paid off if we place our own bets through our guys,” Garcia was saying. “But, boss, I don’t see how you’re going to get the kinda money out of it you’re talking about…”
“’Cause he isn’t going to throw the fight. All the smart mob money’ll be on him losing—and we’ll bet on him winning. And we’ll take ’em big-time when he surprises ’em!”
Garcia blinked. “They’ll take it outta Steele’s hide, boss.”
“And how’s that my worry? Just you make sure the mob’s up to their neck betting against Steele. They’re gonna be sad little monkeys when they lose. But they won’t trace it to us. If you see Harley, tell him to keep an eye on that poker game up at the hotel, got some real big money suckers comin’ in…”
He walked over to Morry, to have a gander at the take, and heard a couple of the dockworkers talking over their flask. “Sure, Ryan’s hiring big down there. It’s a hot ticket, pal, big paydays. But problem is—real QT stuff. Can’t talk about the job. And it’s dangerous too. Somewhere out in the North Atlantic, Iceland way…”
Gorland’s ears pricked up at that.
He slipped outside by the side door and set himself to wait. Less than a minute later a couple of the deckhands came out, weather-beaten guys in watch caps and pea jackets, headed for the docks. The deck rats didn’t notice him following. They were too busy whistling at a group of girls having a smoke across the street.
He shadowed the sailors close to dockside, then hung back in the shadows of a doorway, sussing the scene out. The deckhands went aboard one of the ships—but it was another one that caught Gorland’s eye—a new freighter with a lot of activity on its decks, getting ready to cast loose. The name on the bow was The Olympian. That was one of Ryan’s ships. There was a guy in the lee of a stack of crates near the loading dock, smoking a pipe. Something about him said G-man. It wasn’t Voss—probably one of his men, if Gorland was any judge of cop flesh.
If Andrew Ryan was attracting G-men, he must be up to something of “questionable legal status.” Which meant, at the very least, he could be blackmailed—if Gorland could find out exactly what to blackmail him for.
Seemed like the agent was watching the two guys arguing at the gangplank of Ryan’s freighter—but he wasn’t close enough to listen in without them noticing.
Gorland tilted his hat so the G-man wouldn’t see his face and strolled over, hands in his pockets, weaving a bit, making like he was drunk.
“Maybe I can get me some work on one of these ships,” Gorland said, slurring his words. “Mebbe, mebbe … Back bustin’ work, they got … Don’t care for it … mebbe they need a social director…” He did a good drunk—and all three men discounted him immediately as he approached.
Gorland paused near the gangplank, muttering to himself as he pretended to struggle with lighting a cigarette. All the while, he listened to the argument between the man standing on the roped gangplank, and a mustachioed man on the dock who looked like he might be a deckhand.
“I just ain’t shipping out to that place again, and that’s all there is to it,” snarled the deckhand in the black peacoat. He wore a knit cap on his head and a handlebar mustache on his upper lip. A swarthy type, eyebrows merged in a single black bar. But getting old, maybe—skin leathery, hair salt and pepper, hand trembling as he jabbed a finger at the ship’s officer. “You ain’t going to make me go out there! Too goddamned risky!”
“Why, percentagewise, they’re losing less people than building the Brooklyn Bridge,” said the officer. “I have Mr. Greavy’s word on that. Stop being such a coward!”
“I don’t mind being on the ship—but in that hell down below, not me!”
“There’s no use trying to say you’ll only take the job if you stay on the ship—it’s what Greavy says that goes! If he says you go down, you go down!”
“Then you go down in my place—and you wrestle with the devil! It’s unholy, what he’s tryin’ to do down there!”
“If you leave here now, matey, you don’t get paid a penny more! Get aboard this instant—we sail in ten minutes—or you can say good-bye to your contract!”
“Two weeks salary for my life? Pah!”
“You won’t die down there. We had one run of bad luck is all—”
“I say it again: Pah! Good-bye to you, Mr. Forester!”
The deckhand stalked off—and Gorland realized the ship’s officer was glaring at him with unconcealed suspicion. “You—what are you doing hanging ’round here?”
Gorland flicked his cigarette butt into the sea. He grinned drunkenly. “Just having a smoke, matey.”
He set off to follow the deckhand, wondering what he’d stumbled onto. It was like a trail of coins gleaming on a moonlit path. If he kept following the shiny little clues he’d find the moneybag they were leaking from.
Gorland knew this trail could lead him to trouble, maybe jail. But he was a restless man, unhappy if he wasn’t out on an edge. He either stayed busy working the game or lost himself in a woman’s arms. Otherwise he started thinking too much. Like about his old man dumping him in that orphanage when he was a boy.
The deckhand turned the corner of one of the loading docks to go up the access road. It was a foggy night, and there was no one else on the short side road to the avenue. No one to see …
Frank Gorland had two approaches to getting what he wanted from life. Long-term planning—and creative improvisation. He saw a possibility—a foot-long piece of one-inch-diameter metal pipe, fallen off some truck. It was just lying in the gutter, calling to him. He scooped up the piece of pipe and hurried to catch up with the slouching shape of the deckhand.
He stepped up behind the man, grabbed his collar, jerked him slightly off balance without knocking him over.
“Hey!” the man yelped.
Gorland held the deckhand firmly in place and pressed the end of the cold metal pipe to the back of his neck. “Freeze!” Gorland growled, altering his voice. He put steel and officiousness into it. “You turn around, mister, you try to run, and I’ll pull the trigger and separate your backbones with a bullet!”
The man froze. “Don’t—don’t shoot! What do you want? I don’t have but a dollar on me!”
“You think I’m some crooked dock rat? I’m a federal agent! Now don’t even twitch!”
Gorland let go of the deckhand’s collar, reached into his own coat pocket, took out his wallet, flipped it open, flashed the worthless special-officer badge he used when he needed bogus authority. He flicked it in front of the guy’s face, not letting him have a real look at it.
“You see that?” Gorland demanded.
“Yes sir!”
He put the wallet away and went on, “Now hear this, sailor: you’re in deep shit, for working on that crooked project of Ryan’s!”
“They—they told me it was legal! All legal!”
“They told you it was a secret too, right? You think it’s legal to keep secrets from Uncle Sam?”
“No—I guess not. I mean—Well I don’t know nothing about it. Just that they’re building something out there. And it’s a dangerous job, down them tunnels under the sea.”
“Tunnels? Under the sea? For what?”
“For the construction. The foundations! I don’t know why he’s doing it. None of the men do—he tells ’em only what they need to know. Only, I heard Greavy talking to one of them scientist types! All I can tell you is what I heard…”
“And that was—?”
“That Ryan is building a city under the sea down there!”
“A what!”
“Like, a colony under the goddamn ocean! And they’re laying out all kindsa stuff down there! It don’t seem possible, but he’s doing it! I heard he’s spending hunnerds of millions, might be getting into billions! He’s spending more money than any man ever spent buildin’ anything!”
Gorland’s mouth went dry as he contemplated it, and his heart thumped.
“Where is this thing?”
“Out in the North Atlantic—they keep us belowdecks when we go, so we don’t see where exactly. I ain’t even sure! Cold as death out there, it is! But he’s got the devil’s own heat coming up—steam comes up someways, and sulfur fumes, and the like! Some took sick from them fumes! Men have died down there, buildin’ that thing!”
“How do you know how much he’s spending?”
“I was carryin’ bags into Mr. Greavy’s office, on the platform ship, and I was curious, like. I hears ’em talkin’…”
“The what kind of ship?”
“That’s what they call it. Platform ship! A platform to launch their slinkers! The Olympian there, it supplies the platform ships!”
“Slinkers, that what you said?”
“Bathyspheres, they is!”
“Bathyspheres! If you’re lying to me…”
“No officer, I swear it!”
“Then get out of here! Run! And tell no one you spoke to me—or you go right to jail!”
The man went scurrying away, and Gorland was left in a state of mute amazement.
Ryan is building a city under the sea.
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