The Rum Runner

by Christine Marciniak

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Hank assured her. “If he was going to jump, I’m sure he would have done it whether you were there or not.”

  “And the bombs would have hit the trenches whether you were there or not,” Alice countered.

  Wow. She really pulled no punches.

  “Doesn’t make it any less horrible,” Hank said.

  “Exactly.” Alice squeezed his fingers. “I didn’t bring that up to depress us, though it certainly did have that effect. I wanted to let you know that I understand having seen horrible things. I get it. I also know it is possible to move on. It was for me, and it can be for you. If you want to.”

  “You think I don’t want to?”

  “You tell me.”

  Of course he wanted to be able to live a normal life. This wasn’t a matter of choice. He didn’t choose to have panic attacks or nightmares. But maybe he didn’t have to let them control him quite so much. Maybe there was a way to move on.

  And maybe he could do that with someone who understood to help him. They had reached the Mary B, and Alice was shivering beside him.

  “Tea?” he asked as he guided her over the gangway, her hand warm in his.

  “Brandy?” she asked, one eyebrow quirked. “Medicinal, of course. It would warm us up quicker.”

  He grinned. “I may have some on board. For medicinal purposes.”

  “Naturally.”

  He led her into the galley and lit the lantern, casting the small wood-paneled room with a cozy glow. They actually kept a bottle of brandy in the galley. She was right that there was nothing quite like it when someone had a chill, and that tended to happen when they were out at sea. He poured a little into two glasses and sat down beside her at the table.

  “When do you go back out?” She took a sip and looked at him over the top of her glass.

  The question hit him like a dagger in the heart. He was going out to sea, soon, and for two weeks. Never before had he wanted to stay on land instead of going. There’d never been a reason to stay before.

  “A couple of days.” Was there a way to delay it more? Maybe he could wait until after the weekend, take her out on Friday or Saturday.

  “And you’ll be gone for a couple of weeks.”

  Two weeks suddenly felt like an eternity. “Ten days to two weeks, depending on the haul.”

  “So if you catch a lot early on, you get to come home sooner?”

  He smiled at her eagerness.

  “Something like that.”

  She took an appreciative sip of her brandy. “This is quite good. I suppose I better not ask where you got it.”

  “Better not,” he agreed. He took the glass from her hand and put it on the table. He pulled her close and kissed her, hoping to pick up where they had left off in her sitting room.

  She responded eagerly, and he wondered if there were any non-awkward way to get her to his cabin. It wasn’t the most comfortable place in the world, but it beat the galley.

  Before he could formulate the words, the boat shifted and there was a thump from the working deck. He pulled back from Alice, all his senses alert. Someone had boarded.

  “What’s the matter?” Alice asked, eyes wide.

  “Nothing, I hope,” he said and stood up. No one was expected on board tonight, but it was possible one of his crew members had come looking for him. They knew that in a pinch this was usually where he could be found. He’d better see who it was and what he wanted.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said and headed out to the working deck. He wasn’t terribly surprised to have Alice follow right behind him.

  The man on deck, dressed in dark clothes, with a black wool cap pulled low over his eyes, looked up, eyes wide when Hank burst upon him.

  “You there! Who are you? What do you want?”

  “That’s George Evans,” Alice said, with certainty, behind him.

  Hank turned to her, confused.

  “Who?”

  “He works for Salerno.”

  “Damn.”

  The man took advantage of Hank’s distraction to jump off the boat and run into the night.

  Alice moved as if to follow him, but Hank grabbed her arm, stopping her.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I can arrest him for trespass. Clearly he wasn’t meant to be here.” She tried to pull her arm free, but he was stronger than she was.

  “I don’t want you messing with Salerno’s gang.”

  “Hank, I’m a police officer. It’s what I do.”

  “Leave it.” The words came out a lot more strident than he’d intended. He tried to lighten his tone. “You’re not dressed for a pursuit.”

  She looked down at the heels and black dress that she’d worn for the wake. “I know where he lives. I can go there tomorrow and arrest him.”

  Hank let go of her arm, since the immediate threat of her taking off seemed to be past.

  “Don’t. I won’t press charges. Let it go.”

  “Why? I know he works for Vince Salerno. Jiggy Malone warned me that Vince Salerno is probably behind Nagy’s murder. Patsy thinks Jiggy is. Either way, I don’t like that guy sneaking around on the Mary B.”

  “I don’t like it either,” Hank said, and he also didn’t like the fact that Alice had apparently already collected an awful lot of information. How long before she traced things back to him?

  “Is that what Jiggy was talking to you about at the funeral home?”

  She nodded.

  “Stay away from him.” He couldn’t forget the threat Jiggy had made against Alice. He needed to keep her away from him at all costs.

  She crossed her arms and looked him straight in the eye.

  “Either Vince Salerno or Jiggy Malone, or both, are involved in rum running in this town, and I intend to put a stop to it.”

  “Don’t mess with them.”

  “Don’t tell me how to do my job.” She tapped her foot, and he suspected he was on dangerous ground here.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it, but stay away from them. Especially Jiggy.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  She turned toward the gangway, and his heart filled with panic. He had to make her understand that she was putting herself in harm’s way. He rushed to intercept her, grabbing her arm once more.

  “I’m telling you, if you don’t stay away from Jiggy you’ll be sorry.”

  The hard look in her eyes startled him.

  “Is that a threat?” She jerked her arm free.

  He took a step back as if she had actually slapped him.

  “No! It’s a warning. You could end up like Nagy.”

  “I can take care of myself, Henry Chapman. Thank you very much.”

  She climbed off the boat, and like a coward he watched her walk away into the darkness.

  Chapter Seventeen

  He didn’t try to follow her. She wasn’t sure if she was happy about that or not. She should have known he was no different than any other guy, thinking that because she was a woman she couldn’t do her job.

  She trudged back up the causeway, wishing she had on more comfortable walking shoes. They hadn’t bothered her while she was walking with Hank. The way back seemed twice as long as the way there. She’d let her head be turned by a handsome man and gentle kisses. She was a fool.

  She had a job to do, and he wasn’t going to stop her. Maybe she couldn’t arrest George Evans for trespass if Hank refused to sign a complaint, but she could still ask him what he was doing on Hank’s boat late at night. She wouldn’t go now; it would be better if she waited until she was on duty and in uniform.

  She got across the causeway and glanced down at the Nagy house. There were lights on, and people silhouetted against the windows. Good, Irene wasn’t alone. Every day was going to be a struggle, but at least she had people to help her through them.

  Right now, she just wanted to get home and take a hot bath and not think about anything. The problem was that she knew she wouldn’t stop thinking. About Han
k. Was she too rash in running out on him? He hadn’t followed her, so maybe not.

  It had all been a pipe dream. A fairy tale wish brought on by dancing with him at the club, and somehow that long-ago dream of having a home and family of her own seemed to be possible. Silly of her.

  As she approached the police station, she decided her bath could wait. There were things she needed to find out.

  She pulled open the door, and McGrath, the night sergeant, looked up in surprise.

  “What are you doing here, Grady? Chief give you the night shift all of a sudden?”

  “I want to look at some files.”

  McGrath picked up his coffee cup and nodded toward the cabinets.

  “You know where they are, help yourself.”

  Not only did she know where they were, but nearly every damn piece of paper put there in the past few years had been put there by her. But she didn’t have a photographic memory, and there were plenty of papers put there before her time.

  “Want a cup of coffee?” McGrath asked as she headed straight toward the drawer marked S.

  “Yes, please.” She flipped through the folders. Sabo, Sacco, Saffron, Sakowski, Salgado. She stopped and looked again, but there was no file on Salerno.

  “You ever hear of a Vince Salerno?” she asked McGrath as he handed her a cup of coffee.

  “Can’t say as I have. No folder on him?”

  She shook her head and took a grateful sip of the mud-like coffee.

  “That’s good, then, right? Kept his nose clean.”

  She supposed that was true. At least in Woodbridge.

  “Who made this coffee?” She grimaced as she took the second sip.

  “Those of us on the night shift need a higher octane to keep us going.” He gave her a self-deprecating shrug. “Who’s this Vince Salerno guy? What you want with him?”

  “I don’t know,” Alice admitted. “I think he’s involved in rum running. His name keeps popping up when people talk about Tomas Nagy’s murder.”

  “Thought we arrested the guy who killed Nagy.” McGrath perched on the edge of a desk.

  “We got the guy who pulled the trigger.”

  “And your gut tells you to dig deeper.”

  “Pretty much.”

  McGrath grinned and shook his head. “You are your daddy’s girl, that’s for sure. The Chief ever gives you a chance, you’ll put us all to shame.”

  She didn’t want to put them to shame, she just wanted to do her share. She put down the vile cup of coffee and checked another drawer. Her heart nearly stopped when she found a file for Chapman, Henry. She hadn’t wanted to find a file for him. She wanted him to have kept his nose clean, as McGrath would say.

  She opened it and found only one piece of paper, nearly ten years old. Apparently, he’d been involved in a fist fight shortly after coming back from the war. She put the folder away. That certainly wasn’t something she would hold against him.

  On to the next drawer. Malone. The problem, of course, was that she didn’t know Jiggy’s given name. She felt fairly confident that he hadn’t been named Jiggy by his mother. Though who knows, weirder things had happened. She’d gone to school with a girl named Ladybug. That girl had insisted everyone call her Charlotte.

  She found several folders for Malone and brought them back to her desk. She sipped the coffee and pored through what she found inside. One was for a woman, a Bridget Malone caught shoplifting from Christensen’s a few years before. That clearly wasn’t Jiggy. The next was for a Walter Malone, and it was a complaint he had issued about the neighbor’s cow getting into his garden. The paper was yellowed with age, and Walter had been about eighty at the time of the complaint. This was not the Jiggy she was looking for.

  The last file was for a James Malone, and Alice let her hopes rise. Surely Jiggy could be a nickname for James. But the James in the file had been the victim of a deadly carriage accident fifteen years before. This was not Jiggy either.

  She had struck out.

  “No luck?” McGrath said, looking up from his desk.

  “Afraid not.”

  “What are you looking for, anyway?”

  “I have no idea.” Alice closed the last folder. “I was hoping something would jump out at me.”

  “Not a bad method but doesn’t always work. Go home, get some sleep. There are other avenues you can explore in the morning.”

  “Like what?” she asked, feeling defeated.

  “Good old-fashioned police work. Go out and talk to people. That will tell you a lot more than old reports.”

  “I suppose you’re right.” She returned the Malone files to the cabinet, but one of them didn’t fit in smoothly, blocked by something that had fallen between the files. She fished it out. It was a small pocket notebook. The kind her father used to always carry with him.

  She took it back to her desk, ignoring McGrath’s questioning look. As soon as she opened it, she knew it had been her father’s. She recognized his handwriting and his cryptic note-taking style.

  She read through the notes that would have made perfect sense to her father but were a puzzle to solve for her. On one page were lists of times and days which she suspected related to high tide and low tide. Some of the times were starred. She wasn’t sure what that star meant. Was it a time he needed to check something? A time he knew something was happening?

  What had he been investigating? Some snippet of conversation from way back then made her think he’d been trying to stop rum running. If that were the case, the tide time tables would make sense.

  There were lists of boat names. She perused them and her heart stopped when she saw the Mary B listed there.

  It didn’t have to mean anything, though. Maybe it wasn’t a list of rum runners, just possible suspects? It wasn’t proof of wrongdoing. Just the same, she wished it hadn’t been there. But maybe Hank hadn’t even been the skipper of her then. How long had he been captain?

  On another page the word Jiggy was circled.

  Jiggy.

  In that case it was almost certain her father had been investigating rum runners. And maybe he’d gotten too close for comfort. Could it be that his murder, like Tomas Nagy’s, wasn’t quite as cut and dried as it appeared?

  She tapped her fingers on the page in front of her.

  She needed to find out more. To find out more, she needed to get out of the office. Can’t do good police work sitting behind a desk. For now, she needed a good night’s sleep.

  She tucked the notebook into her desk drawer and stood up. “Good night, Sergeant, and thanks for the coffee.”

  “Good night, Grady,” he answered. “Get some sleep. You’ll find what you’re looking for in the morning.”

  However, in the morning what she found was a foot-high pile of reports to type up.

  “Are you kidding me?” she asked no one in particular when she got a look at her desk. They hadn’t been there last night. Where had they been hiding them all before dumping them on her?

  “It’s been a busy couple of days,” Mark said. “I thought you were getting us a new typist.”

  “Yeah, as soon as I get a chance to teach her to type.” Which wouldn’t happen today, because today was the funeral, and she certainly wasn’t going to be giving typing lessons to a widow on the day of her husband’s funeral.

  At home that night, she avoided Marty, who was getting ready to go out with Douglas, and snuck through the back yard to Trudy’s. Trudy made a fresh pot of tea and put some sponge cake on the table. Then she chased the children outside and told Mark to keep an eye on them.

  “Now, tell me. What happened?”

  It was good to have a best friend.

  “He tried to tell me what to do.”

  Trudy sighed. “Clearly he doesn’t know you well enough yet to know that is not allowed.”

  Trudy’s tone was light, but Alice realized she might have a point. Maybe it wasn’t fair to judge Hank based on something he wouldn’t realize was wrong. But then again, wasn’t
it wrong of him to boss her around at all? Of course, it was.

  “He thinks he needs to protect me.” She took a bite of the sponge cake, which was, naturally, delicious.

  “It’s a guy thing,” Trudy said. “It makes them feel important. Mark thinks he needs to protect me, too.”

  “Mark’s a police officer, trained to protect,” she pointed out.

  “And?” Trudy held her eye, teacup poised half way to her mouth. “Do you think only police officers want to protect women?”

  “But I’m an officer! I can protect myself.”

  “And you don’t sometimes want someone to take care of you?”

  “No.” She knew she was lying, and Trudy knew it too.

  Trudy laughed out loud.

  “You are such a liar. Tell me what is really bothering you about Hank.”

  “I think he’s a rum runner.” Once she said it out loud, she knew it must be true. Of course he was a rum runner. Tomas had been, and Hank was involved with all the same people and he didn’t want her to investigate. What other answer could there be?

  Suddenly Trudy got serious.

  “Oh. It would seem you have incompatible careers.”

  Alice nearly choked on her tea. Trudy handed her a napkin.

  “That’s one way of putting it,” she said when she could breathe again. “So what do you think I should do?”

  “Quit your job, of course,” Trudy said and winked at her.

  Alice sighed. She supposed that would solve one problem, but it really wasn’t an answer and they both knew it.

  “Short of that?”

  Trudy got up and went to the window, where she could look out on her children and husband playing in the yard.

  “To me, nothing is more important than Mark and the kids.”

  “I barely know Hank.” She put down her teacup. He couldn’t be that important to her yet.

  “I know. I was just thinking out loud.”

  “If he doesn’t want me to be able to do my job, he’s not the man for me.”

  Trudy nodded.

  “If he’s involved in illegal activity, he’s not the man for me.”

  Trudy nodded again.

  “If he thinks I need him to protect me and can’t take care of myself, he’s not the man for me.”