Стюарт Стерлинг - Collection of Stories

“Cut his puss diving into a mirror. Broke a couple of choppers when he bounced off the edge of the sink.”

“Either he is a very dumb dodo or else he does not know your rep at that Pier Six stuff, Steve. Or maybe he has enough booze aboard to make him a trifle reckless?”

“He was flying higher than a B-Thirty-Six when I brought him down, Sarge. Bring that ammonia.”

“ ’Twill be more’n smelling salts you’ll need to patch up that tear in your own slicker — and what’s under it.”

Koski felt of his arm. “Stings a bit. Spilled some hooch on it Be all right. Patch it with tape. Rub that cork on his smeller.”

The sergeant shook the ammonia bottle, touched the rubber to the engineer’s nostrils. Buzz didn’t stir.

“Daub iodine on his cuts, sarge. That ought to do it.” Koski went through Buzz’s pockets.

Sailor’s case-knife, razor-sharp; pack of blood-soggy cigarettes; book of matches from Sloppy Joe’s, Avenida Santiago, Habana; another from Jack Dempsey’s Restaurant, New York. Rubber tobacco pouch; no tobacco but a union card made out to Benjamin F. Cotlett, Norfolk, Va., and a folded picture postcard addressed to Buzz Cotlett, c/o Ketch Sea-Dog, Porto Abrillo, Cuba.

That was all except for a trick magnifying glass that showed an enlargement of a naked girl — and sixty-four cents in coin.

Mulcahey poked the glass applicator at a corner of the engineer’s blood-caked mouth.

Buzz moaned. He cursed thickly, opened his eyes.

“My shoulder! You pulled my shoulder outa joint.”

“You’ll have more than a shoulder to worry about,” Koski said.

“Yah! You caught me off guard with that Commando trick. I should have give it to you right off the bat.” Buzz fumbled at his teeth.

Koski hunkered down beside him. “Never heard of the Sea-Pup, hah?”

“Didn’t say that,” Buzz twisted his head to look at the dinghy lying against the transom. “No yacht of that name, I said.”

“How about the Sea-Dog? With a Sea-Pup tagging along behind?”

“So all right, you got me.” The engineer grimaced, propping himself on one elbow. “So you’re gonna beat the tail off me, if I don’t talk. Okay, I’ll talk. What you want me to say?”

“You worked on the ketch? How long?”

“Six, seven months.”

“Who’s the owner?”

“Maury Perris. Do I get to smoke? Or you gonna third me?”

Koski stuck a cigarette in Cotlett’s mouth, lit it. “Sorry if this isn’t your brand.”

Buzz squinted balefully. “What the devil! It’s tobacco.”

“Yair.” The lieutenant rubbed his chin. “This Perris. He the big bustle and leg man?”

“That’s him. Duke of Dames, they call him on Broadway.” Buzz inhaled, coughed, retched.

Mulcahey helped him to the cockpit coaming.

Koski wondered if he was handling this thing right. The wise heads down at Harbor Precinct headquarters would probably have told him the way to handle anything connected with Maury Perris was with gloves on. Koski reflected that it was too bad he’d left his gloves at home.

Perris, the wonder-boy of Neon Alley; the musical comedy maestro who’d rocketed into the public eye with “Undress Parade”; who had his face in more newsreels and on more television sets than the President — always against a backdrop of what his press agent called the “Perris Lovelies.”

Mysterious Maury, the gossip papers dubbed him. Nobody knew where he’d come from, how he got his money. Nobody knew whether he had the millions he claimed or was merely ballyhooing a bluff into a fortune. Young, good-looking, glib, smooth as a silk-stockinged leg — Mysterious Maury.

Koski said to his prisoner, “Must have been a soft touch, working for a boss like that, Cotlett. When did you quit?”

“Tonight.” The face with the flattened nose was shiny with sweat; the voice was sullen instead of truculent. “I didn’t quit, either. He paid me off, with a bonus on account of it’s late in the season to get another job on a pleasure craft.”

“Why’d he fire you?”

Buzz spat out blood. “Well, you see, it’s like this: Mr. Perris wasn’t on the Sea-Dog much. Too busy running his show biz, I guess. Like you say, it was a cincheroo job. We’d be on the club mooring a couple weeks. Then we’d run down to Cuba with some movie tycoons, hit the high spots in Havana, run back up here and play sitting duck another couple weeks.

“Three of us did the work. Jeff Vaugh, he’s the cap; a smart sailorman, Jeff is. Frank Kaalohti, he’s cookee an’ steward, from Honolulu. Frank’s all right, too. And me. All we got to do, most the time, is to be nice to Mrs. Perris. And that ain’t bad!”

Koski nodded to keep the faucet flowing. “Wife stayed on board most of the time, alone?”

Buzz’s fingers hid his mouth. “Well, you see, she wasn’t exactly alone, most of the time. There’s this sidekick of the boss, Mr. Belton. He sort of hung around practically all the while the boss was away. Very cuddly with Mrs. Perris, when he thinks nobody is lookin’ or listenin’.”

Mulcahey grunted: “Does Maury Perris know what goes, behind his back?”

“Well, no. That’s what got Mr. Perris sore tonight, see. Belton is on board with Mrs. Perris; they aren’t expectin’ the Duke until tomorrow night. I’m in the clubhouse ferryin’ out a bucket of icecubes — we run short — and boom! I run smack into the boss, luggin’ his suitcase.

“I guess I looked surprised. Or maybe he’s wise to the setup, because right off lie wants to know who’s on board his ketch. I can’t duck it, because for sure he’s going out there and see for himself. So I tell him.”

Koski stripped off his slicker, got busy with adhesive. The gash in his arm was deep. It probably needed stitching. But it could wait; he had more urgent matters to attend to. “Was Belton’s being aboard news to your boss?”

The engineer’s eyes narrowed: “How would I know? All I know is, Perris got redhot. Said he’d fix Belton’s wagon so it wouldn’t squeak any more. Wanted me to row him right out. I says ‘Whyn’t you wait till the club launch gets back to the float and go out on that, Mr. Perris? You’ll get drenched, in the Sea-Pup, so much spray. Your suitcase’ll get soaked.’

“Well, that tore it, see? He accuses me of bein’ in with ’em — of wanting to get out to the Dog ahead of him and tip ’em off. He hauls out a roll of bills and asks me how much I got comin’. He adds some extra to it and gives me walkin’ papers then and there. Wouldn’t even let me go back to the ketch for my stuff. Said he’d ship it to me.

“Then he rows out to the Sea-Dog by himself. I come up to the avenue, walk down to the Beacon. And that’s all.”

“All,” Koski said, “except why you had enough moola to choke a whale, when you wouldn’t have that much coming to you if you’d drawn no pay since you wore diapers. Why you were so eager to pick a scrap with me when I mentioned the Sea-Pup. Why has the dink got blood all over it? And who tried to sink it by punching holes in it?”

Buzz Cotlett stared. “So! He did kill them, after all? I never thought he really meant it. Honest truth, I didn’t think so. He don’t seem like that kind of a mug at all!”

Koski punched the starter button.

“Let’s go see what kind he is, hah?”

In the last two hours the wind had increased. Despite Mulcahey’s careful handling, the Vigilant bucked like a rodeo bronc.

Buzz sprawled in the cockpit, his back against the Sea-Pup, his head held between his hands. Koski studied the listing in Lloyds Register of Yachts: