“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.