Gulf coast girl: original title, Scorpion reef

by Charles Williams

  Water closed over me. I kicked downward toward the light. The shadowy columns of the pilings seemed to drop away endlessly off to my right. They were encrusted with barnacles which could cut like razor blades. I passed a big lateral timber, and then another. It was like going down in a freight elevator.

  I was on bottom. He should have been right there beside the light. He wasn’t. I looked wildly around. There was no sign of him anywhere. I swam along the edge of the pilings, searching. I tried to think. Unconscious, he should have settled straight to the bottom, like a dropped anchor. Maybe he hadn’t been knocked out after all, and was above, swimming. Then I saw I was in among the pilings. They were all around me. I knew what it was now, but it was too late. I had to go up. I was running out of breath.

  I kicked diagonally upward, avoiding the pilings. My lungs hurt. I wondered if I’d misjudged the time, stayed under too long. I began to be afraid of the barge. If I miscalculated and came up under it I might not get out. Then my head broke surface. I took two deep breaths and went under again. Maybe he was already beyond help. It had taken me too long to realize that with the tide ebbing he would have gone down at an angle and was lying somewhere back under the pier among that tangle of pilings.

  I picked up the light and swam in with it. A whole jungle of pilings began to grow up around me. I thought of those barnacle-encrusted lateral timbers above me, and the bottom of the barge itself. If I lost my bearings I’d never get out. Then I saw him. He was lying beside a pillar with the side of his face in the mud as if he were asleep. I dropped the light and reached for him.

  I was trying to get a grip on his shirt collar when I saw the plume of dark smoke drifting out of his head to thin out and disappear downstream in the tide. I reached around and put my hand on the back of it. It was like a broken bowl of gelatin.

  He was dead. It was only the pressure that was making him bleed. He turned a little as I jerked my hand away, and settled on his back in the muck. His eyes were open, staring at me. I fought the sickness. If I gagged, I’d drown.

  Four

  I don’t remember coming out, or how I did it. 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, and water ran out of my clothes as from a saturated sponge. The cut places on my face were stinging with salt. My right hand hurt, and when I felt it with the other it was swollen.

  I had to get out to the watchman’s shanty and call the police. Then I sat real still and stared at the darkness while the whole thing caught up with me. This wasn’t an accident I had to report. I’d killed him in a fight.

  I hadn’t intended to, but what difference did that make? 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. There was nothing else to do, and sitting here wasn’t going to bring him back to life. 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?

  I’d already come to their attention by being with that girl. Now I’d killed one of their muscle men, and strangely enough just the one who’d wanted to beat me up and question me about Macaulay in the first place. They wouldn’t mind, would they? Forget it, Manning; it was just one of those things. Drop in and kill one of us any time you’re out our way.

  Then, suddenly, I realized I wasn’t thinking of the police any more, or of Barclay’s mob of hoodlums, but of Shannon Macaulay. And the Ballerina. Why? What had made her come into my mind at a time like this? 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. I wouldn’t do it. The hell with reporting it. Sure, I regretted the whole thing. And those sightless eyes would probably go on staring at me for years. 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. There was no way out except right past the watchman’s shack. I was all marked up from the fight. 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.

  It was the beautiful simplicity of it that made it so terrifying. 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. They didn’t have to sign a book or get a pass. 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. There hadn’t been anyone else in here. One man had come in; nobody had left. Christiansen would never have any trouble remembering that when the police came checking.

  There had to be a way out of it. It was maddening. 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. That was the awful part of it: 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.

  My mind was racing now. I sprang up and ran around to the storeroom door, still barefoot, dripping water out of my sodden clothes. I found a flashlight and leaped onto the ladder. I ran across to the door of the shed and threw the beam into the darkness inside. There it was, back in a corner. I was weak with relief. Maybe he’d parked it there in the dark to keep me from seeing it and being warned. But that didn’t matter. The big thing was that he did have a car in here.

  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 approximately the size of the pug. 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.

  But wait. There was something else. I’d still have to get back inside without Christiansen seeing me. He knew I was in here, and I couldn’t very well come in again without having left. 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 and flashed the light in, and the whole thing fell in on me again. I realized I should have known it if I’d been using my head. You always removed the keys automatically when you got out of a car. It was worse than ever now.

  I leaned wearily against the door. I knew where the keys were, didn’t I? It would take only a minute. Revulsion swept over me. I thought of what it was like down there, the light shining among that surrealist forest of dark pilings while grass undulated gently in the current and a dead man watched you with smoke coming out of his head. It was something out of a madman’s dream.

  But it had to be done. I walked back to the barge, dreading it, and stood on the afterdeck where he had landed and slid in. I could see the faint glow of the light below me, back un
der the pier, and began taking off the wet trousers and shirt. There was no use being hampered by them this time. In the deep shadows beside me I could just make out the form of the big steel mooring bit. That was what had killed him. He’d been wheeling vertically as he fell, and his head had crashed down onto the top of it with force enough to brain an ox. I felt queasy, and tried not to think about it.

  Then, suddenly, the whole plan began to take form in my mind at once. I’d had only part of it before; this would clinch it. Men had been found floating along water fronts before with their heads broken in, and usually their pockets were empty. And I didn’t merely take the car out; I parked it among those dives in the tough district between here and town. It wouldn’t matter where he was actually found. Bodies drifted erratically with the tides as they began to grow buoyant.

  I was ready. Then I hesitated, thinking coldly. I didn’t know much about law or the workings of courts, but I had sense enough to realize that what I was about to do was deliberately criminal. The other hadn’t been, even though it had killed him. I could still go call the police and report it, and everything would be on my side. A half dozen generations of lawyers and New England clergymen leaned over my shoulder and whispered fiercely that that was the only thing to do.

  And on the other hand? Once I did this it was irrevocable, and I was on my own. If they caught me then there’d be no evidence of a fight or accident. They might convict me of deliberate murder, because I’d tried to cover it up. Even there in the hot night I could feel the chill run up my back.

  I waited, trying to make up my mind. I didn’t have all night. Which was it to be? Then, strangely, there was nothing in my mind except that girl, just the way it had been before. There was an odd feeling of finality about it, of inevitability, as if I already knew what I was going to do because there wasn’t actually any choice. I didn’t try to understand it. That would have been futile. On the face of it, it was crazy. For hours I’d been fighting against taking her job, and now that something was in the way which might stop me I knew I wouldn’t let anything stop me. I put the mask over my face and dropped over the stern into the water.

  I went straight down until I was below the last of the horizontal timbers and then cut in among the pilings. There could be no lost motion. Thirty feet down and thirty back used up a lot of precious air, and I’d cut it too fine those other times. The light grew stronger. He was still lying there beside it. I looked away from his face. I swam down and took hold of his belt. Revulsion shot through me as I pushed a hand into the first pocket. It yielded nothing but a handkerchief. The next held a pocketknife and a package of contraceptives. The desire to hurry, to run from him and get back to the surface, was almost overpowering now. I had to fight it. I turned him over. Mud sucked at him. A cloud of silt lifted and obscured the upper part of his body, drifting down the current. I felt for the hip pockets.

  The leather key case was in the first. Then I had the wallet. I slid back a little, looked at them in the light to be sure I made no mistake, and then rammed the wallet down into the muck beyond my elbow. I withdrew my hand and closed the hole. I swam out, following the light cable. I went up. My head broke surface. Darkness and the clean night sky had never looked more beautiful.

  I went around to the ladder, still shaking a little, and climbed aboard. My right hand hurt against the rungs. I hoped I hadn’t broken any bones. I stood naked and wet in the night, thinking furiously. One of the bad moments was over now. But there was still another. No, I told myself reassuringly, there’d be nothing to it. Was I losing my nerve now that I was actually going to do it instead of just thinking about it? The chances were a thousand to one he’d merely glance up and wave me on as I went past in the car.

  I walked around to the other side of the deckhouse and set the key case to drain beside the ladder where I could find it. Then I went aft, unplugged the light, and hauled it aboard, coiling the cable. I put it away in the storeroom, along with the diving mask, and locked the door.

  I wrung out the wet clothes and hung them in the bathroom. Glancing hurriedly at my watch, I saw it was ten minutes of eleven. I had plenty of time. Then I did a double take, realizing how bad the strain had been. I’d had the watch on all the time, three trips to the bottom of the channel, without even noticing it.

  It was supposed to be waterproof, but that didn’t mean much. Five fathoms down was a lot different from standing in the rain. I held it up to my ear. It was still running. I took it off and dried it.

  Splashing myself with a pail of fresh water, I dried off and looked at my face in the mirror. There was a discolored lump above my right eye, a cut in the corner of my mouth, and another bad bruise on the side of my jaw. There was nothing I could do about it now except try to keep anybody from seeing it. I examined the hand. It was badly swollen, but I couldn’t feel anything broken.

  I dressed, putting on a white sport shirt like the one the pug had been wearing. It was just eleven o’clock. Plenty of time, I thought, beginning to feel tight in the chest. But I didn’t want to cut it too fine. Sometimes the graveyard man came early and they sat out there and talked, two lonely old men who had only their jobs and bleak boarding-houses to fill their time. I couldn’t take a chance on two. I’d better go, even though it meant more time to kill outside before I could come back.

  I locked the door, picked up the key case, and went up on the pier. The wet trail I’d left before was still there on the concrete. I remembered the car was a green Oldsmobile. That was good. Mine was a tan Ford. He’d remember all right; there couldn’t have been any mistake. I didn’t have the flashlight now, but I groped around until I found it. I got in and started the motor. I was nervous. Suppose he was standing outside the shack where he could see right into the car? I wouldn’t know it until I’d come out the doors at the other end of the shed, and then it would be too late.

  I thought of the answer to that. Switching the lights on, I turned the car around until it was headed for the door at the far end, and turned them off again. As soon as my eyes were accustomed to the darkness I went slowly ahead. There was no danger of running into anything, and I could see the door just faintly ahead of me. When I was within thirty or forty feet of it I eased to a stop and got out. Slipping up to it on foot, I peered around the edge. It was all right. There was only the empty gate with the hot cone of light above it, and the vacant lots beyond. He was inside. I turned and ran lightly back to the car.

  Remembering to slouch low in the seat, I eased the door shut, flipped the lights on, and went ahead. My mouth was dry. It was a hundred miles. I was outside now. I turned left, crossed the railroad spur. Not too fast. Slow down a little approaching the gate. The car was right in front of the shack now. Lifting a hand, I looked just once, out of the corners of my eyes.

  He was sitting on a stool at the desk just behind the window, pouring coffee out of a Thermos. He glanced up casually, waved a hand, and then looked back at the cup. I was past.

  The tension gave way, and I felt as if I’d flow out over the seat like spilled water. Every nerve in my body relaxed. There was nothing to it now.

  I turned left at the next corner and went down a dark street toward town. It was about fifteen blocks to the honky-tonk district. Parking the car in a dark spot a half block from a gaudy burst of neon and noise, I looked quickly around and got out, taking the keys and locking it just as he would have. No one had seen me. I went up to the corner and turned right, away from the water-front. As I passed a vacant lot I threw the keys far into it in the darkness. I was free of him now. I thought of him and shuddered. The poor, vicious, unfortunate little bastard. Why couldn’t he have stayed away?

  I didn’t know how far I walked. It must have been miles. I avoided lights and kept to the quiet residential districts, going away from the waterfront all the time. At twelve-thirty I was near an all-night drugstore. It was late enough now. It would be around a quarter of one by the time I got back. I went in a side door and back to the telephone booth and called a
cab. When it came I was waiting out at the side in the shadows. I got in without the driver’s getting a look at my face. Everything was all right now. I sat back in the corner, where he couldn’t see me in the mirror.

  We passed the last street and were approaching the gate. No one was in sight. “Just slow down there so I can tell him who I am,” I said to the driver. “You don’t need a pass to drive in.”

  “Right, chief,” he replied.

  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 driver shifted gears and started to move ahead. Then he 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—”

  But I wasn’t even listening now. A prickling sort of numbness was spreading over my whole body as I stared at the window of the shack. It was old Chris. He had just got up from a chair and was looking out, a puzzled frown on his face. Then he turned toward the door.

  The other watchman was still talking beside the cab window. “. . . 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. When did you go out? I didn’t see you.”

  I fought to get my tongue broken loose from the roof of my mouth. “Why—I—” It was impossible to think. The whole thing was like some crazy nightmare. “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—” I’d got myself started, and now I couldn’t stop. I could hear my voice going on and on. “—that’s when it was. A little before twelve. I waved at you, remember? He was an old friend of mine—get a couple of beers—”