The New Black Mask (No 8)

Flotsam and Jetsam John Lutz

John Lutz is the winner of the 1985 Edgar Award for the best short story of the year. He has published some two hundred stories in his twenty years as a professional writer and eight novels, the most recent of which is Tropical Heat (Henry Holt and Company, 1986).

Commenting on “Flotsam and Jetsam,” Mr. Lutz says he has long been intrigued by alcoholism as a subject for fiction, and he believes that the illness alcoholics suffer would be better understood if it were more often explored by creative writers. He is intrigued by the way alcohol affects memory, as he demonstrates in the following story.

When a customer hefted a grease-spotted box of glazed-to-go and cracked, “You’d make more money selling these by the pound,” Danny didn’t smile his customary good-business grimace to hide the hurt.

After the customer had left and Nudger was the only one other than Danny in Danny’s Donuts, Nudger sipped his horrendous coffee and studied Danny over the stained rim of the Styrofoam cup. Danny, who resembled a scrawny basset hound, had larger, deeper, and darker circles than usual beneath his sad brown eyes, and the lines on his drooping features appeared longer and more defined. Something was gnawing on him. If this kept up, he would go from basset hound to bloodhound, a less lovable breed.

“What’s bothering you, Danny?” Nudger asked, partly to make conversation, partly to divert Danny’s attention from the fact that he hadn’t been able to get down more than half of the Dunker Delite Danny had bestowed upon him for breakfast.

Danny sighed, then removed the grayish towel he kept tucked in his belt and flicked some crumbs off the stainless steel counter. “Friend of mine died,” he said.

Nudger grunted and nodded, surreptitiously folding his napkin to conceal the half-carcass of the doughnut before him when Danny glanced away. “Natural death or accidental?”

“He died in a fall,” Danny said, “off a wagon.”

“Old friend?”

Danny tucked the towel back beneath his belt and nodded. “We went back over twenty years. Then we wound up in AA together.”

“That kind of wagon,” Nudger said. He knew that Danny had been a member of Alcoholics Anonymous for the past seven years, and in that time hadn’t touched alcohol. The organization had convinced Danny, finally and forever, that he would always be an alcoholic and the best he could do was to be one who never drank alcohol. If Danny had a religion, it was AA. And the organization had done more for him than religion had done for most people.

“Artie Akron hadn’t touched a drop of liquor for five years, Nudge,” Danny said, leaning on the counter with both elbows. “Then they find him last night down on North Broadway with his head bashed in and his wallet missing. They say he had a point twenty-eight alcohol content in what was left of his blood.”

“It happens that way sometimes,” Nudger said. “Some punk probably rolled him for his money and hit him too hard.” He wondered, was Danny only mourning his old friend, or was he also considering that the same kind of fate might someday be his own? It was a tough life for those who’d inherited the wrong genes and a thirst for alcohol. “You’ll make it okay, Danny,” Nudger said.

Danny glanced over at him and smiled sadly; he knew what Nudger had been thinking and appreciated the concern. “You want another doughnut, Nudge?”

“Er, no, thanks, I’m full, I’d better get upstairs and do some work.” Nudger’s office was on the second floor of the old brick building, directly above the doughnut shop.

Danny picked up Nudger’s cup and ran some more gritty dark coffee into it from the big steel urn. “One for the road, Nudge.”

Nudger thanked him, carefully picked up his wadded napkin as if it were empty, and tossed it into the plastic-lined trash can by the window counter on his way out. The napkin-wrapped doughnut struck the can’s bottom like a piece of stone sculpture.

The morning was already heating up; a typical St. Louis July day. It would also be typical of St. Louis weather if it were sixty degrees and hailing by nightfall. The only thing that changed rapidly in this city was the weather.

Nudger quickly entered a door next-door to Danny’s Donuts and climbed a narrow wooden stairway to his office. He picked up the morning mail from where it lay on the landing, then unlocked the office door and pushed inside.

Warm, stifling, stale. The small office still seemed to contain heat from yesterday’s record-breaking temperature, as well as the sweet, cloying scent from the doughnut shop below. It was the kind of scent that permeated everything: furniture, drapes, clothes, even flesh. Wherever Nudger went, he gave off the faint scent of a Dunker Delite. It didn’t drive women wild.

He switched on the window air conditioner, then sat down in his squealing swivel chair and did nothing until the cool breeze from the humming, gurgling window unit had made the office air more breathable. Finally, he picked up the stack of mail from where he’d tossed it on the desk and leafed through it.

The usual: a mail-order catalog from International Investigators Supply Company, featuring an inflatable boat that would fit into a shirt pocket when deflated; a letter from his former wife Eileen, no doubt threatening stark horror unless alimony money showed up via return mail; an enticement to join a home-video club specializing in X-rated movies full of snickering adolescent sex, for adults only; an envelope from the electric company that looked disturbingly like a bill. Nudger tossed the entire mess into the wastebasket.

Then he glanced at his watch, made sure his phone-answering machine was on Record, and left the office. He had to follow a cigarette delivery-truck on its route, to discover if the driver had anything to do with why certain figures didn’t coincide.

A week later, when the cigarette pilfering case had ended (the supervisor — the man who had hired Nudger — turned out to be the thief; there was some debate over paying Nudger’s fee), Nudger was sitting at his desk wondering what next when there was a knock on the door.

Client! Nudger thought hopefully. He leaned forward, his swivel chair squealing at the same time he called for the visitor to enter.

The door opened and Danny walked in.

“You don’t seem glad to see me, Nudge,” Danny said.

“It’s not that,” Nudger said. “I was expecting someone else.”

“I think I need to talk to somebody, Nudge. You know how it is, I got no family, nobody.”

“Sit down,” Nudger said. “Talk.”

Danny sat in the chair by the window, aging ten years in the harsh morning light. “Another friend of mine died last night,” he said. “Found on the north side in a rough neighborhood, shot in the back of the head. Robbery again.”

“Who was this one?” Nudger asked.

“Mack Perry, another member of my AA chapter, another old shipmate.”

“Shipmate?”

“Yeah. Perry, Akron, and I served on the USS Kelso during the Vietnam War. This was in the midsixties, before the war heated up, when the Navy got young guys to join by promising them they’d go through training and service together. We were in a St. Louis unit. Lots of guys on the Kelso were from St. Louis, until after it was hit and recommissioned later as a minesweeper.”

“Hit?”

“By a North Vietnamese torpedo boat. The ship didn’t sink, but we limped back to port with two dead, including the captain, and fifteen wounded. They dug metal out of us and pinned medals on us and took the Kelso out of service for repairs.”

“I didn’t know you were a war hero, Danny.”

“Wrong place, wrong time,” Danny said simply. “And me and a few others were just drunk enough to be brave.”

Nudger could see he didn’t want to talk about the violent years, so he concentrated on violent yesterday. “You said Perry was another old shipmate, Danny. Was the other fellow who was killed, Artie Akron, on the Kelso, too?”

Danny nodded, “Yeah. That’s when the three of us really started drinking hard, in Honolulu after the Kelso got hit and we were in the last stages of our recuperation. Of course, lots of other guys were drinking hard then, too, and didn’t go on to let it ruin their lives.”

Nudger sat staring out the window beyond Danny, at the pigeons strutting along a stained ledge of the building across the street. He really didn’t like pigeons — messy birds. “Are any other old shipmates in your AA chapter?” he asked.

“Nope,” Danny said. “But there’s a lot more of them around town, I told you we were mostly recruited together here and formed a kind of unit throughout training and part of our service.”

“Kind of odd,” Nudger said, “two old Kelso crewmen being murdered within a week of each other.”

Danny’s furrowed forehead lowered in a frown. “You figure it could be part of a pattern, Nudge?”

“Can you think of any reason there might be a pattern?”

Danny sat silently for a moment, then shook his head. “No, there was nothing between Akron and Perry except that they served on the Kelso and were alcoholics.”

“You know anybody else fits that description, Danny?”

“No, not really.” Danny’s somber brown eyes suddenly widened. Fear gleamed in them briefly like a signal light: a call for help. “Jeez, Nudge, you don’t think somebody might try snuffing me, do you?”

“I wish I could tell you, Danny. I guess I’d better try to find out more about what’s going on.”

Danny looked embarrassed. “I can’t pay you for this right away, Nudge, but I will eventually. And you’ve got free doughnuts forever.”

Nudger tried to mask the distress on his face, but he was sure Danny caught it. The man was sensitive about his doughnuts. Nudger would have to make amends.

“And coffee?” he said, bargaining hard.

Danny smiled. “Coffee, too, Nudge.”

It was laborious but sure, the process of getting a list of the Kelso’s crew members in 1965. Naval Records even supplied a list of the crew’s hometown addresses. Thorough, was the military. We should all learn.

Fifteen of the Kelso’s crew had been from St. Louis. Nudger sat down with his crew list and the phone directory and matched five names besides Danny’s, Akron’s, and Perry’s. He began phoning, setting up appointments. When told that the subject of their conversation would be the Kelso, the four crew members he was able to contact eagerly agreed to talk with Nudger.

The first Kelso crewman Nudger met with was Edward Waite, who took time out from his job as some sort of technician at a chemical plant to sit in a corner of the employees’ lounge with Nudger over coffee. The place was empty except for them; a long, narrow room with plastic chairs, Formica tables, and a bank of vending machines displaying questionable food.

Waite was a large, muscular man with a florid face, powerful and immaculately manicured hands, and a clown like fringe of reddish unruly hair around his ears, grown long as if to compensate for his bald pate. He squinted at Nudger with his small blue eyes, as if he needed glasses, and said, “Sure, I was below deck when the Kelso took the torpedo. The concussion rolled me out of my bunk. I heard valves exploding, steam hissing, shipmates yelling. None of us near the bow were in any real danger, though; the torpedo hit amidships. But I can tell you I wanted to see the sky worse than anything when I managed to stand up. I could smell the sea and hear water rushing and figured we might be going down.”

“You lost two crewmen,” Nudger said.

Waite nodded, gazing down at the Styrofoam coffee cup that was barely visible steaming in his huge hand. “Yeah, a signalman name of Hopper, and Captain Stevenson. They were on the bridge when the Kelso got hit; damage was heavy there. Artie Akron tried to pull the captain out of the flames, but he was already dead. That’s how Akron got wounded, going onto the burning part of the bridge after the captain. Won himself a Navy Cross, and now he got himself drunk and killed in a bad part of town. Hard to figure.”

“It is that,” Nudger agreed. “Did Akron do much drinking on board the Kelso?”

Waite thought about that, looking beyond Nudger at the sandwich machine. “No more than any of us, as far as I can remember.”

“Who did Akron pal around with who might know more about him?”

“Nobody in particular on the Kelso, but when we were laid up in Honolulu he did a lot of bumming around with Mack Perry. A lot of serious drinking, come to think of it. I guess they both got too far into the bottle there. Maybe that’s what led to their alcohol problem. Odd, though, them both getting rolled and killed within a week of each other.”

“How come Akron and Perry all of a sudden became buddies on shore, but hadn’t been on board ship?” Nudger asked.

Waite shrugged. “Hell, who knows? Maybe they were bunked next to each other in the hospital there. Perry was on the bridge, too, when the Kelso and that torpedo met. He picked up some shrapnel and got burned some. It makes sense that he and Artie Akron were in the hospital bum unit together.”

“Makes sense,” Nudger agreed. “Did anyone else from St. Louis get wounded in the torpedo attack?”

“Jack Mays, Danny Evers, Milt Wile, maybe a few others. None of them got badly hurt, though. Just enough to earn some medals and some hospital leave. I got injured myself, in the stampede to get up on deck after the ship got hit. All hell erupts when a little ship like a destroyer takes a hit, Nudger. For a few minutes there’s terror and panic. It’s nothing like in the movies.”

“Not much is,” Nudger said. He checked his list. Milt Wile had died in an auto accident four years ago. Running his forefinger down the list, Nudger said, “Jack Mays is one of the ten crewmen who moved away from St. Louis.”

“Yeah. I saw him at our five- and ten-year reunions, but he wasn’t at the fifteen-year get-together.” Waite sipped his coffee. “He’s in prison somewhere, I heard, mixed up in narcotics trafficking.”

“Do you know the whereabouts of the other crew members who moved from the city?”

“Most of them. I talked to them at the last reunion, five years ago. We decided not to have a twenty-year reunion, though. You know how it is, other interests, lives gone in different directions. Only eight of us showed up at the fifteen-year reunion.”

Waite told Nudger about the other crew members. Two more of them had died within the past five years. Now Artie Akron and Mack Perry were dead. Nudger could see that Waite was depressed just talking about it. Time did that to people who went to reunions. Another Kelso crewman, Ralph Angenero, had done seven years for extortion before being released from the state prison in Jefferson City two years ago. Other than Mays and Angenero, the crewmen had, as far as Waite knew, stayed on the sunny side of the law.

Nudger spent the rest of that day and part of the next talking to the Kelso crew members still in the city. They all more or less substantiated what Waite had said. The series of interviews hadn’t given Nudger anything to work with; no new insights, no new direction. He was still at sea.

From time to time in that situation, Police Lieutenant Jack Hammersmith had tossed Nudger a life preserver. Though it would be difficult to discern from their conversation, the two men had a deep respect and affection for each other that went back over ten years to when they shared a two-man patrol car. Nudger had saved Hammersmith’s life; Hammersmith never forgot or considered the scales even. His sense of obligation hadn’t flagged even after Nudger’s nervous stomach had caused him to quit the force and go private.

Nudger sat now in one of the torturous straight-backed oak chairs in front of Hammersmith’s desk at the Third District. He watched with trepidation as Hammersmith’s smooth, pudgy hand fondled the greenish cigar in his shirt pocket then absently withdrew. Close. Smoke from Hammersmith’s cigars had the capacity to kill insects and small animals. Even secondhand, it was more than mildly toxic to humans.

“Who are these people?” Hammersmith asked, studying the list of names that Nudger had handed him. “Is this the infield of the Minnesota Twins?”

“They’re former crewmen of a destroyer in the Vietnam War,” Nudger said. “As were Artie Akron and Mack Perry. All presently St. Louisans.”

“Those last two names strike a chord. Murder victims, right? A couple of alkies who got themselves rolled and killed.”

“Making any progress on those cases?” Nudger asked, with an edge of sarcasm.

Hammersmith’s pale blue eyes glared at Nudger from his smooth, flesh-padded features. He sure had put on weight during the past ten years. “You know there actually are no cases, Nudge. It’s not unusual to find alkies rolled and dead in this city or any big city. It’s virtually impossible to find a suspect. Maybe some bum or small-timer we pick up on another charge will confess to one of the killings, but probably not. The risk of dying comes with the territory for alcoholics. It’s an American tradition.”

“These two men were members of the same Alcoholics Anonymous chapter,” Nudger said. “They hadn’t consumed any alcohol for months, maybe years, before they were found dead.”

“Maybe. Anyway, that’s when an alkie really goes on a big bender, Nudge, coming off a long dry spell.” He shook the paper in his hand. “What do you want me to do with this list?”

“Check with Records and see if you have anything on the names.”

“That’s what I thought you wanted,” Hammersmith said. “Unauthorized use of police files.” He drew the cigar from his pocket, methodically unwrapped it, and lit it. Greenish smoke billowed. Nudger’s remaining time in the office was very limited. Hammersmith intended it to be that way. He was a busy man; crimefighting was a demanding profession.

After Hammersmith had phoned Records and given them his request, he leaned his corpulent self back in his padded desk chair and puffed on the cigar with a rhythmic wheezing sound, fouling the room with a greenish haze. Nudger was going to earn this information.

“You’re going to kill yourself with those poisonous things,” Nudger said, to fill the silence in the hazy office.

“You’ll probably get to me first,” Hammersmith said. “You and your pestiness.”

Nudger was sure there was no such word as pestiness, but he thought it best not to correct Hammersmith’s diction. Anyway, the message was clear. He sat quietly until a young clerk who knew better than to mention the smoke in the office came in and laid some computer print-out paper on Hammersmith’s desk.

“Not very interesting,” Hammersmith said around his cigar, even before the pale clerk had gone. He removed the cigar and placed it in an ashtray, carefully propping it at an angle so it wouldn’t go out. “Nobody here has anything on this sheet more serious than a traffic violation. Well, here’s a five-year-old assault charge against one Edward Waite. Disturbance at a tavern. Other than that, not a black hat in the bunch. Your two deceased drunks, however, had a string of alcohol-related offenses until about six years ago. They’ve been clean since then. I checked last week, Nudge. Your police department does care when a corpus delicti is noticed at the curb.”

“Reassuring,” Nudger said, standing up from the uncomfortable chair. The smoke was thicker nearer the ceiling; he stifled a cough. “Thanks for your help, Jack.” He moved toward the door and fresh air.

Hammersmith’s voice stopped him. “Keep me tapped in on this one, Nudge. If there’s a chance to collar whoever killed either of those alkies, I want to know.”

“You’ll be the first I’ll tell,” Nudger promised.

Hammersmith smiled and exhaled a greenish thundercloud. “You feel okay? You look a little sickly.”

“Oh, that’s probably because my lungs are collapsing,” Nudger said, opening the door and pointing his nose toward the sweet, breathable air of the booking area.

“So who invited you here?” Hammersmith said behind him.

Nudger didn’t recall inviting anyone to drop by at four A.M. at his apartment on Sutton, but there seemed to be someone in the hall, pounding on his door with a sledgehammer. He sat up in bed, rubbing his eyes, trying to convince himself this was a dream and he wouldn’t have to cope and could go back to sleep.

The pounding continued. Even the walls were shaking.

“Nudge?...”

Nudger recognized the voice filtering in through the locked door. Danny.

“Hey, Nudge!”

Nudger’s stomach came belatedly awake and gave him a swift mulelike kick that helped to propel him out of bed. Soon the neighbors would be on the phone, in the hall, shouting, threatening to call the landlord or the police, meaning it all. The muscle-bound drug-head down the hall in 4-C might get violent; he’d almost killed a meter reader last month.

“Damn!” Nudger stubbed his toe on the nightstand. He managed to switch on the reading lamp, which provided enough light for him to find his way out of the bedroom and into the living room. Switching on another lamp, he made it to the door and unlocked it.

It was like opening the door to a distillery. Danny was slouched against the wall in the hall. He staggered back with a dumb grin on his long face, almost losing his balance, and stared at Nudger. “You ain’t got nothin’ on, Nudge. You’re naked.”

Which was true, Nudger suddenly realized, coming one hundred percent awake just in time to see the door across the hall open and old Mrs. Hobson peer out above her gold-rimmed spectacles. The Hobson door quickly closed, then opened again a fraction of an inch.

“Shut up down there or let me join the party!” a deep voice yelled from the landing upstairs.

Nudger quickly grabbed Danny and yanked him inside, then shut and relocked the door. He went back into the bedroom and put on a robe and the leather slippers his true love Claudia Bettencourt had given him on an expensive whim, then he returned to the living room. Danny was now slumped in Nudger’s favorite armchair, his head lolling. He had vomited on the chair and on the carpet. He looked as pale and sick as Nudger had ever seen him.

“What happened, Danny?” But Nudger knew what had happened.

“Smallish drink,” Danny said, his voice slurred.

“How many?” Nudger asked.

“Thousands.”

“Stay there,” Nudger said. He went into the kitchen and got Mr. Coffee going. When he came back, he saw that Danny had passed out.

“The hell with this,” Nudger said. He would let Danny sleep. He got some wet towels, cleaned up Danny, cleaned the armchair and the carpet. Then he wrestled the limp Danny until he’d removed his shirt and shoes and dumped him onto the sofa.

“Doughnuts,” Danny said, snuggling in.

“What?”

“Remember when you caught that old guy in my shop and chased him, thought he had a bag of the day’s receipts. But all he had was doughnuts. He was hungry, was all. Two dozen glazed doughnuts. His name was Masterson, gray guy about ninety years old. Bum with a hole in his shoe with newspaper sticking out of it. Hell, we let him have the doughnuts. What did I care; I was drunk at the time. That’s when I was drinkin’ heavy, Nudge.”

Nudger thought back. “That’s been over seven years ago, Danny.”

“Eight at least,” Danny said, his voice still thick.

“How come you remembered that?” Nudger asked.

Danny ignored him. “He’d have got sick if he’d eaten all them doughnuts,” he said. He would never have said that if he’d been sober. Fiercely proud of his weighty cuisine, was Danny. Soft snoring began to drift up from the sofa.

Nudger poured himself a cup of coffee and let Danny sleep.

He sat at the kitchen table, sipping coffee and thinking, until almost dawn. Then he went back to bed and tried to sleep for a while, but that didn’t work. At eight in the morning, he felt almost as bad as Danny looked.

Danny probably felt even worse than he looked. He sat on the edge of the sofa, holding his head with both hands as if it were fragile crystal. “Fell off the wagon,” he said sheepishly, when he’d managed to free his tongue from the roof of his mouth.

“Why?” Nudger asked.

Danny shrugged, wincing. “Got to thinking about Akron and Perry. It ain’t right, how they stayed dry so long and then wound up booze-soaked and dead. It ain’t fair.”

“Life isn’t renowned for its evenhandedness.”

“Don’t I know it, Nudge.” Danny brought off a smile. Brave man, risking having his cheeks shatter. “You know it, too, what with people pounding on your door in the middle of the night.”

“What made you think of the old bum with the doughnuts?” Nudger asked.

Danny looked bewildered. “Huh? What old bum?”

“Take a shower,” Nudger said. “I’ll get us some breakfast.”

“Nothing to eat for me, Nudge,” Danny said, making it to his feet. “Just black coffee and a gallon of orange juice.” He stumbled bleary-eyed into the bathroom. Nudger listened to the tap water run as Danny drank glass after glass of water from the washbasin faucet before climbing into the shower.

Over his third glass of orange juice, Danny said, “I ain’t been that far gone in over six years, Nudge, except for when Uncle Benj died and didn’t leave me any money. He got to be a mean old bastard, a dry drunk who wouldn’t drink or admit his problem. They’re the worst kind of alcoholic.”

Maybe, Nudger thought, but Uncle Benj’s liver might have disagreed.

After breakfast, Danny looked, and seemed to feel, reasonably human. While Nudger listened, he phoned someone named Ernie, an AA buddy and confidant who promised to meet him that morning. Then, assuring Nudger that he was all right and would stay sober, he left to open the doughnut shop.

Nudger picked up the phone and made a ten o’clock appointment with Dr. Abe Addleman, a reformed alcoholic and the head physician at the Pickering Alcoholic Rehabilitation Center, who knew more about alcoholism firsthand and textbook than anyone else in the city.

Mays was still in town, registered under his own name at the Mayfair, a classy old downtown hotel with acres of carpeting and wood paneling. Hammersmith’s check of major hotels had located him within an hour. The age of the computer. Nudger elevatored to the hotel’s fifth floor, chomping antacid tablets as he rose. In the hall, he adjusted his clothing and buttoned his sport coat.

He knocked on Mays’s door, heard movement inside the room, and within a few seconds the door opened. Jack Mays, older and heavier than the grinning, towheaded sailor Danny had pointed out in the Kelso crew photograph, stood staring blankly at Nudger.

“I was expecting Room Service.”

“Sorry,” Nudger said. “I’m a friend of a friend of Artie Akron and Mack Perry. Can I come in so we can talk?”

“Talk about what?”

“Old times. I’ll talk, and you interrupt me if I’m wrong about something. Though I suspect I’ve got everything pretty well figured out.”

Wariness glimmered for a moment in Mays’s flat gray eyes. Desperation crossed his face like a shadow, and he ran a hand through his thinning blond hair. He had his white shirtsleeves rolled up; when he raised an arm to lean on the doorjamb, Nudger glimpsed a faded blue anchor tattoo high on his forearm. “This a shakedown?” he asked.

Nudger didn’t answer. Mays stepped back to let him in, then closed the door and walked to the window. He stared down at the traffic on St. Charles, studiously not looking at Nudger. Nudger could almost hear the gears in Mays’s mind whirring.

“You got out of Raiford Prison in Florida last month,” Nudger said, “after serving seven years on a narcotics charge.”

Mays snorted. “Those aren’t old times.”

“But they pertain to old times on the Kelso. You peddled drugs and bootleg liquor on board ship back then, didn’t you?”

“Sure. No big deal. Half the guys in Nam used one thing or another. It was a bad war.”

“Especially for you, Mays. The Kelso’s captain found out about your drug-dealing and was going to have you court-martialed. There was a confrontation on the bridge, when the two of you were alone for a few minutes. That’s when the North Vietnamese attack occurred and the ship was hit. You used the opportunity to kill the captain so he couldn’t make good on his court-martial threat. When Artie Akron and Danny Evers got to their feet after the explosion, they saw the captain still standing. After the bridge had burned, his body was found in the debris.”

“They were mistaken about Captain Stevenson,” Mays said, looking at Nudger now. “They were disoriented. He was killed in the explosion on the bridge. Akron knew they’d been wrong about seeing the captain on his feet; five minutes after they thought they saw him, Akron was trying to pull him from the flames — got a medal for it even though he couldn’t reach Stevenson. It didn’t matter, though, because Captain Stevenson was already dead. He was killed almost instantly when the torpedo hit.”

“That’s what they thought all these years. But that’s not what you admitted to them in Honolulu, when the three of you were drunk.”

Mays smiled a mean smile. “You got to Danny Evers.”

“Sure. Danny and I are old friends. I did what you planned to do, what you were hanging around town waiting for the opportunity to do when enough time had passed after Mack Perry’s death. I got Danny drunk this afternoon. Only I did it with his permission, and in the presence of a doctor. And a stenographer.”

Mays took a step toward Nudger, then stood still, poised. Dangerous. Sweat beaded on his upper lip. His eyes were the color of a flat gray-green sea where sharks swam. Nudger’s stomach turned over, but he talked on despite his fear.

“You, Akron, and Danny were falling-down-drunk in Honolulu when you admitted having killed the captain and told how you did it. Then you tried to make amends for your slip of the tongue and your booze-affected judgment by saying you were only joking. But you all knew it hadn’t been a joke. The next morning, Akron and Danny didn’t remember any of the conversation, or didn’t seem to. And you weren’t about to bring it up. But you watched them, and whenever there was a Kelso St. Louis crew reunion, you showed up and reassured yourself that they still didn’t recall the drunken conversation in Hawaii so many years ago. When you got out of prison, you came here for the twentieth reunion, found out there wasn’t going to be one, and also discovered that Akron, Danny, and Mack Perry were attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. You didn’t know they’d become problem drinkers, but you knew what I confirmed this afternoon: When something happens to someone while very drunk, he tends to forget it when sober, but he might just remember it when he’s drunk again, even years later. Some doctors even say that’s the reason alcoholics drink, to try, usually futilely, to get in touch with the part of their lives they can only recall when extremely drunk; it’s as if a piece of their past is missing. You were afraid Akron or Danny would fall off the wagon, get blind drunk, and happen to remember the Honolulu conversation and mention it to the wrong party. But why did you kill Mack Perry?”

“He was going to AA meetings with Artie Akron and Danny. When alkies get into the bottle they sometimes spill their guts to a fellow AA member, especially if he’s an old friend and shipmate. If they’d just been social drinkers, I could have let them live. Perry always had a drinking problem, but how do you figure the other two, Danny and Akron, becoming alcoholics?”

“Maybe you gave them their reason to drink,” Nudger said. “One that was buried in their subconscious minds.”

“Freud stuff,” Mays said, grinning. He shrugged. “They couldn’t prove anything, not after all those years.”

“Sure they could. You told them you shot the Kelso’s captain with a pistol you stole from ordnance. If his body was exhumed, even now the bullet might be there in the coffin with him.”

“Might,” Mays said. “The bullet might have passed through him when I shot him. Or even fallen out of his body; he was burned almost to a cinder.”

“It’s a big might,” Nudger told him. “Too big not to act on if a murder charge is at stake. You could take a chance on your old shipmates not remembering, until you found out they were problem drinkers, alcoholics. Enough deep drunks, if any of them started drinking again, and the secret might unexpectedly pop out of the past. The only sure way to prevent that from happening was to kill them. But first you got them drunk, to make sure they were capable of falling off the wagon and might repeat what was said in Honolulu, to somehow justify the murders as well as to provide a cover for the deaths. You knew the police wouldn’t make a connection or look too closely into the street murders of a few middle-aged drunks, killed and rolled for their wallets. The thing about your old shipmates that frightened you, their alcoholism, was what provided a safe means of getting rid of them.”

A gradual change came over Mays, a darkening of his complexion and a hardening of his broad features. It was as if something in a far, shadowed corner of his mind had been flushed out of hiding. “I could live knowing they might have a few too many now and then,” he said. “It was unlikely they’d remember what I said all those years ago. But to a gut-deep, genuine alcoholic, time means nothing. Anything might surface. Twenty years ago is like twenty minutes ago. You’re right. I couldn’t take the chance anymore that they might talk.” He moved around so he was between Nudger and the door. “And I can’t take the chance that you might talk, no matter how much you shake me down for.” He scooped up a heavy glass ashtray and sprang at Nudger.

Nudger yelled in surprise, tried to back away, and lost his footing. It was a good thing; as he fell backward onto the carpet, he felt a swish of air and glimpsed the bulky ashtray arc past his head. Mays lost his grip on the ashtray at the end of his swing. It went skipping across the room and broke against the far wall. Snarling, he lunged at Nudger just as Nudger had gotten up on one knee.

They went down together, rolling on the floor and seeking handholds on each other. Nudger shoved the palm of his hand against Mays’s perspiring face; it slipped off, and he had the brief satisfaction of feeling his elbow crack into Mays’s cheekbone. He tried to grasp Mays’s hair, but there wasn’t enough of it to grip, and Nudger’s hand shot away with a few blond strands between the fingers of his clenched fist. Mays had one hand against Nudger’s chest, pressing him to the floor. His other hand found Nudger’s eyes and tried to gouge them out. Nudger twisted his neck, turning his face to the carpet. He could smell something garlicky Mays had had for lunch. He could hear Mays’s labored, rasping breathing. Or was that his own rasping struggle for air? Two middle-aged guys out of shape and fighting for their lives.

Then Mays was sitting up, one hand beneath Nudger’s shirt. There was amazement and rage in his contorted features. “You bastard! You’re wired! Everything we said’s been recorded!”

With strength exploding from this fresh infusion of rage, he lunged again at Nudger, trying for a chokehold. This time Nudger managed to bend his knee and place a foot against Mays’s soft midsection. He shoved hard and Mays grunted and lurched backward into a crouch, slamming into the wall and hitting his head hard. He glared at Nudger and felt around on the floor for one of the jagged pieces of the broken ashtray.

“Lose a contact lens?” Hammersmith asked. His bulk suddenly loomed over Mays. Two blue uniforms flanked him, behind Police Special revolvers aimed steady and ready at Mays.

“Did you get enough of that on tape?” Nudger asked, peeling adhesive strips and transmitter from his bare chest, wincing with pain.

“Every incriminating word,” Hammersmith said. He began reading Mays his rights as two more uniforms came in and jerked Mays to his feet, frisked him, and handcuffed his wrists behind his back.

“I didn’t have any choice about what I did,” Mays was saying, looking at Nudger now as if pleading for understanding and pity. “They knew about me, even if they didn’t realize it. The knowledge was out there, floating around like something rotten in their memories. It could have washed ashore on alcohol anytime, with any unexpected change in the current. I couldn’t live knowing that, so the three of them had to die.”

“Two out of three isn’t bad,” Hammersmith told him. “It might win you the gas chamber.”