Gulf Coast Girl - Charles Williams(3)

I was ready. Then I hesitated, thinking coldly. I didn’t know
much about law or the workings of courts, but I had sense
enough to realize that what I was about to do was
deliberately criminal. The other hadn’t been, even though it
had killed him. I could still go call the police and report it,
and everything would be on my side. A half dozen generations
of lawyers and New England clergymen leaned over my
shoulder and whispered fiercely that that was the only thing
to do.
And on the other hand? Once I did this it was irrevocable,
and I was on my own. If they caught me then there’d be no
evidence of a fight or accident. They might convict me of
deliberate murder, because I’d tried to cover it up. Even
there in the hot night I could feel the chill run up my back.
I waited, trying to make up my mind. I didn’t have all night.


Which was it to be? Then, strangely, there was nothing in my
mind except that girl, just the way it had been before. There
was an odd feeling of finality about it, of inevitability, as if I
already knew what I was going to do because there wasn’t
Gulf Coast Girl — 44
actually any choice. I didn’t try to understand it. That would
have been futile. On the face of it, it was crazy. For hours I’d
been fighting against taking her job, and now that something
was in the way which might stop me I knew I wouldn’t let
anything stop me. I put the mask over my face and dropped
over the stern into the water.
I went straight down until I was below the last of the
horizontal timbers and then cut in among the pilings. There
could be no lost motion. Thirty feet down and thirty back
used up a lot of precious air, and I’d cut it too fine those other
times. The light grew stronger. He was still lying there beside
it. I looked away from his face. I swam down and took hold of
his belt. Revulsion shot through me as I pushed a hand into
the first pocket. It yielded nothing but a handkerchief. The
next held a pocketknife and a package of contraceptives. The
desire to hurry, to run from him and get back to the surface,
was almost overpowering now. I had to fight it. I turned him
over. Mud sucked at him. A cloud of silt lifted and obscured
the upper part of his body, drifting down the current. I felt for
the hip pockets.
The leather key case was in the first. Then I had the wallet.
I slid back a little, looked at them in the light to be sure I
made no mistake, and then rammed the wallet down into the
muck beyond my elbow. I withdrew my hand and closed the
hole. I swam out, following the light cable. I went up. My
head broke surface. Darkness and the clean night sky had
never looked more beautiful.
I went around to the ladder, still shaking a little, and
climbed aboard. My right hand hurt against the rungs. I
hoped I hadn’t broken any bones. I stood naked and wet in
the night, thinking furiously. One of the bad moments was
over now. But there was still another. No, I told myself
reassuringly, there’d be nothing to it. Was I losing my nerve
now that I was actually going to do it instead of just thinking
about it? The chances were a thousand to one he’d merely
glance up and wave me on as I went past in the car.
I walked around to the other side of the deckhouse and set
the key case to drain beside the ladder where I could find it.
Then I went aft, unplugged the light, and hauled it aboard,
coiling the cable. I put it away in the storeroom, along with
the diving mask, and locked the door.
Gulf Coast Girl — 45
I wrung out the wet clothes and hung them in the
bathroom. Glancing hurriedly at my watch, I saw it was ten
minutes of eleven. I had plenty of time. Then I did a double
take, realizing how bad the strain had been. I’d had the watch
on all the time, three trips to the bottom of the channel,
without even noticing it.
It was supposed to be waterproof, but that didn’t mean
much. Five fathoms down was a lot different from standing in
the rain. I held it up to my ear. It was still running. I took it
off and dried it.
Splashing myself with a pail of fresh water, I dried off and
looked at my face in the mirror. There was a discolored lump
above my right eye, a cut in the corner of my mouth, and
another bad bruise on the side of my jaw. There was nothing I
could do about it now except try to keep anybody from seeing
it. I examined the hand. It was badly swollen, but I couldn’t
feel anything broken.
I dressed, putting on a white sport shirt like the one the
pug had been wearing. It was just eleven o’clock. Plenty of
time, I thought, beginning to feel tight in the chest. But I
didn’t want to cut it too fine. Sometimes the graveyard man
came early and they sat out there and talked, two lonely old
men who had only their jobs and bleak boarding-houses to fill
their time. I couldn’t take a chance on two. I’d better go, even
though it meant more time to kill outside before I could come
back.
I locked the door, picked up the key case, and went up on
the pier. The wet trail I’d left before was still there on the
concrete. I remembered the car was a green Oldsmobile. That
was good. Mine was a tan Ford. He’d remember all right;
there couldn’t have been any mistake. I didn’t have the
flashlight now, but I groped around until I found it. I got in
and started the motor. I was nervous. Suppose he was
standing outside the shack where he could see right into the
car? I wouldn’t know it until I’d come out the doors at the
other end of the shed, and then it would be too late.
I thought of the answer to that. Switching the lights on, I
turned the car around until it was headed for the door at the
far end, and turned them off again. As soon as my eyes were
accustomed to the darkness I went slowly ahead. There was
no danger of running into anything, and I could see the door
Gulf Coast Girl — 46
just faintly ahead of me. When I was within thirty or forty feet
of it I eased to a stop and got out. Slipping up to it on foot, I
peered around the edge. It was all right. There was only the
empty gate with the hot cone of light above it, and the vacant
lots beyond. He was inside. I turned and ran lightly back to
the car.
Remembering to slouch low in the seat, I eased the door
shut, flipped the lights on, and went ahead. My mouth was
dry. It was a hundred miles. I was outside now. I turned left,
crossed the railroad spur. Not too fast. Slow down a little
approaching the gate. The car was right in front of the shack
now. Lifting a hand, I looked just once, out of the corners of
my eyes.
He was sitting on a stool at the desk just behind the
window, pouring coffee out of a Thermos. He glanced up
casually, waved a hand, and then looked back at the cup. I
was past.
The tension gave way, and I felt as if I’d flow out over the
seat like spilled water. Every nerve in my body relaxed. There
was nothing to it now.

I turned left at the next corner and went down a dark street
toward town. It was about fifteen blocks to the honky-tonk
district. Parking the car in a dark spot a half block from a
gaudy burst of neon and noise, I looked quickly around and
got out, taking the keys and locking it just as he would have.
No one had seen me. I went up to the corner and turned
right, away from the water-front. As I passed a vacant lot I
threw the keys far into it in the darkness. I was free of him
now. I thought of him and shuddered. The poor, vicious,
unfortunate little bastard. Why couldn’t he have stayed away?
I didn’t know how far I walked. It must have been miles. I
avoided lights and kept to the quiet residential districts,
going away from the waterfront all the time. At twelve-thirty I
was near an all-night drugstore. It was late enough now. It
would be around a quarter of one by the time I got back. I
went in a side door and back to the telephone booth and
called a cab. When it came I was waiting out at the side in the
shadows. I got in without the driver’s getting a look at my
face. Everything was all right now. I sat back in the corner,
where he couldn’t see me in the mirror.
Gulf Coast Girl — 47
We passed the last street and were approaching the gate.
No one was in sight. “Just slow down there so I can tell him
who I am,” I said to the driver. “You don’t need a pass to
drive in.”
“Right, chief,” he replied.
He braked to a stop in front of the shanty. The 12-to-8
watchman was looking out the window. “Manning,” I called
out, keeping my face in shadow. He lifted a hand.
“All right, Mr. Manning.”
The driver shifted gears and started to move ahead. Then
he stopped. Somebody was calling out from the shack. “Mr.
Manning! Just a minute—”
I looked around. The watchman was coming out. “I almost
forgot to tell you. A woman called about ten minutes ago—”
But I wasn’t even listening now. A prickling sort of
numbness was spreading over my whole body as I stared at
the window of the shack. It was old Chris. He had just got up
from a chair and was looking out, a puzzled frown on his face.
Then he turned toward the door.
The other watchman was still talking beside the cab
window. “. . . Chris was just about to walk out and tell you.
He said you was on the barge.”
I couldn’t move, or speak. Chris was standing beside him
now, looking in at me. “Son of a gun, Mr. Manning. When did
you go out? I didn’t see you.”
I fought to get my tongue broken loose from the roof of my
mouth. “Why—I—” It was impossible to think. The whole
thing was like some crazy nightmare. “Why, I came out a
while ago. Remember? When my friend left. We drove out to
have a couple of beers. It must have been a little before
twelve—” I’d got myself started, and now I couldn’t stop. I
could hear my voice going on and on. “—that’s when it was. A
little before twelve. I waved at you, remember? He was an old
friend of mine—get a couple of beers—”
“You was in that car when it left?” He peered at me, more
puzzled than ever. “Well, I’ll be go to hell. I looked right at it,
too, and didn’t even see you. I must be gettin’ absent-minded.
And here I was about to walk all the way out there to the
barge and tell you that woman called—”
Gulf Coast Girl — 48
He broke off suddenly, and then went on with quick
concern. “Why, Mr. Manning. What’s wrong with your face?”
That was the absolute horror of it. There was nothing
happening, really. I wasn’t being accused of anything, or
tortured by a Gestapo, or given the third degree. I was just
being clucked over by two gentle, lonely old men trying to be
helpful. They took an interest in me. They had to sit there
eight hours a day and guard the goddamned place and I was
the only thing in it alive or moving or that you could talk to or
from which you could get even the vicarious illusion of still
being connected with a world where some day somebody
might conceivably do something, so they liked me and took an
interest in my comings and goings. That was all it was. And
they would remember every word of it.
“Oh,” I mumbled, feeling my face as if I were surprised at
the fact of having one. “I—uh—I was getting something out of
the storeroom and fell.”
“Well, that’s too bad,” he answered solicitously. “But you
ought to put something on them cut places. Might get
infected. You never know. I think it’s the climate around here,
the muggy air, sort of—”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes. Thanks.”
Somehow, we were moving again. It was over. At least, that
part of it was over. The nightmare itself came right along
with me. The driver went on through the shed and stopped at
the end of the pier. I got out under the light. It didn’t make
any difference now. Nothing made any difference.
He handed me my change. I tipped him a quarter, and he
said, “Thanks, chief.”
Then he grinned at my face and swollen hand. “Hate like
hell to see the other guy,” he said.
He left.
I walked over to the big stringer at the edge of the pier and
put my foot on it, looking down into the shadows below me,
only half conscious of the big diesel tug muscling a string of
barges up the waterway ahead of me. Again, it was the
simplicity of it that terrified me. It had been nothing but an
old man who hated to go back to the four bleak walls of a
boarding-house room.
Gulf Coast Girl — 49
I tried to think. How much chance did I have now? In a few
days he’d float up, somewhere along the water-front, and the
police would start looking. One of the first things they’d do
would be to question all the guards along the piers—
Float up? That was it. He couldn’t float up. I had to stop it. I
looked downward again, and shuddered. Could I go back into
that place once more? Once? It would take at least a half
dozen dives to do it, to make him fast with wire to the bottom
of one of those pilings. Too much precious time and breath
were wasted in going down and coming up. But I could
recharge the cylinders of that other aqualung. It’d be easy
that way.
I broke off and just stood there, regarding the ultimate
horror. What I was actually looking at was the tug
disappearing around the bend above me, shoving its barges
in toward the oil dock near the end of the waterway. I was a
diver, and yet it had taken me all this time to realize it had
just gone by here with its powerful twin screws churning up
that muck and silt on the bottom. You could hold a thousandwatt
light three inches in front of your eyes down there and it
would look like the glow of a firefly.
The tide was still ebbing. It would be the end of the next
flood before you could see your own hand under the pier. And
not only that. The churning millrace from the propellers
might have moved him. There was no telling where he was
now.
There was just one more thing, I thought, and then we had
it all. Carter would be back from New Orleans sometime this
morning, here aboard the barge, and I wouldn’t be able even
to look.
I fought with panic. I still had a chance, I told myself.
They might never connect me with it. After all, there was no
identification on him now that I’d shoved the wallet into the
muck. They wouldn’t have a picture of him, except possibly
one taken as he looked when he came up. Chris might not
have had a good look at him when he came in the gate.
But I wouldn’t know. That was the terrible part of it. I’d
never have any idea at all what was happening until the hour
they came after me.
Gulf Coast Girl — 50
I had to get out of here. I was thinking swiftly now. Quit,
and tell Carter I was going to New York. Sell my car, buy a
bus ticket, get off the bus somewhere up the line, and come
back. Buy the boat, under another name, of course. In three
days I could have it ready for sea. We’d be gone before they
even came looking for me. If they did.
It didn’t occur to me until afterward that never once in all
of it did I ever consider the possibility of not buying the boat
and not taking Shannon Macaulay. That part of it was
apparently foregone, and inevitable, so I didn’t even have to
think about it.
Suddenly I had to see her. Why, I didn’t know. I had to get
the money for the boat, or make arrangements for it, but that
didn’t account for the overpowering desire just to see her.
For the first time in a self-sufficient life I was all at once
terribly alone, and for some reason I couldn’t define she was
the one I wanted to see.
That reminded me. What had the watchman said? Some
woman had called? I looked down, and I was still holding in
my hand the slip of paper he had given me. It was a telephone
number, the same one she had given me in the bar. Maybe
something had happened to her. I turned and ran toward the
car.
Gulf Coast Girl — 51
Five
Calling from the watchman’s shack would be quicker, but I
didn’t want the audience. I slowed going through the gate,
and the graveyard watchman lifted a hand and nodded. I
noted bitterly that old Chris had gone home at last.
I turned right off the dark street, away from the waterfront.
There was an arterial and a shopping center about ten
blocks over. The drugstore was closed, but I saw a neon
cocktail glass beyond it and a sign that said Elbow Room. I
parked and pushed through a door into refrigerated dimness
and smoke and a muted ground swell of “Easy to Love.” The
phone booth was at the rear, beyond the jukebox.
I closed the door and fished for a dime. The little fan
whirred. I wondered uneasily how long it had actually been
since she’d called. Twenty minutes? Thirty?
It was ringing. It went on.
Then it clicked. “Hello,” she said. “Mrs. Wayne speaking.”
She sounded all right. I breathed easier.
“Manning,” I said.
“Oh. Bill! I was just hoping you would call—” There was a
contralto delight in it that was like the brush of finger tips.
Then I remembered what she’d told me: be careful what you
say. She was merely cueing me. There still might be
something wrong.
Gulf Coast Girl — 52
“When am I going to see you again?” I asked.
“Do you really want to?”
“You know I do,” I said. “How about right now?”
“We-e-ll—”
“Can I come out?”
“Heavens, not here,” she said, coyly chiding. “Bill, after all
—”
After all, we have to be discreet. There was a strained,
uncomfortable feeling in this talking to her as if we were
lovers, and I wondered what she thought of having to do it.
“Where can I pick you up?” I asked.
“How about meeting me at that same cocktail lounge? In
about fifteen minutes?”
“I’ll be waiting for you,” I said.
I was sitting in the car in front of it when she pulled up in
the Cadillac and found a place to park. If she was being
followed I didn’t want to go inside where they might get a
look at my marked-up face. I eased alongside. She saw me,
and slipped out on the street side and got in. It had taken
only seconds.
I shot ahead, watching the mirror. There were cars behind
us, but there was no way to tell. There are always cars behind
you. I was conscious of the gleam of the blond head beside
me, and a faint fragrance of perfume.
“Are you all right?” I asked quickly.
“Yes,” she said. “But they searched the house again, while I
was gone.”
I turned and headed for the beach, wondering about that.
Why would they search the house? And how would she know
they had, if she’d been gone? If they were looking for a man
they’d hardly have to pull out the dresser drawers and slice
open the upholstery, the way they did in movies. Then I
began to get it.
We passed a street light. She looked at my face and gasped.
“Bill! What happened?”
“That’s what I’ve got to tell you,” I said. I swung the corner
and headed west on the beach boulevard. It was beginning to
Gulf Coast Girl — 53
darken now, at one a.m., as the crowds thinned and some of
the concessions closed up shop.
The pug stared at me with his unseeing eyes, just waiting
for the buoyancy nothing on earth could stop. Tell her? What
kind of fool would tell anybody?
But how else was I going to explain what I had to do? I had
to trust her. We had to trust each other. And the insane part
of it was that I did. I considered that, puzzled. I’d known her
less than 24 hours, she had never told me one word about
herself, and yet I would have trusted her with anything.
Maybe they shouldn’t let me out alone.

I watched the mirror. There were still too many cars to tell.
I picked up speed, checking them.
“Bill,” she said urgently, “tell me. What is it?”
“That thug, the one who was beating you. He looked me up
at the pier, to work me over for slugging him. There was a
fight, and an accident. I knocked him off onto the barge—”
“He isn’t—”
“Yes,” I said.
She didn’t say anything. I glanced around at her, and her
head was bowed as she looked down at her hands. Then she
raised it, and her eyes were bitter with regret.
“It’s all my fault,” she whispered. “I got you mixed up in it
—”
“Stop that,” I said. “It was nobody’s fault, except his. He
just couldn’t leave well enough alone.”
I told her the whole story. We came down off the sea wall
onto the hard-packed tracks going west along the beach.
There was no moon, and it was very dark. I could hear the
surf off to the left. There were three cars behind us. One of
them stopped; I kept watching the other two.
“I’ll never forgive myself,” she said. “But, Bill, won’t they be
able to see it was just an accident?”
“Not now,” I said. “It’s probably never an accident if you’re
fighting, and it’s too late for that, anyway. But for God’s sake
quit blaming yourself. You didn’t have anything to do with it.
That’s about as sensible as blaming General Motors for it
because he drove out there in an Oldsmobile.”
“What are we going to do?”
Gulf Coast Girl — 54
I checked the mirror again. The two cars were falling back
as I picked up speed. “I’m still trying to get it straight in my
mind,” I said. “Legally, I’m guilty. Morally, I don’t feel guilty
at all; I don’t think I’m any more responsible than if he’d been
killed in an unavoidable traffic accident. And I don’t intend to
go to prison or get myself killed by Barclay’s gang for
something I couldn’t help—”
“Of course not,” she said simply.
“All right. Listen,” I said. I told her what I was going to do.
“There’s only one catch to it,” I finished. “You’ll have to give
me the money for that boat with no guarantee you’ll ever
hear from me again. The word of a man you’ve known for one
day isn’t much of a receipt.”
“It’s good enough for me,” she said quietly. “If I hadn’t
trusted you I would never have opened the subject in the first
place. How much shall I make the check?”
“Fifteen thousand,” I said. “The boat is going to be at least
ten, and there’s a lot of stuff to buy. When we get aboard I’ll
give you an itemized statement and return what’s left.”
“All right,” she said.
I looked back. The lights of the other two cars were far
behind us. They disappeared momentarily behind some
dunes. I slowed abruptly and swung away from the beach,
coming to a stop some fifty yards from the roadway. We were
in the edge of the dunes with the low silhouette of a line of
salt cedars before us, well out of range of passing headlights.
I snapped off my own lights before we had even stopped
rolling.
It occurred to me suddenly that I’d done a very foolish thing
in coming out here at all. We should have stayed downtown
on a lighted street. If they were following her, all they’d seen
was a quick transfer from her own car to one they didn’t
recognize. I might even be Macaulay for all they knew.
She started to light a cigarette. “Not yet,” I said. One of the
cars went by, and then the other. Their red taillights began to
recede down the beach.
When they were gone, I said, “All right,” and lit her
cigarette. She took the checkbook out of her bag and held it
open on her thigh. I snapped the lighter again so she could
see.
Gulf Coast Girl — 55
“Pick a name,” I said. “How about Burton? Harold E.
Burton.”
She wrote out the check. I held it until it dried, and put it in
my wallet. “Now. What’s your address?”
“One-oh-six Fontaine Drive.”
“All right,” I said, talking fast. “I should be back here early
the third day. This is Tuesday now, so that’ll be Thursday
morning. The minute the purchase of the boat goes through
and I’m aboard I’ll mail you an anniversary greeting in a plain
envelope, just one of those dime-store cards. I don’t see how
they could get at your mail, but there’s no use taking
chances. Other than that I won’t get in touch with you. I’ll be
down there at the boat yard all the time. It’s in another part
of the city, and I won’t come into town at all. I’ve only been
around Sanport for about six months, but still there are a few
people I know and I might bump into one of them. I’ll already
have everything bought and with me except the stores, and
I’ll order them through a ship chandler’s runner—”
“But,” she interrupted, “how are we going to arrange
getting him aboard?”
“I’m coming to that,” I said. “After you get the card, you
can get in touch with me, from a pay phone. It’s Michaelson’s
Boat Yard; the name of the sloop is Ballerina—”
“That’s a pretty name,” she said.
“It’s a pretty boat,” I replied. “I’m just hoping I can get her.
She was still for sale last night. But if something happens and
she’s already sold by the time I get back, I’ll make that card a
birth announcement instead of an anniversary greeting, and
give you the name of the one I actually do buy. There are
several down there. All straight?”
“Yes,” she said. She turned a little on the seat and I could
see the blur of her face and pale gleam of the blond head. “I
like the whole plan, and I like the way your mind works.” She
paused for a moment, and then added quietly, “You’ll never
know how glad I am I ran into you. I don’t feel so helpless
now. Or alone.”
I was conscious of the same thing, but probably in a
different way than she’d meant it. There was something
wonderful about being with her. For a moment the whole
Gulf Coast Girl — 56
mess was gone from my mind. The sea wind blew past the
car, and behind us in the night I could hear the surf.
“You were good on the phone, too,” she said. “Thanks for
understanding.”
In other words, keep your distance, Buster. It was stage
money, so don’t try to buy anything with it. I wondered why
she thought she had to warn me. We both knew it was only an
act, didn’t we?
Maybe I was always too aware of her, and she could sense
it. I lashed out deliberately at the spell, shattering it. “All
right. Now,” I said curtly. “That still leaves the problem of
getting him aboard. I’ll have to work on that. He’s there in
the house, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” she said, surprised. “How did you know?”
“Guessing, mostly. You said they’d searched it while you
were gone. They wouldn’t have had to tear it up much,
looking for a grown man. So maybe he told you they had.”
“You’re very alert. He heard them and told me.”
“Why is he hiding there? And how?”
She leaned forward a little with her elbow on the back of
the seat, and took another puff on the cigarette. “I’ve been
wanting to get to this. Here’s the whole story, briefly.
“About three weeks ago my husband saw one of them on
the street and knew they’d caught up with us again. But for
some time he’d been working on this plan for getting to
Central America and losing them completely, for the last
time. It was about completed. I won’t go into it in much detail
except to say it involved a man who’d been a close friend of
my husband’s in college. He lives in Central America, in
Honduras to be exact, and is very wealthy. He owns a number
of large plantations, and has considerable political influence.
He’s also a rather passionate flying fan. He’s always buying
planes in the States and having them flown down to him, and
my husband was to take this one to him. It would get him out
of the country without any trail they could follow, you see?
He’d merely take off without filing a flight plan, and
disappear. Of course, landing down there would be illegal,
but as I say, this friend of his had quite a bit of political
power.
Gulf Coast Girl — 57
“The only trouble, however, was that he had to go alone. It
was a light plane and its cruising radius with the maximum
amount of fuel was still a little short, so he’d added an extra
tank. That meant I had to come later, making sure I wasn’t
followed. We had that arranged, however. I was to do it over
the Memorial Day week-end, and it involved about five
different zigzagging commercial flights with the reservations
made considerably ahead of time. On a long holiday like that
they’d be sold out, you see? If they were trying to follow me
they might catch a no-show at one or even two of the airports,
but not all of them. There was more to it than that, too, but I
won’t bother you with it.
“But he had engine trouble, and the plane crashed off the
coast of Yucatan. My husband got off in a rubber boat, and
was picked up by some snapper fishermen. And they brought
him, of all places, right back into Sanport. Fortunately the
boat docked at night and he managed to slip off and get out
to the house without being seen. It was just two days before I
was supposed to leave.
“But now they’ve found out where we live, and they have
the place surrounded. Barclay rented the house right across
the street, and they watch me all the time. They’re waiting for
me to lead them to him—”
“And they don’t know he’s inside?”
“I don’t think so. You see, they searched it the first time
while he was actually gone. It was disguised as a burglary,
but it was pretty transparent.”
“But didn’t you say they’d searched it again today?
Yesterday, I mean?”
She nodded. “He’s in a sealed-off portion of the attic, and
the only way into it is through the ceiling of a second-floor
closet. He has to stay up there nearly all the time. All the time
when I’m out of the house. I think they’re pretty sure he’s
gone, but they know if they keep watching me I’ll lead them
to him sooner or later. I hadn’t realized until what happened
up at the lake that they might try beating me up. That scares
me, because frankly I don’t know how much of it I could
take.”
I thought of it, feeling the cold stirrings of anger and an
increasing awareness of just how much more there was to
this girl than her looks. She was cast out of the pure metal.
Gulf Coast Girl — 58
No whining, no heroics—she simply said she didn’t know how
much of it she could take and went right on with what she
had to do. The next time that pug looked at me, I’d look back.
She went on. “And as to what’s in the plane, it’s money.
About eighty thousand dollars, to be exact. All he has left. He
can’t take much more, Bill. That plane crash did something to
him—the crash, that is—and then being brought right back in
the middle of them after he thought he had gotten away. And
losing the money on top of it, so he couldn’t even run any
more.”
“But you just wrote a check for fifteen thousand—”
“I know. Naturally, he had to leave me some so I could
follow him. And I sold my jewelry, and borrowed what I could
on the car.”
I began to catch on then. There’d been this $700 trap gun
and three fathoms of Cadillac and all the rest, so I’d been hit
rather a glancing blow by the fact that she was going to trust
me out of town with $15,000 of her money. If I turned out to
be a crook and ran off with it, it was such a bore to have to go
down to the bank and tell them to transfer another bushel or
two into the checking account. It wasn’t exactly like that. She
was merely handing me the last chance they’d ever have. This
girl was a plunger. If she said she trusted you she trusted you
all over.
“Well, wait,” I said. “I can probably find a cheaper boat—”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to go to sea in a cheap
boat. And we’ll recover the money from the plane, anyway.”
“All right. But, listen. My God, do you realize the jam you’ll
be in if something happens to me?”
“That was the general idea, Bill, when I said I wanted time
to make up my mind about you. Remember?”
“I see what you mean,” I said. “Do you mind if I get a little
personal?”
“Why, no. What is it?”
I tried to say it lightly. “I’ve been feeling sorry for Macaulay
because he was up against a rough proposition alone. I’d like
to amend that, for the record. I don’t know of anybody who’s
less alone.”
Gulf Coast Girl — 59
She didn’t answer for a moment, and I wondered if I’d
gotten it off as lightly as I intended. After all, this was an
awkward situation for her, and she’d already shown me the
road signs once.
It was almost too fast for me then. She slid toward me on
the seat, murmuring, “Bill . . . Bill!” her face lifted to mine
and her arms slipped up around my neck, and then I was
overboard in a sea of Shannon Macaulay. My arms tightened
around her and I was kissing her, assaulted by faint fragrance
and the touch of her and the way she could overrun and flood
all the last corners of consciousness, and all the time my mind
was trying to regain that half second of lag and tell me it was
an act and that the reason she was saying my name over and
over was to keep me from having my head blown off.
It wasn’t thought. You couldn’t hold her in your arms and
think, so it had to be instinct that told me what it was. She’d
been looking beyond me, and must have seen him silhouetted
against the sky. The surf and the pounding of blood in my
ears drowned out any possibility of my hearing him, but he’d
probably be standing at the window now, right at the back of
my neck, and if she hadn’t already got across the fact it was
somebody named Bill she was kissing, and not Macaulay,
she’d have blood all over her before she could say it again.
A voice said, “All right, Jack. Break it up and turn round.”
I was so tight and the tension broke so suddenly I was
conscious of an almost hysterical impulse to giggle over the
idea. I knew now he’d heard her say Bill, all right, because he
called me Jack.
Instead, that is, of just shooting me without bothering to
say anything.
I turned. A light burst in my face, and another voice I would
know anywhere remarked with urbane weariness, “I say, you
people are oversexed, aren’t you?”
Two thoughts caught up with me at once. The first was that
they hadn’t heard us and didn’t suspect anything. Her
reaction time had been so fast they’d caught us kissing, just
what you’d have expected of two people in a parked car along
the beach. That was good.
Gulf Coast Girl — 60
But it was the second one that pulled the ground from
under me. They had that light in my face. They’d be blind if
they didn’t see the marks that pug had left on it.
I had never been more right. “Hmmmm,” Barclay said
softly, somewhere in the darkness. “So that’s where he went.”
I didn’t say anything. I could feel the hair prickle along the
back of my neck.
“Came to see you, didn’t he?”
“Who?” I asked, just stalling for time. I had to think of
something. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t be dense, if you don’t mind. Chap you hit, up at the
lake.”
If I denied it they wouldn’t believe me, anyway, and when
he didn’t show up they’d go out there and ask the watchmen.
They’d know then I’d done something to him. There was a
better way: talk like a loud-mouthed fool, and admit it. It
didn’t have much chance, but at least it had more than the
other.
“If that’s who you mean,” I said. “He did. I guess you
haven’t seen his face. And that’s not all. If you don’t keep him
out of my hair he’s going to be bent worse than that the next
time you get him back.”
“Where is he now?”
“How would I know?” I said. “Was he supposed to tell me
his plans?”
It was creepy. I was scared and in a bad spot, trying to talk
like Mike Hammer, and to nobody. There was just that light
glaring in my face and a whole universe of blackness around
it.
“Well, it isn’t important,” he said. “But there’s another
matter. We’re about to suggest that you leave town, Manning,
and do it immediately. These sylvan assignations of yours and
Mrs. Macaulay’s are becoming something of a nuisance; this
is twice we’ve been led on a fool’s errand just to find you
rutting about the landscape. Get out of the car.”
I didn’t want to, but I got out. I heard her shaky indrawn
breath as I closed the door. “No. No. No—”
It was a good, cold-blooded, professional job. Nobody said
anything. Nobody became excited. I never did even know for
Gulf Coast Girl — 61
sure how many there were besides Barclay. I swung at the
first dark shape I saw, because I had to do something; the
blackjack sliced down across the muscles of my upper arm
and it became a dangling, inert sausage stuffed with pain.
They pulled both arms behind me and bent me back and
slugged me in the stomach. At first I tightened the abdominal
muscles in time to the cadenced beat of it, slug, swing, slug,
but after a while I lost even the power to do that. Somewhere
far off I could hear her crying out and opening the car door,
but then somebody pushed her and she fell.
When they turned me loose at last and went away my knees
folded and I fell forward on my face. Wind roared in my
throat, and my mouth was full of sand.
Gulf Coast Girl — 62
Six
I tried to roll over. I was conscious she was on her knees
beside me, helping.
“The animals,” she said. “The filthy—unspeakable-animals
—” Her voice broke.
When I could sit up I slid backward and sat propped against
the side of the car while the waves of sickness subsided. My
whole right arm prickled and felt numb except for the hard
welt of pain above the elbow, and I couldn’t move the hand. I
rubbed it with the left. She sat down on the sand beside me,
took the arm gently in her hands, and massaged it.
“I’m sorry, Bill,” she said. “I’m terribly sorry.”
“It’s all right,” I said. The left hand clenched, down against
the ground, and sand ran between my fingers I opened and
tightened it again, and swallowed, conscious of the dry,
metallic taste in my mouth. After another deep breath some
of the shaking went away. “There’s nothing we can do about
it. Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she said. “I just fell down.”
In a minute we got back in the car and sat down. She lit a
cigarette for me; I held it in my left hand and tried to work
some feeling into the right. I could hear the surf swishing
dreamily behind us. All the violence had washed out of the
night as suddenly as it had come. They’d given me their little
demonstration and were gone. They didn’t have to stick
Gulf Coast Girl — 63
around and tell me what would happen if they caught me
again. That was understood. And in just a few more hours
they were going to start wondering what had happened to
that little thug. When they did they’d come and ask me.
Some of the numbness was leaving my arm now and I could
drive. We started back. Neither of us said anything about the
way I had kissed her when she put on that act for them. It
would only be embarrassing.
“What did Macaulay do to them?” I asked.
She hesitated.
“It’s all right,” I said. “If it’s none of my business—”
“No,” she said slowly, staring ahead at the headlights
probing the edge of the surf. “It isn’t that. It’s just that I don’t
know the whole story myself.”
“Didn’t he tell you?”
“Most of it. But not all. He says I’ll be safer if I never know.
It happened about three months ago. He had to go to the
Coast on business, for about a week, he said. But three days
later he called me late one night, from San Antonio, Texas. I
could tell he was under a bad strain. He said for me to pack
some bags, put as much of our stuff in the car as I could, and
leave right away for Denver. He didn’t explain; he just said he
was in trouble and for me to get out of New York fast.
“I did, and he met me in Denver. He said it was something
that happened at a party he went to, in some suburb of Los
Angeles. I could see he didn’t want to talk about it, but he
finally admitted a man had been killed, and he had seen it—”
“But,” I said, “all he has to do is go to the police. They’ll
protect him. He’s a material witness.”
“It’s not that simple,” she said. “One of the people involved
is a police captain.”
“Oh,” I said.
It sounded too easy and too pat, but on the other hand
there wasn’t any doubt she was telling the truth. I tried to
discount the fact I’d probably have believed her if she’d told
me the other side of the moon was an amusement park, but it
still came out the same way. She wasn’t lying. But what about
Macaulay himself?
“How long have you been married?” I asked.
Gulf Coast Girl — 64
“Eight years.”

“And he’s been with that marine insurance firm all the
time?”
“Yes,” she said. “He’s been with them ever since he came
out of law school, back in the thirties, except for three years
in the service during the war.”
I shook my head. There was nothing in that. We came into
town. The traffic lights were flashing amber now, and the
street-sweeping trucks were out. I stopped beside her car and
got out with her. She put out her hand. “Thanks,” she said.
“It’ll be bad, waiting for that card.”
There was nobody on the street. I was still holding her
hand, hating to see her leave. Then I remembered the
awkward thing I’d said in that bar as a result of looking at her
like this, and let it drop. “Don’t go out of the house at night
while I’m gone,” I said. “If you have to come downtown, do it
during rush hours when there are lots of people on the
streets.”
“I’ll be all right,” she said.
“If you see a car behind you on the way home, don’t worry
about it. It’ll be mine.”
I followed her out. It was an upper-bracket suburb out near
the country club. She pulled into a drive and stopped under a
Carport beside a two-storied Mediterranean house with a tile
roof and ironwork balconies. I stopped at the curb, looking
along the streets where the old, peaceful trees made shadowy
patterns in the lights and all the lawns were sleek and wellkept.
Violence? Here? Then I turned my head and stared at
the house across the street. The windows were all dark. But
they were in there, watching her as she got out of the car and
fumbled in her bag for the key. She waved a white-gloved
hand, and went inside.
I went on, looking the place over. It was the second house
from the corner. I turned at the intersection and drove slowly
down the side street. There was an alley behind the house. A
car was parked diagonally across the street from the mouth
of it, in the shadows under the trees, and as I went past I saw
a man’s elbow move slightly in the window. They had it
covered front and back. There’d be one at the other end of
the alley.
Gulf Coast Girl — 65
All I had to do was get Macaulay out of there alive. And by
that time they’d be after me, too.
* * *