The sailcloth shroud - By Charles Williams Page 0,5
bites. Why?”
They looked at each other, ignoring me. Ramirez turned to go out, but Willetts shook his head. “Wait a minute, Joe. Let’s get the rest of this story first, and you can ask the lieutenant for some help in checking it out.”
He turned back to me. “Did you and Keefer leave the bar together?”
“No. He left first. Right after he drank the coffee. He was weaving pretty badly, and I was afraid he’d pass out somewhere, so I tried to get him to let me call a cab to take him back to wherever he was staying, but he didn’t want one. When I insisted, he started to get nasty. Said he didn’t need any frilling nurse; he was holding his liquor when I was in diapers. He staggered on out. I finished my beer, and left about ten minutes later. I didn’t see him anywhere on the street.”
“Did anybody follow him out?”
“No-o. Not that I noticed.”
“And that would have been just a little before twelve?”
I thought about it. “Yes. As a matter of fact, the four-to-midnight watchman had just been relieved when I came in the gate at the boatyard, and was still there, talking to the other one.”
“And they saw you, I suppose?”
“Sure. They checked me in.”
“Did you go out again that night?”
I shook my head. “Not till about six-thirty the next morning, for breakfast.”
Willetts turned to Ramirez. “Okay, Joe.” The latter went out. “There’s no way in and out of the yard except past the watchman?” Willetts asked.
“I don’t think so,” I replied.
Ramirez came back, carrying a sheet of paper. He handed it to Willetts. “That checks, all right.”
Willetts glanced at it thoughtfully and nodded. He spoke to me. “That boat locked?”
“Yes,” I said. “Why?”
“Give Joe the key. We want to look it over.”
I stared at him coldly. “What for?”
“This is a murder investigation, friend. But if you insist, we’ll get a warrant. And lock you up till we finish checking your story. Do it easy, do it hard—it’s up to you.”
I shrugged, and handed over the key. Ramirez nodded, pleasantly, nullifying some of the harshness of Willetts’ manner. He went out. Willetts studied the paper again, drumming his fingers on the table. Then he refolded it “Your story seems to tie in okay with this.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“The autopsy report. I mean those two bites of hamburger he ate. It’s always hard to place the time of death this long afterward, especially if the body’s been in the water, so about all they had to go on was what was in his stomach. And that’s no help if you can’t find out when he ate last. But if that counterman at the Domino backs you up, we can peg it pretty well. Keefer was killed sometime between two and three a.m.”
‘It couldn’t have been much later than that,” I said. “They couldn’t dump him off a pier in broad daylight, and it’s dawn before five o’clock.”
“There’s no telling where he was thrown in,” Willetts said. “It was around seven-thirty this morning when they found him, so he’d have been in the water over twenty-four hours.”
I nodded. “With four changes of tide. As a matter of fact, you were probably lucky he came to the surface this soon.”
“Propellers, the Harbor Patrol said. Some tugs were docking a ship at Pier Seven and washed him to the surface and somebody saw him and called them.”
“Where did they find the car?”
“The three-hundred block on Armory. That’s a good mile from the waterfront, and about the same distance from the area that beer joint’s in. A patrol car spotted it at one-twenty-five Thursday morning. That’d be about an hour and a half after he left the joint, but there wasn’t anybody in sight, so they don’t know what time it happened. Could have been within a few minutes after you saw him. The car’d jumped the curb, sideswiped a fireplug, pulled back into the street again, and gone on another fifty yards before it jammed over against the curb once more and stopped. Might have been just a drunken accident, but I don’t quite buy it. I think he was forced to the curb by another car.”
“Teen-age hoodlums, maybe?”
Willetts shook his head. “Not that time of morning. Any ducktails blasting around in hot-rods after midnight get a fast shuffle around here. And there wasn’t a mark on his hands; he didn’t hit anybody. That sounds like professional muscle to me.”
“But why would they kill him?”
“You tell me.” Willetts stood