Down Among the Dead Men

XII

Under the fierce glare of top-shielded lights, Pier Nine was a noiseless nightmare of activity. Rubber-shod longshoremen padded quietly along with pneumatic-tired hand-trucks loaded with steel drums. Rope slings were hoisted soundlessly up over the mud-gray side of the freighter bulking alongside the pier. No donkey engines barked; there was no whining of winch drums or screeching of taut wires; none of the raucous bedlam or bawling of orders which usually provide accompaniment for a rush job of night-loading.

The unnatural hush reminded Koski of an old silent film; the straining figures in jerseys and dungarees lowering the drums gently to thick fiber mats; the absence of the normal clutter of bales, crates, boxes.

Across the end of the pier, a red-enameled truck had been parked: Chemical Company No. 12; — three men in dark blue uniforms sat on the running board, with extinguishers at their feet. Sling-men made their lashings fast with an air of tense concentration. As the boss stevedore signaled, palm up to the hoist man, Koski noticed the red and blue concentric circles painted on the end of the drum, read the yellow stenciling:

“They keep telling me there’s no danger handling this stuff, Lieutenant.” A small, dark man who looked like a prosperous barber emerged from the gloom beyond the loading lights. “All the same, nobody is doing any tap routines while those cans are going aboard.”

“Hi, Van. What goes?”

“We all do. If one of these boys should trip over his own dogs.” The Homicide officer pointed toward a plump man in a tight-fitting trench coat, standing by a checker’s stand halfway down the pier. “Hurlihan says they already put aboard quite a few tons of smokeless powder and three hundred cases of mine fuses — but the big noise has to be tucked in bed last. Say,” he took out a cigarette mechanically, stuck it between his lips, removed it with a grimace. “I pick your friend Hurlihan up at his hotel. I was going to take him down and fling him in the clink, but all you said was you wanted to gat heem. So I just tail him down here.”

Koski sized up the superintendent’s narrow, sloping shoulders; his round bullet-head, dead-white skin and mat of black, curly hair. “What’d he have to say for himself?”

“Says from eight to ten pee-em Sunday he was at Leon and Eddie’s. I bet it’s the first time that place’s ever been used for an alibi.”

“Anybody with him?”

“Pal of his. Lawyer for the Line. Fella name of Fross. I couldn’t get Fross on the phone to check it, but Hurlihan says plenty of other people who know him saw him here... including Leon.”

“He go there straight from the Seavett?”

“Claims he went to his hotel, first. Doesn’t admit knowing anything about any trouble on the yacht. He could be putting on an act. But he don’t seem to be fretting himself about anything except the twenty-four hundred cans of this stuff.” Van jerked a thumb toward a drum twirling slowly as it ascended over their heads. “You can’t blame him for that. I’ve aged a couple of years since midnight, myself.”

“Okay, Ponce de Leon. Go find yourself a fountain of youth. I’ll take over.” Koski walked over to the checker’s stand, touched the superintendent’s shoulder.

Van came up behind him. “Here’s a gent you better not try to give the brush-off, Mister Hurlihan. Meet Lieutenant Koski.” Van eased away.

Hurlihan glanced up from the stowage plan, fluttered a fat palm at the file of loaded trucks being trundled out of the pier shed. “Don’t bother me now. This stuff’s dangerous. Got to watch it every second.”

“You’re not the only guy watching it.” Koski eyed two men in belted raincoats and white caps bearing the gold shield of the Coast Guard; they stood on the alert just beyond the checker’s stand.

“I’m responsible for getting it in the holds.” Fear flickered in Hurlihan’s gray eyes. “Those lads have cost me a couple hours already, giving the once-over to my dock gang. Now you cops come along. Lord knows when we’ll get done now.” He pulled his coat collar tighter. “Tugs’ll be here at five tomorrow afternoon. Hatches have to be battened down by then, win, lose, or draw. How the hell can they expect us to make overnight turnarounds with everybody butting in—”

“Must keep you kiting. Been on the job all day?”

“Since half-past eight this morning. What is this? A third degree?”

“You’ll know it if we have to put you over the hurdles. Here on the pier all the time?”

“Out here. In my office. In the bathroom, if you have to be so damn nosey.”

“Seen young Ovett? Heard from him?”

“Hide nor hair. Since I left the Seavett.”

“After you had that scrap with him over your attentions to his wife, didn’t he follow you off the yacht?”

“Nothing of the kind.” Hurlihan wagged his head in emphatic denial. “There wasn’t any fight. Merrill and I didn’t even discuss Mrs. Ovett. Nobody followed me when I went ashore. Did Merrill sic you on me?”

“The guy who sicced us onto you is packed in ice up at the City mortuary on Twenty-ninth.”

Hurlihan opened his mouth, closed it, squinted at Van. “That’s why you been keeping tabs on me the last hour? Because you think I killed somebody.” He snorted. “You damned dimwits, I don’t even know who’s dead!”

“You haven’t anything on us. There isn’t enough left of this guy to tell. What we have checks with the description of Ansel Gjersten. The Seavett’s engineer.”

The superintendent’s chin sank on his chest. He shoved his hands deep in his coat pockets. “Ansel was live enough the last time I saw him. I had no more reason to kill him than I have... you, for instance. I don’t know who murdered him. Or why. Or the first thing about it.”

“What were you doing on the yacht? Besides playing boops-a-daisy with Mrs. Ovett?”

“Hadn’t anything to do with Gjersten. Purely a matter of business.”

“I’ve heard of murder for business reasons.”

“Nothing like that in this.” Hurlihan took an envelope from an inside pocket, extracted a paper. “I went out to get Barbara’s proxy. To vote her shares at the special stockholders’ meeting next week.”

“How come you get her proxy?” Koski scanned the document, stuck it in his pocket. “When her husband’s in the offing?”

“Hey, that’s mine! Gimme that!”

“Control yourself. Number of things I don’t savvy about these proceedings. Why doesn’t young Ovett handle his wife’s business affairs?”

“Merrill,” — Hurlihan picked his words cautiously — “won’t act to protect his own interests — to say nothing of Barabara’s. The Line is shaping up for a terrific breakdown. On paper, we’re making a profit. At sea, we’re losing so many ships we’ll be out of business in six months. That’s the thing some of us are trying to put a stop to.”

“What’ll you do? Keep ’em afloat with proxies?”

“We could cut our losses, under the right management.” The superintendent swore under his breath as a longshoreman slipped on the wet planking of the pier, nearly let a drum topple over. “Better engines, to hop up speed; it’s the ship that drags behind the convoy that gets versenkt. Better loading; to prevent cargo from shifting and cutting down knots. Younger captains, trained in blind navigation, so they won’t stray out of convoy at night. These new intercommunicating systems that won’t get out of kilter in an emergency.”

Koski growled: “Is young Ovett against improvements?”

“His father is. Because they cost dough. Merrill doesn’t seem to give a damn. The crowd I’m with want new blood at the top, to spend the money, save the ships. And the men. Doesn’t sound as if it would lead to manslaughter, does it?”

“Might be a connection. If somebody figured he could grab control by putting the Line on the rocks first.”

Hurlihan’s face puckered. “You suspect someone in the company of deliberately...” his voice trailed off.

“We have reason to believe the killer knew short-wave radio. Most likely way to communicate with the U-boats. The Seavett has a ship-to-ship set. Gjersten was on the yacht. So was Merrill Ovett. So were you.”

“Well!” The superintendent took off his hat, wiped off the sweat-band. “You don’t add that up and make a spy case out of it. Or a murder case. Everybody in the shipping business uses short-wave. Or used to. I had a set in my office; I turned it over to the Navy. What does that make me?”

“If I knew all the answers, I wouldn’t be asking questions.”

Moisture streamed down the superintendent’s face; more than could be accounted for by the mist. “Dammit, we aren’t the only company losing vessels. We’ve had some rotten breaks, but that doesn’t mean anything except that our management is dead on its feet—”

“I heard that record. Turn it over. Tell me how a man could discover when one of your ships is going out? This one, for instance?” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the freighter.

“He might be tipped off by someone who’s on a hatch-crew; they know when the Pobrico’s supposed to be loaded. Or someone connected with the longshoremen’s union, who’d hear about it when the men reported for new jobs.”

“But they wouldn’t know which route the ship was going to take?”

“Only way anyone could find that out would be to get into my office, study the location chart.”

“What’s the location chart? To show the position of your ships?”

“Every bottom we own or charter. Where they’re supposed to be every minute, day or night. But no one’s allowed in my office. It’s always locked when I’m not there. Nobody can get near the pier shed without being checked, double-checked and vouchered, these days.”

“Merrill ever go in there?”

“He might.” Hurlihan looked out past the freighter at the river, a sluggish, leaden stream under the glare of the loading lights. “He worked there for a couple of months, few years ago.”

“Still have a key, does he?”

“Don’t know. Some of the Line officials have. But anybody else would have to run the gantlet o-f our guards, the customs men, and the pier patrolmen.”

“Let’s have a peek at this location thing.”

The superintendent’s office was locked. Hurlihan used a key chained to his belt, pushed open a heavy steel door, let Koski into a long, narrow room at the end of the shed. From its window Koski could see out over the well-deck of the freighter. Light streamed up out of the hold, silhouetting men of the forward hatch gang — black gnomes against a yellow inferno. One of the explosive drums swung up over the side, hovered, spun slowly as it descended. The Harbor Squad man heard Hurlihan expel his breath in a long sigh.

The superintendent turned to a jumbo chart of the North Atlantic which covered one wall from floor to ceiling; the chart was covered with transparent plastic, which bore the greasy markings of colored crayons. Inch-long miniatures of steamships were sprinkled along the route north past Nova Scotia and Iceland; they bore markings: Santa Inez, Santa Felice, Santa Rosario...

On the long bare table in front of the chart were other miniatures, mounted on small, painted metal disks. One was labeled Santa Pobrico. Hurlihan picked it up, touched it to the cellophane. It clung to the chart just outside Ambrose Lightship off New York Harbor. “Sheet of zinc underneath the chart; it’s electrically magnetized so these widgets stick where we put them. Unless a torpedo knocks them off.” He touched the miniature of the Pobrico. “If you don’t stymie me, this is where she’ll be by nine o’clock tomorrow night.”

Koski nudged the ship-cymbol gently along on the chart a couple of inches. “What’re the red marks for, f’r instance?”

“Where we lost a ship.”

“What about the blue crosses?”

“Attacks.”

Koski saw a blue X a little below and to the right of Cape Hatteras. Beside it was printed in green ink: Santa Mercede.

“This the last one you lost, Hurlihan?”

“Yeah. One of my pals went down with that — the first officer. He wasn’t as lucky as Merrill.”

Koski didn’t act as if it was news. “The old man’s son been on any other Ovett ships that have been torpedoed... besides the Mercede?”

“Search me. If I knew what alias he used, I could find out from the log-files.” The superintendent couldn’t keep his attention away from the window; he was listening to the detective with a mixture of impatience and anxiety. “But you couldn’t suspect a man who actually sailed on board a ship that was sunk, anyway.”

“Couldn’t I?” Koski’s jaw jutted. “The sort of slug who’d tip off a sub-commander about a ship’s sailing might be able to fix it so he wouldn’t be among those missing after she went down.” He tapped Hurlihan on the chest with rigid fingers. “We’ve had it straight from the feed-box that young Ovett’s planning to ship out of the harbor today. If he goes out on your T.N. Tanker, you’ll have a hell of a lot of explaining to do, mister. Better make good and damned sure he doesn’t!”