The Good Old Stuff (16 page)

“Not that either. I want to talk about that crash boat business in Ceylon, where the skipper was drowned.”

He looked up at me, and he was angry. “I’ve given testimony on that thing till I’m blue in the face. I’m sick of it.”

I waited a few seconds, then I said, “Look, Dosani. I’m not official. The guy was a friend of mine. My best friend. I just want to know what happened. Just what is a crash boat?”

He relaxed. “Oh, sure. If that’s the way it is. A crash boat is a job with nearly a P. T. hull. Crew of thirteen. Two aircraft
motors. Uses hundred octane. Not much armament. Couple of Browning fifties, maybe a forty millimeter, and sometimes an eighty-millimeter mortar mounted on the stern. Used to dash in and pick wounded guys off the shore. Pretty fast job. Uses an army crew. Quartermaster.”

“What did you do?”

“Down there nursing those damn motors. Seasick every minute we were out.”

“What happened that night?”

“I don’t know much about it. This Captain Christoff comes aboard about ten o’clock with these two people, a guy and a babe. We knew it wasn’t right, but he was in charge of the boat. Quinn, the warrant, tried to argue with him, I heard, but no soap. We bust up a poker game and take her out. We went straight out of Colombo harbor, and then he opened her up. Quinn was handling her. I hear the three of them, Christoff and two passengers, went out on the bow. About ten miles out, Quinn turned her around and for a few seconds we were parallel to the ground swell. Just at that minute, according to the passengers, Christoff tried to get back to the bridge. You have to walk along a narrow spot near the low rail. He went over, and by the time the passengers got Quinn’s attention, he was too far past the spot to find Christoff. We circled for a half hour or so. They say that Christoff was potted, and that he probably sank like a rock.”

“Hear anything else from the other guys? Anything that struck you as funny?”

He rubbed the side of his face, leaving a streak of grease. Then he shook his head. “Not a thing. He just stepped out of line and got caught. He seemed like a good joe, a teek hai sahib. It was just a technicality that they put him in charge of
Betsy
for a few days until the regular replacement showed up. He wasn’t supposed to take her out, because he didn’t know anything about her. But I guess he got tight and that skinny British bitch went to work on him. Joy ride.”

“What happened to the first skipper you had?”

“Silly damn thing. Went swimming outside of Trincomalee Harbor. He and another guy were fishing with plastic explosive. Fenner swam out just as the other guy tossed one in with a
short fuse. He wasn’t watching Fenner. The concussion under water collapsed his lungs. We didn’t cry none when he got it. He was one of those guys with a rule book in each hand and a frosty look in his eye. Thought he was an admiral.”

Nothing else of consequence was said. I noticed that he was impatient to get back to work. I thanked him and shook hands with him and left. I crossed his name off the list.

Stenwitz was sitting on his front porch in a T-shirt and khaki pants as I went up the walk. I’d gotten his description from the clerk at the corner grocery. He was a fat boy with white freckled arms and a puffy face. He scowled at me.

“You’re Stenwitz, aren’t you?”

“Yah.”

“I’m Howard Garry, and I want to ask you a couple of questions about that time in Colombo when Captain Christoff was drowned.”

“What’s your angle?”

“I was a friend of Christoff’s.”

“Sure. You were a friend of Christoff’s.” He got up and walked to the railing. He spat down into the shrubbery. Then he turned toward the front door. “Write me a letter,” he said. “I’m busy.”

I took a quick step and caught him by the shoulder and spun him back just as he got inside the door. I grabbed his wrist and yanked hard. He came back out onto the porch and swung at me. I ducked it. He tried again, grunting as he swung. He missed again. He stood, breathing hard, his round head lowered, his eyes small in their puffs of flesh.

“Shove off, bud. I’ll call the cops. This is private property.”

I didn’t move and he tried again, a roundhouse blow. I stepped inside of it and let it wind around the back of my neck. I sunk my right hand deep into his stomach. He doubled over, his face greenish. I lugged him to the chair and sat him in it. I sat on the railing and lit a cigarette. I waited while he got his breath back. He made strangled sounds in his throat which finally died away.

“Now, Stenwitz, we’ll have a nice little talk. Okay?”

“I don’t tell you a thing.”

“You act like you must have been the guy who shoved Christoff overboard.”

“You’re nuts. The drunken jerk fell off.”

“Then why are you so nasty about it?”

“I just don’t like guys with questions. That’s all. Now get off the porch.”

“Not for a while. You talk nice or I’ll drop another one into your stomach. I got nothing to lose, Stenwitz. Where were you when it happened?”

He looked at me sullenly. I slid off the rail and stood up. “Port, stern. Coiling line,” he said quickly.

“Could you see Christoff and the two passengers up in the bow?”

“No. Couldn’t see a thing. Not a damn thing. Too dark. Bridge in the way.”

“When did you know Christoff was gone?”

“When Quinn brought her around and started whamming the bell.”

“Where were the passengers then?”

“I don’t know.”

There was nothing he could add. There was nothing else I could think to ask. I tried some pointless questions and he gave sullen direct answers. At last I left. As I climbed into my car at the curb, I looked back toward the porch. He was still in the chair, and he was smiling. I couldn’t read the smile.

Two days later I walked into a bar in Rochester, New York, and picked a spot at the end where I could lean my shoulder against the plaster wall.

I ordered a brandy and water, and when the thin pale bartender set it in front of me I said, “You’re Stan Benjamin, aren’t you? Cook on the
Betsy
when you were in Ceylon?”

The distant look faded, and he gave me a slow grin that turned him into a human being. “Yeah. But I don’t know you. Were you there?”

“No, but my best friend was. Captain Christoff.”

“Sure. I remember him. He was only with the boat a few days. Tough break for the guy. Did you look me up here?”

“If you can do it and still take care of the customers, I’d like to hear what happened.”

“It’s slow this time a day. I was sitting in on a poker game when your friend came aboard tight with a couple of guests, a thin British doll that he called Conny and a big red-faced guy named O’Dell. They come aboard by coming across the decks of some British boats that we were moored to. Quinn and Christoff had some kind of an argument that I didn’t hear, and then Quinn came down the ladder and told the guys to get to their stations, that we were taking a run. He was sore as hell.

“There wasn’t anything for me to do at first, and then Christoff and the two guests sat in the main cabin and they opened the door over the booth into the galley. Christoff slid a bottle of John Hague in and told me to fix up some drinks. That was against the rules too, but I got my orders so I did it. I took a little nip myself and fixed up three tall ones, using plain water. When I set them through the little door I could see that the babe and O’Dell were on one side of the booth and the captain was on the other side. He acted tight.”

“What did they talk about?”

“I couldn’t hear so good. They were talking about some club they’d just come from. Christoff had trouble talking straight. The other two didn’t seem so bad. They seemed a little tense about being out in
Betsy
. As soon as we got outside the harbor, the grounds well rocked us around. I made another round, and then the gal said that she’d like to go topside and get a look at the moon on the ocean. Only by that time there were clouds over it. They went on up.”

“Anything else?”

“You probably heard the rest. How we circled around for more than a half hour with the woman having hysterics. Couldn’t find the guy. When I went back down, I saw the big guy with the red face draining the last of the bottle. I stopped and looked at him. He set it down, empty, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and glared at me. I went back into the galley. Then we went in, and there were investigations that lasted for weeks. I understand Quinn was in for promotion, and that little tea party sort of screwed him out of it.”

He bought me my third brandy on the house and then I had the last one and bought him one. He ducked below the bar to polish it off. I liked the little guy. I made him take another one and he acted pretty jolly.

Then I said, “What’d you think of Stenwitz?”

“A moody jerk if there ever was one. Nobody liked him. He was the only guy on the weather deck when it happened. He didn’t see a thing. Used to get sore as hell when we asked him why not. Strange guy. Didn’t have a friend in the army. Not a one.”

While I was eating dinner at the hotel I checked Benjamin’s name off the list. Nothing yet. There didn’t seem to be much point in going on. Only three covered out of the seven left in the country. Four to go: Baker, Ruggerio, Janson, and Quinn.

Two weeks later I stopped in a gas station just outside of Seattle. Only one left: Quinn. Wilmert L. Quinn.

I paid for the gas and kept the gas pedal down near the floor until I got into town at four o’clock. I went to the address I had been given and found that the Quinns had moved. The woman didn’t know where they had moved to, but she thought that they were still in town. I stopped in a drugstore and tried the phone book. Then I called information and found that he had a new phone that had not been listed yet. She gave me the address. It was ten minutes to five when I pulled up in front of a new house on the edge of town. Standard stuff. White with a high peak to the roof. Green shutters and a tall red-brick chimney with a big Q in wrought iron fastened to it.

I rang the bell. A girl opened the door. She looked about eighteen. Average height, hair dyed the color of summer flax, wearing a cheap print dress that was too tight for her. Her mouth was moist and her eyes had the flat, automatic joy of a woman who steps out of a doorway at night on a dim street.

She giggled before I could open my mouth. “Whatever you got to sell, brother, maybe I could buy some.”

“I’m not selling today. I want to see Mr. Quinn. You his wife?”

“Yeah. I’m a brand-new wife, practically a bride. Come on in.” She stood aside, and as I stepped past her she swung her
body so that I had to brush against her. I smelled the raw liquor on her breath.

The living room was small and perfectly square. The furniture was bright and ugly, the colors too raw, the lines without grace. I stood in the doorway and she minced past me, swinging her hips. She sat down on a green couch and patted the cushion beside her. “He ain’t here yet. Tell me about it.”

I crossed the room and sat in a gray chair with crimson buttons on the cushions. She gave me a mock pout and said, “Unfriendly, huh? I won’t eat you, mister.”

“When does he get home? Maybe I ought to go and then come back.”

“Don’t rush off. He’ll be along in maybe a half hour. Want a drink?”

I nodded and she flounced out. She paused at the door and said, “Come and help me.” I got up and followed her out to a cluttered kitchen. There was a tray of melting ice cubes on the enameled top of the table, along with a half bottle of cheap rye and four or five small bottles of ginger ale.

She jumped up onto the sink shelf and swung her legs. “Make your own, mister.”

I stepped over to the table and mixed a light rye. I opened one of the bottles of ginger ale. It was warm. It foamed up over the top of the bottle. I stepped over to the sink and let it run down my hand. She slid over so that her knees were against my side. I looked up at her in protest just as she launched herself at me, both arms tight around my neck, her loose mouth clamped on mine.

I dropped the bottle into the sink and tried to pry her hands loose. She giggled through the kiss. She didn’t smell clean. I got hold of her wrists and pulled her arms loose. She slid down to the floor and twisted her wrists away from me. She swung and slapped me so hard on the ear that my head buzzed. She stepped back and said, “Just who the hell do you think you are? What makes you think you can come in here and paw me?”

A tired voice behind me said, “Shut up, Janice. I saw more of that than you thought I saw.”

I turned around. A middle-sized man with a tight, disciplined
face stepped by me. He slapped her with the hard heel of his open hand. She slammed back into the door to the back hall. A trickle of blood ran down her chin.

“You got no right to hit me, Will,” she gasped.

“All the right there is, baby. That’s the last time I touch you. Pack your stuff and get out of here.”

She opened her mouth to object. He stood and looked at her. She dashed by him and ran out of the kitchen. I heard the quick stomp of her heels as she went to the stairs.

He turned to me. I could see that he was about thirty, even though he looked nearer forty. “I’m sorry, friend. Always thought she was like that, but never had the proof before. A little tough on you, though. What’d you come here for, anyway?”

“This is a hell of a time to bother you with it, Quinn, but I wanted to get your story on the Captain Christoff drowning. He was my friend.”

He looked hard at me, and I returned the stare with as much candor as I could manage. “Sure you aren’t a slick customer trying to open it up again? I don’t want to do any more testifying. That business knocked me out of a promotion I could have used.”

“I understand it did. Sorry. But suppose I come back tomorrow when you aren’t all upset?”

“Never mind that. I’m okay. Who else have you talked to about this?”

I told him whom I had seen. He led me into the living room. I could hear a low wailing noise coming from upstairs. He seemed to ignore it.

“Then I should tell you what the others wouldn’t have had a chance to know, I suppose. Let’s see now. Best place to start is where he came aboard. I was sitting with my legs hanging over the side smoking a pipe. The harbor was quiet. I could hear a hot poker game belowdecks. There were footsteps behind me, and Captain Christoff walked up. I jumped up. I could see two people behind him.