Down Among the Dead Men

III

The river was a dark tunnel under the shadowy span of bridges. The Vigilant got up to twenty knots, her bow uptilted like a runner’s head thrown back for air. Koski stood in the cockpit, bracing himself against the bulkhead, scanning the gloom ahead for lights which might signify an eighty-footer moving north.

As they surged past the tall stacks marking the Navy Yard, he caught a stealthy movement in the field of his binoculars. A black boat, low of freeboard and displaying no lights, was slipping in toward the Queens shore.

“Junkie.” He pointed her out to the Sergeant. “Probably got a load of manila off one of the supply scows.”

“We could nail him, skipper.”

“Not now. Looks like Eustape’s tub. We’ll get around to him in due course.”

“Give him enough rope, that otter’ll set himself up in the cordage business.”

“He better learn the jute business. It’ll come in handier where he’s headed.”

The giant span of the Triborough Bridge came into view as they sped past the upper end of Welfare Island. They circled an Army dredge, felt the slew of the Hell Gate race, boomed along past a sand-barge tow toward North Brother and the Sound. There were plenty of slowly moving lights on the dark expanse toward College Point and Whitestone — but none that might have been the Seavett.

A Coast Guard cutter anchored inside Throgs Neck pointed a tapering finger of white at them, cut off its searchlight, as soon as the beam touched the square-green flag whipping from the Vigilant’s jack-staff.

“Run over, Joe. Maybe they know a thing.”

The patrol-boat swerved inshore. A hundred feet away, Koski cupped his hands, bellowed: “Seen an eighty-foot Cee-Gee Auxiliary? Going down Sound?”

“Five... minutes... ago.” The hail came faintly over the rumble of the heavy-duty motor. “Need... any... help?”

“No,” Koski hollered. “Much oblige.”

“I am cutting the corners as close as I dare, Steve.” The Sergeant shaved the inshore side of a black nun-buoy whose tall cone teetered over against the drag of the current until its white number was almost under the surface. The clear, green jewel of Stepping Stones light came up around the Neck.

“Thar she, Irish,” Koski nodded toward a white spark far to the left of the lighthouse. “Won’t be long now.”

It was another five minutes before they made out her outline against the dim riding lights of the lumber fleet anchored off City Island. The Seavett had a corsairlike sheer and a slant-front, streamlined deckhouse. She was moving along at a steady five knots.

The Vigilant crawled up on her starboard quarter. When they were a hundred yards away, Koski put the beam of the flashlight on the yacht’s deckhouse. He held it on the varnished woodwork and plate glass long enough to make sure he had the helmsman’s attention; then threw the beam down toward the water, reached up and held his hat over it so that only enough light escaped to illuminate the police flag. The Seavett didn’t alter course or slow her speed.

“There,” Mulcahey observed, “is one dumb dilly. How do they let farmers like that fly a Cee-Gee Auxiliary flag?”

“I wish we had one of those one-pounders aboard. I’d put the fear of the Lord into him. Run across her bows, Irish.”

The Vigilant crept up to the yacht’s counter, came abreast, forged ahead, cut in sharply.

Profanity belched from the Seavett’s deckhouse. She slewed westward, heeling over heavily. Mulcahey followed her around, nosed the police-boat against her, amidships. Koski swung over to the yacht.

“What the heirs the matter with you! Don’t you know a police flag when you see it?”

The man who stumbled angrily out of the deckhouse was short and stumpy-legged; the plump beer-belly made his uniform coat a little too tight. His nose was too big for his face and networked with fine purple threads; sacks of puffy flesh under the prominent eyeballs gave him a toadlike appearance. The smell of liquor was strong on his breath.

“Dammit, you got no right to stop us. We’re on Coast Guard duty.”

“Y’don’t say. We work with the Cee-Gee, too. And when a cop-boat pulls up beside you, you stop or you’ll get your ears pinned back. You Cardiff?”

“ ’Sme.”

“Koski. Lieutenant. Harbor detail. Drop your hook.”

“What’s all the rumpus about?”

“Get your hook down. Talk afterwards.” Cardiff went forward, threw off lashings, tossed his plowshare anchor overside — kullunge.

He came back to the deckhouse, put his gear in reverse, took a strain on the anchor-rode, cut the motor.

“Satisfied?”

“Hell of a long way from it.” Koski was curt. “Heard from your man, Gjersten?”

“Don’t much expect to, now.”

“Why not?”

Cardiff looked at him out of the corner of his eyes. “If he’s gone overboard, somebody’d have picked him up before this. He could handle himself all right in the water. So I imagine he just skipped ship.”

“Didn’t figure that way this morning when you phoned headquarters.”

“Didn’t figure one way or the other. No basis for figuring. Nobody saw Ansel go ashore. Other hand, nobody saw him go overboard. One of us would most likely have heard him yell, even if we were under way.”

“You saw Gjersten last at Rodd’s Yard?”

“Yuh. Just before we left.”

“Who else was on board?”

The Captain held his left hand out in front of him, studied the palm as if he were reading from a note. “Missus Ovett was down in the main cabin. Mister Hurlihan was down there, too. He’s general superintendent of the Lines; comes around every so often to discuss... uh... business. Then there was Frankie — he’s our Filipino cook and bottle-washer — he’d have been forward in the galley. And me.” He closed his palm abruptly, glanced up.

Koski pushed past him into the deckhouse. The only light came from an underlit chart-glass, forward of the mahogany wheel; the dim glow made mirrors of the deckhouse windows. Beyond the chart-glass, up against the port windows, was a gray metal cabinet with vernier dials, switches, a one-piece telephone instrument in a nickeled fork at the side.

“You only carry two in your crew, Cardiff?”

“Supposed to have four. Been short-handed since Pearl Harbor. I don’t squawk. I’d probably be drawing Navy pay myself, if it wasn’t for a leak in my pump valves. There’s only me and Frankie left. He’s not sure of his citizen status, or maybe he’d try to get in as a mess-boy.”

“Who handles the short-wave apparatus, here? Gjersten?”

“No. I do. What little handling it gets. We’re restricted to the Coast Guard fixed frequency now. Mr. Ovett had it put in a couple of years ago so he could use the ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore channels. All that’s out, times like these. Don’t use it once a week. Nothing to it, anyway. Press a button to talk, listen for the buzzer when the control officer wants to give us an order.”

Koski snapped a switch at the side of the set. A glass button glowed red. “Gjersten have any pay coming to him?”

“His wages so far this month. About seventy-five dollars.” Cardiff watched the Lieutenant twiddle the directional antennae. “Not as if he’d signed on with the Line. If he’d jumped ship there, he’d forfeit it all. Here, it’ll be waiting, if he calls for it. I hope it’s the last money I have to turn over to him, though I don’t know where I’ll get a man to take his place.”

“Good riddance, hah?”

“I’d have given Ansel the bounce long ago, even though he was a wiz around those heavy-duty gas motors. But he was a disagreeable guy. Never did anything without griping. Worst of it was, he knew he could get away with it.”

“Drag with the owner?” Koski turned up the volume control, but the tubes weren’t warm enough to snap the set into action.

Cardiff pointed to the deck at his feet. “She hired him.”

“That way? Isn’t she pretty well along in years to be mucking around with a thirty-year-old yacht-hand?”

The Captain’s eyes bulged; his forehead wrinkled. “She’s a long way from being on the retired list.”

“Thought Ovett was around seventy...”

“Sure. But she’s not Missus Lawford Ovett. His daughter-in-law. Son’s wife. Twenty-five or so.” The man’s cupped palm described a sinuous vertical movement in the air.

Koski’s lips made a soundless O. “Where’s young Ovett?”

“We don’t see much of Merrill.”

“Not around last night?”

“Well... he was... and he wasn’t.” The Captain appeared to be rummaging in the drawer for something he couldn’t find. “We hadn’t seen him or heard from him — at least I hadn’t — for a couple of months. Then yesterday he showed up out of a clear sky while we were lying there at Rodd’s Dock.”

“What time?”

“About high tide. Say five. He just walked on board without saying where he’d been or what he’d been doing.” Cardiff closed the drawer, cleared his throat “Kind of surprised... everybody.”

“Somebody caught with his pants down?”

“No, no. Nothing like that.”

“Was there a fight?”

“Oh, no.” Cardiff fidgeted. “No rough stuff.”

“Did Hurlihan clear out?”

“Not right away.” The Captain looked over his shoulder, made sure there was no one on the deck outside. “Missus Ovett sent Frankie up to the bridge to tell me we’d run around to the East River and drop the super off at the club float, foot of Wall Street. So I sent Frankie over to Rodd’s machine shop to locate Ansel. He was trying to get hold of a template — so we could straighten out the propeller ourselves. Few minutes after they came back, I took the tub across the river. We could only make about quarter-speed; the fog was thicker than a steam-bath and running on one propeller makes her vibrate so I thought she’d shake her guts out.”

“Gjersten didn’t mix in this family argument?”

“Not that I heard. He went right down to the engine-room. If you’re thinking he tipped Merrill off to any dirt about Missus Ovett—”

Koski made a brusque gesture with the flat of his hand. “I’m thinking there must have been plenty of rough stuff, no matter what you heard, or didn’t hear. What else would you call cutting off a man’s head? And arms? And legs? Stuffing his body in a suitcase...?”

Cardiff cleared his throat again, ceremoniously. “Now I suppose I ought to say I’m sorry for Ansel. But I never did like the surly son of a sea-cook. Still, that decapitation business — that’s enough to turn your stomach.”

“It was. Whether it was Gjersten or not. There’s damn little to go on in the way of identification. How tall would you say he was?”

“Little under six feet. Well built. Weighed maybe a hundred and seventy-five pounds, I’d guess.”

“Ever see him stripped?”

Cardiff rubbed a forefinger under his nostrils. “In his undershirt. Only thing I remember is that whacky-looking tattoo mark.”

“Yair...?”

“A propeller. Four-bladed propeller, it was supposed to be, only it looked more like a purple four-leaf clover. Frankie kidded him about it once; Ansel got sore and near broke the Filipino’s arm before I cut in.”

“What was on his arm doesn’t help. Recall any marks on his body?”

The Captain shook his head. “There’d have been plenty of marks on him if he got into a fight with Merrill, though.”

“Tough?”

“Boss’s son has a temper like a fulminate cap; runs in the family, sort of. The Old Man blows his valve if anybody looks crosseyed at him. And I’ve seen Merrill make a pretzel out of a pipe-stanchion when he got in a rage at her.” Cardiff jerked his thumb toward the deck again.

“Well, hell. You’d have heard it if he and Ansel mixed it below deck, hey?”

“Hard to say.” The Captain was thoughtful. “Those old motors make more noise than a bombing plane. Even when they’re idling, they’re nothing to lull you to sleep. I didn’t even hear Merrill when he came up on deck and jumped to the float.”

“You see him?”

“I saw him sprawling on the float after he took a flying leap for himself.”

“Where was Ansel?”

“Well, he’s supposed to handle the for-rad line when we dock, but he hadn’t shown since he first went down below, so I figured maybe he was in the John or something. So I ran the bow-line out myself, because I could tell Mister Hurlihan was in a swivet to get on shore.” Cardiff hiccoughed gently. “He hopped off onto the float and beat it up the gangplank to the pier. I gave her right rudder and a touch of reverse to swing out — went up to cast off. Frankie was at the stern-line; I heard him yell. When I looked back, there was Merrill doing a broad jump clear across to the float.”

“He have a suitcase with him?”

“Jumping across five feet of water? Didn’t have anything except what he could carry in the pockets of his blue serge.”

Koski thumbed brown flakes into the bowl of the corncob. “Where was his wife?”

“Below. In her cabin, she says.”

“Didn’t you think it was queer for young Ovett to shove off like that, without saying so-long to anybody?”

“How’d I know he hadn’t been talking to Missus Ovett?” The Captain puffed out his cheeks, exhaled like a balloon deflating. “I thought likely he was hotfooting after Mister Hurlihan. That was no skin off my stern.”

“You see Ansel after you left the Wall Street float?”

“No. Matter of fact, now I come to think of it, I don’t recall seeing him at all, after we left Rodd’s. But I didn’t pay any attention to that; he’s been such an unreliable scut.”

The radio burped, beeped, exploded intoraucous voice:

“...Cutter Algonquin calling Coast Guard Fire Island...”

“...go ahead, Algonquin...”

“...bringing in twenty-two survivors torpedoed merchant vessel. Expect to disembark Freeport about three A.M. Will need four ambulances. Hospital accommodations for fifteen. That is all.”

“...Message received, Algonquin...”

The set fell silent. Koski switched it off, grimly. “You say Merrill Ovett knew how to operate one of these sets?”

“I didn’t say so. But if you ask me, I’d say he does.”

Koski gripped his arm. “Listen, don’t play twenty questions with me. I’m after a killer. I’m after a man who may have been responsible for those fifteen people being rushed to a hospital — and for those who won’t need any medical attention because they weren’t picked up. You tell me what you know. Without my having to drag it out of you. And start now.”