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The Day I Died

Page 19

by Lawrence Lariar


  There were no stars. Coyle held the cigarette in his right hand. He snaked his left hand along the ridge of the deckline, groping for the gas tank cap and finding it under his fingers, the cold metal a circle of hope for him. Could he unscrew it? His fingertips dug into the rim of steel.

  “How much further?” Masterson shouted at Bruck.

  “Ten minutes,” said Bruck.

  “Are you running at top speed?”

  “Not in this kind of water,” Bruck shouted back. “It don’t pay to go fast in this.”

  Masterson muttered a quiet curse, settling back in the seat again. The exchange had given Coyle a chance to adjust his body for his chore. There were too few muscles for the job; that was it. The strain of turning against the gas cap required more leverage, an easier posture. But there was nothing Coyle could do to alter his position. The cigarette in his right hand was burning down slowly. He strained against the cap feeling a needle of pain prick his wrist. But the cap was turning now. Slowly. Slowly. No noise at all. Coyle continued to unscrew the cap, his heart bursting in his chest.

  And then the cap was off!

  Bruck had handled the wheel with a sailor’s skill, running the We Two carefully over the whitecaps, his head aimed off the bow, exchanging only an occasional word with Masterson. As they spoke, Coyle found himself trembling with the fresh anxiety of his purpose. There would come a moment when he must shift the cigarette from his right hand to his left, to drop the spark into the gas tank.

  Already, he could feel the lit end warming his fingers as he raised the butt to his mouth.

  The whole earth spun and whirled in the immediate moment. The sky, the sea, the windy void around him, all sounds and smells and sensations blacked out for him. He was concerned only with the quick flip of movement, the gesture, the muscular action that would carry the spark to the gas tank before Masterson could notice it.

  He froze. The reflex nervousness built itself into a paralysis now. He was staring hard at Masterson. He was reacting to Masterson’s bulky silhouette, the menacing hulk turned his way now, and inside the black mass, inside the silhouette, Coyle could feel the probing eyes, the vacant, staring pits. And in the electric moment, the image of Masterson became a death’s head and Coyle knew that he was face to face with the living symbol of his doom. He could not kill the quick hallucination. He could not change the face of Masterson, no longer human, no longer a flesh and blood man. This was the death he feared. This was the menace. In another tick of time, would death guess his plan? In another breath, would the black angel become aware of the bursting, throbbing purpose in him?

  Now, more than ever before, Coyle wanted life.

  In the eternity of moving his hand, in the great weight of this pulsing moment, Coyle breathed deeply of the air around him. This was no time for yielding to the specter, no time for abandoning his purpose. He would live again.

  He must live again!

  Coyle closed his eyes and felt the rasp of his own breathing, hard and raw and dry in his throat, the cigarette out of his mouth now, the spark moving in a sudden arc, down, down and further still. Did Masterson catch the gesture?

  There was no time for further thought.

  Coyle dropped the cigarette into the open gas tank.

  And the world exploded around him as he leaped from the boat in a desperate dive, over the side and down …

  CHAPTER 28

  … deeper into the ocean, plummeting into the cool and bottomless pit to an unmeasured depth, his ears singing against the pressure, down lower and lower still, his body loose and free, his eyes open and the salt stinging them as he reached the limit of his endurance and then started upward through the black sea.

  Coyle broke surface a good distance from the great flame.

  The We Two burned over there, a giant pyre, sizzling and spluttering, an inferno of heat and light. The hull alone rode the waves. The great blaze roared over the bony structure of the eaten body of the ship, here and there yielding a flaming board to the maw of the sea. Around and about the We Two, a skein of oil spluttered, flickering and dying as the ocean ate into the fire. What had happened to Masterson? And Bruck? The roaring blaze set up a great aura of light, a crimson glow that lit the water in widening arc. Beyond the frying timbers, obscured by a burgeoning cloud of smoke, a small white shape drifted. It was the dinghy, awash and skipping lightly on the sea.

  Coyle swam slowly toward the dinghy. Something had happened to his shoulder, a burning pain that would not let him move easily. He struggled beyond the mass of flame, avoiding the debris, taking the long way around to skirt the heat in the immediate circle close to the We Too. The fire was fading fast when he made the dinghy and got aboard. He sank back in the little boat, his lungs bursting with the pressure of his swim.

  The cry for help alerted Coyle, and he leaned over the dinghy and looked back at the feeble glow that once was the We Too. The light was dying now. It would be out in a few minutes, sucked into nothingness by the sea. Only a thin thread of flame remained, along the bow, a little ridge that danced along the white boards. And in the next instant, a bubbling and gurgling and hissing sigh went up from the boat. She wallowed and turned over and sank, her bow rising in a final burst of flame before the sea claimed her.

  The shout for help was stronger now. Coyle lifted the small oars and began to row, squinting and straining through the gloom. It was Bruck out there. He appeared suddenly, a clutching, clawing, screaming figure.

  “Save me, Coyle,” he shouted. He had hold of a side of the cabin, a broad piece of wood, an incongruous life raft for his bulky figure. He rolled and turned on the wood.

  “Where’s Masterson?”

  “I didn’t see him.”

  “I should let you drown too, you bastard!”

  But when Bruck lost his grip on the cabin side, when he gurgled and sank for the first time, Coyle reached out and pulled him close to the dinghy. With great effort, he managed to haul him aboard. Bruck’s face was horribly lacerated on the temple, his hands blistered and stiff with fire. But Bruck would live. Bruck would live to tell the full story, all the way from the beginning in New York. And the proof would make itself known to the police when they picked up Stack, Masterson’s man, out on the big boat.

  Coyle sank back and rested. Exhaustion held him away from the oars, but he did not rest for long.

  He began to row with a stiff and awkward stroke, aiming the nose of the dinghy into the brightening horizon. The sky was gray and the sun would be up soon, the light would be silvering the sea. Coyle’s shoulder stabbed and stung him, but his mind would not accept the pain. He felt nothing but the lightness in his heart, his soaring joy.

  And when the sun burst through a ridge of clouds and washed the sea with brilliance, Coyle raised his head and sang into the sun.

  He was still singing when he brought the dinghy around the ridge of palms that skirted the docks of the Carrillon.

  He was singing loud and clear.

  About the Author

  Lawrence Lariar (1908–1981) was an American novelist, cartoonist and cartoon editor, known for his Best Cartoons of the Year series of cartoon collections. He wrote crime novels, sometimes using the pseudonyms Michael Stark, Adam Knight and Marston la France.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1952, 1980 by Lawrence Lariar

  This authorized edition copyright © 2018 by the estate of Lawrence La
riar and The Mysterious Press

  Cover design by Ian Koviak

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-5638-0

  This 2019 edition published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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  LAWRENCE LARIAR

  FROM MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM AND OPEN ROAD MEDIA

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