The War Heist

by Ralph Dennis

  She was an E-class cruiser. Her silhouette stamped and marked her. There were two funnels just behind the bridge. Then there was a space, an interval, where the third funnel should have been but wasn’t. The third funnel was where the fourth one usually was. Outlined against the sky, the profile was that of a grin with one tooth missing.

  At 0940 a working party from the starboard watch was sent ashore to await the arrival of the train that carried the assigned cargo. The train from London arrived at 1000 hours, and the engine shunted the boxcars to the harbor siding.

  Under the supervision of a tall man in a dirty black raincoat the seal on the first boxcar was broken and the door unlocked. The working party from the Emerald worked for almost an hour unloading that boxcar and stacking the crates on wooden cargo skids. At 1120 hours the bosun’s pipe was for the remainder of the starboard watch to assemble to handle cargo. Winches lifted the cargo skids to the deck of the Emerald.

  H.M.S. Emerald was not a cargo ship. It was a ship of the line. As a warship it was not constructed to carry large quantities of anything other than provisions and munitions. Storage for 2,717 boxes and crates created a problem that was solved only by using the weapons and ammunition magazines as cargo holds.

  There was a break for lunch. During the afternoon, as unloading continued, three other boxcars arrived at the harbor and were shunted onto the siding. One car was from Liverpool, one from Manchester, and the other from Edinburgh.

  At dark the working party was dismissed and a guard posted on the remaining boxcars. The first day they’d unloaded eight of the fourteen boxcars.

  The tall man in the dark raincoat slept that night in the passenger coach. During the night, at one- and two-hour intervals, he could be seen prowling the length of the train.

  At 0730 the next morning the bosun piped the same watch, the starboard, to stations to handle cargo. The starboard watch worked through the morning until it was relieved by the port watch at 1300 hours. The watch going off duty was granted shore leave until 0700 hours the next morning.

  The port watch had it easy. Another hour and the last of the cargo had been received and stored away. The working party was secured. The tall man in the dark raincoat came aboard and stored his bag in the compartment assigned to him and to three of the bank officials.

  Accompanied by the cargo officer, he made the rounds of the storage holds. He did not seem pleased that the cargo shared space with powder and shells.

  Nobody on H.M.S. Emerald—the working parties—knew what the cargo was. There was some joking below decks about the markings on the crates. salt fish.

  “Why the hell do they need salt fish in Canada?”

  “I suppose they shipped it here by mistake and want it back now.”

  The men with tired backs and sore muscles had some doubts that salt fish could ever be that heavy. “It’s like bloody lead weights,” one rating said.

  Speculation continued. It would not be confirmed what the shipment was until the Emerald was a day at sea.

  MacTaggart slept that night aboard the ship. He slept through breakfast. He would have slept through dinner as well if one of the bank officials hadn’t come into the compartment to get a package of pipe tobacco. Awake finally, he still felt tired and dizzy. The strain of the last three days and the fitful sleep the first two nights had him jumpy and nervous.

  He had dinner in the ratings mess. He spent the afternoon walking around the ship. It was larger than he’d first thought it was. It was like a small town, a world of its own.

  At dusk, before he went ashore, he asked that a guard be posted on the magazines until the ship left the harbor.

  By dark, still wearing the stained raincoat and needing a shave, he made the first of his pub stops. He worked the waterfront area, the public houses near the port. One pint here, one pint there, talking little, mainly listening. He seemed turned back on himself, deep in other thoughts and other places.

  He wasn’t. He heard every word said around him.

  At half-past nine, satisfied that there was no street talk about the shipment, he returned to the harbor and the Emerald. He sloshed with the beer he’d been drinking. He wobbled on his rounds of the cruiser while he checked to make certain that the watch was still posted on the cargo.

  He found his way to his bunk. He stretched out and either slept or passed out within minutes.

  He didn’t notice the weighing of the anchor at 2254 hours. Forty minutes later H.M.S. Emerald passed the boom and headed for the open sea.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Harry Churchman picked the meeting place. It was his town, wasn’t it? Didn’t he know the back streets and the side alleys? You worked for Mr. Arkman and you got to know the seamy side of the city. Penthouses and the East Side, townhouses and Park Avenue—those were for the big ones, the guys behind the money masks.

  The ones on the way up, the bright guys with the new hustles—they came from grubby places and wore all they owned on their backs. A good tailor was better than a good address with them. The new hustler wore some tailor’s best on his back and about fifty dollars on his feet, and he walked out of some slum apartment and turned a corner and waved down a cab. By the time he left that cab somewhere in midtown nobody could tell where he lived.

  But Harry knew. He had to hunt them down. He delivered the operational money for the risky deals, and sometimes he had to collect Mr. Arkman’s share. The hard-way collections.

  Harry selected an abandoned garage on Tenth Avenue. That part of Tenth was residential, working-class houses and rented rooms in shotgun flats. The garage tenants hadn’t made rent and expenses for more than a year. Now the corrugated-tin sides had scrawled obscenities on them, child high, and the windows had been smashed even before they’d been boarded up.

  Harry arrived in a cab about half an hour early. He had the cab drop him a block away. After the cab turned a corner he walked back to the garage and tripped the heavy padlock on the office door with a key about the size of a paring knife.

  The office was empty. No furniture at all. Just the paper trash on the floor and the dust balls that had collected. It was warm inside from the June heat. A door that hung on one hinge led to the work space with the grease pits and the divided stalls where the mechanics had worked.

  There was a skylight above this main work area. It was dirty, but it let in enough light so that Harry could find the electric switch box just beyond the wrecked door. He threw a couple of switches. Banks of lights flared on. He cut those and tried another. He experimented until he found one bank of overhead lights that had some burnt-out bulbs mixed in. He wanted only the minimum light. Too much light, like too much noise, would advertise the meeting.

  A long wooden table was directly under the skylight. Its top was scarred and scratched and, here and there, showed the black puckers and pocks of cigarette burns. There were six mismatched chairs around the table. Harry leaned across the table and ran a finger down the center of it. Dust rolled ahead of the finger in waves. He blew the dust from his finger and looked around. He found the bathroom. There was a cloth-towel roller on one wall. He ripped the towel from the box. It came away easily. Rotten. He tore away a long section of the towel and carried it to the table. He wiped the top and the chair seats. A hit-or-miss job. It didn’t matter to him. He wasn’t any goddam house maid. Screw it. He picked himself a sturdy chair that would hold his weight. He eased into the chair and checked his watch. Still twenty minutes to wait.

  The garage, until a few months before, had been a numbers collection center. For electricity they’d tapped into another line down the street. Getting water was almost that easy. You slipped a few bills to an off-duty man from Water and Sewage.

  At one time all the runners—the collectors—brought the day’s take to this table. It came from all across the city. It came in leather bags and brown-paper sacks. Once it got to the table, it received a count that would have pleased any big-city banker. On peak days all six chairs were f
illed. Underlings did the count, and the boss circled the table the whole time. The boss verified each count and kept his eyes open for sticky fingers.

  Mr. Arkman had some points in the numbers business. It was one of his dozen or so continuing enterprises. At least once a month, without warning, Mr. Arkman dropped by the collection center to do his own check. Harry went along as his gun.

  Back around the first of the year, the collection center had started drawing attention. They’d had to buy a policeman and then his buddy. It was all those arrivals and departures at a deserted building. In April the collection center moved to another location. Maybe in a year they’d rotate back to the garage. That was why they hadn’t done anything about the electricity or the water.

  When Harry began to look for a place to hold the meeting, he remembered the unused collection center. It had been easy enough to find one of the runners and talk him into the loan of a key.

  Captain Whitman walked in two or three minutes early. He wore a new gray lightweight suit. His tie shirt was wrinkled, and the collar was rimmed with a dark sweat line. “Hot out there,” he said. He tossed a long tube wrapped in brown paper onto the table. The tube rolled toward Harry.

  Harry put out a hand and checked it. “Maps?”

  “The latest I could find.” Johnny walked away from the table and looked into the bathroom. “I’m the first one here?”

  “You’re the whole fucking gang.”

  “Lucky me.” Johnny pulled a chair from the table and sat down. He was across from Harry. He grinned. “You and me, Harry, we could probably pull this off alone.”

  “It’s a dogshit idea. The two of us have about as much chance as eight of us do. That is, not much chance at all.”

  “You were eager before,” Johnny said.

  “That was before.”

  “And you’re backing away now?”

  “I say that?” Harry tipped his chair and balanced it on the back legs. He stared up at the skylight. It was almost full dark outside. “Let’s say I quit drinking tit milk a long time ago. And there ain’t anybody can force-feed it to me. It just happens it might be better if I spent some time in Canada. This fairy-tale job works out, I can use the money. It don’t, and I still won’t be in New York City.”

  “Who’s looking for you?”

  “Who said anybody was looking for me?” Harry snorted. “You jump to funny conclusions, Captain.”

  “Strike the conclusion, then. You ready to leave?”

  “I could leave yesterday.” Harry lowered his head. His eyes were closed. His face was a death mask. Then he opened his eyes slowly, degree by degree, as if getting used to the light. “This bunch of crazy dogfaces you put together. You must like failure.”

  “It was the best I could do on short notice.” Johnny hesitated a beat. “You know them?”

  “The way I know you.” Harry made a fist with his right hand and uncurled one finger. “Gunny Townsend. Learned most of what I know from him. A good man one time, the best there was. He’s sick, old, and tired now.”

  “There might be one campaign left in him.”

  Harry poked out another finger. “Richard Betts. Might be he knows his job. Word was that he did. The way I think, though, anybody plays with matches and fuses didn’t start with a full fifty-two in the deck.”

  “An occupational hazard?”

  A third finger. “Vic Franks. I don’t know him except to wave at.”

  “He talks to cars and trucks,” Johnny said, “and they talk back to him.”

  “And that’s not crazy?” Harry held out the full hand, the little finger and the thumb showing now. “That leaves the Gipson boys. Clark ought to be preaching hellfire and damnation in some backwoods church in Alabama or Georgia. Randy, his brother, is only a slightly higher form of life than a cockroach.”

  “They know railroads.”

  Harry dropped the hand, palm down, on the table top. “That’s the lot. It’s a rotten stew.”

  “You missed one,” Johnny said. “Harry Churchman.”

  “Him? He’s the biggest nut in the whole batch. You know why? Because he knows better. He’s got good sense. He don’t do dumb things. And, with all that true, he’s about to go waltzing away to Canada after a trainload of gold that might exist and then again might not.”

  “The gold’s real.”

  “You say.”

  “More people than me say it,” Johnny said. “For one, there’s a British major named Withers. I’ve known him a time. He let it slip, and the next day, when he realized what he’d done, he almost crapped in his uniform.”

  “And he heard about it on the streets?”

  “At British Intelligence.”

  “It might make a difference.” Harry scratched the side of his nose. “You believe him?”

  “One hundred percent. Major Renssler believes him too. That ought to mean …”

  “That reminds me,” Harry said. “He’s the other one we didn’t talk about. The boy scout from West Point.”

  “He’s smart like you. He knows the gold is coming in, but he’s against the whole idea.”

  “I might marry him,” Harry said.

  The street door opened. Both men turned and looked in that direction. Vic Franks and Gunny Townsend had met down the street while they were searching for the address. They walked past the sagging door. Vic Franks nodded at the captain and took a seat. Gunny circled the table and put out a hand to Harry.

  “It’s good to see you.”

  “How are your lungs, Gunny?” Harry gave the hand a squeeze.

  “Sound as a dollar.”

  Harry laughed. “I didn’t know the dollar was in trouble.”

  “It’s not.”

  “I hope that’s true, Gunny.”

  “It’s fact.” But he dropped his eyes and turned and looked for a chair.

  The others drifted in during the next ten minutes. There was talk about old times in the Army and in Company D. It was a lot like a reunion.

  Tom Renssler was the last to arrive. Johnny nodded at him in passing as he went to the office doorway and locked it with an inside slide bolt. When he returned all the chairs were taken. He stood at one end of the table. Tom sat on the edge and crossed his legs at the knee.

  Johnny looked at Tom. “You want me to start?”

  “It’s all yours,” Tom said.

  “Might as well, then.” Johnny took a deep breath and looked around the table. “There’s something you might not know. There’s a difference in time zones between the States and England. It’s a matter of five or six hours.”

  Randy Gipson turned to his brother. “This a school?”

  “It’s seven in the evening here now. It’s midnight in England. About now, give or take a few minutes, a cruiser named the Emerald is going to leave a port on the west coast of Scotland. It’s carrying a lot of paper, stocks and bonds and that kind of crap. Stuff I wouldn’t wipe my ass with.”

  Johnny stopped. He dug a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. He took his time getting one lit. When he looked the length of the table he saw the confusion, the disappointment that was registering on the faces. He took a couple of puffs on the Camel. “And, besides that worthless paper, the Emerald is carrying something on the other side of a hundred million in gold bars.”

  He had their attention.

  When MacTaggart came to he didn’t know where he was or how much time had passed. He was damp-wet and was stretched out in a narrow bed. The strong smell of medicines and disinfectants told him he was in sick bay. There was, he realized, a new lump on the back of his head that felt about the size of a tennis ball.

  The light blinded him. He could see the blur of shapes above him, crowding around him. Then he got his eyes to focus. A naval officer wearing a yellow rain slicker moved closer to the bed and leaned over him. Water dripped on MacTaggart from his rain hat.

  “Who the hell are you, sir?”

  “MacTaggart.”

  “What the bloody hell is a Mac
Taggart?”

  MacTaggart didn’t answer. He closed his eyes. His bladder was empty and peaceful. The pain from the back of his head didn’t outweigh that.

  It was, he decided, a fine time to complete his night’s sleep.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  It took a few minutes for the meeting in the Tenth Avenue garage to settle down again.

  In the talk and excitement that followed Johnny’s announcement of the estimated value of the gold, Gunny Townsend went into the bathroom and closed the door behind him. There was a muffled sound of coughing. When he returned a few minutes later he wasn’t coughing but he was pale and his hands shook when he lit a cigarette.

  Harry Churchman watched him. He saw the tremor in Gunny’s hands and thought, no matter how I feel about the old man, I don’t want my ass to depend on him backing me. The shooting starts and his lungs get to itching, I might get some rounds in my back by mistake.

  Randy Gipson, still with the bluish shaved head from his time in the stockade, had spent the last two days trying to drink all the whiskey in New York. He hadn’t had a drink for almost an hour. He felt sick and logy, and he sweated an oily, rank perspiration. It was enough to clear one end of the garage. It was the smell of cheap whiskey, and it was even worse because he hadn’t had a shower since they’d reached New York. Clark hovered over his brother, soothing him and promising him another drink as soon as the meeting was over. It was the only way he could get Randy to concentrate on their part of the problem.

  Richard Betts looked bored. He stared down at his hands. He smiled to himself every now and then—that was at the thought of Ethel, two days ago, waiting at the Dothan, Alabama, bus station for him. Lord, dumb as she was, she might still be there.

  Beside him, Vic Franks had his eyes closed. In his mind he had X rays, cutaways, of engines. Big truck engines choked and died as the sugar in the gas turned to black stone.

  Tom Renssler had a headache. He’d been short of money when he’d arrived in New York. He’d thought of a West Point friend, one who’d stayed in the Army for five years after graduation and then resigned. In the years since then, Mark Swift had published one book of poetry and one novel. It turned out he lived in the Village on a trashy street a few blocks away from Washington Square. The Village was where all the writers lived that year. The apartment, when Tom finally found it, was a cold-water loft above a garage. Everything smelled of gas fumes and oil. The headache either came from the fumes or the raw, sour wine Mark drank all day.