Black Duck

by Janet Taylor Lisle

  There was something about the tone of this question that caused us all to nod quickly. Mr. Culp smiled. He put his hat back on, winked at me and launched into one of his New York jokes. It wasn’t that funny, but beside me John Appleby gave a big laugh. When I went inside, he stayed to shoot the breeze with Mr. Culp. He was still there a half hour later when my father noticed and ordered him back to work.

  The Monday after Thanksgiving, Marina came to find me in an outbuilding behind the store where I was working my afternoon shift.

  It was the first I’d seen of her since mid-October. She’d been going out of town that fall, staying with some high school friends in Harveston over the weekends, commuting to school from up there and coming home to catch up on housework during the midweek days. I’d heard she and her father were at odds over it. He wanted her home, taking care of him and Jeddy, the way she had been doing since her mother died. I no longer knew the inside workings of their family, but the word was she’d stood up to him and declared independence. Which she’d won, it appeared. Recently, and not without a lot of grumbling, the chief had started hiring old Mrs. Smithers to come in part-time to cook.

  Harveston was where Marina had spent all of the Thanksgiving holiday while Jeddy and the chief were in Vermont. Now they were back and she’d come home, in a blaze of new glamour, I thought. She’d been to Boston and bought a smart wool coat, deep green with a leather collar, high style to my countrified eyes.

  She hadn’t come by to impress me, though, or to show me any special interest at all. What she wanted was to give me a lecture. Her subject was Mr. Culp.

  “Don’t you know who he is? He’s with the New York mobsters. They’re trying to break in around here. You should tell your dad to run him off,” she announced, before I’d hardly had time to say hello. That set me on edge.

  “My dad said he’s sitting on a public bench and it’s none of our business,” I answered. “Anyway, the guy’s giving out cash and people are coming in here and spending it, so we don’t mind.”

  “You should be protecting folks, not setting them up,” Marina replied. “The man is looking for a fix, that’s plain as day.”

  “A fix!” I said. “Who does he want to fix?” I’d never heard her talk this way. She seemed to have acquired a whole new vocabulary since we’d last conversed.

  “Your dad, for one. He wants him on his side when the shooting starts.”

  “If there’s going to be shooting, why don’t you tell your own dad? He’s the one with the badge.”

  I turned to walk off.

  “Ruben, wait.” Marina caught my arm. “My father won’t do anything and neither will yours. They’re both in it up to their necks.”

  “That’s a lie!” I told her. “Speak for your own family, not mine.” I was offended that she’d lump my father in with hers, when anyone could see there was no comparison.

  Marina gave me the kind of glance you give a five-year-old who thinks the moon is made of green cheese.

  “There’s something else,” she said. She lowered her voice. “Remember how those Boston gangsters came in and killed Tom Morrison’s dog last spring?”

  I glared at her. “Of course I remember.”

  “They were looking for the ticket to a big liquor shipment.”

  “I know that, and it’s long past,” I said. “That shipment must’ve come in months ago.”

  “It didn’t,” Marina whispered. “It’s still coming. And the word going around is, the ticket’s still good. Over three thousand cases, signed, sealed and paid for. The big syndicates have got wind of it and they’re looking to horn in. That’s one reason you’ve got a New York mobster sitting outside your store. Ruben, listen to me: Billy Brady wants to see you.”

  Suddenly I saw where all this talk of “fixing” and “setting folks up” and “mobsters” was coming from.

  “So you’re in touch with Billy?”

  “We talk now and then.”

  “That’s right, he lives in Harveston.” I put two and two together. “Lucky thing you have friends up there.”

  “Yes, it is. So what?”

  From her tone, I suspected there was a lot more going on between her and Billy than she was telling. That galled me. I didn’t have a leg to stand on with Marina, but the idea that Billy Brady was moving in on her touched a nerve. All those years eating supper in the McKenzies’ kitchen had mounted up in my mind to a form of possession, I guess.

  “Billy’ll be down at Tom Morrison’s late this afternoon,” Marina said. “He’ll come in by boat. Will you go to see him?”

  “I will not! All he wants is to get his own hands on that shipment. He’s after money, same as everyone else.”

  “That’s not true,” Marina said. “You don’t know him. People in Harveston say he’s been helping families out from what he makes. That’s why his crew’s got the good name it has.”

  “Well, I wish he’d stay away from Tom Morrison,” I shot back. “He’ll get him in trouble hanging around there all the time. It’s not fair to drag an old guy like that into anything to do with the Black Duck.”

  Before I’d even finished saying those words, Marina was reaching to cover my mouth.

  “Shh-shh! Not so loud.”

  I tore her hand off me. “There’s nobody around here.”

  “There’s always somebody around everywhere,” she whispered. “You just don’t notice. And Ruben, they’re watching you specially.”

  “Nobody’s paying any attention to me, that’s one of my problems.” I sent her a furious look.

  “They are. It’s why Billy wants to see you. There’s a new rumor that you’ve got it. The ticket, I mean, the thing you and Jeddy found.”

  I’d already guessed that was where this discussion was headed, and it scared me. I wasn’t about to show that to Marina, though.

  “Who says I have it, Charlie Pope?” I asked, stonewalling the best I could. “Look, I’ve said it a hundred times, all there was on the guy was his pipe and—”

  Marina slapped her hand over my mouth again, and this time I let it stay there. From behind us came a soft squeak. We looked around. The trapdoor in the floor across the room had risen up a little. After a moment of silence, John Appleby came up the ladder out of the old root cellar, a storage area no longer in use since part of it had caved in during the winter.

  “John, what’re you doing down there?” I demanded.

  “Just getting some potatoes,” he said. He held up a bag.

  “Potatoes are in the side shed now. There’s nothing in that place.”

  “Yes, there is,” John Appleby said. “There’s potatoes.”

  He slid by us with a smug look.

  “See what I mean?” Marina whispered after he’d gone. “You should be careful what you say.”

  “John Appleby’s not a spy. He’s a kid with a big chip on his shoulder is all.”

  Marina shook her head at me. “Will you go and meet Billy?” she asked again.

  “No!” I told her. “Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. My dad won’t let me off for anything anymore. We’re all working like dogs here to keep up. You tell Billy Brady you delivered the message. Someone is watching me. Well, I’m real glad to hear it!”

  I stormed off, and this time Marina let me go. When I looked back, she’d disappeared up front.

  I stayed away from that part of the store for the next hour and didn’t see her again. Toward the end of the afternoon, though, I opened the trapdoor of the old cellar and looked in. It was black as pitch inside, so I got a book of matches and went down the ladder. All it took was one strike to see that there wasn’t a single bag of potatoes in the whole place.

  Newport Daily Journal, January 1, 1930

  BLACK DUCK SURVIVOR CHARGES COAST GUARD GAVE NO WARNING BEFORE OPENING FIRE

  “IT WAS A SETUP,” NAVIGATOR SAYS

  NEWPORT, JAN. 1—The Coast Guard cutter that intercepted the Black Duck in fog early last Sunday morning gave no warning before unleashing
deadly machine gun fire, according to Richard Delucca, the Duck’s navigator and sole survivor. Delucca’s three shipmates were killed in the barrage, the most violent incident to date along these shores.

  “There was dense fog out there and we came up on the cutter so quick that we thought we’d run into it,” said Delucca, 24, speaking to reporters for the first time from his bed at Newport Hospital.

  “We didn’t know it was a government vessel. They gave us no warning shot and no signal to stop. They started firing that machine gun and kept firing. I believe it was a setup. Somebody tipped them off that we’d be coming. Everybody knew Campbell was out to get the Black Duck,” Delucca said, referring to Officer Roger Campbell, skipper of C.G. Patrol Boat 290, who gave the order to shoot.

  Delucca lost his thumb in the incident. He has been charged with smuggling illegal liquor.

  His account was denied by a Coast Guard spokesman. “They were trying to escape. These unfortunate killings resulted from an honest effort to enforce the law,” he said.

  The Interview

  YOU STILL HAD THAT FIFTY-DOLLAR BILL, didn’t you? David Peterson asks when Ruben Hart lumbers back from the kitchen, carrying two glasses of lemonade. Outside, a summer rain is cascading down on the yard. They’ve taken shelter in the dark parlor. The room is hot, even with the windows open.

  Don’t expect much. It’s store-bought, Mr. Hart says, handing over the lemonade. If my wife were here, we’d be having the real thing.

  That’s okay, David says. I like store-bought. The truth is, he’s never had any other kind.

  Did you still have that tobacco pouch under your mattress? David asks again.

  Of course.

  With the half a fifty rolled up inside?

  Would you throw something like that away?

  No. One thing I don’t understand. Why did Tony Mordello’s freighter take so long to show up? Was it lost at sea or something?

  For six months? No.

  So?

  It was always scheduled for a December delivery. That’s how Tony Mordello had set it up. He wanted his shipment in time for the holiday season, when he knew he could sell it at a good price. He was buying low and selling high, good business practice.

  And then he was shot with the ticket on him, David says.

  Hidden in his tobacco pouch, that’s right.

  How does that work, using a torn bill as a ticket? I still don’t get it.

  Easy. The captain of the freighter Tony hired to bring his liquor down here has the other half. They did the deal face-to-face up in Canada. Then, when Tony’s runners go out to get the shipment in their speedboats, they have Tony’s bill and match it with the captain’s. Everybody knows they’re dealing with the right outfit.

  Pretty cool, David says. It’s like a signed contract.

  Mr. Hart smiles grimly. It’s better. There are no names written down, and bills can be folded small. They stand up longer, too—in seawater, for instance. Tony Mordello ran a smart operation. If the College Boys hadn’t murdered him, he’d have made a second fortune off the huge cargo coming in on this freighter. His wife could’ve bought herself another diamond necklace and Cadillacs for the kids.

  So now the Boston College Boys were after you?

  Not only them. The New York mob, too. At least, that’s what Billy Brady had sent Marina to tell me. I didn’t believe him, though, knucklehead that I was.

  But how would they have known you even had that fifty? You’d kept it secret all that time.

  One person knew.

  Who?

  Mr. Hart gets up painfully from his chair. Wet weather raises havoc with his joints.

  Let me show you something. He shuffles over to one of the formal, white-doilied parlor tables and fumbles around amid the framed photographs, bending low, trying to find the right one in the parlor’s gloom. Whatever pruning Mr. Hart has managed so far with his medieval clippers hasn’t improved visibility in here. David, who’s had more gardening experience via Peterson’s Landscaping than he likes to admit, offered to lend a hand but was turned down. Help is a not a word in the old man’s dictionary.

  Finally Mr. Hart selects a small photo in a silver frame and walks back across the room. He holds it out to David: a black-and-white snapshot of a skinny kid wearing a baseball cap and standing beside a bicycle.

  Who do you think that is?

  I don’t know.

  Guess.

  Jeddy McKenzie? David says.

  You’re right. Mr. Hart nods solemnly. My old friend Jeddy. He’d seen me with the bill in front of my locker.

  But . . . did he tell?

  I believe he did. He told the chief.

  How could he? He was setting you up.

  He was. In the name of police business, that’s what he was doing.

  He must’ve thought his dad would step in, somehow. He wouldn’t have done it on purpose, would he?

  That’s a good question. I don’t know the answer. Maybe I don’t want to know.

  THE MUFFLED ENGINE

  I WAS IN A BLACK MOOD WHEN I LEFT THE store that afternoon, angry at Marina and sore from unloading stock all day. If I’d been smart, I would have headed straight back to my house and stayed put. But my mother was there, as she always was, ready and waiting to ask how my day had gone.

  “Going home, kid?” Stanley Culp gave me the eye as I slouched by.

  “Why would I want to go there?”

  “So, you’re off for a ride? Well, take care of yourself.”

  I wheeled my bike into the street and pedaled away, feeling his shrewd gaze on my back.

  If there was, as there was later said to be, an old Ford station wagon with Massachusetts plates keeping watch on the store from an alley across the road, I paid no attention.

  I didn’t care, either, that Charlie Pope, hustling away from the police station on some errand, shot me a cool glance over his shoulder and picked up speed.

  Chief McKenzie, standing in the station door, was either just coming in or about to leave. His heavy profile faded back out of sight as I passed. Perhaps he was making a note of the direction I was taking, perhaps not. I couldn’t be bothered to pick up on such details.

  I remember that Ann Kempton, the local seamstress, waved at me from her backyard as she took in laundry from the line.

  A group of younger boys was in the field beyond the school whacking a baseball around and whooping it up. They’d been in the store buying sodas earlier, where they’d been warned to keep their voices down and wait their turn at the counter. I knew every one of them by name, such is the closeness of a small town, and now, hearing the crack of the ball on the bat, and their shouts, a darker feeling swept over me.

  I was trapped in this place. While Marina visited Harveston and Boston, meeting up with the world, I hauled pickle barrels in Riley’s back room, where not even my father looked in on me anymore. He’d given up trying to make me into something he could like.

  I laughed cynically, a Stanley Culp kind of laugh. I’d take a ride, all right. I’d go missing for a while. Supper could wait on me for once. Let them wonder where I was.

  And so I set out toward the back country, down a road I’d seldom biked which wound away from the sea, past rocky farmland and shrub-clogged forests. The November daylight began to fade and still I went on, furiously at times, suddenly in a rage that even one-eyed Tom Morrison was no longer specially mine. He was Billy Brady’s friend, and Billy’s father’s before that. The free life he led came out of weakness and retreat, not anything strong he could pass on to me. He was as likely as anyone to bend before the wind.

  And what a wind. I imagined Billy now, coming in by boat to the beach, striding up the path to Tom’s shack. Billy Brady, tall and broad-shouldered, his white Labrador loping at his side; Billy, with all the glory of the Black Duck blazing out, and his easy, joking manner that charmed everyone.

  Deep in these thoughts, I rode on through the darkening landscape. Over an hour passed before I thought of goi
ng back. My legs had begun to ache. The sun was down by then, and the road dim. An eerie silence rose on all sides and I was suddenly aware that I was far, far out in the country. I was turning to head home when the sound of tires came from the bend ahead. I flicked on my bicycle lamp and drew to the side.

  The vehicle, driving without headlights, rode toward me with a ghostly quiet. As it passed, I recognized the whir of a muffled engine and glanced back over my shoulder. It was a Ford coupe, one taillight out.

  The vehicle braked, stopped and began to reverse direction. A moment later the car came up in back of me and I squeezed over a second time to let it by. But it hung back and, little by little, moved up closer until I felt the heat of the motor on my legs.

  “Come ahead!” I yelled, gesturing for the driver to go past. He would not. When I looked back to see what the trouble was, a face pushed up close to the windshield and broke into a toothy grin.

  Fear spiked through me. Even so, I couldn’t believe that anyone could mean me harm. A game is what I thought, and for another hundred yards, I played my part by riding as far to the left-hand side as possible without going in the woods. Finally, with a roar, the big roadster pulled out to pass and I thought I’d be left in peace. But that was not to be. With stealthy calm, the vehicle moved up until the broad side windows were abreast of me. Out of the corner of one eye, I saw faces through the glass.

  “Hey! Give me some room!” I called out.

  There was no response, and in the next second I saw that I wasn’t to be allowed even my slim edge of road. The side of the car moved closer until, with a last impatient swerve, it struck me. I lost my balance and went flying into the woods, where a darkness darker than night dropped over me.

  WHERE’S THE TICKET?

  THE SOUND OF VOICES DRIFTED DOWN TO me, as if through the depths of an ocean. For a while I was too far sunk to pay attention. Then, slowly, I surfaced and opened my eyes. My head felt heavy and swollen. Without even looking, I knew I was a prisoner.