“You understand I want Ovett. I want him damn quick.”
The lawyer sat up very straight. “I might possibly be able to suggest a train of thought in that direction.”
“You’ve got a clear track.” Koski wheeled about.
“He may have gone to sea, again. You knew he’s been getting firsthand experience as a sailor, I presume.”
“Yair.”
“Under a nom de guerre.”
“Now you’re touching the spot. What name?”
“I regret my inability to advise you on that point.”
“Ever hear him mention any name he might have used on other trips?”
“I am sorry.” The lawyer nipped at a speck of dust on his coat sleeve. “I can’t help you.”
“Say.” Schlauff slapped the newspaper against the calf of his leg. “I don’t know the tag M.O. used for shipping purposes. But I might know where to find out...”
“It’s like pulling back teeth,” Koski growled. “Spit it out.”
Schlauff rose, tossing his newspaper in the chair. “There’s something in that report on the Wyatt girl, Mister Fross.” He kept facing Koski and the lawyer, backed toward the door of the sanctum. “She used to call him some whacky name,” he put his hand on the knob almost reluctantly. “I heard her use it once in a booth. I’ll show you...” He slid out of sight. The door closed softly after him.
Fross laughed, skeptically. “Sinbad. It’s ridiculous; Merrill wouldn’t attempt anything as juvenile—” his voice dwindled away as Koski got to the inner door, flung it open.
The Harbor Squad man hissed a mono-sibilant, strode through the cozy-nook, opened the private door to the hall, looked out. There was no one in the corridor. He dived toward the red bulb marking the stairs, jerked open the door, listened. No sound of running feet; nothing but distant traffic noises.
He cursed under his breath. Trying to run down a sharpshooter like Schlauff in a building as big as this might take half a day; time Koski couldn’t spare now. He stalked back into the office, muttering: “Singlehanded Schlauff. Needs his teeth fixed up. First thing he knows somebody’ll straighten them for him. With a spade—” He cut it short. Both offices were empty. Koski moved swiftly through the corridor to the reception room. “Where’s Fross?”
The bespectacled old man at the switchboard regarded him owlishly. “I couldn’t say, sir.”
“He go out just now?”
“I didn’t see him, sir.”
“You wouldn’t.” Koski went back into Fross’s office, rummaged around, found nothing that interested him. In the private cubicle he had better luck. In a handkerchief on the shelf under the portable bar was a nickel-plated hammerless.
The Lieutenant stuck a pencil in the barrel, held it up so he could sniff at the muzzle without touching it. It was a thirty-two and it had been cleaned since it was last fired.
He wrapped it in the handkerchief again, put it in his pocket, went out to the elevator by the private door.
XX
Fingers of fog crept across Battery Park, strangling the lambent blue at the subway kiosk, shrouding a newspaper stand in golden haze. A tug groaned dismally; a St. George ferry hooted back. There was no dusk, only an enveloping grayness which grew steadily darker. Koski opened the door marked Harbor Precinct, stood with hands on his hips. He sniffed, grumbled:
“Haven’t you guys heard?”
Mulcahey took his feet off the teletypewriter desk. “What’s of new?”
“You can live three weeks without food, three days without water. But only three minutes without air.” He stalked to the window, jerked the steel sash up. The dim light above the landing stage fifty feet away outlined the Vigilant in soft focus.
“We had that open, coach.” The Sergeant objected. “It is an invitation to double pneumonia. The mist comes rolling in like we’re in that cave under Niagara Falls.”
“You’ll stand in a damp hallway for an hour, saying good night to a dame. Get you inside a warm office, right away you’re sensitive to moisture.” Koski slumped into his straight-backed chair, shuffled through the departmental circulars on his desk. The teletype clattered; a short-wave receiver muttered monotonously in one corner.
“What do them convoy navigators do, dense weather this way, skipper? They are not allowed to tootle their klaxons.”
“Follow the wake of the ship ahead. Ship tows a buoy with a hook sticking up on top, cuts the waves, makes a ripple of white water.” Koski tossed aside a notification of an Anchor Association meeting. “If it gets too thick to see that, they run blind, Irish. And trust to luck. Same like us on this case.”
Mulcahey tilted his head back, winked laboriously at O’Malley. “My sense of tuition informs me that something has gone sour. What marches?”
“Time.” Koski stuck his hands in his trouser pockets, stretched his legs out stiffly. “And still not Merrill Ovett.”
“The next three hours will march none too quick for me. At one bell in the next watch I will be nestling alongside the most seductive suzy the human arm ever encircled.”
“You’ll be nestling in the Gowanus. With a set of body drags.”
“Ah, now, Steve. I give this damsel my iron-clad guarantee...”
Koski rubbed his eyes wearily. “There’s no such word as femme in your lexicon, Irish. Until we pack this in the Finished file.” He took out the handkerchief with the revolver, unscrewed the cap of his fountain pen, found a manila tag, tied it to the trigger-guard. “To Identification. With love and kisses. Ask them to shoot to Ballistics.”
Mulcahey hefted it. “Would this be the barker that bit the Purdo babe?”
“If so, one Henry Fross suffers from carelessness. He doesn’t impress me as careless. Still, I’d like an expert verdict. If it isn’t asking too much...?”
“I will hustle it thither on the instant.” The Sergeant turned, pivoted around again, “Say, — it nearly slipped my mind—”
“What slipped what...?”
“Homicide traces the suitcase.”
“Where?”
“A drugstore. Off Times Square. It is the first time I realize the drugstores are in the luggage business.”
“Hell. Some of them carry farm machinery. Any clerk remember the purchaser?”
“That’s the way they traced it. By asking around about a buyer with a turban on the south end of his head. Further than that, the identification remains nil and void. But there is one funny thing...”
“Make me laugh.”
“This buyer carries a roll of something when he comes into the store. There is a paper around it so the clerk cannot be sure but he thinks it is oilcloth. It smells like oilcloth. There are very few things in this world which smell like oilcloth, thanks be.”
“Yair.” Koski nodded, slowly. “To put under the body while he was sawing it up. When did he make the buy?”
“About two-thirty or three Sunday afternoon. That’s the top of the news... from here.” Mulcahey went out.
Koski pulled a sheet off a pile of blank forms; under the heading DETECTIVE’S DAILY ACTIVITY REPORT — FORM DD62, he wrote the date: 3/20/42. He looked at the paper.
Where would he begin: — with the Seavett, Ansel Gjersten, Merrill Ovett, Captain Cardiff, Frankie the Filip, Barbara? What to say about the Bar-Nothing, Big Dommy, Dora, Schlauff, Claire Purdo, the man in the cotton mask? How ought he to cover Ellen Wyatt, and Tim Joslin? Or the angles at the Ovett Line; Clem Hurlihan, Rolf Berger, Lawford Ovett? And friend Fross?
After a while he put the cap back on his fountain pen, laid DD62 at one side of his desk, went into the bunk-room, tossed his coat on the cot with his shield number on it. He opened his locker, dug out a razor and shaving cream, filled a tumbler with water, busied himself with lather, staring out the window at the mouth of the river. The fog had thinned momentarily under the night breeze. The soft blurs of light had sharpened to brighter pinpoints of red, white, yellow...