“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.