FOUR

But he was right and I was wrong, and I came to see that the night Calvin Duane and I had trouble with the hijackers. It was Calvin Duane first saw the car following us, Calvin being a scared kind of creature with his eyes always going this way and that, looking out of the windows and then into the mirror to see what was behind, and much like a rabbit with his head stuck up out of its hole wondering if it was all right to go hop somewheres. And smoking one cigarette after another, taking just a puff or two of each and then heaving most of it out of the window as if it wasn’t costing him good money for all he wasted.

Because he was like that I didn’t take too much stock in all his fits and starts and worries, but this time I knew he was right.

“That car’s following us,” he said, never taking his eyes off the mirror. “I don’t like the looks of that car.”

It was a big black Packard sedan with its headlights bright, and it was trailing us a fair distance behind. I speeded up a little and the Packard kept the same distance between us. Then I slowed down some and that was the bad time, because the Packard slowed down, too, never making a move to pass us.

Calvin Duane looked like he was ready to drop dead of fright. “Oh, Jesus,” he said, “there’s going to be trouble. Oh, God almighty, there’s going to be trouble just the way I always knew. Get going, you fool. Get your foot down on that gas and push. Oh, Jesus, I wish my son of a bitch brother was here to see what it was like. I’ll kill him if I ever get out of this alive. I’ll tell him where to head in.”

It was a joke trying to push the truck faster than that Packard, but I done my best. We went through Rockville Centre so fast that I had to fight the wheel making the turn onto the westbound road into New York, but when we were clear of town I saw the headlights behind me right where they were before. Then they started to move up alongside the truck, and when Calvin Duane saw that, he grabbed at my arm.

“It’s no use,” he said. “You pull up and let them take what they want. I got a family home, do you hear? I got a family home. You let them take what they want and don’t you make trouble.”

That was in my mind, too, and that’s what I would have done except that something happened then that there wasn’t any call to happen. The Packard saw me slowing down, but it wasn’t enough for him. He started to cut across me to force me off the road, and then a man leaned out of the back window and pointed a shotgun at me. Pointed a shotgun right at my head not five foot away, and there wasn’t any call to do that no matter what.

It was that set me off somehow. I didn’t even think what was smart and what wasn’t. I slowed down for one more second so that the Packard was ahead of me, and then I jammed down hard on the gas and slewed into it just behind the hood. It made a crash to wake the dead, but the truck could take it and the Packard couldn’t. It skidded to a dead stop in the middle of the road, and the truck bounced away almost over the shoulder of the road. I got it straightened out and headed right, but not before that gun went off behind me, some of the shot ripping into the canvas over the load of barrels and a couple of them whining by my head like hornets and taking the glass right out of the mirror on the way.

Then we were off down the road full speed, and I saw that all that time Calvin Duane had been grabbing hold of my arm. He didn’t even know that himself, because when I shook him off he looked down at his own hand as if he was surprised to see it there.

“Oh, Jesus,” he said, “we went and got away with it.” Then he started laughing like a fool. “I wish Fred was here to see it,” he said. “We were dead pigeons and we got up and flew away. Oh, flap, flap, we flew away. You know how much is left of that car back there? You know how many trucks ever got through once they got held up like that? Oh, Jesus, that gun looked like a cannon, didn’t it? But bang, bang, and the pigeon flew away. You hear that thing go bang in your ear?”

That was the thing. I heard it and I saw it, and what kept turning around in my mind was the idea that if it was going to be guns and shooting now, it wouldn’t make much difference if it was on land or water. A gun is a gun, and when it goes off at you, the least thing that matters is whether it’s a hijacker shooting it or a Coast Guard man. What it came down to was, if I was getting paid to be shot at, I ought to get paid the kind of money Willie Boy talked about.

I didn’t waste time about it. And that night when I told Willie Boy how I come to see it his way he said, “Now you’re talking like a real Yankee Doodle Dandy. We’ll make a great team, you and me, kid. We’ll take Prohibition and shove it right up Uncle Sam. We’ll shove it into him like an umbrella and open it all the way. What do you think of that?”

I didn’t like such talk against the government, even if it was mostly fooling. I said, “I got nothing against Prohibition one way or the other. And I got nothing against Uncle Sam. Far as I can see, it’s the land of the free and the home of the brave and all I’m trying to do is make a little money for myself. When do we start?”

“As soon as we get a boat fitted out,” said Willie Boy. “And that’s your first job. Want to stay over in town tonight and get on it tomorrow?”

“No, I have to get the truck back and tell my boss. Wouldn’t be right to just walk out on him, the way he treated me so fair and square. And he owes me pretty near a week’s pay, too.”

“All right,” said Willie Boy, “you do that. You tell him you’re going digging the kind of clams you use a corkscrew on instead of a knife. Then get back here on the double, because if you want to make money, kiddo, you’ve got to move fast. It’s a fast little world, pal, and even if you don’t want to make money you’ve got to move fast or get run over. Keep moving, Mike. Keep that throttle wide open, because in a little while they’re going to lay you six foot under for keeps, and then you’ll have all the time you need to take it easy. You follow me? I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow night.”

Fred Duane hated to see me go, but he wasn’t too much surprised about it. He gave me what pay was coming to me and then counted out ten dollars extra. “That’s for bringing the truck through last night,” he said. “You done a good job bringing it through like that. Sure you wouldn’t want to stay on for thirty a week? Might even talk it over with O. P. Smith and get it up to thirty-five. That’s good pay for easy work, ain’t it? A lot better than taking a chance on getting drowned off Fire Island somewhere. You can’t get drowned driving a truck.”

“Maybe not,” I said, “but you can sure get shot at.”

“Well, suppose instead of Calvin along with you, you had one of them Italian fellers from New York with a gun on him to scare off trouble. That’s what it’s coming to now, anyhow, what with them hijacking bastards moving onto the roads around here.”

“No,” I said, “I’m set to run a boat. And it ain’t only the money. I feel kind of easy around boats.”

Fred Duane looked at me, all the while sucking his lips in and out. “I guess you do,” he said. “Where do you figure to unload that boat? You and your friend don’t have any ideas about working out of Tippietown, do you? O. P. Smith wouldn’t take kindly to that, nohow. He’s sort of got the idea the only liquor boat belongs at the dock here is mine.”

“Far as I know, we’ll be working out of New York. I can’t say for sure, but that’s the way it looks.”

“Well, all right,” said Fred Duane. “And that’s smart, too, if them hijacking bastards are going to be thick as bedbugs on the Long Island roads. You work right out of the city, you save yourself a lot of heartburn. But you watch yourself in New York, and I’m talking to you now like your own pa would. You watch yourself in New York because the people there ain’t our kind. It’s all Italians there and Jews and a lot of niggers and a bunch of Pope-kissing Irish that ain’t any better than the niggers. You do business with them, and that’s all. There’s no call to be friendly with them more than that. Remember you’re a white man, and that’s what your pa would tell you if he was here to do it.”

“That’s the truth,” I said, and we shook hands on it.

So after that I worked for Willie Boy, and got paid a hundred a week the way he said I would. But worked hard for every penny of it, because of so many things having to be done. First of all was getting a boat fitted out, and before I could judge what kind of hull to buy I had him show me the motor he was so crazy about. As soon as I got a look at it I could see why he felt that way about it. It was chocked up on a pair of two-by-fours in a garage not far from the fish market, all wrapped up in cloth and tied tight around, and when we got the wrappings off I knew I was looking at the finest motor I ever saw in my life. It was even bigger and better than any Pierce-Arrow or Packard engine I was ever around, and it looked like it had been put together by a watchmaker.

“That’s my baby,” Willie Boy said, and he ran his hand over it the way you’d do to a woman. “What do you think of it?”

“It’s a nice motor,” I said. “It’ll be a hog on gas, but it’s a nice motor. What kind of car did it come out of?”

“Rolls-Royce. It’s got about five thousand miles on it, but when you hear it turn over you’ll swear it came out of the factory yesterday. I’ve got a weakness for Rolls-Royces, kiddo. An inherited kind of weakness. Now do you think we’ve got something that’ll do better than fifteen knots going and ten coming?”

“Maybe so. Depends on the hull.”

“And that’s where you come in. Find us the right one, and when you do I’ll give you the money for it. Then you get it over to the haulway in Voorhees’ yard in Brooklyn and work on it until it’s shipshape. Soon as you’re ready I’ll have baby here delivered to you, and once we’re in the water we’re in business.”

“Where’ll you be while all this is going on?”

“Don’t you worry about that. All you have to know is that I pay for the works, and I skipper the boat, and I make the contacts. But when I’m not around, you don’t know me and never heard of me. Nobody’ll ask you any questions at Voorhees’—not if they want to keep doing their little haulway jobs while the tug and barge business is so slow—and you keep your own lip buttoned all the time. You never heard of any Willie Boy or any Willie or even anybody whose name starts with a W. Got that straight?”

“Sure,” I said. “Don’t make any difference to me. Not as long as I don’t get stuck with money troubles when they want to get paid.”

“You won’t be. Any time they give you a bill you bring it here and I’ll give you the cash to pay them. And don’t ever try any tricks with me, kiddo. You got any idea in your thick head of taking off in that boat when my back is turned—you got the least little notion of a double cross—you better put a bullet in your own belly to start with. Otherwise I’ll sure as hell catch up to you and do it myself.” And he pulled open the pea jacket and stuck his thumbs in his belt on each side of that big gun so that I could see it plain.

“I’m an honest man,” I told him. “That thing can’t make me any more honest than I am.”

“There are no honest men,” Willie Boy said, and he reached out and patted the motor. “There’s only honest machines. All a man has to be is smart enough to know what’s good for him. If you’re that smart we’ll get along fine.”

And we did. He left everything to my judgment, and I made sure to do right by him. And he was never cheap or quarrelsome about money, so that made it easy for me. In the long run it was more like being partners than working for him.

I had luck in finding a boat right away. It was over in Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn, and it was a beat-up-looking sea skiff about thirty foot long and a little narrower in the beam than most. But when I had the man row me out to where she was moored I could tell this was the one for me. For all she looked so beat-up her bottom was bone dry, and as for her being narrower than I had figured on, it meant that much more speed in a pinch.

Once I had her on the haulways at Voorhees I pulled out her old motor and junked it, and went over every inch of the hull until it was better than new. Willie Boy said to paint it black so I did that, and then put the name Ursula on her which is what he wanted her called. She was ready for the motor then, so I had it trucked in from the garage and set it into the weathertight housing I had built into the hull. Knowing she’d be a hog for gas I set in a big auxiliary tank at the bow which would help bear it down when we were going out empty. And for the propeller I took a chance on one that was a little oversized, figuring that the Rolls-Royce engine could handle it and make good use of it.

When I got the boat down the haulways and into the water I had no way of timing it exactly, but when I opened up wide I knew we were doing better than fifteen knots, we must have been doing twenty or more. And it danced along easy as a flirty girl. I went across the bay that way, the bow chopping the ripples, the hull rocking in the cross wind, and the motor telling me it had more to give if I wanted it. She was a dream of a boat. I never saw any before or since that was better, nor anything her size could take calm water or rough better than the Ursula. She was a fit boat for someone like Willie Boy, no question about it.