Free The Big Both Ways by John Straley

Ellie pushed them farther into the water. Ellie took one last long drink from the paper bag then threw it under the pier, where the girl heard glass breaking. Ellie pushed the boat away from shore and climbed in.
    It felt as if the whole thing was going to flip over. No one could keep their seat until the sad man with the beat-up face started to row. He sat with his back to the front and pulled on the oars, staring straight at Ellie.
    The rain was falling harder now as the sun broke over the Cascades. The raindrops made little plopping sounds as they tried to jump back into the air. All the drops made little circles and the circles all cut into one another, and sometimes a fish jumped right up through it all and back into the green. A little white diving duck, which Annabelle did not recognize, poked its neck down and disappeared. She leaned back under her umbrella and closed her eyes.
    The little dory sat low in the water. Ellie was pulling clothes out of her bags and throwing the suitcases into the water. She was laughing but no one else was. Annabelle had her feet up on her own suitcase and the man who was rowing had a bundle of clothes resting on his outstretched legs. When Annabelle tilted her umbrella she could see only the shoulders and back of the man ducking his head and pulling against the oars.
    Annabelle looked to the south where dark clouds rolled over the water. There was a bluff of black clouds churning up the water in its path. It almost looked as if bits of broken glass were being sucked up out of the sea. Annabelle hunched deeper in her spot.
    Ellie called over the man to Annabelle, “Did I ever tell you about the little sailboat I used to have out on the lake near the Idaho border?” The battered blonde was waving gaily as if she were in a parade. “My sister and I could sail that boat anywhere.”
    The little girl hunkered down in her nest. “No,” she said softly, and added, “I think we’re going to get wet.” Then she closed her eyes tight and the wind stooped down on them like a falcon. She pulled her umbrella down and curled against the birdcage. As the wind tried to pull the umbrella out of her hands, the yellow bird began to sing.

SIX
 
    George Hanson quit drinking about the same time Prohibition had been lifted. He didn’t see the point of it anymore. He had been a cop for ten years and most of that time he had been chasing after the small-time crooks and grifters who had come down to the waterfront following the illegal liquor trade. There had been hidden warehouses and late-night schooners pulling up to unlighted piers. There were speakeasies where everyone knew the password and no one ever expected to be raided. There was never much pressure to solve cases. But now everyone was drinking anywhere they wanted, and Hanson was back to more disagreeable crimes: men killing their wives and sometimes wives getting a first good lick in. Hanson had tried drinking after they lifted Prohibition but he found it too damn depressing.
    Hanson had grown up knowing the world of the docks. There had been stevedores and wharf rats coming to their back door for meals ever since he could remember. He had helped his father stitch up men who were unrecognizable from their beatings. His first few years on the force he tried to stay away from the waterfront, but gradually he ended up near the beach, drawn by the smell and the call of the gulls, drawn by the bodies thathad a way of washing up there. George had seen the corruption moving into the labor rackets, kickbacks and bribes that flowed up the chain of authority in a way that would have sickened the Finn. The docks were becoming another grift, and he didn’t mind putting the bite on some of these new union boys, but he still couldn’t stand to be around Floodwater operatives.
    Floodwater Security was an old company from the Midwest. The first office opened up in Winona, Minnesota, when the town was broken open by spring floods and the local authorities