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.
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.