Collection of Stories

Alibi Baby

Popular Detective, September 1948

The patrol-boat Vigilant furrowed the oily blackness of the Sound like a plow turning soft mud. The probing finger of her searchlight groped past the rusty hulk of an anchored tanker, found the red nun buoy, slanting sharply in the ebb.

In the pilot house the big sergeant spun the spokes to circle the channel marker. “You’ll be havin’ your name on the promotion roster, sure, Steve.” In the dim glow flooding up from the binnacle bowl, his fleshy Celtic face had the appearance of an aggrieved Kewpie. “The powers that be can do no less than up you to a Captain’s berth after the neat way you pin a lily on that dock rat’s chest.”

“Ah, Sarge, I wouldn’t bust up our partnership like so.” Steve Koski’s lean, muscular figure relaxed against the port bulkhead. The reflection of the running light off the foredeck ruddied his long, narrow features, varnishing the prominent cheekbones with a weathered-oak effect which made him appear more like a stoical cigar-store Indian than the Harbor Squad’s most feared plainclothes lieutenant. “What’d a captain’s badge get me? Swivel-chair spread. Executives’ pot. Uh-uh, I’ll stick to a deck instead of a desk, long’s they’ll let me. Our trouble is, cops get no more chance than undertakers. Usually we don’t get called in until the corpse is cold. How often do we save anybody?”

Mulcahey protested. “Show me any boat in the Marine Division with a better record of rescues than the Vigilant, now!”

“I wasn’t referring to cock-eyed bargehands we drag out of the drink, or the desperate dames we fish out of the East River.” Koski held the white funnel of light on a floating object, about the size of a man’s head bobbing in a black eddy some thirty feet off the buoy. “Speaking of rescues, let’s peek at that.”

“ ’Twill likely be a half melon off a garbage scow. Or a rare, vintage derby blown off the night boat.” Mulcahey throttled the grumbling exhaust down to a hollow mutter.

The police boat lost way. The hrrrush of the bow wave fell to a whisper. Koski leaned but over the gunwale, dipped his boathook.

“I’ll score you fifty percent, Sarge. It is a hat. But no derby.” Koski turned the dripping headgear over in his knotty fingers beneath the glare of the searchlight beam.

It was a wool yachting cap of navy blue. Its patent-leather visor was cracked and split, its gold braid torn and tarnished. Above the visor and between the braided anchors was pinned a white celluloid button with bold black lettering: BATHING BEAUTY INSPECTOR’S LICENSE.

Around the button’s rim, in smaller type: Official Navel Inspector O! O! O!

Mulcahey grinned through the pilot house window. “Dost deem it worthy of listing in the log?”

Koski didn’t answer. He touched a dark spot about the size of a cookie on the cloth top. Under the bright white light his finger tip looked as if it had been smeared with ketchup.

Mulcahey let the motor idle, came back to the cockpit. “Wouldst crave to have us head back for Pier One so we can turn this in to the lab boys?” he asked. “They could put it under their microscopes, analyze it in their test tubes and so on and forth. Eventually comin’ up with the startling information that the owner thereof had a severe nosebleed or maybe cut his toe on some barnacles.”

“Oh, sure!” Koski answered sarcastically. “Top of a cap’s just the thing to use for stanching a nosebleed!” He turned the cap over, peered at the inside. Stuck to the underside of the bloodstain were two white hairs.

“That,” Mulcahey said, “don’t look so good, now. I wouldn’t kid about that!”

“Could be the owner lent the cap to his St. Bernard, or course!” Carefully the lieutenant pulled open the worn leather sweatband. Stuck against the stiff-wired fabric frame was a water-soaked and sweat-stained business card, which read:

“Top of the cap is dry,” Mulcahey pointed out. “With that air caught underneath it and the tide runnin’ fast, it might have been kept from sinkin’ — all the way from the Island.”

“Yair. Would mean it hasn’t been in the water more’n an hour. Figuring the current at two point five knots. Make it around nine p.m. it started to drift down here.” Koski examined the other side of the card. In purplish indelible ink were scrawled names:

Mulcahey whistled. “That last one sounds like a hot biscuit. Perchance this Lothario was fidoodling around with too many frails. Mayhap one of ’em found she was being crossed up and belted Casanova over the dome.”

“Boats,” Koski said irritably.

“Huh?”

“Not names of dames, Sarge. Names of boats. With the phones of owners. Gents who want to sell their craft. Plenty dough, every spring.”

“Oh, yeah.” Mulcahey nodded. “Lots of guys offering their boats as a bargain before they put the hulls in the water.”

“That Ansy Pansy. Sailboat, isn’t she? Comet class champ couple years ago, if I remember.”

“They’s quite a few of them one designs haul out at the Trident Yacht Club, Skipper.”

Koski took cap and card into the pilot house, deposited them carefully on the glass chart case.

“Give with that gas, Irish,” he said.

Mulcahey jammed the reverse lever ahead, revved the two hundred horses to a thundering roar. The Vigilant’s nose lifted. Her tail squatted. White wings of spray planed out from the quarters. The square green flag whipped taut in the rush of air as the blunt-bowed thirty-two footer overtook a long row of black dominoes silhouetted against the ghostly green of Stepping Stones light.

When the pilot house windows were abeam of the tug hauling the string of barges, Koski asked:

“What kind of guy’d be likely to have the phone numbers of four different boat owners, Irish?”

“One these brokers?”

“Not wearing a cap like that. No. Not around the Trident.”

“Ship chandler, now? Marine supply man? Sometimes they sell—”

“Those boys keep their dope in office file, not in their hats.”

Mulcahey gave up.

Koski stuffed a bulldog briar, silently. Then:

“How about some yacht club employee?”

“Yuh. Sure. That could be it. Steward, like?”

“Trident’s not that tony. When the season’s under way, they might go so far as to hire a cook, but their flag doesn’t go up until Decoration Day. However, even in April, they have a watchman.”

“Old geezer, yuh. I seen him.” The sergeant sighted along his samson post, lining it up with the four vertical blue lights on the Trident’s clubhouse mast. Then he gazed at Koski with something approaching awe. “That would fit in with those white hairs!”

Koski squinted at the sergeant before answering.

“Name’s Versena. Pete Versena, something like that. Always goes around needing a haircut and a shave. They call him Poodle Pete along the Island.”

“That lid, with the snappy crack gimmick in place of the regular club button,” Mulcahey agreed. “Yuh, that would be just his speed, now.” He shot another sidelong glance at his superior and shipmate. “If ever I am tempted to dally with a career of crime, I will steer me a course one hundred eighty degrees away from you, so help me!”

“Don’t go jumping off the deep end yet.” Koski shaded his eyes to squint toward the club float, past the moored sloops, cabin cruisers, outboards and strings of rental rowboats. “Chances are Poodle Pete’s just looked too long on the wine while it was red and is sleeping it off on a bridge-deck somewhere.”

But when the Vigilant nudged the Trident’s float, there was so sign of the elderly watchman, nor any answer to Koski’s hail.

Mulcahey was troubled. “If he’s up and about, ’tis queer he’s not here. You could not say we arrive on tiptoe.”

Koski half-hitched the stern line over a float cleat, used his hand lantern. On the opposite end of the float, staining the wet canvas binding of the rub rail, he found more blobs of dark and ominous red.

“We can eliminate the barnacles, Irish. Just to play it safe, take a punch at that short-wave. Tell the Sentinel to hustle in from the Harlem.” He moved up the gangway into the gloom of the yacht yard. “And dust off those grappling irons.”

The lights on the signal mast washed the clubhouse with a ghostly blue and gave a sepulchral tinge to the canvas-shrouded hulls not yet uncovered for spring refitting. The only noise Koski heard was the crunch of his heels on the gravel.

Up the yard, beyond a score of hooded motor boats and high-masted sloops, an amber glow warmed the portholes of a small cabin cruiser. The lieutenant frowned at it, then turned toward the back porch of the clubhouse.

“Hi, Pete” Silence. “Hey — Poooodle.” Nothing answered but the slap of the tide against pilings.

He tried the back door. It was unlocked. The kitchen was dark. Grim lines at the corners of Koski’s mouth hardened. The old watchman never would have left the premises, without first locking up.

Koski took his time in going through the yard, peering beneath squat-sterned catboats, sharp-nosed speed boats. No Pete. Nobody.

Brass lettering on the transom of the lighted cruiser proclaimed C-Urchin, New York. She was a raised decker with steering shelter glassed in and protected aft by new khaki cockpit curtains. Her hull was freshly painted, a smart emerald bootstripe setting off the gloss white of the topsides. Somebody knew how to look after a sea-going lady, he decided.

A home-made ladder of paint-bespeckled 2x4s stood against her, amidships, surrounded by sawhorses, paint cans, an upturned dinghy. Its upper end reached to one of the cockpit curtains which had been left unfastened, flopping loosely in the night breeze.

“Ahoy, on the Urchin,” Koski hailed. He knuckled the hull loudly.

There were hasty steps. A white face appeared timidly in the gap beside the loose curtain — a girl, dark hair bound in a yellow bandana, dark eyes wide with fear.

“What is it?” Her voice was tremulous.

“Harbor Police,” Koski said.

“Oh!” She gasped, clutched at a stanchion. “What’s wrong, officer?”

“Take it easy.” Koski wondered whether it had been his arrival that so frightened her. “Just looking for the club watchman. Seen him around the yard tonight?”

“Pete?” she managed. “No. Not since supper. Why do you want him?”

Koski half turned, as if to go. “You alone on the boat, miss?”

“No.” She seemed relieved at his indication of departure. “Ken’s here — my husband. I’m Marya Caton. If I see Pete, I’ll tell him you want to see him.” She started to withdraw.

He moved back to the ladder. “Ask Mr. Caton if he’s seen Pete.”

“Why — Ken’s not here now.” She was alarmed by Koski’s fresh show of interest. “When I said he was here, I didn’t mean he’s on board right now.”

“When you expect him back?”

“Most any minute. He just went out — to see if he could find some — some stuff to fix our sink drain.”

Koski put a foot on the first rung.

She retreated to the shadowy interior of the cockpit.

“That’s what scared me,” she went on hurriedly, “your saying you’re from the police. I thought something’d happened to him.”

Koski climbed up. “If he’s coming right back, I might wait for him, Mrs. Caton.”

He paused at the top of the ladder, holding onto the new canvas where a jagged piece had been torn out of one corner.

“I’ll stay here in the cockpit,” he suggested.

“No, no,” she apologized nervously. “I guess you can come below. It’s only — Ken’s always warning me about letting anybody come aboard when he’s not here.”

“Wise gent.” Koski pushed the canvas aside, got a leg over the coaming. She retreated down the companionway.

With the light from the cabin on her, Koski could see how pretty she was. She was not more than twenty-five, with delicate oval features made to seem a bit more rugged by a warm, winter tan. The smallness of her hands was emphasized by her quick, fluttering bird-like movements.

One of the hands moved to her throat apprehensively.

“Has Pete done anything to get him into trouble?”

“Not that I know of.” Koski let her worry about it.

The cabin was like the girl — small, attractive, neat as a pin. Brasswork gleaming, brightwork glistening with varnish, bright cretonne at the ports, cozy cushions on the bunks, framed photos on the forward bulkhead. One, of a youth in a corporal’s uniform.

“Your husband?” he pointed.

“That’s Ken. Yes.” Fear stayed in her eyes, her voice. “We married just before the war. We haven’t been together much. He’s only been back a year. We haven’t been able to find a place to live.” Under Koski’s gaze, she shivered suddenly, though the shipmate range should have kept the April chill out of the cruiser. “So Ken bought the Urchin with a G.I. loan. We meant to charter her for fishing, but—” her voice faltered.

“Plans change?” Brittle glass crunched beneath his shoes as Koski crossed to the companionway. He looked down. One of the splintered shards had a curved edge like a watch crystal, only larger.

His right hand, hidden from the girl, felt along the cabin roof. In a box set into the rounded roof, just forward of the steering wheel, was a four-inch compass hung in gimbals. The mahogany top of the box had been smashed, the thick glass lens broken. Other fragments were on the deck, in the groove of the hatch slide.

“Prices have gone up so.” She’d had time to figure out her answer. “We thought we could charge twenty-five dollars for taking out a party of four. With meals, that is. But, things the way they are, we’d have to ask forty. There won’t be so many who’ll pay that.”

He nodded sympathetically, wondering why a boat owner whose craft was otherwise so shipshape — or a boatkeeper whose galley pans were so spic and span — would a leave broken compass around like that.

“That’s the kind of difficulty the police aren’t much help on, Mrs. Caton. But if there’s anything else bothering you?”

“Oh, no,” she cried, biting her lip. “There’s nothing. I... I just get so lonely — sometimes — with Ken — away.” She turned aside so he wouldn’t notice the tears in her eyes.

A low whistle shrilled close by; high note, low note, repeated.

She froze, rigid as a child playing still-pond-no-more-moving.

Koski said: “That him?”

Marya nodded.

“Tell him to come on in.” Koski didn’t appear to notice her tension.

She stumbled up the companionway. “Ken!” she called, almost hysterically. “It’s all right, Ken. Come on up.”

Koski was right behind her. He caught her before she got to the head of the ladder, pushed her aside, looked out.

He didn’t see anyone. Or hear anyone. The whistle wasn’t repeated.

When he got to the ground, she leaned out of the cockpit above him, shouting: “Ken! Ken!”

Koski glanced up. “Never mind,” he said. “You’ve warned him enough.”

She shook her head violently, terrified.

“Not that it’ll make any difference,” he told her. “We’ll get hold of him. Don’t fret about that.”

Mulcahey was using the probe pole in the soft mud alongside the float when Koski got back.

“What was the commotion, Steve? Did I not hear some babe crying aloud in the night?”

“Dame on the C-Urchin. Yair. When the Sentinel pulls in, tell ’em to use care with those hooks. We don’t want to mark up — whatever’s down there. No more’n it’s been marked up.”

“ ’Twill be the watchman, then?”

“He’s not around, anyway, Sarge. And I wanted to ask this dame’s husband about that. But he’s not around, either. When the boys get to dragging, you go up and keep a peeper on that cruiser. Something smells fishier’n a week-old halibut.”

Koski strode away. Everything was quiet on the Caton boat when he went past and out to City Island Avenue.

At the delicatessen whose card had been in the cap, he asked about the Catons. The proprietor was obliging, but wary. He was sorry, but he couldn’t remember seeing Marya or her husband for some time. If the matter was urgent—

Koski said it was urgent, all right.

The delicatessen man frowned. Had the lieutenant asked at the Anchor? The Catons frequently dropped in at the Anchor.

“Thanks,” said Koski. “I’ll do the same.”

The bar-and-grill with the pink neon anchor over its door was practically opposite the Trident Yacht Club. Through grimy windows, Koski could see a long bar, a kaleidoscopic juke box, half a dozen tables covered with red-checkered cloth. A dozen waterfront characters were draped over the bar. At one table sat a solitary woman.

The blare and beat of Harry James greeted him as he swung open the door:

The stench of stale beer, rank tobacco, sour sweat and strong disinfectant had the force of a blow. The men at the bar turned to eye the newcomer. None of them looked like the photograph on the C-Urchin’s bulkhead.

Only the woman greeted Koski. She was a scrawny specimen of indeterminate age, with red-rimmed eyes and a shiny beacon of a nose.

“Ah-ha,” she hiccoughed loudly. “Me old chum! Me bucko mate and buddy! Pull up one of m’knees an’ siddown, pal.”

Koski smiled, striding toward the bar. “How they going, old-timer?”

“Down.” She lifted an empty whisky glass. “When I c’n get ’em.” She hiccoughed again, drooped over the table.

“Rum,” Koski murmured to the bartender, a blond wide-shouldered youth with sunbleached hair like new rope ends and a homely genial face. “Demerara, if you have it.”

The barkeeper grinned cheerfully. “We used to carry that stuff, but our customers couldn’t. How’s Jamaica?”

“Jake.”

The man behind the bar slopped three fingers of the molasses-brown liquor into a glass. “Something with it?”

“Little information.” Koski held out a half-dollar. Under it, in the hollow of his palm, the gold badge with Marine Division in blue enamel.

The bartender raised one eyebrow. “Don’t know’s I can furnish that, either. What’s it?”

“Seen Poodle Pete tonight?”

“Nah. Hardly ever do. He don’t patronize high-grade joints like ours.” Candid gray eyes smiled along with the wide, homely mouth. “Pete belts that buck-a-bottle sherry around, for his. What you want him for?”

“Seems as if the old guy might have got himself hurt. Just checking around to find out.” He took the rum straight. “Ken Caton been in here tonight? Or Mrs. Caton?”

Suspicion clouded the gray eyes instantly. “Neither hair nor hide of ’em.”

“Mmm.” Koski shoved the glass across the bar. “Ask your regulars if they’ve run across him this evening.”

The bartender hesitated, scowling. Then he shrugged.

“Any you boys seen Ken lately?” he asked.

“Not me.” “Not since last night, Rikky.” “That creep? Uh-uh.” The bunch at the bar were curious but unconcerned.

The woman at the table spoke up, thickly. “I seen him. At the chandler’s. He was buyin’ a piece of pipe.”

“Ah, shut up, Lize.” Rikky made a pushing-away gesture with his palm. “You were prob’ly seeing double.”

One of the drinkers, standing close to Koski, bobbed his head sideways toward the woman at the table.

He said: “Easy Lizzie can point you out pink ellyfants, if you want ’em.” He laughed uproariously.

“Easy” Liz swung around, making her chair creak. “Yah! You crumb bums! I know Ken Caton all right. Know all ’bout him.” She hiccoughed, got heavily to her feet.

Rikky swaggered around the bar. “That’ll be all from you, now, Liz. You’re schwocked! Shuddup!”

Unsteadily, she waved him away. “Got a ri’ t’say — what I please. Know all ’bout Ken — rotten way he treatsh — treats — sweet li’l wife ’f hish — rotten, shtinkin’ temper ’f his—”

Rikky grabbed her, pushed her toward the door.

Koski moved swiftly, caught the bar-keep’s arm just as Easy Liz was bellowing: “You was shayin’ shame thing yourself, tonight, Rikky Lundgren. Y’know you said jus’ them very words to Poodle!”

Koski said: “Keep your hair on, brother. Let’s hear what she has to say.”

“Ah! This old frowz don’t know what she’s talking about. She’s plastered right up to the ceiling!” Rikky glared. “Sign there over the bar says we don’t serve intoxicated people. One side, mister.” He shoved Easy Liz to the door. The men at the bar circled them.

Koski swung the bartender around. “Leave her alone.”

Rikky spat in his eyes.

In the second it took Koski to blink his back vision Rikky reached the bar, snatched a half-empty whisky bottle, swung it behind him, smashed it on the mahogany back bar. He held the jagged remainder out before him, retreating behind the bar.

Koski did a one-hand, up and over. His feet caught Rikky in the chest, drove him against a pyramid of glassware which crashed down. Rikky slashed the bottle at Koski’s abdomen before the lieutenant got his feet under him. Koski twisted, grabbed a fistful of apron high up, yanked viciously and butted his head at the bartender’s chin.

A knife edge of the bottle gashed the lieutenant’s hip like a red-hot wire. But with the impact of Koski’s forehead, Rikky’s chin snapped back, struck a shelf. A mountain of bottles fell on him, cutting his face, drenching him with mint liqueur, cherry brandy, rock and rye.

Koski let go of the apron, wound his fingers in Rikky’s tow hair. He banged the blond head against the back bar hard enough to bring down more bottles, kept banging until a handful of hair came loose in his fingers and Rikky sagged limply to the floor.

Koski wiped his face on a bar towel, turned to the men gawking, wide-eyed, on the opposite side of the bar.

“That’s it,” he mumbled. “Show’s over. Close up now. Don’t crowd, going out.”

The men filed out, swearing under their breaths. Easy Liz wasn’t among them; she’d departed as soon as the fight began, Koski guessed. He couldn’t see her outside on the street, either.

He locked the front door, switched out the sidewalk neon, examined his wound. The bottle had slashed open a foot of his pants leg but only gouged an inch-long tear in the sensitive part of his thigh.

It bled a lot. He doused some of the Jamaica on it, felt the sharp bite of the alcohol. He went to the rear of the joint. Adjoining doors were marked Pointers, Setters.

He tried the first. It was locked.

In the other he found hot water and a roller towel. He used his knife on the towel, made a passable bandage. When he went out, Rikky was on his knees behind the bar, moaning and holding the top of his head in both hands.

“Plenty more where that came from, Tough Stuff.” Koski touched him with a toe. “If you want it.”

Rikky wavered to his feet, groggily.

“Help yourself to a drink.” The lieutenant gestured broadly. “On the house.”

The bartender cursed him, found a broken bottle with a half pint of Irish whisky in it, put the razor-sharp edge to his lips, drank deep. “What’s it all about, copper?”

“You tell me.”

“I was only covering up for a good guy.”

“Covering up for a killer. Poodle Pete got his. You know who gave it to him. Spill.”

Rikky drained the rest of the half pint. “Well. If you know that much. I didn’t want you to catch wise — on Mary a’s account as much as Ken’s.”

“Get to it,” Koski said tightly.

“Liz was right. Ken was looking for a piece of pipe to fix his sink. He found it — somewhere in the Trident yard. Maybe it belonged to some other boat or came out of one. I wouldn’t know.” Rikky inspected a loose tooth in the cracked back-bar mirror. “What I do know is, Pete caught him with the goods, started an argument. Ken got sore, or scared maybe, and took a clout at the old gazink.” He made a brief gesture, clenching his fist, pointing it at the floor. “Down goes McGinty”

“How’d you find that out? Caton come here after slugging Pete?”

“Yeah. He wanted to borrow a few markers — we used to be pretty good friends before the war — so naturally I get a double sawbuck on the line. I ask him why does he need the dough so fast, and he tells me.”

“Said he killed Poodle Pete with the pipe?”

“Shucks, no. Said he crowned him. Thought the old coot might be hurt bad. Wanted to beat it until the thing cooled down, that’s all. Jimminy, I didn’t know he killed Pete!!”

“Mrs. Caton know all this?”

“You can’t prove it by me.” Rikky found another whisky bottle, poured liquor on his palm, rubbed it on his scalp, grimacing. “I s’pose Ken told her something.”

“Let’s go over and find out.”

Rikky flung his fingers out stiffly toward the wreckage. “Aw, have a heart! Leave my place like this? Look at it!”

“Didn’t look so hot to begin with. Come on.” Koski inclined his head toward the door. Rikky slammed a felt hat on his head, groaned with pain, stalked out stiffly.

Koski marched him across to the Trident yard, up the Urchin’s ladder.

Marya came to the torn canvas before Rikky reached the coaming.

“Oh,” she whispered. “Rikky? I thought—”

“Your husband,” Koski put it to her brusquely, “won’t be back right away. As if you didn’t know.”

He stared helplessly at the bartender. He hunched up his shoulders, held his hands out, palms up.

“The brass buttons knew it all, anyway, Marya. I had to tell him I lent Ken some moola to get away.”

She made that quick fluttering movement of fingers to throat again. “He... knows?” She avoided Koski’s eyes.

“I know you made a mistake trying to protect a creep who’d beat the brains out of a harmless old man, Mrs. Caton. Trying to warn him when he came around the boat—”

“Steve!” Mulcahey called loudly, from the foot of the ladder. “We found him.” Marya gasped, tumbled down the companionway, flung herself on a bunk, sobbing. Rikky followed her, fumbled at soothing her.

Koski went to the ladder. “Head bashed in, Sarge?”

“Like you figured, yuh. What do you want us to do?”

Koski told him, quietly and quickly.

“Holy Mother!” The sergeant was startled. “Can such things be?”

“That’s for you to find out, Sarge. The sooner the quicker.” Koski went below.

Rikky was doing his best to console Marya. She wasn’t having any. She crouched miserably at one end of the starboard bunk, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief.

Koski sat down opposite her. “You don’t want to feel so bad about losing a guy who’d crack open an old man’s brain and then fix things so you’d be holding the bag.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying!” Rikky muttered.

“Yair. You have so. You told me Ken Caton was a no-good rat who abused his wife and—”

“That’s a lie!” Marya screamed. “A horrible lie!” she repeated more calmly, glaring at the bartender. “You know it’s a lie, Rikky! How can you stand there and let him say things like that about poor Ken when you know he never hurt me or anybody. Why don’t you tell him the truth, Rikky Lundgren! Why don’t you!”

“Maybe, I can make a stab at part of it myself,” Koski said. “I saw that busted compass up in the cockpit — that place in the curtain where somebody tore out a hunk so blood spattered on it wouldn’t be noticed. I’d say there must have been quite a fracas right here on board the Urchin.”

It was so quiet in the cabin Koski could hear a tug hooting for the right of way at Hell Gate. He went on:

“Liz said Pete had been in the Anchor tonight, Rikky. That would have been to tip you off that Ken was going to be away from the boat for awhile, and — stop me if I get it wrong, Mrs. Caton — to warn you what Caton had said, that he didn’t want anyone coming on board while he wasn’t here. Meaning especially you, is my guess.”

Marya watched Rikky like a person hypnotized. Rikky kept his eyes fixed on Koski.

“I expect that was all you needed to get you into the trap, Rikky. From the way Liz talked and the things you let slip yourself, plus the fact you managed to get this babe, to set up an alibi for you—”

“No!” Marya breathed. “I never did.”

“Sure. In reverse, sort of. But an alibi, just the same. What else is it when you don’t contradict his story that your husband’s run away? What do you call it when you phony things up by hollering ‘Ken — Ken,’ when all the time you knew your husband was dead?”

Tears streamed down her face. “I didn’t mean to — didn’t want to — but—”

“Yair. This big creep had something on you. Or you thought he had. He raised a hand in the “Stop” gesture to keep her from saying anything. “I don’t want to know what it was — and where he’ll be going, nobody else will have a chance to find out. If you’d been cuddling up to him a little while your husband was overseas — if you were hoping to keep him from finding it out—”

“I told Ken.” The cry sounded as if it had been wrenched out of her by torture. “He knew. He hated Rikky because of it. But I didn’t want everybody to know what a mess I’d made of things. And Rikky said... he said—” She couldn’t finish.

“Yair. He would.” Koski stood up slowly. “Just the sort of lad to bully you into clearing him and laying the blame on the man he’d just murdered. Your husband didn’t have any intention of leaving you alone with the wolf practically on your doorstep. After he’d sent Pete over to bait the trap, he waited until Rikky slid out of the Anchor. The back way, eh, Rikky? Never mind, you got here. And Ken found you here. You fought. He got it.”

Rikky shook his head unhappily. “You got part of it right, copper. I didn’t come over to make a play for Marya at all. I came over because he had killed Pete.”

“See if you can sell it to the D.A. He buys those things once in a while. For my dough, you took the pipe away from him, hit him with it.”

“If that was all there was to it,” Rikky roared, “I could claim self defense and get away with it!” He stepped back to the foot of the companionway stairs, leaning against the gravity gas tank on the after bulkhead. “I was right here. He jumped me.”

Koski drew his gun, let it dangle at his side. “Don’t waste it on me. Your legal beagle will probably think it’s terrific. To me it’s a lot of mahaha. I’d say you slugged him up by that compass box. But I don’t care how you killed him — you did it. Then you threw the fear of God into this babe by threatening to expose your relationship with her or whatever. After you got that set, you carted the body overside. Down the ladder. That’s when the blood got on the curtain.”

Rikky put a cigarette between his lips, flipped open his lighter, watched the small blue flame with a sort of dejected intensity:

“Tell him, Marya. Give him the straight on it.”

“The straight,” Koski retorted, “is that Pete saw you lugging the corpse, got suspicious when he saw the blood on Ken and wanted to call the police. You beat him to the punch. You brained him, too — and dumped him off the float near Ken. Hoping somebody’d be dumb enough to think Ken had murdered Pete and then drowned himself.”

Rikky’s right hand stroked the slender copper tubing which curved from beneath the gas tank to the Urchin’s motor. He kept his eyes on the flickering flame of the light.

“If you won’t speak up, Marya, I’ll have to!”

He tugged ferociously at the macaronisized tubing. It came loose before Koski could raise his gun. Pink fluid spurted out. Rikky tossed the lighter at it.

There was a whoosh of blue incandescence and a sheet of vivid flame cut off the cabin from the cockpit.

Koski had time for one instantaneous snap shot before Rikky scrambled out of sight up the companionway. Then the lieutenant whirled, ducked into the “head” behind him, reached up, unhooked the hinged hatch over the toilet, banged it open.

He dived back into the cabin where Marya huddled, as if paralyzed, watching blazing rivulets trickle toward her.

He got his arms around her, tossed her up through the hatch on deck.

He put one more bullet through the companionway before he followed.

As he dropped the nearly unconscious girl to the ground, the rear of the cruiser opened up like the unfolding petals of a huge orange blossom...

The avenue was crowded with shiny red apparatus. The bloodshot eyes of motor pumpers and chemical trucks spilled claret over the canvas covered hulls in the Trident yard. The night was noisy with gongs, sirens, much shouting.

Mulcahey watched the cloud of steam rising from the charred ribs of the Urchin.

“I thought these guys weren’t allowed to keep their gas tanks filled while they are in yard storage, Steve.” He turned to Koski.

“Aren’t, Sarge. Ken was about ready to launch his boat, though. He’d been retiming his motor, thought he’d take a chance and test it out on dry land, I suppose. He had ten gallons put in yesterday. Rikky knew that, I guess.”

“You’ll never know for sure, then. He didn’t have an inch of skin left on him that wasn’t crisp as a piece of burnt bacon, when they dragged him out.”

“Eventually, why not now?” Koski murmured.

“Huh?”

“He’d have been burned anyway, sooner or later.”

“I see what you mean. What I do not see is this: how did you figure this Caton’s body was in the water, too, when you told me to have the boys grapple a second time?”

“The washroom. In his joint.”

“Is that supposed to clear it up for me?”

“It was locked, Irish. Joints like that, you have to keep the men’s room open. Rikky’d used it to clean off the blood on his clothes after the murder. Some of the clothes were still in there. He didn’t have time to dispose of ’em, and he didn’t want to be away from the bar too long and start suspicions...”

“Oh! Yuh. Simple! When you state it thus.”

“Well. Of course he gave his hand away when he tried to shut up dizzy Liz. If he’d just let her gabble on, I might not have given him a second s thought.”

“No?” The sergeant turned to gaze at the black hulls of the patrol boats — lightning-bugs, showing fitful lights around the float.

A distant hail went up. Searchlights dipped straight on the surface.

“They will have found Caton, Steve. Another of them post mortems you were talking about.”

“We’re improving, though, Irish.”

“Are we now? With three casket cases on our hands in one night?”

“I think so. Too little help, maybe. But not entirely too late.” Koski stared soberly at the internes standing by the blanketed figure of Marya Caton near the ambulance. “We were in time to save a little something out of the wreckage. Something worth saving, if you ask me.”