IT WAS DAMP OUT. DARK AND MUDDY ON THE road. A spring rainstorm had been through during the day and not much had dried off when I left for Brown’s Cove that evening. I pedaled slowly. The wind was blowing into my face, which led me to thoughts of Jeddy and his cap that would never stay on. Seeing Marina that afternoon had made me homesick for him, if you can be homesick for a person. We hadn’t said two words in as many weeks and had taken to walking to school by different routes so as not to run into each other.
I was ready for a change.
It wasn’t Jeddy’s fault his dad was who he was. When I thought about it, I could even admire how Jeddy was sticking to his guns, backing up his father in a difficult time. I knew I’d do the same for my father if it came to that.
I made up my mind to speak to Jeddy as soon as I could. We’d work it out. He’d agree not to ask me what was going on along the beaches. I’d agree not to let anything slip that he’d have to report as “police business.” We’d been friends for so long, it didn’t seem as if it’d be that hard.
Brown’s Cove was a good three miles out of town. Before long, I knew I wasn’t the only one headed there. Five or six vehicles rushed by me in the dark, driving without headlights. One of them was Mr. Riley’s fancy red Lincoln. I knew it well. He parked out front of the store whenever he came down from Boston. I’d replaced the bulb in my bicycle lamp and had the beam cocked way up to spot out potholes ahead. I think Mr. Riley recognized me as he went by because an arm came out and waved just before the Lincoln disappeared into the dark. I liked that, being recognized by Mr. Riley. He was giving me a lot more scope than my own father, trusting me to do a big-time job.
I’d never been on the beach at Brown’s, though I’d passed it going upriver on the Fall River boat a couple of times. It was a natural cove sheltered by a dip in the coast, a good place for a hidden landing. When I rode up, about twenty men were already there and a bunch of skiffs were pulled up on the beach, oars set and ready. The place was lit up bright as day with oil lanterns planted on the beach and car headlights shining across the sand. When I looked across the water, I was astonished to see a freighter looming like a gigantic cliff just outside the blaze of lights. It was in the process of dropping anchor. I soon found out that she was the Lucy M., a Canadian vessel that usually moored outside the twelve-mile U.S. territorial limit off the coast to avoid arrest.
The way the Prohibition law was written, the Coast Guard couldn’t touch an outside rig, since it was in international waters. So ships from Canada and the West Indies, Europe and Great Britain would lie off there, sell their liquor cargos and unload them onto rum-running speedboats like the Black Duck to carry into shore. Sometimes as many as ten or fifteen ocean-going vessels would be moored at sea, waiting to make contact with the right runner. “Rum Row,” these groups of ships were called. You couldn’t see them from land, but you knew they were out there lying in wait over the horizon. It gave you an eerie feeling, as if some pirate ship from the last century was ghosting around our coast.
I couldn’t believe the Lucy M.’s captain would be so bold as to bring her into Brown’s, where any Coast Guard cutter in the area could breeze up and put the pinch on her. Nobody at Brown’s seemed worried about it, though, and unloading operations soon commenced.
The skiffs on shore rowed out and took on burlap bags, which was how the liquor was cased this time, then rowed in and were unloaded by the shore gang. I was assigned to a gang of eight men that handed the bags up the beach to waiting vehicles. It was a smoothly run operation, two gangs working at once, and a bunch of skiffs rowing out and back so that just as one skiff was unloaded and took off for more cargo, another would land, stuffed to the gunnels. We worked our tails off for an hour, took a short break, then started again. The men on my gang were all good fellows, some of whom I knew from town. They weren’t used to having someone as young as me on the job, and I took a lot of kidding, but I didn’t care. I was happy to be there, making my twenty bucks.
Along about midnight, someone came running onto the beach, shouting: “Feds! Feds!” Right behind him came a car. It slammed on the brakes and men in dark suits jumped out with pistols. They were Prohibition agents. After them, two state patrol cars drove in, and a bunch of uniformed police officers ran onto the beach, some of whom were carrying guns, too.
It all happened so fast that I stood there, frozen to the ground. Tino, a guy I’d been working with, grabbed my arm.
“Hey, kid, hoof it!”
I took off after him. We dove behind a sand dune, then split up and crawled off into the beach grass. After about five minutes, I heard footsteps come up close to where I was lying flat out in the grass. I held my breath and the feet went away over a nearby dune. I never knew if it was the police, the Feds, or one of the shore crew scouting for a buddy. I was too scared to look.
Later, loud voices sounded from down on the beach. I crawled to the top of my dune and took a peek to see what was happening. The car lights were still blazing, and I saw Mr. Riley in a circle of police officers. Charlie Pope was there, and so was Jeddy’s dad in his leather vest with his badge shining out. Mr. Riley was mad as a wet hen. His face was bright red and he was yelling.
“I bought protection!” he shouted. “I paid you for it. What’re you doing here, messing up my landing?”
Chief McKenzie said something I couldn’t hear that made Mr. Riley even more furious.
“Who’re you working for? The big boys?” he shouted. “What’d they pay you to do this? It’s my drop. I paid for it!”
Meanwhile, two men in suits who must have been Federal agents came up. They took hold of Mr. Riley on either side and snapped handcuffs on him. He tried to shake the guys off, but didn’t get anywhere. They started walking him to a car. He kept glancing over his shoulder at the Lucy M. out in the cove. She was pulling up anchor.
“Where’re you taking my cargo?” Mr. Riley yelled. He kept on yelling until they put him in the car. The last I saw of him was his fancy shoes, the ones he never liked to get wet, disappearing as they closed the car door on him.
The police had rounded up a few other members of the shore gang, handcuffed them and put them in cars. But after the Feds left with Mr. Riley, Chief McKenzie gave an order to let everyone out of the patrol cars. He and Charlie undid all the handcuffs and let everyone go.
It was beyond me what had happened. The chief drove off, followed by a caravan of vehicles, leaving the beach in darkness except for one oil lamp somebody had forgotten. Out in the cove, the Lucy M. was under way, heading off into Narragansett Bay. She was heavy in the water, still carrying a lot of cargo. We’d only unloaded her about halfway. I couldn’t figure out where the Coast Guard was, and why no one was coming to stop her. She went out onto the bay and steamed down the coast, lights full on, as if she were the most law-abiding ship in the world.
I lay quiet for a few more minutes, then got up and found my bike in the dark. I was about to take off for the long ride home when Tino strolled up.
“Hey there, kid. I’ve got a vehicle in a field at the top of the lane. If you want to walk up with me, I’ll give you a lift home.”
“Can you take my bicycle?” I asked.
“Sure can.” He was a nice guy, a dockworker who’d come all the way over from New Bedford to do this job. I’d heard him talking to the other shore workers earlier. We set off, me wheeling my bike.
“Some night, right? That’s how it goes sometimes,” he said.
“Does this mean we don’t get paid?” I asked.
“Afraid so.”
I shook my head. “I don’t get it. The Federal agents arrested Mr. Riley, but then the police let everybody else go?”
“Sure they did. That was part of the deal.” Tino gave a laugh. He was an old hand at rum-running, and knew the game.
“What deal?” I asked.
“The deal to put this guy Riley out of business, I guess. The way I see it, Riley thought he’d paid the Feds and the cops enough to look the other way for this landing. But somebody got to them and paid ’em a little more to take an interest.”
“How’d you figure that?”
“Just from what I heard on the beach. Riley was yelling his head off at that cop.”
I looked at Tino. The cop he was talking about was Chief McKenzie. I couldn’t see him taking a payoff to double-cross Mr. Riley. They knew each other from town.
“The police must’ve gotten a tip about this landing tonight,” I said. “That’s why they were here. I guess they let the crew off because they were local guys.”
Tino laughed merrily at this. “The police got a tip, all right, just not from who you might think. Riley’s an independent operator in this area. It’s no secret he’s made a bundle running his own show. My bet is, somebody bigger wants to take him over.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Y’don’t want to ask that,” Tino said. “Y’don’t want to know. But if I was to make a guess, I’d say it’s an outfit up in Boston. Big boys, like Riley was yelling. I hear they’re on the move.”
“You mean a gang?” I asked. “Like the Mafia?”
Tino gave me a look. “You didn’t hear it from me.”
“What’ll happen to Mr. Riley?”
“He’ll pay a fine and maybe sit in jail a couple of months. Nothing much. He’s lucky. If it’s the Boston guns he’s up against, they’re tough eggs. They could’ve knocked him off like Tony Mordello.”
“You never heard of him? He was working the New Bedford area up where I come from. I bet this guy Riley knew who he was.”
“Well, what happened to him?”
“He was running a big operation in champagne and Canadian whiskey, making money hand over fist. He’d been at it awhile, had fancy cars, a big house, furs for his wife. We were all working for him, doing real good for ourselves. Then the show falls apart. From what I hear, he got a visit from a couple of guys who wanted a piece of the action, and he told them to shove it. I guess he didn’t count on who they were. One night about a month ago, Tony disappeared.”
“Is he dead?”
“Nobody knows and nobody wants to ask. He went to a poker game in his evening suit and never came home. Now his operation is being run by couple of smart guys they call the College Boys, out of Boston. It’s a real syndicate. They’ve got their own muscle.”
I kept quiet after that. It was pretty clear to me who the dead man on Coulter’s Beach must have been.
I told Tino where I lived. When we came to the end of my driveway, he helped me unload my bike.
“Don’t know if I’ll see you again,” he said. “I’ll probably be sticking closer to home now. It’s getting too chancy on these out-of-town jobs.”
I nodded and thanked him for the ride.
“Watch out for yourself, kid,” he said, and drove off into the dark. Looking after him, I realized I’d never even told him my name.
Five minutes later, I was reading my mother’s note and eating her cookies in the kitchen. I thought I’d handled everything fine until I went to pour myself a glass of milk and it splashed all over the table. I looked down at my hand. It was shaking like a branch in a storm.