Down Among the Dead Men

XXII

Ellen slipped the clipping into her coat pocket. “Aren’t you tired of following us around, Lieutenant?”

He tossed his hat toward a hook, ringed it. “Yair. I’m tired. Of getting the runaround from a couple of cubs who don’t seem to know from apples.”

Joslin drank some water. “We told you we didn’t know what it was all about.”

“You did. I want what you do know.” The waiter wandered in, observed Koski uneasily.

The man from the Harbor Precinct picked up the menu. “I might grab off a quickie, Bill. Crab sandwich, hot. Coffee, black. Vite!”

“Sure, boss.” The waiter shuffled away. Up front, the middle-aged man paid his check, departed.

Koski leaned back in his chair. The pain in his side hadn’t lessened. His headache had returned, with sound effects. “We had a tip young Ovett was going out on the Santa Pobrico.”

Joslin traced a pattern on the tablecloth with his fork; it looked to Koski like the silhouette of a submarine. He went on: “Coast Guard made a search at the pier just before the steamer sailed.”

Ellen folded and refolded an empty paper match container.

“Went over her from truck to keelson,” Koski moved back to let the waiter put a plate before him. “Tip was slightly cockeyed. Merrill Ovett wasn’t aboard.”

“I thought he was,” Joslin admitted. “He told me he might ship out on her.”

“Tim would have told you,” Ellen reached across the table, covered the organizer’s hand with her own, “except we were afraid—”

“—of the wrong thing, yair. You were afraid we’d catch him. You should have been afraid of the kind of guy who’d murder a man, cleave him into hunks and toss him in a tideway. Who’d shoot down a girl because she might have been a witness against him. Who’d batter a private op within an inch of his life because the dumb dope stuck his nose in the wrong place. Guy behind that sort of mayhem’s nobody to play ring-around-the-rosie with.”

“I didn’t know about those others.” Joslin stopped doodling.

The color drained out of Ellen’s face. “You haven’t anything to connect Merrill with... these crimes.”

“No? The girl came from a disorderly house three blocks from where his yacht was lying. The private investigator had trailed him over there.”

“Not like Merrill,” Joslin said, tightly. “He has a lousy temper. But he’d never shoot a woman.”

“That’s the sort of brutality you’d expect from a Nazi,” Ellen cried. “It would revolt Merrill as much as it does us.” She took out the clipping. “You can’t really believe a man who’d go through hell and high water like this,” she handed it to Koski, “would bludgeon anyone just because he was being followed.”

Koski scanned the clipping as he ate. “Queer.” He read on. “About this sub commander knowing he was on the Mercede.”

“Just a stab in the dark.” There was no conviction in Joslin’s tone.

“Think so? Mention it to you?”

“Yes. Said none of the others in his lifeboat knew who he was. So he kept quiet. But it kind of... worried him.”

“Yair.” The Lieutenant drank his coffee. “Lost a lot of weight in the lifeboat, didn’t he?”

“They all did.” Joslin chewed on his lower lip, scowling. “Merrill looked bad. That’s why I thought...”

Koski set his cup down with a clatter. “You been thinking about it long enough. I’ve been thinking the same thing.” He laid a bill on the table, stood up, reached for his hat. “You going to come across with that alias he used? Or do I get it the hard way—”

“M. Stanley,” Joslin said. “That’s what he told me.”

“His grandfather’s middle name,” Ellen nodded, solemnly. “I hope you’re wrong... about what you’ve been thinking.”

Koski motioned toward the door. “The coop’s outside. You better come along. Both of you.”

They made a silent procession out to the street; there was no conversation in the car on the way to the Basin.

A burly shape in oilskins and sou’wester was huddled over the Vigilant’s transom, tinkering with a loose exhaust pipe. The Sergeant waved a strip of asbestos packing:

“Come on in. The water’s fine. It’s dripping down my back faster than it can run out my shoes.”

“Pity the sailors on a night like this.”

“And pity a poor lug misfortunate enough to be doing repair work on a rust-pot like this when by all rights I should be conducting an intimate affair in a bood-war. Hello... passengers, no less?” He grinned a greeting to the girl, let the grin flatten against his teeth as he recognized Joslin. “If it isn’t the tough turkey. Come aboard, my fine-feathered friend and we will take up where we left off.”

Koski snapped: “Forgetsis, Sarge. Get your mind on the race. We’re rolling down to Rio.”

Mulcahey groaned. “The Gowanus, God forbid?”

“No. Caulk instead of talk. We’re overdue at the Pobrico.”

“In two shakes she will be as good as new. Almost.”

“Have her ready to r’ar, Joe. I’m going inside to get off a message.”

They foamed out into the bay. Joslin crouched on the transom seat at the stern, with an arm around Ellen. Spray burst over the foredeck, showered the cockpit. Koski tossed a tarpaulin back to the two huddled aft. “No law against bundling.” He joined Mulcahey in the pilot-house.

“Any word from the detention ward, Irish?”

“As good as could be expected, coach. Schlauff pulled through the operation. He is on the critical list and will not be able to appreciate the nurses for a couple of days at the very least.” The dark bulk of the Statue of Liberty loomed up on the starboard quarter.

“What about the stenographer?”

“He sticks at the bedside; he is in the operating room; goes into a dead faint when proceedings begin. They resuscitate him and pick up his notebook. But there is practically nothing in it because Schlauff did not utter a peel all the time he is in his deliriums. Except to mumble something which is beside the point.”

“Let’s have it.”

The Sergeant delved in his slicker pocket, pulled out a fragment of damp teletype newsprint. On it were erratic capitals: