Death on the Waterfront

by Robert Archer

  “It’s too bad Tommy burned the letters,” muttered Jackson. “They would have helped his story some.”

  “His sister can testify to the letters and so can Augustino when and if the boys catch him. It’s going to be kinda hard on Mrs. Murdock and her daughter, coming on top of her husband’s murder, but the whole story will have to be told in court.”

  “I’ll bet that little rat knew about those letters before he ever met Burke,” said Jackson. “Blackmail’s his dish.”

  Maeve was thinking of Murdock’s wife and daughter. “What a homecoming.”

  They were silent for a moment, then she asked, “Would a hardheaded businessman like Murdock actually pay ten thousand dollars for a batch of silly love letters?”

  “He evidently intended to.” Stern swung the car off the avenue into one of the lanes leading to the tunnel. They were taking Maeve home over her vehement protestations that she could get there just as easily by bus.

  “Murdock was hardheaded, but he was conventional,” he continued when they had paid the toll and were speeding through the tunnel. “He hated and feared scandal. The fact that he drew the money from the bank almost immediately after Burke first contacted him makes me think he would have paid rather than have those letters made public. Then, too, Burke was Mayme’s brother. Murdock probably didn’t want to turn him over to the police.”

  Jackson swore suddenly. “By God,” he said, “Burke and me—we were both planning to blackmail Murdock, and about the same thing too.”

  “But not with the same motive,” said Maeve.

  “I wasn’t thinking of motive. I was thinking that if Murdock knew I was coming to put pressure on him he may have decided what the hell and told Burke where to get off.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Stern. “I thought of that. And then Burke might have killed him and taken the ten thousand. Of course it’s possible, but I still believe Burke’s story. I believe it because Burke fits the picture as an unwilling blackmailer rather than a killer—and another reason is that I think both Murdock and Riorden were killed by the same man and Burke was in that room at Big Edna’s when Riorden was killed.”

  “That’s what he says,” objected Jackson. “It’s pretty close timing.”

  “That’s what he says, and I bet it checks. If Burke had already killed twice he would never have left Powers alive.”

  “Don’t forget Augustino was out in the car while Burke was in Murdock’s library,” said Maeve. “He wouldn’t be squeamish, would he?”

  “Bennie wouldn’t strangle a man,” said Jackson with conviction. “He’s too yellow to come that close.”

  “Yes, and it’s too bad,” murmured Stern. “From what I’ve heard of friend Bennie, I don’t know anyone I’d rather help fry.”

  “So you got Burke”—Jackson’s voice was disconsolate—“and what have you got? A couple of lousy blackmailers.”

  “That’s true,” agreed Maeve. “You’re not much closer to the murderer than you were before.”

  “Don’t you believe it,” Stern retorted cheerfully. “We’ve exposed a very annoying red herring and we’ve practically eliminated at least one grade-A suspect—to wit, Burke. I’ll admit we’re not out of the woods yet, but Burke’s story has cleared away some of the underbrush, and I’m beginning to see daylight. Grant me a couple of slightly shaky premises, and I’ll reconstruct these two murders for you, step by step.”

  “Unless you’ve been holding out on us,” Maeve challenged, “that’s sheer braggadocio.”

  “What are your premises?” Jackson sounded interested.

  Stern remembered Jackson’s suspicions regarding the identity of the killer. Jackson was in the union—on the ground floor as far as these murders were concerned—and, right or wrong, his suspicions were important. But he was a stubborn clam, and how to open him up was a problem.

  “Want to check your theories with mine, do you?” he asked slyly. “Okay, I think we’ll agree, at least up to a point. Premise number one concerns motive. My guess is that the motive for killing both Riorden and Murdock was fear of exposure as a stool pigeon.”

  “Check,” muttered Jackson.

  Stern permitted himself a slight smile, but he kept his eyes on the road. “And following logically out of premise number one, premise number two is that the same man committed both crimes.” Jackson was silent until Stern glanced at him. Then he said haltingly, “There’s a third premise. The murderer is one of seven men.”

  “Seven?” questioned Maeve.

  “I can’t go that far,” said Stern.

  “You’ve got to.” Jackson’s voice sounded tired. “God knows I don’t want to, either, but I can’t help myself. It’s there. That committee leaked like a sieve, and the leak had to come from inside, not out. If there’s a rat in the union he’s on that committee.”

  “You could have more than one stool,” said Stern.

  “What good would he be if he wasn’t on the committee?” Jackson began chanting names, a doleful, rising litany: “Burke, Melius, Painter, Sangster, Colletti, Gordon—and me. One of us is a killer and a rat.”

  “Don’t sound so morbid,” pleaded Maeve. “And for God’s sake, leave yourself out. You didn’t do it.”

  Stern was malicious. “He’s the only one who hasn’t an alibi of some sort,” he pointed out.

  “Oh, shut up, Joey Stern,” Maeve snapped. “You’re just an egotistic windbag. You and your premises. It’s—it’s not scientific. It’s just guessing.”

  Stern was hurt. “Hell’s fire,” he gasped. “Do you think I’d have planned this business tonight——”

  “You didn’t plan it,” said Maeve. “I did.”

  “All right. You did. Have it your own way. Anyway I’m sorry. I seldom expect to be taken seriously.”

  There was a strained, uncomfortable silence for a time after that. All three kept their eyes straight ahead. The car had long since left the tunnel and was traveling along a broad concrete highway. Ahead and to the left, a beam of light marked the beacon of the municipal flying field, beyond which was the suburban development where Dr. Stevenson lived. Maeve was almost home.

  “I’m sorry, too, Joey,” the girl said softly at last. She squeezed his arm. “Let’s stop being silly, all of us. Suppose you start guessing.”

  “Don’t sniff at guessing, my sweet.” Stern’s tone was stiffly pedantic. “That’s all crime deduction amounts to, practically. So-called scientific methods don’t solve one case out of ten. Oh, they help—I don’t mean to say that the highly publicized crime laboratory down at headquarters is a complete waste of the taxpayers’ money. But criminals nowadays don’t go around dropping collar buttons and leaving fingerprints and spilling prussic acid on the tablecloth. They know better and they don’t wear collar buttons.”

  Maeve said meekly, “I wasn’t sniffing.”

  Stern unbent a little. “Okay, I’ll cut the lecture. Take the first of these murders. Assuming our premise on motive is correct—and it’s all we’ve got—Riorden was killed by a labor spy because Riorden knew his identity or the spy thought so.”

  “Wait a minute.” Jackson leaned forward. “That hook of mine must have been swiped a week ago. I don’t know when the shoes were stolen but I haven’t seen them in that broom closet for a month. Whoever stole that stuff had frame-up on his mind a long time before Riorden found that spy report.”

  “Right,” said Stern. “The murder grew out of the frame-up, not the other way around. I doubt that, originally, murder had anything to do with the plan. All the opposition wanted was to start trouble on the water front and then get you and perhaps one or two others out of the way long enough for the old racketeer leadership of the union to come in and take control. But murder became necessary when Riorden threatened to spill the beans.”

  “Isn’t that pretty drastic?” asked Maeve.

  Jackson grunted. “Murder’s cheap on the water front. Looking at it the way you do,” he said to Stern, “the killer might have been one of W
eller’s gang.”

  “Uh-uh.” Stern shook his head emphatically. “Weller’s mob would use their heads, and this fellow didn’t. He got panicky and spoiled the show. Another guess of mine is that he was Murdock’s private spy. He went to report direct to Murdock. Maybe he wanted money to get out of the country or maybe he expected Murdock to cover him, but instead, Murdock gave him hell. Anyway, they quarreled about something, and Murdock underestimated his employee. Employers are usually contemptuous of that kind of rat, even if they use them. Then the guy suddenly got the idea that he’d never be safe as long as Murdock was alive. Result: curtains for John Murdock. The details may be wrong, but I’ll bet a dime to a doughnut the fundamentals are accurate.”

  “Simple—like that,” said Maeve. “Now all you need is the murderer and some cellophane to wrap him in.”

  “Proof,” growled Stern. “That’s the wrapping we need. And we got damn little of it. The polecat’s been too blamed lucky so far. Take what happened in Murdock’s library this morning, for instance: that room was doggone near as busy as a subway station during rush hour. First, there were a couple of telephone calls, one on the hall phone—that was you, friend Jackson—and another twenty minutes later—that was Mayme Burke——”

  “It couldn’t have been Mayme,” objected Jackson, “unless she did a Houdini. I took her clothes and locked her in.”

  “Yeah, and you ruined a perfectly good telephone. Maybe she dropped a note out the window like they do in the melodramas. For cripesake, don’t bother me. I’m guessing it was Mayme, and if you must know one of Nicholson’s men got a statement from Mayme that backs me up. Now let me get on, will you?

  “Murdock probably got up when Mayme called. Anyway, he made an outgoing call five minutes later—that was to take care of you, because the order had to come from him and that was the only contact he had with the outside. Then there’s another call about eight o’clock. That’s Burke. Murdock gets dressed and sits down at the table to do some work or something and in pops the murderer. Maybe Murdock knew he was coming and maybe he didn’t, but in either case the result was the same.”

  “What time do you think the murderer got there?”

  Stern grinned. “About the time Weller’s boys ran you off the road. They certainly did you a favor when they carted you away from there. If they had left you there, my friend——”

  “Then Gordon could have...” Maeve paused as she remembered. “But the trooper came by fifteen minutes after the accident. That gives Gordon an alibi, doesn’t it?”

  Jackson grunted suddenly: “It does like hell.”

  “What’s that?” said Stern, “you wouldn’t contradict a lady, would you?”

  “There’s something wrong about that clock business,” said Jackson in a voice that was barely audible. “I noticed a clock just as we were leaving the ferry, and it said eight forty-five. It didn’t take three quarters of an hour to get to the place where Weller’s hoodlums forced us off the road.”

  “Did you check with the clock on the dashboard?” asked Stern quickly.

  Jackson said miserably: “I meant to, but Whitey was looking at the paper and had it held so it covered the clock. Later I forgot.”

  “Then you don’t know whether the clock was right or not?” Jackson said: “It couldn’t have been right. I hate like hell to even think it, but it was nearer nine than nine-thirty when that car ran us off the road.”

  “Meaning,” said Stern softly, “that Whitey was in that ditch for forty-five minutes instead of fifteen.”

  Jackson said nothing. His face in the shadows was inscrutable. “Well,” said Stern after a minute, “that’s another good alibi gone to the bowwows. Let’s get back to the library. The murderer killed Murdock, tried to open that inner compartment of the safe and couldn’t, then pried open the drawer of Murdock’s desk—that’s a grisly thought, with Murdock hanging there at his elbow—and took something—guess what—from the drawer and left by the windows. A little later—I wouldn’t know how much—along comes Burke and Bennie and then Powers and still later, maybe somebody else—remember Burke said he thought he heard a car just after he bopped Powers—and nobody saw the murderer come or go or saw him anywhere in the neighborhood as far as we know. That’s what I call nice timing.”

  He braked the car into the curb in front of a wide, rambling house set back and above the street in a terraced lawn. “I bet you catch hell for being out so late.” He indicated a light in the windows of the first floor and grinned at Maeve. “Nunky’s still up.”

  “You know very well he’s up till all hours,” said Maeve. “Probably playing chess with one of his disreputable cronies.” She made no move to get out of the car.

  “It’s very late,” murmured Stern. “Don’t bother to invite us in.”

  “I wasn’t going to. It’s Joey who’s rude, not I,” she informed Jackson in an aside. “I want the answers to one or two questions, though, before I go.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, for one thing, what happened to the ten thousand dollars? How do you know the murderer couldn’t get into the safe? Or Burke, for that matter?”

  “The keys, my dear, the keys.”

  Maeve shook her head. “What keys? You’ve got to be a little more explicit, mastermind.”

  “In words of one syllable for your limping intellect, my sweet,” said Stern, “the dead man’s keys. The keys that were on the desk when the law came. The inner compartment of the safe was opened with a key, not forced, although somebody tried to.”

  “But how do you know?”

  “I don’t. I’m still guessing. I’m guessing that the safe was still closed when Powers came into the room and that Powers remembers it was. He’s very observant, is Powers.”

  “Then Powers might have taken it.”

  “Of course. But if he had I think he would have said the safe was open. In fact, I’m sure he would have.”

  “But—then who?” Jackson had been listening intently.

  “I’ve got it,” exclaimed Maeve. “The car Burke heard.”

  “Exactly,” said Stern, “the car.”

  But though Maeve coaxed and wheedled, Stern would not say who he thought was in the car.

  “All right,” she said, finally, in exasperation. “You’re not so clever anyway. You almost pulled a boner when you questioned Burke.”

  “How come?” asked Stern.

  “That stuff about the mask.” Maeve’s nose wrinkled contemptuously. “I’d like to have seen your face if Burke had found the newspaper. That story about the mask was in every one of them. I read them myself.”

  “Ah, but he couldn’t find the paper,” said Stern insufferably. “I was sitting on it.”

  PART FOUR

  1. Strike

  FOR the second morning in succession fists pounded on Jackson’s door. He rolled over sleepily, called “Who?” in a half-strangled voice and found that the sheet had wrapped itself around his neck like a boa constrictor. He fought it with unnecessary savagery. He was always groggy when wakened suddenly.

  “Telephone.” The voice sounded like Nutsy, the night clerk, a high whining complaint, but it might be a stall. Fink Weller’s boys might be around to finish the job they had started before their boss died.

  Jackson swung his long legs out of bed, flexed his taped wrists, and looked at a large right fist. The wrists were practically as good as new. Maybe it was a couple of Weller’s boys at that.

  “Who is it?” he called and, not waiting for an answer, caught up the chair beside the bed and padded silently to the door. Standing to one side, he turned the snap lock and pressed the catch that held it back. He put one hand on the doorknob and held the chair in front of him like a battering ram. Then he flung the door back and leaped into the hall.

  There was a frightened cry and a thud, and he was standing in the hall looking down at Nutsy sitting on the floor against the opposite wall. Nutsy was swearing in his usual helplessly vicious fashion and nursing his jaw whe
re a rung of the chair had caught him. Except for Nutsy and himself, Jackson saw that the hall was deserted.

  “You crazy bastard,” said Nutsy, “I’ll cut your throat in your sleep for that.”

  Jackson picked him up. “Okay, so I was wrong this time. There was a telephone call.”

  He left Nutsy to take inventory of his bruises and went back into the room for his pants. In a moment he was out at the desk, picking up the telephone receiver.

  Bullethead Sangster’s deep, liquid voice answered his hello.

  “Jack? How you feelin’? I heard you got mussed up some.”

  “I’m okay,” said Jackson. “What’s on your mind?”

  “You better get down here to the pier if you can navigate,” Sangster told him. “We got a strike on our hands.”

  “Strike?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Who called it?”

  “Melius. He called a rump meeting of the Exec last night.”

  “Nuts,” said Jackson. “The Executive Committee can’t call a strike. What do the boys say?”

  “The boys ain’t talkin’. You’ll find out why when you get here.” Sangster hung up, and Jackson, a bitter gleam in his eye, returned to his room to dress. So Melius was going to take over the union, was he? Was Weller in it, or was Melius acting on his own, and how did this fit in with the murder of Riorden and Murdock and the attack on Whitey and himself? In the act of pulling up the zipper on his leather windbreaker, Jackson paused. Melius! Had Melius killed Riorden and tried to get Whitey and himself out of the way, so he could control the union and turn it into a racket? That was cockeyed. Melius could have had nothing to do with the car that bumped Whitey and himself into the ditch. That had been the work of Fink Weller and his men. Still, Melius could be the stool pigeon; everything pointed to such a possibility. But that would mean that he, Jackson, was dead wrong in his suspicions. He wished to God he was but he didn’t think so.