The Sodden Sailor
A Nick Williams Mystery
Book 11
By Frank W. Butterfield
Nick Williams Mysteries
The Unexpected Heiress
The Amorous Attorney
The Sartorial Senator
The Laconic Lumberjack
The Perplexed Pumpkin
The Savage Son
The Mangled Mobster
The Iniquitous Investigator
The Voluptuous Vixen
The Timid Traitor
The Sodden Sailor
The Excluded Exile
The Paradoxical Parent
Nick & Carter Stories
An Enchanted Beginning
Golden Gate Love Stories
The One He Waited For
Their Own Hidden Island
© 2017 by Frank W. Butterfield. All rights reserved.
No part of this story may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without express written permission of the copyright holder.
This book contains explicit language and suggestive situations.
This is a work of fiction that refers to historical figures, locales, and events, along with many completely fictional ones. The primary characters are utterly fictional and do not resemble anyone that I have ever met or known of.
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Epilogue
Author's Note
Acknowledgments
Historical Notes
More Information
Sodden
ˈsä-dən
1. Dull or expressionless especially from continued indulgence in alcoholic beverages
Sailor
ˈsā-lər
1. a : One that sails; especially : mariner
1. b (1) : A member of a ship's crew (2) : seaman
Chapter 1
1198 Sacramento Street
San Francisco, Cal.
Sunday, February 6, 1955
Half past 6 in the evening
I was walking down the stairs when the doorbell rang. Sunday was everyone's night off, so I made my way over and opened the large front door.
Captain Daniel O'Reilly stood under the lamp that illuminated the front porch. He was the captain of our yacht, The Flirtatious Captain. He was somewhere north of 40, stood about 5'7", and was broad in the chest. He was wearing a blue pea coat over a green cable sweater and dark brown trousers. As soon as I opened the door, he removed his cap and took the pipe out of his mouth. His blond hair was almost gone. He'd cut it back to almost nothing since the last time I'd seen him.
Grinning at me, he asked, "How are you, Mr. Williams?" O'Reilly was Irish and still had a faint lilt in his voice when he spoke.
"Just fine, Captain. Good to see you. Come in out of the cold." I could feel the damp chill as it tried to creep inside. The afternoon had warmed up to almost 60 but, by sunset, it was cold and damp with fog. The lights in the park across from our house were dimmed from the wisps that were blowing by. All I could see of the big neon sign that sat above The Huntington Hotel across from the park was a faint red haze.
The two men walked into the house. O'Reilly put his hand on his friend's shoulder and said, "Nick Williams, may I introduce an old friend, Peter Thomas?"
He was painfully thin in his heavy clothes. He stood about 5'8" or so. His jaundiced face was lined and creased from exposure so much so that I couldn't make out his age. He could have been anywhere from 40 to 70. Since he was a friend of Captain O'Reilly's, I figured he was a sailor of some sort. He was wearing an ancient black coat that was coming apart at the sleeves, a thick black sweater that looked new, threadbare black trousers, and a black hat. He tossed his cigarette to the marble floor of the entryway, stubbed it out with the toe of his thick-soled black shoe, and extended his hand with its cigarette-stained fingers.
I shook and got a solid grasp in return. His hand was dry and calloused. He needed to trim his yellowing fingernails. One of them scraped my hand as he released it.
"Nice to meet you, Mr. Thomas."
The man replied in an accent I didn't immediately recognize. "That'll be Captain Thomas, if you don't mind."
"Well, Captain, can I take your coat?" Once that was taken care of for both men, I said, "My husband, Carter Jones, is in the kitchen. I cooked so he's serving."
Captain Thomas stopped short. He curtly asked, "Husband?" His black eyes narrowed as he stared at me.
I crossed my arms. "That's right."
I glanced at O'Reilly who rolled his eyes. "We went over this, Pete. These are the men who can help. And we're all a little bent. I could tell a couple of stories about you and Shanghai."
"Seems like all I run into these days are damned poofters." He was still staring at me.
"You know where the door is. Meanwhile, there's some good food waiting in the kitchen for whoever's hungry." I turned and walked into the great room, through the dining room, and slammed open the kitchen door on my way in.
. . .
We ate at the kitchen table. Thomas decided to get off his high horse and seemed to enjoy the food. I'd made lasagna, my old standby. There were two pans. One with plenty of garlic and one with not as much. Carter was getting better at eating garlic but he still wasn't sold on it. On that particular night, he had the entire pan to himself.
We didn't talk much as we ate. We also skipped the salad that Mrs. Strakova, our cook, had left in the icebox for us. The lasagna had smelled too good to wait.
Once he'd cleaned his plate, Thomas pushed his plate back and crossed his legs in his chair. He took out a tobacco pouch and began to roll a cigarette. "Well, Mr. Williams, they say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. And I'm more partial to you now than when I walked in the door." He licked the paper closed and looked around for a light. O'Reilly offered his Zippo and Thomas sighed contentedly once he'd had his first puff.
I shrugged. I didn't like the man. I knew that O'Reilly had a good reason to bring him over. He wouldn't have done so, otherwise. He'd called me on the Friday before and had asked if we could meet. I'd suggested he come to dinner. I'd decided I was going to start cooking on Sunday nights and that was our inaugural dinner. He told me he was bringing a friend. I'd assumed the friend would be a new lover. I was obviously wrong.
Carter asked, "So, Captain, how's the boat?"
O'Reilly, Thomas, and I all said, "Ship," at the same time. I knew that Carter understood the difference between a boat and a ship and only used the term to watch me (and O'Reilly) react like Pavlov's dog hearing a bell.
We all laughed as O'Reilly leaned forward to reply. Before he could say anything, I stood up and said, "Let's go into the great room. We've got brandy, port, whiskey."
Carter stood and began to clear the plates. "Or whatever you want."
Leaving my husband to the dishes, I headed through the door and into the dining room. The bar was at the far end of the long redwood table that took up most of the dining room. "Captain O'Re
illy? Brandy and soda? Is that right?"
"That'll suit me just fine, Mr. Williams. Pete? What's your poison?"
The man walked up next to me as I began to pour brandy into an Old Fashioned glass. "Any Madeira by chance?"
I shot some soda into O'Reilly's brandy and said, "We might. I'll have to ask Carter."
"Oh? Clear something up for me, Mr. Williams, if you would."
"What?"
"Is he really the husband or is he maybe the wife?"
I put down the glass and turned to look at Thomas. He was standing close and grinning at me as if he'd just said something really funny. Over the smell of rotting teeth, his breath reeked of alcohol. And it was more than the beer we'd had with supper. He smelled like a dirty old drunk. There was no better way to describe it.
Although I was better at doing it with taller men, I pulled back and, before he could move, gave him a right hook just above his left kidney. In response, he came at me with a right of his own. He got me square on the jaw. I fell back and hit the bar, sending bottles and glasses flying to the floor.
I quickly found my footing. Relying on a trick that Mike, my ex-lover, had taught me, I used my right foot to pull his left leg forward as I went for his face with my right hand. His eyes registered surprise as my fist hit the side of his gin-blossom nose. He fell to the floor and stayed there, moaning in pain. I figured it was hitting the floor, and probably some broken glass, that was more painful than anything I'd delivered.
O'Reilly walked over and said, "Sorry about that, Mr. Williams." Nudging the prostrate man with his shoe, he added, "He always was a bloody idiot who couldn't keep his mouth shut."
Right then, Carter stomped out of the kitchen. As he dried his hands on a towel, he scowled. "What the hell is going on in here?"
I said, "Captain Thomas tripped."
"And fell on your jaw when he did?"
I felt my face with my hand. There was already some swelling.
My husband said, "Come in here, Nick, while O'Reilly handles his pal."
Once we were in the kitchen alone, Carter banged open the icebox and began to fill the dish towel he was carrying with bits of chipped ice that Mrs. Strakova always kept in a bowl. "What was that all about?"
"Captain Thomas doesn't much like poofters. Told me so when he walked in the door. After putting out his cigarette on the floor in the entryway."
"He better hope Mrs. Kopek or Nora don't find out about that. He's liable to get more than you gave him." The former was our housekeeper and the latter was our maid. Along with Mrs. Strakova and Mrs. Kopek, we also had two couples working for us. Ida was the kitchen maid who worked under Mrs. Strakova. Nora was her girlfriend. Gustav was our butler and valet. Ferdinand, his boyfriend, was our gardener and sometime chauffeur. They were all Czechoslovakian. On that night, Mrs. Strakova and Mrs. Kopek were out at some event involving recent Czechoslovakian refugees while the two couples had decided to go out to the movies together. I had no idea what they were seeing but Gustav had told me they were going to the Fox Theatre on Market Street after a quick dinner somewhere.
As he held the towel against my jaw, he asked, "What'd you give him?"
"My famous right hook—"
Carter laughed. "Poor guy." I'd given Carter the same back in '48 right after he'd told me that he loved me.
"Then I used that leg trick Mike taught me and got him right on his nose."
"Remind me to get Mike another box of Cubans." Carter grinned down at me.
I laughed. "I think he still has plenty left from the ones I just brought him from Mexico." Besides being my ex-lover and best friend, Mike was also a former police lieutenant and the President of our firm, Consolidated Security, Inc.
"He can always use more. What's that accent, by the way?"
"Australian," I replied. It had taken me a moment to figure that out when O'Reilly and Thomas had arrived. But I'd run across a few Australian sailors when I was a corpsman in the Navy during the war and soon recognized it.
Carter removed the towel and gently pressed on my skin. "How's that feel?"
"Not bad. You know I don't swell up much."
He mussed my hair. "It's cause you're so skinny, Boss."
I rolled my eyes and stood up. He pulled me into his arms and gently kissed my jaw up one side and down the other. "That feel better?" he asked.
I nodded and kissed him deeply in reply.
. . .
We were all sitting in the great room in front of a roaring fire. As usual, Carter had masterfully built the fire and then opened the door that led to the garden just outside. We both liked the fresh air along with the heat from the fire.
While Carter was taking care of me, Captain O'Reilly had cleaned up the mess in the dining room.
Carter had grudgingly found a bottle of Madeira in my father's wine cellar down in the basement. The cellar was ours but the contents were his. That was part of the deal when we'd moved into the big pile of rocks the summer before. Carter had essentially stolen the bottle but I figured he would take care of it in that mysterious way he had when dealing with my father.
Captain Thomas looked pretty bad but he was gamely smiling and sipping the Madeira from a small glass.
I asked, "Why'd you bring this charming fellow over, Captain?" That was directed to O'Reilly.
He sighed. "All for a good cause. He needs some help." He paused. "We both need some help and I think you two are the ones to provide it."
Carter huffed. "I'm not feeling very charitable at the moment."
I chuckled. "What's up?"
Thomas said, "I have a gal in mainland China that I need to smuggle into Hong Kong."
"A gal?" I asked.
"Yeah. We aren't on the best of terms—"
Carter interrupted. "Imagine that."
Thomas tried to grin but winced instead. "That's as may be, but she is the mother of my son and they're in a tight place, there's no doubt."
"Where is she?" I asked.
"They're about five miles from the border."
I looked over at O'Reilly with a question on my face. I had no idea about the local geography.
"Hong Kong is a peninsula with a number of islands jumbled together in the world's most beautiful harbor. The whole thing is about a thousand square miles. Most everyone lives on or near the harbor."
I asked, "The peninsula is connected to the mainland?"
O'Reilly nodded. "Young Jerry and his mother are in a refugee camp that's not far from the border and near a town called Shumchun. It's where the train to Canton enters China. Ever since the Communist revolution in 1949, there have been a lot of people who've wanted to get into Hong Kong. A couple of times since then, the Chinese government pushed a few thousand across to see how the British would react."
Through gritted teeth, Carter asked, "How can we help?"
Thomas started to reply, but O'Reilly got there first. "We need airfare to Hong Kong and money to bribe our way back and forth across the border."
"And then money to get home," added Thomas.
"And where's that?" I asked.
"Sydney."
I stood up. "Captain Thomas?"
He looked at me with a grin. "Mr. Williams?"
"Will you pardon us? My husband and I need to have a private conversation with Captain O'Reilly."
He shrugged. "Don't let me get in the way."
. . .
We moved into the office. Carter, arms folded and with a scowl on his face, stood next to the glass cabinet where he kept my trophies. That's what he called the models of our three airplanes and The Flirtatious Captain. It was something he'd decided to do as a joke to make sure my head didn't get too big. I thought it was utterly charming.
"Captain, what's really going on here?" That was Carter.
The captain was sitting in Carter's desk chair, a big leather job that was adjusted for a man who stood 6'4". O'Reilly's legs didn't quite hit the floor. I was sitting at my father's old desk which was directly across from C
arter's.
"You know my story. I started working for Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Nationalists in '38, running guns from Hong Kong through Shanghai and upriver for the Chinese Nationalists. That was after the Japanese took Shanghai in '37, so it was blockade running, mostly. I didn't always know what we were carrying, but we always got through, on way or another. I headed back to the States after Pearl Harbor and the fall of Hong Kong in December of '41. All the time I was doing that work, Pete was there with me. I wouldn't be sitting here if it weren't for him." O'Reilly's eyes looked away from me and over towards Carter. "I'm sorry, Mr. Jones, for Pete's behavior. He has no right. And maybe I shouldn't have done this but I really have no one else to turn to."
Carter relented. His face relaxed and he said, "You're part of our family, O'Reilly. We'll help you out. But what's the part of the story that you're leaving out?"
I couldn't help but grin. Carter was becoming a better and better investigator. If he were to ask me, I would have told him not to ask that question as directly as he did. But, still, he was getting better and better.
O'Reilly sighed. "I do appreciate that, Mr. Jones. I truly do. I've never—"
I interrupted him, going against my own advice. "What's the real story?"
He looked at me and smiled wanly. "You do get to the point, don't you, Mr. Williams?"
I nodded and waited.
He took in a deep breath. "Mai isn't just Pete's gal."
"May? Like the month?" asked Carter.
"M,a,i," explained O'Reilly. "It's a girl's name. It means 'apricot'."
Carter asked, "Is she your daughter?"
O'Reilly laughed. "No. She's my half-sister. We have the same father. Her mother was Chinese and lived in Hong Kong."
"Is that how you ended up there before the war?"
He nodded. "My father was a round-about friend of Chiang Kai-shek. The generalissimo, Chiang, that is, he found out about me and hired me on. That's when I met Pete. He'd already been doing jobs for the Nationalists. And that's how he met Mai."
"How old is Jerry?" asked Carter.
"15 this year. He was born in 1940."
"Are your sister and Thomas legally married?" I asked.
O'Reilly shook his head. "No."
I looked up at Carter. His whole body language had changed. He looked worried instead of angry. I knew he was thinking about the kid. I was worried about a gal having to raise a kid during the Jap occupation, the brutal civil war between the Communists and the Nationalists, and the revolution that ended it all in '49.
The Sodden Sailor (A Nick Williams Mystery Book 11) Page 1