Tim Curran
DEADLOCK
1
“She’s sitting right out there in the harbor,” Arturo said. “At the end of old Number Five Pier, the Yvonne Addams. A six-hundred foot bulk freighter. I own her lock, stock, and barrel. Not that it does me any good, you understand, because I can’t get a crew to sail her.”
“Why’s that?” Charlie Petty asked. “Not sea-worthy or whatever they call it?”
“Oh, no, Charlie, she’s ship-shape, got her papers and everything. The Coasties have crawled up one side of her and down the other. She’s ready to sail, ready to make me some money, only I can’t get a crew aboard her. It’s the craziest thing.”
“That’s too bad,” Charlie said. He pulled off his cigarette and glanced around Arturo’s office, wondering what the hell this was all about. Because it was coming, it was surely coming and he knew it.
“Ain’t it, though?” Arturo said.
Charlie flicked his ash. “We all got troubles, Mr. Arturo. But what’s that old hulk got to do with you calling me here? I mean, let’s just get to it, shall we? I owe you fifty grand and you want it and I ain’t got it. That’s what this is about. So quit humping my leg already. Do I get it in the belly or the head?”
Arturo laughed and shook his head. “Charlie, Charlie, Charlie. Man, you are something. You watch too many of those gangster pictures, you know that? I’m just a businessman. A solid, respectable fucking businessman. Are we square on that?”
“If you say so.”
God, that was rich. Arturo had so many goddamn bodies out there he couldn’t remember where he’d planted them all. This guy went through the Northside underworld like the Black Plague, leaving a trail of corpses behind him… along with more than a few witnesses who were too terrified to testify against him.
“You got balls, Charlie. You bet with both hands and lose your ass every time. You’re what’s called a degenerate gambler. But, my God, you got quite a set on you.” Arturo leaned back in his chair, crossed his meaty arms behind his head. “Most guys wouldn’t dare talk to me the way you do. They’d be in here groveling and begging, but not you. You’re into me for fifty large and you still ride my ass. What a set, what a set!”
Charlie smiled. He’d spent his life blowing from one gutter to the next like a stray leaf. He’d done time and faced down some of the meanest animals society had squeezed out. And he’d done this without so much as a shudder or a shimmy-shake or a second backward thought. Truth was, he didn’t think about it much, the kind of person he was or the fish he swam with. He just took it for granted. It was when a guy spent too much time thinking about how close he danced to the edge or how sharp the blade was that he started second-guessing himself, started losing his balls, his guts. And when he did that, it was all over but the eulogy.
“Who we kidding here?” he said. “You’ve already made up your mind, so get to it already. Cut the fucking melodrama.”
“Maybe if you shut your hole, I will. See, it’s got to do with that ship out there.”
Charlie pulled off his cigarette. “I’m listening.”
“That ship is in good shape, I could be hauling ore and grain and you name it with her. I got all the contracts I want, but I can’t sail her. And I can’t sail her because I can’t get a crew to step foot on her.”
“Okay. Why’s that?”
“Because she’s got a history,” Arturo said. “A bad history. Sailors think she’s a jinx, a hoodoo ship, and they won’t sail on her.”
It was Charlie’s turn to laugh. “Are you saying that hulk is haunted?”
Arturo shrugged. “Your words, not mine.”
“Oh, for chrissake. In this day and age?”
“Why not? All I know is that nobody’ll board her. Christ, I even brought in foreign crews and they didn’t last the night. Not a one of them.”
It was a real shame, Arturo explained. He wasn’t a shipping magnate, it wasn’t his thing. He was just a common businessman. Sure, he dabbled in some loansharking and illegal gambling, but other than that he was legit as Arm & Hammer. Some guy had signed the Yvonne Addams over to him after he’d accrued some very heavy debt. At the time, Arturo hadn’t known what sort of ship she was, but he found out soon enough.
“See,” he said, “when she was signed over to me she was sitting right where she is now and had been for two years. The guy I got her from was just glad to be rid of her. He played me for a sucker, all right. I got a good ship, but no crew’ll touch her, and I’m paying out my ass on taxes and docking rental.”
“So sell her.”
But that was no good either, Arturo said. The other ship brokers knew about the Addams’ history. They didn’t believe for a minute she was haunted or any of that, but being shrewd businessmen themselves, they were using it as leverage. Sure, they’d take the Addams off his hands, but at less than a third of what she was worth. The only other option was to sell her to a salvage company, but again at a staggering loss.
Charlie blew smoke out. “That’s tough. They got you by the balls. What’s the beef, anyway? Got spooks rattling chains and carrying their heads around or what?”
“No, not exactly.”
Arturo said there were no manifestations exactly that he knew of. Just a lot of bad luck. The past three voyages were nothing but trouble. Lots of random violence, guys going nuts and jumping overboard. The voyage before last, they had two suicides and a murder. When the Addams reached port, they had to take the first mate off in a straight jacket.
“All kinds of crazy shit,” he said in summation.
“But there’s more?”
Arturo nodded. “Try this on for size. Three of her captains killed themselves mid-voyage. Guys have jumped overboard. There’s been murders, outbreaks of mass violence… you name it. Shit, Charlie, one trip three swabbies hanged themselves in one night. People seem to think—and you’ll laugh at this, big-balled prick like you—that there’s something on the ship, something not exactly human, something… evil.”
“Sounds like one of them comic books I read as a kid.”
Arturo shrugged. “Last time out, the entire crew disappeared.”
The ship’s last port of call had been a place called Paramaribo in Surinam. Her last communication was about sixteen hours later as she steamed for New Orleans. She was posted missing two days later. Three months went by and the Yvonne Addams was sighted off the Cape Verde Islands by a fishing boat. She had drifted over quite an expanse of the South Atlantic and had taken on some water, but was no worse for the wear.
“Pirates or something?”
Arturo shrugged. “That thread was followed, but it led nowhere. Her cargo was untouched. She had a belly of bauxite ore, which is valuable if you have a refinery and are smelting aluminum. But without that very costly set up, bauxite is nothing but rocks.”
“So where’d everybody go?”
“They never found out. Only that it looked like they’d left in one hell of a hurry. All the lifeboats gone.”
“That’s weird.”
“It’s more than weird, Charlie. It’s goddamn scary. Things happen at sea. The Addams would hardly be the first fucking derelict out there. Hell, I’m told dozens are logged every year… but that didn’t make the owners any happier. They got rid of her, sold her to the guy I got her from sans the bauxite, of course.”
“Well, gotta be a reason. Maybe they thought she was going under and they abandoned ship.”
“Maybe. But why no SOS?”
“Maybe she was commanded by Captain Bligh.”
Arturo said the captain’s name was Maxton, a real old school hardcase. He wasn’t well liked, but he was respected. Of course, when you had a master like that and he up and vanished, first thing the Coast Guard, civil and marine authorities started thinking was mutiny.