Стюарт Стерлинг - Collection of Stories

The loudspeaker began to squawk:

“Attention Vigilant. Attention Vigilant. Small craft reported ashore on eastern side of Little Neck Bay. Investigate. Authority, Manhattan Police Communications. Ten-forty p. m. That is all.”

Mulcahey swore. “Now it’s some scow ashore on a mud flat they want us to chase after. I never will be able to square myself with my doll!”

“What you kicking about?” Wearily Koski pushed the starter button. “It’s a nice night for a boat ride, isn’t it?”

G-Men Detective, Winter, 1951

Stealthy fingers of fog reached out to strangle the lighthouses marking danger spots along the Sound. Even the ghostly loom of Execution Rock became a hazy blur against the gray velvet of the summer mist.

At the wheel of the police boat, Sergeant Mulcahey took one last pelorus reading before the giant beacon was choked off.

“ ’Tis a dog’s life, no less — patrol duty on a night like this, Steve,” he said.

The man leaning against the port coaming struck a match, applied it to the bulldog briar which was clamped, bowdown, between his teeth. The flare of flame, reflecting from the wet rubber of his slicker, mellowed the seamy harshness of his weather-bitten features, giving them the quality of some bronzed warrior statue, glistening with moisture.

“It might not be so bad for a seeing-eye dog, at that, Irish,” Lieutenant Steve Koski said.

“ ’Tis no fit for beast or man.” The sergeant throttled the hundred and eighty horses down to a walk, nosed the Vigilant toward the Sands Point shore. “Th’ proper an’ suitable way to spend a night like this is before a cozy fire, settled down comfortably with a good wench.”

Steve Koski cupped one hand behind his leeward ear. “Next week is your off-time — you can do your home work then — cut your motor!”

Mulcahey switched the engine to silence. Only the hissing bone in the patrol-boat’s teeth and the soft rustle of her wake disturbed the blanketed hush of the quiet waters.

Down sound, the deep mournfulness of a tramp freighter’s whistle was echoed by the querulous hoot of the Port Jeff ferry. A distant tug uttered threats about the Hell Gate channel. Koski pointed, twenty degrees off the port quarter:

“There. Slow and easy, sarge. Somebody splashing...”

“Dropping a mud hook, likely. Playin’ it smart instead of runnin’ blind in pea soup like this.”

Mulcahey pushed the starter button, gave the thirty-two footer a touch of clutch, let her coast, nudged her again gently.

“Light, Irish.”

The white blade of the searchlight sliced through the steaming mist. “Even an old sea dog is not supposed to have the nose of a bloodhound, Steve. Or would it be the ears of a bat you fancy yourself havin’?”

For answer, Koski stepped to the waterway beside the pilot house, grabbed the long boathook.

“Hear it?” he asked.

Mulcahey killed the motor again, stepped to the door of the pilot house.

“He-e-e-elp!” The cry barely audible, not because it was far away, but on account of the thin, faint voice. “He-e-e-elp!”

“Coming!” bellowed Koski.

The Vigilant crept ahead. The white lance of the searchlight probed — left, right, up—

“Hold it!” Koski angled the boathook toward something white and sinuous moving in the wreathing vapor which lay along the surface of the water.

Mulcahey spun the wheel. The police boat swung around.

Koski leaned far out toward the pale, frightened face beneath the dark tangle of hair, held the boathook by its last six inches. The sinuous arm reached up to seize the metal prong.

“Leaping catfish,” breathed the sergeant. “A girl!”

Koski pulled her in, slowly. When she came alongside, he reached down, caught her arm, slid the boathook inboard and got a two-hand grip.

Mulcahey helped him get her over the gunwale — his eyes bulging.

The girl was young, pretty, terrified — and except for a bra and the briefest of panties, quite without clothing.

There was no more color in her face than on the underside of a halibut, except for her right eye around which was a circle of leaden discoloration which matched the shade of her lips.

On her shoulders were other bruises. She shivered, as Koski carried her below. He had the feeling it was not entirely because of immersion. He flung a blanket around her before he put her on the bunk.

“Anybody else out there with you?”

“No.” Noiselessly her lips formed the syllable and she shook her head.

“How’d you get out here in the Sound?”

She found her voice then. A weak, timid voice:

“I... I don’t remember. I... I think I fell overboard. The boys were fooling around—”

Mulcahey, bringing the flask from the first-aid kit, said: “That must of been kind of a rough party you was on!”

Koski held the brandy to her lips. “Get some of this in you. Make you feel better.”

She drank, coughed, rolled over on her side, was sick. She braced herself against falling to the cabin floor with her left hand. On the wrist, stones glittered in the feeble light from the bulkhead.

Koski bent. The tiny hands on the jeweled face of the wristwatch had stopped at 10:17.

“Twenty-five minutes,” Koski said. “You been swimming around all that time?”.

“I... I guess so.” She rolled back onto the bunk, avoiding his eyes. “You’re... you’re a cop, aren’t you?”

“Yair. What boat you take this dive off?”

“I never noticed its name.” She tried another pull at the flask. “Just — some fella’s motor boat.”

“Yair?” Koski gave no indication as to whether he believed her. “What’s your name?”

“Alice... Alice Wilson.” If there was any hesitation in her answer, it was imperceptible.

“Who’d you go on this party with, Miss Wilson?” The Lieutenant might have been a sympathetic physician.

“Uh... Charley.” She stared at him. “Charley something. I never did know his last name. I... I just met him in a place and we were dancing and I guess maybe we were drinking and he asked me if I’d like to go on a motorboat cruise—”

Mulcahey raised his eyebrows, stuck out his lower lip and inclined his head forward. “You’re lucky to be alive! You know that!”

“Yes,” she breathed, “I know that.” Fear showed plainly in her dark eyes — she closed them and sank back on the rolled-up dungarees which served as a pillow behind her head.

“You’re going to be all right,” Koski said. “Go to sleep, you want to. We’ll run you in.”

She nodded again, without opening her eyes.

Mulcahey threw in the clutch. “Bayside’ll be quickest, for a doc, huh?”

“I don’t think she needs a doctor.” Koski’s voice was muffled by the roar of the motor. “I don’t know what she needs. Might be a lawyer.”

“Ah, now, Steve!” “She was covering up, Irish.” “That, she needed. But she could of. been leveling. ‘Twouldn’t be the first time some sea-goin’ Lothario gets a party of mice aboard and figures they can’t get off an’ walk home. So—”

“Horse! She didn’t know the guy’s name. Or the boat’s name. She didn’t offer to tell us where she met this Charley. Where they got on the boat. Or who else was in the party. Besides, if it was just that she fell overboard or went on a party swim — she’d be tickled silly to be rescued. She’s not. She’s scared witless, right now.”

The Vigilant rounded Plum Point cautiously, crept into Manhasset Bay through the great, moored fleet of yachts against the outgoing sweep of the tide.

Mulcahey spoke with his eyes fixed on the red channel markers. “They’s pretty near a thousand craft in this harbor, Steve. How you goin’ to find out which one of ’em she come off?”