Chapter 3 - THE SECOND CYLINDER
Lucardi took us to a warehouse on Washington Street.
The sign outside read:
LUCA IMPORT & PRODUCE
Crates of onions and canned tomatoes lined the front.
Behind them, through another locked door, was a room with no windows.
One table.
Four chairs.
A wall map of the harbor.
A radio set more sophisticated than anything Tommy ever repaired at home.
And an American flag folded on a shelf.
That confused me more than the armed men outside.
Walter was seated across from us.
Lucardi’s men searched him.
Wallet.
Cigarettes.
One folding knife.
No second cylinder.
Lucardi placed Tommy’s cylinder on the table.
“Where is the other one?”
Walter shrugged.
“I don’t know.”
“You said he made two.”
“I said you were assuming he didn’t.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
Walter smiled.
“You’re getting old.”
Lucardi leaned back.
No anger.
“What did Thomas tell you?”
Walter’s confidence slipped.
“Enough.”
“Meaning nothing.”
I interrupted.
“Stop.”
Both men looked at me.
I was tired of being the object in their argument.
“Tommy did not build mysteries for amusement. If there are two cylinders, he had a reason.”
Lucardi nodded once.
“Agreed.”
Walter said:
“He had a reason to distrust him.”
I turned.
“Why?”
Walter hesitated.
Then looked at Lucardi.
“Ask Salvatore what happened to the cargo ship Maribel.”
Lucardi’s face changed.
I saw it.
“What happened?”
Walter leaned back.
“Three months ago, one of Lucardi’s warehouses sent bearings and machine components to Pier 22. Supposedly for repair work.”
Lucardi said:
“They were legitimate shipments.”
Walter smiled.
“Part of them.”
I looked at Salvatore.
He did not deny it quickly enough.
“What was in the rest?”
He answered eventually.
“Alcohol.”
I stared.
“During wartime rationing?”
“Black market liquor,” Walter said. “Very patriotic.”
Lucardi ignored him.
“I moved contraband before the war. Some habits did not stop because Washington printed posters.”
I almost laughed at the absurd bluntness.
“So Tommy discovered it?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“He threatened to report me.”
Walter added:
“And suddenly Tommy becomes useful to you.”
Lucardi’s eyes narrowed.
“That is not what happened.”
“Then explain.”
Lucardi looked at me.
This time he did.
“After Pearl Harbor, federal agents came to men like me.”
I frowned.
“Men like you?”
“Men who knew the docks. The unions. The freight routes. Men who knew which foreman gambled, which clerk drank, which warehouse guard had cousins overseas.”
He paused.
“They wanted information.”
This was not impossible.
Everyone knew organized crime controlled pieces of the waterfront.
But hearing it said aloud inside a produce warehouse felt unreal.
“You worked for the government?”
Lucardi gave a humorless smile.
“Not officially enough for medals.”
Walter snorted.
Lucardi continued.
“Tommy learned I was passing information about suspicious shipments to federal contacts.”
“And the black-market liquor?”
“I was still a criminal.”
The honesty made him harder to classify.
“Tommy confronted you?”
“Yes.”
“And then?”
“He asked whether I could get him introduced to the right people.”
“Why?”
“Because he already suspected something larger.”
Walter’s face went tight.
Lucardi glanced at him.
“Someone was using legitimate wartime cargo movements to hide sabotage materials.”
“What kind?”
“Timers. Detonator parts. Chemicals.”
My stomach turned.
“To bomb ships?”
“Maybe docks. Maybe warehouses. Maybe rail links. We never learned the full target.”
“Tommy did?”
Lucardi looked at the cylinder.
“I think so.”
Walter said:
“And you think opening that makes you the hero.”
Lucardi’s voice dropped.
“I’ve never called myself that.”
Something about the exchange finally made sense.
Tommy had not trusted Lucardi because Lucardi was innocent.
He trusted him because Lucardi was useful.
Until usefulness became dangerous.
I thought back to Tommy’s final visit.
He had brought me coffee.
Sat by the radio.
Asked about my landlord.
At the time I thought it was casual.
“How long has Hallowell owned this building?”
“Years.”
“Does he ever go into tenants’ rooms?”
“What?”
“I’m asking.”
I laughed at him.
“Tommy, are you investigating my landlord?”
He didn’t laugh.
Now I turned toward Walter.
“Tommy knew about you before he died.”
Walter shrugged.
“He suspected.”
“Of what?”
Silence.
Lucardi answered.
“Walter managed rental buildings near several docks.”
“So?”
“So empty apartments are useful.”
My skin chilled.
“For what?”
“Storage. Meetings. Radio equipment.”
I stared at Walter.
“No.”
Walter snapped:
“You think I’m a German agent?”
“I think you attacked me for something hidden in my dead brother’s radio.”
His face tightened.
That was answer enough.
I looked at Lucardi.
“Open it.”
He hesitated.
I slammed my good hand on the table.
“Open it.”
Lucardi took out a small knife.
Carefully broke the wax seal.
Inside the metal tube was a narrow strip of paper rolled tightly around a smaller object.
Lucardi pulled both out.
The paper had only four words.
CLARA KNOWS THE SONG.
I stared.
“What?”
Walter leaned forward.
Lucardi unrolled it again.
Same words.
CLARA KNOWS THE SONG.
“What song?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
Walter started laughing.
I looked at him.
“What?”
He shook his head.
“Your brother was cleverer than all of us.”
Lucardi picked up the smaller object.
A tiny brass fitting.
It looked like part of a radio dial.
Then suddenly I remembered.
Tommy, age twelve, tapping a rhythm on our kitchen table.
Our mother shouting from the stove:
“Thomas, stop that infernal song.”
A song.
Not sung.
Tapped.
He used it whenever we played hide-and-seek in the tenement courtyard.
Three quick taps.
Two slow.
Three quick.
I whispered:
“I know the song.”
Lucardi leaned forward.
“What is it?”
I looked at the wall map.
Then at the radio set.
“Not a song.”
Walter’s smile vanished.
“It’s a frequency pattern.”
Tommy had taught me years before the war how to use tuning numbers as a game.
Three stations.
Two shortwave bands.
One repeating sequence.
Numbers disguised as music.
I looked at the little brass fitting.
Tommy had not hidden a list inside the cylinder.
He had hidden instructions for how to find it.
May you like
And the second cylinder, I suddenly knew, was never inside the radio.
It was inside a broadcast.
