Black Duck

by Janet Taylor Lisle

  “Who’s Viola?” Marina asked. Tom brightened up at this and invited her over to see Viola’s grave in the corner, where he proceeded to launch into the old dog’s remarkable aquatic history. Meanwhile, Billy and I had a short talk.

  “Tom says you and Jeddy McKenzie were on the beach the day the thugs dropped in,” he said. “What’d they look like, if you don’t mind my asking. I’ve got friends in the business, local guys, you know, who might’ve come across them.”

  I told him about the big mug in the wide-brimmed hat and his little narrow-eyed friend, about the machine guns they carried on their shoulders, and the speedboat with the real professional skipper at the wheel.

  “They were looking for something they thought Tom had taken off a dead body that washed up. When they didn’t find it, they shot Viola.”

  “The old buzzard didn’t tell me about any dead body,” Billy said. He glanced over fondly to where Tom was carrying on, at great length, to Marina. I saw his eye linger on her, too. “Any idea what they were after?”

  “Tom said they kept talking about a ticket of some kind.”

  Billy’s head jerked around. “A ticket?”

  “That’s right. He didn’t know what they meant.”

  Billy gave me a slow smile. “A ticket! Well, that’s their game then. Mystery solved.”

  “What d’you mean? What is it?”

  “A ticket’s what the boys call a document that proves you’ve got a paid contract for a shipment of liquor. Usually means a big shipment, one that’s arriving on a freighter. There’s a bunch of renegade operators out to hijack the cargo on these vessels whenever they can by pretending they’re runners for the buyer onshore. A ticket solves the problem. The runner gives it to the freighter’s captain to prove he’s the right guy. The man who was shot must’ve been carrying one. Who was it? Somebody from around here?”

  “We never knew for sure because the body disappeared right after Jeddy and I reported it. We were the ones who found it. Chief McKenzie didn’t do much to follow up, but somebody told me later it might’ve been a man from New Bedford.” I was playing my cards close to my chest.

  Billy gave me a glance. “Tony Mordello.”

  I nodded. “That was the guy.”

  “So that’s where Tony ended up. He was a big operator, too.” Billy shook his head.

  “Did you know him?”

  “By reputation. No more’n that. The rumor is that the College Boys of Boston took him out. They wanted in on some of Tony’s action and he wouldn’t go along with them. I guess they didn’t know about this other deal he’d done until after their hoodlums dumped him. Too late, they hear he’s carrying this ticket. They send out a couple of thugs to look for his body.”

  I didn’t say anything. It was making me nervous that Billy Brady knew so much about Tony Mordello and the College Boys.

  He cleared his throat and stepped up closer to me. “Now listen, Ruben. There wasn’t one of those documents on him, was there? When you and Jeddy found him, I mean. Nothing that would fit the description of a ticket? It could be a piece of paper, like a sales receipt, signed and dated. But a simpler thing they use is a dollar bill torn in half.”

  My heart skipped a beat.

  “He didn’t have one,” I said, quickly.

  Billy gave me a sharp look. “You’re sure?”

  I nodded.

  “You could get yourself in trouble holding one of those things,” Billy said.

  I kept my mouth shut. A gleam was in his eye that I didn’t trust.

  Marina came back over with Tom then, and told me we should think about getting along if she was ever going to be home in time to cook up the clams she’d bought for supper.

  “Clams!” Billy glanced at her. “You wouldn’t be making clam chowder, would you?”

  “Thought I might,” Marina said, tossing her hair back from her face.

  “How about some corn bread and a bit of bacon to go with it?”

  “Could be done.” She gave him one of her appraising glances, which he met straight this time with the flash of a smile.

  After that, she wasn’t in such a rush to get going and we stood awhile longer shooting the breeze. Sadie leaned up against first Billy and then Tom, asking for attention, which she got plenty of from both.

  “Where’d you find this sweet lady?” Tom asked, ruffling her ears. He’d taken a shine to her.

  “She was given me by a fellow in Harveston,” Billy said, “for a good turn I did him. She’s purebred white Labrador.”

  “I was thinking she’s something special,” Tom said. “Can she swim?”

  “Like a fish,” Billy said. “She’ll go off the high-diving rock down at Walter’s Point if you give her a good reason.”

  Marina laughed at that. “What’s a good reason?” she asked.

  “How about clam chowder for supper with corn bread and a ration of bacon on the side?” Billy said, giving her a wicked grin. They all broke up laughing, but I didn’t. I could see Billy Brady had taken an interest in Marina and, worse, that she didn’t mind.

  Later, on our ride back down the main road toward home, I tried to make some bright conversation, but Marina wouldn’t bite. She was mulling over something, gazing at the fields we passed with an absent expression. I’d seen her in these quiet spells before and knew better than to interrupt. We came to her bike and she insisted on getting off and walking the rest of the way by herself.

  “I could take the clams and drop them at your house,” I offered. “How are you going to carry them and wheel that busted bike at the same time?”

  She told me no, she’d had enough free transportation for one afternoon. Then she warmed up again and thanked me for the favor I’d done carrying her to the harbor.

  I said I was jealous of Jeddy for getting to have her clam chowder that night. Of all the things Marina cooked for us over the years, that was my number-one favorite.

  “Don’t worry, there’ll be plenty of other times,” she said. Then she paused, and I could see she was trying to decide whether to speak about something else.

  “Ruben Hart, you’ll keep quiet about where we went this afternoon, won’t you?” she said at last.

  I said I would.

  “My father wouldn’t like to hear that I’ve been down at Tom Morrison’s talking with the likes of Billy Brady. His family’s been in the rum-running business since it began.”

  “They might be thinking twice about staying in that business since Billy’s dad was shot,” I said.

  Marina shook her head. “They’re not, I’m afraid. Or Billy hasn’t, anyway.”

  “What d’you mean? Is he smuggling now?”

  “More than that.” She leaned closer to me. “Can you keep a secret? Tom Morrison let it slip when we were talking back there. Billy’s skippering liquor runs on the Black Duck. He was there asking Tom if they could use his place for storage.”

  KNUCKLING UNDER

  THE MINUTE I GOT HOME FROM TOM Morrison’s that afternoon, I took that torn-in-half fifty-dollar bill out of my geometry book, rolled it up the way it had been and hid it back inside Tony Mordello’s tobacco pouch. Then I stuffed the tobacco pouch under my mattress and sat down on top.

  A picture of the Black Duck coming in at Tyler’s Beach rose into my mind. I had no doubt now who the dark, laughing man at the pilot’s wheel had been. Billy Brady was carrying on his family tradition. The cocky skipper whose crew outran the Coast Guard night after night, who threw up ingenious smoke screens and vanished like Robin Hood into their mists, was from Harveston, right up the road. Part of me was breathless that he was somebody I knew.

  But another part lay low and cautious. There’d been something a little too pushy about Billy’s interest in Tony Mordello’s ticket. I hadn’t liked how he’d pressed me about it, and now that I’d lied about having it, I didn’t want to go back. The best thing for me, I decided, was to pretend I’d never opened that tobacco pouch.

  And that was what I did. As the
weeks went by, the danger seemed to pass. The pouch stayed where it was, squashed under my mattress, a strange souvenir I couldn’t quite bring myself to throw away. No one else bothered me about the rolled-up bill, and whatever Tony Mordello’s secret deal had been, I supposed it was as dead as he was. His fabulous shipment had ended up in somebody else’s hands and it wasn’t up to me to worry about whose they were.

  Even as one problem seemed to clear up for me, though, another was developing for our family.

  With Mr. Riley in jail, my father became responsible for more than just the day-to-day operations of the store. Goods ordered from Boston, such as tobacco and dress fabric, hardware items and a line of footwear carried by the store, now fell under his supervision. He spent more time on the telephone and longer hours over the account books. He was rarely home for supper, even on weekends.

  It got so bad that my mother started bringing his evening meal to the store, determined he’d have it hot and on time. Often, she’d stay if he needed help with shelving or pricing. I spent these evenings at home. I wasn’t expected to work overtime no matter what was happening at the store. It was a given in our family that my schoolwork was more important, that I’d be following in my father’s footsteps soon enough, learning the business of running a store, which, in our town back then, was about as important and well-paying a job as could be found.

  Being manager of Riley’s store was to be a gift my father would pass on to me, and up until that spring of 1929, there seemed no reason that he wouldn’t be able to. His position seemed rock solid. He was well-liked and trusted, a beacon of honesty in the community. For the most part, Mr. Riley had seen the benefit to his store of honoring this reputation, and allowed my father to maintain a buffer of ignorance about the bootlegging operations going on behind the scenes. Occasionally, the buffer was breached, as when Mr. Riley had asked me to work at Brown’s and my father had felt pressure to agree, but this was the exception.

  Now, with Mr. Riley absent from the store, the breach widened and the shady world of his rum-running operations began to encroach directly on my father’s pristine territory. For though Mr. Riley had been arrested, his “import business,” as I heard him call it more than once, continued apace. From the number of out-of-town vehicles with Massachusetts plates that began to park in front of the store, it was easy to figure that Boston’s College Boys had succeeded in muscling their way in and taking charge of rum-running operations in our area.

  The first thing that happened was that my father discovered a large storage “hide” for liquor on the store premises. It was dug into the floor of the barn behind the store’s main building, and had probably been there a couple of years. In the past, the place had been kept padlocked, off-limits to store personnel, and if my father ever wondered what was under there, he never acknowledged it. That June, as Mr. Riley cooled his heels in jail, my dad received a visit from a pair a husky strangers who presented him with a key to the hide and told him to make himself available on certain nights.

  This, to his credit, Dad refused to do, and Mr. Riley, from his jail cell, found another man not connected to the store to do the job. Just knowing about the hide, though, confused and outraged my father. No longer could he ignore the fact that liquor was coming and going from store property. One evening, he poured himself out to my mother in the kitchen while I listened from my post at the top of the back stairs.

  “Turn a blind eye to it, Carl,” my mother advised. “Pretend it doesn’t exist and go about your own business.”

  “But it does exist! It’s right there under the floor.”

  “I know, but it doesn’t concern you.”

  “It didn’t concern me as long as I didn’t know about it. Now I know, and it concerns me,” my father said. His voice rose to a pitch I hadn’t heard before.

  “The store’s the important thing,” my mother told him. “You don’t want to get involved in these outside activities. Mr. Riley knows how you feel. He’s always seen to it you’re kept out of things.”

  “Riley’s not there to draw the line anymore,” my father said. “I have bums coming in that you wouldn’t believe, pressuring me to open up more storage space. I tell ’em, ‘No! I won’t do it!’ Then I get word from Riley to let ’em have the shed, let ’em borrow the delivery van for Friday night. I know what it’s for, but what can I do? It’s his store, not mine. I’m afraid he’ll find somebody else to run the place if I don’t knuckle under.”

  “Oh, come, he wouldn’t fire you!” my mother exclaimed.

  “Wouldn’t he, now, if he saw I wasn’t going along? He must make ten times on smuggling what I clear in legal sales in a month. It’s money, not law, that speaks loudest to him.”

  My mother was silent. I think she’d caught sight at last of the corner my father was in. I know I saw it. Our family was on the line, our whole way of life.

  My mother spoke again, a dark voice of warning.

  “Whatever you do, keep Ruben out of it.”

  “I’m trying, let me tell you.”

  “Carl, you keep him out. Trying’s not good enough.”

  Once again, my father left the kitchen without answering. He retreated into the parlor to read the newspaper while I tiptoed back to my room.

  Listening down the back stairs was something I’d done since I was small, a way of cutting through the false front of calm my parents so often laid over their real views and worries. This time, I wished I hadn’t done it. I was shocked to hear my father talk about “knuckling under” to a slickster like Mr. Riley. It seemed unfair that a man of my dad’s worth should be forced to go against his moral conscience in order to keep his job. That wasn’t something that should be asked of anyone, I thought, and I was amazed that my mother would advise such a thing.

  That night, I couldn’t sleep for thinking of my father’s problems. Along about midnight, I got up, dressed and went outside to walk around. It was a windless evening, clear, with a bright moon hanging in the sky. I went up to the main road, crossed over and in a short time found myself coming up on the McKenzies’ house, which I hadn’t been near in some time.

  Late as it was, a light shone from the kitchen. That gave me an idea. I slipped into their yard and crept close to one of the windows, thinking I’d have a little fun spying if it was Jeddy doing his schoolwork or Marina up over some sewing.

  A warm glow rose from the room. The sight of the familiar wood counters, of Mrs. McKenzie’s china cabinet and the black stove in the corner, gave my heart a wrench. I wished more than anything to be back inside those friendly walls. If Jeddy had been there, I’d have gone in in a minute to talk to him. I was longing for our old selves, sick of having to look the other way and pretend not to care whenever we passed in the hall at school.

  There was a person in the kitchen, but it wasn’t Jeddy. Chief McKenzie sat at the supper table, working by the light of a small table lamp. He’d taken off the leather vest he wore in his official police capacity, and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. I took a moment to figure out what he was doing. Knowing what I did about the scrimping that went on in that house, it was about the last thing in the world I’d ever have expected: he was counting money.

  There was a lot of it, stacks of bills piled up neat as you please. The chief was working over them slowly and methodically, the way he did everything he put his mind to, from police files to household accounts. No one would ever accuse Ralph McKenzie of neglecting his duties, whatever else they had against him. He didn’t like error or failure, and kept strict control to avoid it.

  I watched him lick his finger, count out a number of bills, take up a pencil and make an entry in a book. He tucked the bills into a white envelope, sealed it, wrote a name on the front. He put the envelope aside, and started over again, counting more bills, recording them. I was too far away to read what he was writing on the envelopes, but I could guess: they were names.

  I knew about payrolls. My father paid the store staff weekly using identical white envelopes
. Chief McKenzie was doing the same, except that the amount of money at his elbow was far more than my father had ever handled. It took my breath away to see that much cash in one place, as if somebody had robbed a bank.

  For a quarter of an hour I watched him through the window. Then a hound dog that lived on a farm down the road came rambling up on the yard and caught sight of me. I guess he took me for a burglar, because he started to woof. The chief jumped up from the table and came across to the window to look out. I ducked around the corner of the house, the dog at my heels, yammering away.

  In another minute, I heard the back door slam, and knew Chief McKenzie was outside. That scared the devil out of me. I took off into some brush. He heard me running and came round the house after me.

  “Hey, who is that? What’re you doing here?”

  There was no stopping me then. I was running flat out, going through hedges, jumping stone walls, kicking at the dog, who was excited by all the action and stayed right up with me, nipping at my shins. I crossed over the main road and went down into a swamp on the other side whose terrain I knew. The dog didn’t like that—it was a bog known for snakes—and quit following me after a few minutes. Even then, I didn’t stop. I went crashing through pools of muck, up banks covered with ferns, down again into ooze that came over my ankles until I floundered through to the higher ground of the field behind our house.

  There, I paused. And listened. Far in back of me, I heard that hound dog baying its head off. I was still in a panic, breathing hard and half expecting Chief McKenzie to come rearing up out of the swamp after me. I ran across the field and crouched down behind our old pump house, where I could keep an eye out in case anyone came across the field to our yard.

  Finally the dog quieted down. The night grew peaceful again. My shoes were black with mud. I took them off and sneaked inside, went up to my room and lay down on my bed in my clothes. They were wet, but I didn’t care. I was burning up from the run home and couldn’t seem to cool down. I lay there sweating, wondering if the chief had recognized me in the dark and, if he had, what he’d do about it.