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  Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

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  DEATH ON THE WATERFRONT

  A Dock-Front Murder Creates Panic in High Places

  By

  ROBERT ARCHER

  Death on the Waterfront was originally published in 1941 for THE CRIME CLUB by Doubleday, Doran and Co., New York.

  * * *

  This is a work of fiction,

  in which the characters and incidents

  are wholly imaginary.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Contents

  TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

  PART ONE 5

  1. Accident 5

  2. Rat 15

  3. Stool Pigeon 20

  4. Bar 27

  5. Hook 31

  6. Station House 39

  7. Hotel Room 48

  8. Penthouse 54

  9. Highway 59

  PART TWO 63

  1. Routine 63

  2. Library 70

  3. Man in the Brown Coat 75

  4. Secretary 84

  PART THREE 92

  1. Escape 92

  2. Accusations 101

  3. Hunches 107

  4. Cat House 113

  5. Alibis 119

  6. Man Hunt 127

  7. Drive Home 134

  PART FOUR 141

  1. Strike 141

  2. Blind Alleys 151

  3. Breaking and Entering 158

  4. Locked Room 170

  PART FIVE 179

  1. Bait 179

  2. Shots 193

  3. Pay-Off 201

  4. Postscript 207

  REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 211

  PART ONE

  1. Accident

  A WHISTLE shrilled out of the darkness of the forward hold, and the winchman’s assistant, standing with one foot on the hatch combing, gestured upward with the palm of his right hand. The winch operator pushed a lever, and the steel cable began to move out of the shadowy hole, glistening iridescent as the morning sun struck rusted metal. The winch engine coughed asthmatically, causing the even flow of the cable to become a series of spasmodic jerks. The winchman’s lips formed the word: “Easy.” His face was worried.

  The engine coughed again, jerking the cable; there was a sharp twang, and a steel strand parted and unwound, the frayed end lashing out like a striking snake. The signalman leaped back from the hatch combing. He shouted an agonized warning:

  “Look out below!”

  From the dockside someone shouted: “There she goes!”

  The winchman jockeyed his controls, trying desperately to ease the heavy sling load over the combing of the hatch onto the ship’s deck. The sling rose past the edge of the hold, swaying slightly; it seemed that she was going to make it, but the unraveled strand of cable caught in the pulley block above, and the sling swayed and bumped against the hatch combing. The weakened, rusty cable parted. The sling load struck the hatch combing and turned over, raining metal bars down into the hold like shrapnel.

  There was a second of interminable, paralyzed silence, as though some invisible force had stopped the plunging metal and held it suspended in the still air of the hold, just as the watchers held their breath locked in their chests—then the bars landed in a series of hollow, muffled booms, and, rising out of the dark mouth of the hold, heard on the dockside even above the cannonading of falling iron, scream after scream, too sharp and agonized to imagine coming from a human throat. The screams stopped suddenly. A bustling confusion followed the accident.

  Presently, out in East Street, an ambulance came jangling its way through the halted traffic and swerved in at the big double doors of the dock. In the pool hall directly across the street from Pier 40 longshoremen crowded to the door and windows, some with cues still in their hands. A tall, slim-hipped man wearing a leather windbreaker and blue serge pants laid his cue carefully on the green table top and elbowed his way through the men at the door.

  “I’m going over to see what happened,” he said.

  “Go get ‘em, Jack. That’s the third in three days.”

  “God damn Murdock and his lousy, rotten equipment to hell.”

  “Damn bosses in general. Why discriminate?”

  “There’s good and bad. I worked in Frisco and Galveston. Murdock and Eastcoast stink so’s you can smell ‘em clear out there.” The man who had damned all bosses laughed. “It’s not the bosses that’s different—it’s the unions. They got real organization out there: decent wages and working conditions and even hiring halls. You don’t have to scrap each other to get a job out there, and the union refuses to work with worn-out equipment. What the hell anybody that ever worked out there ever came East for is more than I can see.”

  “You talk like a Red. What’d you come East for yourself?”

  “I didn’t. I’ve lived on this water front all my life. I got a wife and two kids. This is my home.”

  A dark-skinned, squat little man said earnestly: “You tella me just one thing. We gotta union, too, is so? We gotta rid of the labor fakers and the racketeers now, is so?”

  “You got Jackson to thank for that.” The speaker nodded in the direction of the pier gates through which the man in the leather windbreaker had disappeared.

  “Sure, Colletti,” one of the men said to the squat man, “you’re right’s far as you go. Jackson drove Fink Weller and his goons out of the union. But how do we know Jackson’s any better? How do we know he won’t sell us out just like Weller did? That old potbellied pie-card artist Melius is still president, ain’t he?”

  “Sure, he’sa president,” said Colletti. “You elected him, is so? You got union meeting regular now, is so? You elect who you want.”

  “Boy, he’s got something there. Weller never held one union meeting in all the time he ran the union. You took what he told you and liked it.”

  “You got meeting now,” Colletti insisted. “You got no more kickback. You vote for what you want; you get it.”

  “Right in the neck,” laughed another longshoreman. “You’re screwy, Wop.”

  “You see!” Colletti nodded his head vigorously. “Jackson beata Fink Weller. He beata Murdock, too, pretty soon. We get new contract, good pay, no more accidents. You come union meeting. You vote; you see.”

  The figure of the man in the leather windbreaker appeared in the pier door and came threading his way toward them through the rumbling traffic of East Street.

  “Shut up, you mugs. Jack’s comin’ back.”

  The men surged out and surrounded Jackson as he reached the sidewalk.

  “What happened?”

  “Anybody hurt bad?”

  “What’d you tell the boss Stevie, Jack?”

  Jackson held up his hand, his face serious and unsmiling. “Cable broke,” he said. “Dumped a couple of tons of scrap iron back into the hold. Old man Kelly’s dead. That Negro kid, Marty Jefferson, got both his legs broken. Is there somebody here knows Kelly’s old lady?”

  “I do.” It was the man who had cursed all bosses.

  “Go on over there,” said Jackson. “Better some
body she knows tells her than have her get it from a cop.”

  “Jefferson?” asked one of the men. “That’s the kid won the Golden Gloves, ain’t it?”

  “Yeah. He won’t fight no more for a while.”

  “How long is this going to keep up, Jack?” asked one of the men. “God Almighty, can’t we do something?”

  Jackson looked at the man. “This is your union as well as mine. What do you think we ought to do?”

  “Strike,” shouted someone. “That’s what I say.”

  Jackson turned his head. Then he turned back to the man who had asked the question.

  “Someone said, ‘Strike.’ Is that what you think?”

  “I don’t know,” said the man. “That’s for you fellows on the Negotiating Committee to decide.”

  Jackson sighed. “I’m going up to the hall to see Melius,” he said. “Any of you men want to come along?”

  He turned without waiting for an answer and strode off up the street. Several of the men followed.

  Jackson pushed open the door marked “Office” at the rear of the Union Hall. Fat Melius, the union president, sat at his desk leaning back in a swivel chair, reading the morning paper. He looked up and said, “Hello, Jack. Hello, boys. What is this—a delegation?” The men who had followed Jackson crowded into the room. They stood silent in a semicircle while Jackson explained tersely what had happened on Pier 40.

  “Christ, that’s too bad,” said Melius. “I knowed old man Kelly all my life. His missus’ll take it hard.” His chins quivered. The small eyes peered up out of the red face at the men standing behind Jackson. There was a grease stain on his bulging vest.

  “It’s too much,” said Jackson. “It’s the last straw. I’m going to see Murdock and I thought you might want to come along.”

  “Now, now,” said Melius, “you know we can’t do that, Jack. Murdock’s a busy man. Besides, we got a meeting with him for two o’clock this afternoon to discuss the new contract. We can take it up then.”

  “I’m taking it up now,” said Jackson. “You want to come?”

  “Kinda highhanded, ain’t ya, Jack? Undemocratic. Seems to me the committee should discuss this thing before we go barging in on Murdock.”

  “The committee has discussed it. We’ve raved about overloaded slings and rotten equipment till we’re black in the face. Now it’s time to do something.”

  “It’sa not time,” said Colletti. “It’sa past time.”

  Melius pushed up on the arms of his chair and got slowly and heavily to his feet. “Okay,” he said. “Whatever you boys say. But I wouldn’t want to be the one responsible for upsetting Murdock and making him refuse to sign that contract.”

  “He’ll refuse anyway,” said one of the men. “Murdock don’t want to sign no contract with anybody but Fink Weller and his goon squad.”

  Melius looked at the man. “Weller and his goon squad’s gone,” he said. “This is a real union now.”

  “He’ll be back. I’m from the Southwest,” said the man. “A Missouri mule, that’s me.”

  “You’re a jackass,” said Melius heavily. He continued to look at the man with his hard little eyes. The man looked away.

  “Come on,” Melius said to Jackson. “You want to talk to Murdock. We’ll go talk to him. I’m. president of this union, and you’re a business agent. I guess between us we got a right to speak for the membership.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Jackson. “Colletti!” He turned to the little Italian. “You’re a member of the Negotiating Committee—come along.”

  Jackson strode through the business-office entrance to the pier and took the steps two at a time to the second floor. Melius puffed and panted in his wake, with Colletti, his swarthy face dark with righteous indignation, bringing up the rear. The union president’s movements, conditioned by his girth, were usually slow and ponderous, and he had had difficulty keeping up with the younger and fitter men on their walk from the Union Hall. Jackson looked back, and his eyes crinkled at the corners, watching the fat man heave laboriously up the stairs.

  “How long since you did an honest day’s work, Jim?”

  “Go to hell,” wheezed Melius.

  Jackson laughed. “Age before beauty.” He propelled Melius ahead of him through the swinging doors into the outer office of the shipping company.

  A middle-aged clerk with tired eyes stood up behind the gate in the railing which divided the office in half. Melius said: “We’d like to see Mr. Murdock. It’s important. We’re from the Longshore Union.”

  “He’s busy,” said the clerk shortly. “Perhaps his secretary will see you.”

  Melius hesitated, and Jackson pushed by him and confronted the clerk. “We’ll pass up the pleasure of talking to Nellie Cosimo,” he said.

  A stenographer giggled, and Jackson paused to grin at her. She lowered her eyes demurely, and Jackson turned back to the clerk. “Look, brother. You’ve got your job, and we’ve got ours. You can’t keep us out, so just stand aside.” He reached over and unhooked the gate and strode through, followed by the protestations of the clerk. Melius caught his sleeve.

  “This ain’t smart, Jack,” he said. “The old man’s liable to lower the boom on us for this.”

  Jackson removed the fat man’s hand from his sleeve. “Not on you, Jim,” he said. “He wouldn’t do that to a nice old guy like you.”

  Colletti grinned, and Melius’ face purpled, but Jackson turned his back on him and went through the door marked “Private,” into a large, square office with windows facing East Street. A square-headed, square-shouldered man with a mop of sandy hair sat behind a big desk. A woman seated beside the desk had her head turned and was looking over her shoulder at the door. She was a big black-haired woman with snapping eyes.

  The man and the woman both spoke at once. The man said, “What do you mean barging in here like this?”

  The woman said: “Get out, you roustabouts, before I call the police.”

  Jackson paid no attention to them. His eyes were on a side door of the office that was just swinging shut. He had just a glimpse of a man’s shoulder and one trouser leg. The man seemed to be in a hurry. Jackson took two long steps across the room and snatched at the door, but it was locked, and by the time he got it open the hall was empty. The hall led around a corner to the stairs, and the man was probably halfway down to the street by now. Jackson closed the door and dashed to a front window, but here a projection obstructed the view, and he could not see the entrance to the dock. He shrugged his shoulders and turned back into the room.

  A tableau of startled faces—Melius, Colletti, and the clerk at the door, the man and the woman at the desk—greeted him. The faces registered emotions varying from surprise to outrage. He grinned. “Sorry, Murdock, I thought I saw a friend of mine.”

  “You big ape,” screamed the woman. She was standing now, nearly as tall as Jackson and all but inarticulate with rage. “You belong in a cage, and I’m going to see you’re put there.” She caught up the receiver of a desk phone, but the sandy-haired man reached out, took it from her, and replaced it.

  “Sit down, Miss Cosimo,” he said. “I’ll handle this if you don’t mind.” He jabbed a blunt forefinger at the clerk. “Get out and close the door.”

  The clerk exited with alacrity; the secretary relaxed into her chair slowly and unwillingly, her hot, black eyes on Jackson.

  “I’d hate to meet you in a dark alley, Nell,” said Jackson.

  “All right,” said the big man at the desk, “cut out the monkey business. Now that you are in here what do you want?”

  “Well, I’ll tell you, Mr. Murdock——“ began Melius.

  Jackson cut in. “You heard about old man Kelly, didn’t you?” Murdock nodded. “I thought that might be it. That’s why I can overlook your slamming in here the way you did. I don’t blame you boys for being a little upset. I’m upset myself. Kelly worked for Eastcoast a long time.”

  “Twenty backbreaking years,” said Jackson, “and
what did he get for it? His brains knocked out with an iron bar.”

  “Take it easy,” said Murdock. “I told you I know how you feel, but accidents will happen. And I’ll tell you boys something else. I’ve already arranged to see that Mrs. Kelly is taken care of. There’s a job for her right here in my office.”

  “A job,” said Jackson. “Scrubbing floors?”

  “Well,” said Murdock, “what do you want me to do, make her general manager?”

  Colletti growled deep in his throat, and Jackson glanced at him and shook his head warningly. The little Italian was a firebrand and had to be controlled to keep him from going berserk.

  “The union’ll take care of Mrs. Kelly,” said Melius with heavy dignity. “You don’t have to do anything about her, Mr. Murdock. What the union wants you to do is something that will prevent these accidents. The men are getting pretty hard to handle because of them.”

  “Negligence,” said Miss Cosimo, “gross negligence—that’s what it was. We received the report this morning that the winchman was responsible.”

  “Winchman?” exploded Jackson. “Rotten cables, worn-out machinery, overloaded slings—that’s the answer. Now let’s quit stalling. What are you going to do about it, Murdock?”

  Colletti nodded his head violently. That was the kind of talk he had come to hear.

  “I could say I don’t like your tone and to get out of here,” said Murdock, “but I won’t. All our equipment is tested and examined regularly, but I’ll order a special investigation, and if anything is found that endangers the men it’ll be replaced immediately. That satisfy you?”

  “We don’t wanta satisfaction,” Colletti burst out. “We wanta new rigging, that’s all.”

  “I think that’s fine,” Melius said hastily.

  Colletti looked at him in disgust.

  “Will you write a clause specifying new equipment and maximum sling loads into the new contract?” asked Jackson.

  “I’m discussing the new contract with your Negotiating Committee this afternoon. You can take that up then. You boys’ll have to get out of here now. I’m busy.”