Holiday Homicide

by Rufus King

  I signaled Harry first, by leaning on the starboard rail, lighting a cigarette, taking a couple of drags and then dropping the cigarette into the river. He went handsomely Theatre Guild, fumbled around in his overcoat pocket as though he’d forgotten something, shrugged, went back to the gangplank and boarded Coquilla again. I knew he would shortly go down the portside landing ladder and get into the speedboat, so he was off my mind.

  A representative of the Manhattan Underseas Contracting Company boarded Trade Wind from the landing stage. He introduced himself as Oscar Wickstrom, one of the partners. He had the placid type of Swedish face which is such a fine mask for a solid boxful of intelligent shrewdness. He was getting a good stiff price for the job and knew it, so he listened carefully to the setup and raised no objections to the play about the thin line, grapple and speedboat, but told me to leave everything to him. He returned to the landing stage, boarded a small boat from the tug and went out in her to the tug.

  Moon hit the deck around then, and Jimmy’s man was with him. They shook hands at the gangplank, and Jimmy’s man went ashore and I didn’t see him again for another three-quarters of an hour when I happened to notice him bobbing around in a rowboat, a phenomenon which there was no time to figure out at the moment. Anyhow, by that time, if you forgot the snow and biting wind, the river in the neighborhood of Wharf House looked like Henley.

  Moon looked smug when I told him everything was smooth and said, “That’s nice, Bert,” in the way he does when he’s got some egg trick of his own up his sleeve.

  The lad from Center Street had the wind well up by now and had come aboard. He joined us.

  “Nasty day, Mr. Moon,” he said.

  “Yes, isn’t it.”

  “I’m Duffy, from Homicide.”

  “How-do-you-do, Mr. Duffy. Have you met my secretary, Bert Stanley?”

  “No.”

  “Mr. Duffy, Mr. Stanley.”

  Mr. Duffy and Mr. Stanley shook gloves. Mr. Duffy then squinted some snow out of his eyes.

  “May turn out to be a blizzard, Mr. Moon.”

  “It might.”

  “If it did, we’d form a society.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You know, just like that bunch did that went through the blizzard back in ’eighty-eight.”

  “Ah?”

  “And we’d have a dinner once a year. I like dinners. You ought to taste the job that Mrs. Duffy can do on a goose.”

  “My compliments to Mrs. Duffy.”

  “Thanks.”

  You could all but spot the chapter on “Psychological Approach” in the manual which this line of lather must have come from, First-lull-your-quarry-with-small-talk-before-pouncing; that sort of thing.

  Well, Moon being presumably fully lulled, Young Hopeful got down to tacks. He nodded over at the tug and said, “That looks like a diving outfit.”

  “Yes, doesn’t it?”

  “Having some diving done, Mr. Moon?”

  “I thought I might.”

  “Here?”

  “Here.”

  “What for?”

  “Now there, Mr. Duffy, you’ve got me. I don’t know.”

  “Huh.”

  “I mean I don’t know in the sense that the man will dive simply on a general hunt for clues.”

  “Such as?”

  Moon did a fine job of looking slightly annoyed and embarrassed. It got my full vote for the Academy award.

  “Mr. Duffy, I have no reason for not being perfectly frank,” he said, and God help Mr. Duffy. “We are sparing no expense and leaving no stone unturned in our efforts to establish my client’s innocence.”

  “Still what?”

  “One of the pieces of evidence that I am positive will clear Bruce Jettwick is the murder gun. The ownership of that gun will be traced, and the true criminal apprehended. So far the police have not been able to locate that gun. I have employed a diver to search the river bed in the vicinity of the scene of the crime. Mr. Duffy, you may draw your own conclusions.”

  If Duffy had had a lighted rocket in his hip pocket he couldn’t have left Trade Wind quicker.

  “A fine thing!” I said, and meant it. “He’ll have the harbor police up here in ten minutes.”

  “I want them.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Yes. I saw that man right after lunch, before I went below. I knew it was inevitable that we would have to consider the police.”

  “But I’ve a plan for that.”

  “I’m certain it will dovetail with mine. Remember, Bert, that nothing makes a dog less attentive to surrounding activities than throwing him a good meaty bone to chew on.”

  “That is just dandy. Where’s the bone?”

  He smiled in that polite way that makes me want to strangle him, and asked me to instruct him in the steps he would have to take for our getaway. I told him, and he said “Excellent, excellent,” and walked down the gangplank and over toward Coquilla with me in tow. We went aboard, and Moon asked me to wait for him in the speedboat while he went below and picked up a few things he wanted in his quarters.

  It was ten minutes of three.

  Coquilla’s speedboat is a honey. She’s stout enough to stand a moderately heavy sea without pounding to pieces, and her twin Bhudas will shoot her up to sixty and hold her there against most weather. The two men who always handle her were in the forward cockpit with Harry Lochbittern and his brief case between them. I got into the after cockpit, with its own windshield and spray hood, and checked on the line, grapple, ulsters, thermos jug and so forth.

  Moon came down and got in, and we shoved off and idled over to the tug. Oscar Wickstrom was leaning over its rail. The snow was getting thicker, and I asked him how the diver would be able to see anything on that sort of a day, and he said something about a modern underwater light and told me not to worry. I handed up the thin line and grapple, while we innocently so chatted, and he said that the diver was all set to go down. He advised us to make fast to the tug so that the diver would know just where to locate us when he came to pull his trick.

  Moon said to Wickstrom, “I suggest that the diver bring up two or three objects from the bottom of the river and give them to us before he brings up the grapple; say, anything at all that he may find.”

  “A good idea, Mr. Moon. I’ll tell him.”

  We made fast and were nicely set by the time that the returns showed up from harbor “A,” thanks to Mr. Duffy. They were a couple of harbor police launches, and District Attorney Seward and Assistant Police Commissioner McGilvray were aboard one of them, and a World Movietone Newsreel cameraman with his apparatus was with the lads in the other.

  Moon spotted the newsreel man and said:

  “It couldn’t be working out better, Bert.”

  There are moments when utter disgust makes me speechless, and I thought of Moon’s remark that the hours between two and five would find the vicinity of Trade Wind free of suspects and of official observation, and was speechless.

  The diver was lowering himself by a ladder over the side of the tug. He looked like nothing I thought a diver ought to look like, having been accustomed through pictures to objects resembling vertical tanks that are swung overboard by cranes. This guy looked almost naked in comparison as he wore nothing but a rubber suit, heavy boots, a modern helmet and some gadgets strapped to his back. Wickstrom later told me that the depth and pressure were nothing to speak of right there, and that that was all the equipment the man needed. There was no air tube, and nothing but a safety line to yank him up by.

  The harbor police boat with Seward and McGilvray maneuvered into the best position for getting in on the newsreel shot of the diver making his first submerge. Then it slid alongside us and McGilvray said:

  “What was the idea of not tipping us off about this, Moon?”

  “I couldn’t see the sense in bothering you, McGilvray. At the best it’s nothing but a wild-goose chase.”

  “It’s a pretty expensive one, I�
��d say.”

  “My client has enough money to avoid any sparing of expense.”

  “Don’t I know it.” McGilvray added grimly, “I warn you, Moon, we’re on hand to take over anything your diver brings up.”

  “McGilvray, for your own sake, do not be absurd. That man is a licensed diver in my private employ engaged on a private job. If in his search he should produce any object which either you or Mr. Seward can prove to me is evidentially connected with the murder of Myron Jettwick, you have the right to demand it and I shall turn it over to you cheerfully. Whatever else he may find is his business and mine.”

  “That man—what’s-his-name—”

  “Mr. Duffy.”

  “Duffy; he said you were diving for the murder gun.”

  “Quite right. For the murder gun, and for whatever else the diver may find.”

  There was just enough smoke in this screen to confuse McGilvray and he started to look fierce, but then suddenly broke into a corncob smile, which puzzled me until I saw that the diver was coming up, and that the newsreel cameraman was cranking, and that McGilvray was moving stage center as closely as the police launch would let him.

  It was a battered child’s go-cart.

  The diver clung to the speedboat and reached the go-cart up to Moon, who lifted it solemnly into the cockpit and set it down. The diver submerged again. Moon gestured toward the go-cart and looked inquiringly over at McGilvray, only to meet a chill and formal silence.

  Object number two was a rusted frying pan with some holes in it.

  Moon smiled. Seward smiled. McGilvray had to smile because the camera was cranking again. Harry Lochbittern started to laugh himself sick. He has no sense of restraint whatsoever.

  This time the diver stayed down much longer than he had before. Ten minutes passed, while the snow got thicker and the wind from the northeast had ice in its teeth. The launch with the cameraman aboard moved closer to the other police boat, and the cameraman shouted that he’d practically have to take close-ups to get anything at all. You could see that this didn’t irritate McGilvray one bit.

  Five more minutes passed.

  The way Moon worked it was real art. He had been sitting quietly on the stern seat, with his left hand hanging over the speedboat’s side. He didn’t move, even when the diver’s helmet broke water. He didn’t move until the diver had tossed the small grappling hook over the speedboat’s stern and into the cockpit. The diver submerged again immediately. Then Moon stood up, then crouched swiftly beside the grappling hook.

  McGilvray almost fell overboard in his hurry to see what was up.

  “What’s that?” McGilvray shouted.

  Moon held it up.

  “A grappling hook.”

  “The hell with that. I mean the thing you picked off it—by God, it’s a gun! Hand that gun over and be damned quick about it, Moon.”

  Again Moon did a fine job which blended anger, frustration, and regret. The police launch swept alongside, and Moon handed the dripping revolver over to McGilvray.

  “Would you like the grappling hook too, McGilvray?”

  “No, smarty. You can keep it for a souvenir.”

  “Thanks,” said Moon.

  The fade-out was a sweetheart. Harry Lochbittern quietly loosed our line from the tug, the twin Bhudas started purring, and gently as a snowflake we opened water between us and the two police boats. I like to remember my last glimpse of them, just before we gently pulled the black steel box on board and stowed it safely in the cockpit under an ulster. The newsreel cameraman was cranking away and shouting to McGilvray:

  “No, Commissioner, don’t point it at the lens—No, no, not straight—sideways so the audience can see it’s a gun—it’s the murder gun World Movietone wants, Commissioner—sideways—flat, Commissioner—okay—okay—okay—”

  They never knew we were gone until the snowfall had blurred us, and by then we were hitting a full sixty and nothing in that man’s harbor could have caught us. Moon didn’t need to tell me about the gun. It was an old crock with its numbers filed off that had been given him by an admirer, a second-story man in Melbourne. I’d seen Moon when he had slipped it out of his overcoat pocket and had held it over the speedboat’s side, so that when he untangled it from the grapple it would be nice and wet.

  I uncorked the thermos jug and passed it around. Walter had done a good job. It was hot, rightly spiced, and very fine rum.

  Chapter Thirteen

  REWARD: $10,000

  Harry Lochbittern, with a fine show of acrobatics, joined us with his briefcase in the after cockpit. Sheltered by the spray hood from the terrific drive of wind, spume and snow, he sat on the floor boards and took a look at the black steel box’s lock with a tenderness that only a mother could display toward a long-mislaid child. Moon asked him whether he could accomplish anything while the speedboat was doing its rumba through the seas, and Harry looked hurt and said forget it, and picked out some small fine instruments and got to work.

  Twenty minutes later, Moon joined Harry on the floor boards and got ready to examine the papers in the opened box. It was a good box, self-sealing against fire and water, and none of the papers had been hurt. Moon complimented Harry both on his artistry and expedition and sent him, blushing, back to the stern seat and me, and the jug of hot spiced rums.

  You had to admire the care with which Moon worked. He put on a pair of thin leather gloves, and read through the contents of the box. He put in his inner coat pocket an envelope containing a single sheet of note paper covered with script, three typewritten letters with their envelopes and something that looked like a contract.

  He returned the other papers to the box and motioned Harry to join him. He told Harry to lock the box and to wipe it clean of fingerprints. He told him to return with it in the speedboat and, under cover of the complete darkness which would have fallen by then, to drop the box overboard alongside of Trade Wind before bringing the speedboat up to Coquilla and having her swung aboard.

  Moon came back and sat down. He took off the thin gloves and threw them into the Sound, again taking no chances, in that their pattern or some slight defect in their surface might be developed from the papers and traced.

  My face was all set with a bright and receptive look which was completely wasted because Moon lapsed into his impersonation of a clam and stayed that way until we left the speedboat and picked up the car outside of Oyster Ray. Moon pried his lips enough apart to tell the driver to hustle us to the Manning, and then cemented them together again.

  The Manning is a small residential hotel in midtown Manhattan which Moon has so far succeeded in using as a quiet retreat when he doesn’t want to be bothered either officially or socially. It still retains brass railings for its red-carpeted staircases, two openwork elevators with a shuddering speed of one vertical mile per hour, a staff of young lads of sixty, and a very good office safe.

  It was half past five when we got there. Moon dismissed the car and we went inside. He asked Mr. Murgatroyd, the desk clerk, for a manila envelope. He put the papers he had taken from the steel box in it, sealed it, wrote his name on it, and told Mr. Murgatroyd to hold it for him in the office safe and not to deliver it to anyone but Moon himself or me.

  After that and some seasonal greetings of a social and financial nature were attended to we went out into the darkness and the snow, netted a taxi, drove to Wharf House and boarded Trade Wind. The bunch were all back from the funeral, and we joined them in the main saloon where very good Mauser cocktails, sherry, and caviar were going the rounds.

  Once again my esteem for Miss Jettwick hit a new high, because if anything can rub out the pall of a funeral a Mauser cocktail will. I hadn’t had one for years. You make them with a half jigger of Italian vermouth, a half jigger of dry gin, one barspoonful of apple brandy. Shake.

  Even without the Mausers they were all agog, as word had been given them of the diving operations during their absence, and the retrieving from the river bottom of what was still being a
ccepted as the murder gun. Thanks to Elizabeth the duck egg on my head had also been bruited around and came in for its moment of attention, too.

  I hated to see that look of hope on Helen Jettwick’s face. They call it radiant, and you knew she was figuring that as soon as the murder gun was checked down at headquarters both McGilvray and Seward would see that they had make a mistake, and Bruce would be released from the Tombs and come home to her.

  Moon told her privately as soon as he could that it wasn’t as simple as that, but he told her to be of good heart. The phrase must have struck her one hundred percent because she studied Moon’s eyes for a moment, and the radiance started to come back again on a firmer basis, if you know what I mean.

  As for the rest of them, if one of them did happen to be the lad or lass we were after, he or she was doing a fine cover job of ignoring the fact that Moon’s diver might, while scuttling about on the river bottom, have come across the black steel box.

  Even my pet suspect, Spider McRoss, stuck strictly to the finding of the gun and was very eager to know just how it would affect Bruce’s chances for a quick exit from the cage. Wallace Emberry answered that one. He was staying on for dinner, after having come back with them from the funeral, and he told McRoss that unless the gun could be traced to its last owner It wouldn’t do any more good than his own efforts had to obtain a writ of habeas corpus or to have Bruce turned loose on bail.

  From the way his eyes popped you could tell that he was still good and mad because said efforts had resulted in nil.

  I put the telescopic gaze on Mrs. Schuyler and could see nothing there, even though she did seem paler and less well preserved than usual, and what the Frogs call distrait. In fact, later, after the case was closed, when I thought back on all the good eye work I wasted during that cocktail hour, I was one point this side of ditching my career of chasing nuts and criminals with Moon and taking up simple bartending again, because Moon knew right at that minute exactly why Myron Jettwick had been murdered, and was morally certain as to who had fired the gun.