It was Pier Five. I could see the pool of light at
the entrance to the shed, and the watchman
leaning back in a chair reading a magazine in front
of his little office just inside the doorway. There
was no way to get on or off the pier without going
past him, but they didn’t require a pass on most of
them. I searched the street in both directions and
was about to hop down from between the cars
when I saw a police car coming from the right. It
stopped at the watchman’s office of the boat repair
yard that was the next pier beyond Five. The men
in it were talking to the watchman. Then it came on
up to Pier Five. They called the watchman out and
talked to him. I began to catch on. They were
looking for me, probably, and giving my description
to the watchmen at all the piers. They passed the
next one, which was not in use, and went on to Pier
Seven where they did the same thing.
It could be something else, of course, but I
couldn’t take a chance on it. I had to stop and tell
the watchman what I wanted and what boat I
wanted to board, and if he had my description the
police would be there before I could even get to the
outer end. I cursed wearily. Now what?
I’d never find a way to do it from here. I went
back to the left for another fifty yards to where the
watchman couldn’t see me crossing the street, and
hurried over when there were no cars in sight. I
stood in the shadows in front of Pier Six and stared
across the slip. Pier Five ran out for some twohundred
feet, with a long T-head at the outer end.
There were perhaps a dozen boats moored to it.
They were nearly all shrimp boats. But there was
no way around the big packing and icing shed at
the landward end.
A car went past in the street. I moved back up
against the wall to merge with the shadows. A
derrick barge was mooring in the end of the slip,
its deck about six feet below where I was standing.
I looked down. The light was poor, but I thought I
saw a small work boat in the water beside it. I
eased along the edge of the slip until I found a
Man on The Run — 140
ladder going down. In a moment I was standing on
the deck. Apparently there was no one on board. I
slipped around to the outboard side of the deck
house. There was the work boat. I pulled it
alongside with its painter. There was one oar in it.
Stepping down in it, I cast off the painter and
sculled it over to the shadows alongside Pier Six,
turned, and headed outward, keeping near the
piling. When I reached the end of the pier, I was
beyond the outer limits of the illumination from the
street lights. The tide was ebbing slowly, and I let
it carry me down toward the T-head of Pier Five.
There was one light-standard in the center of it,
and the outer ends were in semi-darkness. None of
the boats carried any lights at all. As I neared them
I began trying to make out the names. I was in
luck. Marilyn was the first boat along the inner side
of the T-head. She was moored port-side to, with
her stern toward me. I could just make out the
lettering in the shadows: MARILYN OF SANPORT.
I drifted in under her quarter, caught her rudder
post, and handed myself along her starboard side
in the work boat. She wasn’t a shrimper; they all
look approximately alike, no matter where you
meet them. Marilyn was a sea-going monstrosity,
an old two-masted schooner that had apparently
been converted to power. Her masts were cut off
and they’d added a midships house that looked like
a chicken coop. Probably a snapper fisherman, I
thought. Even in the semi-darkness out here at the
end of the pier you could tell she was dirty and
sloppily kept up. She reeked of fish, and apparently
she hadn’t been scrubbed down since discharging
her catch. I passed a cardboard carton of rotting
garbage lying on deck. She showed no lights
anywhere, and I couldn’t hear anyone aboard. I
made the painter fast, and stepped lightly up onto
her deck.
I was just forward of the midships house.
Opposite me a plank led up onto the shadowy bulk
of the pier. It was intensely silent. Somewhere
beyond the railroad yards a siren wailed, and it
Man on The Run — 141
made me shiver. I started aft, feeling my way
cautiously along the starboard side. Just as I came
into the darker shadows of the midships house I
stepped on a body. The body stirred, scattering
empty beer cans that rolled along the deck,
muttered a drunken curse, and went back to sleep.
I ducked down in the shadows and crouched,
absolutely motionless, until the beer cans stopped
their clatter. No one called out. He must be the
only one aboard, unless they were all passed out.
He had the watch, I thought sardonically, tossing
six or eight beer cans over the side so I wouldn’t
start them rolling again. I waited another minute,
stepped over him, and went on aft. The crew’s
quarters should be back here.
There was a companion ladder going below. I
stepped softly onto it and groped my way down. I
reached the bottom, and stood perfectly still,
listening for the sound of breathing. There was
utter silence. It was as dark as the inside of a coal
mine, and the air was stale and foul with the odor
of dirty clothes and old damp wood. I flicked on the
cigarette lighter and looked swiftly around. The
place was deserted. It was a small and dirty fo’c’sle
with bunks on each side and some steel lockers
against the forward bulkhead. I looked around for a
light of some kind. On the forward bulkhead near
the lockers was a kerosene lamp mounted in
gimbals. I stepped over and lighted it. It cast a very
weak yellow glow across the room.
There were eight bunks, but only five of them
held mattresses. The deck was littered with
cigarette butts and two or three pairs of sea-boots
kicked partly out of the way under the lower bunks.
Oil-skins dangled from the after bulkhead. Over
most of the bunks were pin-ups clipped from girlie
magazines. Two of the uppers which didn’t have
mattresses were loaded with seabags and beat-up
old suitcases. There was a new plastic suitcase in
one of the lower bunks.
I grabbed down one of the seabags, dumped its
contents on the mattress of one of the bunks, and
Man on The Run — 142
pawed through the stuff. It was all clothing. I
repacked it and searched another, with the same
negative results. Next I hauled down one of the old
suitcases and opened it. It held more clothing,
some shaving gear, a few old magazines, some
contraceptives, and a deck of cards, but no letters
or photographs or identification of any kind.
The next one was no more profitable, except that
it did contain a savings account passbook made out
to a Raoul Sanchez. In the third I found a packet of
letters in a girl’s handwriting addressed to Karl
Bjornsen. I sighed wearily and replaced them all on
the upper bunk. There was nothing left now except
the new plastic job, and I had a hunch it would be
locked. It was.
I cast about for something with which to jimmy it
open. I saw nothing that would do, but then
remembered I still hadn’t searched the lockers. I
went over and began pulling them open. They held
more foul-weather gear—shoes, stacks of
magazines and paperback books, and a couple of
half-empty bottles of rum. But lying in the bottom
of one of them was a large screwdriver and a
marlinespike.
I grabbed up the marlinespike and attached the
lock on the suitcase, inserting the point and prying
upward. It was tough, but after a couple of minutes
it gave up and flew open. I felt a little flutter of
excitement as I looked in; this one seemed more
promising. Right on top, wrapped in a silk scarf,
was a German Luger. Beside it was a whole deck of
filthy pictures, held together by a rubber band, and
three letters postmarked Havana, Cuba, and
addressed in a feminine hand to Sr. Ernie Boyle.
Under them was a photograph of a man and a girl
at a table in a sidewalk cafe. There was something
vaguely familiar about the man. I was just lifting it
out for a closer look when I tensed up, listening.
Somebody had come aboard. I heard his footsteps
as he walked aft along the deck above me. I
crossed to the lamp in two quick strides, and blew
it out.
Man on The Run — 143
The beam of a flashlight probed downward from
the deck, splashing against the steps of the
companion ladder. I leaned back against the bunks
on the starboard side. He came on down the
ladder. I could see nothing but the big black shoes
and the light, pointed downward. He stopped at the
bottom, some twelve feet from where I was
standing and started to raise the light. It swept
along the bunks on the port side and then came
abruptly to a stop when it hit the jimmied suitcase.
I could hear his breath suck in. “Ladrones!” he
said, and began to curse in Spanish. The light
swung and splashed against my face.
I dived for him, but the light blinded me, and he
was too far away. When I got there I met nothing
but a fist, which crashed just under my ear, and the
railing of the companion ladder. I plowed into the
railing with my left shoulder and for a moment my
whole arm went numb. I fell back against the
bulkhead, straightened, and reached out for him.
The light splashed against my face again, and at
the same time the fist smashed against my jaw. I
fell forward this time, grappling wildly with my
arms, and caught him by the shirt. It tore. I swung
and managed to hit him on the side of the face, but
I was off balance and there was no power behind it.
Then the light swung in a short, chopping arc,
something smashed against my head, and I fell.
A whole ocean of pain was sloshing around in my
head, and when I tried to move, something was
holding me and somebody was tugging at my feet. I
opened my eyes. There was light in the room now;
the kerosene lamp was burning again. I was lying
on my right side in one of the bunks with my arms
twisted behind me. My hands were tied. I looked
down at my feet.
He was a big Mexican or Cuban kid of twenty-two
or so, dressed in a leather jacket and dungarees.
He was muttering to himself in Spanish and tying
my feet to the stanchion of the bunk. He had broad
shoulders and a square and rather pleasant face,
Man on The Run — 144
but when he looked at me his eyes were filled with
nothing but anger and contempt.
“Ladron!” he spat at me.
“You speak English?” I asked.
He checked the knots in the line, and
straightened. “Sure, I speak English, Jack. And how
low can you get? Coming on a pot like this to steal
from the crew.”
“I didn’t come here to steal,” I said.
”Of course not,” he said contemptuously, and
turned away. He started up the companionway:
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“Where else?” he said. “Out to the phone to call
the cops.”
Man on The Run — 145
Thirteen
Listen,” I said quickly. “Wait a minute, will you? I
tell you, I didn’t come here to steal anything.”
“You think I’m that stupid?” he asked. But he did
pause.
“No,” I said. “I don’t. And if you’ll just think
about it or a minute you’ll see I’m telling the truth.
Why the hell would I waste time breaking the
suitcase open? I’d just carry it off.”
He snorted. “Past the guard out there?”
“I’ve got a boat tied up alongside. I could have
had all your suitcases off here thirty minutes ago if
I’d wanted them.”
He made no reply. He went on up the ladder and
I heard his footsteps going forward along the deck.
Well, I’d tried. Then, miraculously, he was coming
back. He stepped down the ladder and stood
looking thoughtfully at me.
“So you don’t steal suitcases. Just work boats,”
he said. “Go ahead and make me cry.”
“I’m going to put the boat back,” I said. “And I
was going to leave the money here to pay for the
suitcase—if I didn’t find what I was hoping to. The
money’s in my left hip pocket.”
Man on The Run — 146
He lighted a cigarette. “And what was it you
wanted?”
“I’m trying to find a man named Ryan Bullard.”
“And you thought he might be in that suitcase?”
“That’s right,” I said.
“You wouldn’t be short a few of your marbles,
would you?”
“No. I mean it,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I
think he is in there. There’s a photograph—but
never mind. There’s nobody on here named
Bullard?”
“No.”
“Then he may be using another name. Or the guy
I’m looking for may not be Bullard at all, but I still
want him. Is there a big joker about six-three or
six-four, heavy all the way up and down, black eyes,
flat nose, mostly bald, with a fringe of black hair?”
He nodded. “That’s Ernie Boyle.”
I felt the stirrings of excitement. Maybe I was
getting somewhere at last. “He’s the one I’m after.”
“Then you must be crazy, Jack. I mean like crazy
crazy. You better let me call those cops. If I’d broke
open his suitcase, I’d be screamin’ for ‘em.”
“I know what he’s like,” I said. “I’ve already run
into him once tonight. But with the trouble I’m in,
anything Boyle does to me is just a short-cut.”
“Who are you, anyway? And why did you come
out here in a boat?”
“I’m Foley,” I said.
His eyes widened. “Oh. That tanker third mate
that killed the cop.”
“I didn’t kill the cop.” I explained about the fight
and how I’d left Stedman’s apartment. It was
impossible to tell what he thought of it.
“And you think it was Boyle?”
“I think he had something to do with it.”
“Wait a minute, Foley. When was this cop killed?
It was about a week ago, wasn’t it?”
Man on The Run — 147
“Last Tuesday.”
“Uh-uh. That’s what I thought. We didn’t even
get in port till Friday.”
I’d been afraid of that. “And he was aboard last
trip?”
“Yeah. And Tuesday we’d still be on the
Campeche Bank, about four hundred miles from
here.”
“I didn’t say he did it,” I said. “I know who that
was. But I think he had something to do with it. Did
you ever hear him mention the name Frances
Celaya?”
“No-o. It’s new to me.”
“How about the name Danny?”
“No dice.”
“What’s yours?” I asked. “Raoul Sanchez.”
“All right, listen, Raoul—” I told him about the
ambush by the playground and about Frances
Celaya’s being killed. “This guy Boyle is mixed up
in it some way and I’ve got to find out how. There
may be something in that suitcase. So how about
untying me?”
“Sure. That’d be great. And when he gets back
I’m sitting here watching while you go through his
gear? So he’ll kill both of us instead of just you?
Try again.”
“Cut it out,” I said. “When he starts down the
ladder, jump me and fake a fight. Say you just got
here and caught me.”
He thought about it for a moment. Then he
shrugged and began loosening the knots. “All right,
but don’t try anything, Foley. I can take you, any
day in the week. I was a pro for a couple of years.”
“Thanks,” I said. I sat up and moved my arms.
“Then you must figure this Boyle is a wrong one
yourself?”
He sat down in one of the bunks and crushed out
his cigarette in a sardine can ashtray. “Maybe. But
I don’t bother him.”
Man on The Run — 148
I strode over to the suitcase in the opposite bunk.
Picking up the Luger, I checked to see if it was
loaded. It wasn’t. I started to turn, still holding it in
my hand, but paused when I saw the expression on
his face.
There was anger in it and chagrin. “Pretty cute
trick, ladron. And I went for it like a sucker, huh?”
I caught on then. “Here,” I said, and grinned. I
tossed the Luger to him. He caught it, staring at
me unbelievingly.
“It’s not loaded,” I said. “But if you hear Boyle
coming, point it at me. Say you just got here and
took it away from me.”
“Hmmm,” he said. “I guess you’re really telling
the truth, Foley. But you’d better see if you can
find some ammunition and load this thing, and
keep it yourself. That’s the only thing that’ll save
you if he comes back.”
“I don’t want to have to shoot him,” I said. “He
may be the only person in the world who knows I
didn’t kill that cop. As long as he’s alive there’s one
chance in a million he might talk. But if he’s dead
—” I turned back to the suitcase again.
The photograph was first. The man in it was
definitely familiar, but the girl was somebody I’d
never seen before. She was Latin and very pretty,
but she wasn’t Frances Celaya. I passed it to
Sanchez. “Is that Boyle?”
He nodded. “Yeah. But it must have been made
several years ago. When he still had most of his
hair.”
“That’s what I thought,” I said. “And it’s the same
guy that opened the phone booth to get a look at
my face. Where would you say it was taken?
Havana?”
“It could be,” he said. “Or it might be Vera Cruz.
They have cafes like that too.”
“Did Boyle ever talk about Cuba?”
Man on The Run — 149
He shook his head. “Boyle never talks much
about anything. But he speaks Spanish like a whiz,
I know that.”
It all added up a little at a time, I thought.
Bullard was supposed to have done time in a Cuban
prison. I went on ransacking the suitcase. The
filthy pictures I disregarded; Havana wasn’t the
only place you could buy those. In another
envelope I found three small photographs of a boat.
There were no people in the pictures, and nothing
written on the back to indicate where they had
been taken, or when. It was a sailboat with a ketch
rig, apparently forty to fifty feet long.
And that was all. There was nothing else beside
the usual clothing and toilet articles. I went
through it again, just to be sure, and even
investigated the pockets in the clothing and
checked to see if the bag had a false bottom or
hidden compartments. There wasn’t even any
ammunition for the gun.
Nothing remained except the three letters. I
looked at the envelopes. Two of them were
postmarked last October and the third in
November. All three had been addressed to Sr.
Ernie Boyle in care of a Señora Jiminez in Ybor
City, Florida, but the last one had been forwarded
from there to Boyle on the Marilyn in care of the
Tinsley Seafood Packing Co. of Sanport. I slid out
the first letter. It was written in Spanish in a none
too legible hand. I’d had one year of the language
in high school, but I’d forgotten what little of it I’d
ever learned, and combined with the poor script it
was hopeless. I checked the other two. They were
the same. The only thing I learned was that they
were all from the same girl. She signed herself
Cecilia.
Then I shook my head, and wondered how stupid
I could get. I handed them across to Sanchez. “Will
you read these letters and tell me what they say? I
can’t read Spanish.”
Man on The Run — 150
He grinned. “This’ll kill you, Foley. Neither can
I.”
“What?”
”Oh, I can puzzle out a word of it here and there.
That’s all.”
“Are you kidding? You speak it.” I stopped then, a
little awkwardly. It just hadn’t occurred to me he
might be illiterate.
He caught the hesitation and smiled again. “Oh, I
can read and write. English. You see, my people
came from Mexico and they spoke Spanish at
home, but I was born in Corpus Christi and went to
school there. So I spoke it, but never did learn to
read it.”
“Oh,” I said. That seemed to be that. “I could
probably get a few words of it,” he said. “But—”
“But what?”
“I don’t like the idea of reading a shipmate’s
mail. That’s on top of the fact that if he caught me
he’d kill us both.”
“I’m a seaman myself,” I said. “And I don’t like
prowling through other peoples’ gear. But this is
not just any shipmate. The cold-blooded
sonofabitch drowned a girl in a bathtub about four
hours ago. I’m positive he helped kill a policeman
named Purcell. And if he’s the guy I think he is, he
beat a seaman to death with a baseball bat about
five years ago. So let’s don’t be too squeamish.”
“All right,” he said.
He slid the letters out one at a time, and went
through them, frowning. It was intensely silent
except for some bugs batting themselves against
the chimney of the kerosene lamp. I looked
uneasily around until I located the marlinespike; it
was right beside the jimmied suitcase. Even with
that, my chances of getting out of here alive were
going to be very slim if Boyle showed up. He had
the knife, he probably outweighed me about fifty
pounds, and he was more or less a professional in
the business of killing people.
Man on The Run — 151
Sanchez shoved the last letter back in its
envelope and handed them to me. “I don’t get
much of it,” he said. “They’re love letters and
probably pretty hot stuff, but you wouldn’t be
interested in that. Two or three times she says
something about when he gets the money. I don’t
know what money, or where he’s supposed to get
it, but I think they’re going to buy a boat with it.”
”There are some pictures of a boat in his gear,” I
said. “That could be it.”
He nodded. “Anyway, she mentioned it several
times.”
“Any names?” I asked.
“Just this Mrs. Jiminez. And once somebody
named Frances.”
I glanced up quickly. “Frances? Any last name?”
He shook his head. “No. Just Frances. I got the
idea she meant somebody in Ybor City. That’s part
of Tampa, you know. Lots of Cubans there.”
“I know,” I said. “How long has Boyle been on
here, do you know?”
“Let’s see. He joined up in Tampa, about last
September, I think. It was in the hurricane season,
anyway. We had to run back and wait one out in
Mobile the first trip he was aboard.”
“You were taking the catch into Tampa then?”
“Yeah. And sometimes Pensacola.”
“How long have you been running into Sanport?”
“Since the latter part of November, I think.”
“Did anybody ever come aboard to see Boyle
when you were tied up here?”
“No. Not that I know of, Foley.”
“Has he taken a trip off since he joined her?”
“No. Been on here all the time.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “Do you keep any
kind of log book?”
He nodded. “Sure. We enter the catch every day.
And our position—when we know it.” He grinned,
Man on The Run — 152
the white teeth flashing. “We’re not like you guys,
sextants, Loran, RDF’s, fathometers, and all that
stuff. We navigate with a hand lead.”
“Can we look at the log?”
“Sure.” He went up the companion ladder, and I
heard him going forward. He returned in a moment
with a beat-up old ledger.
“Check back and see where the Marilyn was on
December twentieth,” I said.
He flipped backward through the pages and
moved over closer to the lamp. “Hmmm. Here in
Sanport. We docked on the seventeenth, and sailed
on the twenty-first. Seven a.m.”
I nodded. “Good. Now, January, twenty-eighth.”
He riffled some more pages.. “Here we are.
Sanport Arrived here on the twenty-seventh.
Sailed the thirtieth.”
So he was here when the Shiloh outfit was held
up and again when Purcell committed suicide—or
was killed. But it didn’t prove anything at all. Over
half a million other people were also here at the
same time.
“Thanks,” I said to Sanchez. He went back up the
ladder with the log book. I picked up one of the
letters and stared at it, trying to force my mind to
remember some Spanish I’d had ten years ago.
There must be something here. I heard Sanchez
coming back along the deck, and then his shoes on
the ladder.
“Just can’t stop bein’ nosy, can you, mate?”
I turned. It wasn’t Sanchez. Boyle was standing
at the bottom of the ladder, seeming to fill it from
one handrail to the other with enormous shoulders
inside the dirty gray sweater. He had a loose-lipped
grin on his face as he pulled the knife from his
pocket and clicked it open. I picked up the
marlinespike. He leaned against the ladder
watching me coolly with the small black eyes.
There wasn’t even any animosity. It was just a job
he had to do. I swung the marlinespike against the
Man on The Run — 153
base of the lamp chimney, and the fo’c’sle was
plunged into total blackness.
I waited tensely, listening for any scraping of
shoes against the deck. The silence went on. Then
he spoke softly, still by the ladder. “Only way out’s
over here, tanker sailor. Come and get it.”
I said nothing. It was impossible to see anything
at all; it was a blackness like the end of the world.
There was no point in talking just to let him know
where I was. I knew where he was and where he
was going to be all the time: between me and that
ladder.
If I only had something to throw. Not the
marlinespike, I thought. I had to hang onto that as
long as I could; it represented the one slim chance
I had for survival. The Luger! Sanchez had left it in
the bunk where he was sitting. I tried to visualize it
in the darkness, and moved one soft step to the left
and forward, and put out a hand. I touched the
railing of the bunk, slid my hand over onto the
mattress, and moved it in a slow arc. How much
longer would he wait? He knew he could come
straight back and I couldn’t get past him in the
narrow quarters without touching him somewhere.
But he wanted to hear me cry out, or beg. My
fingers touched the Luger. I pulled it toward me,
transferred the marlinespike to my left hand, and
picked it up in my right. I stepped softly back.
There was still no sound from Boyle.
I touched the railing of the upper bunk on my left
with my fingertips to be sure I was in the center of
the fo’c’sle. He should be straight ahead of me, a
little over twelve feet away. But maybe he was
kneeling. I clamped the Luger under my left arm
for a moment, reached into my pocket with my
right hand and drew out two dimes. I tossed them,
aft and a little to the right. They tinkled against the
bulkhead to one side of him.
There was no sound of movement, but he
laughed. “Mate, you didn’t think I’d fall for that
stupid trick, did you?”
Man on The Run — 154
I grabbed the Luger in my right, leaned back,
and slammed it forward as hard as I could throw,
straight at the sound of his voice. There was a
sickening sound of impact and something brittle
and sharp like breaking bone, and he cried out in
pain and rage. The knife clattered on the deck, and
I heard him collapse against the ladder.
I rushed forward, swinging the marlinespike. It
rang against the handrail of the ladder. I drew it
back and swung it again, straight down, and felt it
hit him. An arm encircled my legs, and he laughed.
It was a terrible sound, bubbling and full of gravel,
as if he had blood and broken teeth in his mouth.
He heaved upward. I left the deck and crashed over
backward, feeling the weight of him as he surged
after me. I slashed at him with the marlinespike. It
hit him. I put out a hand to find his head so I could
hit him where it counted and I felt the hand slide as
it came up against the bloody mess of his face, and
I swung the steel again and again. A big hand
caught my wrist and twisted, and the spike slipped
out of my grasp. It rolled away in its crazy circle in
the darkness.
Now neither of us had a weapon. I wondered
what I could do to him with my bare hands when I
couldn’t even hurt him with a solid steel bar. A big
fist crashed against the side of my face, and lights
exploded in back of my eyes. I rolled, trying to get
away from him, and kicked at him with my feet.
And then, miraculously, I wasn’t in contact with
him anywhere. We were separated and lost from
each other in impenetrable darkness like two
eyeless and primitive forms of life circling in
combat in the ooze at the bottom of the sea. I didn’t
know where he was nor where I was myself. All
sense of direction was lost.
I knelt, absolutely motionless, and tried to quiet
the tortured sound of my breathing. My ribs were
pressed against the rail of a bunk, but there was no
way to tell whether it was a starboard bunk and I
was facing forward, or a port bunk and I was facing
aft. I held my breath and listened for him but could
Man on The Run — 155
hear nothing for the pounding of blood in my ears.
He would try to stay between me and the ladder,
but he didn’t know where he was either. For some
reason, I thought of Suzy Patton. He had probably
killed her. I was filled with rage and wanted to get
my hands on him. That was insane, and I knew it;
the only way I’d ever get out of here alive was to
stay away from him until I could find the ladder. I
couldn’t fight him. He was like a gorilla; he could
kill me with his hands as easily as he’d killed
Frances Celaya.
Then I heard something. It was a hollow, tinny
sound, and I knew he’d brushed against one of the
lockers or bumped it with a shoe. He was
completely away from the ladder, at the forward
end of the foc’sle. The sound had come from my
left, so I stood up and started to move softly in the
opposite direction. I put out a hand and touched
one of the railings of the ladder. Then he hit me. I
fell against the steel steps with his weight on top of
me. He was trying to get his hands on my throat. I
pushed up with my arms and legs and we fell
backward off the ladder and rolled. We crashed
into the stanchion of one tier of bunks and it gave
way and mattresses spilled down on top of us. I
twisted from under him and then I was across his
back with both arms locked around his neck. I
pulled back. He came up to his knees, carrying me
with him, and then to his feet. I tightened my grip
and he lurched sidewise and fell, and we plowed
headlong into the row of sheet metal lockers. They
came adrift and fell over on us.
He broke my grip around his neck and threw me
off him. The lockers rattled and crashed as we
fought our way out from under them. A fist caught
me on the jaw and slammed me back against the
bulkhead. It dazed me. I tried to get up and fell
over one of the lockers. He caught me and
slammed my head back against the bulkhead. One
of the big hands tightened around my throat. I was
strangling and beginning to lose consciousness. I
Man on The Run — 156
thought I heard somebody running along the deck
above us.
The beams of flashlights stabbed downward from
the deck, and men were coming down the ladder.
Boyle released me and sprang up. I pushed myself
up to my knees, and swayed, just in time to see him
lunge for something shining in the lights that
splashed on the deck near us. It was the
marlinespike.
“Police!” a voice barked. “Stay right where you
are!”
Boyle grabbed up the piece of steel and lunged
toward the lights. “Drop it!” a voice warned. He
took one more step and the gun crashed. He fell
forward against the bulkhead near the ladder and
slid to the deck.
I tried to stand up. Everything drained out of me
at last and I started to fall. And my last thought as I
slid into blackness was that now I had lost them all.
Frances Celaya was dead, and now they’d shot
Boyle, and there was nobody else who knew how it
had really happened.
Man on The Run — 157
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