Стюарт Стерлинг - Collection of Stories

“Behind him?” Win Negus cried. “How the devil could he have gotten behind Bill?”

Koski got between the dredger captain and his partner. “Let him tell it, mister,” he warned Negus.

“He must have got in the same way he left, Win,” Cale said hoarsely. “By the pier door, there at the side—”

“It was locked!” Negus roared. “I locked it myself! I always do, after—”

Koski put an elbow in the dredgerman’s stomach, shoved him back. “Clam. Stay clammed. Understand?” Negus fumed, but kept quiet. The Harbor Squad detective touched Cale’s shoulder. The wholesaler’s eyes were closed.

“Did you tell this to the police when they came?”

Cale opened his eyes wide. “Didn’t tell anyone. Nobody asked me anything — until just now.”

Behind Koski, Negus cursed thickly. “How in the devil could he have answered questions anyway, when he collapsed? He was out like a light until a couple minutes ago!”

“Yeah,” Koski said, continuing to address Cale. He pointed to the door by which he himself had entered the oyster house. “You say the gunman ran this way, out onto the wharf?”

“Yes.” Cale panted convulsively. “He grabbed the money bag. The guard coming to meet Bill saw it — pulled his gun. The murderer shot the guard. Bill grappled with him — and got two bullets right—” the father faltered, forced himself to go on — “right under the heart. Then the murderer spun around, ran back to the door there — and out. That’s all I–I remember. When I saw Bill was — was—”

He sprang up suddenly, lurched at the glass door and stumbled out. Koski turned. Through the partition, he saw a slender, dark-haired girl in a squirrel coat break out of a patrolman’s grip, fling herself on the dead boy’s body.

Negus crowded through the door with Koski. But before they could reach Cale Telfer, he was bending over the wailing girl, trying to wrestle her away from his son’s body.

“Get — away — from — him!” he raged. “If it hadn’t been for you getting your claws in him, you hellcat — this wouldn’t have—”

“Cale!” Negus bellowed, breaking his partner’s grip on the girl. “For God’s sake, man, use a little sense!”

In the scuffle, the cop grabbed the girl, hauled her roughly to her feet.

“I’ll have to run you in, if you don’t obey orders, miss.”

“I can’t help it,” she sobbed. “I can’t believe he’s—”

She turned away, whimpering, covering her mouth with her hands. Even with her face contorted with anguish, there was a sort of wild beauty in her gypsy-like coloring, her enormous dark gypsy eyes.

Cale mumbled what might have been an apology.

“Sorry,” he said. “I was upset. I didn’t know what I was saying.”

Negus helped him back to the office, explaining, beneath his breath, to Koski, “What Cale meant — if Bill’d been on the Mollie B. with me, the way his father wanted him to be, he’d have been ashore now with the rest of the crew. Cale wanted him to learn oysterin’ from the beds up, way we did, thirty years ago. All hand-tongin’ then. No power hoists like nowadays.”

He clattered on. Koski got the impression he was trying to keep the older man from saying anything more that he might regret. But Cale refused to remain silent.

“Bill wouldn’t go on the Mollie B. ,” he said bitterly. “Had to work in the Market so’s he’d be close enough to that little tramp to see her every night. I ought to have made him sign on with Win!”

Negus squeezed his partner’s arm gently. It might have been a sympathetic gesture — or a warning. The head of Shoalwater Seafoods looked up sharply. The eyes of the two men locked for a moment. Then Cale turned his head away, shuddering as if from a severe chill.

“Who’s the girl?” Koski asked.

“Patty Rondo,” Negus replied quickly, anxious to take the burden of answering on his own shoulders. “She’s an entertainer over at the Lighthouse. No real harm in her, I suppose. And there wouldn’t have been any in Bill’s foolin’ around with her, except he got marryin’ notions in his head.”

Sergeant Mulcahey stuck his head in the wharf door. “I got that dope, Lootenant.”

“Whatsit, Irish?”

“Number 71J22RCH is licensed in the name of D. J. Felch, Port Richmond. You remember the guy?”

“I’ll say I do, Sarge.” There had been a midnight meeting between Doojey Felch and the crew of the Vigilant — which had resulted in that junkie’s conducting his waterfront activities some thirty miles further upriver for a period of six months, less time off for good behavior. Doojey was just the sort to have been mixed up with Eddie-the-Switch. “Ask Headquarters to send out a three-state for him. Put his photo on the six o’clock T.V. program. Doojey would have been the other one in the junk boat, sure.”

Mulcahey scowled. “You could be right, Lootenant. Still an’ all, Pier One reports they have been notified by this selfsame D. J. Felch that his junk boat was stolen this afternoon around two-thirty from where it was tied to a gas barge in Newtown Creek.”

“Alibi,” Koski said. “And it smells. Doojey was in this just as deep as the rat out in the boat.”

“Boat?” Negus reacted as if he’d been touched with a live wire. “You mean — out in the Mollie B.?”

Koski moved past the sergeant, out onto the pier. “The man who killed your son is in the junk boat there, on the other side of the Vigilant, Mister Telfer.”

“Dead?” Cale whispered. “Is he dead?!”

“Yeah.” Koski stepped onto the dredger, squatting on his haunches. He pointed to the deck just aft a heavy winch. “There’s blood spatter. That armored truck guard must have plugged him. He was bleeding pretty bad when he ducked out this door, and crossed the deck here, to get to the junk boat.”

“Hell’s bells a-booming!” Negus protested loudly, “that junk skiff wasn’t here when the holdup happened.”

“Sure it was,” Koski said. “It was on the far side of your oyster boat, Mister Negus. At low tide, like this, nobody would have seen it from the pier. Probably it was only here a minute anyhow — just long enough for the gunman to hop up on your deck, cross to the pier, and go in and grab the money bags. They’d have timed it to a whisker. Sure.”

The phone in the office jangled. Cale turned, automatically, to answer it. Steve Koski eyed Win Negus steadily.

“There was some fidoodling with the thirty-six thousand, though,” he said to Negus. “That money didn’t go into the junk boat with the killer. He didn’t have it when we caught up with him.”

The master of the oysterman didn’t understand. Steve Koski made it clear for him.

“The moneybag the killer took to the junk boat,” Koski said, “was filled with socks loaded down with oyster shells and old newspapers — stuff that would weigh about what the day’s receipts would total.”

“He might have ditched the dough on the dredger here,” Mulcahey suggested, “soon’s he got outside the shed. Then he could have repacked the bag with—”

“He wouldn’t have taken time to do that,” Koski interrupted. “Not with all that hell busting loose on the pier.” Keeping his eyes on Negus, who seemed suddenly grim and defiant, Koski went on, “The killer couldn’t have known the armored truck boys would point out somebody else as the escaping murderer. No. But he might have switched bags, here on the Mollie B . He might have left the one loaded with cash, here — and taken the dummy when he jumped down into the junk boat.”

Cale Telfer came back from the phone and stopped at the wharf door. “Detectives want me to make a statement, Win. They’re up front of the shed, now.”