Стюарт Стерлинг - Collection of Stories

“It’s a junkie,” he announced. “I can’t see him, though—”

“The sucker’s running without lights.” Koski picked up a lacquered megaphone, stepped back to the cockpit. “Cut her, Irish,” he said to the sergeant.

Mulcahey silenced his hundred and eighty horses. Koski put the mouthpiece of the megaphone to one ear and swept the wide end of the fibre funnel in a slow semicircle. At one spot, on the port quarter, the hollow turkey-turkey which had seemed to come from every point on the compass, sounded sharply louder. The lieutenant pointed.

“Sic ’em, Tige,” he said to Mulcahey. “He bit your father.”

The sergeant cut the motor in fast, angled the nose of the patrol boat around in a rush. He moved the throttle-bar forward. The Vigilant’s bow lifted. Water seethed past the gunnels, boiled astern.

Koski switched on the big searchlight. A probing finger of white poked through a hundred feet of milky murk — and touched something red.

“Right rudder,” Koski cautioned. “It’s a tramp. The junkie’s run in behind her.”

The police boat veered off, heeling over to its cockpit coaming. The rusty red hull of the tramp bulked darkly above them, its running lights vague in the mist. Shouts of alarm came down to the two officers as the Vigilant surged under the steamer’s counter, swung wide to avoid her threshing screw, and plunged like a rocking horse gone mad across the bobbling wake, after the junk boat.

“The junkie’s heading down Buttermilk.” Koski used the megaphone as a sound-tracer again.

Mulcahey spun the spokes. “Tell me now,” he complained, “why wouldn’t we run across this miscreant an hour ago, instead of when we’re headin’ for Pier One to sign off duty? An’ me, with a very tasty dish waitin’ my beck an’ call!”

“Your dame’ll wait.” Koski caught a low gray shadow in the blurred cone of the searchlight. The shadow slid around the tail barge of a long tow, which was headed toward the Narrows, and vanished. “Pour it on, Irish,” he said.

Sergeant Mulcahey fiddled with the controls. The motor’s roar lifted to a high, shrill pitch. The guns in the bulkhead racks began to chatter from the vibration.

“That junkie’s probably got a boatload of ol’ manila, Steve. He’ll claim he bought it. Nobody’ll be able to prove different an’—”

“I’ll be able to prove he’s forfeiting his license by running in a fog without lights,” Steve Koski retorted. “And don’t kid yourself. He’s not scooting away like that with any stolen rope. If that’s what it was, he’d have dumped it overboard long ago and waited for us to come up with him.”

The police boat closed the gap swiftly. The junk boat turned, twisted to evade the searchlight, then wheeled, at last, toward the deep shadows of shore.

“He’s makin’ for the Gowanus!” Mulcahey swore softly. If the junk boat should gain that narrow hulk-lined canal to find him would be like hunting a rat under a barn.

Steve Koski lifted the repeating rifle out of its brackets. The quarry was no more than two hundred yards ahead. Mulcahey kept the long finger of light on the hunched figure crouching beside the junk boat’s motor housing.

A stub-nosed diesel tug, with a beard of rope matting trailing over its bow, came chugging out of the mouth of the canal. The junk boatman headed right at the tug. Koski crawled up on the forward deck.

“Swing out a point, Irish,” he called to Mulcahey. “He’s smack in line with that tug’s wheelhouse.”

The tug began to turn. The cargo lighter the tug was towing swung out and the junk boat slewed. Its bow began to disappear behind the lighter.

Koski fired.

A searchlight came on then above the tug’s wheelhouse. It felt its way across the water to the police boat. When it touched the square green flag whipping at the Vigilant’s signal mast, the light winked out abruptly. The tug sheered off, to get out of the way. Mulcahey called. “Did you hit the junkie?” Koski shook his head. “I wasn’t trying to. I was aiming at his gas tank. Bear down on her, Irish.”

They thundered into the mouth of the evilsmelling canal, their exhaust reverberating from the narrow walls. The junk boat was rounding a wharf topped by a ramshackle galvanized shed.

“Half,” Koski yelled, from his position on the forward hatch.

Mulcahey slowed the motor to 600 r.p.m., sweeping the shore to starboard with the blinding brilliance of the searchlight.

A beam of the iron shed, Sergeant Mulcahey caught the stern of the junk boat full in the glare, fifty feet ahead. He grabbed the clutch lever, went into reverse.

The Vigilant lost way, rumbled to a foaming halt ten feet off the pier head. The junk boat had its nose in the mud beneath the pilings of the pier.

“I can’t get the light down on him, Steve.”

“Use your flash,” Koski ordered. “And watch yourself.”

Mulcahey poked the hand torch over the coaming. From the gloom beneath the pier a gun spat. A stanchion on the police boat rang loudly, lead ricocheting off into the fog.

Koski’s rifle answered, once. There was no return shot.

“I might have hit him that time, Irish. Back around under there so I can get a boat hook on him.”

The Vigilant churned the foul-smelling water. It moved out, then came back as Koski hurried aft. He kept the repeater cradled in his right arm even when he snatched the boat hook from its chocks. He kept low behind the stern transom.

“Another couple feet astern, Irish.”

The stern of the police boat inched in under the wharf. Koski leaned out then, hooked the after thwart of the junk boat with his ten-foot pole.

“Slow ahead, Irish.”

Mulcahey moved her out into the canal. Koski hauled the junk boat out into the glare of the sergeant’s flashlight. The man who lay slumped across the motor housing was dead. His jaw hung slackly open. His eyes stared unblinking into the light.

“Sureshot Steve,” Mulcahey marveled. “You sure got him good.”

Steve Koski went overside, dropped lightly onto the junk boat’s bow thwart. He shook his head. “Somebody else got him first, Sarge.” He pointed to the water sloshing along the floorboard. It was the color of claret. “He never bled that much in half a minute.”

“I see what you mean.” Sergeant Mulcahey studied it. “Yeah. You could be right about that.” The sergeant took the bow line, threw hitches around a cleat on the Vigilant’s stern rail. “But what I’ll be wanting to know, Steve — what did the poor devil have in the boat anyway that was worth dyin’ for?! Never have I seen a junkie with less to—”

“He’s no junkie.” Koski held up the man’s arm. The sleeve of his overcoat glistened silkily in the light. “You ever see a water rat wearin’ a hundred an’ fifty dollar overcoat?”

He fished a hat out of the pink water.

“Or a twenty buck kelly?”

Mulcahey scratched his head. “Well, what d’you know!”

“I think I’ve seen this lug’s face before, somewhere, Irish,” Koski said.

“In the Commissioner’s private portrait gall’ry, no doubt—”

Mulcahey broke off. From the pilothouse came a sepulchral voice.

“Vigilant! ... Vigilant! ... Come in!... Come in!”

Mulcahey hurried to the squawk box and slapped down the Talk toggle. “Patrol Boat Nine calling Doubleya Enn Pee Dee. Over.”

The hollow tones of the speaker were croaking as he clicked the lever to Listen. “Where are you, Vigilant? Over.”

“Gowanus Canal. Take it.”

“Report immediately to Pier Ten, Fulton Market, on a nineteen, a thirty-two. Acknowledge.”