Authors: Jonothan Cullinane
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Contemporary Fiction
Furst tapped the card. “O’Phelan was an Irishman, second engineer on a coastal service freighter between San Diego and the Bering Sea,” he said. “He was washed overboard during a storm in the Gulf of Alaska.”
Furst handed Molloy a second seaman’s card. “This feller witnessed the tragic event.”
The photograph on the second ID showed a gaunt and pockmarked man around thirty with thinning fair hair and a bent nose, named — according to the particulars — Hendrik Lech SUBRITSKY.
Furst shook his head. “This guy saw something? Cross-eyed bastard would have been looking the other way his whole sorry life.” Like the first card, Subritsky’s had been stamped DECEASED.
“O’Phelan had a policy with US Life,” said Furst. “On paper everything seemed in order. The claim was met.”
He rested his cigarette on an ashtray. “In March last year we had an approach from an Oakland public defender acting for Subritsky. His client had shot a guy. He was looking at hard time. His girl was in the family way. He wanted to talk about O’Phelan. If he could show us the Irishman had faked his death, would there be something in it for him?
“I went to see him at California Correctional. He told me that O’Phelan had hidden in the hold during the storm and snuck off the ship in Juneau two days later. In return for providing a witness statement, O’Phelan promised Subritsky a percentage of the insurance money. Of course, Subritsky never saw a penny.” Furst shrugged. “And a week after I talked to him, Subritsky was dead.”
Molloy looked up. “O’Phelan?”
“Stabbed to death in the Yard,” said Furst. “The Coloured section. There are rules. This was not a smart guy.” He reached around for his hip flask. “Little more?”
Molloy shook his head. He checked his notebook. “There’s no record of him coming ashore in Juneau?”
“It’s US territory,” said Furst. “You just step off.”
“Who was O’Phelan’s beneficiary?”
Furst produced another item from the stack on the desk. “This peach. His loving wife Valma. De facto wife, I should say.”
He showed Molloy a mugshot, front and side views, a tough-looking woman in her twenties, black roots visible through peroxide, holding a sign with the name Valerie Marie ROSEN, and beneath
that a list of offences including the words “solicitation”, “prostitution”, “theft” and “narcotics”.
“The insurance business has gone to hell,” said Furst, taking back the photograph. “Before the war a broad like this could have no more succeeded in a claim than gone to the moon.” He raised his hands in disgust.
“You think Subritsky was telling the truth about O’Phelan?” said Molloy. “That he faked his disappearance?”
“I do,” said Furst. “Verified by Valma. He skipped out on her too. The scam was Valma’s idea, dreamed up after watching
Double Indemnity.
You seen that damned picture? When it came out every mutt in America started planning.” Furst shook his head at the fecklessness of Hollywood. “We made copies of his picture and sent them out with a request for information and a reward. We got sightings. Honolulu. Mexico. Nothing solid.”
He picked up a folded magazine and passed it to Molloy. “But a month ago an operative in Sydney sent us this.”
It was the Australian weekly magazine,
The Bulletin,
opened to an article about Communist infiltration of the union movement in the South Pacific. Furst offered a magnifying glass to the detective.
“Take a good look,” said Furst. “The one in the circle.”
There was a small photograph accompanying the story. Four men leaving the Trades Hall in Hobson Street in Auckland. The first two were Jock Barnes and Toby Hill; Barnes hatless, suit coat unbuttoned, a striped tie halfway down his front, Hill in a three-piece suit, holding a briefcase in one hand and a pipe in the other. The third was putting on his hat, his face in shadow, but Molloy recognised the curly hair of Dave Griffiths, a watersiders’ delegate. A circle had been drawn around the fourth. He was wearing a white shirt and dark tie, jacket in the crook of his arm, looking past the camera.
Furst put O’Phelan’s Merchant Marine ID next to the
Bulletin
photograph. Molloy bent forward and ran the magnifying glass over the picture, going in on the circled figure, comparing it with the ID. A tough, handsome face, black wavy hair parted off-centre and pushed back, a cowlick sprung loose.
He looked at Furst. “It’s the same bloke,” he said.
“That’s what we think.”
“And you want me to find him?”
“I do,” said Furst. “If it turns out he’s not our man, well, okay. If, on the other hand, it turns out he is, then we would be delighted.”
Molloy stubbed out his cigarette. He pointed at Barnes and Hill.
“Look, Furst,” he said. “Thanks for the offer but I think you’re talking to the wrong bloke. I know these two. There’s a big showdown coming on the waterfront. I don’t want to get tied up in something that’s going to cause them even more trouble.”
“Okay,” said Furst, sitting forward, one hand on his knee. “First thing, it’s Al. Second, Lipscombe said you were a Commie. Doesn’t bother me. My brother is a union big shot in New York. Garment Workers. Bright red. Been to Russia even. Worked in a factory over there showing them how to cut patterns. So what? He’s a good man. I was a cop long enough to know that a feller’s politics don’t tell you an awful lot about him when all’s said and done, not about the things that count. Third, US Life & General doesn’t want the publicity. A case like this? It’s an embarrassment.” He nodded towards the
Bulletin
story. “And maybe, if
this
guy is
our
guy, it’s something your pals would want to know? A grifter in the ranks?”
“Could be,” said Molloy.
Furst stood and stretched. “And fourth? I’ve got to get some sleep.”
“I charge a pound per day, plus expenses,” said Molloy. “Five pound minimum.”
“Company pays a generous closure bonus if a case is cleared,” said Furst.
“Sounds good,” said Molloy.
“When can you start?”
“Now, if you like.”
“Glad to hear it,” said Furst, taking a five-pound note from his wallet.
Molloy picked up the magazine. “Mind if I hang on to this?”
“It’s yours.”
Molloy wrote a number in his notebook, tore out the page, and handed it to Furst. “This is my landlady’s telephone number,” he said. “You can leave a message there if you need to get in touch. I’ll phone you here at the hotel.”
They shook hands.
“Welcome aboard,” said the American.
Molloy caught the Mission Bay tram and got off in Quay Street. The road was lined with trucks along both sides, motors idling, drivers leaning against the mudguards smoking and passing the time. On the wharf, cranes were slinging freight into the holds of ships, wharfies standing on top of bales and pallets, swinging through the air. Men sat or squatted along the red wrought-iron railings in the sun, eating their lunch and drinking tea from Thermos flasks, reading
Truth
or making calculations in the margins of the
Friday Flash.
Hard to believe there was insurrection in the air.
He crossed the road and approached the barrier at the entrance to Queen’s Wharf. Billy Burgess was leaning on a walking stick and counting out loud, using a pencil to point at wool bales stacked high on the tray of a Bedford idling in front of the traffic barrier, while the driver, a hard nut in a black singlet, Armoured Brigade beret pushed back on his head, made whistling noises.
“Whistle as much as ye like,” said Billy. “It’ll take as long as it takes.”
“Och aye, I know,” said the driver, in a Freemans Bay tough’s idea of a Scottish lilt.
“Johnny,” said Billy. “Seven, eight — you here to see me, son? — nine, ten.”
“When you’ve got a minute,” said Molloy.
“Go on inside,” Billy said, tearing a duplicate from his tally book and handing it to the driver. “I won’t be long. Put the kettle on.”
Billy was a Glaswegian in his fifties, short and lean and angular, face like a knucklebone, skin dry and cracked, sharp eyes a watery green. He was a Harbour Board gatekeeper. A tattooed schooner disappeared into a fog of curly grey hair on one wiry forearm, the blurred outline of an anchor was faintly visible on the other. He had come to New Zealand as an engineer on the Union Company coalburner
Kent
in 1920, met a girl, bought himself out, got married. One child, a son named Graeme, a civilian radio operator with Post and Telegraph, seconded to a Coastwatch station in the Gilbert Islands in August 1942, captured two weeks later, and executed, aged twenty, his head lopped off by one of those big curved swords the Japs used, buried up there in the jungle somewhere. His last radio message was, “Japanese coming. Regards to all.”
Billy’s world was a quadrangular one. The Sailors’ Mission where he lived, Queen’s Wharf where he worked, the Grey Lynn Returned Services Club where he drank, and a weekly visit to Symonds Street Cemetery to tidy the ground around his wife’s grave and enjoy a reflective smoke. He spent eight hours a day checking freight manifests and keeping the port traffic moving. If he had a soft spot it was his overweening belief in the Social Credit theories of Major Douglas, which he would promote at the drop of a hat. But he was well liked, and everyone coming on or going off the wharf — seagulls, sailors, shippies, watersiders — had to pass by his station. He knew them all. If anyone would know the bloke in the
Bulletin
picture and be able to keep his trap shut, Billy would. If it
was
O’Phelan, and word got out that someone was asking about him, he could go bush or be halfway across the Tasman before you could say Jack Robinson. And at a quid a day plus expenses it made sense to be cautious.
Billy’s shed was a single man’s hut, low-ceilinged, with a standing desk and a window on sliders cut into the west wall and opening onto the traffic barrier. Molloy turned on the Zip. There was tea in a willow-pattern tin, sugar in a glass jar, and a teapot and two stained cups on a shelf. A half bottle of milk sat in the corner out of the sun. Billy’s brown dust-coat hung on a hook behind the door. There was a calendar and statutory regulations and weight lists on the wall, and a framed print of the HMS
Royal Oak.
Billy had won a DSM at the Battle of Jutland, “wounded by a shell splinter but continued to carry on” in the words of the citation which he kept in a drawer, along with the medal, in his room at the Mission. He had shown it to Molloy once in a sentimental moment after a few restorative whiskies at an Armistice Day breakfast.
Billy came in and shut the door, hanging his hat and his stick on the hook. Immediately, horns started tooting. “Toot away, you bastards,” he said, taking a handkerchief from his pocket and wiping his forehead. He waved at the window. “Wool. Every day’s like this. Trying to get the stuff out while they can. There’s lorries and freight backed up to blasted Timbuktu.”
“Think of all that overtime.”
“Bugger the overtime,” said Billy, taking an egg sandwich from a brown paper bag and offering half to Molloy. “Brave men fought for the eight-hour day and I don’t need the money.”
Molloy passed him a cup. “Could come to a screaming halt pretty soon,” he said.
“For all the good it’ll do them,” said Billy. “I was on Clydeside after the war. The Great War, that is.” He gestured with his sandwich. “You pansies never knew what a real war was. The Glasgow general strike. Soldiers everywhere, mounted policemen, machine guns, talk of Bolsheviks.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Felt like this, if you know what I mean.”
“How did that end up?”
“Not well for the boys. These things never do. They’ve been quietly moving lads to Papakura Camp all week, my pals on the railways tell me. Fellas in civvies were sneaking around here a few nights ago, getting the lay of the place. Had ‘officer’ written all over them.”
A truck horn tooted. Billy put down his tea and slid open the window.
“I’m coming!” he said. “Let me finish my cuppa, for the love of God.” He looked at Molloy. “What’s it you need, son? I’d better get back to it.”
Molloy opened the
Bulletin
and pointed to the photograph.
“Recognise either of these blokes with Barnes and Hill?” said Molloy. “On the QT.”
Billy squinted.
“Can’t tell for sure with his arm up like that,” he said. “But I think it’s Dave Griffiths.”
Molloy pointed to the second figure. “What about him?”
“I’ve seen him around a bit. Watersider. Likes a drink.”
“That narrows it down,” said Molloy.
Burgess gave him a long look. “He takes his waters at the Grey Lynn RSC,” he said. “His name’s Frank O’Flynn.”
The Grey Lynn Returned Services Club was a two-storey brick building in Francis Street, just off Richmond Road. It had originally been the Grey Lynn School, then a picture theatre called the Galaxy, and, from 1947, a watering hole for merchant seamen, who — denied entry to the Returned Services Association because they were not considered to have been servicemen, as though manning unarmed freighters on the Murmansk run was a peacetime occupation — had taken over the lease and established a club of their own, one with more generous entry criteria.
Molloy went through the front door into the Public Bar. It was quiet and dark, with stained sunlight coming through high windows that wouldn’t have had a decent clean since the place was the Galaxy. An elderly man was sitting at a table in front of two empty jugs, his yellow-stained fingers slowly turning a rollie, twisting both ends with the delicacy of a safe-cracker, a terrier keeping a furious lookout on the carpet at his feet.
“How are you, Davey?” said Molloy.
Davey Coulson didn’t look up. “That you, Johnny?” he said. “How are you, son?”
“I’m good,” said Molloy. “You all right?”
“Yes, I’m all right,” said Coulson.
A man in the corner was picking out a tune on the upright, stumbling over notes.
“Bloody hell, stop that flamin’ racket!” someone yelled.