The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction Page 6

  I’d whistled softly. There was nothing cheap about this deal. I could see myself cruising the world in the Ballerina. She was a beautiful auxiliary sloop. I’d wanted her even before she’d been put up for sale. With the Ballerina and five thousand bucks I could live the kind of life I always wanted. I could work and play as I pleased. Manning of the Ballerina.

  That about clinched it. That and Shannon Macaulay. She’d been awfully good about my misunderstanding of her motives that afternoon and grateful for what I’d done.

  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 tried to relax walking back to the pier, but it wasn’t easy. I couldn’t figure the Macaulay guy. What was he mixed up with? Why was he so sure he could spot the plane? How did he figure he could shake this mob with something as easy to spot as this big beautiful blonde wife of his? I knew landing them secretly in a foreign country wasn’t legal. And I didn’t like the possibilities of tangling with Tweed Jacket and his buddy again, but those were risks I’d have to take.

  Relax? Hell, I’d wanted to drive her home, but I knew how stupid that was the minute I’d said it. She gave me her number and told me to watch what I said, to make it sound like a lovers’ meeting in case Tweed Jacket was tapped in. We’d arrange to meet once more to give me the money I’d need. Just before she drove away, she’d thanked me, saying, “You’ve got to help me, Bill, I can’t let him down.”

  6

  It was about 10:30 when I walked up to the shack at the pier.

  Old Christiansen, the watchman, came out. “Fellow was here to see you, Mr Manning,” he said. “He’s still out there.”

  “Thanks,” I answered, not paying much attention. “Goodnight.” It was late for anybody to be coming around about a job. I entered the long shed running out on the pier. It was velvety black inside, and hot. Up ahead I could see the faint illumination which came from the opened doors at the other end. There was a small light above them on the outside.

  I started over toward the ladder to the barge and then remembered that old Chris had said somebody was waiting out here to see me. I looked around, puzzled. My own car was sitting there beside the shed doors, but there was no other. Well, maybe he’d gone. But Chris would have seen him. The gate was the only way out.

  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 enough light to see the hard, beat-up, fight-hungry face. He lazily crushed out his cigarette against the paint on the side of my car.

  “Been waiting for you, Big Boy,” he said.

  “All right, friend,” I said. “I’ve heard the one about the good little man. A lot of good little men are in the hospital. Hadn’t you better run along?”

  Then, suddenly, I saw him holding and hitting her again and I was glad he’d come. 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. 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. My wild swings were just his meat; they’d only pull 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. He sucked air when my right came slamming into his belly. 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 pier, with his back toward it. I went along with him, lunging at him with a right. It connected.

  He shot backward, trying to get his feet under him. His heels struck the big 12-by-12 stringer running along the edge of the pier and he fell outward into the darkness, cartwheeling. I heard a sound like a dropped canteloupe and jumped to the edge to look down. The deck of the barge lay in deep shadow. I couldn’t see anything. I heard a splash. He had landed on the after deck and then slid off into the water.

  I went after him, wild with the necessity to hurry. But the minutes it took me to break out the big underwater light and a diving mask made the difference. The ebbing tide had carried him under the pilings supporting the pier and by the time I got to him he was dead. He was caught there, his skull crushed by the fall on the deck. His eyes were open staring at me. I fought the sickness. If I gagged, I’d drown.

  7

  The next thing I was conscious of was hanging to the wooden ladder on the side of the barge, being sick. I’d left him there. The police could get him out; I didn’t want to touch him. I climbed up to the deck and collapsed, exhausted. I was winded, soaked and the cut places on my face were stinging with salt. My right hand was hurt and swollen.

  I had to get out to the watchman’s shanty and call the police. But then the whole thing caught up with me. This wasn’t an accident I had to report. I’d killed him in a fight. I’d hit him and knocked him off the pier, and now he was dead. It wasn’t murder, probably, but they’d have a name for it – and a sentence.

  Well, there was no help for it. I started wearily to get up, and then stopped. The police were only part of it. What about Barclay? And the others I didn’t even know? This was one of their boys.

  Suddenly, I wasn’t thinking of the police any more, or of Barclay’s hoodlums, but of Shannon Macaulay. And the Ballerina. Of course, the whole thing was off now. Even if I didn’t get sent to prison, with those mobsters after me and convinced I had some connection with Macaulay I was no longer of any use to her.

  No, the hell with reporting it. Sure, I regretted the whole thing. But I was damned if I was going to ruin everything just because some vicious little egomaniac couldn’t leave well enough alone. Leave him down there. Say nothing about it – I stopped.

  How? Christiansen knew he was in here. I was all marked up. In a few days, in this warm water, the body would come to the surface, with the back of his head caved in and bruises all over his face. I didn’t have a chance in the world. He’d merely come in here to see me, and had never come out. That would be a tough one for the police to solve.

  Of all the places in the world, it had to happen on a pier to which there was only one entrance and where everybody was checked in and out by a watchman – No. Wait. Not checked in and out. Just questioned as they came in. No books, no passes. And the watchman only waved them by as they went out.

  It collapsed. It didn’t mean anything at all, because nobody had gone out. Christiansen would never have any trouble remembering that when the police came checking.

  There had to be a way out of it. I looked across the dark waterway. Everything was quiet along the other side; there was nothing except an empty warehouse, a deserted dock. Nobody had seen it. Barclay probably didn’t even know the pug had come out here. He’d done it on his own because he couldn’t rest until he’d humiliated a bigger man who’d knocked him down. There was nothing whatever to connect me with it except the simple but inescapable fact he’d driven in here to see me and had never driven out again— I stopped. Driven? No. I hadn’t seen any car. But how did I know there wasn’t one out there? The shed was dark. I got a flashlight and checked. The
re it was in the corner of the shed. All I had to do was drive it out past the watchman, and the pug had left here alive. It was as simple as that.

  Out at the gate the light was overhead, and the interior of the car would be in partial shadow. The watchman’s shack would be on the right. I could hunch down in the seat until I was about the pug’s size. All the watchman ever did was glance up from his magazine and wave. He wouldn’t see my face; nor remember afterward that he hadn’t. It was the same car, wasn’t it? The man had driven in, and after a while he had driven out.

  Wait. I’d still have to get back inside without Christiansen’s seeing me. But that was easy too. It must be nearly eleven now. Chris went off duty at midnight. All I had to do was wait until after twelve and come back in on the next man’s shift. He wouldn’t know where I was supposed to be, or care.

  I walked over to the car, flashed the light in, and saw there were no keys. I leaned wearily against the door. I knew where the keys were, didn’t I? It would take only a minute. Revulsion swept me.

  But I knew it had to be done. I dove down, emptied his pockets, and came up to surface again. I hadn’t looked at his face. It took me a few minutes to clear the gear I’d used. Then I tried to fix up my face with hot water applications. After that I changed into dry clothes that were similar in color to the ones he’d been wearing. I dried his keys and started his car.

  I hunched down in the seat and drove up to the gate slowly. Chris was in the shack, pouring coffee out of a thermos. He looked over casually, waved a hand, and turned back to his coffee.

  I drove the car uptown – away from the waterfront, parked it on a quiet street, and threw the key far into a vacant lot. I was free of him now, the poor little punk. Why couldn’t he have stayed away?

  8

  At twelve-thirty I stepped into an all-night drugstore and called a cab. I hoped the driver couldn’t see my face.

  We passed the last street and were approaching the gate.

  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 cab started to move ahead, then 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 –”

  I wasn’t listening. I stared at the window of the shack. Old Chris was looking out, a puzzled frown on his face.

  The other watchman was still talking. “– 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. I didn’t see you go out.”

  I fought to get my tongue broken loose from the roof of my mouth. “Why – I –” It was impossible to think. “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—”

  “You was in that car?” He peered at me dubiously. “I looked right at it, too, and didn’t even see you. I must be getting absentminded. I was about to walk all the way out there to the barge and tell you that woman called—”

  He broke off suddenly, concerned. “Why, Mr Manning. What’s wrong with your face?”

  I was rattled now, but I tried not to show it to these two old men who meant well, but who would remember everything they saw later on.

  “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.”

  I got rid of the cabbie, who’d be the third guy to answer any questions asked by the police – or Barclay’s bunch of killers.

  I tried to think. How much chance did I have now? In a few days he’d float up, somewhere along the waterfront, 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.

  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.

  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.

  Suddenly, I had to see her. For the first time in a self-sufficient life I was all at once terribly alone, and I didn’t know why, but I had to see her.

  That reminded me. The watchman had said that a woman had called. 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 ran toward the car.

  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 pulled up at the nearest bar and called her. She answered, finally, her voice tense. We put on the lovers’ rendezvous tone to take care of possible listeners. She arranged to meet me at the cocktail joint we’d drunk at earlier in the day.

  I was sitting in the car in front of it when she pulled up and parked her Caddy. If she were 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 blonde head beside me, and a faint fragrance of perfume.

  She noticed my face and gasped. Tell her? What kind of fool would tell anybody? I had known her less than twenty-four hours; I knew practically nothing about her; I knew she had gotten me into this mess; yet I would have trusted her with anything. I told her. I brushed off her sympathetic offerings, but I didn’t find them unpleasant.

  I had been watching the mirror carefully. By this time we were well out on the beach highway and traffic had thinned out considerably. There were three cars behind us. One of them stopped. I shot ahead fast, dropping the other two well behind me. As they disappeared momentarily behind some dunes, I slowed abruptly and swung away from the beach. We were some 50 yards from the road, well out of range of passing highlights. I shut the headlights before we stopped rolling.

  She started to light a cigarette. “Not yet,” I said. Both cars went by, their tail-lights slowly receding down the road.
>
  I lit her cigarette.

  “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.

  “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?”

  “106 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. 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. All straight?”