Chapter 6 - The Weight of the River
The tug didn't sink; it simply sat deeper in the mud as the tide turned off the lake point.
By six AM, two longboats from the River Police were coming up the channel, their six oars dipping in perfect unison, their oilskin coats shining black in the cold rain that had started up again from the north.
On the road above the bank, a crowd had begun to form—not dockworkers or gamblers, but the small, grey-faced men who lived in the tenements behind the cold-storage plants. They stood silently in the rain, their hands jammed into their coat pockets, watching three federal marshals in blue wool coats walk down the shale path toward the dray wagon.
The head marshal was a man named Vance—no relation to the big man with the broken leg in the coal cellar—a tall, clean-shaved officer with three grey silver buttons on his cuffs and a dark leather holster that sat high on his hip.
He stopped three feet from Gidley’s wagon. He didn't look at the old man. He looked at the heavy cotton flour sack sitting on the seat between Marcus and Carrie.
"That’s the elevator book," Vance said. His voice was cold, precise, like a man reading an entry from a ledger he’d checked three times.
"It’s nine years of river books," Gidley said, his hand still resting on the mare’s reins. "Every barge that came down from Galena. Every ton of lead that was listed as 'grain sweepings' at the South Pier."
The marshal reached out one gloved hand and touched the neck of the sack. He didn't open it. He knew what was inside; he’d spent four years looking for those sixteen pounds of rag paper.
He turned his head slowly to look at Carrie.
She was still sitting in the back of the wagon box, her legs wrapped in an old grey wool horse-blanket that Gidley had kept under the seat. Raleigh was beside her, his head resting squarely in her lap, his eyes closed as if he were sleeping in front of a kitchen stove.
"The girl," the marshal said. "Is she John Hayes’ daughter?"
"She’s Carrie," Marcus said, stepping between the marshal and the wagon wheel. "Her father died at the coal pocket four years ago."
The marshal looked at Marcus for three long seconds. His grey eyes were intelligent, tired, with the fine lines around the corners that come from looking at dirty water and clean paper for thirty years.
"John Hayes was a good inspector," Vance said quietly. "He told me three weeks before he died that someone was changing the scale receipts at the Union tank. I didn't believe him because I thought Old Man Gidley was the only one with a key to the scale house."
"I was," Gidley said from the bench, his single eye staring straight ahead between the mare’s ears. "I gave the key to John because he was the only man on the river who didn't take five dollars to look the other way when the night-barges came in."
"And who took the whistle?" the marshal asked.
"I did," Carrie said. Her voice was small, but it carried clearly through the cold rain. "My father gave it to me before he went to the yard. He said if I ever heard a dog crying in the dark, I should blow the third note."
The marshal looked down at Raleigh.
The dog’s left ear twitched once at the sound of her voice, but he didn't open his eyes. The deep scar across his muzzle looked whiter now in the morning light, like a line of dry salt drawn across his black skin.
"Sean’s going to federal court in Springfield," the marshal said after a long pause. "He’s got four charges of bribery, two of tax evasion, and three of illegal transportation of government bullion."
"What about the dog?" Marcus asked.
The marshal looked at the black leather collar sitting on the floor of the wagon box—the one with the three cold-hammered brass rivets that had been cut through with an iron file.
"The dog was listed on the inventory as an 'attack asset' belonging to the Bennett Commercial Corporation," Vance said. "The corporation was dissolved by order of the circuit judge at midnight."
He reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a small piece of yellow paper—a standard river receipt—and a stub of lead pencil. He wrote three words across the back of the form, signed his name with a heavy flourish, and tossed the paper into the wagon box at Carrie’s feet.
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"What's that?" Marcus asked, picking up the yellow slip.
"It’s a destruction order," the marshal said, turning his back to walk toward the police boats that were now tying up at the river wall. "It says the asset was disposed of in twelve feet of water off the intake pier at six-fifteen AM."
