Стюарт Стерлинг - Down Among the Dead Men

He left word where he could be reached, went out, flagged a taxi.

“Harbor House. Sutton Place. At Fifty-fourth. Forget there’s a rubber shortage, will you?”

Lawford Ovett lived in a penthouse; neither the major-general at the street door or the head-usher in the elevator could, or would, tell if he was in.

The maid who answered the doorbell wasn’t much better; she said she would see if Mister Ovett was in and what was the Lieutenant’s business, s’il vous plait.

“Official,” Koski said. “And I’m in a hurry.”

From windows opening out on a terrace, he looked down on the dark avenue of the East River. A railroad car-float was being herded toward Hell Gate by a sheepdog of a tug; a deep-laden fish-boat bucked the ebb toward Fulton Market; a ferry swam over to Welfare Island, throwing a brassy radiance on the water.

Faint yellow beads moved across the black lacework of the Queensboro Bridge; — men and women returning to Long Island City, Jamaica, Flushing, Richmond Hill, Jackson Heights. There would be men there who had a stake in the hand Koski was playing. Men who had been working overtime making shells that would be going over in one of the convoys in a few days; men taking their girls home after one last night before they shipped out on a tanker; men reporting to the Coast Guard for the early morning offshore patrol; men with brothers or cousins or sons in the fighting ships that shepherded the convoys to the other side.

A door closed down the corridor; a middle-aged Santa Claus emerged briskly. His chipped-beef skin had a freshly scrubbed look against the white hair; deep crinkles were etched around the corners of eyes blue and shiny as agates. His nose was short; it spread flatly at the nostrils.

“Lieutenant?” The voice had the soft Scandinavian accent. “ Vaer so göd.” He held out his hand toward an armchair.

“Came about your son, Mister Ovett.”

“I am not Merrill’s father. Lawford’s in there.” He moved his head an inch to one side. “I’ll take care of anything you want. I’m Rolf Berger. His executive director.”

“This is a person-to-person call.”

“You can’t see Lawford.”

“You think I can’t?”

“He’s asleep.”

“Wake him up.” Koski scowled, “I told the maid this was urgent.”

Berger rotated his head slowly from left to right, back again. “It’s impossible. Better let me help you. Lawford’s under doctor’s orders.”

The man from the Harbor Squad planted his fists on his hips. “He’ll be under police orders, if you keep horsing around.” He stalked toward the hallway.

Berger held out an arm, barred the way. “Looking for trouble, aren’t you? I’ve dealt with your kind before. Get out. Stay out until you have a proper warrant.” Koski reached inside his coat; brought out his service-special, hefted it on his palm. “I’m after a criminal. You may be aiding him to escape. In such cases, there’s a little thing called the privilege of hot pursuit. It makes this,” he dangled the gun loosely in front of him, “a damned good warrant.” He pushed past the other, flung open the door.

The room was small and narrow, paneled in white painted tongue-and-groove. The floor was bare save for a couple of rag rugs. There was no furniture except one sagging wicker chair. Across one end of the room a ships-berth had been built in between two plain-front lockers. Opposite it was a hanging locker, a mahogany dresser-cupboard, a white commode. On the commode, in place of jug and basin, was a huge bust of marble.

Overhead a varnished hatch was partly open to the night sky; the faint light which came through its ground glass was the only illumination in the room. An aneroid barometer in a brass case hung between a couple of framed photographs of old ships. Koski thought it likely this cabin had been transferred board-by-board to the penthouse and set up there in memory of long years on blue water. He went over to the berth.

The head on the white pillow looked, in the vague illumination from the hatch, like Salome’s offering on the silver platter.

The man was asleep. His cavernous face was lead-gray; deep shadows emphasized the gauntness of the eye sockets; slate-blue lips gaped open under the long hooked nose.

Koski put the gun away. “Good evening!”

The head remained motionless.

“Looks like a dying man.”

“He’s a broken man.” Berger glowered. “He’s been a sick man for a couple of years. Ever since his son began the farce of working his way up a ladder he never had to climb at all. Lawford’s been badgered about enough, sir, — and if you’ve any expectation of rousing him out of his sleep tonight, I’ll stop you if it’s the last thing I do.”

“You won’t stop me doing anything I have to do.” Koski was brusque. “You a friend of the family? Or just a business acquaintance?”

“When you’ve stayed in business with a man for thirty years, you’re his friend.” Berger bit off the end of a panetela, stuck it in his mouth, unlighted, at a defiant angle.

“Okay. One of the Ovetts seems to be in a jam.” Koski glanced curiously at the tell-tale compass inverted in the ceiling over the berth. “You want to be a help, you can tell me what I need to know. If you don’t, I’ll have to ring in the higher-ups. The old gentleman might not care for that.”

“We’ve had enough trouble from stupid officials. More than enough. Telling us what we can ship, where to take it, how much to charge for it. Fixing it so the damned union howlers can give us orders as to who we have to hire, how much to pay them, what kind of cheese our men have to have with what kind of pie. Good Heavens, if we have much more of it, Lawford’ll be in his grave. So if I can save him any of it...”

Koski examined the bust on the commode; it was a badly chipped head of Kaiser Wilhelm. Part of the nose had been broken off. One of the mustaches was gone. An ear was missing. Around the base were the marks of chisels spelling out words which at first he thought were Hoch der Kaiser ...

“What the hell goes on here?” he inquired. “A little pro-Germanism?”

“Not at all.” Berger snapped. “That’s a relic of the old Vaterland, later the Leviathan. Used as a transport during the last war. The statue was mounted at the head of the swimming pool. The troops marked it up, naturally. After the war, when we took over the ship. Lawford thought it would be amusing to have it here in his cabin. It’s not exactly the sort of thing a German would be proud of, in its present shape.”

“Never was, was it?” Koski went back into the living room.

“You wanted some information about Merrill?” Berger tongued the cigar around in his mouth.

“Want to know where he is.”

“I couldn’t tell you. Doubt if Lawford has any idea, either. He and the boy don’t jibe very well. But if there’s any trouble I can straighten out...” Berger spread his palms. “I’ve come to Merrill’s rescue once or twice before so Lawford wouldn’t have to know about it.”

“He’ll take some rescuing this time. It’s murder.”

Two vertical creases formed between Berger’s eyebrows. He chewed on the cigar, morosely. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

“You wouldn’t like the sight of it, either. The murderee was hacked into hunks. We haven’t found all of him, yet.”

“Someone Merrill had a fight with?” The Executive Director clasped his hands behind his neck, began to pace up and down.

“All we know for sure is there was a murder. An engineer from the Ovett yacht is missing. Ansel Gjersten, his name is. And young Ovett’s done a disappearing act. That’s enough to make an arrest.”