Charles Williams - Gulf Coast Girl

“Yes. Now, when do I call you again?”

“Saturday afternoon about five, unless something happens and you have to get in touch with me sooner.”

It took the rest of the morning to check the gear on the sloop and make out a stores list. Broussard’s runner came down in the afternoon and picked it up. The yard closed at five. I drove the truck inside and parked it. The night watchman was a friendly, talkative old man who reminded me a little of Christiansen. He wanted to know if I was going to sail that boat clear up to Boston all by myself. What happened when I had to go to sleep? The whole thing fascinated him. Here was another problem; as fast as I solved one I had two more to take its place. I had to get them aboard without his seeing them.

I studied the layout of the yard. The driveway came in through the gate where the office and the shops were located, and went straight back to the pier running out at the end of the spit. There were some ways on the right, where they were building a couple of shrimp boats, and on the left was the marine railway itself. The Ballerina, of course, would be out on the pier after I brought her back in from the shakedown. It could be done, I thought; if I backed the truck up to the pier and left the lights on he wouldn’t be able to see them come out the rear doors.

The foreman had given me an extension light and some cleaning gear. By midnight I had the cabin immaculately clean. I switched off the light and lay down on one of the settees.

We put her back in the water a little after one the next afternoon. I kept watch on the bilges for about an hour, and she was all right. With one of the yardmen aboard to give me a hand I took her down the channel against the tide with the engine, after the dock trial, hoisted sail, and went on out. There was a good breeze blowing, kicking up a moderate chop on the bar. I took her back and forth across it and let her pitch to see if she opened up anywhere. When we came back and tied up I pumped the bilges again. In a few minutes she was dry. Baby, I thought, standing on the pier looking at her.

There was still nothing in the morning or afternoon papers about his body being found. When the yard closed I backed the truck down to the pier and stowed all the gear aboard the sloop. The yard work was completed now, and I’d asked them to have the bill ready for me in the morning.

I worked on the charts for a while, stowing away the ones we wouldn’t need in the Gulf. Turning on the radio, I picked up a time tick from WWV and started a rate book on the chronometer. After a while I heard a weather report for the West Gulf: moderate east and northeast winds.

I switched off the light and lay down. It was hot in the cabin. I could hear water lapping against the hull. It was a lovely sound until I started thinking of his body down there somewhere. How much longer did we have? I got off him at last, and tried again to see Macaulay, running into the same old blank wall. He didn’t even exist. Then I was thinking of her again.

I sat up and savagely lit a cigarette. I was being paid, I reminded myself, to get Macaulay out of that house alive, and not to lie there thinking about his wife.

All right. So I’d get him out. I had an idea for it, and it might work, too, if I didn’t get myself killed doing it. But what about her? I still hadn’t solved that.

Suppose I arranged a rendezvous out there on the beach and transferred her to the truck? That was all right, provided she could get far enough ahead of them so I could get her aboard without their seeing it. But if they did see it, we didn’t have a chance. That truck was too slow. And I was pretty sure by now they were trailing her with two cars. They’d murder us.

They were pros; we were amateurs. It was going to have to be good. I dug up and discarded plan after plan, but after a long time I began to see a way I could do it. When I had it all straight in my mind, I looked at the watch. It was a little after four. Sleep was impossible now, so I got up and walked out on the end of the pier. Taking off the watch and the shorts, I dived in and went for a long swim out toward the channel. When I came back I sat naked in the Ballerina’s cockpit, smoking and watching the sky redden in the east. This was the last day. If everything went right, this time tomorrow we’d be at sea.

Eight

The stores came down in a truck at a little after nine. I looked quickly for the two cartons. They were there. I took them aboard and started checking stores with the driver. When he had it all on the end of the pier I wrote out a check and started carrying it aboard.

I was still at it at eleven o’clock when I looked up and saw the two strange men come into the yard. They were dressed in seersucker suits and Panama hats, and were smoking cigars. I saw the foreman go over, as if asking what they wanted. They started around the yard, talking to each of the workmen for a minute or two.

Then they were coming toward me. I was just picking up a coil of line; I straightened, watching them. I’d never seen them before as far as I could tell.

“Mr. Burton here’s from out of town,” the foreman was saying. “I doubt if he’d know him.”

“What is it?” I asked, trying to keep my face blank. I was beginning to be afraid. The larger one, the blond, was carrying something in his hand. It was a photograph.

He held it out. “Ever see this man, that you know of?” he asked. He didn’t glance toward my hand as I took it; he watched my face. They both did. They didn’t have an expression between them.

I held it up to take a good look. Then I handed it back. “I don’t think so,” I said. “What did he do?”

“Just a routine police matter,” he said. “We’re trying to find somebody that might know him.”

I shook my head. “Sorry. He’s a new one on me.”

“Thanks anyway,” he said.

They left.

I went on aboard the boat with the coil of line under my arm, but instead of stowing it away I walked down into the cabin and dropped, weak-kneed, onto the settee. I wiped the sweat from my face. The way they worked was frightening; it couldn’t possibly have been more than a few hours since they’d found him, and already they had a picture. Not a picture, I thought. Probably dozens of them, being carried all over the water-front. And it was a photograph of him as he was alive, not swollen and unrecognizable in death.

Anybody but a fool would have known it, I thought. The pug would have a criminal record, and when they have records they have pictures. Maybe they had identified him from his fingerprints. But that made no difference now. The thing was that Christiansen would recognize him instantly.

I shook it off. They’d still be looking for Manning, who had gone to New York. And we’d be gone from here in another twelve hours. I was still tense and uneasy, though, as I finished loading stores and went up to the office to write a check for the yard bill. I topped off the boat’s fuel tank and fresh water tank. The ringing clatter of the calking hammers died away at twelve as the men knocked off and went home. It was Saturday afternoon.

I filled the running lights, and drove the truck out and bought some ice. She was ready for sea. There was nothing to do now but wait.

It was bad. And it grew worse.

It was exactly five o’clock when the telephone rang inside the booth at the gate. I went in and closed the door.

“Bill,” she said softly, “I’m getting really scared now. Are we all ready?”

“We’re all ready,” I said. “Listen—I’ve got to get Macaulay first. They’re not sure where he is, and if it works right they won’t even know he’s gone. They won’t suspect anything’s happening. But when you disappear, everything’s going to hit the fan.”