Стюарт Стерлинг - Down Among the Dead Men

“If he doesn’t, he’ll learn something about it, one of these days. Up river.”

“That reminds me. Up river. I nearly forgot.” The Sergeant slewed the wheel, the Vigilant rounded the Erie Basin. “You had a message from the dispatcher.”

“You and your memory! Give.”

“One of the Homicide troupe is playing tag with Bre’er Hurlihan; he seems to have caught up with the gent. The address where he is patiently awaiting your arrival — wait a sec—” he picked up the coffee pot, looked at its side. “Pier Nine. Yeah, I thought that was right.”

“You thought! Don’t make me split my sore lip.” Koski pounded out his pipe on the gunwale. Sparks cascaded over the stern. “If that super’s working, it might mean they’re getting some fire-alarm freight on board for a quick clearance. There’s a certain guy I wouldn’t want to see leave these parts so sudden, Irish. Lean on that throttle!”

The motor’s pitch rose a note higher. The hull shuddered. Wings of spray fountained out from the bow.

Under the fierce glare of top-shielded lights, Pier Nine was a noiseless nightmare of activity. Rubber-shod longshoremen padded quietly along with pneumatic-tired hand-trucks loaded with steel drums. Rope slings were hoisted soundlessly up over the mud-gray side of the freighter bulking alongside the pier. No donkey engines barked; there was no whining of winch drums or screeching of taut wires; none of the raucous bedlam or bawling of orders which usually provide accompaniment for a rush job of night-loading.

The unnatural hush reminded Koski of an old silent film; the straining figures in jerseys and dungarees lowering the drums gently to thick fiber mats; the absence of the normal clutter of bales, crates, boxes.

Across the end of the pier, a red-enameled truck had been parked: Chemical Company No. 12; — three men in dark blue uniforms sat on the running board, with extinguishers at their feet. Sling-men made their lashings fast with an air of tense concentration. As the boss stevedore signaled, palm up to the hoist man, Koski noticed the red and blue concentric circles painted on the end of the drum, read the yellow stenciling:

“They keep telling me there’s no danger handling this stuff, Lieutenant.” A small, dark man who looked like a prosperous barber emerged from the gloom beyond the loading lights. “All the same, nobody is doing any tap routines while those cans are going aboard.”

“Hi, Van. What goes?”

“We all do. If one of these boys should trip over his own dogs.” The Homicide officer pointed toward a plump man in a tight-fitting trench coat, standing by a checker’s stand halfway down the pier. “Hurlihan says they already put aboard quite a few tons of smokeless powder and three hundred cases of mine fuses — but the big noise has to be tucked in bed last. Say,” he took out a cigarette mechanically, stuck it between his lips, removed it with a grimace. “I pick your friend Hurlihan up at his hotel. I was going to take him down and fling him in the clink, but all you said was you wanted to gat heem. So I just tail him down here.”

Koski sized up the superintendent’s narrow, sloping shoulders; his round bullet-head, dead-white skin and mat of black, curly hair. “What’d he have to say for himself?”

“Says from eight to ten pee-em Sunday he was at Leon and Eddie’s. I bet it’s the first time that place’s ever been used for an alibi.”

“Anybody with him?”

“Pal of his. Lawyer for the Line. Fella name of Fross. I couldn’t get Fross on the phone to check it, but Hurlihan says plenty of other people who know him saw him here... including Leon.”

“He go there straight from the Seavett?”

“Claims he went to his hotel, first. Doesn’t admit knowing anything about any trouble on the yacht. He could be putting on an act. But he don’t seem to be fretting himself about anything except the twenty-four hundred cans of this stuff.” Van jerked a thumb toward a drum twirling slowly as it ascended over their heads. “You can’t blame him for that. I’ve aged a couple of years since midnight, myself.”

“Okay, Ponce de Leon. Go find yourself a fountain of youth. I’ll take over.” Koski walked over to the checker’s stand, touched the superintendent’s shoulder.

Van came up behind him. “Here’s a gent you better not try to give the brush-off, Mister Hurlihan. Meet Lieutenant Koski.” Van eased away.

Hurlihan glanced up from the stowage plan, fluttered a fat palm at the file of loaded trucks being trundled out of the pier shed. “Don’t bother me now. This stuff’s dangerous. Got to watch it every second.”

“You’re not the only guy watching it.” Koski eyed two men in belted raincoats and white caps bearing the gold shield of the Coast Guard; they stood on the alert just beyond the checker’s stand.

“I’m responsible for getting it in the holds.” Fear flickered in Hurlihan’s gray eyes. “Those lads have cost me a couple hours already, giving the once-over to my dock gang. Now you cops come along. Lord knows when we’ll get done now.” He pulled his coat collar tighter. “Tugs’ll be here at five tomorrow afternoon. Hatches have to be battened down by then, win, lose, or draw. How the hell can they expect us to make overnight turnarounds with everybody butting in—”

“Must keep you kiting. Been on the job all day?”

“Since half-past eight this morning. What is this? A third degree?”

“You’ll know it if we have to put you over the hurdles. Here on the pier all the time?”

“Out here. In my office. In the bathroom, if you have to be so damn nosey.”

“Seen young Ovett? Heard from him?”

“Hide nor hair. Since I left the Seavett.”

“After you had that scrap with him over your attentions to his wife, didn’t he follow you off the yacht?”

“Nothing of the kind.” Hurlihan wagged his head in emphatic denial. “There wasn’t any fight. Merrill and I didn’t even discuss Mrs. Ovett. Nobody followed me when I went ashore. Did Merrill sic you on me?”

“The guy who sicced us onto you is packed in ice up at the City mortuary on Twenty-ninth.”

Hurlihan opened his mouth, closed it, squinted at Van. “That’s why you been keeping tabs on me the last hour? Because you think I killed somebody.” He snorted. “You damned dimwits, I don’t even know who’s dead!”

“You haven’t anything on us. There isn’t enough left of this guy to tell. What we have checks with the description of Ansel Gjersten. The Seavett’s engineer.”

The superintendent’s chin sank on his chest. He shoved his hands deep in his coat pockets. “Ansel was live enough the last time I saw him. I had no more reason to kill him than I have... you, for instance. I don’t know who murdered him. Or why. Or the first thing about it.”

“What were you doing on the yacht? Besides playing boops-a-daisy with Mrs. Ovett?”

“Hadn’t anything to do with Gjersten. Purely a matter of business.”

“I’ve heard of murder for business reasons.”

“Nothing like that in this.” Hurlihan took an envelope from an inside pocket, extracted a paper. “I went out to get Barbara’s proxy. To vote her shares at the special stockholders’ meeting next week.”

“How come you get her proxy?” Koski scanned the document, stuck it in his pocket. “When her husband’s in the offing?”

“Hey, that’s mine! Gimme that!”

“Control yourself. Number of things I don’t savvy about these proceedings. Why doesn’t young Ovett handle his wife’s business affairs?”