Trouble at the Brownstone

Chapter 30

I was reading the just-delivered Gazette when Wolfe, fresh from the plant rooms, strode into the office. I looked up at him and smiled.

“So, you have done it,” he said as he sat at his desk.

“Yep, what do you think? Do I look professional?”

“You look... different.”

“Well, that’s the idea, isn’t it?” I said, swiveling to face him. “Between the glasses and the shorter hair, I hope to seem like a different person with, of course, a different name.” I tossed one of my new business cards onto his desk.

He looked at it with a frown. “5 Boroughs Magazine. Who conceived that title?”

“I did, who else? A great name for a new local publication, don’t you think?”

His response was to begin going through the mail I had stacked on his blotter.

After lunch, undaunted by Wolfe’s lukewarm reaction to my transformation, and my new “employer,” I left the brownstone with a reporter’s notebook I had cadged from Lon Cohen years ago. My destination: The North River.

The National Export Lines dock was quiet when I stepped onto it. One ship, with a Swedish name and blue-and-yellow flags, was moored, but nothing seemed to be going on.

“Can I help you, mate?” a bearded longshoreman asked.

“I am looking for Mr. Douglas Halliwell,” I told him.

“In his office, halfway toward the river,” he said, pointing in a westerly direction.

The small office, which looked a lot like Charlie King’s over at the Cabot & Sons pier, was cluttered with stacks of papers. At a small desk amid the clutter, a muscled man with a crew cut was hunched over, writing in what appeared to be a logbook or a ledger. “Mr. Halliwell?” I asked.

“Yeah, whaddya want?” he said, looking up at me through bloodshot eyes.

“My name is Stuart Moore, and I’m a writer for a brand-new local publication, 5 Boroughs Magazine,” I told him, placing my card, complete with the periodical’s artistic logo designed by me and Larry Berg, in front of him. “For our very first issue, we are doing profiles of some of the people who make this great city work. Your name was one of the first suggested to us, and of course New York’s role as a great port must be represented in our article.”

“Who suggested me?’

“Someone from the Port Authority, I forget his name. But he told us that you run one of the biggest and best operations along the North River.”

“That so?” Halliwell said, his unshaven face creased with a smile. “Well, I’ve been at it for a long time, and I guess you could say that I know my way around this river and this harbor.”

“Do you mind if I take a few minutes of your valuable time?”

“Uh, okay... sure. What can I tell you for your story?” Halliwell’s mood had quickly gone from sour to downright amiable. I could see that what had been told about his having a big ego worked in my favor.

“First off, because this is a profile, our readers will be anxious to know how you got into this business in the first place.”

Halliwell, who did not ask me to sit down, leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head, as if deep in thought. “When I was eighteen and had just graduated from high school in Queens, I needed to get a job. My father, who was a welder, happened to know a guy who worked on the docks over in Brooklyn, his name was Morrissey. He managed to use his influence, to get me on a crew. So I guess you could say that I landed my first full-time job through connections, but — are you writing all this down? — I soon showed that I was very capable, and before long, I was doing more heavy labor than most of the veteran hands on the dock.”

“Very impressive,” I said, making a show of scribbling in my notebook. “You must have worked during the Depression.”

“Oh, I did, and that’s when I moved up through the ranks, you might say. I eventually left Brooklyn and came over here, to this very dock. At the time, Mr. Chambers, who is still the principal owner and general manager of National Export, wanted to cut back and spend more time in Florida. He increasingly gave me added responsibilities, and now he pretty much lets me run this operation.”

“That is quite a success story,” I said. More scribbling.

“Well, Sam — Mr. Chambers, that is — knows that he can trust me,” Halliwell said, clearing his throat.

“What happened when we went to war?”

“I enlisted, of course. Who wouldn’t?” he said, sitting up straighter and squaring his shoulders. “You look to be the right age. I assume you served.”

“Yes, for three years. Did you see action?”

“I was with the army in Germany and have the medals to prove it,” he said, trying without success to sound casual. “It was frustrating, I’ll tell you. We didn’t get to Berlin in time to keep the Russkies out, and now look at the mess we’ve got: The lousy Commies elbowed their way in. If only we had supported those tough Krauts longer instead of destroying their army, then they could have held the damned Reds at bay at least long enough for us to block their entry into Berlin. Eastern Europe wouldn’t be in such a mess and Berlin wouldn’t have gotten carved up like it is. And also, we wouldn’t have had to use that damned airlift.

“It was obvious to us over there at the time that the Germans weren’t our real enemies, it was Stalin and that Moscow bunch,” Halliwell went on. “I’m sure in whatever your role was, you were aware of that too.”

I made no comment, saying, “I gather that when the war was over, you got your old job back here at National Export.”

“Sam Chambers held the fort while I was in uniform, and, boy, was he glad to see me come back. The biggest smile I’ve ever seen was when he turned things back over to me and made a beeline for Palm Beach.”

“So, he continues to be happy with the way you run this pier?”

“That’s what he tells me every time we talk on the phone. Revenues are up, and the crew here are doing their job.”

“It sounds like you work well with your men.”

“Mr., what is it... Moore?” Halliwell said, looking at my business card, “I have always tried to run this operation in an organized way. And since returning from military service, I’ve become more conscious than ever of the importance of a strict chain of command.”

“Were you an officer?”

“No, but I had plenty of authority as a Sergeant First Class, and if the fighting had gone on much longer, I was in line to become a First Sergeant. What about you, Mr. Moore?”

“Because of the nature of my assignment, I’m afraid even now that I am not allowed to discuss my rank or where I served.”

Halliwell nodded. “Understood. Intelligence work, eh?”

It was my turn to nod. “I’m sure that your crew members here respect you.”

“They do, I can guarantee that.”

“I assume most of the ships you load and unload are from foreign ports, right?”

“Yes. Of course, New York has one of the great harbors in the world, but I guess I don’t have to tell you that. It’s part of the reason your magazine is doing this story.”

“Do you have any interesting experiences to relate about the type of merchandise you receive from overseas?”

Halliwell scratched his head. “I can’t think of any funny stories, if that’s what you mean. Right now, we’re sending more things to Europe than we’re getting from them, because they’re still in the long process of rebuilding.”

“What about smuggling? Do you run into much of that?”

He jerked upright in his chair. “Smuggling — no!” He seemed shocked that I would even raise the topic.

“I just wondered, because over the years there have been stories of artwork and watches and gold and other valuable items finding there way here, especially from Europe.”

“Well, we haven’t had any — yeah, what is it?” Halliwell swiveled as one of his longshoremen knocked on the glass of his door and opened it a crack. “I need to see you, Chief,” he said.

“I’ll be right back,” Halliwell said, getting up, going outside, and closing the door behind him. He and the dockworker walked several paces away from the office, and I could hear the muffled sound of loud words, most of them delivered by the boss. He came back in, running a hand over his forehead. He had no long hair to smooth. “Sorry, there’s been a little disagreement, and I’ll have to settle it, but that can wait. Do you have any more questions for me?”

“I don’t think so. We’d like to get a photograph, of course. Can I send someone here to take a shot of you on the pier?”

“Tell you what,” Halliwell said, “I just happen to have picture that I’m sure would work. I’d really rather not have someone come here with a camera. I think it looks bad for the men to see their superior being photographed like some sort of a big shot.” He went to a filing cabinet and pulled out a black-and-white glossy of him on the dock, hands in his pockets, squinting up at a freighter and wearing a thoughtful expression. “Will this do?”

“I’ll show this to my editor and see what he thinks,” I said as I left the office. “The pier doesn’t seem busy right now.”

“Yeah, this happens sometimes. We’re supposed to be getting a ship in later today from Rotterdam. As you know, that port was heavily bombed during the war, and only in the last year or so is it getting back to where it was before 1939.”

“It has taken all of Europe a long time to recover, and they are not there yet.” I observed.

“And the Commies sure aren’t helping much,” Halliwell said. “Make sure I get a copy of your magazine when it comes out.”

I told him I would and walked off the pier, happy I had encountered so few longshoremen. Although if I had run into any who had seen me in McCready’s, I doubt they would have recognized me in my bespectacled get-up.