Black Duck

by Janet Taylor Lisle

  The police had rounded up a few other members of the shore gang, handcuffed them and put them in cars. But after the Feds left with Mr. Riley, Chief McKenzie gave an order to let everyone out of the patrol cars. He and Charlie undid all the handcuffs and let everyone go.

  It was beyond me what had happened. The chief drove off, followed by a caravan of vehicles, leaving the beach in darkness except for one oil lamp somebody had forgotten. Out in the cove, the Lucy M. was under way, heading off into Narragansett Bay. She was heavy in the water, still carrying a lot of cargo. We’d only unloaded her about halfway. I couldn’t figure out where the Coast Guard was, and why no one was coming to stop her. She went out onto the bay and steamed down the coast, lights full on, as if she were the most law-abiding ship in the world.

  I lay quiet for a few more minutes, then got up and found my bike in the dark. I was about to take off for the long ride home when Tino strolled up.

  “Hey there, kid. I’ve got a vehicle in a field at the top of the lane. If you want to walk up with me, I’ll give you a lift home.”

  “Can you take my bicycle?” I asked.

  “Sure can.” He was a nice guy, a dockworker who’d come all the way over from New Bedford to do this job. I’d heard him talking to the other shore workers earlier. We set off, me wheeling my bike.

  “Some night, right? That’s how it goes sometimes,” he said.

  “Does this mean we don’t get paid?” I asked.

  “Afraid so.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t get it. The Federal agents arrested Mr. Riley, but then the police let everybody else go?”

  “Sure they did. That was part of the deal.” Tino gave a laugh. He was an old hand at rum-running, and knew the game.

  “What deal?” I asked.

  “The deal to put this guy Riley out of business, I guess. The way I see it, Riley thought he’d paid the Feds and the cops enough to look the other way for this landing. But somebody got to them and paid ’em a little more to take an interest.”

  “How’d you figure that?”

  “Just from what I heard on the beach. Riley was yelling his head off at that cop.”

  I looked at Tino. The cop he was talking about was Chief McKenzie. I couldn’t see him taking a payoff to double-cross Mr. Riley. They knew each other from town.

  “The police must’ve gotten a tip about this landing tonight,” I said. “That’s why they were here. I guess they let the crew off because they were local guys.”

  Tino laughed merrily at this. “The police got a tip, all right, just not from who you might think. Riley’s an independent operator in this area. It’s no secret he’s made a bundle running his own show. My bet is, somebody bigger wants to take him over.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Y’don’t want to ask that,” Tino said. “Y’don’t want to know. But if I was to make a guess, I’d say it’s an outfit up in Boston. Big boys, like Riley was yelling. I hear they’re on the move.”

  “You mean a gang?” I asked. “Like the Mafia?”

  Tino gave me a look. “You didn’t hear it from me.”

  “What’ll happen to Mr. Riley?”

  “He’ll pay a fine and maybe sit in jail a couple of months. Nothing much. He’s lucky. If it’s the Boston guns he’s up against, they’re tough eggs. They could’ve knocked him off like Tony Mordello.”

  “Who’s Tony Mordello?”

  “You never heard of him? He was working the New Bedford area up where I come from. I bet this guy Riley knew who he was.”

  “Well, what happened to him?”

  “He was running a big operation in champagne and Canadian whiskey, making money hand over fist. He’d been at it awhile, had fancy cars, a big house, furs for his wife. We were all working for him, doing real good for ourselves. Then the show falls apart. From what I hear, he got a visit from a couple of guys who wanted a piece of the action, and he told them to shove it. I guess he didn’t count on who they were. One night about a month ago, Tony disappeared.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “Nobody knows and nobody wants to ask. He went to a poker game in his evening suit and never came home. Now his operation is being run by couple of smart guys they call the College Boys, out of Boston. It’s a real syndicate. They’ve got their own muscle.”

  I kept quiet after that. It was pretty clear to me who the dead man on Coulter’s Beach must have been.

  I told Tino where I lived. When we came to the end of my driveway, he helped me unload my bike.

  “Don’t know if I’ll see you again,” he said. “I’ll probably be sticking closer to home now. It’s getting too chancy on these out-of-town jobs.”

  I nodded and thanked him for the ride.

  “Watch out for yourself, kid,” he said, and drove off into the dark. Looking after him, I realized I’d never even told him my name.

  Five minutes later, I was reading my mother’s note and eating her cookies in the kitchen. I thought I’d handled everything fine until I went to pour myself a glass of milk and it splashed all over the table. I looked down at my hand. It was shaking like a branch in a storm.

  THE BREAKUP

  I SAW JEDDY ON THE WAY TO SCHOOL THE next morning. He had his cap on backward, which is what he did when he was having trouble with something. I knew him so well, I could almost tell what the trouble was. If he looked mad, it had to do with Marina or something that happened at school. If he was walking slow and looking sort of defeated, it was his dad. Jeddy was walking slow.

  I came up on him and got into step.

  “How’s things?” I said.

  He didn’t answer.

  I thought a little and said: “Guess what? Mr. Riley got arrested last night.”

  “How come?” Jeddy asked, without looking at me.

  “I don’t know. My dad got a call this morning. Mr. Riley’s up in the Fall River jail.” I was lying to Jeddy, but what I said was true. A man had come knocking at our door at 6:oo A.M. A half hour later, my father was on his way up to Fall River in our Ford.

  “My dad said he’s been running rum,” Jeddy volunteered.

  “Who has?”

  “Mr. Riley.”

  “When did he say that?”

  “A while back. My dad’s had his eye on him.”

  “How come you didn’t tell me?” I asked him. I was happy to hear the chief had been watching Mr. Riley. It put him on the right side of the law, which, after last night, I hadn’t been sure of. Still, I thought Jeddy should’ve let me know since Mr. Riley was my father’s boss.

  “It was police business,” Jeddy said, glancing over at me. I knew he was starting up on the argument we’d had. I didn’t want to do that anymore.

  “How about riding down to see Tom Morrison on Saturday?” I said. “I’ve been back a few times. We could go crabbing on his raft.”

  “Can’t,” Jeddy said, not looking.

  “Why not?”

  “I’m working at the farm on Saturday.”

  “How about Sunday,” I said.

  “I’m working on Sunday, too.”

  “Not all day.”

  “Yes I am,” Jeddy said.

  I gave him a hard stare. When he finally looked back at me, I said, “You don’t want to be friends anymore?”

  He gave a kind of defeated shrug, as if it was out of his hands.

  “We don’t need to talk about anything. We could just . . . you know.”

  He knew what I meant.

  “My dad said I don’t have time,” he told me. His eyes slid away. I could tell that wasn’t what his father had said.

  “What’s going on, Jed? Is it my dad? Does the chief think he’s in with Mr. Riley?” It occurred to me that Chief McKenzie might believe that. My dad worked for Riley, after all.

  Jeddy shook his head. “I just don’t have time,” he repeated.

  “Because if he does, he’s wrong. Come on, you know my dad’s not in on it. He never would be.” I stopped walking and looked over.
“I might be, but never him.”

  I was dropping a clue, hoping Jeddy would ask me what I meant. In our good days, he would have. It was part of how close we were that we could read each other’s minds. You might be in on it? Jeddy would’ve said. What’s this “might be”? It would’ve given me an excuse to tell him where I’d been the night before. I was dying to be asked. I wanted to tell him about the Black Duck.

  Jeddy didn’t look at me. He kept on walking. That scared me. It seemed as if a terrible new wall was going up between us and nothing I said or did could stop it.

  For a moment, I thought I’d tell him anyway. I came so close. When I think back now, I know that’s what I should have done. If I’d kept to our rule of no secrets and told Jeddy what had happened at Brown’s, how I’d seen his dad and all, it might’ve brought us together again. We could’ve compared notes and talked through what was happening. That might’ve given us a larger frame to put around things, a frame that took in a few fog banks and murky nights, not just the sharp daylight of right and wrong, which was the kind of childish picture we’d been living in up to then.

  We were entering new territory, Jeddy and I, only we didn’t realize it. The world was about to get tougher on us, more complicated, and there we were fighting with each other instead of sticking together as we’d sworn to do.

  We came up on the school. I glanced over at him. He was looking kind of sick. I had a pretty clear idea by then what the trouble was between him and his father, and it made me angry. Chief McKenzie had no right to give orders like that. Whatever side of the rum-running business he was on—and I honestly didn’t know what to think right then—he had no right to cut Jeddy away from a friend like me. Why he would do it, I couldn’t understand. He knew me and he knew my dad about as well as anybody could. All I could think was, it must be a mistake.

  “Listen, it’s all right,” I told Jeddy. “You can steer clear of me if it’s easier for you. Your dad will see the truth sometime, then we’ll get back together. Anyway, we’ll always be friends, right? Nothing can stop that.”

  Jeddy didn’t answer. His head was turned away and I could see from how his jaw was set that he was holding himself in. He wanted to say something, but he couldn’t. We walked along in silence for a couple more minutes. At last, he gave the tiniest nod, as if he was saying good-bye, and lit out up the road. I stopped and waited till he was inside the school before going on myself. It seemed the right thing to do to give him some room.

  THE SQUEEZE

  MY FATHER CAME BACK TO THE STORE FROM Fall River late that afternoon. He’d been there all day trying to get Mr. Riley out of jail, but the judge was a hard-nose and wouldn’t set bail.

  Right off the bat, Dad called a meeting of store employees to put the record straight.

  He explained how Mr. Riley had been busted in a raid on Brown’s Cove, which everyone already knew from the gossip flying around town. He said Mr. Riley would have to sit in a cell for a few days until things got worked out, and that a lawyer was on the case and he’d have his day in court. In the meantime, Riley’s General Store was to go ahead with its usual business.

  “Nothing has changed,” Dad told us. “This store is not involved with Mr. Riley’s arrest. Neither is anyone who works here. Smuggling is not part of our business, and that,” he went on, sending a warning look around the stockroom where we were all gathered, “is how things will continue to be as long as I am in charge.”

  It was a good speech, I’ve got to say. For the first time, I understood why my father had been so careful not to voice an opinion, one way or the other, about rum-running. It was his responsibility to keep Riley’s General Store open and on the right side of the law. Our community depended on Riley’s, and he was going to see that it was well served.

  I couldn’t help noticing, though, that while he was giving the eye to Bink Mosher, the butcher, and Fanny DeSousa, the cashier, and even to the new stock boy, John Appleby, he never once glanced at me. This was deceitfulness of a sort, for all the time he was talking about no one being involved, he knew I’d been there on Brown’s with Mr. Riley. He knew he himself had given me permission to be there.

  It opened my eyes to watch my father walking the fringes of dishonesty that afternoon, though I could appreciate why he did. It was to protect the store and to give me cover, and certainly to spare my mother the worry of knowing where I’d been.

  Something else began to bother me. My father didn’t level with me privately, either. All the rest of that day, I waited for him to take me aside and talk to me about Brown’s. I badly needed to hear his views on Mr. Riley’s arrest. Was it good or bad? I wanted to tell him about Chief McKenzie being on the beach, about the charges Mr. Riley had made against him and how everyone else had been let go afterward. Was Tino right? Had Mr. Riley been set up?

  Gradually, it dawned on me: Dad was never going to speak to me. He didn’t want to know about my night on the beach. He even avoided being alone with me, as if he was afraid I’d embarrass him by bringing it up. If I’d been older, I might have understood. The less said the better was his old-fashioned way of dealing with a situation that had gotten out of hand, that was scaring him, maybe, because Mr. Riley had gone to jail.

  As it was, I was hurt by his silence, which I turned on myself. I knew I was far from perfect, a disappointment to him as a person and a son. Now I believed I’d sunk so low that he couldn’t bear even my company anymore. Cast off in this new, frightening way, I stayed out of his sight as much as I could. And that was too bad, because right then was when I could have used his help.

  Charlie Pope caught up with me late one afternoon as I walked home from the store. He pulled his car over to the side of the road ahead of me and waited until I came up. Then he opened the door and stepped in front of me.

  “Howdy, Ruben,” he said, eyes sharp on my face.

  I said hello.

  “Wanted to speak to you about one small thing.”

  I looked at him. Ever since Jeddy had told me what he’d tried with Marina, I’d thought he was a snake. Now, just like one, his tongue flicked out over his lips, leaving a thin film of spit.

  “Y’know that body you and Jed found a few weeks back?”

  I nodded.

  “You might be interested to hear it’s been identified.”

  “So you found it again?”

  “Never was lost. Turns out the Coast Guard spotted it from the air just after you left. Went in there in a seaplane and picked it up before we got there.”

  That was a lie. I kept quiet.

  “He was a New Bedford man, drowned off his boat while he was sport fishing,” Charlie went on. “One of those sad accidents. People don’t know the power of the sea. They get a hold of some fancy boat and think they’ve bought the keys to heaven. Go off by themselves. Don’t take precautions.”

  I didn’t say anything. He went on.

  “The fellow was a well-known businessman over there, owned a couple of restaurants. Made quite a bundle for himself. I hear his wife’s in a bad state. Two little kids. You can imagine how it’d be. She believes he had some papers on him from a deal he was negotiating. It wasn’t in his wallet. That turned up on the boat. Actually, one slip of paper is what they’re looking for. You didn’t by any chance see something like that when you found the body?”

  “What kind of paper?” I said.

  “I dunno, receipt-sized. Y’know, they’re trying to clean up his affairs, get the estate straightened out. She is, I mean. His wife. That piece of paper would be helpful.”

  “Did you look in his pockets?” I asked sarcastically.

  Charlie’s lips twitched. He glanced down at his feet. When he glanced back up, his eyes had turned mean.

  “We looked in his pockets. Yes sir, we certainly did. What I want to know, kid, is if you looked in his pockets.”

  “I didn’t,” I answered. I gazed directly at him. It was a bold-faced lie.

  “And you didn’t take anything else off that b
ody?”

  “No. I didn’t even touch it. Neither of us did.”

  I added this to protect Jeddy. I hoped to God he’d said the same thing.

  “I find that hard to believe,” Charlie said. “Two kids and a body alone on a beach. First thing you’d do is search him.” He was really putting the squeeze on.

  “Not us,” I declared. We stared at each other.

  “He’d been in the water awhile,” I said. “Could be this piece of paper dissolved. Or washed away.”

  “That’d be a shame,” Charlie snapped. He got back in his car and put his head out the window. “Listen up, Ruben, you better be telling the truth. This isn’t some game of hide-and-seek we’re playing.”

  I didn’t turn a hair. “Who’s we?” I shot back. “You and Chief McKenzie? Or are you in this by yourself?”

  He licked his lips again. “You’re a smarty. I’d watch my back if I was you,” he said, and drove off.

  When I got home, I went up to my room first thing and closed the door behind me. I opened my desk drawer and searched around in the rear of it. The pipe and tobacco pouch were there, pushed into a corner. I brought them out into the light, feeling again the strangeness of having them in my possession. It was like holding a little piece of the dead man’s life, a very personal piece that only those closest to him would have been familiar with. His wife, for instance.

  Now that Charlie had told me about her, I could imagine her. She must have watched the man open his pouch and fill his pipe after dinner on many nights. What was his name again? Tony something. His young children would have caught the scent of tobacco smoke traveling up the stairs to their bedrooms. They would have gone to sleep with a peaceful image of their father in their minds. Their father, the rumrunner. Would they ever know the real story of how he’d died?

  I opened the pouch to sniff the leaf myself, and with its tang in my nostrils came a sudden thought. I pushed my fingers down into the tobacco and poked around. In a second, I brushed against something, and going deeper, I pulled out a slim paper scroll. It looked like a cigarette to me, a fancy one with a fine gray-green design, somewhat misshapen from being in salt water for so long. A bit odd, yes, but a man might store a cigarette he wished to smoke later in his tobacco pouch.