Стюарт Стерлинг - Collection of Stories

“Want me to go with you?”

“Uh, uh.” Koski stopped the oysterman. “You stay here while the dredger’s being searched, Mister Negus.”

Cale turned away, his shoulders bowed. “I’ll be all right, Win,” he said, his voice dull and listless. “Only be a minute, I guess.” He walked wearily toward the wire partition.

“Plenty places where you could hide a small bag on a big tub like this, Irish,” Koski told Mulcahey. “Mister Negus’ll help you use the fine-tooth comb.” The sergeant wiped mist off his face with the inside of his sleeve. “You’ll not be with us, hah?”

“I’ll be walking down the avenue a bit.” Koski stepped quickly onto the pier.

“O-o-o-oh!” Mulcahey’s eyebrows went up, the corners of his lips came down. “Like that.”

“Yeah.” It was an old tip-off Koski had used with his sergeant before. “And watch it, Irish. Nobody goes on the Mollie B. Nobody off.”

“Not—” Joe Mulcahey sized up Negus, the oysterman gravely — “while breathin’, Lootenant.”

Koski went on through the wire partition. Cale Telfer was fifty feet ahead of him, but the Harbor Squad lieutenant made no effort to close the gap as the old man stalked past the shucking boards and out into South Street.

Cale’s clumsy subterfuge — that the police wanted him to ‘make a statement’ — hadn’t registered for a moment with Koski. When that crusty divisional detective captain got ready to take an affidavit, he didn’t request the person concerned to show up at the precinct house. He went and brought him in.

Cale marched to a sleek maroon sedan parked across from the Municipal Fish Market, got in and tramped on the starter. When he pulled out and turned up Catherine Slip, Koski was pointing the wholesaler’s sedan out to First Grade Detective Herman Goldweiss, patrol car 8, Precinct 2.

“I’m supposed to be posted here until the newspaper men—” the radio car cop began.

“You’re supposed to take orders. Get going. Don’t let him get away from you,” Koski commanded. “Don’t crowd him too close.”

“That’s old Telfer!” Goldweiss protested, pulling the car away from the curb. “Guy whose son got shot!”

“No kiddin’?” Koski seemed mildly surprised.

“What’sa idea tailin’ him? They already got the killer.”

“They have? Did they find the bag of marbles he was supposed to have hijacked?”

“Nah. He must of stashed it somewhere.” The commandeered patrol car slithered around a corner, braked fast as Telfer pulled his sedan in to the curb ahead, beneath a spasmodic neon: The Lighthouse. “Don’t worry, Lieutenant,” Goldweiss said. “The boys’ll get where he hid it out of him, after they’ve talked to him a while in the back room.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

Koski left the radio-car officer trying to figure it out, glanced in through the Lighthouse door. Cale was making for a booth halfway down the gloomy tunnel of the dimly-lighted grille. The girl in the booth was Patty Rondo. Beside the row of booths was a long bar with a dozen idlers ranged against it.

Koski went in. There was no time for caution. If it had been the girl who’d phoned Bill’s father to come here, it meant the fireworks might start suddenly.

They’d already begun when Koski slid into the next empty booth. He couldn’t see either of them. The backs of the booths extended nearly up to the low ceiling. But he could hear.

Patty was in a cold rage. “You rotten, double-crossing fink!”

“I’m not denying anything,” Cale answered in a curiously flat, toneless voice.

“He’s dead! You killed him!”

“I wish I could say it wasn’t true.” The old man’s words came slowly, as if he was weighing each one carefully. “But it is.”

“If it wasn’t for your filthy two-timing, we’d be away on our honeymoon now. What’d you do with the money?”

“I put it out of your reach, Patty.” Cale seemed to be explaining something to a dull-witted child. “I never meant you to get your hands on it, you know. Any more than I intended you should get your claws into Bill.”

“Bill’s safe enough from me, at any rate.” She gave a sinister little laugh. “But if you think I’m not going to get that money, you’ve got another—”

“No, Patty. When you told me on the phone I’d better bring you something, or I’d be sorry, I knew what you meant, all right. So I did bring you something.”

Koski took three fast steps on the balls of his feet then. He had his hand on the barrel of Cale’s nickel-plated gun, pressing its muzzle down toward the beer mats on the table, before the old man stared up at him, thunderstruck.

Patty was quicker. She started to slither past the table, out of the booth.

Koski pushed her back, crowded in beside her, taking the gun away from Cale with no trouble.

“Hands on the table. Both of you. That’s right. Keep ’em there. Let’s put a few cards on the table, too, hah?”

Cale seemed too frozen with fear to open his mouth.

Patty sneered at him. “Can’t make a move without yawping copper, can you, murderer! Have to ring the blues in on everything — even your own son’s killing!”

The old man went deathly pale, leaned against the back of the booth, gasping.

“You’ve got him wrong, Miss Rondo.” Koski wondered why the near-gunplay hadn’t caused more commotion among the men at the bar. No one seemed to be watching them with any special interest. “Mister Telfer didn’t call the police in on this. He didn’t know I’d trailed him here. I expect he wouldn’t have liked it anymore’n you do.”

“Me?” She laughed, hysterically. “I’m glad you’re here! You must have heard him admit — what he’s done.”

“Yeah.” Now, out of the corner of his eye, Koski did catch a furtive movement of the loungers at the bar. He crowded against the girl so she wouldn’t be able to hamper his gun hand. “Mister Telfer admitted being in on a bad deal, all right. But it was a deal you cooked up.”

The group at the bar was splitting — three or four sidling and shuffling toward the booth to distract his attention, the others sneaking up behind him.

“You hooked the boy — a kid who never wised up to your kind. You got him to the marry-me stage, and when his father came around to break it up, you offered to give the boy the gate — if you got paid enough.”

The old man stared at him, awed. “I did. Yes. She wanted more than I could pay.”

Koski stood up abruptly, the nickel-plated gun in his left hand, his right hand in the gun pocket of his melton. He swiveled around, facing the three who’d idled up within a few feet of the booth behind him.

He said, “Something, boys?” They found business of pressing interest back at the bar, moved back hastily.

“She told you how you could get the dough for her, I expect, Mister Telfer.” Koski spoke to the old man, but watched the girl. She was staring at someone standing behind the garish jukebox. The lieutenant could only make out a shadowy figure there.

“He’s a liar, if he told you I framed that holdup, copper,” Patty cried scornfully. “It was Cale Telfer’s own idea. He told Eddie when to run the boat in an’ tie up, when the door would be unlocked—”

“That is true.” The old man struggled to his feet, in spite of Koski’s warning gesture with the gun. “But I had no intention—”

“No!” snarled Patty. “You’d no intention of bein’ on the up an’ up with Eddie, after you rigged the holdup with him. You held out the money, tipped off the guards, got Eddie killed—”

“How’d you know he was dead, Miss Rondo?” Koski shoved Cale back into his seat. The old man had blocked the lieutenant’s line of vision so he lost sight of that shadowy figure momentarily.