“Well, well.” Koski moved in. “So you’re the lad who didn’t know anything about Merrill Ovett.” He couldn’t see any closet; there wasn’t much clothing around. A canvas cot was neatly made up with sheets and pillowslip; along the floor next to the table was stacked a long row of volumes. An accordion in a battered leather case occupied a broken-down washstand.
Joslin stepped to the cot, reached under it, came up with a sawed-off billiard cue. He swung the leaded end, casually. “If you’re fixing to strong-arm me around, somebody’s going to get hurt, gumshoe.”
Koski went toward him, stiff-legged; stood with feet planted wide apart, fists on hips. He looked at the books on the table. “The word goes around you’re tough stuff. Don’t tell me you’re a brow, too.” He picked up three volumes: Theory of the Leisure Class, by Veblen; Collected Poems, by Masefield; Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens.
Koski fingered the flyleaf of the autobiography. Merrill S. Ovett was written in a broad staccato hand. Portland, June, 1934. “Where’d you get this, Joslin?”
“What’s it to you? I borrowed it. You can’t frame me on that.”
“I’m not in the picture business, hard guy. When’d you get it from Ovett?”
“I don’t recall. Long time ago. Three, four years.”
“How long’s it been since you’ve seen him?”
“Any time you blues want dope from me, get yourselves a subpoena. I’ll talk to the District Attorney, maybe. Not to a lot of finks.”
Koski put the books down. “You’ll talk to me. Here. Or at headquarters. Suit yourself. But don’t get snotty with me because some pratt from a private agency has shoved you around.”
Joslin gave a sardonic “Ha!” He jabbed a stubby forefinger at the scar on his chin. “See that? A uniform cop did that to me. A dumb ox of a strike-breaking cop. I was in the hospital a week. You think I’m going to throw my arms around you just because you took a civil service exam! That’s for laughs.”
Koski pushed his hat back from his forehead, hooked his thumbs under his lapels. “How much you weigh?”
Joslin scowled. “Hundred and eighty-five pounds. Why?”
“Nothing much. Only you’re the cockiest hundred eighty-five pounds I ever met. I’ll cut it right off the rare end. You may be covering up for Ovett—”
“You won’t get me to admit he needs covering.”
“The big-hearted pal act. All right. Leave Ovett out of it, time being. There are a few little coincidences that tie you in with these murders.”
“Murders.” The organizer’s eyes narrowed. “You told Ellen one man had been killed.”
“That was so. Then. Today a girl got shot to death. Either by the same crut. Or someone working with him.” Koski took a step closer. “In addition to which, there’s a good chance the slob we’re after has been pipelining out dope on ship clearances... to enemy submarines—”
Joslin gritted: “You—!” The billiard, cue swung up.
Koski crowded up against him; clutched the other’s right biceps, broke the force of the swing. He jammed his forearm up under Joslin’s chin, shoved the man’s head back. The cue thudded on the Lieutenant’s shoulder. He grapevined one leg behind the organizer, leaned on him. Joslin went backward, off balance. Koski bored in, got a wristlock on the arm holding the cue. He levered down, heard the weapon clatter to the floor. He pushed Joslin back against the wall, held him there, kicked the cue behind him, turned to one side, bent down, picked it up.
“How you want it, hardboiled? Either loosen up. Or grab your hat and hang on. Because you’re going over the jumps.”
Joslin edged over to the table. “You might bang me around some. But you’re not going to get away with saying I’m working against the merchant marine.”
“If you’re not, why don’t you give out, help me get the snake who is?”
The organizer reached for the milk bottle. Koski lifted the cue, warningly. But all the other did was to thumb out the cardboard cap, put the bottle to his lips, drink. It took him ten seconds, it gave him time to think. He set the bottle down, recapped it, wiped his lips on a paper napkin that had been tucked under the bottle. Then he pulled a kitchen chair out from the table, swung it around, sat down and leaned his arms on the back. “I can’t buck you on that. How am I supposed to be involved?”
“Where were you Sunday afternoon, Sunday evening?”
“In the afternoon I was speaking to a rank-and-file meeting of the union. At the hiring hall. In the evening I was giving a concert,” he waved toward the accordion, “to the essie-eyes. Seamen’s Church Institute. Maybe I murdered a few pieces, but that’s all.”
“Plenty of people saw you? Both those places?”
“Plenty.”
“Then who the hell signed your name to a register in a scummy dive over in the Jungle?”
“Somebody else—”
“Lured a man up to the room or followed him up there? Killed him?”
“—Not me.”
“Cut his body up? Packed it in a suitcase? Heaved it in the drink?”
Joslin’s ears began to get red. “I’d like to lay my hands on the fellow who signed my name to that.”
“You don’t know anything about any of that.” Koski didn’t make it a question. “All right. Let’s tune in a different station. That was Sunday. This is Tuesday. Where were you about an hour ago?”
“Right here.”
“All by yourself?”
“All by myself. This girl you spoke of, — she was shot an hour ago?”
“Over in Brooklyn. Treanor Place. Know that section?”
“Never heard of it.”
“Maybe young Ovett has.” Koski walked around the room, scrutinized a Gropper cartoon pinned to the wall, a National Geographic map of the Western, Ocean in colors, unfolded over the foot of the cot. “When’d you see him last?”
Joslin rummaged around the table for a stick of gum, concentrated on unwrapping it, before he answered. “Sunday noon. Just before I went over to the union meeting.”
“Where?”
“Here.”
“Say where he was going after he left here?”
“I suppose he was going home.”
“Skip the suppositions. Didn’t expect to see him again before he shipped out?”
“No.”
“Hadn’t figured on his wiring your girl he’d see her today?”
“Listen. You can’t work up any antagonism on that score. Merrill’s been a friend of Ellen’s longer than I have. He introduced me to her.”
“On pretty good terms with young Ovett, weren’t you? Isn’t usual for a union man to be pally with a shipowner’s son.”
“Merrill is a union man as well as a shipowner’s son. That’s why I like him. Any individual who can snap out of his environment enough to see the other fellow’s viewpoint has a lot to him. Merrill does that; he even goes so far as to make trips on one of his father’s vessels, — against the old man’s orders, — to see for himself how the men are being treated.”
“Under an assumed name, hah?”
“He couldn’t get aboard any other way. They’d toss him off on his ear; Hurlihan practically jumped out of his socket when I told him he couldn’t deny the conditions on Ovett ships any longer since an Ovett was getting a firsthand look at them himself, — and would do something about it.”
“Oh! Hurlihan knew?”
“Sure. I told him, when it was too late for him to do anything except rave about it.”
“Sunday morning, maybe?”