Crossing Up

The recent phrase in the headlines "Don't ask - don't tell" reminded me of an incident that occurred more than forty years ago.... At a certain time our cargo claims were backing up because our claim agent was spending so much time defending the company from personal injury suits. So the decision was made to hire a clerk/stenographer to relieve the backload. Enter Merton S. a male stenographer who typed forty words a minute and reveled in the male atmosphere of the waterfront pier environment. It was a time when gayness was still in the closet and Merton made a dent in the backload of claims. Then one day Merton did not report for work. He had no next of kin so his landlady was contacted and when she looked in on him she found Merton on the floor with five slugs in his torso and a closet full of women's clothes. Our boy had another life after work and it appeared he met the wrong John in his after dark enterprise. We made the news for one day as this was well before 24/7 cable news. Eventually the police came down to interview Merton's fellow employees as they had no leads in the case. Our claims agent being distraught of losing his crackerjack
steno misspoke to the detective saying "Merton was my friend." They hassled him for months until the police finally acknowledged that their suspect was probably a transient carnival type passing thru who unfortunately met our steno between paragraphs. So our small outport chalked up a homicide but we couldn't compete with the New York Pistol Local who controlled the Hudson river piers.
tjs
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