The sergeant echoed the curse. “Sure, maybe you had a thing there, about them pickled eels. Steve. I must be seein’ around corners, but ain’t that the blinker buoy off Gowanus? Holy hat, no! ’Tis some fathead on shore, usin’ a flash!”
“Slow her.” Koski took the night glasses out of their leather case, peered at the dim spark that winked on and off through the milky mist. A long blink, a short. A pause. A long and a short again and immediately repeated.
“Beam, Irish.”
The searchlight dazzled a pencil of illumination through the coiling vapor. A hundred yards inshore, the light was reflected from a hull that might have been white, or gray. It might have been a fifty-footer or a seventy. The boat wasn’t making headway.
“In, Sarge.” Koski lifted the sub-machine gun from its rack, checked the load, the safety. “Circle back. Come in to her bow.”
“If that ain’t the Vannity,” the big Irishman growled, “I’ll eat a bushel of beer caps. She must have bust down.”
“Run that beam along her cockpit. It’s it all right.” The lieutenant could see no stacked crates above the party boat’s coaming, but the customs lettering K2074 and the name VANNITY were plain enough now that the police boat had cut the gap between them to thirty yards. Also, there was a man on the low foredeck, hanging onto the deck house with one hand, waving a flashlight frantically with the other.
Mulcahey let the police boat coast, throttled the motor to a purr.
Koski cupped a hand. “What’s the trouble?”
The man on the party boat — a short, fattish individual in dark pants and a red mackinaw — hollered, “Ma-an... overboard!”
“Alongside, Irish.” Koski couldn’t see in the fishing boat’s deckhouse because of the glare reflected by the Vigilant’s searchlight. “Douse the beam. Get a gun.”
The police patrol’s nose nuzzled the party boat’s starboard quarter. Mulcahey gave the wheel a half-spin to the right, kicked the propeller ahead a couple of seconds. The boats lay rail to rail.
“Catch.” Koski heaved a short line.
The man on deck grabbed at it, snubbed it around a deck cleat.
“Just keep her steady, Irish. And cover me.” The lieutenant stepped across to the party boat, the sub-machine cradled in his elbow. “Who’d you lose?”
“The cap’... Jeeps. I’m glad you guys got here. I been lookin’ for him, last half hour.” The man was breathless. “But I conkin’ go for help. One of the lines got wrapped around the screw when we hit that scow.”
“Who’re you?”
“Olsan. Bernt Olsan. I was helpin’ Chuck.”
“Helpin’ him what?” Koski felt a grittiness underfoot on the cockpit flooring, but saw no sign of any liquor cases on board.
“We was tryin’ out the new motor. Mister Vann — he owns the boat — he had a new motor put in, an’ Chuck — that’s Cap Matless — he didn’t want to gamble takin’ her offshore without givin’ the new engine a break-in.”
“Careful guy, hah? Not so careful you didn’t hit something in the fog?”
“Scow. Sand scow.” Unhappily, Olsan wiped his plump face on the inside of his mackinaw sleeve. “We was on our way back to Sheepshead, where we come from, an’ all of a sudden boom, there’s this thing smack in front of us. Chuck swings away, so’s we won’t crash head-on, then he yells to me to help hold her off. He comes out of the cabin there an’ runs to the rail with a boathook he grabs up. But we sock into that barge like a truck smackin’ a telegraph pole, an’ he goes over.”
“Boat hook and all?”
“Yep. I try to grab him, of course. But he must’ve gone under the scow because that’s the last I see of him. If I could’ve seen him, I’d’ve jumped in after him. All I could do was holler my head off to get somebody on the scow t’ help me, but it just keeps goin’ along.”
Koski stepped into the deckhouse. “What’d you do?”
“Tried t’ get the boat goin’ so’s I could chase after that scow an’ the tugboat towin’ her, but I don’t know nothin’ about motor boats.”
“No? Why’d Matless want you along on a trial run, then?”
Olsan held out his hands, palms up. “Guess I was the only guy around, an’ I could blow the fog horn, stuff like that. But I don’t know a damn thing about what to do when a line gets tangled in the propeller like it did. So I just shut off the motor an’ let her drift. Of course, I kept lookin’ for Chuck.”
“Why didn’t you reverse the motor, unwind the line from the shaft?”
“Never thought of it.” Olsan seemed genuinely surprised. “Jeeps, would that’ve freed it? Only shows a bartender ain’t got no business on a boat.”
“How’d you happen to think of using that flashlight?”
“Well, I been wavin’ it for pretty near half an hour. I was about give it up. Nobody except you paid any attention.”
Koski eyed the Vannity’s chart case, its flag cabinet, its red can of flares, its ship-to-shore set.
“Trial run, hah? Go far up the river?”
Olsan grimaced. “How would I know. Even if we coulda seen anything, I wouldn’t’ve known where we was.”
“Didn’t put in anywhere?” Koski came out of the deckhouse, leaned out to look at the party boat’s hull.
“No, sir.”
“Well, let’s put in at Sheepshead now. I’ve had one cold bath tonight, or I’d go overside and free that screw. But we’ll give you a tow.” The lieutenant slipped the safety catch on the tommy gun. “Phil Vann know you were out on this joy ride?”
Olsan drew in his breath sharply. “I’ll say he didn’t. He’ll prob’ly fire me.”
“Yeah? Would he mind his captain taking out the boat that much?”
From the police boat’s cockpit, Remsen said savagely, “Mind? Vann hated Chuck’s guts. He wouldn’t have kept him as long as he has — except for Ellen.”
Chapter V
The Old Skipola
Sergeant Mulcahey took one step back out of the Vigilant’s pilot house, whacked a hand like a baseball glove on Remsen’s shoulder, hauled him back to the pilot house door.
“Stow that chatter, unless it’s a new set ’f teeth ye’re wantin’! Keep it stowed, understand?”
“I’ve said all I wanted to,” Remsen muttered. “It’s the God’s truth.”
On the party boat Koski paid out a two-inch anchor line to the towing bitts of the police launch.
“Know that lad, Olsan?” he asked.
“I’ve seen him,” Olsan answered. “At the Tavern. He’s Chuck’s brother-in-law. What’s he doing here?”
“Same thing we are. Hunting a couple hundred cases of Scotch. Any ideas about it?”
“Whisky? I could use a slug right now, that’s all.”
Koski gave the sergeant the take-it-away signal, crouched long enough over the blunt bow of the fishing boat to see the scarred paint where the Vannity had hit something hard. He came back to the deck house, appraising the plump Olsan thoughtfully.
“Now if all that hodelyo about rubberhose work in the back room of police stations was on the up and up, it’d save a lot of time. Mister Olsan. I’d simply whale you over the kidneys until you said right out plain what you did with that liquor.”
“You could knock my brains out and I couldn’t tell you anything except what I did. You’re a hell of a cop, not even botherin’ to grapple for Chuck.”
“Don’t hand me any more of that guff, mister. Or I’ll forget my badge and go to work on you just on general principles. We know how Matless learned about the shipment of Scotch. There’s evidence at the pier to show this tub was tied up there tonight. It won’t be hard to tie you in with the murder charge.”