The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction (9 page)

“You’re very alert. He heard them and told me.”

“Why is he hiding there? And how?”

She leaned forward a little and continued. “I’ve been wanting to get to this. Here’s the whole story, briefly.

“About three weeks ago my husband spotted them on the street and knew they’d caught up with us again. He had a plan for getting to Central America and losing them completely, for the last time. It was about completed. It involved a man who’d been a close friend of my husband’s in college. He lives in Honduras and is a wealthy plantation-owner with considerable political influence. He’s also a rather passionate flying fan. He’s always buying planes in the States and having them flown down to him, and my husband was to take this one to him. It would get him out of the country without any trail they could follow, you see? He’d merely take off without filing a flight plan, and disappear. It would be illegal, but as I say this friend of his had political connections.

“However, he had to go alone. It was a light plane and its cruising radius with the maximum amount of fuel was still a little short, so he’d added an extra tank. I was to come later, making sure I wasn’t followed. I was to do it over the Memorial Day weekend, and it involved about five different zigzagging commercial flights with the reservations made considerably ahead of time. On a long holiday like that they’d be sold out, you see? Anyone trying to follow me might catch a no-show at one or even two of the airports, but not all of them.

“Two days before I was to leave, my husband came back. He crashed off the Yucatan coast, but got into a life raft and was picked up by a Sanport fishing boat. They docked at night and he got home unseen.

“But now they’ve found out where we live, and they have the place surrounded. Barclay rented the house right across the street, and they watch me all the time, waiting for me to lead them to him—”

“And they don’t know he’s inside?”

“I don’t think so. You see, they searched it the first time while he was actually gone. They made it look like burglary.”

“But didn’t you say they’d searched it again today? Yesterday, I mean?”

She nodded. “He’s in a sealed-off portion of the attic, and the only way into it is through the ceiling of a second-floor closet. He stays up there nearly all the time. All the time when I’m out of the house. I think they’re pretty sure he’s gone, but they know if they keep watching me I’ll lead them to him sooner or later. I hadn’t realized until what happened up at the lake that they might try beating me up. That scares me, because frankly I don’t know how much of it I could take.”

That angered me and made me realize how much more there was to this girl than her looks. No whining, no heroics – she simply said she didn’t know how much of it she could take and went right on with what she had to do. The next time that pug looked at me, I’d look back.

She went on. “And as to what’s in the plane, it’s money. About eighty thousand dollars. All he has left. He can’t take much more, Bill. That plane crash did something to him – and being brought back to Sanport after he thought he had gotten away. And losing the money on top of it, so he couldn’t even run any more.”

“But you just wrote a check for fifteen thousand—”

“I know. Naturally, he left me some so I could follow him. I sold my jewelry, and borrowed on the car.”

I began to catch on then. She was merely handing me the last chance they’d ever have. This girl was a plunger, and when she said she trusted you she trusted you all over.

“Well, wait,” I said. “I can probably find a cheaper boat—”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to go to sea in a cheap boat. And we’ll recover the money from the plane, anyway.”

“Do you realize the jam you’ll be in if I turn out to be a phony?”

“That was the general idea, Bill, when I said I wanted time to make up my mind about you. Remember?”

“I remember,” I said. “Do you mind if I get a little personal? I’ve been feeling sorry for Macaulay because he was up against a rough proposition alone. I’d like to amend that; I don’t know of anybody who’s less alone.”

She didn’t answer for a moment, and I wondered if I’d gotten it off as lightly as I intended. After all, this was an awkward situation for her, and she’d already shown me the road signs once.

It was almost too fast for me then. She slid toward me on the seat, murmuring, “Bill . . .
Bill!
” her face lifted to mine and her arms slipping up around my neck, and then I was overboard in a sea of Shannon Macaulay. Yet even as I swam into that sea, my mind was trying to tell me it was an act and that the reason she was saying my name over and over was to keep me from having my head blown off. And that’s what it was.

A voice said, “All right, Jack. Break it up and turn around.”

I turned. A light burst in my face, and another voice I recognized as Barclay’s said, “You people are oversexed, aren’t you?”

Two thoughts caught up with me at once. The first was that they hadn’t heard us and didn’t suspect anything. Her reaction time had been so fast they’d caught us kissing, just as you’d have expected of two people in a parked car along the beach. That was good.

But it was the second one that pulled the ground from under me. They had that light right in my face, and they’d be blind if they didn’t see the marks that pug had left on it.

I had never been more right. “Hmmmmm,” Barclay said softly. “So that’s where he went.”

“Who?” I asked, just stalling for time. I had to think of something. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t be stupid. The guy you hit, up at the lake.”

If I denied it they wouldn’t believe me anyway, and when he didn’t show up they’d go out there and ask the watchmen. They’d know then I’d done something to him. There was a better way: talk like a loud-mouthed fool, and admit it. It didn’t have much chance, but at least it had more than the other.

“If that’s who you mean,” I said. “He did. I guess you haven’t seen
his
face. Keep him out of my hair or he’s going to be bent worse than that the next time you get him back.”

“Where is he now?”

“How would I know?” I said. “Was he supposed to tell me his plans?”

“Skip it, wise guy,” he said. “And get out of town. We’re too busy to be chasing around after your love instincts. Get out of the car.”

I didn’t want to, but I got out. I heard her shaky indrawn breath as I closed the door. “
No. No. No
– ”

It was a good, cold-blooded, professional job. Nobody said anything. Nobody became excited. I never did even know for sure how many there were besides Barclay. I swung at the first dark shape I saw, because I had to do something; the blackjack sliced down across the muscles of my upper arm and it became a dangling, inert sausage stuffed with pain.

They gave me a good working over. The last thing I heard was Shannon’s screams.

When I came to, she was there on her knees beside me, helping. My arm was numb and I felt sick, but she rested there until the pain subsided.

Driving back to town, neither of us said anything about the way she’d put on the kissing act to keep my head from being blown up.

Finally, I asked, “What did Macaulay do to them?”

She hesitated.

“It’s all right,” I said. “If it’s none of my business—”

“No,” she said slowly, staring ahead at the headlights probing the edge of the surf. “It isn’t that. It’s just that I don’t know the whole story myself.”

“Didn’t he tell you?”

“Most of it. But not all. He says I’ll be safer if I never know. It happened about three months ago. He had to go to the coast on business, for about a week, he said. But three days later he called me late one night, from San Antonio, Texas. I could tell he was under a bad strain. He said for me to pack some bags, and leave right away for Denver. He didn’t explain; he just said he was in trouble and for me to get out of New York fast.

“He met me in Denver. It was something that happened at a party he went to, in some suburb of Los Angeles. He didn’t want to talk about it, but he finally admitted a man had been killed, and he had seen it.”

“But,” I said, “All he has to do is go to the police. They’ll protect him. He’s a material witness.”

“It’s not that simple,” she said. “One of the people involved is a police captain.”

“Oh,” I said.

It sounded too easy and too pat, but on the other hand there wasn’t any doubt she was telling the truth. But what about Macaulay himself?

“How long have you been married?” I asked.

“Eight years.”

“And he’s been with that marine insurance firm all the time?”

“Yes,” she said. “He’s been with them ever since he came out of law school, back in the thirties, except for three years in the service during the war.”

I shook my head. There was nothing in that. We came into the almost deserted town. I stopped beside her car and got out with her. She put out her hand. “Thanks,” she said. “It’ll be bad, waiting for that card.”

There was nobody on the street. I was still holding her hand, hating to see her leave. But all I said was, “Don’t go out of the house at night while I’m gone. If you have to come downtown, do it during rush hours when there are lots of people on the streets.”

“I’ll be all right,” she said.

“If you see a car behind you on the way home, don’t worry about it. It’ll be mine. That’s all.” I followed her out. It was an upper-bracket suburb out near the country club. She pulled into a drive and stopped under a carport beside a two-storied Mediterranean house with a tile roof and ironwork balconies. I stared at the house across the street. The windows were all dark. But they were in there, watching her as she got out of the car and fumbled in her bag for the key. She waved a white-gloved hand, and went inside.

I went on, looking the place over. It was the second house from the corner. I turned at the intersection and drove slowly down the side street. There was an alley behind the house. A car was parked diagonally across the street from the mouth of it in the shadows under the trees, and as I went past I saw a man’s elbow move slightly in the window. They had it covered front and back. There’d be one at the other end of the alley.

All I had to do was get Macaulay out of there alive. And by that time they’d be after me too.

I made my plans quickly. I drove back to the barge, packed my stuff, cleaned my face up as well as I could. It was morning when I started into town. I thought about the guy under the pier and then tried to dismiss him from my mind. Shannon helped. I couldn’t push her out of the picture at all – nor could I forget Macaulay. His story didn’t jell. I knew something about that tricky coastline off Central America. He’d have to be a superb navigator to find that spot again.

I sold my Oldsmobile for half of what it was worth and bought a bus ticket to New York. Before I got on the bus, I sent a telegram to Carter explaining that I had to see sick relatives in New York and that he’d have to get a new diver. It was the least I could do.

I fell asleep the minute I hit the seat.

We came into New Orleans at ten-fifteen p.m. Through passengers going east were scheduled to change buses, with a layover of forty minutes. I got my bag, ducked out a side door, and caught a cab. I registered as James R. Madigan at a little hotel and went to work on the marks on my face. Another few hours and they’d hardly be noticed.

They might find out I’d left the bus, and they might even trail me to this hotel and eventually start looking for somebody named Madigan, but there the whole thing would end. Harold E. Burton was only a check for $15,000, and the last place they’d ever expect me to go would be back to Sanport.

I studied the rest of it. There’d be the station wagon I had to buy to get back to Sanport with all the gear. I’d store it in a garage after we sailed. After a year or so they’d probably sell it for the storage charges, and if anybody ever bothered to look into it all he’d find would be that it had been left there by a man named Burton who’d sailed for Boston in a small boat and never been heard of again. People had been lost at sea before, especially sailing alone.

After I’d landed them on the Central American coast, I’d return to Florida and could lose myself among the thousands who made a living along the edge of the sea in one way or another, gradually building up a whole new identity. I burned my identification. I fell asleep thinking of Shannon.

It was a little after eight when I awoke. I shaved hurriedly, noting my face was almost back to normal now, and dressed in a clean white linen suit.

A little later, I put in a long-distance call to Sanport, to the yacht broker. I told him I was interested in the
Ballerina
. He said it was available at eleven thousand dollars. I arranged to meet him at Michaelson’s yard in Sanport at nine the next morning.

When the banks opened I went into the first one I came to, endorsed the check for deposit, and opened an account, asking them to clear it with the Sanport bank by wire. They said they should have an answer on it by a little after noon.

The used car lots were next. Part of my mind had been occupied with the problem of getting Macaulay out of that house, and now I was starting to see at least part of the answer. I didn’t want a station wagon; I wanted a black panel truck. I found one in the next lot. After trying it out, I told the salesman I’d come back later and let him know. I couldn’t buy it until the check cleared.

The wire came back from the Sanport bank a little after one. I cashed a check for three thousand, picked up the truck, and drove over to a nautical supply store. It took nearly two hours to get everything I needed here, chronometer, sextant, azimuth tables, nautical almanacs, charts, and so on, right down to a pair of 7 × 50 glasses and a marine radio receiver. That left the diving gear. Of course there was still the aqualung in the back of her car, but the coast of Yucatan was too far to come back for spare equipment if anything went wrong. I bought another, and some extra cylinders which I had filled. At five o’clock the truck was full of gear, and nothing remained but to check out of the hotel and start back.