“We could nail him, skipper.”
“Not now. Looks like Eustape’s tub. We’ll get around to him in due course.”
“Give him enough rope, that otter’ll set himself up in the cordage business.”
“He better learn the jute business. It’ll come in handier where he’s headed.”
The giant span of the Triborough Bridge came into view as they sped past the upper end of Welfare Island. They circled an Army dredge, felt the slew of the Hell Gate race, boomed along past a sand-barge tow toward North Brother and the Sound. There were plenty of slowly moving lights on the dark expanse toward College Point and Whitestone — but none that might have been the Seavett.
A Coast Guard cutter anchored inside Throgs Neck pointed a tapering finger of white at them, cut off its searchlight, as soon as the beam touched the square-green flag whipping from the Vigilant’s jack-staff.
“Run over, Joe. Maybe they know a thing.”
The patrol-boat swerved inshore. A hundred feet away, Koski cupped his hands, bellowed: “Seen an eighty-foot Cee-Gee Auxiliary? Going down Sound?”
“Five... minutes... ago.” The hail came faintly over the rumble of the heavy-duty motor. “Need... any... help?”
“No,” Koski hollered. “Much oblige.”
“I am cutting the corners as close as I dare, Steve.” The Sergeant shaved the inshore side of a black nun-buoy whose tall cone teetered over against the drag of the current until its white number was almost under the surface. The clear, green jewel of Stepping Stones light came up around the Neck.
“Thar she, Irish,” Koski nodded toward a white spark far to the left of the lighthouse. “Won’t be long now.”
It was another five minutes before they made out her outline against the dim riding lights of the lumber fleet anchored off City Island. The Seavett had a corsairlike sheer and a slant-front, streamlined deckhouse. She was moving along at a steady five knots.
The Vigilant crawled up on her starboard quarter. When they were a hundred yards away, Koski put the beam of the flashlight on the yacht’s deckhouse. He held it on the varnished woodwork and plate glass long enough to make sure he had the helmsman’s attention; then threw the beam down toward the water, reached up and held his hat over it so that only enough light escaped to illuminate the police flag. The Seavett didn’t alter course or slow her speed.
“There,” Mulcahey observed, “is one dumb dilly. How do they let farmers like that fly a Cee-Gee Auxiliary flag?”
“I wish we had one of those one-pounders aboard. I’d put the fear of the Lord into him. Run across her bows, Irish.”
The Vigilant crept up to the yacht’s counter, came abreast, forged ahead, cut in sharply.
Profanity belched from the Seavett’s deckhouse. She slewed westward, heeling over heavily. Mulcahey followed her around, nosed the police-boat against her, amidships. Koski swung over to the yacht.
“What the heirs the matter with you! Don’t you know a police flag when you see it?”
The man who stumbled angrily out of the deckhouse was short and stumpy-legged; the plump beer-belly made his uniform coat a little too tight. His nose was too big for his face and networked with fine purple threads; sacks of puffy flesh under the prominent eyeballs gave him a toadlike appearance. The smell of liquor was strong on his breath.
“Dammit, you got no right to stop us. We’re on Coast Guard duty.”
“Y’don’t say. We work with the Cee-Gee, too. And when a cop-boat pulls up beside you, you stop or you’ll get your ears pinned back. You Cardiff?”
“ ’Sme.”
“Koski. Lieutenant. Harbor detail. Drop your hook.”
“What’s all the rumpus about?”
“Get your hook down. Talk afterwards.” Cardiff went forward, threw off lashings, tossed his plowshare anchor overside — kullunge.
He came back to the deckhouse, put his gear in reverse, took a strain on the anchor-rode, cut the motor.
“Satisfied?”
“Hell of a long way from it.” Koski was curt. “Heard from your man, Gjersten?”
“Don’t much expect to, now.”
“Why not?”
Cardiff looked at him out of the corner of his eyes. “If he’s gone overboard, somebody’d have picked him up before this. He could handle himself all right in the water. So I imagine he just skipped ship.”
“Didn’t figure that way this morning when you phoned headquarters.”
“Didn’t figure one way or the other. No basis for figuring. Nobody saw Ansel go ashore. Other hand, nobody saw him go overboard. One of us would most likely have heard him yell, even if we were under way.”
“You saw Gjersten last at Rodd’s Yard?”
“Yuh. Just before we left.”
“Who else was on board?”
The Captain held his left hand out in front of him, studied the palm as if he were reading from a note. “Missus Ovett was down in the main cabin. Mister Hurlihan was down there, too. He’s general superintendent of the Lines; comes around every so often to discuss... uh... business. Then there was Frankie — he’s our Filipino cook and bottle-washer — he’d have been forward in the galley. And me.” He closed his palm abruptly, glanced up.
Koski pushed past him into the deckhouse. The only light came from an underlit chart-glass, forward of the mahogany wheel; the dim glow made mirrors of the deckhouse windows. Beyond the chart-glass, up against the port windows, was a gray metal cabinet with vernier dials, switches, a one-piece telephone instrument in a nickeled fork at the side.
“You only carry two in your crew, Cardiff?”
“Supposed to have four. Been short-handed since Pearl Harbor. I don’t squawk. I’d probably be drawing Navy pay myself, if it wasn’t for a leak in my pump valves. There’s only me and Frankie left. He’s not sure of his citizen status, or maybe he’d try to get in as a mess-boy.”
“Who handles the short-wave apparatus, here? Gjersten?”
“No. I do. What little handling it gets. We’re restricted to the Coast Guard fixed frequency now. Mr. Ovett had it put in a couple of years ago so he could use the ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore channels. All that’s out, times like these. Don’t use it once a week. Nothing to it, anyway. Press a button to talk, listen for the buzzer when the control officer wants to give us an order.”
Koski snapped a switch at the side of the set. A glass button glowed red. “Gjersten have any pay coming to him?”
“His wages so far this month. About seventy-five dollars.” Cardiff watched the Lieutenant twiddle the directional antennae. “Not as if he’d signed on with the Line. If he’d jumped ship there, he’d forfeit it all. Here, it’ll be waiting, if he calls for it. I hope it’s the last money I have to turn over to him, though I don’t know where I’ll get a man to take his place.”
“Good riddance, hah?”
“I’d have given Ansel the bounce long ago, even though he was a wiz around those heavy-duty gas motors. But he was a disagreeable guy. Never did anything without griping. Worst of it was, he knew he could get away with it.”
“Drag with the owner?” Koski turned up the volume control, but the tubes weren’t warm enough to snap the set into action.
Cardiff pointed to the deck at his feet. “She hired him.”
“That way? Isn’t she pretty well along in years to be mucking around with a thirty-year-old yacht-hand?”
The Captain’s eyes bulged; his forehead wrinkled. “She’s a long way from being on the retired list.”
“Thought Ovett was around seventy...”
“Sure. But she’s not Missus Lawford Ovett. His daughter-in-law. Son’s wife. Twenty-five or so.” The man’s cupped palm described a sinuous vertical movement in the air.