Down Among the Dead Men

XX

Fingers of fog crept across Battery Park, strangling the lambent blue at the subway kiosk, shrouding a newspaper stand in golden haze. A tug groaned dismally; a St. George ferry hooted back. There was no dusk, only an enveloping grayness which grew steadily darker. Koski opened the door marked Harbor Precinct, stood with hands on his hips. He sniffed, grumbled:

“Haven’t you guys heard?”

Mulcahey took his feet off the teletypewriter desk. “What’s of new?”

“You can live three weeks without food, three days without water. But only three minutes without air.” He stalked to the window, jerked the steel sash up. The dim light above the landing stage fifty feet away outlined the Vigilant in soft focus.

“We had that open, coach.” The Sergeant objected. “It is an invitation to double pneumonia. The mist comes rolling in like we’re in that cave under Niagara Falls.”

“You’ll stand in a damp hallway for an hour, saying good night to a dame. Get you inside a warm office, right away you’re sensitive to moisture.” Koski slumped into his straight-backed chair, shuffled through the departmental circulars on his desk. The teletype clattered; a short-wave receiver muttered monotonously in one corner.

“What do them convoy navigators do, dense weather this way, skipper? They are not allowed to tootle their klaxons.”

“Follow the wake of the ship ahead. Ship tows a buoy with a hook sticking up on top, cuts the waves, makes a ripple of white water.” Koski tossed aside a notification of an Anchor Association meeting. “If it gets too thick to see that, they run blind, Irish. And trust to luck. Same like us on this case.”

Mulcahey tilted his head back, winked laboriously at O’Malley. “My sense of tuition informs me that something has gone sour. What marches?”

“Time.” Koski stuck his hands in his trouser pockets, stretched his legs out stiffly. “And still not Merrill Ovett.”

“The next three hours will march none too quick for me. At one bell in the next watch I will be nestling alongside the most seductive suzy the human arm ever encircled.”

“You’ll be nestling in the Gowanus. With a set of body drags.”

“Ah, now, Steve. I give this damsel my iron-clad guarantee...”

Koski rubbed his eyes wearily. “There’s no such word as femme in your lexicon, Irish. Until we pack this in the Finished file.” He took out the handkerchief with the revolver, unscrewed the cap of his fountain pen, found a manila tag, tied it to the trigger-guard. “To Identification. With love and kisses. Ask them to shoot to Ballistics.”

Mulcahey hefted it. “Would this be the barker that bit the Purdo babe?”

“If so, one Henry Fross suffers from carelessness. He doesn’t impress me as careless. Still, I’d like an expert verdict. If it isn’t asking too much...?”

“I will hustle it thither on the instant.” The Sergeant turned, pivoted around again, “Say, — it nearly slipped my mind—”

“What slipped what...?”

“Homicide traces the suitcase.”

“Where?”

“A drugstore. Off Times Square. It is the first time I realize the drugstores are in the luggage business.”

“Hell. Some of them carry farm machinery. Any clerk remember the purchaser?”

“That’s the way they traced it. By asking around about a buyer with a turban on the south end of his head. Further than that, the identification remains nil and void. But there is one funny thing...”

“Make me laugh.”

“This buyer carries a roll of something when he comes into the store. There is a paper around it so the clerk cannot be sure but he thinks it is oilcloth. It smells like oilcloth. There are very few things in this world which smell like oilcloth, thanks be.”

“Yair.” Koski nodded, slowly. “To put under the body while he was sawing it up. When did he make the buy?”

“About two-thirty or three Sunday afternoon. That’s the top of the news... from here.” Mulcahey went out.

Koski pulled a sheet off a pile of blank forms; under the heading DETECTIVE’S DAILY ACTIVITY REPORT — FORM DD62, he wrote the date: 3/20/42. He looked at the paper.

Where would he begin: — with the Seavett, Ansel Gjersten, Merrill Ovett, Captain Cardiff, Frankie the Filip, Barbara? What to say about the Bar-Nothing, Big Dommy, Dora, Schlauff, Claire Purdo, the man in the cotton mask? How ought he to cover Ellen Wyatt, and Tim Joslin? Or the angles at the Ovett Line; Clem Hurlihan, Rolf Berger, Lawford Ovett? And friend Fross?

After a while he put the cap back on his fountain pen, laid DD62 at one side of his desk, went into the bunk-room, tossed his coat on the cot with his shield number on it. He opened his locker, dug out a razor and shaving cream, filled a tumbler with water, busied himself with lather, staring out the window at the mouth of the river. The fog had thinned momentarily under the night breeze. The soft blurs of light had sharpened to brighter pinpoints of red, white, yellow...

Koski read them as if they had been neon advertisements on Broadway, before the dimout. Those three vertical whites moving almost imperceptibly away from the Battery would be a tug with coal barges coming up from the stake-boat off Black Tom. That cluster of faint yellow dots across the river, — the Coast Guard patrol cutter at the main channel. The luminous red and green, close to the water, — an oil barge from Bayonne for Spuyten Duyvil. And riding sluggishly in the thinner vapor high above the water, two clear, white sparks, — one above the other; that might be a freighter bound out for Quarantine, the net at the Narrows, the assembly port and... God knows where. Her convoy number would be showing by daylight; her name would be painted out. But under the clay-gray war paint Koski thought it likely she would have on her stern the letters S-A-N-T-A P-O-B-R-I–C-O.

He wondered if the little metal replica was on the wall chart in Hurlihan’s office; how long it would remain there...

The phone brrrd. Koski said: “Yair. Here. Go”

“Philbrick, Ballistics, Lieutenant... Homicide says you want the dope on that slug from the Treanor Place shooting... It weighed seventy-two grams... came from a thirty-two caliber Harrington and Richardson automatic... manufactured in Worcester, Mass., some time subsequent to 1935... weapon you’re after will be rifled with a six-groove left-twist spiral. Pitch, ten and a half inches... groove depth, ten-thousandths of an inch... groove width, forty-two thousandths... smokeless powder used in the cartridge... the shells will show an ejector mark which has been isolated... the barrel was comparatively clean when the gun was fired.”

“H&R 32 auto. Okay.”

“You have anything you want us to test against that, Lieutenant?”

“You have one I don’t need tested. An S&W I just sent over. Ticketed Henry Fross. Skipola. Thanks.”

He had scraped one side of his face when the phone went into action again. This time it was Nixon.

“I have a rare specimen for your collection.”

“From the stiff?”

“B-yutifui prints. Nearly good as new.”

“What does it get us?” Koski began on the other side of his face.

“Same as a couple we picked off the bedstead in Room Five at Dominick’s.”

“Shows what science can do. When given a chance.” Koski rinsed the razor. “The one place we know for sure he had been. That the crop?”

“Give us time, pardner.”

“That’s what I’ve got nothing but. Find something, for Pete’s sake. How about that stuff from the Joslin garret?”

“We found a million. Take us a week to classify. He must hold seances or something.”

“Yair. Nothing from the Purdo flat?”

“Zero. Killer must have worn gloves.”

“I’ll fit him out with wristbands if you’ll only give a little. Much oblige. For what?” He hung up.

Mulcahey stuck his head in from the muster room.

“When you get done with your toilette, sire...”

“Something?”

“A rum-dum to see you. He is stumbling all around, stewed to the scuppers. I done my best to shoo him off but he does not shoo.”

“What’s he look like?” Koski washed off the remains of the lather.

“A refugee from a Walt Disney, no kidding.”

“Pluto? Or Mickey?”

“That Reynard the Fox, in the one about—”

“Fox!” Koski dried his face, hurriedly. “Thin? Mustache? Thirty-five to forty?”

“I am glad nobody runs him in for cluttering up the hallowed precinct, if you are acquainted with him.”

Koski dived out the door, went down on the run.

Morrie Schlauff shambled along the wall by the door, trying to brace himself with futile pawings. He weaved unsteadily as Koski reached him.

“Shails... unner... name...” he muttered thickly. “Shails...” he swayed...

“Seldom have I met up with a handsomer snootful.” Mulcahey clumped to the foot of the stairs.

“Save it, Irish!” Koski put his arm around the investigator’s shoulders. “Say it again, Schlauff.”

“Shails... Breeco...” The man grimaced, struggled to balance himself, toppled against the wall. His hat slid askew over his eyes, fell to the floor. The hair on the left side of his crown was matted as if he had rubbed oil in it.

“Amby, Irish! Double quick!” Koski held Schlauff erect.

“Hurt he is? Me bawling him out for being stinko!”

“Skull fracture, for Pete’s sake! Snap into it!” The Harbor Squad man put his face close to Schlauff’s. “One more try. What name’d Ovett use?”

Schlauff’s eyes — rolled. His lower jaw went slack. He made a final tremendous effort, “...going... shink.” His lips worked convulsively... “shink... breeco...” His tongue lolled, his knees sagged. He was a limp weight in Koski’s arms when Mulcahey rushed back.

“Here in three minutes. Holy Mother! ’S he gone?”

“Just out. Might go. Might not. Pull his legs out straight. Have to hold him sitting up.”

“What was he mumbling in his beard?”

“Name of the ship our man got away on, Irish.”

“Got away!”

“Just went down harbor. Ten minutes ago. The Santa Pobrico. Of the Ovett Line. Sounded as if he was trying to say the Pobrico’s going to be sunk.” He scowled at the wound on Schlauff’s head. “I ought to be sore at the dumb cluck. He thought he’d put over a swiftie, collect himself an easy dollar. Walked into one hell of a beating. Had guts enough to make it over here, when he found out what he was up against.” The wail of a siren rose and fell. “I wish I knew just what the guy was trying to get to me. He couldn’t have had it far wrong. Or he wouldn’t have been taken, like that.”

O’Malley yelled from the detective office: “Hey, they got Joslin.”

Koski barked: “Who did?”

“One the Oak Street boys.” O’Malley hurried out. “He tails the Wyatt dame. To the Lighthouse, over by Fulton Market. An’ who does she have a rendezvous with but Hardrock Joslin! How you like!”

“I like it. Is Oak Street still there?”

“Standing by. Waiting for orders.”

“Tell him to keep standing. I’m on my way.”

The long, gray car rolled up.

“Sarge, you ride in the amby. Stick with Schlauff until I get a steno-guy over to the hospital. I want to know if he says anything more before he goes under. Don’t muff it, now.”

“If it comes my way, I will catch it.”

Koski let the interne take his burden, hopped in a squad car, was speeding across Battery Park before the ambulance door shut.