Down Among the Dead Men

XXIII

“I have to take it on the typewriter,” Mulcahey apologized, “whilst the officer reads it to me over the telephone. Excuse it, please.” He squinted off to starboard where a deeper blotch of black to the southwest indicated Staten Island.

“How any periscope could be of use on a night like this, I fail to comprehend, skipper. I am doing well to keep off the Bay Ridge shore without the aid of a telescope.”

“You can spot the quarantine anchorage with your naked eye.” Koski leveled a finger a couple of points off the starboard bow. “But the pig-boats don’t depend on vision. Radio locators and sound detectors are their dish in dirty weather.”

“Speakin’ of which, I’m hoping we don’t have to go out past the lightship after your wolf. Them two cuddlers back there will be half drowned.”

Koski touched the aluminum pot over the alcohol flame. The coffee was hot enough; he poured steaming liquid into thick white cups. “First aid to the lovelorn.” He made his way back to the cockpit. “Mug up,” he called above the thunder of the exhaust. “If you’re not frozen stiff.”

Ellen said: “I need that” and “Thanks.”

Joslin muttered: “How about the net at the Narrows?”

“They’ll have it open for us.” Koski ducked a slap of spray that bobbled athwartship, moved forward as the loudspeaker began to croak.

“...St. George base calling Vigilant... come in, Vigilant...”

Mulcahey clicked the “talk” lever:

“Vigilant, here... go ahead, St. George...”

“Position one eight determined... Auxiliary at buoy fifteen main channel... acknowledge...”

Koski put his mouth to the transmitter. “Vigilant should reach buoy fifteen in about... say ten minutes...”

“Finished... Wynant... St. George...”

A lance of light from the shore threw sudden illumination on a red and white striped buoy a hundred yards ahead; was extinguished before the men in the Vigilant’s pilot-house could get more than a brief, photographic impression of the nettug inshore and the control vessel just beyond the net.

The Sergeant throttled down; nosed the patrol-boat past the ominous line of jagged spikes barely showing above the water. “I would sooner go on the rocks with a full gale behind me than try to run over that guard in one of them speed-boat hulls. ’T would rip the bottom out like it was cardboard.”

“The Japanazis can do enough damage offshore without coming in this close, Irish. Check off your channel markers, now.”

They got up to speed again, roared through the night. There was a chop in the lower bay; by the time they made out the gray hull of a converted yawl at Buoy Fifteen, the Vigilant was plunging and bucking in toppling waves.

The yawl slid down Ambrose Channel; the Sergeant cut his speed to remain astern. “I trust our first-cabin passengers do not suffer from the mal de mer, coach.”

“They’ll take some tougher things than a cross-sea before the night’s over.”

Against the tapering tower of the West Bank beacon, they made out a clipper-bowed hull. Koski shone his pocket flashlight on the police flag. The yawl turned back toward the Narrows; the Mohawk glided gracefully out toward sea, with the Vigilant astern.

It was a mile farther before Koski realized they were already catching up to the convoy. The Coast Guard cutter had angled out of the main ship channel. A spot of white ahead became the foam of a propeller wash; the sound of the police-boat’s exhaust echoed back from the high, iron wall of the tanker looming up beside them.

The Santa Pobrico was the second vessel they overtook; her wheel was turning over just enough to give her steerage-way.

The Mohawk disappeared to port behind the dark bulk of the freighter. Koski reached for the megaphone on the binocular shelf. “Give me all the leeway you can, Irish. I’ll be no monkey on a stick, with this rib the way it is.” He clambered up on the forward deck.

He didn’t need the megaphone. A rope ladder was already swaying down.

Mulcahey maneuvered as close as he dared. The patrol-boat lifted high on the crest of the ground-swell, its deck level with the bottom of the ladder. Koski sprang. The wave surged inshore. The Vigilant dropped away beneath him, down into the trough, left him dangling six feet out from the hull as the freighter rolled.

She came back. The Lieutenant thudded against the wet iron of the plate, wondered how much of a shock it took to set off a cargo of T.N.T. He began to climb. His side was an agony of torture before hands reached over the rail, hauled him up. Two men with gold braid on their caps steadied Koski at the ladder head.

“Piper, first officer,” one of them put out his hand.

“Koski, Lieutenant.” The man from the Harbor Precinct wiped his palms.

“Coast Guard says you have additional information about the man they searched for, this afternoon.”

“Just learned he signed on under the name of Stanley. M. Stanley. Let’s see your roster.”

Piper led him to the bridge; unlocked a drawer; produced a board with a typewritten sheet clipped to it. His finger ran down the list of names. “Here you are. Black gang. M. Stanley, oiler, second class.”

“On watch now?”

“All hands are on duty until we take departure from the lightship. Want to see him?”

“Yair.”

“Hope it doesn’t take long. Convoy escort can’t wait for laggards. Bad business to be left behind, where we’re going.”

“Might be worse to keep on. With this bird aboard.”

They want aft to the poop deck where the four-inch gun pointed threateningly from behind its concrete emplacement; down steep companionways, through a narrow hatch. Piper climbed down the iron ladder to the engine-room grating, waited while Koski descended.

An elderly man with grizzled hair was making some adjustment on the valves of the big reciprocating engine; he glanced up from the rhythmic slide of the crank arm, nodded.

“Stanley around?”

The man jerked his head over toward one shoulder. Koski turned. Bent over a circulating pump were muscular shoulders in a sleeveless undershirt. The man’s face was hidden, but on the left arm Koski saw a white patch of adhesive. He started for the oiler, was still ten feet away when the man pivoted around. Black eyes, set in a white face like raisins in a blob of dough, darted suspiciously from Piper to the Lieutenant; the oiler backed against an asbestos-covered pipe, picked up a wrench.

“Steady as she goes, Gjersten.” Koski halted.

The man looked quickly over his shoulder, as if he expected someone else to be there. “Who you talking to?”

“Drop the wrench!” Koski took out his gun.

“My name’s Stanley!”

“Save your breath! You’re Ansel Gjersten! Show’s over! Trip’s off! Didn’t end the way you expected, did it?”

Gjersten laughed, uncertainly. The wrench swung up at his side in what might have been a casual movement...

“Don’t start anything!” Koski warned. “You’ll go ashore feet first!”

The wrench came down swiftly, smashed against a valve fixture. Steam jetted out fiercely into the engine-room, hissing like a locomotive.

“Why don’t you shoot!” Gjersten flung himself to one side. “Shoot! Blow the damn ship out of the water, why don’t you!” The oiler fumbled at his belt. “I’ll do it for you—”

Koski gasped in air too hot to breathe, dropped to his knees, shielded his face with his arm. The engine-room clouded with vapor. Piper cried a warning, sprinted for a control valve.

Gjersten lay on one elbow, dragged an automatic from the waist-band of his pants. He took time to aim...

Koski dived, clubbing his service special. Flame spat in his face. A hot wire streaked across the side of his neck. He smashed at the black eyes with every ounce of strength he could put behind it, felt the bone of the man’s skull crack...

The roaring of the steam deafened him. For an instant he wasn’t sure whether the cargo had let go. Then the roaring blast from the steam pipe stopped hissing, became merely a hoarse, hot breath.

He rolled off Gjersten. The man was dead.

Piper came running back. Men poured down the iron ladder. There was a quarter hour of confusion, in the engine-room, on deck, in the executive cabin, — before Koski convinced the Pobrico’s command that he had a right to take the body ashore. It was another fifteen minutes until the Vigilant got underneath the swaying ladder again and let Koski step off to the foredeck.

“Hold her, Irish. Another one coming.”

“Holy Mother.” Mulcahey craned his neck up at the body being lowered in a sling. “You had to knock him out?”

“Permanently.” Koski slashed the hoist-rope.

A canvas sea-bag came down like a descending pendulum over the pilot-house; Mulcahey leaned out, grabbed it, hauled it in, line and all. “If anyone was to scoot up and ask me,” the Sergeant swung off toward the Narrows, “I would say a dead wolf is the best kind there is.”

“He won’t be biting, any more.” Koski dragged his burden aft. The police-boat lurched away from the freighter.

Joslin called: “Need any help?”

“Yair. Drag it down to the cockpit.”

“It was Gjersten,” Ellen cried. “That other... in the morgue... that’s Merrill.”

“Yair. Must be.”

“Means this skunk,” Joslin piled the tarpaulin over on top of the body, “murdered Merrill”

“To get his papers,” Mulcahey agreed.

“He got the papers, all right.” Koski wet his handkerchief in sea-water, laid it across his neck where the bullet had raised a welt. “But he didn’t kill Ovett. This,” he touched the corpse with his toe, “isn’t Bandage Face.”