Gulf Coast Girl - Charles Williams(2)

I waited, feeling the hot tension in the room. It was going to
be rough if he started asking her some more. I wasn’t any
hero, and didn’t want to be one, but it wasn’t the sort of thing
you could watch for very long without losing your head, and
with Tweed Jacket you probably never lost it more than once.
Tweed Jacket’s amused gaze flicked from me to the girl and
he shook his head again. “Waste of time,” he said. “He’d
scarcely be here, under the circumstances, unless the rules
have changed. Might go through the rooms, though, and have
a dekko at the ash trays. You know his brand of cigarettes.”
The pug went out, managing to bump against me and push
me off balance with a hard shoulder as he went past. I said
nothing. He turned his face a little and we looked at each
other. I remembered the obscene brutality of the way he was
holding and hitting her, and the yearning in the stare was
mutual.


There was silence in the room except for Shannon Wayne’s
stirring on the sofa. She sat up. The whole side of her face
was inflamed and her eyes were wet with involuntary tears.
The bathing suit was one of the old ones with shoulder straps
and one of them was torn loose so the front of it slanted
downward across a satiny breast. She fumbled at the strap,
Gulf Coast Girl — 23
watching Tweed Jacket with fear in her eyes. The button was
gone. She held it together and went on enduring.
Tweed Jacket apparently found us tiresome in the extreme.
He crushed out his cigarette, whistling a fragment of the
“Barcarolle” from The Tales of Hoffman. The pug came out of
the last room.
“Water haul,” he said, spreading his hands.
Tweed Jacket’s eyebrows raised. “Beg pardon?”
“Nothing. Nobody here for a long time, from the looks of
it.”
“Right.” Tweed Jacket unfolded himself languidly and stood
up.
The pug looked at me, his hazel eyes bright with
wickedness. “How about Big Boy? We better ask him, hadn’t
we?”
“Rather unnecessary. I’d suggest you stick to business, old
boy.”
There was no longer any doubt as to who was boss, but the
pug wanted me so badly he tried once more. “This is a quiet
place to ask, and he might know Macaulay.”
Tweed Jacket waved him toward the door. “Quite unlikely,”
he said. His eyes flicked over the girl’s figure again with that
same cool amusement. “I’d say his interest in Macaulay was
vicarious, to say the least. Vive le sport.” They went out.
In the dead silence I could hear their footsteps retreating
along the pier, and in a moment the car started. I breathed
deeply. I was pulled tight and soaked with sweat. Tweed
Jacket’s urbane manner covered a very professional sort of
deadliness, and it could easily have gone the other way. Only
the profit motive was lacking. He simply didn’t believe
Macaulay was here.
I turned. She was still holding the front of the bathing suit.
“Thank you,” she said, without any emotion whatever, and
looked away from me. “I’m sorry you had to become involved.
As soon as I can change, I’ll drive you back to town.”
I walked over in front of her, so mixed up now I didn’t know
anything. “It’s all right,” I said. “But I wonder if you’d tell me
what this is all about? And why you threw that gun in the
lake?”
Gulf Coast Girl — 24
She looked through the place I’d have been standing if I
had existed. “Really,” she said coldly, “I thought you had that
all figured out.”
She was about as beautiful when she was angry as at any
time. I tried to filter that out of my mind and look at her
objectively. It wasn’t easy.
What had changed the picture? Nothing had really
happened to prove I was wrong about it, but I was suddenly
very ashamed of myself. It was odd, especially when I still
didn’t know why she’d done it, or why she had told me her
name was Wayne while they’d called her Macaulay. All I was
sure of was that I’d jumped to the wrong conclusion.
“I’m very sorry,” I said. “I’d like to apologize, if it’s worth
anything.”
Her face brightened a little. Then she smiled. With the eyes
still full of tears that way, it could catch hold of you right
down in the throat.
“It’s all right,” she said. “It’s my fault, anyway. I don’t know
how I could have been so stupid as not to realize that was the
way it would look. What else could you think?”
I was uncomfortable. “I’d like to forget it,” I said, “if you
could. But what in the name of God did you do it for?”
She hesitated. “I’d hoped I would have more time to make
up my mind before I told you. If I told you at all. But you were
too observant.”
“Make up your mind about what?”
Her eyes met mine simply. “About you.”
“Why?” I asked.
She stood up. It was obvious she was under a strain.
“Would you—excuse me a minute? I’d like to change, and
maybe if I had a chance to think—”
“Sure,” I said. She went out. I sat down and lit a cigarette.
There was no use trying to guess what it was all about, or
what she really wanted. I thought of the two men who had
just left. There was something deep and probably quite
dangerous going on under the surface here, but I couldn’t see
what I had to do with it.
I switched back to her, and as usual I couldn’t get my
thoughts sorted out. I was conscious of being happy about
Gulf Coast Girl — 25
something, and in a moment I realized it was simply knowing
I’d been wrong about the whole thing. That made no sense at
all, of course. Maybe I ought to see a psychiatrist, I thought
sourly.
She came out in a few minutes, dressed and looking as
smooth as ever. She had put on fresh make-up, and the ugly
redness was gone from the side of her face. She touched it
gently.
“I want to thank you again,” she said. “I don’t know how
much more of it I could have taken.”
I stood up. “Then you do know where he is?”
She nodded quietly.
I began to understand then what she had been trying to
make up her mind about. But I still didn’t see why. What did
they want with me? We went out. She locked the door and we
walked out to the car.
She got behind the wheel, but made no move to turn on the
ignition. She slipped around facing me, with her elbow on the
back of the seat. It was very quiet, and her face was deadly
serious. She had made up her mind.
I gave her a cigarette and lit it, and lit one for myself. I
dropped the lighter back in my pocket.
“There’s one thing,” I said. “Maybe I don’t want to know
where he is.”

She gave me a quick glance. “You don’t need a lot of
explanation, do you?”
“It was just a guess,” I admitted. “But I’m still not sure I
want to know anything Tweed Jacket is trying to find out. I
don’t like that efficient look of his.”
“You won’t have to know,” she said. “At least, not until
we’re ready to go. I’m just offering you a job.”
“Before we go any further,” I said, “what kind of jam is he
in? Not the police?”
“No. You’ve seen two of them. They didn’t look like police,
did they?”
“Hardly,” I said. “But what does he want with me?”
“He needs help. Specifically, a diver.”
Gulf Coast Girl — 26
I took a puff on the cigarette and looked out through the
moss-hung dimness of the trees. “The world is full of divers.
They run into each other nowadays, spearing fish.”
“A diver is not quite all,” she said. “Remember—”
I began to get it then, all the questions about boats and
offshore sailing and navigation. He needed several people,
actually, but in a thing like this the fewer you told, the better.
“So that’s why the gun business?” I said.
She nodded. “I’ll admit it was rather theatrical, but you
understand, don’t you? When I read that story about you in
the paper I thought you were just the man we were looking
for, but I had to be sure. Not only that you could handle the
job, but also just what kind of man you were.
There are a couple of reasons why a mistake could be
absolutely fatal. That seemed like a good way to do it. It
would give me most of the day to size you up, and in a place
where we wouldn’t be seen together. Unfortunately, I was
wrong about that. I knew I was being followed, but I thought
I’d gotten away from them. However—” She blushed slightly
and looked away from me in confusion. “I don’t think there
was too much harm done, since he took it for something else
—”
I was ill at ease myself. Tweed Jacket hadn’t been the only
one.
“What is it you want me to do?” I asked. “Don’t forget, I’m
merely an employee of a salvage company. Any job
negotiations are supposed to be handled by the owner—” She
shook her head emphatically. “No. That’s out. We don’t want
a corporation, or a committee, or an expedition. It has to be
one man, and one man only, and it has to be one who’ll keep
his mouth shut for the rest of his life. If you do it, you’ll have
to quit your present job, giving some other reason, of course
—”
“It doesn’t involve breaking any laws?”
“No,” she said. “But I’ll warn you. It could be quite
dangerous. Even afterward, if they found it out.” She stopped
suddenly, frowning a little. “No. Wait. Since you’ve brought
up the question, I’ll be perfectly frank with you. There is one
aspect of it that probably isn’t quite legal. That is taking a
boat into the waters of a foreign country and landing two
Gulf Coast Girl — 27
people secretly. But there’d be no chance of your getting
caught, and it doesn’t sound like a particularly reprehensible
crime—”
“Depends on what they were being landed for,” I said.
“Simply,” she said, her eyes somber, “so they could live in
peace. And go on living.”
I nodded, thinking about it. I had a hunch she was telling it
to me straight. She and her husband were running from
Tweed Jacket and God knew how many more for some reason,
but somehow I couldn’t connect her with anything criminal.
Of course, I didn’t know anything about him at all, but I was
beginning to like her very much. I tried to warn myself. It
hadn’t been twenty minutes since I’d gone off halfcocked in
the other direction. Maybe there was just something about
her that precluded objective appraisal, at least as far as I was
concerned. “What is the deal, specifically?” I asked. She took
another drag on the cigarette, and crushed it out very slowly
in the ash tray. She looked at me. “Just this,” she said. “That
you buy and outfit a seaworthy boat large enough to
accommodate three people but which can be handled by one
seaman with the help of two landlubbers. We’ll furnish the
money, of course, but the whole thing is to be done under
your name or an assumed one, and we have no connection
with it, for obvious reasons, until the very hour we go aboard.
Secretly, and without being followed. That isn’t going to be
easy, either. Sail us to a place off the coast of Yucatan and
recover something from a private plane which crashed and
sank—”
“Wait,” I said. “In how much water? Do you know?”
“Just roughly,” she replied. “About sixty feet, I think.”
I nodded. “That’s easy. The depth, I mean. But finding the
plane is something else. You could spend years looking for it,
and still never locate it. Planes break up fast, especially in
exposed positions and shallow water.”
“I believe we can find it,” she said. “But we’ll go into the
reasons for that later. After we recover what my husband
wants from the plane, you sail us to a spot on the coast of a
Central American country and land us. That’s all.”
Gulf Coast Girl — 28
“What Central American—” I started to ask, and then
stopped. The vagueness had been intentional. “I land you?
What about the boat?”
“The boat is yours. Plus five thousand dollars.”
I whistled softly. There was nothing cheap about this deal.
Then two thoughts hit me at exactly the same time like two
slugs of Scotch. The boat is yours was one of them, and the
other was Ballerina. It was like hearing somebody had left
you a million.
“Wait,” I said eagerly. “How much do you plan to spend for
a boat?”
“Could we get an adequate one for ten thousand?”
“Yes,” I said. I considered swiftly. The last I’d heard they
were still asking twelve thousand for Ballerina, but they
might go for an offer of ten cash. Sure they would. And if not
I’d add the rest myself out of the five thousand.
Then I thought of something else. “You mean, I just land
you on the coast of this country, whatever it is, and that’s it?
You realize, don’t you, that without papers you’ll be picked up
and deported inside a week?”
“That part is all taken care of,” she said.
It was none of my business. She could even say that nicely.
We were both silent for a moment. I turned, and she was
watching me. “Well?” she asked. “What do you think?”
Manning of the Ballerina, I thought. I could see the lines of
her. But, still, what about this? I didn’t know anything.
“Look,” I asked, “this whatever-it-is in the plane. Does it
belong to your husband?”
She nodded. “It’s his.”
“Which is his real name? Wayne or Macaulay?”
“Macaulay,” she said simply. “You don’t make it as easy for
them as looking you up in the telephone book.”
“Who is Tweed Jacket?”
“His name is Barclay. You might call him a killer, though I
prefer executioner. It describes his attitude as well as his
profession.”
“And your husband is running from him?”
Gulf Coast Girl — 29
“Barclay’s only one of them. Running, yes. In the past three
months we’ve lived in New York, San Francisco, Denver, and
Sanport.”
“Couldn’t he get police protection?”
“I suppose so. But it isn’t much of a way to live.”
I still hesitated, without knowing why. What was I afraid of?
I believed her, didn’t I? Maybe that was it. I was too eager to
believe her.
Suddenly she reached out and put her hand on my arm. The
gray eyes were large and unhappy and pleading. “Please,”
she said.
You couldn’t look at her and refuse her anything. “All
right,” I said. “But I’d like to have until in the morning before
making it definite. Suppose I call you?”
Gulf Coast Girl — 30
Three
She sighed with relief and reached for the ignition key. We
started back. I lit another cigarette and thought about it. I
still wasn’t too sold on the thing. I was sold on owning that
boat and I was practically panting to believe anything she
said, but she hadn’t said enough.

“Listen,” I said. “I don’t want to know where he is, or
what’s in the plane, as long as it’s really his. We can skip
that. But don’t you think you’re asking me to make up my
mind with damn few facts to go on? It’s a queer-sounding
deal. You’ll have to admit that yourself.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. I guess it is. And I can
understand your wondering if it’s entirely aboveboard,
without knowing any more than you do.
“But maybe this will help. My husband’s full name is
Francis L. Macaulay. He is—or was, rather—an executive in a
firm of marine underwriters in New York. The name of the
company is Benson and Teen. If you’ll call either them or the
New York police they’ll assure you he isn’t in any kind of
trouble with the law, and never has been. The only people
he’s hiding from are gangsters. I’d rather not go into it any
further than that, because it’s his business, and not mine. But
that’s what you really wanted to know, wasn’t it? That this
wasn’t something that might get you in trouble with the
police?”
Gulf Coast Girl — 31
“That’s what I wanted to know,” I said.
Something still puzzled me a little, though. And that was
the fact that hoodlums seldom bothered to hunt down and kill
some perfectly innocent law-abiding John Citizen who was
hardly aware they existed. As a rule you’d been connected
with them in some way, been near enough to have a little of it
rub off. But an executive in an insurance firm? That didn’t
make sense at all.
But where did the plane come in?
“You’d better warn your husband that if he can’t pinpoint
that plane crash within a mile he’s just going to be wasting
his money,” I said. “It’ll be impossible to find it.”
“That’s all right,” she said with assurance. “He knows right
where it is.”
“He’s sure, now?”
“Yes,” she said. “It was right off the coast. And he was in it
when it crashed.”
“I see,” I said.
But I didn’t see much.
Where had he been going? What was in the plane? And how
had he got back here, assuming he was here?
I could tell, however, that she was reluctant to talk about it
any more than she had to, so I quit asking questions. There’d
be time enough for that when I gave her definite word I’d
take it.
But why was I holding back? It puzzled me. I’d have given
my left arm for that auxiliary sloop Ballerina, and here it was
being tossed in my lap. The job was easy, the pay was
fantastic. I believed she was on the level. What did I want,
anyway?
Of course, I didn’t have any desire to look down the end of
Barclay’s gun again, but that was calculated risk, and besides
he probably wouldn’t have any reason to connect me with it
until it was too late and we were already gone.
Something kept bothering me, but that wasn’t it. I gave up.
It was a little after five when we began to get back into the
outskirts of the city. We hit the peak of the traffic rush right
on the nose and crawled through the downtown district a
slow light at a time. After a while she pulled into a parking lot
Gulf Coast Girl — 32
and we walked up to the corner to a cocktail lounge for a
drink. That was where the odd thing happened.
It was one of those too-utterly-utter places I usually
avoided, dimly lighted, with blue-leather-upholstered booths
and a soulful type who needed a haircut playing Victor
Herbert on an electric organ. We sat down in the last booth
and ordered Scotch and water.
After the drinks came she wrote down her telephone
number for me. “You’re sure it’ll be all right?” I asked. “They
haven’t tapped your phone?”
“It’s not likely,” she said. “But you never know for sure. Just
be careful what you say; tell me you want to see me again, or
something like that. I think it’ll be all right if we meet just
once more, to give you the money, but beyond that it’s too
risky.”
“Yes, it would be,” I agreed, knowing she was right but still
feeling let down about it.
We both fell silent, listening to the music. A moment or two
went by. I was looking at her face when she suddenly raised
her eyes and saw me.
“You’re quiet,” she said. “What are you thinking about?”
“You,” I said. “You’re probably the most beautiful woman
I’ve ever seen in my life.”
It was completely unexpected. I hadn’t intended to say a
thing like that. It startled me, and I cursed myself for an
awkward idiot.
She was startled, too, for an instant. Then she smiled, and
said, “Why, thank you, Bill.”
She was probably wondering when they’d flushed me out of
the hills and put shoes on me.
We finished our drinks in silence while I tried irritably to
figure out why she affected me that way. God knows I wasn’t
a particularly smooth type, but I’d never had this many
thumbs and left feet around a woman before. She was
married, I had known her exactly one day, and yet in less
than four hours I’d managed to insult her and then startle her
out of her wits with a piece of off-the-cuff brilliance like that.
Maybe it just wasn’t my day.
Gulf Coast Girl — 33
We walked back to the car. She offered to drive me out to
the pier, but I vetoed it. “You’d better stay away from places
like that,” I said. “They’re not safe with those people
following you.”
She nodded. “All right.” We shook hands, and she said
quietly, “I’ll be waiting to hear from you. You’ve got to help
me, Bill. I can’t let him down.”
I watched her drive away. Restlessness seized me, and I
didn’t want to go back to the pier. I went into another bar and
ordered a drink, nursing it moodily. Twice I started to the
phone to call one of the girls I knew for a date; both times I
gave it up. I tried to think calmly back over the day, to pull it
into perspective, and I kept bumping into Shannon Macaulay
at every turn. She ran through it like a brilliant silver thread
through a piece of burlap.
Look, I asked myself, what was with Shannon Macaulay? I
didn’t know anything about her. Except that she was married.
And her husband was on the lam from a bunch of mobsters.
So she was tall. So she was nice looking. So something said
sexy when you looked at her body and her face, and sweet
when you looked at her eyes. I had seen women before,
hadn’t I? I must have. They couldn’t be something entirely
new to a man 33 years old, who’d been married once for four
years. So relax.
I left the bar.
I remembered after a while I hadn’t eaten anything since
breakfast. I went into a restaurant and ordered dinner. When
it came I wasn’t hungry.
It was an easy job. It probably wouldn’t take a month
altogether, if he really knew where that plane was. A month—
Just three of us at sea in a small boat. I shook my head
irritably. What the hell difference did that make? It was just a
job, wasn’t it?
I’d own the Ballerina. After I landed them I’d sail her across
to San Juan. I’d go to work for the Navy, at least until the
hurricane season was over, and then cruise the West Indies.
Why, with that much money I could sail her around the world.
I’d try writing again.
I pushed the food back and looked around for a phone
booth. I dialed the yacht broker’s office. There was no
Gulf Coast Girl — 34
answer. It went on ringing. At last I remembered to look at
my watch. It was nearly seven.
I went out in the street and bought a paper, standing on a
corner while I rustled impatiently through it to the classified
section. She was still listed among a dozen others in the
broker’s ad. 36 ft. aux, slp. Ballerina. Slps 4. Now there was a
description, I thought sourly. The poet who dreamed it up
would probably call the Taj Mahal an oldr. type bldg, suitbl.
lge. fmly.
I walked out to the beach and prowled for miles along the
sea wall. It was after ten when I finally caught a cab and went
back to the pier. The driver stopped at the watchman’s
shanty.
“This will do,” I said, and got out.
While I was waiting for my change the watchman came out.
It was old Christiansen, who was always eager for a chance to
talk. “Fellow was here to see you, Mr. Manning,” he said.
“He’s still out there.”
“Thanks,” I said. I put the change in my pocket and the cab
left.
“Maybe he’s got a diving job for you, eh?” Christiansen
said. “That’s what he said, anyway.”
“I suppose so,” I answered, not paying much attention.
“Good night.” It was late for anybody to be coming around
about a job, but maybe he’d been waiting for quite a while.
I crossed the railroad spur in the darkness and entered the
long shed running out on the pier. It was velvety black inside
and hot, and I could hear my footsteps echo off the empty
walls. Up ahead I could see the faint illumination which came
from the opened doors at the other end. There was a light
above them on the outside.
I wondered what kind of man Macaulay was. There was no
picture of him at all. An executive in a marine insurance firm
who was being hunted down by a mob of gangsters didn’t
make even the glimmerings of sense. I thought of being
hunted that way, of never knowing when some utter stranger
might shoot you in a crowd or when they might get you from
behind in the dark. It had never occurred to me before, but I
began to realize now how helpless and alone you could be.
Sure, you had the police. But did you want to live in a
Gulf Coast Girl — 35
precinct station? What was left? They could catch and
prosecute the man after he’d killed you, if that was any
comfort, but they couldn’t arrest him for wanting to.
Then I thought of something else. The girl herself. He must
love her very much. If you were trying to hide, having her
around would be like carrying a sign with your name on it, or
a lighted Christmas tree. And in Central America? Murder.
Any kind of scrawny, washed-out blonde led a parade down
there, and she’d stick out like the Chartres cathedral in a
housing development.

But maybe that didn’t matter so much. It wasn’t as if they
were running from the police. A mob looking for them
wouldn’t have any connections that far away, and if they got
out of the country without leaving tracks they should be all
right.
Then, for no reason at all, I remembered the thing she’d
said when we had parted there at the car. “I can’t let him
down.” At the time it had seemed perfectly normal, the thing
any woman would say if her husband were in trouble. But was
it? I can’t let him down. It puzzled me. There was an odd ring
to it somewhere. He was her husband; presumably she was in
love with him. And from the little I’d seen of her I knew she
wasn’t given to stating the obvious. There wouldn’t be any
question of letting him down, nor any necessity for
mentioning it. When you put it into words, even without
thinking, it wasn’t love, or devotion. It sounded like
obligation.
I came out the doors at the end of the shed. Off to my left,
just at the edge of the illumination from the small bulb over
the doors, I could see the ladder leading down onto the
barge. Only a little of it stuck above the level of the pier now,
and I remembered absently that the tide had been ebbing
about three hours.
I started over toward it, and then suddenly remembered old
Chris had said somebody was waiting out here to see me. I
looked around, puzzled. My own car was sitting there beside
the doors, but there was no other. Well, maybe he’d gone. But
that was odd. Chris would have seen him. There was no way
out except through the gate.
I saw it then—the glowing end of a cigarette in the shadows
inside my car.
Gulf Coast Girl — 36
The door swung open and he got out. It was the pug. There
was just enough light to see the hard, beat-up face, and the
yearning in it, and the bright malice in the eyes. He lazily
crushed out his cigarette against the paint on the side of the
car.
“Been waiting for you, Big Boy,” he said.
“All right, friend,” I said. “I’ve heard the one about the good
little man. And it’s put a lot of good little men in the hospital.
Hadn’t you better run along?”
Then, suddenly, I saw the whole thing over again, saw him
holding and hitting her like some vicious little wasp
systematically destroying a butterfly, and I was glad he’d
come. A cold ball of rage pushed up in my chest. I went for
him.
He was a pro, all right, and he was fast. He hit me three
times before I touched him. It was like one of those
sequences in an animated cartoon—boing-boing-boing! None
of the punches hurt very much, but they sobered me a little.
He’d cut me to pieces this way. He’d close my eyes and then
take his own sweet time chopping me down to a bloody pulp.
These raging swings of mine were just his meat; I didn’t have
a chance in God’s world of hitting him where it would hurt,
and they only pulled me off balance so he could jab me.
His left probed for my face again. I raised my hands, and
the right slammed into my body. He danced back. “Duck
soup,” he said contemptuously.
He put the left out again. I caught the wrist in my hand,
locked it, and yanked him toward me. This was unorthodox,
and new, and when my right came slamming into his belly it
hurt. I heard him suck air. I set a hundred and ninety-five
pounds on the arch of his foot, and ground my heel.
He tried to get a knee into me. I pushed him back with
another right in his stomach. He dropped automatically into
his crouch, weaving and trying to suck me out of position.
He’d been hurt, but the hard grin was still there and his eyes
were wicked. All he had to do was get me to play his way.
He was six or eight feet in front of the car, with his back
toward it. I went along with him, lunging at him with a
looping right. He slipped inside it, pounding that tattoo on my
middle. He slid out again, as fast as he’d come in, only now
Gulf Coast Girl — 37
he was three feet nearer the car. I crowded him again. He
didn’t know it was there until he felt the bumper against the
backs of his legs.
I moved in on him fast. He didn’t have anywhere to go, and
he was already too far back and off balance to swing. I caught
his wrist and the front of his shirt and leaned on him. The
right crashing against his face had an ugly, meaty sound in
the night. This was exactly the way he had held and beaten
the girl. I slammed him again, savagely, punishing him.
“Different when you’re catching, huh?” I said. I rocked him
again.
He twisted away at last, but he was a little groggy now and
his timing was off. A trickle of blood ran out of his mouth, and
my hand hurt. I was conscious I had blood on my own face,
too, because it was getting in my eyes. There was no sound
except the labored breathing and the rasp of our feet against
the concrete of the pier. He circled me, a little more warily
now, and we moved out of the cone of light above the doors.
He slashed in suddenly and made my head ring with a hard
right to the jaw, but left himself open long enough for me to
counter. He rocked back on his heels. I swung again. He
dropped. I looked down at him. There wasn’t even any
satisfaction in it now. “Better beat it while you can,” I said,
gasping for breath. “I’m too big for you. I lean on those arms
a few more times, they’re going to weigh three hundred
pounds apiece. And when they come down, the lights go out.”
He had no intention of quitting. His eyes hated me as he got
up. I was a bigger man, and I’d knocked him down when he
was off guard; there could never be any peace for him until
he’d humiliated me. He retreated evasively, trying to stay out
of reach until his head cleared. I crowded him, but I could
never hit him solidly. He was too much the pro for that. We
were farther away from the light now, near the ladder going
down onto the barge. He was beginning to recover a little. He
came in suddenly, jabbing at my face. I tied his arm up and
swung at his middle again. It hurt him. His hands fluttered
helplessly. I swung once more, moving in with it.
He shot backward, trying to get his feet under him. His
heels struck the big 12-by-12 stringer running along the edge
of the pier and he fell outward into the darkness,
cartwheeling. I heard a sound like a dropped cantaloupe and
Gulf Coast Girl — 38
jumped to the edge to look down. The deck of the barge lay in
deep shadow. I couldn’t see anything. I heard a splash. He
had landed on the afterdeck and then slid off into the water.
I jumped, taking a chance of breaking a leg. It was a good
eight feet down to the deck at this stage of the tide. I landed
safely, and clawed in my pocket for the keys. Then I
remembered. The aqualung was in the trunk of the girl’s car.
There was another in the storeroom, but the cylinders were
empty.
It didn’t matter. I could do it without diving gear, but I had
to have a light. I ran to the storeroom door, frantically
jabbing at the lock. I got it open at last, wild with the
necessity to hurry, and plunged inside. I was sweating. I
bumped into something, and cursed. My hands located the
big underwater light and its coil of cable. I ran aft, groping
for the plug at the end of it. Holding that in one hand, I threw
the rest over the stern into the water. It took only a second to
plug it into the receptacle and turn the switch. I could see it
glowing faintly thirty feet below on the mud. I ran back to the
storeroom for a diving mask, kicked my shoes off, and
dropped over the stern. I didn’t know how long it had been
now. All I knew was that if he was knocked out he’d drown
almost instantly.
Water closed over me. I kicked downward toward the light.
The shadowy columns of the pilings seemed to drop away
endlessly off to my right. They were encrusted with barnacles
which could cut like razor blades. I passed a big lateral
timber, and then another. It was like going down in a freight
elevator.
I was on bottom. He should have been right there beside
the light. He wasn’t. I looked wildly around. There was no
sign of him anywhere. I swam along the edge of the pilings,
searching. I tried to think. Unconscious, he should have
settled straight to the bottom, like a dropped anchor. Maybe
he hadn’t been knocked out after all, and was above,
swimming. Then I saw I was in among the pilings. They were
all around me. I knew what it was now, but it was too late. I
had to go up. I was running out of breath.
I kicked diagonally upward, avoiding the pilings. My lungs
hurt. I wondered if I’d misjudged the time, stayed under too
long. I began to be afraid of the barge. If I miscalculated and
Gulf Coast Girl — 39
came up under it I might not get out. Then my head broke
surface. I took two deep breaths and went under again.
Maybe he was already beyond help. It had taken me too long
to realize that with the tide ebbing he would have gone down
at an angle and was lying somewhere back under the pier
among that tangle of pilings.
I picked up the light and swam in with it. A whole jungle of
pilings began to grow up around me. I thought of those
barnacle-encrusted lateral timbers above me, and the bottom
of the barge itself. If I lost my bearings I’d never get out.
Then I saw him. He was lying beside a pillar with the side of
his face in the mud as if he were asleep. I dropped the light
and reached for him.
I was trying to get a grip on his shirt collar when I saw the
plume of dark smoke drifting out of his head to thin out and
disappear downstream in the tide. I reached around and put
my hand on the back of it. It was like a broken bowl of
gelatin.
He was dead. It was only the pressure that was making him
bleed. He turned a little as I jerked my hand away, and
settled on his back in the muck. His eyes were open, staring
at me. I fought the sickness. If I gagged, I’d drown.
Gulf Coast Girl — 40
Four
I don’t remember coming out, or how I did it. The next thing I
was conscious of was hanging to the wooden ladder on the
side of the barge, being sick. I’d left him there. The police
could get him out; I didn’t want to touch him.
I climbed up to the deck and collapsed, exhausted. I was
winded, and water ran out of my clothes as from a saturated
sponge. The cut places on my face were stinging with salt. My
right hand hurt, and when I felt it with the other it was
swollen.
I had to get out to the watchman’s shanty and call the
police. Then I sat real still and stared at the darkness while
the whole thing caught up with me. This wasn’t an accident I
had to report. I’d killed him in a fight.
I hadn’t intended to, but what difference did that make? I’d
hit him and knocked him off the pier, and now he was dead. It
wasn’t murder, probably, but they’d have a name for it—and
a sentence.
Well, there was no help for it. There was nothing else to do,
and sitting here wasn’t going to bring him back to life. I
started wearily to get up, and then stopped. The police were
only part of it. What about Barclay? And the others I didn’t
even know?
I’d already come to their attention by being with that girl.
Now I’d killed one of their muscle men, and strangely enough
Gulf Coast Girl — 41
just the one who’d wanted to beat me up and question me
about Macaulay in the first place. They wouldn’t mind, would
they? Forget it, Manning; it was just one of those things. Drop
in and kill one of us any time you’re out our way.
Then, suddenly, I realized I wasn’t thinking of the police
any more, or of Barclay’s mob of hoodlums, but of Shannon
Macaulay. And the Ballerina. Why? What had made her come
into my mind at a time like this? Of course, the whole thing
was off now. Even if I didn’t get sent to prison, with those
mobsters after me and convinced I had some connection with
Macaulay I was no longer of any use to her.
No. I wouldn’t do it. The hell with reporting it. Sure, I
regretted the whole thing. And those sightless eyes would
probably go on staring at me for years. But I was damned if I
was going to ruin everything just because some vicious little
egomaniac couldn’t leave well enough alone. Leave him down
there. Say nothing about it—I stopped.
How? Christiansen knew he was in here. There was no way
out except right past the watchman’s shack. I was all marked
up from the fight. In a few days, in this warm water, the body
would come to the surface, with the back of his head caved in
and bruises all over his face. I didn’t have a chance in the
world. He’d merely come in here to see me, and had never
come out. That would be a tough one for the police to solve.
It was the beautiful simplicity of it that made it so
terrifying. Of all the places in the world, it had to happen on a
pier to which there was only one entrance and where
everybody was checked in and out by a watchman—No. Wait.
Not checked in and out. Just questioned as they came in.
They didn’t have to sign a book or get a pass. And the
watchman only waved them by as they went out.
It collapsed. It didn’t mean anything at all, because nobody
had gone out. There hadn’t been anyone else in here. One
man had come in; nobody had left. Christiansen would never
have any trouble remembering that when the police came
checking.
There had to be a way out of it. It was maddening. I looked
across the dark waterway. Everything was quiet along the
other side; there was nothing except an empty warehouse, a
deserted dock. Nobody had seen it. Barclay probably didn’t
even know the pug had come out here. He’d done it on his
Gulf Coast Girl — 42
own because he couldn’t rest until he’d humiliated a bigger
man who’d knocked him down. That was the awful part of it:
there was nothing whatever to connect me with it except the
simple but inescapable fact he’d driven in here to see me and
had never driven out again—I stopped. Driven? No. I hadn’t
seen any car. But how did I know there wasn’t one out there?
The shed was dark.
My mind was racing now. I sprang up and ran around to the
storeroom door, still barefoot, dripping water out of my
sodden clothes. I found a flashlight and leaped onto the
ladder. I ran across to the door of the shed and threw the
beam into the darkness inside. There it was, back in a corner.
I was weak with relief. Maybe he’d parked it there in the dark
to keep me from seeing it and being warned. But that didn’t
matter. The big thing was that he did have a car in here.
All I had to do was drive it out past the watchman, and the
pug had left here alive. It was as simple as that.
Out at the gate the light was overhead, and the interior of
the car would be in partial shadow. The watchman’s shack
would be on the right. I could hunch down in the seat until I
was approximately the size of the pug. All the watchman ever
did was glance up from his magazine and wave. He wouldn’t
see my face, nor remember afterward that he hadn’t. It was
the same car, wasn’t it? The man had driven in, and after a
while he had driven out.
But wait. There was something else. I’d still have to get
back inside without Christiansen seeing me. He knew I was in
here, and I couldn’t very well come in again without having
left. But that was easy, too. It must be nearly eleven now.
Chris went off duty at midnight. All I had to do was wait until
after twelve and come back in on the next man’s shift. He
wouldn’t know where I was supposed to be, or care.
I walked over to the car and flashed the light in, and the
whole thing fell in on me again. I realized I should have
known it if I’d been using my head. You always removed the
keys automatically when you got out of a car. It was worse
than ever now.
I leaned wearily against the door. I knew where the keys
were, didn’t I? It would take only a minute. Revulsion swept
over me. I thought of what it was like down there, the light
shining among that surrealist forest of dark pilings while
Gulf Coast Girl — 43
grass undulated gently in the current and a dead man
watched you with smoke coming out of his head. It was
something out of a madman’s dream.
But it had to be done. I walked back to the barge, dreading
it, and stood on the afterdeck where he had landed and slid
in. I could see the faint glow of the light below me, back
under the pier, and began taking off the wet trousers and
shirt. There was no use being hampered by them this time. In
the deep shadows beside me I could just make out the form of
the big steel mooring bit. That was what had killed him. He’d
been wheeling vertically as he fell, and his head had crashed
down onto the top of it with force enough to brain an ox. I felt
queasy, and tried not to think about it.
Then, suddenly, the whole plan began to take form in my
mind at once. I’d had only part of it before; this would clinch
it. Men had been found floating along water fronts before
with their heads broken in, and usually their pockets were
empty. And I didn’t merely take the car out; I parked it
among those dives in the tough district between here and
town. It wouldn’t matter where he was actually found. Bodies
drifted erratically with the tides as they began to grow
buoyant.