Gulf Coast Girl (3 page)

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.”

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 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.”

“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?”

“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?”

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?”

“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 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.

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 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 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.

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 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.”