Chapter Eight

HIS JOB for the night was to roam the decks looking for signs of trouble, everything from fistfights to fires. The forward area of the lower main deck behind the big staircase was an open-air lounge of sorts, a bullpen of wicker furniture and potted plants, and he noticed that mostly older people were sitting here, served by four waiters bringing out ice setups in sweating silver buckets. The boat doddered downstream, threading through the anchored freighters in quarantine at the same speed as the current, and a breeze rose off the water like a blessing, for as much as passengers craved the music and drink, they came to get out of the over-heated pavement of the city and their oven houses that wouldn’t cool down until midnight. At eight-thirty he went upstairs and the long ballroom seemed like a broad wooden railway tunnel filled with music, each ceiling arch hung with dim yellow, red, and blue lights, and the band was settling into a medium-tempo fox-trot embroidered with clarinet improvisations. The breeze steeped in and matched the flow of music, giving the swaying four hundred couples a lift from their humid life that normally left their dancing shoes green with mildew in the back of the closet. Through the windows the doubled shore lights sparked in the river and everyone felt the watery motion under their sliding feet, the turning of currents melting into the horns’ urging; the couples quick-stepped and careened, navigating the dance floor under the colored lights. Sam remembered this deck as a closed-up and creaking static mess, but now it was a moving cloud in dreamland, soon to be a memory for the dancers, who would outlast the boat itself by many years.

He walked over where the second mate watched the crowd. “Hey,” Charlie called. “This New Orleans crowd can dance.”

Sam looked over his shoulder. “I guess they can. What’s that fellow doing?”

Duggs yelled over a rising trumpet riff. “The Texas Tommy. If too many of them start up that hop dancing you have to stop it or at least spread ’ em out. The bracing under the floor can’t take too much of that. A two-step’s worse. The whole deck goes up and down like a fight ring when everybody takes a step on the downbeat.”

“Shake the place apart?” He thought Duggs was making a joke.

Charlie shook his head. “Last year an excursion steamer upriver had the whole dance deck cave in. Sent thirty people to the hospital.”

“Hell of a way to end a good time!”

“You go check the café.”

“Right.”

The band stopped and the girls returning to their tables across the floor were smiling and fanning themselves, their dresses hanging limp.

“If you see Weller, cheer him up.”

“What?”

“The captain’s got him waiting tables on the hurricane deck.”

“I bet the musicians’ union will gripe about that.”

“He asked for it himself. His salary was cut now that he’s just playing the day trips.”

On the third deck was a long, roofed section open to the night, dim except for a glowing backwash from bulbs outlining the several decks. Here couples were lounging at tables, some mixing drinks from bottles they’d brought from shore, some at the dark edges of the deck kissing, telling lies, making promises. The restaurant on the rear half of this deck was packed with people eating sandwiches or cheap steaks. A door at the rear spewed a stream of white-jacketed waiters serving the whole boat. Everyone forward was well behaved so he turned his attention to the rear of the deck, where Ted Weller was taking an order at a table. He met him at the kitchen door, before he went in.

“Moonlighting?”

“Got to do some damn something to squeeze a nickel out of the old man.” Ted Weller’s eyes were red, and Sam wondered if he’d been drinking.

“Hey, I’m on your side.”

“The more I work, the less I have. First my little girl, and now they’re trying to starve me out.”

Sam put a hand on his shoulder. “Your little girl? That’s what I’m here for. When we get upriver, I’ll start asking around onshore.”

Ted wrote something on his pad and glanced up. “She would kiss me at bedtime and say ‘Gute Nacht.’ I was teaching her German.”

“Yeah?”

He leaned close and Sam could smell the whiskey. “You don’t know what it’s like, not to be able to take your kid in your arms anymore.” He turned at once and banged through a swinging door.

Sam wanted to follow him through and remind him that he wasn’t the only man in the world to lose a child, but he held back, watching the door swing in and out with waiters and busboys, giving a sliced-up view of Ted Weller arguing with a sweating cook.

AROUND TEN O’CLOCK, the boat swung into a dreamy turn at the Violet locks and was steaming upstream at three-quarters speed. The band broke into an uptempo version of “Everybody Step” and emptied the tables. When Sam came down the stairs Charlie Duggs was dragging a big young fellow by the collar out toward the forward rail. He broke loose and swung, punching Duggs in the jaw. Charlie’s face rebounded wearing a grin, and he slapped the man openhanded, the percussion cracking above the thundering band, the customer plunging sideways under a table. Sam went over to help but the second mate waved him off.

“I can handle this one. He just wants to dance a new step is all. A waiter came up a minute ago and said things were getting testy downstairs.” He grabbed the man by the ankles and hauled him back out into the music.

On the main deck Sam spotted two old men arguing, their faces crimson, one holding a cane by its bottom, the curved handle rising toward a big Emerson ceiling fan, which jerked it away, and carried it three turns before flinging it across the lounge, onto a table, where it knocked drinks in the laps of an overdressed and tipsy foursome. Sam at once understood several things about a dance steamer: people felt safe getting drunk since there was no proper law on board, nearly everyone was drinking, and any cruise was liable to turn more unstable as the trip wore on.

He stepped in front of two men advancing from their dripping table. “Easy,” he said, holding up his hands. “It was an accident.”

“Oh yeah?” One of them raised a fist, a short fellow with an ice cube rising out of his vest pocket. “Where have you been? These old bastards have been carping back and forth for the past half hour. This was supposed to be an enjoyable ride.”

“We want our money back for the drinks,” the other man said, swaying and then taking an extra step to the side.

“I’ll see that the waiter brings out another bucket of ice and some glasses.”

“What about an apology?” the little man said.

The larger of the two old men came over. His eyes were small and his nose was a huge overripe strawberry. “I’ll take my cane, thank you.”

“Don’t you have anything to say?” the little man snarled.

The old gentleman pursed his mouth, and Sam knew by looking at his face that he was going to say something that would result in the breaking up of a quarter of the wicker furniture in the lounge. “I see,” the old man began, “that you would like for me to make you feel better. You want me to apologize for the actions of an electrical contrivance.”

Here the little man’s friend stepped up. “You don’t have to get smart with us.” He gave the old man a halfhearted shove in the vest.

A tiny, well-dressed, middle-aged gentleman stood up across the room and steadied himself against a plant stand. “You just watch who you’re shoving around,” he chirped. “That’s my father-in-law.”

Two women were flapping ice off their dresses, and one of them picked up the cane and tossed it at the old man, hitting him on the forehead and knocking his glasses off. “You trashy people,” he roared, “ought to be thrown overboard!”