“Do you know a girl, name of Alice Rorty, Remsen?”
“Rorty? Never heard of her.”
“Cap have any girl friend?”
“Nah. All he’s interested in, he’s got an a-cordeen, plays it sometimes nights when I’m workin’. It don’t sound had in a place big as this. I mean, it didn’t.”
“How long were you gone for eats?”
“Oh, you know. Half an hour. Maybe three-quarters. I signed out with Cap. I guess it’s on his hook when I left. Around ten o’clock, somewhere around that.”
Koski looked at his wrist watch. If the cold bath hadn’t slowed it, it was now five minutes past eleven. Still, even an hour was a short time to put the snatch on three hundred cases of Scotch worth close to fifteen thousand bucks.
When they came to the watchman’s body, Koski asked, “Did you move him, or touch him?”
“Cripes, no! I could see he was dead. I know better’n that. You ain’t suppose to move a murdered person.”
“That’s right. But somebody did. Maybe the killer. He fell on his face when that hook caught him. See that smudge on his nose and chin?”
“Yuh.” Remsen said nothing about the much more obvious smear of crimson lipstick by the dead man’s mouth.
“Then somebody rolled him over on his side.” Koski hooked an arm inside Remsen’s, led him to the little door opening onto the river.
Remsen seemed scared at the sight of the police-boat with its square green flag fluttering damply in the mist. But when he saw the girl in the cockpit, he cried out:
“Ellen!”
She seemed to shrivel up inside the cocoon of blanket. She turned her face away, began to cry noiselessly.
Koski said, “Thought you didn’t know her?”
The checker said fiercely, “Her name ain’t Rorty! And you’re damn right I know her! She’s my sister!”
Koski cocked his head at the sound of sirens in the street he’d just left. “You noticed the lipstick on Weltz’s face, didn’t you?”
Remsen ignored him, fell to his knees on the stringpiece, leaning over to get his face as close to his sister’s as possible. “Ellen! Ellen!”
She stared up dumbly, her eyes glassy with tears.
He clapped his hands to his head, swayed back and forth like a man in great pain. “Why’d you do it, Sis? Why’d you do it?”
She spoke then, thickly but distinctly, as a drunken person does when trying to enunciate clearly.
“You know why I did — what I had to, Hal.”
Chapter III
Two Plus Two
The checker stood up stiffly, his head bent forward as he kept his eyes on the girl. He held his arms out rigidly from his sides with the fingers extended.
“I give up,” he muttered.
Mulcahey growled, “Black shame on ye, killin’ an old codger like Ed.”
Koski touched Remsen on the shoulder. “That wasn’t a confession, was it?”
“Hell, no!” Remsen waggled his head in despair. “I only meant I can’t understand why my sister’d do a thing like that.” He stared at her, miserably. “If she did,” he added.
“Jump down.” Koski motioned. “Keep an eye on him, Joe.” He waited until Remsen had landed on the pilothouse roof and Mulcahey was helping him down to the foredeck. Then the lieutenant went back into the pierhouse.
He held his flash so the funnel of light lit up his head and cap. The two radio patrolmen, running toward him, slowed.
“What you got?” one of them called.
“Hijack?” asked the other.
Koski circled the beam on Ed Weltz. The uniformed men inspected the body with noncommittal grunts.
“Might be the same crew who’ve been hoisting stuff along the waterfront for weeks. Or could be some amateurs who figure the professional pirates’ll get blamed for whatever they do. Either way, there’s a couple hundred cases of Scotch missing and this watchman knocked off. But there’s a queer angle.”
“What’s that on his puss?” asked the older patrolman.
“Looks like lipstick,” his partner suggested.
“It is, too.” Koski explained about the girl’s suicide attempt. “Her brother’s head checker, here. He claims he was out grabbing a sandwich when all this happened, came back and heard me, put in a call for help.”
The younger officer looked skeptical. “Our shortwave reported the call was relayed from Launch Nine. Is that your boat?”
Koski nodded. “I’ve got the brother on board with her. She won’t admit swinging that crate hook — but she doesn’t deny it, either.”
The elder patrolman smiled cynically with one corner of his mouth. “She’ll prob’ly claim the old dodo was attacking her, and that she only bopped him in self-defense.”
“Maybe.” Koski didn’t seem concerned. “I’ll turn her over to you as a homicide suspect. I want to ask her brother a few things. He might give us a lead to these cargo thieves the commissioner’s getting so burned up about.”
The younger policeman squinted suspiciously. “We better take ’em both off your hands, Lieutenant. We got strict orders to bring everyone connected with these piracies straight to the Deputy Inspector.”
Koski regarded him dourly. “Think you’re in your own parish? You’re in the Harbor Precinct, now — even if there’s a yard of concrete between you and the river. You take orders from me. Understand?”
The senior patrolman apologized. “No harm meant, Lieutenant. It’s only the Inspector’s been needling us to get action on this business, an’ Frank’s kind of an eager beaver. We’ll wait for the Hommy Detail — an’ then book your cold-bath baby.”
“Ask your captain—” Koski wasn’t mollified — “to assign a spare man to fixed post here until morning. These snatch-boys have been known to strike twice in the same spot.”
He led the younger officer to the bollard where the Vigilant’s bowline stretched drum-tight in the flooding tide.
When Koski unlocked the ankle cuff, he told the girl, “It’ll make it a lot easier on yourself and on your brother if you tell us why you came to the pier tonight.”
She tried dejectedly to make a skirt out of the thick blanket. “I often come to see my brother. It’s the only chance I get — to talk to him.”
“Doesn’t he live at home? With you?” From the foredeck, Remsen snapped, “You don’t have to answer questions, Ellen. Wait until you get a lawyer. Don’t tell them a thing. I’ll get a lawyer for you. Just don’t say anything.”
Mulcahey grabbed the checker, muscled him against the visor of the pilothouse windows. “Just don’t you say anything, bud. Or I’ll wrap live around your whiskers!”
The girl put her hand gently on Koski’s sleeve. “I ought to be grateful to you. But I can’t tell you anything — nothing at all. You’ll have to believe I’m grateful, and let it go at that. I’m really not worth risking your life for, am I?”
He found a length of quarter-inch rope, helped her make it into a temporary belt to hitch the blanket around her slim waist. “I don’t know about that. Offhand, I’d say a girl who could commit a coldblooded murder wouldn’t be the sort to get remorseful enough to walk to the exit the way you did.”
She held her head high and looked over him at the bluecoat waiting on the pier above.
Koski helped her to the foredeck. “I wouldn’t know what you’re covering up, and you must think it’s damn bad or you wouldn’t have taken that dip. But keeping your mouth shut isn’t going to fix anything. You think about it. I’ll be around to see you in the morning.”
“Don’t bother,” she said bitterly. “I don’t know anything you couldn’t tell from what you found — in there.” She gestured toward the pier, held her hand up to the radio patrolman, was lifted up, disappeared into the great shed.