The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction (7 page)

Why not, I thought savagely. If this was good clean fun in her crowd, what did I have to kick about? Maybe the commercial approach made the whole thing a little greasy, and maybe she could have been a little less cynical about waving that wedding ring in your face while she beat you over the head with the stuff that stuck out of her bathing suit in every direction, but still it was nothing to blow your top about, was it? I didn’t have to tear her head off.

“You’re awfully quiet,” she said, the gray eyes faintly puzzled.

This was the goddess again. She was cute.

“Am I?” I asked.

We walked back to the pier and went into the living room of the houseboat. She stopped in front of the fireplace and stood facing me a little awkwardly, as if I still puzzled her.

She smiled tentatively. “You really found it quickly, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” I said. I was standing right in front of her. Our eyes met. “If you’d gone further up the lake before you threw it in it might have taken a little longer.”

She gasped.

I was angry and I stuck my neck out another foot.

“Things must be pretty tough when a woman with your looks has to go this far into left field—”

It rocked me, and my eyes stung; a solid hundred and fifty pounds of flaming, outraged girl was leaning on the other end of the arm. I turned around, leaving her standing there, and walked into the bedroom before she decided to pull my head off and hand it to me. She was big enough, and angry enough.

I dressed and was reaching for a cigarette when I suddenly heard footsteps outside on the pier. I held still and listened. They couldn’t be hers. She was barefoot. It was a man. Or men, I thought. It sounded as if there were two of them. They came aboard and into the living room, the scraping of their shoes loud and distinct in the hush. I stiffened, hardly breathing now.

Detectives? Wayne himself? Suddenly I remembered the way she’d doubled all over town getting out on the highway and how she’d kept watching the rear-view mirror. I cursed her bitterly and silently. This was wonderful. This was all I lacked – getting myself shot, or named co-respondent in a divorce suit. And for nothing, except having my face slapped around under my ear.

I looked swiftly around the room. There was no way out. The window was too small. I eased across the carpet until I was against the door, listening.

“All right, Mrs Macaulay,” a man’s voice said. “Where is he?”

Mrs Macaulay
? But that was what he’d said.

“What do you want now?” Her voice was a scared whisper. “Can’t you ever understand that I don’t know where he is? He’s gone. He left me. I don’t know where he went. I haven’t heard from him—”

“We’ve heard that before. You’ve made two trips out here in 24 hours. Is Macaulay here?”

“He’s not up here, and I don’t know where he is—”

Her voice cut off with a gasp, and then I heard the slap. It came again. And then again. She apparently tried to hold on, but she began to break after the third one and the sob which was wrung from her wasn’t a cry of pain but of utter hopelessness. I gave it up then, too, and came out.

There were two of them. The one to my left lounged on an armchair, lighting a cigarette as I charged into the room. I saw him only out of the corners of my eyes because it was the other one I wanted. He was turned the other way. He had her down on the sofa and off balance with a knee pressed into her thighs while he held her left wrist and the front of her bathing suit with one hand and hit her with the other. He wasn’t as tall as she was, but he was big across the shoulders.

I caught the arm just as he drew it back again. He let her go. Even taken by surprise that way, he was falling into a crouch and bringing his left up as he stepped back. But I was already swinging, and it was too sudden and unexpected for even a pug to get covered in time. He went down and stayed down.

I started for him again, but something made me jerk my eyes around to the other one. Maybe it was just a flicker of movement. It couldn’t have been any more than that, but now instead of a cigarette lighter in his hand there was a gun.

He gestured casually with the muzzle of it for me to move back and stay there. I moved.

I was ten feet from him. He was safe enough, and knew it. I watched him, still angry but beginning to get control of myself now. I didn’t have the faintest idea what I’d walked into, except that it looked dangerous. I couldn’t place them. They weren’t police. And they obviously weren’t private detectives hired by her husband, because it was her husband they were looking for. Somebody named Macaulay, and she’d told me her name was Wayne. It was a total blank.

The one I’d hit was getting up. Pug was written all over him. He moved in on me clearing his head, cat-like, ready. He was a good six inches shorter than I was, but he had cocky shoulders and big arms, and I could see the bright, eager malice with which he sized me up. He was a tough little man who was going to cut a bigger one down to size.

“Drop it,” the lounging one said.

“Let me take him.” The plea was harsh and urgent.

The other shook his head indifferently. He was long, loose-limbed, and casual, dressed in a tweed jacket and flannels. I couldn’t tab him. He might have been a college miler or a minor poet, except for the cool and unruffled deadliness in the eyes. He had something about him which told me he knew his business.

“All right,” the pug said reluctantly. He looked hungrily at me, and then at the girl. “You want me to ask her some more?”

I waited, feeling the hot tension in the room. It was going to be rough if he started asking her some more. I wasn’t any hero, and didn’t want to be one, but it wasn’t the sort of thing you could watch for very long without losing your head, and with Tweed Jacket you probably never lost it more than once.

Tweed Jacket’s eyes flicked from me to the girl and he shook his head again. “Waste of time,” he said. “He’d scarcely be here, not with her boyfriend. Check the rooms, though; look at the ashtrays. You know his cigarettes.”

The pug went out, bumping me off balance with a hard shoulder as he went past. I said nothing. He turned his face a little and we looked at each other. I remembered the obscene brutality of the way he was holding and hitting her, and the yearning in the stare was mutual.

There was silence in the room except for Shannon Wayne’s stirring on the sofa. She sat up, her face puffed and inflamed; her eyes wet with involuntary tears. She clutched the torn strap of her bathing suit, fumblingly, watching Tweed Jacket with fear in her eyes. Tweed Jacket ignored us. The pug came back.

“Nothing. Nobody here for a long time, from the looks of it.”

He looked at me hopefully. “How about Big Boy? Let’s ask him.”

“Forget it. Stick to business.”

There was no longer any doubt as to who was boss, but the pug wanted me so badly he tried once more. “This is a quiet place to ask, and he might know Macaulay.”

Tweed Jacket waved him toward the door. “No,” he said. His eyes flicked over the girl’s figure again coolly. “It’s Mrs Macaulay he’s interested in.” They left.

In the dead silence I could hear their footsteps retreating along the pier, and in a moment the car started. I breathed deeply. Tweed Jacket’s manner covered a very professional sort of deadliness, and it could easily have gone the other way. Only the profit motive was lacking. He simply didn’t believe Macaulay was here.

I turned. She was still holding the front of the bathing suit. “Thank you,” she said, without any emotion whatever, and looked away from me. “I’m sorry you had to become involved. As soon as I can change, I’ll drive you back to town.”

It wasn’t until ten, that night, that I said goodbye to Shannon Macaulay. We’d driven back to town and stopped at a cocktail lounge. She’d cleared up some of the questions that had been hanging in my mind. She did know where her husband was. He had been an insurance executive for a marine underwriters outfit in New York. He wasn’t in trouble with his firm or the police. I could check that by calling them, she said. The Tweed Jacket, whose name was Barclay, represented some syndicate who were looking for her husband. Why? She evaded that one. I wasn’t satisfied with that, but I went along.

And where did I come in? Easy. The phony dive act was necessary because Shannon had to sound me out. See what kind of a guy I was. Check my experience against that article she’d read about me.

They needed more than a diver. Specifically, they wanted me to buy and outfit a boat and take them off the Yucatan coast to recover something from a sunken plane. Then I was to land them secretly in Central America. That explained her questions about my navigational experiences in the Gulf and the Caribbean. What was in it for me? She’d said, “The boat is yours. Plus five thousand dollars.”

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.”

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.