Blues in the Night

Chapter III Two Plus Two

The checker stood up stiffly, his head bent forward as he kept his eyes on the girl. He held his arms out rigidly from his sides with the fingers extended.

“I give up,” he muttered.

Mulcahey growled, “Black shame on ye, killin’ an old codger like Ed.”

Koski touched Remsen on the shoulder. “That wasn’t a confession, was it?”

“Hell, no!” Remsen waggled his head in despair. “I only meant I can’t understand why my sister’d do a thing like that.” He stared at her, miserably. “If she did,” he added.

“Jump down.” Koski motioned. “Keep an eye on him, Joe.” He waited until Remsen had landed on the pilothouse roof and Mulcahey was helping him down to the foredeck. Then the lieutenant went back into the pierhouse.

He held his flash so the funnel of light lit up his head and cap. The two radio patrolmen, running toward him, slowed.

“What you got?” one of them called.

“Hijack?” asked the other.

Koski circled the beam on Ed Weltz. The uniformed men inspected the body with noncommittal grunts.

“Might be the same crew who’ve been hoisting stuff along the waterfront for weeks. Or could be some amateurs who figure the professional pirates’ll get blamed for whatever they do. Either way, there’s a couple hundred cases of Scotch missing and this watchman knocked off. But there’s a queer angle.”

“What’s that on his puss?” asked the older patrolman.

“Looks like lipstick,” his partner suggested.

“It is, too.” Koski explained about the girl’s suicide attempt. “Her brother’s head checker, here. He claims he was out grabbing a sandwich when all this happened, came back and heard me, put in a call for help.”

The younger officer looked skeptical. “Our shortwave reported the call was relayed from Launch Nine. Is that your boat?”

Koski nodded. “I’ve got the brother on board with her. She won’t admit swinging that crate hook — but she doesn’t deny it, either.”

The elder patrolman smiled cynically with one corner of his mouth. “She’ll prob’ly claim the old dodo was attacking her, and that she only bopped him in self-defense.”

“Maybe.” Koski didn’t seem concerned. “I’ll turn her over to you as a homicide suspect. I want to ask her brother a few things. He might give us a lead to these cargo thieves the commissioner’s getting so burned up about.”

The younger policeman squinted suspiciously. “We better take ’em both off your hands, Lieutenant. We got strict orders to bring everyone connected with these piracies straight to the Deputy Inspector.”

Koski regarded him dourly. “Think you’re in your own parish? You’re in the Harbor Precinct, now — even if there’s a yard of concrete between you and the river. You take orders from me. Understand?”

The senior patrolman apologized. “No harm meant, Lieutenant. It’s only the Inspector’s been needling us to get action on this business, an’ Frank’s kind of an eager beaver. We’ll wait for the Hommy Detail — an’ then book your cold-bath baby.”

“Ask your captain—” Koski wasn’t mollified — “to assign a spare man to fixed post here until morning. These snatch-boys have been known to strike twice in the same spot.”

He led the younger officer to the bollard where the Vigilant’s bowline stretched drum-tight in the flooding tide.

When Koski unlocked the ankle cuff, he told the girl, “It’ll make it a lot easier on yourself and on your brother if you tell us why you came to the pier tonight.”

She tried dejectedly to make a skirt out of the thick blanket. “I often come to see my brother. It’s the only chance I get — to talk to him.”

“Doesn’t he live at home? With you?” From the foredeck, Remsen snapped, “You don’t have to answer questions, Ellen. Wait until you get a lawyer. Don’t tell them a thing. I’ll get a lawyer for you. Just don’t say anything.”

Mulcahey grabbed the checker, muscled him against the visor of the pilothouse windows. “Just don’t you say anything, bud. Or I’ll wrap live around your whiskers!”

The girl put her hand gently on Koski’s sleeve. “I ought to be grateful to you. But I can’t tell you anything — nothing at all. You’ll have to believe I’m grateful, and let it go at that. I’m really not worth risking your life for, am I?”

He found a length of quarter-inch rope, helped her make it into a temporary belt to hitch the blanket around her slim waist. “I don’t know about that. Offhand, I’d say a girl who could commit a coldblooded murder wouldn’t be the sort to get remorseful enough to walk to the exit the way you did.”

She held her head high and looked over him at the bluecoat waiting on the pier above.

Koski helped her to the foredeck. “I wouldn’t know what you’re covering up, and you must think it’s damn bad or you wouldn’t have taken that dip. But keeping your mouth shut isn’t going to fix anything. You think about it. I’ll be around to see you in the morning.”

“Don’t bother,” she said bitterly. “I don’t know anything you couldn’t tell from what you found — in there.” She gestured toward the pier, held her hand up to the radio patrolman, was lifted up, disappeared into the great shed.

“Now then.” Mulcahey shoved Remsen toward the cockpit. “Shoot off your face. You want to so bad!”

The checker applied his handkerchief to the cut lip. “I’ll take my own advice and keep still. Anything I said, you’d twist it someway to go against my sister.”

Koski said, “You seem all-fired sure she killed him.”

Remsen studied the blood on his handkerchief.

“One thing I’m sure of—” the lieutenant poked his flashlight at the pilings alongside, where the sea-moss had been rubbed clean by something that left pearl-gray streaks — “she didn’t get away with those cases of whisky all by herself. It took three or four huskies to handle those boxes. Who else was in on it?”

Remsen cried resentfully. “Look. I didn’t even know Ellen was down here, tonight. I thought she was working. I go out to get a bite, come back to find Ed stone dead and Ellen half drowned. That’s absolutely all I know and all I’m going to tell you.”

Koski grabbed a fistful of the turtle-neck sweater, pulled the checker toward him. “What’s given you ideas it’s smart to clam up on cops? Well, it’s dumb to be dumb. Sooner or later you’ll loosen up.” He slammed the checker back against the bulkhead so hard Remsen grunted like a boxer socked hard in the belly. “Where does your sister work, wearing a satin evening gown? She doesn’t look like a dance-hall dollie.”

“She’s a singer. Night club singer.”

“Where?”

“Tahiti Tavern.”

Mulcahey boomed, “Oh, ho. That joint!”

Koski said, “Phil Vann’s place? Sheepshead Bay?”

“Yes.”

The Harbor Squad lieutenant considered: Tahiti Tavern. One of the biggest drink-dine-and-dance operations in the entire metropolitan area. Half a dozen dining rooms. Three bars and a cocktail lounge half the size of Grand Central. It served a couple of thousand people, weekend nights. Did a year-round business.

Phil Vann. The Seafood Sultan. Built his business on the slogan From a Broiled Lobster to an International Institution. A slick customer. There had been rumors of his rum-running connections back in the bootleg byegones, but he was supposed to be strictly legitimate, if a trifle on the sharp side, nowadays. Still, the Tavern’s cafes and restaurants, its bars and lounge, could absorb a good many hundred cases of Scotch annually.

“Let’s put it this way. Remsen. You work here at the pier. You know when a big shipment of whisky is due. You tell Ellen. She works for Vann. She tells him about the liquor. Then the next thing we know—”

“You’re putting it cockeyed,” Remsen said shakily. “First place, I don’t talk business, outside of business, to anybody. Including my sister. Second place, Phil Vann’s no crook. He’d no more have a part of pirating stuff off a dock than... than I would.”

The checker pulled his sweater down nervously.

“Now you’re beginning to spill.” Koski pushed the flat of his palm against the checker’s wishbone. “Keep pouring. Who does she know over there? Who owns a gray motor boat?”

Remsen looked sick. He gulped. “I suppose that won’t be any secret by tomorrow. Her husband.”

“Oh?”

“Chuck Matless. Charley Matless.”

“Who’s he?”

“Runs one of the party boats for Phil Vann.”

Mulcahey grunted. “Ahha! The Vannity, by any chance, now? A fifty-foot, beat-up old tub?”

“That’s the one. He takes fishing parties out every morning, around five or six o’clock. Out around Ambrose Light. I went with him once.”

The sergeant pursed his lips. “A tall, homely scut? Built thin as a pelican, with a beak big as a pelican’s, too? A nose you could see miles on a clear day?”

“That’s Chuck. But—”

Koski threw off the bow-line. “Turn her over, Sarge. I’ll cast off.” He asked Remsen. “Has he ever had that barge over here at Pier Nineteen?”

“Not that I know of,” Remsen said, unhappily. “You don’t suppose that he might have—”

“After you been chasing junk-boats and fishing for floaters and grappling for suicides for ten years around this harbor, you don’t suppose anything.” Koski coiled the stern line neatly over the cleat. “But you get so you can figure a little. Any party boat that will carry sixty-five people could handle three hundred cases of liquor all right.”