Death on the Waterfront

by Robert Archer

  “You should have been a priest instead of a cop,” growled Burke. “Lemme alone, willya?”

  “Sure,” said Hanrahan. “If you’ll go home and behave yourself.” They walked to the corner in silence, and Hanrahan stepped into the entrance of the clothing store to try the door. Burke stood watching, swaying on widespread legs. He looked sick.

  Hanrahan came out of the store entrance, ducking his head to avoid the low awning. His shrewd blue eyes examined Burke keenly.

  “Tommy, it wouldn’t be May me that’s worrying you, would it?” he asked.

  Burke made a flat, contemptuous gesture. “That stinking little bitch. I stopped worrying about her long ago.”

  “That’s no way to speak of your sister.”

  “You asked me,” said Burke tonelessly. “You know what she is as well as I do.”

  Hanrahan waved a gloved hand. “Git on with ye,” he ordered indignantly, “git on with ye, now, before I run ye in. You ought t’be ashamed of yourself.”

  Burke turned and went up the street away from the water front. His walk was surprisingly steady for that of a drunken man.

  Hanrahan shook his graying head sadly as he lumbered on down East Street. Two blocks further south he turned away from the water front and proceeded on to the parking lot across the street from the hall. When he put his head in at the door of the little sheet-iron shack that served as an office for the parking lot he was breathing heavily.

  Joe Evens (the Evens resulting from the convenient shortening of a multiple-syllable Slavic surname), the parking-lot attendant, looked up from the small table where he had been playing solitaire with a greasy dog-eared pack of cards.

  “‘Lo, Irish,” he greeted the patrolman. “You come to put the kibosh on that crap game?”

  Hanrahan sat down in the only vacant chair. He listened for a moment to the noises coming from the far corner of the parking lot, then he grinned and shook his head.

  “Why should I chase ‘em?” he asked. “They’d just find another place to play and they’d ride the hell outta me. This way, we’re all friends, and I know where they are.”

  “How we gonna have law and order in this country with cops like you?” Evens turned three cards and played a red ten on a black jack. “I’m a public-spirited citizen,” he continued disparagingly, “I think I oughtta report you to the sergeant.”

  Hanrahan’s grin became a laugh. “You think the sergeant don’t know about that crap game, you’re full of hop. The sergeant knows this beat, and he knows me and he don’t want much part of either of us. Besides, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He took off his cap, scratched his grizzled head furiously, and unbuttoned three buttons of his tunic.

  “It’s a nice quiet night,” he sighed, stretching. “I think I’ll just take it easy here till it’s time to go and ring the box. That is, if you got no objections, Mister Evens.”

  Evens grunted and went back to his solitaire. The big cop kibitzed a few moves, then leaned back in his chair, one eye closed, the other open just a slit and shifting warily now and then to the alarm clock hanging from a hook on the wall.

  At five minutes to one he arose and began buttoning his tunic. He was adjusting his cap on his head when he paused, listening to a commotion in the lot outside. There was a sound of running feet and a tall, gangling individual, wearing a khaki truck-driver’s jumper and a dilapidated cloth cap ringed with brightly colored union buttons, appeared in the doorway. Beside the tall man was a panting youth of about seventeen with popping eyes and a dead-white face.

  “Jeez,” gasped the tall man at sight of Hanrahan, “I was just coming to call a cop. There’s a dead man in my truck.”

  “Dead man?” questioned Hanrahan incredulously. “You sure you don’t mean dead dr——?”

  He had been about to say dead drunk when he looked at the boy and the words froze on his Ups. The boy was holding out his hands palms up and staring at them. Under the light the fingers gleamed wet and darkly red.

  “Holy Mother,” breathed Hanrahan. “Where’d you get all that blood, son?”

  The boy sucked in air trying to speak. Then he clapped his sleeve across his mouth suddenly and bent over, out the door, trying not to vomit on the office floor.

  “Show me,” said Hanrahan.

  He went around the crouching boy and out the door, pushing the tall man before him and cutting a swath through the onlookers. The truck driver led him down the block, away from the lights of the parking lot, to where a big six-wheel cab-and-trailer-type truck stood in the shadow of an empty warehouse. There were no street lights here, and it was very dark. Hanrahan switched on his flash, ordered the little group of men who had followed them to stay back, and gestured to the truck driver to lead the way.

  The tailboard of the truck was down, but a heavy curtain of brown canvas hid the interior of the trailer from Hanrahan’s questing light. On the curtain, crudely outlined in white paint, were two arrows, one pointing to the left, the other to the right. Below the left arrow was the inscription, “This Way to the Races,” while on the right a companion caption announced sardonically, “This Way to the Morgue.”

  The truckman reached out toward the curtain, but Hanrahan growled peremptorily, “Wait.” He shifted his light, grunting as it picked up dark, glistening splotches on the tailboard and came to rest finally on a black pool at the curb, just behind the right rear wheel.

  “Bled like a stuck pig. Okay.” He gestured abruptly with the light. “Let’s take a look inside.”

  The truckman picked up a corner of the curtain, and Hanrahan, stooping, played his flash on the black interior of the trailer. The yellow beam fell on a spread-eagled figure lying face up on the floor. The feet, enormous in heavy work shoes, were toward them and not more than a foot from the rear end of the truck.

  Hanrahan raised his light. “For Christsake,” he said softly. “No wonder he bled—his whole throat’s ripped out.”

  “I know.” The truckman did not look. “He’s dead all right, ain’t he?”

  “I never saw anyone deader.” Hanrahan stepped back and swung his light suddenly, full in the truckman’s face. “You know him?” The other shook his head. “Never seen him before.”

  Hanrahan grunted again. “Look, I gotta stay. You go tell Joe Evens to call the precinct. And send the rest of those crapshooters back here.”

  When the little group of men were assembled at the rear of the truck Hanrahan surveyed them. His light fell on a familiar face.

  “You, Bullethead,” he snapped. “Come here and see can you identify this guy. Judging from his clothes, I’d say he was a longshoreman.”

  It was the Negro Sangster who stepped forward. He bent his long frame and peered under the flap of canvas for a moment, then straightened and nodded slowly.

  “I know him,” he said, a note of fatalism in his quiet voice. “He’s a member of my union. His name’s Riorden.”

  “Riorden? Let me take a look.” Whitey Gordon stepped out of the little group and lifted the canvas.

  “It’s him, all right,” he said. “For God’s sake.”

  Hanrahan dropped the flap and waved the men back. “Git over on the sidewalk, you guys, and stay put till Homicide gits here. They’ll want to talk to you.”

  He silenced their protest and herded them against the warehouse wall. “Stay put, now,” he warned. “One of you guys can maybe tell us who done this.”

  A siren wailed and died disconsolately as a prowl car pulled up beside the truck. Two uniformed men sprang out and came to talk to Hanrahan and peer curiously into the trailer. One of them noted the inscription on the canvas.

  “This way to the morgue,” he read and laughed dryly. “That guy sure musta passed on the wrong side.”

  He turned and went stomping over to play his flash in the faces of the little group of men now huddled against the warehouse wall.

  “Whatd’ya mugs know about this? Come on, speak up.”

  He waited a mo
ment, holding the powerful light directly in their eyes, then when no one answered he reached out and grabbed Sangster by the shirt. “Open up, Shine,” he snarled, “before the Homicide squad gets here and goes to town on you.”

  The fingers of Sangster’s left hand encircled the cop’s wrist and tightened suddenly. The cop winced and let go of the shirt.

  “Why, you black bastard.” His hand dropped to the sap at his belt.

  “You were tearing my shirt,” said Sangster evenly. “You got no right to do that.”

  “Go back to college,” one of the men told the cop. The group moved imperceptibly away from the wall toward the policeman.

  Hanrahan came over. “Put down that light, Tim,” he said quietly. “What the hell’s goin’ on here?”

  “I’ll run these smart guys bowlegged,” growled Tim.

  “He’s a rookie, Irish,” said Whitey Gordon. “They oughtta know better than to let him run loose on the water front. He ain’t dry behind the ears.”

  “Pipe down, Whitey,” ordered Hanrahan. He turned to his brother officer. “You’re acting against regulations, Tim, and you know it. You had no call to git tough with these boys.”

  The younger officer’s eyes gleamed whitely in the darkness, but he only mumbled something and turned away. A moment later a car turned into the street and pointed a long finger of light at the truck from its powerful headlights. It came to a stop behind the prowl car, and another, and yet another, followed it.

  Men poured out of the cars and gruff voices began shouting orders. Soon the dark, quiet street was full of light and bustling activity. The canvas covering at the end of the trailer was thrown back and floodlights connected to the police cars by long extensions were set up, turning the boxlike interior into a narrow, unset stage. The actors—policemen in uniform, detectives in quiet business suits, their hats on the backs of their heads, men with cameras and men with notebooks, a doctor with a medical kit and an intern in a white jacket—scrambled in and out of the trailer and swarmed over and about it with the incomprehensible energy of ants. Still others stood over the spread-eagled, bloody figure on the floor, now revealed in all its tragic and pitiful sordidness by the white light that beat down on it, regarding it with their hands in their pockets, their faces showing approximately the same degree of emotion and interest as those of idlers watching a construction project. Occasionally one of them would photograph the figure, the white light of the flash bulb leaping out and lighting up faces beyond the truck with sudden dramatic brilliance; or one of the men would kneel on a knee to poke and prod experimentally, arising again and brushing his hands together—an unconscious, atavistic gesture—as though the corpse had already begun to putrefy.

  The little group of spectators lined up against the wall of the warehouse under the benevolent eye of Patrolman Hanrahan, watched the oddly unrealistic, badly rehearsed melodrama, with apprehensive interest. They were workers in industries where sudden death is not uncommon, and most of them had seen corpses as mangled and pitiful as poor Riorden’s. It was not the corpse that interested and worried them so much as the law seeking a culprit. They had little faith in either the justice or the efficiency of crime detection—painful experience having taught them that the police were, all too often, prone to seize as victim the first unwary bystander who could not prove his innocence. And so, while they felt sorry for Riorden, they were skeptical of the law’s efforts to apprehend his killer and particularly scornful of their own stupid curiosity that had placed them in their present predicament.

  “Boy,” whispered one of the truck drivers bitterly, “was I a dope? I shoulda hi-balled outta here the minute I saw the blood on the kid’s hands.”

  “We’re in the clear,” said a taxi driver with somewhat hollow confidence. “We were all shootin’ crap when this thing happened. We can alibi each other.”

  “How the hell do we know when it happened?”

  “The blood, ya fathead. It wasn’t dry yet. He couldn’t abeen bumped more’n a few minutes before the kid found him.”

  “The doc can tell how long he’s been dead, can’t he?”

  “Sure. I read a detective story——”

  “For cripesake, you’ll get softening of the brain readin’ that junk.”

  “Why the hell did they have to pick my truck?” the driver who had found the body asked plaintively.

  “Eddy okay?”

  “Yeah. He’s over in the shack with Joe. The cops said he could stay there.”

  “Look,” said the driver who had started the conversation, “we’re gonna all stick together, ain’t we? We were all shootin’ crap when this guy was killed. We musta been.”

  “What are you so worried about? You better not let the cops hear you talkin’ like that, or they’ll think you killed him, sure as sin.”

  “Shh,” hissed a warning voice, “here’s the big shot.”

  Conversation ceased, and the group directed its attention to a man in a brown hat and long brown topcoat who had moved into the circle of light at the foot of the trailer. Under the hat the man’s hair showed gray at the temples, and he had a long, sharp nose.

  “That’s Captain Nicholson, Central Homicide,” said Hanrahan out of the corner of his mouth. “God help you guys if he goes to work on you.”

  “Hard, is he?” asked Whitey, sidling closer.

  “He gits what he goes after.”

  “Who’s the little guy in glasses?”

  “Hell, you oughtta know him. That’s Joey Stern from the D. A.’s office.”

  “Yeah, I thought I recognized him. I’ve seen his picture in the papers.” Whitey looked at the little, round-faced man with interest.

  “So that’s the racket buster,” he whispered softly. “Quite a turnout for one dead longshoreman.”

  “Murder’s murder,” said Hanrahan. “Don’t make no difference whether it’s a millionaire or a bum. Anyway, they’re watchin’ the water front pretty close these days.”

  The Homicide captain looked in the direction of the group, and Hanrahan whispered. “Shut up, now. He’ll be comin’ over here in a minute.”

  Nicholson, however, turned his back and spoke to a small man in a wrinkled dark suit who was kneeling beside the body. “What’s the dope, Doc?” he asked.

  The doctor hopped to his feet, brushed his knees, and dropped off the tailboard of the trailer with the surprising agility of a monkey. His answer to the question was a sharp, staccato rattle that had the speed of a radio sports announcer.

  “Wound in throat made by some kind of sharp instrument that entered at the left and tore the tissues from left to right. Looks ugly, and he would have bled to death eventually, but that’s not what killed him. Fracture back of skull—iron rod or bar—made before wound in throat. Been dead about an hour. That’s all until I get him out of here.”

  “Thanks,” said the captain. He called to one of the men, “Benson, you got the stuff from his pockets?”

  The man held up a canvas bag.

  “All right, you can take him away, boys.”

  While the body was being removed he snapped additional orders. “Take the truck in. We’ll go over it again in the morning. Sergeant Tripp, you stay here. Take two men and go over every inch of this block and every other block in the neighborhood if you have to. Look for anything, but especially a longshoreman’s hook.” He turned to a slender, studious-looking young man with glasses who had been wandering here and there about the truck. “Through?”

  The young man nodded. “Not much here, Cap. Blood samples, a little chalk on the sole of one shoe. Nothing under the nails but dirt. I’ll have another look down at the morgue.”

  “Okay, boys, take your lights. Bring the men that found him over to the precinct. We’ll talk to them there.”

  “Hey,” said the worried trucker. “What are you pinching us for? We ain’t done anything.”

  “Shut up, you cluck,” growled Hanrahan.

  The captain, however, answered quietly, “I’m not arresti
ng you unless you force me to. I’m merely taking you to the precinct station house where I can check your stories.” He stood for a moment, patient, smiling a little, then, with a nod to Hanrahan, turned and walked to the big black car with the P.D.H.Q. license plates.

  6. Station House

  The doorbell jangled raucously, and Kate Hefflin sat up with a start. She had been sleeping fitfully, half conscious of street noises that had seemed just outside her ground-floor window. She switched on the light and looked at the clock beside the bed.

  “Twelve o’clock,” she muttered, “seems like I been in bed for hours. Gol darn it, which of those bozos forgot his key now?” She threw back the covers, put her feet into pink mules, the pompons of which were somewhat soiled, and padded across the room to push the button releasing the front-door catch. She opened the door and looked down the hall. When she saw who it was she closed the door until the spring lock snapped and scrambled back to bed so fast she tripped on a trailing hem of nightgown and bumped against the table, almost sending the clock flying through the open window. Clutching the clock, she set it upright and dove under the covers. The barred window beside her bed was open top and bottom, and the room was cold. She huddled in a shivering ball and listened to the heavy feet padding down the hall past the stairs to her door. Someone rapped.

  Kate called, “Yes?”

  “Doc,” said a voice. “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, don’t tell me,” she said. “Let me guess. You forgot your key. When will you guys get it through your thick heads that I go to bed early?”

  “I know,” said Doc. “I said I was sorry, didn’t I? Open the door. I got some mail for you that was in the mailbox.”

  “Shove it under. I wouldn’t stick my tootsies out of this bed again for money. It’s probably bills anyway.”

  “Okay, here it comes.” A long envelope appeared on the carpet beneath the door. “Good night, beautiful. I don’t see what you’re so huffy about. It’s only twelve o’clock.”

  “It’s after.”

  “How much?”