He clattered on. Koski got the impression he was trying to keep the older man from saying anything more that he might regret. But Cale refused to remain silent.
“Bill wouldn’t go on the Mollie B.,” he said bitterly. “Had to work in the Market so’s he’d be close enough to that little tramp to see her every night. I ought to have made him sign on with Win!”
Negus squeezed his partner’s arm gently. It might have been a sympathetic gesture — or a warning. The head of Shoalwater Seafoods looked up sharply. The eyes of the two men locked for a moment. Then Cale turned his head away, shuddering as if from a severe chill.
“Who’s the girl?” Koski asked.
“Patty Rondo,” Negus replied quickly, anxious to take the burden of answering on his own shoulders. “She’s an entertainer over at the Lighthouse. No real harm in her, I suppose. And there wouldn’t have been any in Bill’s foolin’ around with her, except he got marryin’ notions in his head.”
Sergeant Mulcahey stuck his head in the wharf door. “I got that dope, Lootenant.”
“Whatsit, Irish?”
“Number 71J22RCH is licensed in the name of D. J. Felch, Port Richmond. You remember the guy?”
“I’ll say I do, Sarge.” There had been a midnight meeting between Doojey Felch and the crew of the Vigilant — which had resulted in that junkie’s conducting his waterfront activities some thirty miles further upriver for a period of six months, less time off for good behavior. Doojey was just the sort to have been mixed up with Eddie-the-Switch. “Ask Headquarters to send out a three-state for him. Put his photo on the six o’clock T.V. program. Doojey would have been the other one in the junk boat, sure.”
Mulcahey scowled. “You could be right, Lootenant. Still an’ all, Pier One reports they have been notified by this selfsame D. J. Felch that his junk boat was stolen this afternoon around two-thirty from where it was tied to a gas barge in Newtown Creek.”
“Alibi,” Koski said. “And it smells. Doojey was in this just as deep as the rat out in the boat.”
“Boat?” Negus reacted as if he’d been touched with a live wire. “You mean — out in the Mollie B.?”
Koski moved past the sergeant, out onto the pier. “The man who killed your son is in the junk boat there, on the other side of the Vigilant, Mister Telfer.”
“Dead?” Cale whispered. “Is he dead?!”
“Yeah.” Koski stepped onto the dredger, squatting on his haunches. He pointed to the deck just aft a heavy winch. “There’s blood spatter. That armored truck guard must have plugged him. He was bleeding pretty bad when he ducked out this door, and crossed the deck here, to get to the junk boat.”
“Hell’s bells a-booming!” Negus protested loudly, “that junk skiff wasn’t here when the holdup happened.”
“Sure it was,” Koski said. “It was on the far side of your oyster boat, Mister Negus. At low tide, like this, nobody would have seen it from the pier. Probably it was only here a minute anyhow — just long enough for the gunman to hop up on your deck, cross to the pier, and go in and grab the money bags. They’d have timed it to a whisker. Sure.”
Chapter IV
“I’m Your Ears!”
The phone in the office jangled. Cale turned, automatically, to answer it. Steve Koski eyed Win Negus steadily.
“There was some fidoodling with the thirty-six thousand, though,” he said to Negus. “That money didn’t go into the junk boat with the killer. He didn’t have it when we caught up with him.”
The master of the oysterman didn’t understand. Steve Koski made it clear for him.
“The moneybag the killer took to the junk boat,” Koski said, “was filled with socks loaded down with oyster shells and old newspapers — stuff that would weigh about what the day’s receipts would total.”
“He might have ditched the dough on the dredger here,” Mulcahey suggested, “soon’s he got outside the shed. Then he could have repacked the bag with—”
“He wouldn’t have taken time to do that,” Koski interrupted. “Not with all that hell busting loose on the pier.” Keeping his eyes on Negus, who seemed suddenly grim and defiant, Koski went on, “The killer couldn’t have known the armored truck boys would point out somebody else as the escaping murderer. No. But he might have switched bags, here on the Mollie B. He might have left the one loaded with cash, here — and taken the dummy when he jumped down into the junk boat.”
Cale Telfer came back from the phone and stopped at the wharf door. “Detectives want me to make a statement, Win. They’re up front of the shed, now.”
“Want me to go with you?”
“Uh, uh.” Koski stopped the oysterman. “You stay here while the dredger’s being searched, Mister Negus.”
Cale turned away, his shoulders bowed. “I’ll be all right, Win,” he said, his voice dull and listless. “Only be a minute, I guess.” He walked wearily toward the wire partition.
“Plenty places where you could hide a small bag on a big tub like this, Irish,” Koski told Mulcahey. “Mister Negus’ll help you use the fine-tooth comb.” The sergeant wiped mist off his face with the inside of his sleeve. “You’ll not be with us, hah?”
“I’ll be walking down the avenue a bit.” Koski stepped quickly onto the pier.
“O-o-o-oh!” Mulcahey’s eyebrows went up, the corners of his lips came down. “Like that.”
“Yeah.” It was an old tip-off Koski had used with his sergeant before. “And watch it, Irish. Nobody goes on the Mollie B. Nobody off.”
“Not—” Joe Mulcahey sized up Negus, the oysterman gravely — “while breathin’, Lootenant.”
Koski went on through the wire partition. Cale Telfer was fifty feet ahead of him, but the Harbor Squad lieutenant made no effort to close the gap as the old man stalked past the shucking boards and out into South Street.
Cale’s clumsy subterfuge — that the police wanted him to ‘make a statement’ — hadn’t registered for a moment with Koski. When that crusty divisional detective captain got ready to take an affidavit, he didn’t request the person concerned to show up at the precinct house. He went and brought him in.
Cale marched to a sleek maroon sedan parked across from the Municipal Fish Market, got in and tramped on the starter. When he pulled out and turned up Catherine Slip, Koski was pointing the wholesaler’s sedan out to First Grade Detective Herman Goldweiss, patrol car 8, Precinct 2.
“I’m supposed to be posted here until the newspaper men—” the radio car cop began.
“You’re supposed to take orders. Get going. Don’t let him get away from you,” Koski commanded. “Don’t crowd him too close.”
“That’s old Telfer!” Goldweiss protested, pulling the car away from the curb. “Guy whose son got shot!”
“No kiddin’?” Koski seemed mildly surprised.
“What’sa idea tailin’ him? They already got the killer.”
“They have? Did they find the bag of marbles he was supposed to have hijacked?”
“Nah. He must of stashed it somewhere.” The commandeered patrol car slithered around a corner, braked fast as Telfer pulled his sedan in to the curb ahead, beneath a spasmodic neon: The Lighthouse. “Don’t worry, Lieutenant,” Goldweiss said. “The boys’ll get where he hid it out of him, after they’ve talked to him a while in the back room.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Koski left the radio-car officer trying to figure it out, glanced in through the Lighthouse door. Cale was making for a booth halfway down the gloomy tunnel of the dimly-lighted grille. The girl in the booth was Patty Rondo. Beside the row of booths was a long bar with a dozen idlers ranged against it.