Стюарт Стерлинг - Down Among the Dead Men

“Gjersten’s been found dead,” Berger went on. “Merrill was on the yacht about the time the engineer must have been killed. The police are putting two and two together and getting six, as usual.”

Koski examined a gold-leafed strip at the bottom of the picture frame, read Victor Stanley Ovett and beneath, in smaller letters, Founder of the Line.

Ovett’s shoulders drooped, his eyes were dull coals under the shaggy brows. He slumped into the chair.

The Director went to him. “Lieutenant Koski came to your apartment last night; I told him then there was a mistake, — Merrill wasn’t the sort to run away if he’d done anything to be ashamed of. He was trying to tell you the same thing on the phone, Lawford. Not to worry, things will come out all right.”

“On the phone?” Koski asked. “When did he phone?”

“This morning,” Ovett mumbled. “To say... good-by.” His head began to jerk from side to side, spasmodically; his fingers twitched; his lips worked pathetically.

Berger got around back of him, put his hands under the old man’s armpits. “Help me with him, Lieutenant. Has to lie down when he gets one of these attacks.”

They lifted him, walked him between them into the adjoining office, stretched him out on a brown leather sofa.

“Be all right... few minutes.” Ovett shuddered, his head rolled loosely. “Call... Doctor.”

Koski stood by the window while Berger used the phone. The morning sun came out from behind a cloud, slanting a dusty shaft across the model of a full-rigged ship on a stand beside the window, glittering on silvered wire and glass spools on the sill outside. Below, he could see the headquarters of the Marine Division at Pier A; the stubby black hull of the Vigilant beside the slate gray of a Navy launch; the arc of the Battery, the ferry terminals. Beyond, the Hudson was a brooch of sparkling brilliants against lapis lazuli. A gray two-stacked minesweeper moved slowly down past the smoke of the factory chimneys on the Jersey shore; gulls dived in the riffles of the wake. Those same gulls might have been foraging at Governors Island not many hours ago; might still be discovering bits of carrion elsewhere in the harbor...

“Doctor’ll be here in ten minutes.” Berger motioned to the Harbor Squad man. “Just take it easy, Lawford. I’ll leave the door open.” He went back to his own office, muttering: “I warned you this might happen.”

“Yair. Had to do it. Best way to do it is the surgeon’s way. Quick and clean. Hurts more at the beginning. Less later.” Koski followed him. “Where was young Ovett when he phoned?”

“Lawford didn’t know. Saloon in Brooklyn, Merrill told him.”

“That narrows it down. Anyone around here besides his father who was close to Merrill?”

“Hurlihan used to see a good deal of both Merrill... and his wife,” Berger mused. “That was before Clem had delusions of grandeur; thought he could take the company out of the hands of men who have authority because they know how to use it.”

“Hurlihan’s fiddling around with a reorganization, isn’t he? Planning to put himself in your place?”

“My place! By George, I’ll put that trickster in his place and rub his nose in it.” Berger raised his voice. “Don’t talk about replacing me; I’ve been doing my best to quit for three long years. If it hadn’t been for Lawford’s ill health and that rattlebrained son of his, I’d be raising blooded stock over in the Jersey hills today instead of watching stock being manipulated by men who never sailed over as much salt water in their lives as I’ve rung out of my pant leg!”

His face was apple-shiny with perspiration. “I am the operating head of the company only. But — I operate it. They’d better not interfere with me. I’m not one of that stock-juggling crowd. I own ten shares. I want no more. Or any bilge from underlings who talk one way in the front office and use another tone of voice when they’re making undercover deals with union organizers.”

“Meaning Hurlihan?”

“I don’t mince my words. Clem Hurlihan and that underhanded Joslin.”

“Joslin? Which Joslin’s that?”

“I don’t know his name...”

“He the union man you mentioned?”

“Yes. Calls himself an organizer for the International Longshoremen’s Association. He’s a disorganizer, a filthy rotten bolshevik who’s raised more hell with our loading costs—” He glared, apoplectically. “And Lawford’s boy has to associate with that kind of riffraff. By the Lord I wish he’d been with his father and me at the Council Sunday. He’d have heard a thing or two about union organizers who wangle their way into the confidence of shipowners’ sons, — and then go behind the owner’s back to make a shady deal with some crooked superintendent.”

“Hurlihan and this Joslin been getting chummy?”

“What else would you call putting their heads together over breakfast?”

“Where was this?”

“In the coffee room of the Sulgrave Hotel.”

“When?”

“Sunday morning. A member of the Council saw them, wanted to know why Hurlihan was on such close terms with the worst agitator on the water front.” Berger smacked his right fist into his left palm, stood stiffly erect. “I couldn’t tell him. I don’t keep tabs on our men outside of business hours. It may not be of interest to you to know that these two have been conning Merrill along, but all the time working against his interests—”

“Yair. It’s of interest. Mind?” Koski reached for the phone. To the operator on the PBX he said: “Get me Whitehall 4-1760... hello, Johnny... Koski here... I want the low on a guy named Joslin... initial would likely be T ... T for Tim... organizer for ILA... yair.... address, description, the works... and shoot it fast.”

O’Malley said: “Okeydoke, Lieutenant. Message here for you.”

“Come ahead.”

“They picked up that Claire Purdo in Brooklyn...”

“Where at?”

“She’s in durance vile at the Eighty-second precinct. Awaitin’ your kind attention.”

“Won’t keep her waiting long. Tell Mulcahey to cast off. I’ll make a pier-head jump.”

Claire Purdo was thin and nervous; there was a little ring of cigarette stubs on the ash-tray beside her chair in the matron’s room by the time Koski got there. She dabbed at the pit of her palms with a fragment of handkerchief; her forehead, under the brim of the cocky little red hat, was damp with apprehension as the Lieutenant came in and sat on the edge of the matron’s cot.

“If you’re going to send me to the Island,” she burst out, “why don’t you do it, instead of keeping me in here as if I’d committed some crime!”

Koski said: “We’re after something more important than a soliciting conviction, sister.” He sized up the cheap suit, a little too large for her slender figure; the imitation fox scarf around her scrawny neck. According to the detention record, she was twenty-eight, but her features were those of the frightened adolescent. “Where’d you spend the night, if it isn’t too personal?”

“With a friend.”

“I asked where. Not how.”

“In Bay Ridge.”

“Skip the stall.” He held out his hand, palm up. “I’m no vice sniffer. I want the low. I want it quick. Unless you don’t mind getting mixed up in a homicide tangle, you’ll give out, fast.”

“Homicide!”

“Over at Big Dommy’s. Sunday night.” She lit a cigarette; her hands were shaky. “I don’t know anything—”

“Maybe you think you don’t. Just answer my questions. I’ll find out whether you do or not. Now, about last night?”