The Darkest Hour

4

At seven o’clock Retnick left his room and walked to a restaurant on the avenue for breakfast. The day was cold and beautiful; clean winter sunlight sparkled on the snow in the gutters and brightened the faces of the old brownstones. When he returned Mrs. Cara was waiting for him in the hall.

“There’s a telephone call for you,” she said. “The woman says she’s your wife.”

Retnick hesitated and Mrs. Cara watched his dark hard face with frank curiosity. “Okay,” he said at last.

“And how was the cat?” Mrs. Cara said, catching his arm. “No trouble, eh?”

“No, not a bit.”

“See? I told you,” she smiled.

Retnick said, “That’s right,” and walked down the hall to the telephone.

“Hello,” he said.

“Steve — I saw the story on Frank,” she said quietly. “I’m terribly sorry. I know what you meant to each other.”

“Sure,” he said. Then: “Where did you get this number?”

“From Lieutenant Neville. Steve, I want to go out to see Mrs. Ragoni this afternoon.” She hesitated, then said tentatively, “Would you come with me?”

“I’m going to be busy,” he said.

“Please, Steve, I want to talk to you. Last night was so terribly wrong.”

“What do you want to talk about?” he said.

“Steve, Steve,” she cried softly, and he knew that she was weeping. “Don’t throw everything away. Won’t you let me see you this morning?”

He hesitated, frowning at the phone. “Okay,” he said at last. “I’ll stop by Tim Moran’s saloon around ten. Can you make that?”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

Retnick put the phone down, irritated with himself. He didn’t want to see her, not for any reason.

Twenty minutes later Retnick walked into a sturdy, red-brick station house on the West Side of the city. Nothing important had been changed, he noticed, as he stopped at the high wooden information desk. A new painting of the flag hung above the switchboard where a sergeant worked in contact with the district’s squads and patrolmen. But everything else looked the same.

“Is Lieutenant Neville in?” he asked the lieutenant behind the desk.

“He’s upstairs in the Detective division. Take the stairs at the end of the hall.”

Sergeant Kleyburg was sitting alone in the long file room, frowning at a bulky report on his desk. When Retnick stopped at the counter that divided the office, Kleyburg glanced up and removed the horn-rimmed glasses from his broad, impassive face. Then he said, “I’ll be damned,” in a hoarse, surprised voice. He crossed the room, grinning, and pushed open the gate at the end of the counter. “Come in, boy,” he said.

They shook hands and Retnick glanced around at the familiar dusty furniture, the height chart, the bank of gray steel filing cabinets, the bulletin board with its cluster of yellowing flyers.

“It hasn’t changed much,” he said, looking at Kleyburg.

“You haven’t either,” Kleyburg said, punching him lightly on the arm. “You look great.”

“I feel great,” Retnick said.

Kleyburg nodded slowly, his eyes grave and hard. “I can imagine, Steve. You took a lousy rap.”

“You should have been on the jury,” Retnick said. “Is the lieutenant busy?”

“Hell, no. You want to see him alone?”

“It doesn’t matter. But one thing first. Do you have a detective here named Connors?”

“He’s on my shift.”

“Does he work for anyone else?”

Kleyburg shrugged. “I couldn’t prove it. That answer your question?”

“Yeah,” Retnick said. “He’s real smart, eh?”

Kleyburg shrugged again. “We get smart ones occasionally. You know that. They don’t last long. Let’s go see the boss.”

Lieutenant Neville, a slim man with an air of competence about him, looked up from his desk when they opened the door of the office. “Well, well,” he said, standing and grinning at Retnick. “You should have given us a little warning. We could have had drinks and dancing girls. How the devil are you, Steve?”

“Fair enough,” Retnick said.

“I suppose you don’t have any plans yet,” Neville said.

“Oh, yes,” Retnick said, staring at him. “I’m going to find out about Ragoni.”

A small silence settled in the room. Kleyburg shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and Neville ran a hand slowly over his thinning brown hair. “That was rough,” he said. “I know you were friends.” He picked up a report from his desk, frowned at it for a second, and then offered it to Retnick. “That’s all we have so far,” he said.

Retnick skimmed through the detective’s report, picking out the important information quickly. Body of deceased had been observed by a barge captain, floating just under the surface of the river at Eighty-seventh Street. Identification had been made by wife of the deceased. Cause of death was listed as knife wounds.

“That’s all you’ve got, eh?” Retnick said, dropping the report on Neville’s desk.

“We just found his body last night.”

“You haven’t questioned Nick Amato, of course,” Retnick said gently.

“Why the ‘of course’? We’ll pick him up if there’s a reason to, Steve.”

“He’s moving in on Glencannon’s local,” Retnick said. “Ragoni was warned to stop lobbying against Amato and his hoodlums. Now Ragoni’s dead. I’d say this is a good time to pick up Nick Amato.”

“You don’t pick up Nick Amato with a case like that,” Neville said. “Now listen to me, Steve. I’m a cop, not a tea-leaf reader. And I’ve got to talk to you like a cop. You get in trouble with Amato and I won’t be able to help you out of it. Do you understand?”

“I’m not asking for help,” Retnick said.

Neville’s face was troubled. He came around the desk and put a hand on Retnick’s arm. “Don’t be so touchy,” he said. “Off the record, I’ll do what I can. And I think that goes for Kleyburg here and lots of other cops. But officially you’re an ex-cop and an ex-con. Those are two strikes against you, Steve. Keep that in mind.”

Retnick smiled coldly. “There’s not much chance of forgetting it. Take it easy, Lieutenant.”

“Now don’t barge off this way,” Neville said, tightening his grip on Retnick’s arm. “Calm down and listen to me. Will you do that?”

“I’ll listen,” Retnick said.

Neville sat on the edge of his desk and took out his pipe. “You’re thirty-three now, right?”

“That’s right.”

“You’ve got a long life ahead of you. Don’t throw it away, Steve.”

“A long life,” Retnick said. “And what do I do with that nice long life?”

“You can start over, Steve.”

“The big bright dream,” Retnick said, staring at him with a bitter smile on his lips. “Work hard, make good. I did that once, remember? I worked my way through school, and earned eight major letters while I was doing it. I took the police exams when I was twenty-two, and was a third-grade detective eighteen months later. Working hard, making good. I’ve had enough of it. Let somebody else work hard and make good. I’ve got other plans.”

Neville was silent a moment, staring at his unlighted pipe. Then he said: “Do those plans include your wife?”

“No,” Retnick said. “They concern the guy who killed Joe Ventra.”

“Steve, you’re heading for trouble.”

Retnick started to say something, but changed his mind. He made a short, chopping gesture with his hand, and said, “Why waste each other’s time? Take it easy, Lieutenant.”

Kleyburg followed him down the stairs and caught up with him on the sidewalk. He blinked into the bright sunlight and said, “Steve, if you need anything, just yell. Remember that. Anything.”

Retnick said, “Is Ben McCabe still the super over at the North Star Lines?”

“Yes. Why?”

“That’s where Ragoni worked,” Retnick said. “It’s the last place he was seen alive. It’s a good place to ask a question or two.”

Kleyburg’s eyes were worried. “Watch yourself, boy.”

The North Star Lines terminal boomed with noise and commotion; two ships were loading that morning, and winches, trucks and men were straining against the inflexible pressure of time and tides. Retnick stopped before the checker’s office and here, at the mouth of the cavernous warehouse, the noise beat against him in waves.

A guard in a leather jacket stepped out of the office and looked at Retnick with close, sharp eyes.

“Is Ben McCabe around?” Retnick said.

“Yeah, but they got two ships working. He’s pretty busy. What’d you want to see him about?”

“Tell him Steve Retnick is looking for him.”

“Will that be enough?”

“Let’s try it,” Retnick said.

The guard shrugged and said, “You wait here.” He walked onto the pier and turned out of sight around a wall of cargo. In a minute or so he reappeared and said, “It’s okay, Retnick. You know the way?”

“I can find him,” Retnick said. The terminal was cold and drafty; above the whine of winches and rumble of trucks the wind sang through the superstructure of the ships, and swept refuse in frantic eddies along the thick planking of the floor. The air smelled of coffee and oil and the river. Retnick turned into an aisle formed by crates of cargo and went up a flight of steps to McCabe’s office, which overlooked the length of the pier. McCabe’s chief clerk, a thin, balding man with a shy smile said, “Well, Steve, it’s nice to see you again.”

His name was Sam Enright, Retnick remembered. They shook hands and Enright said, “Go right on in. The boss is expecting you.”

“Thanks, Sam.”

McCabe stood up when Retnick entered his office, a short, stockily built man in his fifties, with thick, gray hair and a bold, good-humored face. “I didn’t expect to see you for a couple of months,” he said, as they shook hands. “I thought you’d go off on a long fishing trip or something. You look fine though, like you’d been fishing instead—” He smiled apologetically and didn’t finish the sentence.

“Well, I was up the river anyway,” Retnick said.

McCabe smiled. “Sit down. What’s on your mind?”

“I want to find out about Ragoni.”

McCabe said slowly, “You know he’s dead, I guess.”

“I heard about it last night. That’s why I’m here.”

McCabe wasn’t smiling now; his manner was cautious. “You probably know as much as I do, Steve. Ragoni was last seen in the hold of the Santa Domingo, nine days ago around midnight. He went on deck and didn’t come back. The crew thought he’d gone home.” He hesitated and shrugged. “The next day we learned that he hadn’t gone home. Last night we learned that he’d been murdered. It’s a police matter from now on.”

“How about the accident a couple of weeks ago?” Retnick said, casually. “Was someone trying to get Ragoni then?”

McCabe’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Who told about an accident?”

“I spent my first afternoon out of jail at Ragoni’s home,” Retnick said. “His wife told me about the accident.”

“Well, there was an accident, as you obviously know,” McCabe said. “We investigated it thoroughly. It was a mix-up in orders. The winchman lowered a draft while Ragoni was on the loading platform. Fortunately, he saw it coming and got clear.”

“Did you notify the police?”

“That isn’t customary, as you know.” McCabe’s manner was cold and sharp. There were spots of color in his cheeks.

“You know Amato’s moving onto your pier, don’t you?” Retnick said.

McCabe stood up abruptly and said, “That’s a matter I won’t discuss.”

“Which means the answer is yes,” Retnick said.

“Neither yes or no,” McCabe said, coming around his desk. “We’re shippers. We’re not philosophers of labor, and we aren’t police officers. We work with what the unions give us. I wish the public understood that. Union squabbles aren’t our concern.”

“Sure,” Retnick said coldly. “And because of that Ragoni is dead.”

“I don’t like the implication,” McCabe said angrily.

“I don’t like it either,” Retnick said. “It stinks, if you ask me. Ragoni was fighting as an individual to keep Amato’s killers from taking over the place he worked. They warned him to keep quiet, but he wouldn’t. So they tried for him with a few tons of cargo, and then they stuck a knife in his back. And the same thing will happen to any man who doesn’t want to take orders from Amato’s stooges.”

McCabe turned away and ran a hand through his hair. “All right, all right,” he said bitterly. “If Amato wins the election he’s in. He supplies our terminal. And what in hell can we do about it?”

“You could close down the pier and ship out of Boston or Philly,” Retnick said. “You could post a notice that you wouldn’t come back to the city until Amato’s killers were out of the union. How would that sit with your stockholders?”

“You guess,” McCabe said.

“Well, I didn’t come here to tell you your business,” Retnick said. “I need a favor.”

“What’s that?”

“I want to talk to Ragoni’s crew.”

“Why?”

Retnick shrugged. “I was a good friend of his.”

McCabe hesitated, staring with worried eyes at the river that flowed sluggishly past his windows. “Put it that way, and it’s all right. But this can’t be official, Steve. You understand my position, I think.”

“Sure. Can I see them now?”

“Come with me. Ragoni’s gang is on the Executive”

Retnick followed McCabe downstairs to the pier. Ahead of them the terminal jutted out a hundred yards into the river, a peninsula of noise and light and movement. The Executive was loading to their right, its long graceful hull curving high above the docks.

Retnick and McCabe walked down an aisle flanked by small mountains of cargo, and boarded her amidships. The wind hit them with buffeting force as they stepped from a companionway to the ship’s unsheltered aft deck. At the moment cargo was being stacked in the hold, and the winchman and deck gang were idle; they stood about the open hatch with their hands in their pockets and shoulders hunched against the weather. A big man in a leather windbreaker walked over to them and tugged the brim of his cap.

“Everything’s on schedule, Mr. McCabe,” he said.

“Fine. Brophy, this is Steve Retnick.”

Brophy tilted his big square head to one side and studied Retnick with narrow eyes. “I think we met,” he said. “Didn’t you used to be at the Thirty-First?”

“That’s right.”

“What can I do for you?” Brophy said. Several men drifted over and fanned out in a semicircle behind him, their eyes flicking curiously from Brophy to Retnick.

“I was a good friend of Frank Ragoni and his family,” Retnick said. “His wife is in pretty bad shape right now, as you can imagine.”

“Sure.” Brophy nodded, and several of the men behind him murmured appropriately.

“I talked to her this morning,” Retnick said. “The only thing on her mind was an accident Frank had had on the job a few weeks ago. The doctor told me that this kind of thing is common in shock cases. She was trying to think about anything except the fact that Frank was dead. To calm her down, I told her I’d come over and talk to Mr. McCabe about it. He was good enough to let me see you boys.”

His words made an impression on the men. They all looked solemn and thoughtful. Brophy said, “I can tell you about the accident, Retnick. But it wasn’t an accident, I guess you know. It was a near-miss. I was in the hold next to Ragoni when it happened. There was some dunnage on the loading platform and Ragoni said something about it. I guess he asked if he should pick it up. Well, I’d already given the signal to lower away, so I said never mind.” Brophy took a deep breath that filled his body out like a circus fat man’s. “But he didn’t hear me, I guess. Or he misunderstood. He scrambled onto the platform just as the winch let the draft go. It missed Ragoni by an inch or two. That’s the story, Retnick, all of it.”

Retnick nodded. “I know how those things happen. By the way, who was on the winch?”

“An extra man, fellow name of Evans. Grady here had been out sick for a week or so.”

“I had the flu,” a red-faced little man in the group said importantly. “Couldn’t get out of bed for two weeks.”

Retnick looked at him. “Did you know this fellow Evans?”

The question seemed to put Grady on the defensive. He looked from side to side as if expecting an attack from either direction. “No, I didn’t know him. He was a new man.”

“Did you know him, Brophy?”

“Me?” Brophy looked surprised. “No, Steinkamp, our hiring boss, picked him out of the shape when Grady called in sick. Evans knew his stuff, that’s all I cared about.”

Retnick didn’t ask any more questions. He sensed that the mention of Evans had changed the mood of the men.

“Thanks a lot,” he said to Brophy. “I won’t take up any more of your time.”

They walked back to the terminal office through the noise that crashed between the iron hulls of the two big liners. McCabe sat on the edge of his desk and looked at Retnick.

“That’s as much as I can do for you,” he said. “You heard the story. It’s straight.”

“Yes, I think it is,” Retnick said. He shrugged and smiled. “Thanks a lot, Mac.”

“Anytime, Steve.”

Retnick nodded good-by to him and left his office. Sam Enright glanced up from his desk in the outer room and said, “Well, the boss looks pretty good, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes, he does,” Retnick said.

“I suppose it’s too early to ask about your plans.”

“I’m going to loaf a while.” Retnick sat on the edge of Enright’s desk and lit a cigarette. “By the way, what kind of fellow was Evans?”

Enright ran both hands over his bald head, and then frowned as if he were both surprised and a little hurt to find that his hair was gone. “Well, Evans wasn’t here more than eight or ten days. He was a big guy, a redhead. They called him Red. Quite a hot-tempered character, I heard. Why?”

“I think I knew a friend of his in jail. Do you have an address for Evans?”

“Just a minute.” Enright went to a filing cabinet and took out a card. “We have the dope on him because of that accident. Normally these extra men just float in and out. Got a pencil? He had a room on Tenth Avenue. 201, Tenth. Got it?”

“Yes, thanks. When did he leave here?”

“About a week ago, I think.”

Right after Ragoni disappeared, Retnick thought. “Well, it may not be the same guy,” he said casually.

“From what I heard of Red Evans you’re lucky if it isn’t,” Enright said.

Retnick smiled, but his eyes were cold and deadly. “We’ll see,” he said.

Outside Retnick crossed the avenue and waited for a cab. Traffic was heavy now; trucks rattled by him in steady streams, rushing the city’s supplies to terminals, docks, freight yards. The sun had gone under a bank of low black clouds, and the day was stark and cold. Retnick’s hunter’s senses told him he had struck a hot trail; it was hardly coincidence that Evans and Ragoni had disappeared at the same time. This was a lead the police might not come across. There was no report of the near accident and the longshoremen, even Ragoni’s friends, wouldn’t be likely to mention it. The penalties for talking were too high.

Evans’ attempt to kill Ragoni a week before would be smothered in silence. And the facts would change mysteriously; the file on him might disappear from Enright’s office, and men would remember him as dark-haired and small, if they remembered him at all.

Retnick flagged a cab and gave the driver Evans’ Tenth Avenue address. It was a run-down rooming house crowded in between a small factory and a dead storage garage for automobiles. He talked with Evans’ erstwhile landlady, a plump middle-aged woman with an orderly enthusiasm for detail. Evans had been with her for a month to the day, and had checked out a week ago. He was a man who kept mostly to himself; she saw him only when he stopped by to pay his weekly rent. But he kept his room neat, which wasn’t surprising since he seldom slept there. She didn’t know where he slept.

“Is he in some kind of trouble?” she asked him at last.

Retnick smiled. “Just the opposite. We’ve got some money for him on a damage claim he filed last year.”

“Oh. Well, I wish I could help you.”

“Did he send his laundry out in the neighborhood?”

“Yes, I believe he took it around to the Chinaman’s. That’s in the middle of the next block.”

“Thanks a lot,” Retnick said. “If I catch up with him I’ll tell him to send you a box of candy.”

She smiled cynically. “That’ll be the day.”

Retnick walked down to the Chinese laundry, playing a hunch; Evans hadn’t used his room at night, which suggested a girlfriend. And in that case he might have had his laundry sent to her place. The laundry man was small and young, with smooth blank eyes. Two children played behind the counter, and a woman in a shapeless dress and slippers was ironing shirts on a table against the wall. The room was warm and smelled cleanly of soap and fresh linen.

The young man remembered Evans. Yes. He had work shirts and dress shirts, lots of them. He dropped them off himself, usually in the morning, and his oldest boy delivered them. No, not down the block, but over on the East Side.

Retnick’s fingers were trembling slightly as he wrote down the address and apartment number.

“You a cop?” the young man asked him then.

Retnick smiled at him, letting him believe what he wanted, and the young man sighed and nodded. “Good job,” he said.

Retnick thanked him and left. It was almost ten o’clock, the time he’d agreed to meet his wife at Tim Moran’s. He hesitated on the cold, slushy sidewalk, staring at the address he had got from the laundryman. That would keep for a bit. The session with his wife wouldn’t take long.