Stewart Sterling
Down Among the Dead Men
I
The scream knifed sharply through the March twilight, cutting above the grumble of the police-boat’s exhaust, the hrrush of the bow-wave. Steve Koski slid aft from the pilot-house, squinted across the river’s dark mirror. Against the far shore black dominoes lay side by side — canal barges moored under the towering gloom of Manhattan’s dimmed-out financial district.
“What you make of that, Sarge?”
“The dame who yelled? Ah...!” The blocky-shouldered individual at the Vigilant’s wheel made a pushing gesture with one huge palm. “Was only one of them barge floozies getting beat up.”
“Think so?”
“Her old man has prob’ly looked too long upon the whiskey when it is red.”
“Use some skull. She’d have hollered more than once if she was getting a mauling. That baby was scared.” Koski whipped off his felt hat, shielded his eyes from the port running light. The reflection from the water ruddied his long narrow face, high-lighted the prominent cheekbones so he looked more like a — weathered cigar-store Indian than a plainclothes lieutenant. His gray eyes searched the shoreline. “Run in, Irish.”
The Sergeant made a half-revolution of the spokes. “One will get you five if it is anything more than a wrangle for the Domestic Relations magistrate.” He sighed. “Far as that goes, I have a certain matter of more-or-less domestic relations to take care of, myself — if we could so kindly wind up this tour of duty.”
“Old glamour-pants Joe! Lothario Mulcahey of the Marine Division! Hah! Little more to starboard. Where the lantern is, there.” Koski indicated a yellow spark winking beside the cabin of the end barge. “Might be a kid in the water.” He ran knotty-knuckled fingers through hair wind-bleached to the color of new rope. “No. Looks like somebody hurt, on deck.”
“Always somebody getting banged up on them hulks.” Joe Mulcahey scowled at the silhouettes milling around the pinpoint of illumination. “The farmers who handle them barges is forever busting a leg falling down a hatch or getting caught in a bight of the tow-line.”
Piers emerged from the murk. White lettering on the high stern of the barge became distinguishable: Anna Flannery, Rondout, N. Y. Koski raised a warning hand.
The Sergeant gave the clutch-lever a touch of reverse; the patrol-boat lost way. “If there has been a mishap, it is funny none of them kids is running for help, Steve.”
“Might be somebody’s already gone. Run out a stern line.” Koski edged past the pilot-house to the foredeck as the blunt-bowed thirty-two footer nuzzled the barge-hull. He swung across to the battered rub-rail; peered up on deck.
Five figures clustered around the lantern: a man and a woman, two young boys, a small girl.
Koski called: “Everything all right?”
The taller boy, squatting beside the lantern, pivoted around on his haunches. He wore overalls and a cloth cap; his eyes were round with alarm.
“Pa! The cops!” He pointed to Mulcahey, busy looping a line over one of the barge cleats. “They’s a shield on that one’s cap.”
“Take it easy.” Koski went up over the rail, moved toward the group. “What’s the matter here?”
The man looked over his shoulder, grunted something unintelligible. The woman muttered and made a grab for the tousle-haired girl. “You keep away from it, Dorothy. It’s bad enough for Herbie to go an’ drag up a terrible thing like that...”
“Haw’d I know!” The younger boy, in knickers and a sweater too large for him, knelt beside a black metal suitcase with the lid open. “Jeeze, as many times as I been fishin’ for blue-daws—”
“Shuddup!” The father rubbed at sooty stubble on his chin. “Let the cop ask you what he wants to know.”
“I was only telling him we didn’t know what was in it when we hauled it up...”
“Shuddup!” The man made a threatening gesture with the back of his hand. The little girl buried her head in her mother’s skirts, flung her arms around the woman’s legs, began to bawl.
Koski got close enough to see a lumpy bulk wrapped in wet fabric, salmon-tinted under the smoky flare. Extra padding of cloth had been wadded into each end of the canvas-lined case so the contents would fit tight.
The older boy stood up, stuck his fists in the pockets of his overalls. “It was awful heavy. I hadda help Herbie pull in on it. We thought maybe they was something in it Pa could hock...”
“They wouldn’t ever have laid a finger to it—” the woman shuddered, “if they’d any idea—”
Koski put a hand on the wet cloth for an instant. The thing beneath was cold, soft, slithery. He swung up the lid of the suitcase, closed it. “Where’d you fish this up, Herbie?”
The boy pointed. “Off the side of the pier, there. ’Bout twenny minutes ago. We was after crabs; best place to catch ’m is off the side, there.”
“He hooked it right by the handle,” his brother said. “We didn’t know if the line would bust or not, haulin’ up...”
Herbie stared at the lid. “I’d never lugged it all the way over here — Jeeze — if I’d known what was in it...”
“All right,” Koski snapped the tinny catches that fastened the lid. He straightened up, took out a notebook with a worn, black leather cover. “What’s your name, son?”
“Herbert Gurlid. You going to arrest me, huh?”
The man growled: “Why would he run you in, now, for Pete’s sake! You ain’t done nothing.”
“Spell that G-U-R-L–I-D?” Koski tilted the notebook toward the lantern, so he could see to write. “Live here on the barge, mister?”
“Three years, regular.” Gurlid rubbed his hands along the thighs of his wash-faded dungarees. “Winters here. Summers on the Erie. Never any trouble with the po-lice. You ask anyone. Enough trouble keeping your head above water, with a family, three kids...”
“Yair.” Koski put the notebook back in his pocket, hefted the suitcase. “Any idea who this was?”
“Crysake, no.” The bargeman spat overside, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “How could you tell anything... by that!”
“Maybe we can’t. But the guy who hacked him up better not count on that.” The amber light upspilling from the lantern varnished grim lines into Koski’s long face. “No notion who dropped the valise into the water, either?”
Gurlid shook his head. Herbie said: “Uh, uh.” The little girl took her head out of her mother’s skirt long enough to cry; “I saw him!”
The woman caught hold of the child. “Don’t you be telling any lies now, Dorothy!”
“Wait a minute.” Koski scrunched down so his head was on a level with Dorothy’s. “Who’d you see?”
She dug a fat fist into the comer of one eye. “A big man. Onna wharf.”
The bargeman swore, thickly. “Don’t pay no attention to her. She don’t know what the hell it’s all about.”
Dorothy stuck out her chin. “I did so see him.”
“He have this suitcase?” Koski made a shushing movement toward Gurlid.
“Mmm, hmm. He was luggin’ it down the wharf.”
“She’s makin’ it up,” the older boy burst out. “She never told us she’d seen the suitcase before.”
Koski held up both hands. “One at a time. How long ago was it you saw the big man, Dorothy?”
“Around about...” she puckered up her face, “quarter pas’ six.”
“Ah, she’s nuts,” Herbie jeered. “She wasn’t even on the pier half an hour ago.”
“It was this morning.” The child began to cry. “An’ I know it was around about that time because the gong just rung over to the fish market.”