“Now then.” Mulcahey shoved Remsen toward the cockpit. “Shoot off your face. You want to so bad!”
The checker applied his handkerchief to the cut lip. “I’ll take my own advice and keep still. Anything I said, you’d twist it someway to go against my sister.”
Koski said, “You seem all-fired sure she killed him.”
Remsen studied the blood on his handkerchief.
“One thing I’m sure of—” the lieutenant poked his flashlight at the pilings alongside, where the sea-moss had been rubbed clean by something that left pearl-gray streaks — “she didn’t get away with those cases of whisky all by herself. It took three or four huskies to handle those boxes. Who else was in on it?”
Remsen cried resentfully. “Look. I didn’t even know Ellen was down here, tonight. I thought she was working. I go out to get a bite, come back to find Ed stone dead and Ellen half drowned. That’s absolutely all I know and all I’m going to tell you.”
Koski grabbed a fistful of the turtle-neck sweater, pulled the checker toward him. “What’s given you ideas it’s smart to clam up on cops? Well, it’s dumb to be dumb. Sooner or later you’ll loosen up.” He slammed the checker back against the bulkhead so hard Remsen grunted like a boxer socked hard in the belly. “Where does your sister work, wearing a satin evening gown? She doesn’t look like a dance-hall dollie.”
“She’s a singer. Night club singer.”
“Where?”
“Tahiti Tavern.”
Mulcahey boomed, “Oh, ho. That joint!”
Koski said, “Phil Vann’s place? Sheepshead Bay?”
“Yes.”
The Harbor Squad lieutenant considered: Tahiti Tavern. One of the biggest drink-dine-and-dance operations in the entire metropolitan area. Half a dozen dining rooms. Three bars and a cocktail lounge half the size of Grand Central. It served a couple of thousand people, weekend nights. Did a year-round business.
Phil Vann. The Seafood Sultan. Built his business on the slogan From a Broiled Lobster to an International Institution. A slick customer. There had been rumors of his rum-running connections back in the bootleg byegones, but he was supposed to be strictly legitimate, if a trifle on the sharp side, nowadays. Still, the Tavern’s cafes and restaurants, its bars and lounge, could absorb a good many hundred cases of Scotch annually.
“Let’s put it this way. Remsen. You work here at the pier. You know when a big shipment of whisky is due. You tell Ellen. She works for Vann. She tells him about the liquor. Then the next thing we know—”
“You’re putting it cockeyed,” Remsen said shakily. “First place, I don’t talk business, outside of business, to anybody. Including my sister. Second place, Phil Vann’s no crook. He’d no more have a part of pirating stuff off a dock than... than I would.”
The checker pulled his sweater down nervously.
“Now you’re beginning to spill.” Koski pushed the flat of his palm against the checker’s wishbone. “Keep pouring. Who does she know over there? Who owns a gray motor boat?”
Remsen looked sick. He gulped. “I suppose that won’t be any secret by tomorrow. Her husband.”
“Oh?”
“Chuck Matless. Charley Matless.”
“Who’s he?”
“Runs one of the party boats for Phil Vann.”
Mulcahey grunted. “Ahha! The Vannity, by any chance, now? A fifty-foot, beat-up old tub?”
“That’s the one. He takes fishing parties out every morning, around five or six o’clock. Out around Ambrose Light. I went with him once.”
The sergeant pursed his lips. “A tall, homely scut? Built thin as a pelican, with a beak big as a pelican’s, too? A nose you could see miles on a clear day?”
“That’s Chuck. But—”
Koski threw off the bow-line. “Turn her over, Sarge. I’ll cast off.” He asked Remsen. “Has he ever had that barge over here at Pier Nineteen?”
“Not that I know of,” Remsen said, unhappily. “You don’t suppose that he might have—”
“After you been chasing junk-boats and fishing for floaters and grappling for suicides for ten years around this harbor, you don’t suppose anything.” Koski coiled the stern line neatly over the cleat. “But you get so you can figure a little. Any party boat that will carry sixty-five people could handle three hundred cases of liquor all right.”
Chapter IV
I Hate Your Guts
Mulcahey blew the compressed-air horn at a car-ferry. “If he’s tryin’ to make time with the Vannity, luggin’ a load like that, he’d most likely go down Buttermilk Channel, wouldn’t he, Steye?”
“Yeah.” Koski drank steaming coffee out of a thick handleless mug. “Close in, Irish. There’s a back eddy all along shore. It’d help him.”
He estimated the party boat’s top speed at twelve knots, loaded. The police launch could get up to thirty-five in a pinch. But you didn’t run Buttermilk at full throttle in a fog. Too much chance of running down a skiff. Still, unless the Vannity had better than an hour’s head start. Number Nine might catch her before she got through the Narrows.
He motioned toward the coffeepot. “Slug of that will warm you up, Remsen.”
“I couldn’t hold anything on my stomach.” the checker answered sullenly. “I’m sick already. Just bein’ on the water makes me sick.”
Koski grunted. The black hull of the police patrol was rolling a little as it furrowed the full tide, but it was no worse than the Staten Island ferry in choppy water. The pierman must be a sensitive sucker.
“Your sister mentioned some trouble with her boy friend. Her husband. I suppose she meant, huh?”
Remsen clutched the engine housing to steady himself. “Guess so,” he said shortly. “Chuck ain’t much of a husband. He ain’t home much, least not when she’s home. He hasta get up at three to get the party boat stocked for the trip, an’ sometimes Ellen ain’t even back from the Tavern by then. He don’t get back till late afternoon, an’ by then she’s ready to leave. Besides, he don’t make enough to keep a cat in scraps.”
“Doesn’t Vann come up with good pay?” Koski wondered whether the cut on three hundred cases of Scotch might not provide a few T-bones, as well as scraps.
“I don’t know. I guess so. He does all right by Ellen, what I hear.” Remsen didn’t want to discuss it. He didn’t want to talk at all.
Coming past the end of Governor’s Island, a diesel tug with three gravel barges in tow kicked up a swell. The Vigilant lay over on her beam ends, pendulumed over to the opposite rail. Remsen sank to his knees in the cockpit, groaning.
Koski finished his coffee, unracked the shortwave receiver, pushed the Talk button.
“Patrol Nine to Eee Pee Eee Eee... Okay?”
The metallic voice from the speaker answered instantly, “Come in, Nine.”
“Alert all boats for party boat Vannity, out of Sheepshead, last reported near Pier Nineteen, North River. Fifty-footer, pearl-gray, deckhouse forward, single mast aft the house. Hold and detain for investigation. Koski, Lieutenant. That is all.”
The hollow tones repeated the message and added, “Want the Brooklyn patrol cars notified. Steve?”
“Might ask one to check at the Vann wharf in Sheepshead. We’re on our way there.” He signed off again.
Mulcahey cut the wake of a Navy destroyer surging down the harbor so the police boat bucked like a rodeo bronc. The coffeepot banged against the guard-rail on the stove. Remsen swore feebly.