Стюарт Стерлинг - Collection of Stories

“Sure. What happens?”

“Guy with a gun stuck up the kid who was lugging the day’s receipts out to the armored truck. Kid put up a battle, got killed. Gunman dropped one of the truck guards, too. They just got him into the ambulance a minute ago.”

“What about the holdup man?”

“He got away in the confusion, Lieutenant. Ran out to the street. They’re after him, out there, now.”

“Yuh?” Koski shoved through the group.

A boy of twenty or so — a nice-looking blonde youngster who looked as if he ought to be in a basketball uniform rather than in the dirty oyster-stained apron he wore — lay on the floor. He had his knees curled up under him and his hands were clasped around his middle so — for an instant — Koski had the illusion that he was only badly hurt.

A divisional detective captain caught sight of Koski. “Hello, Lieutenant. They call you in on this?”

“They hung out the lantern, yeah,” Koski said. “ ‘One if by land, two if by sea.’ And we were on the opposite shore. Took us a few minutes to get over here.”

The divisional detective captain wrinkled his nose at the strong fish smell — something Koski was so used to he never noticed it.

“Little delay doesn’t make any difference,” he told Koski. “Appreciate your help, but we’ve got the guy penned up, down the block.”

“You have?”

“They’re gettin’ ready to go in after him, now, with tear gas. Couple truck drivers saw him run in a clam shed, yuh.”

“Are you sure he’s the one?”

“Yuh, yuh.” The detective captain clapped Koski’s shoulder encouragingly. “We got him, all right. Without any help from the Marine Division. Some other time, Lieutenant. Some other time — and thanks.”

He walked away.

A man seized Koski’s arm. “You an officer?”

Lieutenant Koski looked him over. The man was fiftyish, gray-haired, six feet and over, heavy built, big boned even to his weather-leathered face. The faded-blue fisherman’s eyes searched the lieutenant’s anxiously.

“Yeah. Why?”

“Can’t you do something about getting Bill’s body away from here, before his father sees him again — like this?”

“We have to leave him until the Homicide crew have shot their pictures,” the Harbor Squad detective explained. “Who’s his father?”

“Why, Cale is.” The big man seemed surprised. “Thought you knew. Caleb Telfer, my partner. I’m Win Negus, cap’n the Mollie B. Cale is head of Shoalwater Seafoods. We own the boats and the wholesale house together. He had Bill workin’ here, to learn the oyster business.”

“Was his father here when he got shot?”

“Hell’s bells a-booming — that’s what keeled Cale over! The boy died right at Cale’s feet. It knocked the old man out, colder’n a Newfoundland tunny. Doc’s in there now, tryin’ to bring Cale around.”

“You see the killing, yourself?”

“No.” Negus jerked a thumb gloomily toward the shellfish bins out by the open end of the shed. “I was over by the checker, talkin’ to our lobster buyer, when I heard the shots and the boys yellin’. By the time I’d turned around, it was all over — except for this fella scuttling away, there by the clam barrels.”

Koski cocked an ear at the flurry of police whistles out in the street. Either the reserve men had rounded up their prisoner, or the chase was heading in a different direction.

“What’d this holdup guy look like, Mister Negus?”

The dredger captain scowled thoughtfully. “I’m not one of these here camera-eyes,” he said. “But near’s I rec’lect, he was about twenty-five years old, not as tall as you are by a couple of inches, kind of thin and sallow-complected. He was wearin’ gray pants or maybe dungarees an’ a sweater-cap, I think. He had this bundle under his arm. I didn’t rightly notice what it was because, by that time, I’d seen the guard layin’ on the floor and a couple other guards runnin’ in from the truck. I didn’t see Bill at all, ’till later.”

“They got him!” somebody out in the street yelled. The cops got him!”

Koski grunted skeptically. Win Negus’s description hadn’t sounded to the Marine Division man like that of a stickup specialist. Those boys were usually pretty careful dressers — the sweater was off-key, somehow.

As far as the man the precinct boys seemed to have cornered, he didn’t fit in with Koski’s notion of a criminal clever enough to have planned a coup like this, either. The holdup man had evidently known just when the day’s receipts would be handed over, and had timed his attack shrewdly enough to intercept the money before it got in the hands of the armored truck guards. Was it reasonable to suppose he’d figured all that out so neatly-and then left his getaway to such a slipshod chance as running out in the street, without even an escape car at the curb? There was a false note, somewhere.

“How much was stolen, Mister Negus?” Koski asked.

“Don’t know, exactly. Cale will.” The fishboat man pushed open the door to the inner office.

An ambulance interne was holding an ampule under the nose of a middle-aged, snowy-haired, apple-cheeked man who lay back in an old-fashioned oak chair, his fingers clawing at the arms. His collar had been loosened. His plump, rosy face was shiny with sweat.

“All right to ask a few questions, Doc?” Koski said.

The interne glanced up. “Why... uh—”

Cale Telfer rolled his head loosely toward the newcomers. “What you want to know?” His voice was deep and gruff, but there was a curious quaver in it.

The interne shrugged, closed his kit and went out.

“How much was stolen?” Koski watched the man’s eyes. They flickered swiftly to Negus and away again, as if to question what one partner had said about the other.

Cale lurched up from his chair then, took two unsteady strides to a high bookkeeper’s desk. That slanting shelf must have been polished by generations of Telfer elbows, Koski thought.

“Here. Here are duplicate deposit slips.” Cale Telfer’s trembling fingers passed the paper to Koski.

“Traders and Marine National,” Koski murmured, reading. “For deposit — thirty-six thousand, four hundred twelve dollars and eighty-eight cents.” Koski’s eyes narrowed the least bit. “That’s a big haul.”

“If you doubt my word, sir—” Cale began.

Negus cut in. “This last Friday before Lent is always one of the biggest days of the year. But it won’t hit the firm. We’re covered by insurance, aren’t we, Cale?”

The wholesaler rubbed a hand over his forehead as if he was dazed. “Yes, of course, Win. But what difference does it make, with Bill—”

“I realize it must be a shock.” Koski put the slip in his jacket pocket. “You saw the gunman, Mister Telfer?”

Cale’s round face puckered in an agony of recollection. “Clear’s I see you, sir. And as near.” His forehead continued to wrinkle, his cheek muscles to contract spasmodically as he went on to describe, in terse detail, the man Koski had found in the junk boat. “That’s the man, sir. I’d know him, wherever I saw him, even if it was twenty years from now. And I won’t rest until he’s been punished — if it takes twice that long!”

He collapsed, trembling, into the chair. His face had lost all its color. The rosy cheeks were dull putty.

Negus hurried to him. “But Cale, are you sure? The police are after another—”

Koski warned Negus back with a gesture. “Tell me just what happened, Mister Telfer.”

His lips scarcely moving, Cale answered. “I gave Bill the bag — to take out to the armored guards. When Bill got to the weigh scales — this murderer came up behind him — grabbed the bag and—”