1
I was up the mainmast of the Topaz in a bosun’s chair when
the police car drove into the yard, around eleven o’clock
Saturday morning. The yard doesn’t work on Saturdays, so
there was no one around except me, and the watchman out
at the gate. The car stopped near the end of the pier at which
the Topaz was moored, and two men got out. I glanced at
them without much interest and went on with my work,
hand-sanding the mast from which the old varnish had been
removed. They were probably looking for some exuberant
type off the shrimp boat, I thought. She was the Leila M., the
only other craft in the yard at the moment.
They came on out on the pier in the blazing sunlight,
however, and halted opposite the mainmast to look up at me.
They wore lightweight suits and soft straw hats, and their
shirts were wilted with perspiration.
“Your name Rogers?” one of them asked. He was middleaged,
with a square, florid face and expressionless gray eyes.
“Stuart Rogers?”
“That’s right,” I said. “What can I do for you?”
“Police. We want to talk to you.”
“Go ahead.”
“You come down.”
I shrugged, and shoved the sandpaper into a pocket of my
dungarees. Casting off the hitch, I paid out the line and
The Sailcloth Shroud — 2
dropped on deck. Dust from the sanding operation was
plastered to the sweat on my face and torso. I mopped at it
with a handkerchief and got a little of it off. I stepped onto
the pier, stuck a cigarette in my mouth, and offered the pack
to the two men. They shook their heads.
“My name’s Willetts,” the older one said. “This is my
partner, Joe Ramirez.”
Ramirez nodded. He was a young man with rather startling
blue eyes in a good-looking Latin face. He appraised the
Topaz with admiration. “Nice-looking schooner you got
there.”
“Ketch—” I started to say, but let it go. What was the use
getting involved in that? “Thanks. What did you want to see
me about?”
“You know a man named Keefer?” Willetts asked.
“Sure.” I flicked the lighter and grinned. “Has he made the
sneezer again?”
Willetts ignored the question. “How well do you know
him?”
“About three weeks’ worth,” I replied. I nodded toward the
ketch. “He helped me sail her up from Panama.”
“Describe him.”
“He’s about thirty-eight. Black hair, blue eyes. Five-ten,
maybe; a hundred and sixty to a hundred and seventy
pounds. Has a chipped tooth in front. And a tattoo on his
right arm. Heart, with a girl’s name in it. Doreen, Charlene—
one of those. Why?”
It was like pouring information into a hole in the ground. I
got nothing back, not even a change of expression.
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“Couple of nights ago, I think.”
“You think? Don’t you know?”
I was beginning to care very little for his attitude, but I
kept it to myself. Barking back at policemen is a sucker’s
game. “I didn’t enter it in the log, if that’s what you mean,” I
said. “But, let’s see. This is Saturday—so it must have been
Thursday night. Around midnight.”
The detectives exchanged glances. “You better come along
with us,” Willetts said.
The Sailcloth Shroud — 3
“What for?”
“Verify an identification, for one thing—”
“Identification?”
“Harbor Patrol fished a stiff out from under Pier Seven this
morning. We think it may be your friend Keefer, but we
haven’t got much to go on.”
I stared at him. “You mean he’s drowned?”
“No,” he said curtly. “Somebody killed him.”
“Oh,” I said. Beyond the boatyard the surface of the bay
burned like molten glass in the sun, unbroken except for the
bow wave of a loaded tanker headed seaward from one of the
refineries above. Keefer was no prize, God knows, and I
hadn’t particularly liked him, but—It was hard to sort out.
“Let’s go,” Willetts said. “You want to change clothes?”
Yeah.” I flipped the cigarette outward into the water and
stepped back aboard. The detectives followed me below.
They stood watching while I took a change of clothing and a
towel from the drawer under one of the bunks in the after
cabin. When I started back up the companionway, Willetts
asked, “Haven’t you got a bathroom on here?”
“No water aboard at the moment,” I replied. “I use the
yard washroom.”
“Oh.” They went back on deck and accompanied me up the
pier in the muggy Gulf Coast heat. “We’ll wait for you in the
car,” Willetts said. The washroom was in a small building
attached to one end of the machine shop, off to the right and
beyond the marine ways. I stripped and showered. Could it
be Keefer they were talking about? He was a drunk, and
could have been rolled, but why killed and thrown in the
bay? And by this time he couldn’t have had more than a few
dollars, anyway. The chances were it wasn’t Keefer at all.
I toweled myself and dressed in faded washable slacks,
sneakers, and a short-sleeved white shirt. After slipping the
watch back on my wrist, I transferred wallet, cigarettes, and
lighter, took the dungarees aboard the Topaz, and snapped
the padlock on the companion hatch.
Ramirez drove. The old watchman looked up curiously from
his magazine as we went out the gate. Willetts hitched
around on the front seat. “You picked up this guy Keefer in
Panama, is that it?”
The Sailcloth Shroud — 4
I lighted a cigarette and nodded. “He’d missed his ship in
Cristobal, and wanted a ride back to the States.”
“Why didn’t he fly back?”
“He was broke.”
“What?”
“He didn’t have plane fare.”
“How much did you pay him?”
“Hundred dollars. Why?”
Willetts made no reply. The car shot across the railroad
tracks and into the warehouse and industrial district
bordering the waterfront.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “Wasn’t there any identification on
this body you found in the bay?”
“No.”
“Then what makes you think it might be Keefer?”
“Couple of things,” Willetts said shortly. “Was this his
home port?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “He told me he shipped out of
Philadelphia.”
“What else you know about him?”
“He’s an A.B. His full name is Francis L. Keefer, but he was
usually known as Blackie. Apparently something of a live-itup
type. Said he’d been in trouble with the union before, for
missing ships. This time he was on an inter-coastal freighter,
bound for San Pedro. Went ashore in Cristobal, got a heat on,
and wound up in jail over in the Panamanian side, in Colon.
The ship sailed without him.
“So he asked you for a job?”
“That’s right.”
“Kind of funny, wasn’t it? I mean, merchant seamen don’t
usually ship out on puddle-jumpers like yours, do they?”
“No, but I don’t think you get the picture. He was
stranded. Flat broke. He had the clothes he was wearing, and
the whisky shakes, and that was about it. I had to advance
him twenty dollars to buy some dungarees and gear for the
trip.”
“And there were just the three of you? You and Keefer, and
this other guy, that died at sea? What was his name?”
The Sailcloth Shroud — 5
“Baxter,” I said.
“Was he a merchant seaman too?”
“No. He was an office worker of some kind. Accountant, I
think—though that’s just a guess.”
“Hell, didn’t he say what he did?”
“He didn’t talk much. As a matter of fact, he was twice the
seamen Keefer was, but I don’t think he’d ever been a pro.”
“Did you and Keefer have any trouble?”
“No.”
The pale eyes fixed on my face, as expressionless as
marbles. “None at all? From the newspaper story, it was a
pretty rugged trip.”
“It was no picnic,” I said.
“You didn’t have a fight, or anything?”
“No. Oh, I chewed him out for splitting the mains’l, but
you’d hardly call it a fight. He had it coming, and knew it.”
The car paused briefly for a traffic light, and turned,
weaving through the downtown traffic. “What’s this about a
sail?”
“It’s technical. Just say he goofed, and wrecked it. It was
right after Baxter died, and I was jumpy anyway, so I barked
at him.”
“You haven’t kept in touch with him since you got in?”
“No. I haven’t seen him since I paid him off, except for that
few minutes night before last.”
The car slowed, and turned down a ramp into a cavernous
basement garage in which several patrol cars and an
ambulance were parked. We slid into a numbered stall and
got out. Across the garage was an elevator, and to the left of
it a dingy corridor. Willetts led the way down the corridor to
a doorway on the right.
Inside was a bleak room of concrete and calcimine and
unshaded light. On either side were the vaults that were the
grisly filing cabinets of a city’s unclaimed and anonymous
dead, and at the far end a stairway led up to the floor above.
Near the stairway were two or three enameled metal tables
on casters, and a desk at which sat an old man in a white
coat. He got up and came toward us, carrying a clip board.
The Sailcloth Shroud — 6
“Four,” Willetts said.
The old man pulled the drawer out on its rollers. The body
was covered with a sheet. Ramirez took a corner of it in his
hand, and glanced at me. “If you had any breakfast, better
hang onto it.”
He pulled it back. In spite of myself, I sucked in my breath,
the sound just audible in the stillness. He wasn’t pretty. I
fought the revulsion inside me, and forced myself to look
again. It was Blackie, all right; there was little doubt of it, in
spite of the wreckage of his face. There was no blood, of
course—it had long since been washed away by the water—
but the absence of it did nothing to lessen the horror of the
beating he had taken before he died.
“Well?” Willetts asked in his flat, unemotional voice. “That
Keefer?”
I nodded. “How about the tattoo?”
Ramirez pulled the sheet back farther, exposing the nude
body. On one forearm was the blue outline of a valentine
heart with the name Darlene written slantingly across it in
red script. That settled it. I turned away, remembering a
heaving deck and wind-hurled rain, and holding Keefer by
the front of his sodden shirt while I cursed him. I’m sorry,
Blackie. I wish I hadn’t.
“There’s no doubt of it?” Willetts asked. “That’s the guy
you brought up from Panama?”
“No doubt at all,” I replied. “It’s Keefer.”
“Okay. Let’s go upstairs.”
The room was on the third floor, an airless cubicle with one
dirty window looking out over the sun-blasted gravel roof of
an adjoining building. The only furnishings were some steel
lockers, a table scarred with old cigarette burns, and several
straight-backed chairs.
Willetts nodded to Ramirez. “Joe, tell the lieutenant we’re
here.”
Ramirez went out. Willetts dropped his hat on the table,
took off his coat, and loosened the collar of his shirt. After
removing a pack of cigarettes from the coat, he draped it
across the back of one of the chairs. “Sit down.”
I sat down at the table. The room was stifling, and I could
feel sweat beading my face. I wished I could stop seeing
The Sailcloth Shroud — 7
Keefer. “Why in the name of God did they beat him that way?
Is that what actually killed him?”
Willetts popped a match with his thumbnail, and exhaled
smoke. “He was pistol-whipped. And killed by a blow on the
back of his head. But suppose we ask the questions, huh?
And don’t try to hold out on me, Rogers; we can make you
wish you’d never been born.”
I felt a quick ruffling of anger, but kept it under control.
“Why the hell would I hold out on you? If there’s any way I
can help, I’ll be glad to. What do you want to know?”
“Who you are, to begin with. What you’re doing here.
And how you happened to be sailing that boat up from
Panama.”
“I bought her in the Canal Zone,” I said. I took out my
wallet and flipped identification onto the table—Florida
driver’s license, FCC license verification card, and
memberships in a Miami Beach sportsman’s club and the
Miami Chamber of Commerce. Willetts made a note of the
address. “I own the schooner Orion. She berths at the City
Yacht Basin in Miami, and makes charter cruises through the
Bahamas—”
“So why’d you buy another one?”
“I’m trying to tell you, if you’ll give me a chance. Summer’s
the slow season, from now till the end of October, and the
Orion’s tied up. I heard about this deal on the Topaz, through
a yacht broker who’s a friend of mine. Some oil-rich kids
from Oklahoma bought her a couple of months ago and took
off for Tahiti without bothering to find out if they could sail a
boat across Biscayne Bay. With a little luck, they managed to
get as far as the Canal, but they’d had a belly-full of glamour
and romance and being seasick twenty-four hours a day, so
they left her there and flew back. I was familiar with her, and
knew she’d bring twice the asking price back in the States,
so I made arrangements with the bank for a loan, hopped the
next Pan American flight down there, and looked her over
and bought her.”
“Why’d you bring her over here, instead of Florida?”
“Better chance of a quick sale. Miami’s always flooded with
boats.”
“And you hired Keefer, and this man Baxter, to help you?”
The Sailcloth Shroud — 8
“That’s right. She’s a little too much boat for single-handed
operation, and sailing alone’s just a stunt, anyway. But four
days out of Cristobal, Baxter died of a heart attack—”
“I read the story in the paper,” Willetts said. He sat down
and leaned his forearms on the table. “All right, let’s get to
Keefer. And what I want to know is where he got all his
money.”
I looked at him. “Money? He didn’t—”
“I know, I know!” Willetts cut me off. “That’s what you
keep telling me. You picked him up off the beach in Panama
with his tail hanging out. He didn’t have a nickel, no luggage,
and no clothes except the ones he was wearing. And all you
paid him was a hundred dollars. Right?”
“Yes.”
Willetts gestured with his cigarette. “Well, you better look
again. We happen to know that when he came ashore off that
boat he had somewhere between three and four thousand
dollars.”
“Not a chance. We must be talking about two different
people.”
“Listen, Rogers. When they pulled Keefer out of the bay, he
was wearing a new suit that cost a hundred and seventy-five
dollars. For the past four days he’s been driving a rented
Thunderbird, and living at the Warwick Hotel, which is no
skid-row flop, believe me. And he’s still the richest stiff in the
icebox. They’re holding an envelope for him in the Warwick
safe with twenty-eight hundred dollars in it. Now you tell
me.”
The Sailcloth Shroud — 9
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