The Vigilant rounded Plum Point cautiously, crept into Manhasset Bay through the great, moored fleet of yachts against the outgoing sweep of the tide.
Mulcahey spoke with his eyes fixed on the red channel markers. “They’s pretty near a thousand craft in this harbor, Steve. How you goin’ to find out which one of ’em she come off?”
Koski glanced down at the still figure swaddled in the army blanket. He spoke loudly enough for her to hear:
“We’ll take her to the police station and let her call up her people to come and get her, first.”
The girl opened her eyes wide. She hadn’t been asleep.
“I haven’t got any people. I live alone. In a furnished room. All I want is a taxi and to go home.”
“For a babe who lives alone in a furnished room,” said Koski, “you’re carrying around quite a chunk of ice on your wrist. Why’re you so scared of the police?”
The girl rolled off the bunk, stood up, clutching at the blanket which slid down to her middle. All the fear went out of her eyes — her voice was bitter self-condemnation.
“I’ll tell you why,” she said. “My name isn’t Alice Wilson. I live at home with my mother in — a nice part of Brooklyn. I’ve been a dozen different kinds of a fool and it would just about kill her if she knew where I’d been tonight. If you want to know the truth I’d rather have drowned than have Ma find out.”
“Yair,” Koski said dryly. “Pair of dungarees, there on the bunk. They’ll fit you like Camera’s pants but they’ll keep you from shivering yourself silly. Go in the head and put ’em on.” He saw she didn’t understand. “The john. Up forward.”
She snatched up the roll of coarse blue canvas, ran to the head, unlatched the door, slammed it behind her.
Mulcahey made a quarter circle around a moored schooner, avoided a tiny class sloop which was being paddled, sails down, across the fairway, headed for the municipal pier. Beyond, the lambent green eyes of the police boat on shore cast a grisly biliousness over launches, dinghies, outboards and flat-bottomed scows ranged alongside the pier.
“Myself,” said the sergeant, “I am not one to trust a pretty further than the nearest dark alley. But I would be inclined to slip this kid a fin and send her home to her mah-mah. Do you not feel this way about it?”
“Not to give you a short answer,” Koski said, “no.”
Mulcahey squinted at him. “Is it a hunk of pig iron you have for a heart, now!”
“Use some skull, Irish. She switches the act on us, sure. But it’s still an act.”
The lavatory door opened. The girl came out. She’d rolled the dungarees up to her knees — tied the shoulder straps together to make a kind of halter effect in front.
The loose garment was floppy and ludicrous, but she filled it out where it looked well.
“If you only had a sweater,” she grinned shyly, “I’d be all set.”
“Sure,” Mulcahey jumped, “I’ve a sweatshirt which will fit you no worse than th’ Lieutenant’s dungies—”
Koski said sharply: “Slide us in to the pier, first, Irish.” To the girclass="underline" “The matron at the station will have some things you can put on.”
Her face clouded. “You aren’t going to make me go there!”
“Depends.” Koski watched the sergeant deftly kick the big hull around against the pier with right rudder. “On you.”
“How?” She came up to the cockpit, eyes searching his.
“I can’t let you go without being sure there wasn’t somebody with you in a speed boat — or a dink — or maybe one of those bantam sloops.” He waved at old Murfree, on the dock, catching the stern line from Mulcahey. “You’ll have to put it on the line, sister. Or I’ll have to check you in, for investigation.”
She began to cry. Her lips trembled. She leaned wearily against the cabin bulkhead.
“All right,” she said. “What do you want to know? I’ll tell you anything except my name.”
“Who was your joy friend?”
“Charley Haskeline.”
“Who’s he?”
“Works for an advertising agency. Radio City.”
“Where’d he keep his boat?”
“New Rochelle. Some yacht club. Hugenor or something.”
“Ay codfish!” It was old Murfree, leaning over the stringpiece of the wharf, gawping down at the girl. “What’s the matter, miss?”
She looked up, blankly.
So did Koski. “What goes, Murf? You know this chick?”
“Tell him the truth, mister!” The girl cried shrilly, before the old watchman could answer. “Tell him you never saw me before in your life!”
The watchman peered more closely, twisting his head this way and that to see her in different lights. He tugged dubiously at his grizzled mustache.
Behind him, Mulcahey shook impatiently. “Put a name to it, pop. Do you or don’t you know her?”
“I know her,” Murfree nodded soberly. “But I never in my life saw her in a getup like that. And that’s the truth, ay codfish!”
Koski touched the girl’s shoulder. “Well?”
“He’s making a mistake,” she sobbed. “I’ve never been here before. How could he know me?”
The watchman straightened, troubled. He spoke in an undertone to Mulcahey.
“He says,” the sergeant called down, “she is a Mrs. Sundstrom and she lives out on a houseboat called Seabohemia with her husband who is Mister Sundstrom—”
“No kidding,” said Koski.
“And Murf sees her a couple of times every day when she rows in for groceries.”
The girl tensed, sprang. Toward the water.
Koski grabbed, caught her around the waist, dragged her back.
“I thought you’d had enough of that.” He kept his grip on her. “Let’s go out and see how your husband’s getting along, Mrs. Sundstrom.”
Mulcahey dropped to the foredeck.
“This houseboat is about halfway to Plum Point. A big one, painted green and white like an awning — I remember many’s the time thinkin’ what a spot for a vacation. Nobody to call you on the phone or push the door bell or—”
“Cast off, Murf,” Koski called. “Much oblige. Might drop in by-and-by for some more dope.”
The watchman threw down the bow line, neatly coiled. “Ay cod, now you got me worrit. Hope you don’t find nothing wrong out to the houseboat.”
The Vigilant backed away from the pier, went astern in the channel, headed out into the coiling mist — edged in between closely moored bridge-decks and single stickers. Its searchlight picked out the zebra-striped hull of a big houseboat with a railed-in sun deck. Yellow light diffused through the fog from its six side windows.
“Ahoy,” Mulcahey roared. “On board Seabohemia.”
No answer.
He hollered again as the police boat bumped the houseboat’s rub-rail.
Koski said: “Mind the babe,” did a one-hand vault over the rail onto the low foredeck of the floating house.
His feet hit the deck only a split second ahead of the sharp and angry crack of the automatic. He let his knees go, flung himself flat.
From within the lighted cabin came a hoarse, angry bark, almost an echo of the gunfire:
“If you want me, come in and get me, you double-crossing two-timer!”
Koski kept rolling, on the fog-slippery deck, until he was out of the line of fire from the doorway.
Behind him Mulcahey yelled, “Hey! Cut that!”
Bare feet slithered along the greasy-wet planks beside him.
“Sundy!” the girl’s voice was close beside the Lieutenant. “Stop that shooting!”
Koski grabbed her leg, pulled her off balance. She fell on top of him. The gun inside spoke again.
Boots thudded heavily on the rear ‘porch-deck’ of the houseboat — Mulcahey, going aboard from the bow of the Vigilant, with a line.