by Tim Curran
DEADLOCK
Tim Curran
First Edition
Deadlock © 2014 by Tim Curran
All Rights Reserved.
A DarkFuse Release
www.darkfuse.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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1
“She’s sitting right out there in the harbor,” Arturo said. “At the end of old Number Five Pier, the Yvonne Addams. A six-hundred foot bulk freighter. I own her lock, stock, and barrel. Not that it does me any good, you understand, because I can’t get a crew to sail her.”
“Why’s that?” Charlie Petty asked. “Not sea-worthy or whatever they call it?”
First Edition
Deadlock © 2014 by Tim Curran
All Rights Reserved.
A DarkFuse Release
www.darkfuse.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
1
“She’s sitting right out there in the harbor,” Arturo said. “At the end of old Number Five Pier, the Yvonne Addams. A six-hundred foot bulk freighter. I own her lock, stock, and barrel. Not that it does me any good, you understand, because I can’t get a crew to sail her.”
“Why’s that?” Charlie Petty asked. “Not sea-worthy or whatever they call it?”
“Oh, no, Charlie, she’s ship-shape, got her papers and everything. The Coasties have crawled up one side of her and down the other. She’s ready to sail, ready to make me some money, only I can’t get a crew aboard her. It’s the craziest thing.”
“That’s too bad,” Charlie said. He pulled off his cigarette and glanced around Arturo’s office, wondering what the hell this was all about. Because it was coming, it was surely coming and he knew it.
“Ain’t it, though?” Arturo said.
Charlie flicked his ash. “We all got troubles, Mr. Arturo. But what’s that old hulk got to do with you calling me here? I mean, let’s just get to it, shall we? I owe you fifty grand and you want it and I ain’t got it. That’s what this is about. So quit humping my leg already. Do I get it in the belly or the head?”
Arturo laughed and shook his head. “Charlie, Charlie, Charlie. Man, you are something. You watch too many of those gangster pictures, you know that? I’m just a businessman. A solid, respectable fucking businessman. Are we square on that?”
“If you say so.”
God, that was rich. Arturo had so many goddamn bodies out there he couldn’t remember where he’d planted them all. This guy went through the Northside underworld like the Black Plague, leaving a trail of corpses behind him...along with more than a few witnesses who were too terrified to testify against him.
“You got balls, Charlie. You bet with both hands and lose your ass every time. You’re what’s called a degenerate gambler. But, my God, you got quite a set on you.” Arturo leaned back in his chair, crossed his meaty arms behind his head. “Most guys wouldn’t dare talk to me the way you do. They’d be in here groveling and begging, but not you. You’re into me for fifty large and you still ride my ass. What a set, what a set!”
Charlie smiled. He’d spent his life blowing from one gutter to the next like a stray leaf. He’d done time and faced down some of the meanest animals society had squeezed out. And he’d done this without so much as a shudder or a shimmy-shake or a second backward thought. Truth was, he didn’t think about it much, the kind of person he was or the fish he swam with. He just took it for granted. It was when a guy spent too much time thinking about how close he danced to the edge or how sharp the blade was that he started second-guessing himself, started losing his balls, his guts. And when he did that, it was all over but the eulogy.
“Who we kidding here?” he said. “You’ve already made up your mind, so get to it already. Cut the fucking melodrama.”
“Maybe if you shut your hole, I will. See, it’s got to do with that ship out there.”
Charlie pulled off his cigarette. “I’m listening.”
“That ship is in good shape, I could be hauling ore and grain and you name it with her. I got all the contracts I want, but I can’t sail her. And I can’t sail her because I can’t get a crew to step foot on her.”
“Okay. Why’s that?”
“Because she’s got a history,” Arturo said. “A bad history. Sailors think she’s a jinx, a hoodoo ship, and they won’t sail on her.”
It was Charlie’s turn to laugh. “Are you saying that hulk is haunted?”
Arturo shrugged. “Your words, not mine.”
“Oh, for chrissake. In this day and age?”
“Why not? All I know is that nobody’ll board her. Christ, I even brought in foreign crews and they didn’t last the night. Not a one of them.”
It was a real shame, Arturo explained. He wasn’t a shipping magnate, it wasn’t his thing. He was just a common businessman. Sure, he dabbled in some loansharking and illegal gambling, but other than that he was legit as Arm & Hammer. Some guy had signed the Yvonne Addams over to him after he’d accrued some very heavy debt. At the time, Arturo hadn’t known what sort of ship she was, but he found out soon enough.
“See,” he said, “when she was signed over to me she was sitting right where she is now and had been for two years. The guy I got her from was just glad to be rid of her. He played me for a sucker, all right. I got a good ship, but no crew’ll touch her, and I’m paying out my ass on taxes and docking rental.”
“So sell her.”
But that was no good either, Arturo said. The other ship brokers knew about the Addams’ history. They didn’t believe for a minute she was haunted or any of that, but being shrewd businessmen themselves, they were using it as leverage. Sure, they’d take the Addams off his hands, but at less than a third of what she was worth. The only other option was to sell her to a salvage company, but again at a staggering loss.
Charlie blew smoke out. “That’s tough. They got you by the balls. What’s the beef, anyway? Got spooks rattling chains and carrying their heads around or what?”
“No, not exactly.”
Arturo said there were no manifestations exactly that he knew of. Just a lot of bad luck. The past three voyages were nothing but trouble. Lots of random violence, guys going nuts and jumping overboard. The voyage before last, they had two suicides and a murder. When the Addams reached port, they had to take the first mate off in a straight jacket.
“All kinds of crazy shit,” he said in summation.
“But there’s more?”
Arturo nodded. “Try this on for size. Three of her captains killed themselves mid-voyage. Guys have jumped overboard. There’s been murders, outbreaks of mass violence…you name it. Shit, Charlie
, one trip three swabbies hanged themselves in one night. People seem to think—and you’ll laugh at this, big-balled prick like you—that there’s something on the ship, something not exactly human, something…evil.”
“Sounds like one of them comic books I read as a kid.”
Arturo shrugged. “Last time out, the entire crew disappeared.”
The ship’s last port of call had been a place called Paramaribo in Surinam. Her last communication was about sixteen hours later as she steamed for New Orleans. She was posted missing two days later. Three months went by and the Yvonne Addams was sighted off the Cape Verde Islands by a fishing boat. She had drifted over quite an expanse of the South Atlantic and had taken on some water, but was no worse for the wear.
“Pirates or something?”
Arturo shrugged. “That thread was followed, but it led nowhere. Her cargo was untouched. She had a belly of bauxite ore, which is valuable if you have a refinery and are smelting aluminum. But without that very costly set up, bauxite is nothing but rocks.”
“So where’d everybody go?”
“They never found out. Only that it looked like they’d left in one hell of a hurry. All the lifeboats gone.”
“That’s weird.”
“It’s more than weird, Charlie. It’s goddamn scary. Things happen at sea. The Addams would hardly be the first fucking derelict out there. Hell, I’m told dozens are logged every year…but that didn’t make the owners any happier. They got rid of her, sold her to the guy I got her from sans the bauxite, of course.”
“Well, gotta be a reason. Maybe they thought she was going under and they abandoned ship.”
“Maybe. But why no SOS?”
“Maybe she was commanded by Captain Bligh.”
Arturo said the captain’s name was Maxton, a real old school hardcase. He wasn’t well liked, but he was respected. Of course, when you had a master like that and he up and vanished, first thing the Coast Guard, civil and marine authorities started thinking was mutiny.
“But it wasn’t mutiny?”
Arturo shook his head. “No. The Coasties dismissed the idea. Unless they did it very quietly, there was no mutiny. No signs of violence. It just looked like the crew grabbed what they could and got the hell off her. Twenty-two men. None of them were ever heard from again. Including Maxton’s wife, Virginia, who went on every voyage.”
“Spooky.”
Arturo nodded. “Thing is, Charlie, I’m tired of this shit. I’ve had that tub six months now and I’ve lost one contract after another because of these fucking superstitious sailors. I need to put a crew aboard or get rid of her. But I’m not taking it up the ass. I want some return on my investment. Just the investigations and accidents alone have put my goddamn marine insurance rates right up in the stratosphere.”
Charlie crushed out his cigarette. “Okay, let me guess. You’re tired of this shit and you want out, so you want me to board her tonight and torch her so you can collect the insurance.”
“Charlie, Charlie, Charlie. What do you think I am? A hoodlum? It’s nothing like that.”
“Okay, then what? You want me to go out there and exorcise the ghost of Captain Hook?”
Arturo shook his head. “Nope. I want you to spend the night on her. Alone. Just you and the ghosts.”
“You’re kidding me.”
But Arturo did not look like he was kidding. In fact, he had never looked more serious. “No joke, Charlie. You spend the night, I quash your debt. It’s strictly win-win for you.”
“Unless that thing comes knocking at my cabin door at midnight.”
Arturo grinned. “Yeah, except for that.”
2
For about five minutes after Arturo said that, Charlie just sat there staring at him. Of all the crazy-ass things. Spend the night on a haunted boat. This was rich. This was just rich. Hey, Stephen-fucking-King, I got one here for you.
It had to be a joke. Guys like Arturo didn’t give up money like that so easy, not fifty grand. There had to be a catch. “Just spend the night there…that’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“And you wipe out my debt?”
“Just like that. Gone.”
Charlie had to have another cigarette. “Okay…why? So I can prove there’s no ghosts out there?”
That was it. That was it exactly, Arturo explained. That last crew he’d put aboard, the foreign one, were all set to weigh anchor in the morning, but in the middle of the night, they ran off. They wouldn’t spend the night on her. Didn’t matter how much money was in the offing. There was something wrong with that ship, they claimed. They wouldn’t say much more.
“See, I got a guy that’s got another crew all lined up for me. And I got a contract to move some zinc ore that’s worth a bundle. But my boy won’t put his crew on. Doesn’t think it’s safe. I had the ship checked stem to stern, see if there were any gases or anything that might drive guys nuts. Nada. She checks out. My boy is ready to put his crew on, but some of ’em are spooked. Now, if I get a guy…guy like you…to spend the night on her and you come off in the morning and your hair’s not white or anything, the crew’ll board the Addams and sail her. I get one good voyage under her belt, I’ll be able to sell her full price. Between that and the ore shipment, I’ll make a mint.”
Now it was making sense. “Why me?”
“Why not you, Charlie? Like I said, you got balls,” Arturo said, sweetening it a bit. “Now, some of those sailors, they’re pretty tough boys. But sailors are sailors, right? And some of ’em are scared of the dark like little old ladies. But not you. You got balls, you gotta haul ’em around in a wheelbarrow. You don’t spook. I watched you a long time, Charlie. You’re the real thing. You came in here today knowing you might not walk out again and you still didn’t even flinch. No, you’re the boy for this. You spend the night and tomorrow morning you leave free and clear.”
“And that’s it? That’s all I got to do?”
“Sure. The sailors say that whole ship is bad, but particularly the captain’s cabin. That’s where I want you to spend the night. In that cabin.”
“Alone? How about I bring a girl with me and have some fun.”
“No dice. You do it alone. That’s important. If a guy alone can spend the night there, then there’s no reason a crew of swabbies can’t.”
“So I spend the night in a cobwebby, rat-infested floating haunted house.”
Arturo shook his head. “It’s not like that. Everything’s been cleaned out. She’s been mopped and empty for years now. I had a fresh mattress and bedding put on her for you. There’ll be food and drinks. There’s no juice on her right now because the plant is down, but I’ll have some lanterns there for you. You might want to bring a radio or something to keep you company.”
Charlie just sat there for a time. You couldn’t ask for an easier set-up than that. He didn’t believe in ghosts and he didn’t scare because of bumps in the night. He’d lock himself in, bring a .45 with him and catch some Zs. $50,000 worth. “And that’s all there is to it?” he asked one last time.
“That’s it, my friend,” Arturo said. “Just spend the night on a ghost ship in a haunted cabin.”
3
A ghost ship.
Now that really took the old cake and sucked up the frosting to boot. It was like something from an old movie. I’ll give you $50,000 if you can spend the night aboard her. Wasn’t there an old movie with Vincent Price like that? Charlie couldn’t remember, but it seemed familiar.
Arturo thought Charlie had some real balls and, truth be told, he did. Usually. It was just good that Arturo didn’t know how Charlie was feeling on the inside when he walked into his office: absolutely white with terror. He wasn’t worried about the gambling debts. A guy like Arturo had ways of collecting in other ways and especially with someone like Charlie. There was always pick-up work to be done, maybe a robbery here or there, some package moved over the state line, a torch job or two. Things that fell between the cracks that his hoods di
dn’t have time to deal with.
So, it wasn’t the debt that was bothering him.
It was Pam.
Pam was Arturo’s wife and Charlie and she had been banging skins for like three months by that point. It was a very discreet arrangement. The sort that was born out of mutual physical attraction rather than any emotional entanglements. Simple. Straight forward. They met in out of the way places and only when Arturo was down in New York City or Miami, out in Chicago or Kansas City. Nobody knew about it but the two of them.
Of course, Arturo was powerful. He was also jealous, greedy, and suspicious by nature like all made guys were. Charlie wouldn’t have put it past him to have his wife followed. If that had been the case, though, there was no way in hell Charlie would have walked out of his office alive. Arturo would have had a couple heavies waiting there. They’d slug him, shoot him up with something, take him out somewhere peaceful to finish it up.
But nothing like that had happened.
Charlie had been sweating bullets when he went to see Arturo, but he had seen nothing that tipped him off that the man was onto him.
Still…he was paranoid.
A ghost ship? A fucking ghost ship?
It seemed too unbelievable, too staged. Then again, if Arturo wanted to whack him, why all the melodramatics? Unless, of course, that was part of the set-up. For all he knew, Arturo might have a couple meat-eaters waiting for him on the boat. Bing, bang, done. But Charlie wasn’t naïve. He had told three people where he was going and who he was going with. If something bad came down, Arturo would be looking at twenty years for murder conspiracy.