Стюарт Стерлинг - Down Among the Dead Men

Koski pushed his hat back from his forehead, hooked his thumbs under his lapels. “How much you weigh?”

Joslin scowled. “Hundred and eighty-five pounds. Why?”

“Nothing much. Only you’re the cockiest hundred eighty-five pounds I ever met. I’ll cut it right off the rare end. You may be covering up for Ovett—”

“You won’t get me to admit he needs covering.”

“The big-hearted pal act. All right. Leave Ovett out of it, time being. There are a few little coincidences that tie you in with these murders.”

“Murders.” The organizer’s eyes narrowed. “You told Ellen one man had been killed.”

“That was so. Then. Today a girl got shot to death. Either by the same crut. Or someone working with him.” Koski took a step closer. “In addition to which, there’s a good chance the slob we’re after has been pipelining out dope on ship clearances... to enemy submarines—”

Joslin gritted: “You—!” The billiard, cue swung up.

Koski crowded up against him; clutched the other’s right biceps, broke the force of the swing. He jammed his forearm up under Joslin’s chin, shoved the man’s head back. The cue thudded on the Lieutenant’s shoulder. He grapevined one leg behind the organizer, leaned on him. Joslin went backward, off balance. Koski bored in, got a wristlock on the arm holding the cue. He levered down, heard the weapon clatter to the floor. He pushed Joslin back against the wall, held him there, kicked the cue behind him, turned to one side, bent down, picked it up.

“How you want it, hardboiled? Either loosen up. Or grab your hat and hang on. Because you’re going over the jumps.”

Joslin edged over to the table. “You might bang me around some. But you’re not going to get away with saying I’m working against the merchant marine.”

“If you’re not, why don’t you give out, help me get the snake who is?”

The organizer reached for the milk bottle. Koski lifted the cue, warningly. But all the other did was to thumb out the cardboard cap, put the bottle to his lips, drink. It took him ten seconds, it gave him time to think. He set the bottle down, recapped it, wiped his lips on a paper napkin that had been tucked under the bottle. Then he pulled a kitchen chair out from the table, swung it around, sat down and leaned his arms on the back. “I can’t buck you on that. How am I supposed to be involved?”

“Where were you Sunday afternoon, Sunday evening?”

“In the afternoon I was speaking to a rank-and-file meeting of the union. At the hiring hall. In the evening I was giving a concert,” he waved toward the accordion, “to the essie-eyes. Seamen’s Church Institute. Maybe I murdered a few pieces, but that’s all.”

“Plenty of people saw you? Both those places?”

“Plenty.”

“Then who the hell signed your name to a register in a scummy dive over in the Jungle?”

“Somebody else—”

“Lured a man up to the room or followed him up there? Killed him?”

“—Not me.”

“Cut his body up? Packed it in a suitcase? Heaved it in the drink?”

Joslin’s ears began to get red. “I’d like to lay my hands on the fellow who signed my name to that .”

“You don’t know anything about any of that.” Koski didn’t make it a question. “All right. Let’s tune in a different station. That was Sunday. This is Tuesday. Where were you about an hour ago?”

“Right here.”

“All by yourself?”

“All by myself. This girl you spoke of, — she was shot an hour ago?”

“Over in Brooklyn. Treanor Place. Know that section?”

“Never heard of it.”

“Maybe young Ovett has.” Koski walked around the room, scrutinized a Gropper cartoon pinned to the wall, a National Geographic map of the Western, Ocean in colors, unfolded over the foot of the cot. “When’d you see him last?”

Joslin rummaged around the table for a stick of gum, concentrated on unwrapping it, before he answered. “Sunday noon. Just before I went over to the union meeting.”

“Where?”

“Here.”

“Say where he was going after he left here?”

“I suppose he was going home.”

“Skip the suppositions. Didn’t expect to see him again before he shipped out?”

“No.”

“Hadn’t figured on his wiring your girl he’d see her today?”

“Listen. You can’t work up any antagonism on that score. Merrill’s been a friend of Ellen’s longer than I have. He introduced me to her.”

“On pretty good terms with young Ovett, weren’t you? Isn’t usual for a union man to be pally with a shipowner’s son.”

“Merrill is a union man as well as a shipowner’s son. That’s why I like him. Any individual who can snap out of his environment enough to see the other fellow’s viewpoint has a lot to him. Merrill does that; he even goes so far as to make trips on one of his father’s vessels, — against the old man’s orders, — to see for himself how the men are being treated.”

“Under an assumed name, hah?”

“He couldn’t get aboard any other way. They’d toss him off on his ear; Hurlihan practically jumped out of his socket when I told him he couldn’t deny the conditions on Ovett ships any longer since an Ovett was getting a firsthand look at them himself, — and would do something about it.”

“Oh! Hurlihan knew?”

“Sure. I told him, when it was too late for him to do anything except rave about it.”

“Sunday morning, maybe?”

Joslin scowled. “No. I saw Hurlihan Sunday. But it was about a different matter.”

“Was, eh? What name’d Merrill sign under, this last voyage?”

“Now you’ve got me. What difference does it make?”

“Might make a lot.” Koski stacked the volumes, again. “Maybe he used T. Joslin.”

The organizer smiled frostily. “That wouldn’t be any passport with Hurlihan. What the hell’s this got to do with the submarines, anyway?”

“Ovett line seems to have been singled out for attention by the U-boys. Merrill Ovett was sunk in one of them. Knows a lot about Ovett sailings. Ovett yacht has a short-wave sending set that could broadcast dope, if anyone could get to it who was so minded. Yacht had the inside track on Cee-Gee activities, being an auxiliary and all.”

“That doesn’t spatter any mud on me.”

“You work around the docks. You could find out when ships clear, — or somebody might pump you and find out. Your name was on the register for the room where the murder was committed. You talked to Ovett Sunday; that’s the day he disappeared.” Koski threw the billiard cue on the cot. “Let’s go over to the hiring hall, find somebody who can corroborate your oratory.”

Joslin put on his cap without comment, led the way downstairs.

They went along West Street. Under the pillars of the express highway, trucks ground their gears and made obscene bombilations. Along the sidewalks, in doorways of saloons, mission halls, pawnbrokers, flop-houses, — men greeted the organizer; seamen, stevedores, truck drivers, winch-men, gunners, stokers. Men, Koski knew, who loaded the fighting ships that had no armor and made ten knots in a heavy sea, men who sailed them across in spite of mines, bombers, periscopes in the dusk...

Joslin might have been reading his mind. “Lot of these boys have been over and back a dozen times.”

“Yair. Wonder what they’d do to a guy if they found out he was setting them up for the subs to shoot at?”

The organizer only grunted.

Koski made one more attempt. “Understand young Ovett is a bug about radio. You up on that short-wave stuff, too?”

Joslin didn’t look at him. “I don’t know an amplifier from an aerial. If you’re intending to get me to say Merrill does, go spit into the wind. I don’t know any good reason why he shouldn’t, — but don’t try to trap me into giving his answers for him.”