Collection of Stories
- Автор: Стерлинг Стюарт
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Collection of Stories». Краткое содержание книги:
Koski’s long slicker said “cop.” The cap said “Harbor Squad.” Ordinary patrolmen caused no stir along the waterfront. Francy’s customers had learned, through hard experience, to respect men of the Harbor Precinct. Men wearing that cap seldom interfered in mere barroom brawls.
Bull-necked, hog-jowled Francy himself broke the spell.
He wiped his hands on a dirty apron, sidled along the bar, mopping up beer slop with a filthy rag.
“Crummy night, Lieutenant.” His voice held no welcome. Uniforms were bad for trade.
“Little breezy, yair.” Koski gave the customers the once-over. They glared back.
He went to the bar. “Know who belongs to a yacht called Sea-Pup?”
He directed the question to Francy, kept his eyes on the back-bar.
The proprietor shook his head. “Any you scuts know a craft called Sea-Pup?”
A rumble of negatives answered him. But in the mirror Koski saw heads down at the end of the bar swivel toward a keg-chested banty with long arms and a close-shaven bullet-head. He glowered pugnaciously at Koski’s back.
“What goes, Francy! You op’ratin’ without a license or somep’n? Just because a John Law crashes the Joint, we all got to hold our breaths?! Set ’em up in the same alley!”
Francy frowned uneasily. “Cornin’ right up, Buzz. Two Jamaick, one sloe, one rye, four lights.”
Koski murmured: “Make mine Scotch and tap.”
Swiftly the proprietor slapped a whisky glass in front of him. “Any special brand, Lieutenant?”
The barrel-bodied character hammered the bar with his fist.
“Look at that muckin’ sign over yer cash register, Francy! Says Thirst Come, Thirst Served, don’t it? Well, I got my order in first and my friends ain’t takin’ no back seat for any fuddlin’ badge!”
“Take it easy,” Francy warned, “and you’ll get it constant, Buzz. I’m servin’ one on th’ house.”
Buzz banged the bar with the flat of his palm. Beer glasses jumped. “Rush them drinks, hear me? I ain’t waitin’ on any clabber-brain copperoo!”
Koski strode down the length of the bar.
The group around moved aside to let the Harbor Precinct man pass, shouldered in behind him as he came close to the cocky man with the shaven skull.
Koski kept his voice casuaclass="underline" “Full of fizz and vinegar tonight, aren’t you, bud?”
Buzz stuck out his jaw; fumbled for an empty beer glass on the bar. “I’m mindin’ my own business and buyin’ a few drinks for my pals, and I don’t want no trouble from any bulldozin’ ftatfoot! Hear?”
“Spendin’ free and easy, aren’t you?” Koski cut in. “Hit the jackpot, somewhere?”
Buzz’s right hand dug into the pocket of his soiled ducks, came up with a thick roll. “My own dough! You any right to tell me how to spend it?”
“Depends on how you got it.” Koski watched the beer glass dangling at the edge of the bar. He spoke mildly to Francy, over the shoulders of Buzz’s companions. “I’ll try some of that pinch bottle.”
Buzz stuck out his lower lip. His eyebrows, rust-colored and unshaven, met scowling above the bridge of a flattened nose. “I don’t earn my jack stickin’ my snoot into other folks’ business, like some mugs aroun’ here!”
Koski grabbed the man’s Melton jacket at the top button. He was in too close to use his gun. He didn’t like to go for his automatic unless it was necessary. It didn’t seem necessary at the moment.
He jerked Buzz toward him, crowding him against the bar. “Where do you work, Buster?”
Buzz was caught with his right hand stuffing the money back in his pants. His left elbow was jammed against the bar. He wrenched around, to free it.
“I’m an engineer. Leggo!”
“What ship?” Koski ignored the angry undercurrent of mutterings behind him.
“No ship. Ain’t workin’ now.” Buzz got his right fist free, swung it.
Koski blocked the blow with his elbow. “Just paid off tonight, hah? Where was your last job? Aboard the Sear Pup?”
Buzz snarled: “I never hear of no yacht with that name. You show me any yacht with that name around the Island, I’ll buy you enough Scotch to swim in!” He levered his left arm loose, smashed the beer glass on the bar.
Francy yelled: “Stow that stuff, Buzz!” He banged the pinchbottle in front of Koski.
Buzz jabbed the jagged glass at Koski’s eyes.
The Harbor Squad man swept the whisky bottle off the bar with his right hand, sent it flying. It caught Buzz in the teeth, threw him off balance for a second. Koski seized the engineer’s left wrist, stooping, pivoting!
The wrist came up over his shoulder. So did Buzz, slashing downward in midair with the deadly glass.
Lancing pain bit into Koski’s forearm as Buzz did a no-hands cartwheel up over the bar into the bottles ranged against the mirror.
Before Buzz fell on his head in a mess of busted glass, Koski was going up and over in a one-hand vault.
He landed heavily on Buzz. The engineer was out cold. He lay with his mouth open, his eyes glazed.
Koski wound his fingers in the other’s collar. “Anybody wants a helping of the same potatoes — I’ll meet him up at the end of the bar.” He dragged Buzz along past Francy who kept hollering:
“Who’ll pay for the damage? Who’ll pay the damage?”
Koski bent, felt in Buzz’s pockets.
“Here.” He peeled two twenties off the fat roll. “Take your breakage out of this. He’ll need the rest for cigarette money, where he’s going.”
When Koski got his prisoner back to the Vigilant, Sergeant Mulcahey was working in the cockpit. Mulcahey called: “Love of cheeses, what you got there, Steve?”
Koski clumped down to the float. “Buzzsaw with a few teeth missing.” He dumped the unconscious engineer off his shoulder to the coaming. “Maybe we can get him to humming again if we work him over a little.”
The sergeant laid Buzz on the engine hatch. “Are you sure it would not be better if a medico did the work? This guy looks in very poor shape.”
“Cut his puss diving into a mirror. Broke a couple of choppers when he bounced off the edge of the sink.”
“Either he is a very dumb dodo or else he does not know your rep at that Pier Six stuff, Steve. Or maybe he has enough booze aboard to make him a trifle reckless?”
“He was flying higher than a B-Thirty-Six when I brought him down, Sarge. Bring that ammonia.”
“ ’Twill be more’n smelling salts you’ll need to patch up that tear in your own slicker — and what’s under it.”
Koski felt of his arm. “Stings a bit. Spilled some hooch on it Be all right. Patch it with tape. Rub that cork on his smeller.”
The sergeant shook the ammonia bottle, touched the rubber to the engineer’s nostrils. Buzz didn’t stir.
“Daub iodine on his cuts, sarge. That ought to do it.” Koski went through Buzz’s pockets.
Sailor’s case-knife, razor-sharp; pack of blood-soggy cigarettes; book of matches from Sloppy Joe’s, Avenida Santiago, Habana; another from Jack Dempsey’s Restaurant, New York. Rubber tobacco pouch; no tobacco but a union card made out to Benjamin F. Cotlett, Norfolk, Va., and a folded picture postcard addressed to Buzz Cotlett, c/o Ketch Sea-Dog, Porto Abrillo, Cuba.
That was all except for a trick magnifying glass that showed an enlargement of a naked girl — and sixty-four cents in coin.
Mulcahey poked the glass applicator at a corner of the engineer’s blood-caked mouth.
Buzz moaned. He cursed thickly, opened his eyes.
“My shoulder! You pulled my shoulder outa joint.”