Collection of Stories
- Автор: Стерлинг Стюарт
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Collection of Stories». Краткое содержание книги:
“Swing out a point, Irish,” he called to Mulcahey. “He’s smack in line with that tug’s wheelhouse.”
The tug began to turn. The cargo lighter the tug was towing swung out and the junk boat slewed. Its bow began to disappear behind the lighter.
Koski fired.
A searchlight came on then above the tug’s wheelhouse. It felt its way across the water to the police boat. When it touched the square green flag whipping at the Vigilant’s signal mast, the light winked out abruptly. The tug sheered off, to get out of the way. Mulcahey called. “Did you hit the junkie?” Koski shook his head. “I wasn’t trying to. I was aiming at his gas tank. Bear down on her, Irish.”
They thundered into the mouth of the evilsmelling canal, their exhaust reverberating from the narrow walls. The junk boat was rounding a wharf topped by a ramshackle galvanized shed.
“Half,” Koski yelled, from his position on the forward hatch.
Mulcahey slowed the motor to 600 r.p.m., sweeping the shore to starboard with the blinding brilliance of the searchlight.
A beam of the iron shed, Sergeant Mulcahey caught the stern of the junk boat full in the glare, fifty feet ahead. He grabbed the clutch lever, went into reverse.
The Vigilant lost way, rumbled to a foaming halt ten feet off the pier head. The junk boat had its nose in the mud beneath the pilings of the pier.
“I can’t get the light down on him, Steve.”
“Use your flash,” Koski ordered. “And watch yourself.”
Mulcahey poked the hand torch over the coaming. From the gloom beneath the pier a gun spat. A stanchion on the police boat rang loudly, lead ricocheting off into the fog.
Koski’s rifle answered, once. There was no return shot.
“I might have hit him that time, Irish. Back around under there so I can get a boat hook on him.”
The Vigilant churned the foul-smelling water. It moved out, then came back as Koski hurried aft. He kept the repeater cradled in his right arm even when he snatched the boat hook from its chocks. He kept low behind the stern transom.
“Another couple feet astern, Irish.”
The stern of the police boat inched in under the wharf. Koski leaned out then, hooked the after thwart of the junk boat with his ten-foot pole.
“Slow ahead, Irish.”
Mulcahey moved her out into the canal. Koski hauled the junk boat out into the glare of the sergeant’s flashlight. The man who lay slumped across the motor housing was dead. His jaw hung slackly open. His eyes stared unblinking into the light.
“Sureshot Steve,” Mulcahey marveled. “You sure got him good.”
Steve Koski went overside, dropped lightly onto the junk boat’s bow thwart. He shook his head. “Somebody else got him first, Sarge.” He pointed to the water sloshing along the floorboard. It was the color of claret. “He never bled that much in half a minute.”
“I see what you mean.” Sergeant Mulcahey studied it. “Yeah. You could be right about that.” The sergeant took the bow line, threw hitches around a cleat on the Vigilant’s stern rail. “But what I’ll be wanting to know, Steve — what did the poor devil have in the boat anyway that was worth dyin’ for?! Never have I seen a junkie with less to—”
“He’s no junkie.” Koski held up the man’s arm. The sleeve of his overcoat glistened silkily in the light. “You ever see a water rat wearin’ a hundred an’ fifty dollar overcoat?”
He fished a hat out of the pink water.
“Or a twenty buck kelly?”
Mulcahey scratched his head. “Well, what d’you know!”
“I think I’ve seen this lug’s face before, somewhere, Irish,” Koski said.
“In the Commissioner’s private portrait gall’ry, no doubt—”
Mulcahey broke off. From the pilothouse came a sepulchral voice.
“Vigilant!... Vigilant!... Come in!... Come in!”
Chapter II
Holdup and Murder
Mulcahey hurried to the squawk box and slapped down the Talk toggle. “Patrol Boat Nine calling Doubleya Enn Pee Dee. Over.”
The hollow tones of the speaker were croaking as he clicked the lever to Listen. “Where are you, Vigilant? Over.”
“Gowanus Canal. Take it.”
“Report immediately to Pier Ten, Fulton Market, on a nineteen, a thirty-two. Acknowledge.”
“Nineteen and thirty-two at Fulton Fish Market,” Mulcahey repeated.
Koski yelled, “Tell ’em we’re scooting, Sarge.”
“We’re on our way, now. Over.”
“Notify on arrival, Vigilant. Keep on the box. Doubleyou Enn Pee Dee to Pee Dee to Pee Bee Nine, four twenty-six peeyem, March twenty-eight, authority Police Telegraph Bureau. That is all.”
The two-way was silent.
Steve Koski was searching the dead man’s clothing when Sergeant Mulcahey got to the cockpit.
“We’re getting our noses rubbed in it, Steve. Holdup an’ murder at Fulton Market.”
“Get her spinning, Sarge. I’ll poke around on this tub for a few minutes. Keep me tied in short.”
The patrol boat made a tight circle, churned suds under the bow of the towed junk boat. Koski squatted on the stern thwart, examining the stuff he’d frisked from the corpse’s pockets: Alligator wallet, swollen with folding money. Three dollars in silver. Keys on ring. Gold pocket knife. Silk handkerchief. Gold pen. Envelope with two airline tickets, New York to Havana via Miami.
“On the midnight plane tonight, eh?” Koski eyed the body dispassionately. “I’m afraid they wouldn’t take you now unless you were boxed, mister. Wonder who was supposed to go on that little trip with you?”
In the disc of the flashlight, the dead man stared glassily at Koski’s shoes. The lieutenant studied the low forehead, the dark hair growing within an inch of the eyebrows. The long, thin nose with the slightly upturned, reddened tip. The small, pursey lips, the gold-capped incisor. The last time that face had looked up at Koski had surely been from a police flyer.
His name was Eddie-something. It began to come back, now...
He snapped his fingers! Eddie — Eddie-the-Switch, that’s who it was! Koski couldn’t remember the criminal’s last name — it didn’t matter, anyway — but the Marine Division’s crack plainclothesman couldn’t forget the reason given on the Wanted Bulletin for Eddie’s being known as the Switch: “So-called because of frequent boasts that he would light somebody up!”
Eddie-the-Switch had killed a payroll messenger down South somewhere — Birmingham, if Koski recalled correctly. After beating that rap, he had been picked up on another manslaughter charge in Kansas City. He’d shot his way out of jail there. Yeah. Quite a customer, this Eddie-the-Switch had been.
But how had a hot rod like that happened to be on this junk boat? He certainly had been a long way from the accommodations on the Nightliner to Miami!
Steve Koski fished the .45 out of the wine-colored water that sloshed from side to side over the junk boat’s propeller shaft as the Vigilant’s wake bounced the eighteen-footer wildly. It was an Army Colt — with a kick Koski was glad he hadn’t felt.
But, Koski realized, the man must have been dying before the rifle bullet drilled that hole beneath his ear. There was a soggy redness, the size of a dinner plate, on the right side of the man’s coat, from the third to the fourth button. Blood from that wound had stained the water. Eddie-the-Switch wouldn’t have bled much after Steve’s .303 hit him.