The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction (11 page)

“Park at the mouth of the alley, and do it quietly,” Barclay said.

“Mrs Macaulay?” I asked mechanically.

“She’s in the house.”

“Is she all right?”

“Yes.”

I swung around the next corner, and we were on Fontaine, under the big, peaceful trees. “Then you finally killed him, didn’t you?”

“Oh. Yes,” he replied, almost as if talking to himself. “Too bad.”

There was no point in asking what he meant. I was too far behind now to catch up in a week. We parked at the mouth of the alley. Across the street I could see the red tip of a cigarette in the other car. Bitterness welled up in me. I’d fooled them, hadn’t I?

Barclay opened the door on his side. “Go in. We’ll be leaving soon.”

“Leave?”

“Sail.
Ballerina
sleeps four, right?”

He stepped aside in the darkness and followed closely behind me. My mind turned the parts of it over and over with no more comprehension than a washing-machine tumbling clothes. Sail? Four of us? Macaulay was already dead, that was what they’d wanted, wasn’t it?

It was – unless she had been lying all the time. I tried to shove the thought out of my mind. It came back. How would they have known I was coming by in the truck unless she had told them?

Maybe I could have got away from him in the alley, but I didn’t even try. The whole thing had fallen in on me, and I didn’t have anywhere to go. I wanted to see her, anyway. She had lied about it, or she hadn’t lied about it. I had to know.

I had wanted to see Macaulay and when I finally saw him he was a corpse on the floor of his living room. He’d been dressed according to the instructions I’d given Shannon. She was there, shocked and speechless, barely able to keep herself together when Barclay escorted me in. Two of his friends were there, too. He gave his instructions tersely.

“Very well. We’re finished here,” he said. “Who has the keys to her car?”

“Here.” The big blond guy fished them from his pocket.

“Give them to Carl,” Barclay directed crisply. “You’ll go with us in the truck.”

He shifted his gaze to the other man. “Take the Cadillac downtown and park it. Meet us on the southeast corner of Second and Lindsay. We’ll be going east, in a black panel truck, Manning driving. Get in the front seat with him. When we go in the gate at the boat yard Manning will tell the watchman you’ve come along to drive the truck back to a garage. If Manning tries any tricks, don’t shoot him; kill the watchman. As soon as we’re all aboard the boat, take the truck to some all-night storage garage and leave it, under the name of Harold E. Burton, and pay six months’ storage charges in advance. Then pick up the Cadillac, drive it to the airport, and leave it. Take a plane to New York, and tell them we should be in Tampa in three weeks to a month. Tell them about Macaulay, but that we have her and it’s under control. You got that?”

“Check,” Carl said. He took the keys and went out.

I could see a little of it now. They were hanging it on her quite neatly. The police already wanted me, and they’d be after her now too, for killing Macaulay. I didn’t know what Barclay wanted with her, but he had her from every angle. There was nowhere we could run.

We boarded the
Ballerina
the way Barclay scheduled it and he used my loading plan perfectly. The watchman never suspected a thing. Carl drove the truck off the pier and that was it. I could have jumped over the side and possibly escaped, but he knew I wouldn’t. I had nowhere to go, with the police looking for me, and I couldn’t leave her. The big one helped her down into the cockpit.

On deck, Barclay said, “Let’s sail.”

“Where?” I asked.

“I’ll give you a course when we’re outside. Now, step on it.”

“I’ll have to light the running lights first. Is that all right with you?”

“Certainly.”

“I just wanted to be sure I had your permission.”

He sighed in the darkness. “This is no game, Manning. You and Mrs Macaulay are in a bad spot. What happens to her depends on the way the two of you cooperate. Now, get this sloop away before the watchman hears us and comes snooping.”

Getting the watchman killed would accomplish nothing. “All right,” I said. We moved slowly away from the pier, out toward the channel, going seaward. There was no other traffic.

Barclay sat down across from me in the cockpit, smoking. “Very neat,” he congratulated himself above the noise of the engine.

“I suppose so,” I said. “If killing people is your idea of neatness.”

“Macaulay? We couldn’t help it.”

“Of course,” I said coldly. “It was an accident.”

“No. Not an accident. Call it calculated risk.” He paused for a moment, the cigarette glowing, and then he went on. “And speaking of that, here’s where you fit in. You’re also a calculated risk. I can handle small boats well enough to take this sloop across the Gulf, but I couldn’t find the place we’re looking for. We need you. We won’t kill you unless we have to. Score yourself a point.

“But before you start anything, imagine a bullet-shattered knee, with gangrene, and only aspirin tablets or iodine to treat it. And figure what we could do to Mrs Macaulay if you don’t play ball.

“One of us will be watching you every minute. Do as you’re told, and there’ll be no trouble. Is it all clear, Manning?”

“Yes,” I said. “Except you keep telling me this is no game, so there must be some point to it. Would you mind telling me where you think you’re going, and what you’re after?”

“Certainly. We’re looking for an airplane.”

“You mean the one Macaulay crashed in? You’re going to try to find it after you’ve killed the one person on earth who knew where it is?”

“She knows,” he said calmly. “Why do you think we brought her?”

“Look,” I said. “He was alone in it when it crashed. How could she possibly know?”

“He told her.”

“You’ll never find it in a million years.”

“We will. He knew where it was, and was certain he could go back to it, or he wouldn’t have hired you. So it has to be near some definite location, a reef or something. And if he knew, he could tell her. She’s already given me the general location. It’s to the westward of Scorpion Reef. You know the spot?”

“It’s on the chart,” I said curtly. “Listen, Barclay. You’re stupid as hell. Even if you found the plane, that money’s not recoverable. I didn’t tell her, because the main thing they wanted was to get away from your bunch, but that currency’s pulp by now. It’s been submerged for weeks—”

“Money?” he asked. There was faint surprise in his voice.

“Don’t be cute. You’re not looking for that plane just to recover the ham sandwich he probably had with him.”

“She told you there was money on the plane? Is that it?”

“Of course that’s it. What else? They were trying to get to some place in Central America so they could quit running from you and your gorillas—”

“I wondered what she told you.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re nuts, Manning. We’re not looking for any money. We’re after something he stole from us.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“It’s not important what you believe. But what makes you so sure, when you’d never met him and knew nothing about him at all?”

“I know her. She wouldn’t lie about it.”

He chuckled. “Wouldn’t she?”

The
Ballerina
began lifting slowly on the long groundswell running in through the mouth of the jetties. I searched the darkness ahead and could see the seabuoy winking on and off. I wondered why Barclay had tried to get off a cock-and-bull story like that. He was in control; why bother to lie?

“I found their bag, the one she sent aboard.”

I looked around. It was the voice of George Barfield, down below.

“Any chart in it?” Barclay asked.

“No.” Barfield came out carrying something in one hand and sat down beside Barclay. “The satchel was in it, all right. About eighty thousand, roughly. But no chart, none at all.”

“
What?
” It exploded from me.

“What’s the matter with Don Quixote?” Barfield asked. “Somebody goose him?”

“Could be he just got the point,” Barclay murmured. “She told him that money was in the plane.”

“Oh,” Barfield said. “Well, I wanted to see everything before I died, and now I have. A man over thirty who still believes women.”

I felt sick. “Shut up, you punk.” I said. “Put that bag down and throw a flashlight on it. There’s one on the starboard bunk.”

“I’ve got it here.” Barfield put the bag down, flipped on the light and I looked at bundle after bundle of twenties, fifties, and hundreds.

I sold my jewelry and borrowed what I could on the car. It’s the last chance we’ll ever have. I don’t know why they’re trying to kill him; it was something that happened at a party
—

“All right,” I said. “Turn it off, Barfield.”

“You’re supposed to say, ‘turn it off, you punk.’ ”

“Shut up,” I said.

“How long would it take you to learn enough navigation, Joey?”

“Too long,” Barclay answered. “Leave him alone.”

“I was pretty good at math.” Barfield said. “Want me to try it? I could get sick of this guy.”

“Stop it,” Barclay ordered curtly. “Even if we could find the place alone, we still need a diver.”

“Anybody with an aqualung.”

“George,” Barclay said softly.

“All right. All right.”

“What’s in the plane?” I asked.

“Diamonds,” Barclay answered.

“Lots of diamonds.”

“Whose?”

“Ours.”

“And she knows about it?”

“Yes.”

I wanted to hear it all. “And they weren’t trying to get to Central America?”

“Yes, they were, at first. But Macaulay couldn’t take her in the plane because he had to take a diver.”

I was a chump. A sucker. I’d believed her. Even when I’d had intelligence enough to realize the story sounded fishy I’d still believed it. She wouldn’t lie. Oh, no, of course not. Hell, how stupid could you get? She couldn’t go in the plane because he’d had to add a fuel tank to stretch out its cruising radius. I was their last chance to escape; she had trusted me with all the money they had left – she must have been laughing herself sick all the time. I even imagined her telling her husband about it.
Dear, this poor sap will believe anything
.

And because I’d believed it I had killed that poor vicious little gunman and now the police would be looking for me as long as I lived. Only I wasn’t going to be living very long. I was scheduled for extinction when I found Macaulay’s plane and brought up what they wanted.

So was she. And wasn’t that too bad? I wondered if she realized just what her chances were of selling Barclay and that big thug a sob-story of some kind. As soon as she told them where to look for that plane she was through. There should have been some satisfaction in knowing her double-crossing had got her killed as well as me, but when I looked for it it wasn’t there.

So I was going back to feeling sorry for her? I was like hell. The dirty, lying, double-crossing – I stopped, puzzled. If she knew what was in the plane and where it was, why hadn’t they grabbed her off long ago? Why had they kept trying to sweat Macaulay out of hiding so they could take him alive and make him tell, when they could have picked her up any time they pleased?

What the hell, was I still trying to find a way out for her? Of course they hadn’t wanted her as long as there was a chance she would lead them to Macaulay. Her information about the plane would be second-hand, and they’d only taken her as second choice after Macaulay was dead. She was all they had left.

Well, I thought, they didn’t have much.

Barclay had me set a course for west of Scorpion Reef. Barfield watched me plot it in the chartroom.

I gave Barclay the corrected course, and he let her fall off another point.

“Now,” he said, “ever handle a sailboat, George?”

“No,” Barfield replied, across from me. “But if your nipple-headed friend can do it, anybody can.”

“Well, you won’t have to,” Barclay said. “Manning and I will split the watches. You’ll be on deck when he has it and I’m asleep. Mrs Macaulay can have the forward part of the cabin; you, I, and Manning can sleep in the two bunks in the after part. And Manning won’t go down there when one of us is asleep.

“It’s after twelve now,” he went on. “Get some sleep, George. Manning can stretch out here in the cockpit and I’ll take the first watch, until six. When Manning relieves me, you’ll have to come on deck.”

I sat down, as near Barclay as I dared, and lit a cigarette. “It would be tragic,” I said, “if he blew his stack and killed me before I found your lousy plane for you and the two of you could take turns at it.”

“Why should we kill you?”

“Save it,” I said. “I knew all along you wouldn’t. Just give me a letter of recommendation. You know, something like: ‘This will introduce Mr Manning, the only living witness to the fact that we killed Macaulay and that his widow is innocent—” ’

“Not necessarily,” he said. “You can’t go to the police. You’re wanted for murder yourself.”

He knew I’d have everything to lose and nothing to gain. But if I were dead and lying somewhere in two hundred fathoms of water there was no chance at all. And .45 cartridges were cheap.

I moved a little nearer, watching his face. It was calm and imperturbable in the faint glow from the binnacle. I could almost reach him.

The eyes were suddenly full of a mocking humor. “Here,” he said. He handed the .45 automatic to me butt first. “Is this what you want?”

For a fraction of a second I was too startled to do anything. Then I recovered myself and grabbed it out of his hand.

“You really wanted it?” he asked solicitously.

“Come about,” I said. “Take her back to the seabuoy.”

“What an actor!” His voice was amused.

“You don’t think I’d kill you?”

“No.”

“So it’s not loaded?” Completely deflated, I pulled the slide back. I stared. It
was
loaded.

“You won’t pull the trigger,” he said, “for several reasons. You can’t go back to Sanport, because of the police. You couldn’t shoot a man in cold blood. You aren’t the type—”