Стюарт Стерлинг - Collection of Stories

A home-made ladder of paint-bespeckled 2x4s stood against her, amidships, surrounded by sawhorses, paint cans, an upturned dinghy. Its upper end reached to one of the cockpit curtains which had been left unfastened, flopping loosely in the night breeze.

“Ahoy, on the Urchin ,” Koski hailed. He knuckled the hull loudly.

There were hasty steps. A white face appeared timidly in the gap beside the loose curtain — a girl, dark hair bound in a yellow bandana, dark eyes wide with fear.

“What is it?” Her voice was tremulous.

“Harbor Police,” Koski said.

“Oh!” She gasped, clutched at a stanchion. “What’s wrong, officer?”

“Take it easy.” Koski wondered whether it had been his arrival that so frightened her. “Just looking for the club watchman. Seen him around the yard tonight?”

“Pete?” she managed. “No. Not since supper. Why do you want him?”

Koski half turned, as if to go. “You alone on the boat, miss?”

“No.” She seemed relieved at his indication of departure. “Ken’s here — my husband. I’m Marya Caton. If I see Pete, I’ll tell him you want to see him.” She started to withdraw.

He moved back to the ladder. “Ask Mr. Caton if he’s seen Pete.”

“Why — Ken’s not here now.” She was alarmed by Koski’s fresh show of interest. “When I said he was here, I didn’t mean he’s on board right now.”

“When you expect him back?”

“Most any minute. He just went out — to see if he could find some — some stuff to fix our sink drain.”

Koski put a foot on the first rung.

She retreated to the shadowy interior of the cockpit.

“That’s what scared me,” she went on hurriedly, “your saying you’re from the police. I thought something’d happened to him.”

Koski climbed up. “If he’s coming right back, I might wait for him, Mrs. Caton.”

He paused at the top of the ladder, holding onto the new canvas where a jagged piece had been torn out of one corner.

“I’ll stay here in the cockpit,” he suggested.

“No, no,” she apologized nervously. “I guess you can come below. It’s only — Ken’s always warning me about letting anybody come aboard when he’s not here.”

“Wise gent.” Koski pushed the canvas aside, got a leg over the coaming. She retreated down the companionway.

With the light from the cabin on her, Koski could see how pretty she was. She was not more than twenty-five, with delicate oval features made to seem a bit more rugged by a warm, winter tan. The smallness of her hands was emphasized by her quick, fluttering bird-like movements.

One of the hands moved to her throat apprehensively.

“Has Pete done anything to get him into trouble?”

“Not that I know of.” Koski let her worry about it.

The cabin was like the girl — small, attractive, neat as a pin. Brasswork gleaming, brightwork glistening with varnish, bright cretonne at the ports, cozy cushions on the bunks, framed photos on the forward bulkhead. One, of a youth in a corporal’s uniform.

“Your husband?” he pointed.

“That’s Ken. Yes.” Fear stayed in her eyes, her voice. “We married just before the war. We haven’t been together much. He’s only been back a year. We haven’t been able to find a place to live.” Under Koski’s gaze, she shivered suddenly, though the shipmate range should have kept the April chill out of the cruiser. “So Ken bought the Urchin with a G.I. loan. We meant to charter her for fishing, but—” her voice faltered.

“Plans change?” Brittle glass crunched beneath his shoes as Koski crossed to the companionway. He looked down. One of the splintered shards had a curved edge like a watch crystal, only larger.

His right hand, hidden from the girl, felt along the cabin roof. In a box set into the rounded roof, just forward of the steering wheel, was a four-inch compass hung in gimbals. The mahogany top of the box had been smashed, the thick glass lens broken. Other fragments were on the deck, in the groove of the hatch slide.

“Prices have gone up so.” She’d had time to figure out her answer. “We thought we could charge twenty-five dollars for taking out a party of four. With meals, that is. But, things the way they are, we’d have to ask forty. There won’t be so many who’ll pay that.”

He nodded sympathetically, wondering why a boat owner whose craft was otherwise so shipshape — or a boatkeeper whose galley pans were so spic and span — would a leave broken compass around like that.

“That’s the kind of difficulty the police aren’t much help on, Mrs. Caton. But if there’s anything else bothering you?”

“Oh, no,” she cried, biting her lip. “There’s nothing. I... I just get so lonely — sometimes — with Ken — away.” She turned aside so he wouldn’t notice the tears in her eyes.

A low whistle shrilled close by; high note, low note, repeated.

She froze, rigid as a child playing still-pond-no-more-moving.

Koski said: “That him?”

Marya nodded.

“Tell him to come on in.” Koski didn’t appear to notice her tension.

She stumbled up the companionway. “Ken!” she called, almost hysterically. “It’s all right, Ken. Come on up.”

Koski was right behind her. He caught her before she got to the head of the ladder, pushed her aside, looked out.

He didn’t see anyone. Or hear anyone. The whistle wasn’t repeated.

When he got to the ground, she leaned out of the cockpit above him, shouting: “Ken! Ken!”

Koski glanced up. “Never mind,” he said. “You’ve warned him enough.”

She shook her head violently, terrified.

“Not that it’ll make any difference,” he told her. “We’ll get hold of him. Don’t fret about that.”

Mulcahey was using the probe pole in the soft mud alongside the float when Koski got back.

“What was the commotion, Steve? Did I not hear some babe crying aloud in the night?”

“Dame on the C-Urchin. Yair. When the Sentinel pulls in, tell ’em to use care with those hooks. We don’t want to mark up — whatever’s down there. No more’n it’s been marked up.”

“ ’Twill be the watchman, then?”

“He’s not around, anyway, Sarge. And I wanted to ask this dame’s husband about that. But he’s not around, either. When the boys get to dragging, you go up and keep a peeper on that cruiser. Something smells fishier’n a week-old halibut.”

Koski strode away. Everything was quiet on the Caton boat when he went past and out to City Island Avenue.

At the delicatessen whose card had been in the cap, he asked about the Catons. The proprietor was obliging, but wary. He was sorry, but he couldn’t remember seeing Marya or her husband for some time. If the matter was urgent—

Koski said it was urgent, all right.

The delicatessen man frowned. Had the lieutenant asked at the Anchor? The Catons frequently dropped in at the Anchor.

“Thanks,” said Koski. “I’ll do the same.”

The bar-and-grill with the pink neon anchor over its door was practically opposite the Trident Yacht Club. Through grimy windows, Koski could see a long bar, a kaleidoscopic juke box, half a dozen tables covered with red-checkered cloth. A dozen waterfront characters were draped over the bar. At one table sat a solitary woman.

The blare and beat of Harry James greeted him as he swung open the door:

The stench of stale beer, rank tobacco, sour sweat and strong disinfectant had the force of a blow. The men at the bar turned to eye the newcomer. None of them looked like the photograph on the C-Urchin’s bulkhead.