The War Heist

by Ralph Dennis

  “For a dog like Shep, I wouldn’t know,” Bill said. “For a man, it takes one eyedropperful.”

  “Half that much for Shep,” Harry said.

  Bill nodded. The hard eyes read Harry.

  It was dark by the time Harry reached the boardinghouse.

  It was drunk out. Rip-roaring and piss-in-the-streets drunk.

  It was wet, too. Raining and miserable in the streets. All the dead scents seemed to be revived by the dampness. Not even the smell of the sea, the freshness of that, could reach those dark corners of the stews.

  Phillips and Mass were from the Maritimes, and they drank like they’d got a taste for it from the tit. And they knew places that the Gipsons never would have found. Bars as small as an outhouse or as large as a barn.

  Of the two, Clark felt closer to Andy Phillips. They were about the same age, and they’d both been born and brought up dirt-poor or worse. They’d talked some about religion, too. Andy went to church every Sunday when he didn’t work, and when he had to work he went to evening services.

  There was one more bond as well. Andy had a sister, Susan. He talked about her all the time. Susan was seventeen and she was plain, according to Andy, but when he brought out the photograph, Clark decided that she wasn’t plain at all. She had pale skin, and her hair was long and black, and Clark thought she was about the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen.

  It seemed to Clark, if the Lord got past what happened the other night, if the Lord had tested him and the Call was going to come, that he would need a wife. Nobody trusted a preacher if he was not married. One look at her picture and Clark began daydreaming. His own church, and him married to Susan, and with Andy, when it happened, his good friend and his brother-in-law.

  And Andy said he thought that Susan would like Clark. “We’re alike, Susan and me. She likes people I like.”

  Bob Mass was an odd one for Andy to pair up with. Bob was every bit as hard and tough as Randy was. That kind of person. And, to tell the truth, Andy didn’t have the excuse that Clark did. Bob wasn’t Andy’s brother. He didn’t have to carry that burden.

  Maybe it was the young man who looked up to the older man. Something like that.

  All evening Randy and Bob huddled over their drinks. They were talking big, and half of it was lies. Clark and Andy had their own conversation. The drinking pace was different, too. Randy was drinking two to Clark’s one, and it was about the same way with Bob and Andy.

  And then it was 12:20. Cody had told the crew it was a special shift and he didn’t want anybody staying out after eleven. The deadline didn’t seem to bother Bob. He said he could work one day without sleep. Andy was the one with the responsible streak. He kept mentioning how early 3:00 a.m. was when you hadn’t even had an hour or two of sleep.

  The fuss might have lasted another hour except for Randy. He smothered a huge yawn and said that Andy was one hundred percent right. It wasn’t fair for him and Clark to keep workingmen out late when they had a hard day coming up.

  “But I want another drink,” Bob said.

  “That’s easy,” Randy said. “We’ll get us a bottle to nip from on the way back.”

  Randy left the table and leaned across the bar to speak to one of the bartenders. The bartender pointed toward the door and said a few words. Randy nodded. On his way past the table he gave Bob a lazy wink. “Good as done.”

  Randy reached the door to the hallway before the panic hit Clark. All the drinking he’d done must have fogged his mind. That wasn’t the way they’d planned it. Harry didn’t trust Randy, and he’d entrusted the bottle of knockout drops to Clark. “I wouldn’t trust you to piss on a fire,” was what Harry had said to Randy.

  Clark pushed back his chair. Bob and Andy stared at him. “I’d better make sure he’s got enough money,” Clark explained.

  He caught Randy in the hallway. “I’ll buy the bottle.”

  Randy gave him an insolent smile. “Where you going to buy it?”

  Clark looked back toward the blind pig. He realized he didn’t know where the bootleg shop was. “But I’ve got to doctor it the way Harry said.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out the small bottle.

  “I can do it,” Randy said.

  “Harry said …”

  “I know what Harry said.” Randy put out a hand and grabbed the knockout drops from Clark’s open palm. “Screw what Harry said.” He turned and started down the hall.

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “You better go back and keep them company. First thing you know they’ll come looking for us.”

  Clark stopped and looked toward the bar. It was like Randy to be stubborn. Harry had made him mad, and he had got it into his head to doctor the rum come hell or high water. It was his way of getting back at Harry.

  “Go on,” Randy said.

  Randy waited until Clark entered the bar. Then he went looking for the rum. The bartender’s directions took him down the hall six doors to the left. An old woman there, in a room the size of a broom closet, sold him two pints of rum at five dollars a pint. He stuffed one bottle in his coat pocket and carried the other.

  In the dim hallway, before he returned to the blind pig, he used a fingernail to tear away the top right-hand corner of the label. He uncapped it and took a swallow. That done, he placed the bottle on the floor and squatted over. it. He tried to doctor the rum the way he had heard Harry tell Clark it was supposed to be done. It was too much trouble to measure the drops and he was afraid somebody might come out of the bar and see him doing it. Finally he stood and held the rum bottle in one hand and the medicine bottle of knockout drops in the other. He poured in half the drops, and he should have stopped there. But he got to thinking. If half the knockout drops would do it in minutes, then the whole bottle would do it twice as fast. It made such good sense that he poured the rest of the drops from the medicine bottle in the rum. He capped it and gave it a shake to make sure it got spread around.

  On the way out of the building Randy fell behind a few steps with Clark. He explained it. No drinking from the bottle with the torn corner. You could pretend but no swallowing. And, when he could, Randy would switch bottles. They could drink then.

  “It’s not going to hurt them?”

  “Naw,” Randy said. “I had a Mickey myself once in New Orleans. All it gave me was a rotten headache.”

  Hooting and hollering, that’s how it was in the wet streets. The rain had cleared some. A light drizzle now, just enough to soak a man through.

  Staggering and dancing. Now and then they’d step into a doorway and point the rum bottle toward the sky.

  Two blocks and half the bottle of doctored rum, and Andy said he didn’t feel good. Bob leaned against a wet building front and said the rum was getting to him too.

  Randy took that chance to switch the bottles. He said, “It is all that exercise you had,” and he lifted the bottle and let the rum pour down his throat. “Or it’s that you two are half-assed.”

  “You say.” Mass grabbed the bottle, and the drinking started up again. The third block, near an alley, Andy grabbed his stomach and fell down. Bob leaned over him and lost his balance and dropped to his knees. His head landed on Andy’s chest.

  Both were out cold.

  Randy looked down the street and then behind him. Nobody coming in either direction. He grabbed Bob Mass under the arms. “You get Andy.” They dragged them down the alley and left them propped against a wall under a flight of stairs.

  Clark looked at Andy. “You’re sure they’re all right?”

  “They’re horses,” Randy said. He uncapped the doped rum and poured it into a mud puddle. He tossed the bottle away.

  At 3:00 A.M. Cody came down the hall and pushed the door open without knocking. He shook Randy until he was awake.

  “You went off with Bob and Andy last night?”

  Randy blinked at him. “Last night? Sure.”

  “Where’d you see them last?”

  “Some bar or other,” Randy said.r />
  “When was that?”

  “About midnight. We left, but they said they wanted one more drink.”

  “They didn’t make it,” Cody said.

  Randy swung his legs over the side of the bunk. He reached up and gave Clark’s shoulder a hard push. “Get up.”

  “Huh?”

  Randy stepped into his trousers. He was buttoning his shirt when Cody said, “You going looking for them?”

  “I wouldn’t know where to look,” Randy said. He sat on the bunk and pulled his shoes toward him. “You’re short men. You need us, and we’ll work the shift for you.”

  Cody hesitated. “I don’t know how I can pay you.”

  “You’ve been friends,” Randy said. “We’ll take our pay in drinks at Toy’s.”

  “You don’t mind?”

  “Naw. You want us?”

  Cody nodded.

  Randy gave Clark’s mattress another shake. “Up, Clark.”

  Clark jumped down and began to dress, yawning the whole time. It had been a short night’s sleep.

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  Around 0500 hours on the morning of Monday, July 1, a gray shadow of land was sighted from H.M.S. Emerald. The Nova Scotia coastline was dead ahead.

  Duncan MacTaggart, his soiled raincoat flapping around him like black wings, was on deck when the Emerald passed the protective boom and entered the harbor at 0649 hours.

  By 0720 the cruiser was secured to Pier 23, the Halifax Ocean Terminal. Already in place, the assembled train waited on the tracks that ran the length of the pier. The engine that had backed the train into place at 6:00 a.m. was still attached. From the deck of the ship, while he watched the docking crew, MacTaggart counted the units of the train. Fifteen boxcars, three coaches, and a caboose.

  Satisfied, he went below and collected his gear.

  When the gangplank was in place, MacTaggart went ashore and stored his bag and his raincoat in the last day coach, the one nearest the caboose. Clipboard under his arm, he walked past the day coaches and stood in front of the first of the boxcars.

  At 0745 a company of Royal Canadian Navy Cadets marched smartly into view. Within minutes the unloading began.

  The lights burned late behind blackout curtains in the Prime Minister’s bedroom at 10 Downing Street.

  It was a harrowing time for Churchill, a night for long thoughts and a decision.

  What occupied the Prime Minister this night and for the days since the surrender of France was the French fleet. It was the nightmare come true. Since the early days of June, the War Cabinet had sought assurances from the French admirals that the fleet would not be turned over to the Germans.

  Now, most of the French ships were berthed in North Africa, at Oran and Mers-el-Kebir. A decision had to be made.

  It was the P.M.’s determination, with the backing of the War Cabinet, that not one French ship of the line was to fall into German control.

  Churchill plotted the options that he could offer the French admirals. The French pride, damaged by defeat and surrender, had suddenly hardened. All negotiations had come to nothing. The French delayed, marked time, and the outcome did not look promising.

  It was an impasse. The French felt honor-bound to resist all British pressure. The British had to press for a solution before time ran out.

  The courier from the Admiralty arrived at 10 Downing Street a few minutes after 2:00 a.m. The locked metal dispatch case was signed for and taken directly to the Prime Minister’s bedroom.

  Churchill sat up in his bed, a tattered robe wrapped around him. One of his huge cigars, unlit and with the end chewed, rested in a dish on the night table beside the bed. An untouched glass of brandy completed the late-night still life.

  Churchill read the message. It was the first good news of the day.

  In regard to your continuing concern: we respectfully submit that His Majesty’s Ship Emerald entered Halifax, Nova Scotia, harbour at 0649 hours 1/7/40.

  Before the Prime Minister returned to the problem of the French fleet he scribbled a note.

  Prepare new Salt Fish shipment.

  Alert Admiralty, Bank of England.

  By lunch break, noon, MacTaggart figured that a third of the consignment had been unloaded. The paper shipment—the stocks and bonds—had been packed into the first three freight cars, the ones at the caboose and day-coach end of the train.

  The Royal Canadian Navy Cadets had larked through those, tossing them from hand to hand, down the pier and up and into the boxcars.

  The first of the gold crates changed that. The groans sounded and the officer in charge moved down the line saying, “Watch your toes, men.” Even with the warning, a dropped case here and there, and young men limped away from the loading line.

  When lunch call came one boxcar was only partly filled with the gold crates. One hundred cases by MacTaggart’s clipboard count. He sat in that open boxcar doorway. A young cadet brought him a sandwich, an apple, and a mug of hot tea from their rations.

  The sandwich was tinned beef with butter spread on one slice of the thick white bread.

  Clark was almost useless when it came to doing much of anything that took guts. First of all, he’d been worrying all morning about that Andy Phillips kid. Had they given him too much of the knockout drops? Was Randy sure that Andy had been breathing when they left him in the alley? All that mewing like a goddam baby. When, to tell the truth, it didn’t matter a rat’s ass one way or the other.

  He’d worked well putting the train together. No doubt about that. Clark had been railroading almost as long as Randy had. He knew enough not to lose his head on a low bridge, and one near miss uncoupling the air hose years back, and now he did it by the book.

  But there was no way around it that he was chicken. He knew what had to be done and instead of doing it, he was standing around, hands in his pockets, and looking punk, while he sweated the rum from last night.

  It wasn’t to say that it was easy. Back in the train yard, when they’d been putting it together, it would have been easy. They could have emptied every fucking hotbox in the yard. No questions asked, and that was for damned sure. But that wasn’t the way it had to be. Not according to Harry. Harry said they had to pick and choose. Otherwise, they’d have the whole damned train laid up at Wingate Station and the whole Canadian Army would be camped around it in layers.

  No, it had to be done at the dock.

  The plan was to wait until the boxcars were loaded. Then he’d know which ones held the gold and which held the paper shit. You mess up those boxes early, Harry said, and we might end up with fighting a war over paper not worth wiping our asses with.

  All the morning, while the crates and boxes were being put over the side of the ship and humped into the boxes, he and Clark had wandered up and down the pier with oil cans. Cody and most of the rest of the crew had found a coffee urn in one of the watch shacks. They were off there, taking it easy and waiting until the boxes were loaded and sealed.

  There was a lot you could learn if you used your eyes. Take the difference in the way the boxes of paper were handled. Tossing and throwing them like they had feathers in them. And then the gold: the grunting and sweating and the rigid backs—that told the story.

  One time Randy followed one of the Navy cadets into the latrine.

  “Getting wore down?” Randy asked from a place a few feet down the trough.

  “I do believe I’ve broken something,” the cadet said.

  “Heavy?”

  “Those boxes might weight ten stone.”

  “Huh?”

  “A hundred and forty pounds.” The cadet buttoned up. “It might be less. Perhaps a hundred and twenty pounds.”

  “It looks like tons,” Randy said.

  “Over two thousand cases.” The cadet headed for the door. He took a ragged breath. “I don’t know if I’ll last the day.”

  Randy followed him back to the train. The cadet rubbed at the small of his back with both hands.

  They�
��d tailed the train onto the pier. After the caboose, the next three cars were day coaches. Next to the passenger cars, the first three boxcars were loaded with the paper cargo. That meant that all the other boxcars, all twelve of them, would be transporting the gold bullion.

  Randy put Clark to watching the loading of one car. From the beginning until they closed the door and locked it. “Two hundred cases exactly,” Clark said.

  He wasn’t good at math. Two hundred times one hundred and twenty … that equals … no, forget that. Two hundred times one hundred, just to keep it simple. Now, say one ounce is worth thirty-two dollars. Sixteen times thirty-two dollars times twenty thousand and you’ve got …

  He gave it up. Past him. But he damned well knew that it was a hell of a lot.

  Randy figured the best time would be the lunch break. Everybody would be off eating. Nobody would be around except maybe some guards. None of them would think anything about a couple of men from the train crew going on with their work.

  He gave them ten minutes. Time enough to leave the train and line up at the canteen where the food was being served. Time to sprawl around in the sun.

  He nodded at Clark. They walked down the train. It was then he noticed that Clark was scared yellow.

  “Lots of soldiers here,” he said.

  “And not one of them,” Randy said, “knows a train from a cat’s puckered ass.” He put a hand on Clark’s shoulder. “Hold it together, boy. Twenty, thirty minutes, and we’ve got it done.”

  “All right.” But Clark didn’t sound sure.

  “Harry said three boxcars.”

  “That’s a lot,” Clark said.

  “Not for the Gipson boys.” He grinned at Clark. “Can you whistle ‘Dixie’?”

  “Sure.”

  “That’s all you got to do. You got an oil can. You do some oiling. I go under and mess with the hotboxes. Somebody comes you whistle. You do that?”

  “Sure,” Clark said.

  Make it easy for them, he thought. He counted the three coaches, then the three boxes that held the paper. Then he stopped next to the seventh car. A nod at Clark, and he skinned under. Close fit. Still hot under there, and it had a oil stink to it.