Стюарт Стерлинг - Down Among the Dead Men

He rapped on the glass. There was a shuffling inside. The shade was pulled back a crack; a placid, waxy face appeared. The Chinaman shook his head, smiled, dropped the shade into place.

Koski hammered on the glass. “Hey! Open up in there.”

The face materialized again, unsmiling.

The Lieutenant held his badge up in a cupped hand. A key turned.

“Police? For me?”

Koski got inside. “Keep your didies dry. Just want to ask some questions.” A radio in the back room announced five minutes of the latest news gathered from the far corners of the earth.

“Question? Yes?”

“Where’s your list of customers?”

Hong Hop tucked his hands into black sateen sleeves, shook his head impassively.

“No list. Too many customer. Don’t know address.”

“I was afraid of that.” Koski eyed the package rack, filled with thin shirt-sized bundles. “Most of the stuff you wash is clothing?”

“Shirt. Drawer. Sock. Everybody get back from Hong.” The loud-speaker said something about General MacArthur.

“Okay. Nobody says you stole anything. How many customers send you bed-linen?”

“Please?”

“Sheets. Pillowslips. Maybe blankets.”

Hong felt of his fingernails. “Few.”

“Name ’em.”

The laundryman went to a shoe box stuck in one of the compartments of the rack, began to paw over pink, torn pieces of paper. The newscaster’s round tones reported:

“The Navy Department announces the sinking of a medium-sized merchant vessel, somewhere in the North Atlantic. The sinking occurred on the fourteenth of last month. Survivors were landed at an East Coast port.”

Koski made an unintelligible growling sound; his eyes were angry. Survivors landed at an East Coast port! After how many days and nights of fear and suffering! What about those who weren’t survivors, who had faced it out there on the cold dark sea, knowing it was the windup! Did they think it was easy because the announcer said it quick!

Hong put the slips back in the box. “No sheet.”

“I didn’t ask you if you had any. Whose sheets do you wash when you wash ’em?”

“Different people. Sure.”

Koski put his hands flat on the counter, leaned over it. “Listen. You want China to lick Japan?”

The laundryman showed white, even teeth.

“Okay. The U. S. is helping China?”

“Yes. Helping.”

“All right. I’m trying to find a man who may be a spy. Understand? Against this country. And China.”

“Japanese?”

“No. Likely isn’t a German or an Italian, either. Most likely an American. Only way I can run him down is by a piece of sheet that had your laundry mark on it.”

“How long ’go?”

“Week or so.”

Hong stared at a fly on the ceiling. Then he looked at Koski. “Agarappoulous.”

“How’s that? Say it slow.”

“Agarappoulous. Runs saloon.” He ducked his head quickly, seized a black crayon, made a mark on the fresh ticket. “His place. Saloon.” He grinned, handed over the paper. “Sign like this.”

Koski looked at it.

“Big Dommy’s place? The Bar-Nothing Ranch?”

“Yes, yes. I do sheets.”

“Copacetti, Chungking. Keep it under your hat. No talk. Catch?”

Hong scratched an armpit. “Catch.”

Big Dominick’s place was a couple of blocks north, a conglomerate establishment of restaurant, saloon, hotel and dance hall. There was no quivering neon in the sign over the door to the saloon; the windows had been painted black.

“Gangway!” Koski shouldered into a hard-faced crowd lounging around the doorway. “One side.” They made way.

Inside, fluorescent lights gave an unhealthy appearance to the crowd lining the horseshoe bar. A juke-box glowed cerise and purple, wah-wah’d boomingly. The air was heavy with smoke, sour beer, sweat, perfume. The Bar-Nothing wasn’t as full as Koski had usually seen it but the crowd was the same.

Shipyard hands and longshoremen in dungarees; seamen and stokers; Portuguese, Danes, Mexicans, Negroes, Lascars, Chinamen. A few panhandlers drinking their take; a knot of Irish laborers in noisy argument; a solitary drinker with no chin and foxy, protruding teeth; two greasy-faced youths in barrel-top pants and long pinch-waisted coats. And girls, — of every age, shape, size, and condition of sobriety.

Koski elbowed through to the far end of the horseshoe. Behind the shiny chromium of the cash register, a fat-jawed Buddha gave no sign of recognition. He inspected Koski coldly with small, pale eyes encased in folds of tallow-gray flash.

“How you doing, Dommy?” The Lieutenant got his elbows on the bar.

“Bad enough.” The lipless slit of a mouth hardly opened. “Lousy enough without Little Boy Blue come blowing his horn to drive patrons away.”

“If I blow, it won’t be to drive anyone away. On the contrary. Mix me a lime and Jamaica.”

Big Dommy reached mechanically for the rum bottle. “If you got to make a collar, for Pete’s sake, take the guy out in the alley first. Last time I had a free-for-all in here it cost me two hundred clams for breakage.” The puffy eyelids blinked; the sausage of fat beneath his chin wrinkled like the neck of a turtle withdrawing into its shell.

“I don’t want much.” Koski sniffed the liquor. “What do you cut this with?”

The colorless eyes stared stonily. “Carbolic acid. Get to it. You’re not boosting business.”

“How’s for a personally conducted tour of the joint? Just me and you.”

“In your hat. Where the hell would I get off with my trade if they saw me stooling around with you!”

Koski drank. “That’s your problem. Come on. Les’ go.” He set the glass on the bar.

“You putting on a pinch?”

“I will if I have to. I’m fanning the rooms, upstairs. You want to make me get a search-warrant, close you down?”

The saloonkeeper cursed bitterly. “Why don’t you ask your beat-man if I’m pulling anything, before you bull around? This place is run legitimate.”

“What you sweating about?” The Lieutenant waited until Dommy had circled the end of the bar. “I’m not on the Vice Squad.”

The fat man waddled to a blue-painted door, flung it open angrily. “Why do you have to futz around outside your own precinct? Why couldn’t you call up the Captain, here? He’ll set you right... on your tail.” He swore again, thickly, lumbered out into a narrow hall, grabbed a shaky banister and began to haul himself up brass-treaded stairs.

“Get moving.” Koski followed him into the hall, left the door open. “I haven’t got all night.”

“Just long enough to wreck my setup. Look at that bar. There won’t be a nickel coming across it in five minutes. All because somebody leaves a manhole open and a stink blows in.”

Koski got to the foot of the steps. “You’re going to talk yourself into a punch in the teeth—”

The light went out. The hall door slammed. Somebody jumped him, from behind. Big Dommy turned, swung on him. Koski got in one solid punch to the fat man’s face; heard him grunt. The Greek retreated up the stairs, swung his foot from the higher step, kicked the Harbor man in the head.

Then blows rained on him. Arms pinned his arms to his side. His knees buckled.

The blows were cushioned by unconsciousness...

When Koski opened his eyes, he was looking at a ceiling. The ceiling was gray, mottled with irregular brown stains; a crack ran across it from one corner to the other with tributary cracks spreading out like forks of a river. His head left as if somebody were squeezing it in a vise; he moved it enough to see the foot of a white, iron bed. He put his hand flat to push himself on his side, felt coarse mattress ticking beneath him.