Blues in the Night

Chapter VII Mop-Up

Fifty yards astern of the scow Mulcahey was sweeping the water with the beam. A light ring flared ten yards nearer the tow. The sarge would have hurled that preserver over to mark the spot where Koski’d gone under. If Chuck had been able to fend for himself, it would have been possible to swim back to that ring buoy, even exhausted as he was by that long immersion under the scow, dazed as he still was from that blow from the shovel. With Chuck to look out for, even sixty, seventy yards as it was now, with the tow drawing away for the Vigilant, even that was out of the question.

He overarmed back to the side of the scow, catching the rubrail a couple of feet above the loaded water line, with only a couple of yards to spare. While he rested there, hoping Chuck Matless would show signs of life, he watched the police boat’s emerald running light dwindle to a small green spark, the searching sweep of the beam diminish to the wavering antenna of a waterbug.

Sand sifted down on him. He looked up at the side of the scow, six feet above him. Not much chance of pulling himself up there. No cleated steps. No convenient ring bolts. Sand scows weren’t meant to be climbed on.

The sand was spilling down from a trough of the tarpaulin which had been carried over the side a foot or so. If he could get hold of that — but he couldn’t. The other end probably wasn’t pinned under the boxes tightly enough to hold anyway. Still—

He maneuvered one of Chuck’s windbreaker sleeves oil, shoved his left arm through it, gripped the rub-rail with his left hand. One thing sure, if the party boat captain went under now, he wouldn’t go alone.

Then he stripped off Chuck’s belt. He lashed out with the belt buckle, managed to hit the tarp, but the buckle end was too light. It didn’t pull at the canvas enough. It wasn’t until the red flare of the Hunts Point light made the oily surface of the channel look like roiled-up blood that he managed to work one of Chuck’s shoes off, tie it clumsily to the buckle.

Even then, it took a long ten minutes, while the scow swam silently past the belching stacks of Port Morris and a trawler bound for Fulton Market, for Koski to whip at the canvas enough to get the eyelets tangled in a fold, pull the loose end down on him.

The testing was the dangerous part. If he trusted his weight, and Chuck’s, to that ten-foot strip of tarpaulin and it came loose, that would be it. He waited until the tow was only a hundred yards from an anchored power boat on the Bronx shore. Then he began the climb, inching up, avoiding a sudden pull, dragging Chuck along after him.

He’d just gotten one arm safely up over the edge of the walkway, when a familiar roaring grew louder in the mist. He elbowed himself up, lifted Chuck, let him flop lifelessly on the walkway. By the time the Vigilant’s white finger had touched the stern of the scow, Koski stood alone at the edge of the walkway waving.

Mulcahey was up on the walkway, scooping away sand to get a place to make the bow-line fast. Koski was down in the cockpit breaking open a case of I. MacLone’s Finest. The police boat was being towed along with the scow. Apparently the tug’s captain, up ahead, had noticed nothing in the fog.

Olsan pried off the top of the case. “We sure thought you was a dead duck, Lieutenant, goin’ down with Chuck hangin’ onto you.”

“Yeah.” Koski knocked the neck of the bottle off on the rail, poured half a coffee mug full, put it down the hatch. Maybe the whisky would warm him enough to start him shivering. Bad sign when you were so marrow-chilled you couldn’t even shiver.

Vann said tightly. “Chuck go down?”

Koski burbled more liquor in the mug. “I had enough trouble saving myself. Tide carried me under the scow.”

The restaurant man laughed harshly. “You don’t hear me moaning. One less murderer to worry about.”

“Will be,” Koski put the bottom up, “come July or so. Hah, Olsan?”

The bartender puckered his fat features. “But if it was Chuck — killed the watchman, I mean — while he was in the shed—”

“It wasn’t. It was you. You used that hook on Cap Weltz.”

“Hey, now!” the plump man protested. “You got no right or reason—”

“You killed him because he was in on the setup with you and you wanted to pocket the split he was supposed to get. So you waited until he’d helped you move the cases on a hand truck, until he’d unbarred the door so it would look as if somebody’d taken the stuff away on tires. Then you gave him his share — in steel.”

“There ain’t one word of truth in that.”

“Shut your flabby face.” Koski shoved him suddenly. Olsan fell down against the engine housing. “To make it look good, you’d probably have arranged with Weltz to have him tied up after the stuff was on board the party boat. That way he could holler ‘hijack’ and claim he’d been hound by the heisters. You did it quicker. Then you wanted to fix it to get Chuck’s share, too.”

Olsan whimpered, “You’re crucifying me when I didn’t have a thing to do with it.”

“For a second time, you waited until one of your partners helped move those three hundred cases. Then after Chuck got the last case on the scow here, and covered with that tarp, you clouted him with a boathook and hoped to God he’d never come up. But he did, and he got aboard the scow again, somehow. Maybe the stern line from the Vannity did trail in the water and get cut by the screw. He could have climbed up the end that had been cleated to the scow.”

“You’re a liar!” Olsan howled.

Koski touched him with his toe. “I knew you were six kinds of a liar soon’s you started to spill the guff about not knowing anything about boats. No-o-o. You talked about jumping in after Chuck when any ordinary jerk would have said ‘dived’ in. Only a waterman who knew how easy it is to brain yourself in floating debris would have talked about ‘jumping’.”

“Nuts! Try and call me a murderer just because of that!”

“No. You even used the NCU call for help with your flashlight, before you thought. Many a boyscout would have known about the SOS, but only a waterman would know that NCU distress signal the Cee Gee boys use all the time.”

Olsan whimpered with fear.

Vann bent over him. “Did this crud make Ellen kill herself, Lieutenant? I’ll just save the state the trouble—”

“Sheer off, fella. Mrs. Matless is all right. She must have heard her husband, or maybe even futzface here, talking about the hijacking, decided to come to the pier herself to warn her brother about it. It happened Remsen was out when she got there, and so when she found Weltz dead, she thought her husband had done it.”

Vann swore with relief.

Koski went on, “So, probably being pretty fed up with him anyway, and not valuing the kind of life she was living very much, but not wanting Chuck electrocuted for murder, she tried to make it seem as if she’d done the killing herself. Left her lipstick on Weltz’s face, her coat and bag beside his body, then jumped into the river.”

Mulcahey called from the scow. “This guy ain’t hittin’ on all eight cylinders, Steve, but his motor’s turnin’ over. What you want me to do with him?”

“Keep him there until we get to Clason Point. He’ll be ready to give us all the corroboration we want on Olsan.”

The sergeant came up to the Viqilant’s bow. “You want to shortwave for Remsen?”

“No.” Koski teeth began to chatter. Suddenly he felt very cold and tired. “He’ll probably be there waiting for the tow when we get in. I think he had it all figured out, except that he’d guessed his sister was in on the scheme, which she wasn’t.”

“He wasn’t runnin’ away, Steve?”

“Even money he’s rounded up a revolver and aims to blast Chuck. He didn’t seem to care a whole lot about his brother-in-law. And he’d have known Chuck used to come around to the pier with his sister once in a while. Must have met Cap Weltz one of those times. Chuck probably told Olsan about Weltz, and from the way that tug is nosing in now, I’d say one of the watchman’s old buddies is at the helm up there, and likely getting well paid not to notice anything.”

Mulcahey regarded his superior officer with a certain awe. “Did you figure all that out while you was under water, mayhap?”

“Didn’t have my bathproof pen with me, Sarge.”

“Want me to pick up Remsen, if he’s on shore?”

“Better. Otherwise you might have another lifesaving job on your hands when he sees Chuck. Myself, I’ve done my rescuing chores for the day, and I’m going to climb into a warm bed with a good book—”

“Or something.” The sergeant chuckled.

“Be your age, Sarge. I have a date with a dame, hut it’s in the morning. She’s the only one in this whole mess I’m really sorry for.”

“You might give a thought to yourself once in a dog’s age. You give me a bad hour, there, thinkin’ you were gone.”

“You ought to have known it’s hard to keep a good man down, Irish.”

The tug slacked on the towing hawser just then...