Down Among the Dead Men

XI

He took the basket back to his drink. Dommy was in a huddle with another bartender who carefully avoided Koski’s eyes.

After a while the Lieutenant took his glass, went into a phone booth opposite the bar, kept an eye on the bar through the booth door.

He used a nickel, talked to the Sixth Detective Division. There was no report from the men covering the Wyatt studio. He got through to the doctor on night duty at the Medical Examiner’s office. The autopsy hadn’t showed anything beyond the fact that the murdered man had once fractured his collar bone; that he had eaten roast beef and spinach and potatoes some time before his death; there were indications the man had been severely beaten, abrasions, some hematoma, numberless ecchymoses. Koski said:

“I’m no Quiz Kid, doc. If the guy was beaten up, he was beaten up. You don’t have to use all the drugstore lingo.” He hung up.

An old woman in a frayed shawl hobbled in with an armful of tabloids. Koski paid a dime for one.

The murder was on page eleven, “Torso” wasn’t in the headline. Black capitals said:

There wasn’t anything to the story. A body had been found; it hadn’t been identified; an unnamed high official issued a vague warning that the authorities were cracking down on all criminals known to be connected with the policy racket — there was to be no such sinister growth of violence as followed in the wake of the last war...

A single dead man didn’t cause a ripple on the surface of news that told of thousands maimed or killed every day, Koski reflected grimly. It would get more attention one of these days if it turned out that the short-wave crystal was really part of the picture — that would jolt a lot of people who still thought ship sinkings, men swimming in burning oil or drowning in icy water, was something far away from Forty-second Street. But he was glad no hint of that angle had reached print. He wanted no publicity, not yet awhile. He stuck the folded paper in his pocket, went back to the bar.

Dommy brought a brown paper bag. “For free. I’m breaking house rules, too. The ration regulations say only two to a person...”

“I’m not going to cram ’em all down my own throat. What else you got for me?”

The Greek mopped his face with his handkerchief. “Nothing. You don’t have to ride me. I’m doing the best I can.”

“Is there a blonde hangs around here—” Koski unwrapped the wax paper from one of the sandwiches, smelled of it, “—by the name of Claire-something-or-other?”

“Claire?” Dommy spoke through venriloquist’s lips. “Wait. I’ll ask Riley.”

“Save it. Ask him in the back room. At the station.” Koski moved his head toward the phone booth. “I just buzzed the precinct.”

Dommy’s eyes were as expressionless as a blind man’s. “Yap! Yap! Yap! Why’n’t you call off your dogs; you think I keep a card index of these tomatoes!”

“I know what you keep. Better climb into your coat.”

“You act like it hurt you to stand still a second. Lemme catch my breath.” Dommy fumbled for a bottle behind him, spilled four fingers of rye into a highball glass, gulped it. “Would she be a skinny little piece? Toothpick gams? Flat chest?”

“Claire what?”

“Purdo,” the Greek husked.

“Address?”

“How can you expect me—”

Koski jerked a length of steel chain from his left hip pocket, held it out, made it jingle. A nickeled T was attached to each end of the chain.

Dommy refused to notice it, whispered hoarsely: “Somewhere on Treanor. Twenty-one Treanor Place. Damn your guts for making me stool.”

Koski put the twisters away, held out his hand, palm up. “There’s a hat of mine around somewhere. The hat... or five bucks for a new one.”

Riley produced the felt from under the bar. Koski brushed it with his sleeve. “This doesn’t wash it up. I haven’t got the girl yet. I haven’t got the lad who did the job in Room Five. Until I do, you’re on the hook. And I’m on the other end of the line.”

He found the call-box on the corner, used his key, talked to the precinct desk. In two minutes a green-and-white coupe rolled up. In another two, Koski was standing in a hallway of a three-story tenement, odorous of musty carpeting disinfectant and a heavy sickening sweetness that reminded him of Harlem.

The punched-aluminum tag on the door said Mrs. Claire Rawson Purdo; there was no answer to his knock; nobody came out in the hall to see what he wanted. He returned to the patrol car.

“Lady isn’t in.” His eyes searched the block, without result. “Dommy might have got to her first.”

The uniformed man behind the wheel scratched his chin. “Can’t expect a working woman to be at home during business hours. It’s only quarter past two.”

“Late enough, with us nosing around on a cold trail. Ask your desk to scour the district for her. Set a watch at Dommy’s. Go through his place, top to bottom. Here’s your passport.” Koski gave him the keys he had taken from the Greek. “And after you roll me around to the Gowanus, come back here and stick on this door. I want this babe; I want her bad.”

The car dropped him at the edge of a vacant lot littered with pyramids of rubbish. From the coal dock came a rumbling, off-key bass:

“You’ll be on your way to the canal, in a minute, if you don’t pipe down.” Koski let himself down gingerly to the foredeck. “How could that dispatcher make himself heard — your roaring like a bull!”

“Set your mind easy, coach. He made himself heard, only about five minutes ago.” Mulcahey gawked at the Lieutenant’s lip. “Holy mother! Were you mickied?”

“A bunch of the boys were whooping it up. I got muscled around a little. Also, I got a lead.” He tossed the paper sack across the cockpit. “Your iron rations. With Big Dommy’s compliments.”

The Sergeant bit into a hamburger. He held out the bag. “Will you join me, sire?”

“I’ve had a bellyful, Irish.” He sat down on the engine-housing.

“You hurt, skipper?” Mulcahey laid down the hamburg, quickly.

Koski took out his pipe. “Fit as a fiddle, Joe. One rib might need a little tuning up later — but right now I have a couple of chores that need tending.” He flicked flame across the bowl. “That stiff wasn’t butchered on the yacht. He was killed in Dommy’s place. Get going. Back to the Basin.”

The Sergeant cast off, pulled the clutch into reverse, backed the police-boat out into the muddy creek. “Was it the geezer with the chin-wrapping?”

“Yair. Chance the killer did get hurt in the brawl, really needed the bandage.”

“ ’Twould fit in better with your notion that these Gestapos do not go in for disguise and so forth.”

Koski groaned. “What is that under your cap! We don’t know this murderer’s a foreign agent. He could be. But there’s always the possibility the crystal was simply a leftover from some amateur who used it for experimental sending, back in the days when they allowed it. We’ve nothing definite on the spy angle. Except the pains taken to destroy the stiff’s identity. The fact that the Seavett is a Cee-Gee patrol. The coincidence that the owner of the yacht also owns a lot of ships that have been going down offshore.”

“If I could get one dim glimmer of the kind of person you are looking for—” Mulcahey detoured to avoid a railroad tie just beneath the surface, “mayhap I would seem a little less befuggled.”

“How the hell do I know who we’re looking for? He had a bandage around his chops; if he isn’t wearing it now, that doesn’t help us. He can sing sailors’ songs. He knew how to find his way around the Bar-Nothing. He was wearing work clothes or old clothes.”

“Thought the Gurlid kid couldn’t describe how he was dressed...”

“That’s as good as a description.”

“Perhaps I am a trifle slow in responding to the acceleration — but I do not get this...”

“She would have noticed if he was wearing anything very different from the men she’s used to seeing around the docks.”

“Marvelous, how the man figures these things. The only data I can dope out is that he’ll be handy with a saw and a butcher knife. And if this radio device belonged to him, he would know something about electricity.”

“If he doesn’t, he’ll learn something about it, one of these days. Up river.”

“That reminds me. Up river. I nearly forgot.” The Sergeant slewed the wheel, the Vigilant rounded the Erie Basin. “You had a message from the dispatcher.”

“You and your memory! Give.”

“One of the Homicide troupe is playing tag with Bre’er Hurlihan; he seems to have caught up with the gent. The address where he is patiently awaiting your arrival — wait a sec—” he picked up the coffee pot, looked at its side. “Pier Nine. Yeah, I thought that was right.”

“You thought! Don’t make me split my sore lip.” Koski pounded out his pipe on the gunwale. Sparks cascaded over the stern. “If that super’s working, it might mean they’re getting some fire-alarm freight on board for a quick clearance. There’s a certain guy I wouldn’t want to see leave these parts so sudden, Irish. Lean on that throttle!”

The motor’s pitch rose a note higher. The hull shuddered. Wings of spray fountained out from the bow.