The Billy Club Bastard Case Files: The Case of the Smiling Smuggler, Part 3 of 5

This week, Mick returns to the scene of the crime, determined to get the skinny on the Smiling Man and to clear his own name. Then, we dive beneath the sea where a U-boat crew is terrorized by an unknown enemy.

This story is featured in the anthology Bourbon, Bullets, Broads, and Bourbon, which is now available as a Kindle ebook, in paperback, or as a DRM-free ePub.

If you haven’t had a chance to read Part 1 or Part 2 yet, go no further!

Content Warnings: Violence, Gun Violence, Death, Mild Swearing, Nazis

MONDAY EVENING, JUNE 23, 1941
PELICAN DRY CLEANERS
YBOR CITY, TAMPA, FLORIDA

Mick sliced through the police tape and shouldered the back door to the dry cleaners' open. He slid his switchblade shut and dropped it into his pocket.

The scene was how he remembered it: dirty, cluttered, and fetid. He'd tracked in a good amount of sewage by coming in through the drainage ducts and no one had cleaned it up. After baking under a Tampa sun all day, it stank to high heaven in there. The grate he'd knocked off was where it had landed.

Mickey walked past the .22-caliber craters they'd left in the wall. They'd been close, but the combination of darkness and shaky hands doesn't often make for bullseyes. Mick found this curious, because none of the Brook Street boys had been arrested with a weapon, and no iron had been found at the scene.

Mick had rung the station house from a call-box before he'd gone in. The desk sergeant on duty was a drinking buddy from the old days, so he'd humored Mick; he obviously hadn't run into Haugen yet. Not one of the Brook Street Gang got arrested with any cash or heaters. Mick also knew that the gangsters hadn't had the chance to limp off before the officers were on top of them. That meant one thing: they'd stashed everything somewhere in this building.

He hadn't taken the time to study the whole place when he'd been in there. When he was masked, he could only focus on what was directly in front of him, all he could do was aim and let fly. When it was all over, he could only hope he'd ended up where he'd intended to.

He had gone in last night to right some wrongs. For cash, of course. Bob Cross had called him first thing in the morning Sunday. A couple of the creeps had run into an officer's niece at Doubloon's Saturday night and gotten fresh. She'd gotten herself out of there before things could get nasty, but it had shaken her up. When her uncle heard about it, he tried to get something going at the station but there wasn't anything to pursue. The dame wasn't pressing charges and she didn't know any of their names.

In Tampa, when cops had a grievance that they couldn't solve themselves, they took it to the union. President Bob Cross kept a private investigator on retainer for just such an eventuality. His was Mickey Malloy. He knew Mick wasn't afraid to dig around in the less-savory places, and to do what needed to get done to make things balance.

All the Doubloon's bar tender needed was a finsky and Mick had the names of a couple Brook Street boys, just like that.

The trouble with these small-time neighborhood gangs is that everyone is related, everyone is childhood friends. When beating the crap out of them, beating one or two does not work. If any of them are left to retaliate, they will, and they'll escalate. It doesn't matter if their buddies deserved it or not. When it comes to violence, guys like these suddenly scrape together some ironclad principles.

That's why they all had to get got at once.

Mick had explained all this to Bob, and got his rate doubled for his efforts. Plus the fiver he'd dropped at Doubloon's.

The dead of night was Mick's favorite time to pull this kind of operation. Folks were either tired or wired, and either option helped him out. When a black-clad giant bursts int the room and starts walloping everyone within reach, folks who can't trust their eyes start seeing things. Then they tell other folks about it, and the next time Mick comes through a window, or door, or drainage grate, those folks have heard the story. They get scared.

From what Mickey'd read, the man the papers had dubbed 'the Billy Club Bastard' was anywhere from six-six to seven-ten, three to five hundred pounds, had either bottomless empty eyes sockets or pupils that glowed like hot coals. Bullets either bounced off of him or passed straight through. Sometimes he walked through walls like they were air, other times he plowed through like he was a bulldozer.

Those stories were as much a part of Mick's arsenal as his club. Now, it wasn't any kind of billy club, the papers got that dead wrong. Mick had actually pulled it off a wrecked piano he found out back of his office one morning. It was heavy as hell, with a thick, angular head and a ribbed design that fit his hand like he'd been there when they'd carved it.

The rest of the stories were somewhat true. He did shrug off punches and stabs, but only because he showed up prepared. His heavy leather jacket could turn knives, even if he didn't have his thick padded vest underneath. The leather football helmet he wore could handle a hit or two. As for bullets, no one had landed one yet. Mick preferred to cut the lights when he came in the door. Between that and the shock of the Bastard come knocking, folks' aim went to pot. He figured criminals would rather tell reporters that they pumped a hundred bullets into him to no effect than that they were terrible shots.

Mick strolled through the wrecked back room. Between the hurricane he'd brought with him and the subsequent police raid, it was pretty well ruined. Every crate and box had been flipped or shredded. He remembered the procedure. If he couldn't find evidence on a suspect, he'd be damn sure to piss them off. He was surprised the responding officers hadn't sliced the hanging garments to ribbons.

He shined his flashlight down the still-open drain hole. All he could see was the chunky flowing mass of tidewater and sewage that he'd trudged through the night before. If some evidence had fallen down there, it could stay.

That's when Mick noticed the chemical tanks.

They'd mostly been left alone. The officers had pried off their lids, but just to see if the actual cleaning agents described on their labels matched up. The way that Mick's eyes immediately stung told him that they did. Poisonous fumes would definitely be enough to box out a beat cop.

Mick found an old yard rake within arm's reach of the barrel. It wasn't a crime to keep gardening equipment in a business, but halfway down the handle, call it 'barrel-high,' the old wood was slightly bleached. It had been dipped in the fuming solution more than once. He took the rake and stuck it into the caustic liquid, careful to keep his nose averted as he stirred the bottom.

He didn't have to feel around long before he clanked into something with the metal tines. It took a bit more doing, but he finally hooked whatever was submerged and dragged it up.

“There she is,” Mick muttered. He had hooked the handle of a firebox the size of a tool bag. He maneuvered it around, carefully not to touch the chemicals or let anything drip on his clothes. It fit right in the nearby laundry sink and a quick rinse was all he needed to feel confident enough to touch it.

Mick jammed his switchblade behind its lock and twisted. It gave easily. Inside, he found exactly what he was looking for. Two small revolvers, a stack of cash, and a couple logbooks. Mick flipped through the first book, finding a detailed account of how they slipped dirty money into the cleaners' registers. Interesting, but not what he needed.

The second book was right on the money.

It had a list of arrivals and departures, along with tide schedules and contact information for everyone from drivers to port officials to security guards. There was an envelope of film negatives tucked in the back of the book, probably their leverage on the men they needed to twist to get pier access.

Under the latest entry, he found the name 'Bill French' next to a departure time.

High tide, warehouse eight, $600 to Wandering Egret. Brook Street for security and loading.

The entry was signed 'R,' short for Ratface Jerry. Beneath, he had scrawled one more note:

Bring the irons. Midnight.

Whoever this Smiling Man was, he had Brook Street spooked. One thing was for sure: no one in the gang would be providing security for anyone, and the fact that that plan had gone sideways had nearly gotten them all poisoned.

Mick pocketed the book, then dropped the revolvers into the acidic barrel. They sank fast into the green liquid. He took the cash, too, just in case. A wad of sawbacks thicker than a King James Bible never hurt anyone. He slipped out of the dry cleaners' the way he'd come in. No one had spotted him coming or going, he was sure of that.

The commercial pier was the only place Mick knew of with more than six warehouses that the tidal cycle mattered to. He wanted to get there before any of the players showed up. He'd need his armor and his weapon, any edge he could get. Preparation was what let him survive after his pin was pulled. Preparation was what let him direct the explosion that he would become.

Mick's car was two blocks away, tucked between two overgrown row houses. He kept his gear in the trunk. He knew he couldn't go back to his office. Haugen would've given the feds his name, he knew that. Fred didn't owe him cover on a dead body, but the head start was nice.

What Mick needed to do was make it crystal damn clear who'd been doing the poisoning in that hospital, so the G-men already had the answers before they caught up with him.

MONDAY MORNING, JUNE 23, 1941
ABOARD U-703
27°13'47.5" N, 83°51'20.1" W

//translated from the speaker’s original German//

“Distance?” Captain Strohkirch demanded. Sweat slicked his back, drenching his pyjamas.

“Four hundred meters, sir,” the radioman, von Ingersleben, responded.

“Hard to port, then cut the engines and drift,” Strohkirch ordered. His helmsman, Kaufer, performed the maneuver efficiently, and the engineer relayed the orders down to the engine room. Strohkirch felt the deck shift beneath his feet, then the engine shut down. The pulse of the U-boat went with it. The air suddenly went still and stifling.

“Two hundred meters,” von Ingersleben reported.

Strohkirch braced himself. They'd heard the torpedo splash down moments ago, dropped from a plane. If it was one of the new American models, it would have nothing to track with their engine gone silent. If it was something else, he wouldn't have to worry about it much longer. He squeezed his eyes and muttered a quick prayer that he barely remembered from his childhood.

He waited another few seconds before he snapped:

“Distance?”

“Its engine died, sir,” von Ingersleben said after a second. He tried adjusting the hydrophone levels.

“Died?” Strohkirch asked.

“Confirmed, sir, its rotor is no longer turning.”

“The range is too short to have run out of fuel,” Strohkirch said.

“I did not hear any impact, sir.”

That had been Strohkirch's next thought. They had been hugging tight to the bottom, waiting for their agents' transmission. There could have been any number of obstructions around them, from reefs and undulations in the sea floor to wreckage, both modern and ancient. Any one of those things could deflect a torpedo, but the hydrophone would have heard the clang of it striking something, or the whine if its small motor became snarled on netting or seaweed.

If it had exploded, they would have all heard it.

“It just stopped, sir,” von Ingersleben confirmed.

Strohkirch exhaled and almost collapsed backward into his chair. He had stopped putting stock into the power of prayer as an adult, but when fear takes over and one's life is instants from ending, the old thoughts, drilled in like instinct, took over.

“What about the plane?” he asked after regulating his breathing.

“It may still be above, but it would have to be flying at very low altitude to be audible, sir.”

Strohkirch grunted.

“We cannot stay here. Relocate to the alternate rendezvous site. One-eighth speed, Kaufer, do not even disturb the silt.”

“Aye-aye, sir.”

“Von Ingersleben, report our change in location to the shore party,” Strohkirch ordered.

“Yes, sir.”

Strohkirch slumped into his chair and held his head in his hands. The hum of the screws turning calmed him. At least his ship was dependable. His was not a combat vessel, it was a cargo ship. He estimated the old boat had two, maybe three torpedo scares in her before she joined so many of her contemporaries in Neptune's kingdom. Nine submarines had been lost since the new year, including one just five days previous. So many families broken. Winning the war would be little consolation for those who had lost so much.

The entire crew was uneasy. None of them liked being so close to America. Strohkirch had been a seaman for the last war. He remembered how quickly things had fallen apart after the Yankees had arrived. With the campaign in Russia underway, they could ill afford to have the communists behind them while the Americans swarmed in the from the west. There was only so many provocations Germany could make against the Americans. They were reckless and quick to anger, and Strohkirch did not want to be the reason they entered the war. The Yankees would only let their noses be danced on for so long.

Still, his new commanders told him not to worry. The cargo they'd sent him to retrieve was something the Americans could never only admit to losing. They should never have had it in the first place. And, if anything came of the operation, the Reich had elements in place to quash it before it could lash back at them. They were confident in this, but Strohkirch saw things that reminded him of the last war, and how it ended. His ship, his crew, were but pawns to the admirals, or whatever his new commanders were.

In the last three months alone, U-703 had sailed under four banners, each stranger than the last. Now his commanding officer wore the totenkopf of the SS on his collar, but the grinning skull's pate had been sawed open to allow a white flame within to burst forth. Until that first briefing, he had not been aware of any unit bearing such an emblem. Now, that unit commanded its own armada and had ordered him to help the Abwehr steal materials from a neutral but dangerous nation.

Strohkirch was tired. More and more it felt like he had no control over his fate, or that of his crew. He was responsible for twenty-six other men. He had to send them home to their families. He needed to. But powers greater than him had taken that certainty away from him. Now, he only played a part, others wrote his script. His role could as easily be written out on a whim as he could be the victim of a wayward gust of wind or a poorly-placed ink pot.

“Captain?” First Officer Loris said, loudly enough to interrupt Strohkirch's half-dreamt musings.

“Yes?” he started He looked up to see the crew all staring at him. They must have been trying to get his attention for some time.

“Engineering reports a concerning sound near the main shaft,” Kaufer reported. “They recommend we cut engine power.”

“What kind of sound?”

“Metal grinding, sir,” Kaufer reported.

“I can hear it as well, sir. It is all I can hear,” von Ingersleben added. He held up his hydrophone receivers. Even from across the bridge, Strohkirch could hear a pained, audible whine.

“Cut engine power, maintain depth,” Strohkirch ordered.

“Aye-aye, sir.”

The ship's hum went silent. There, at the very edge of his hearing, Strohkirch could hear the squeal of metal cutting away at itself.

“Engineering reports the sound continuing, sir.”

“Shit,” Strohkirsh muttered. He nodded to Loris: “You have the bridge.”

He made his way along the centerline of the ship, dodging those sailors who could not get out of his way fast enough. He passed through the empty cargo hold and entered engineering, as far aft as he could go. The basket-weave of pipes and conduits was always overwhelming for him. He had been a first officer before he got his own ship and a torpedoman before that. He could calculate intercept vectors in his head. The physical makeup of his vessel was not his strong suit, but even he know the sound permeating the cramped area was wrong.

“What is that?” he asked over the piercing whine. It was grating to his inner ear.

“I don't know, sir, everything is shut down. It's coming from outside the hull,” Chef Engineer Reyer said.

“What does that sound like to you?” Strohkirch asked. The sound was familiar to him, but he could not place it.

“I have never heard anything like that underway, sir. If we were dry-docked, I'd swear it was a metal saw.”

“A metal saw?” Strohkirch repeated. He and the chief listened to it in silence with the engineering crew huddled around. He could almost hear it, diamond teeth chewing through metal at ten thousand R.P.M.'s.

The bridge phone light blinked, startling them all.

“Engineering,” Reyer answered. He listened for a second. His eyes went wide.

“Yes, sir,” he said, then hung it up.

“What is it?” Strohkirch demanded.

“There is a second sound coming from bow storage,” Reyer said.

Strohkirch's mouth went dry.

“We are under attack,” he managed. The whine reached a wailing keen and suddenly the engineering compartment was flooded with acrid smoke and showering sparks. Strohkirch stumbled over his feet and hit the deck, his arm over his face. He expected a crippling blast of cold seawater to end him them and there, but none came.

“What the hell?” the chief wondered. Strohkirch got to his feet and shoved his men aside. The smoke dissipated, revealing a circular hole bored directly through the hull. Its edges were red hot. He leaned in to look at it, finding it pitch black on the inside.

“Torch!” he demanded. Before one could be found, the bore hole rattled and echoed. Something metal bounced within in, then slid out to land at Strohkirch's feet. It was a canister grenade.

“Run!” he shouted, as if his crew hadn't already scrambled out and left him there.

The grenade began hissing, pumping out white mist that instantly squeezed Strohkirch's eyes shut and made him cough so violently that it felt like he had been punched in the stomach. He fell to his knee, hard. His body was spasming and he couldn't find his feet. His men dragged him through the hatch and slammed it shut behind him.

“We... have... to surface,” he gasped between wracking coughs. They laid him out flat on the deck in the storage hold and stretched his arms out over his head to open his lungs.

He could hear yelling coming back from the bridge. His ears popped. They were sealing off more compartments. The whole boat was being flooded with mask breaker gas.

Before he could issue more orders, the whine began anew, this time at and even higher pitch, emanating from outside the hold's hull, not a meter away from his head.

“Unlock... the armory,” he managed to gasp. “We'll throw them off... on the surface.”

Dive alarms sounded, and Strohkirch felt the ship shift beneath him as she blew her ballast. They would be atop the waves in seconds, hopefully with enough force to shear off whatever limpets were chewing into his boat.

U-703 burst through the waves with more violence than Strohkirch expected, throwing him into a bulkhead. His head rang.

“Repel boarders,” he croaked. His crew was already working, handing out carbines to men lining up at the base of the conning tower ladder. Loris must have already issued the order.

Strohkirch hauled himself to his feet and stumbled past the ladder. Second Officer Pletscher was already at the top. He heaved the hatch open and followed his Luger up and out. The searing sunlight that poured down the hatch forced Strohkirch and his scalded eyes away. More men climbed out behind him, until half the crew was armed and clambering across the outer hull.

Loris was waiting on the bridge.

“What do you have?” Strohkirch asked, He collapsed into his chair. He did not realize he was bleeding. He had a cut on his palm and his hair was matted and oozing crimson.

“Unknown devices penetrated the hull in two places, sir. Through these breaches, a non-lethal chemical irritant gas was introduced into the ship. Three men, beside yourself, were injured and are being treated now. We locked down the affected sections. Our ascent seems to have stopped an in-progress third breach.”

“Have you contacted the shore party?” Strohkirch asked.

“We transmitted our location change and a may-day. We have yet to receive a response. There is much interference.”

“Damn,” Strohkirch muttered.

Gunfire rattled outside, causing Strohkirch to jump in his seat. His back popped and coiled around a fresh bruise that had tenderized him bone deep. A blast shook the entire boat. Alarms sounded up and down the whole vessel. The feeling of being a rat in a trap overwhelmed him. He forced the spinal terror down and took command of the situation:

“What was that?”

“Small explosion amidship,” Loris answered. “No further breaches reported, sir.”

“Give me the periscope,” Strohkirch snapped. The eyepiece lowered in front of him. He dragged himself to his feet by its handles and settled one eye on the viewer. He could barely see through his streaming tears.

“What the hell...” he whispered. The entire bow of the ship was wreathed in black smoke. The mount that had held his deck gun was empty, as if the cannon had been snipped off. Nearby, six of his men were laid out on the deck in a line, facedown and motionless.

The gunfire reached a crescendo as he wheeled the periscope around aftward.

Two men in black frog man suits were advancing down the ship's spine, shotguns in hand. Several more of Strohkirch's crewmen were laid out across the hull, twitching and bleeding. Only Pletscher remained standing. He tossed his Luger aside, obviously out of ammunition. While Strohkirch watched, one of the frog men kicked the deck team's dropped guns into the sea. The other raised his shotgun and fired it into Pletscher's chest. Pletscher flopped onto his back, still.

“My god,” Strohkirch whispered.

“What is it, sir?” Loris asked.

“Seal the hatch, prepare to dive!” Strohkirch shouted.

“Our men are outside,” Loris objected.

“They are dead!” Strohkirch snapped. “Descend, now!”

Loris tried the hydraulics, but the hatch refused to close. He rushed off the bridge and hauled himself up the conning tower's short ladder to to lock it down manually.

Strohkirch tried to watch the frog men through the periscope, only to find his view dark. They had damaged it. They were coming.

“Loris!” he shouted. He twisted around to see the first officer slam down to the deck. He lay flat on his back, groaning. Two crewmen grabbed him by his shirt and dragged him out of the way.

Sunlight still came down into the ship. The hatch was still open.

“Sir, the planes are not responding, and neither are the ballasts,” Kaufer reported.

“We cannot open the engine room hatch, sir,” Reyer added. “My men are preparing the torches, but it will take hours to cut our way in.”

They could not dive.

A man's voice echoed down from the open hatch. English. American.

“Reyer!” Strohkirch hissed.

“They demand our unconditional surrender,” Reyer translated. He had gone to engineering school in London.

“After they killed Pletscher?” Strohkirch roared. “They shot our men to pieces. We will fight them to the last.”

His bridge crew looked terrified but determined. They were glorified delivery men, now at the mercy of murderers.

The American called down again.

“They say the men are alive,” Reyer told him.

Strohkirch stalked past him and shouted up the ladder shaft:

“I saw you shoot them, you animal!”

“Captain,” someone called back. Strohkirch recognized Pletscher's voice. He squinted upwards and saw his second officer looking down at him through the hatch. “They broke my ribs, sir. Two boarders. They are not using bullets...”

The American hauled Pletscher back and shouted down at Strohkirch.

“They have summoned ships and more planes, sir,” Reyer said. The American paused to let him translate, then shouted again. Reyer translated as quick as he could: “They say could have used a poison gas, or hand grenades, when we were submerged.”

“We are alive because they want us to be,” Strohkirch concluded.

“They have not killed any crewmen, and they do not want to. But they will defend themselves.”

Strohkirch slumped against the bulkhead. He looked around at his crew. Some were crying, both from the gas attack and the shock, others clutched hand tools they intended to use as weapons. They meant to go down with drums and trumpets, and go down they would. They were milk men, not commandos. The Americans above had attacked a submarine as an unsupported pair, forcing it to surface before taking down the most fit sailors in his command.

A loud bang against the deck made Strohkirch jump. Juice ran from a large orange that had splattered against the deck.

The American called down.

“He says that the next one will be a hand grenade.”

Strohkirch sighed and pulled a white handkerchief out of his pocket. His men gasped. They were not even at war with America. There was no telling how they would be treated. But anything was better than sinking with this tub, suffocating in the dark. Strohkirch stepped up to the ladder and waved the handkerchief at the head peeking over the edge of the hatch.

He covered his face when he emerged out of the tower. The sun was bright and his eyes had been rasped with gas. The American grabbed him by the collar and hauled him along. A shove sent him to the deck, where a second set of hands bound his wrists and ankles. When his eyesight adjusted, he found a man standing over him in a wet suit. He was broad and blonde, and he showed no strain when he flipped Strohkirch onto his belly and bound him like a hog for slaughter.

Strohkirch struggled a bit, mostly to say he had, but the strange cord had no give. It was thin and an odd pale green, lighter than chain or cable, braided like rope but without scratchy fibers. He looked to his right and found his anti-boarding team similarly bound, laid out in a row down the length of the boat. Pletscher offered a silent apology.

“Captain,” an American said. His German was flawless. Strohkirch wormed back around. Both of the frog men were standing over him now. They looked almost identical, twins or brothers, with the same frame, blonde hair, and smirks. The one on the left continued: “Thank you for your cooperation.”

A small fleet of fast boats appeared on the horizon. Strohkirch did not recognize the flag the vessels were flying; it was of no country he knew. As they got closer, he made it out better: a blue banner featuring an eagle clutching a saber, its wings outstretched to frame a single staring eye.

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Copyright © 2022 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin. Art by Tyrelle Smith.