Man on the run

by Charles Williams

  The streets were almost completely deserted. That made it even worse; anybody moving at all was conspicuous. There wasn’t a police car in sight at the moment, however. I went up to the corner and turned left. Straight ahead about fifteen or twenty blocks I could see the tall buildings of the downtown area. If I could make it, that would be the easiest place to find a phone at this time in the morning.

  I was crossing the intersection when I saw a squad car turn into the street about three blocks up. It stopped, the men in it apparently talking to the uniformed cop on the corner. Then it shot ahead, coming toward me. They’d seen me. The only way to do it was play it very cool, no matter how scared I was. If they actually stopped and asked me for identification, of course, I was done for, but they might not if I didn’t show any nervousness. I went on at the same pace, stepped up on the curb, and paused to light a cigarette. They slowed, made the turn, and crawled past me on the other side of the street. I could feel the eyes on me. I glanced briefly in their direction, took a puff on the cigarette, and kept on. They went on past. I felt weak all over. They turned right at the next corner and disappeared.

  I made a full block before I had to go through it again. This one was coming, toward me, along this side of the street. They saw me, came on faster, and then slowed. They were going to stop. Then their radio said something in a staccato burst of sound, and they shot ahead, cutting in the siren. When they were a few blocks away I stopped and listened. I could hear three sirens closing in on some place back there. I sighed. Somebody had probably reported a prowler, and now some of the heat was off me. I started walking faster. I was three blocks away and then five. After ten I stopped counting. I was out of the area now.

  I crossed Pemberton Avenue, in the edge of downtown. The Greyhound bus terminal was only a block away on my right. The bars were all closed now, and that would be the nearest place with phone booths. Should I risk it? They had men watching it. But they’d never take a second look at me in this crazy sport coat. I was safer in a crowd, anyway, and the bus station always had people in it. I turned and hurried toward it.

  Fifteen or twenty people were boredly reading papers or trying to sleep sitting up on the benches, and some more were drinking coffee at the lunch counter further back. The phone booths were to the left of the lunch counter. I stepped into the first one, dropped in a dime, and dialed. The phone rang. And then again. After awhile I was conscious that I was counting the rings and that I was very scared. She’d helped me, and I may have got her killed.

  I hung up. Now what? If I could get out there, I couldn’t get in. If she were still out somewhere, there was no way I could warn her. But maybe she’d got bored and started on that vodka again. I’d wait a few minutes and try again.

  Then I remembered that phone number I’d got from Frances Celaya’s purse. I hauled it out of my pocket and looked at it. GL 2-4378 Marilyn. From the way the paper was creased, it had been in her purse for months, and I didn’t see how it could have anything to do with Stedman, but this was all we had left so I might as well try it

  I dropped in a dime, and dialed a number. A man answered.

  “Is Marilyn there?” I asked. “Yeah, she’s here,” he replied.

  I came alert; this might be something after all. “Could I speak to her, please?”

  “What’re you, a damn wise guy?” he snarled, and hung up.

  I stared blankly at the receiver, and put it back on the hook. Maybe this was the way you cracked up; things just quit making any sense. No doubt it was perfectly logical—

  I stopped, wondering how I could have been so stupid. I should have known it all the time. Ducking around to the side of the booth I grabbed the directory. I flipped to the yellow pages, found what I was looking for, and ran my finger down the telephone numbers of the watchmen’s shacks on the Municipal docks.

  Pier Five was GLenwood 2-4378. And Marilyn was a boat.

  A shrimper or commercial fisherman, I thought. Pier Five was where they tied up. Now we were getting somewhere. Then I thought of Suzy again, with that cold uneasiness inside me. Before I went out I had to try once more. I dropped the book, and when I turned to go back in the booth I was looking directly at a man at this end of the lunch counter. He had a cup of coffee and a newspaper in front of him, but his eyes were on my face. Then he looked away and picked up his paper. His face was vaguely familiar, and a little whisper of warning ran along my nerves. But, hell, nobody would recognize me in this sporty outfit. I entered the booth and dialed Suzy’s number. The phone rang and went on ringing, but there was no answer. The fear grew worse. I turned my head, and the man at the counter was looking toward the booth with a thoughtful expression on his face. I recognized him now. He was a detective, one of Stedman’s friends I’d seen several times at Red Lanigan’s bar.

  Twelve

  I turned back and went on listening to the futile ringing of the phone in the apartment while I tried to think. I just couldn’t take much more of it; pretty soon I was going to crack and start gibbering.

  Maybe he still hadn’t recognized me, and I might make it. There was a cab stand at the Pemberton Avenue entrance. I hung up, reached for a cigarette, and was putting it in my mouth as I came out of the booth. I didn’t look toward him. Turning, I sauntered casually toward the entrance, pausing for a moment to look over the rack of paperback books at the newsstand as I lighted the cigarette. There was no way to tell whether he’d got up or not; looking back would be like waving a sign. I went on, waiting for the voice behind me. I reached the door. There was one cab in the taxi zone, and the driver was behind the wheel. Just as I turned and started up toward it, I glanced back through the window. He had got up, and he was coming. He signaled to somebody on one of the benches and began to walk faster.

  I yanked open the door of the cab and leaped in. “Pier Nineteen,” I said.

  “Yes, sir,” he said. He pushed the flag down and hit the starter. We pulled away from the curb. The two detectives emerged from the doorway, running now, and turned up the sidewalk after us. They shouted at the driver. He saw them in the mirror.

  “Friends of yours?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “Probably a couple of drunks. Keep going.”

  We were a block ahead of them and gathering speed. I saw them turn and start back to the station, still running. There was no police car in sight, but the cab’s number would be on the air within seconds now. In the deserted streets at three a.m. we weren’t going to get far before they picked us up. I took two dollar bills from my wallet and held them in my hand.

  We turned right on Walker and headed downtown. We passed a patrol car going in the other direction. It paid no attention to us. The lights were all blinking amber along Walker and we didn’t have, to stop. Ten blocks ahead we swung left into Western Avenue and were headed for the ship channel and waterfront, less than twp miles away now. We met another cruising patrol car. It went on past. I watched it. We were about eight blocks away when I saw it suddenly make a U-turn in the middle of the block. It came toward us, gathering speed.

  “Turn right at the next corner,” I told the driver.

  “But—”

  “I said turn right.”

  There was no siren yet, but they were closing on us fast. We made the turn. “Stop!” I told him. He knew something was wrong and slammed on the brakes. I dropped the two dollar bills on his lap and was out before the car stopped moving. “Get going!” I told him. He went on.

  I lunged across the sidewalk and jumped into a shadowy area between two buildings, out of range of the street light. The police car made the turn on screaming rubber and went past. The taxi was about three blocks away. I cut across the street directly behind the police car, headed diagonally up toward the next corner and ran as fast as I could. Just as I reached the corner and turned down the intersecting street I heard the siren cut loose. They’d been chasing it so far merely because it was the same type of cab as that on the broadcast and they wanted to check the number, but now they�
��d got that in their headlights. They’d be back here in less than a minute. I reached the next corner and turned right. I was one block over now and parallel to the street they were on.

  It was an industrial area, not far from Denton Street, and probably half a mile or less from the railroad yards. It was deserted this time of morning, and shadowy between the widely spaced street lamps. I reached a big warehouse on the next corner and stopped to look up the intersecting street. The patrol car shot past up in the next block, running without the siren. I ran straight ahead, across the intersection, and went on, driving hard. My only chance lay in getting as far from that place as possible before the other cars began pouring into the area. Two blocks further on, I turned left again, toward the railroad yards and the ship channel. I could hear the sirens now. They were something that would haunt my dreams for years—if I lived that long.

  Two more blocks and I knew I couldn’t run any further without rest. Across the street was a vacant lot piled high with big sections of sewer pipe. I ran over, ducked in between two stacks, and lay down in the weeds behind them. It was very dark. I rolled over on my left side, because of the pain in my right, pillowed my head on my arm, and struggled for breath. I heard a car go past the corner on whining tires, but paid no attention. There’d been too much of it, and I didn’t even feel anything any more; I just avoided them mechanically, like an animal that has been trained to perform a trick at the correct signal. I wanted to reach the Marilyn, but after that I didn’t care. If I found out nothing there, I was going to quit running.

  I started thinking about Suzy and kept seeing her lying on the floor beside the door in the living room, killed by that cold-blooded thug. It would be so easy for him; all he’d have to do was knock, and she’d open because she would think it was me. I tried to shake it off. She was probably all right. There must be plenty of reasons she hadn’t answered the phone. I couldn’t think of any then, though.

  But worrying about it now wasn’t going to do any good. And I had a long way to go to get to Pier Five. I tried to orient myself. Pier Nineteen was at the end of Walker Avenue, but I was considerably south of Walker now and should be somewhere opposite Pier Ten or Twelve. If I turned right when I hit the railroad yards and went on another half a mile or mile it would put me pretty close to Pier Five. It was going to be hazardous all the way. They would probably reason that the address I’d given the driver was phony, but they’d search the whole waterfront, since we’d been headed that way. I flicked on the cigarette lighter briefly and looked at my watch. It was three-twenty. In another fifteen minutes I got up and went on. I was very tired. In the seven blocks to the rail-yards I had two close calls. Once a police car turned to the street less than a block behind me, and I barely made it under a warehouse loading platform before its lights could hit me.

  * * *

  It was four-ten. I snapped the lighter off and was in darkness again between the two rows of freight cars. Somewhere behind me a switch engine was working. I knelt and peered beneath the trucks of one of the cars. Beyond me was the quiet street, and the dark shed of a pier still slightly to the right of where I was, and in back of the shed a shadowy jungle of masts and drying shrimp nets. I couldn’t see the pier entrance or the number, but it should be the one. I walked down another dozen cars and climbed up on the coupling between two of them.

  It was Pier Five. I could see the pool of light at the entrance to the shed, and the watchman leaning back in a chair reading a magazine in front of his little office just inside the doorway. There was no way to get on or off the pier without going past him, but they didn’t require a pass on most of them. I searched the street in both directions and was about to hop down from between the cars when I saw a police car coming from the right. It stopped at the watchman’s office of the boat repair yard that was the next pier beyond Five. The men in it were talking to the watchman. Then it came on up to Pier Five. They called the watchman out and talked to him. I began to catch on. They were looking for me, probably, and giving my description to the watchmen at all the piers. They passed the next one, which was not in use, and went on to Pier Seven where they did the same thing.

  It could be something else, of course, but I couldn’t take a chance on it. I had to stop and tell the watchman what I wanted and what boat I wanted to board, and if he had my description the police would be there before I could even get to the outer end. I cursed wearily. Now what?

  I’d never find a way to do it from here. I went back to the left for another fifty yards to where the watchman couldn’t see me crossing the street, and hurried over when there were no cars in sight. I stood in the shadows in front of Pier Six and stared across the slip. Pier Five ran out for some two-hundred feet, with a long T-head at the outer end. There were perhaps a dozen boats moored to it. They were nearly all shrimp boats. But there was no way around the big packing and icing shed at the landward end.

  A car went past in the street. I moved back up against the wall to merge with the shadows. A derrick barge was mooring in the end of the slip, its deck about six feet below where I was standing. I looked down. The light was poor, but I thought I saw a small work boat in the water beside it. I eased along the edge of the slip until I found a ladder going down. In a moment I was standing on the deck. Apparently there was no one on board. I slipped around to the outboard side of the deck house. There was the work boat. I pulled it alongside with its painter. There was one oar in it.

  Stepping down in it, I cast off the painter and sculled it over to the shadows alongside Pier Six, turned, and headed outward, keeping near the piling. When I reached the end of the pier, I was beyond the outer limits of the illumination from the street lights. The tide was ebbing slowly, and I let it carry me down toward the T-head of Pier Five. There was one light-standard in the center of it, and the outer ends were in semi-darkness. None of the boats carried any lights at all. As I neared them I began trying to make out the names. I was in luck. Marilyn was the first boat along the inner side of the T-head. She was moored port-side to, with her stern toward me. I could just make out the lettering in the shadows: MARILYN OF SANPORT. I drifted in under her quarter, caught her rudder post, and handed myself along her starboard side in the work boat. She wasn’t a shrimper; they all look approximately alike, no matter where you meet them. Marilyn was a sea-going monstrosity, an old two-masted schooner that had apparently been converted to power. Her masts were cut off and they’d added a midships house that looked like a chicken coop. Probably a snapper fisherman, I thought. Even in the semi-darkness out here at the end of the pier you could tell she was dirty and sloppily kept up. She reeked of fish, and apparently she hadn’t been scrubbed down since discharging her catch. I passed a cardboard carton of rotting garbage lying on deck. She showed no lights anywhere, and I couldn’t hear anyone aboard. I made the painter fast, and stepped lightly up onto her deck.

  I was just forward of the midships house. Opposite me a plank led up onto the shadowy bulk of the pier. It was intensely silent. Somewhere beyond the railroad yards a siren wailed, and it made me shiver. I started aft, feeling my way cautiously along the starboard side. Just as I came into the darker shadows of the midships house I stepped on a body. The body stirred, scattering empty beer cans that rolled along the deck, muttered a drunken curse, and went back to sleep.

  I ducked down in the shadows and crouched, absolutely motionless, until the beer cans stopped their clatter. No one called out. He must be the only one aboard, unless they were all passed out. He had the watch, I thought sardonically, tossing six or eight beer cans over the side so I wouldn’t start them rolling again. I waited another minute, stepped over him, and went on aft. The crew’s quarters should be back here.

  There was a companion ladder going below. I stepped softly onto it and groped my way down. I reached the bottom, and stood perfectly still, listening for the sound of breathing. There was utter silence. It was as dark as the inside of a coal mine, and the air was stale and foul with the odor of dirty clothes and
old damp wood. I flicked on the cigarette lighter and looked swiftly around. The place was deserted. It was a small and dirty fo’c’sle with bunks on each side and some steel lockers against the forward bulkhead. I looked around for a light of some kind. On the forward bulkhead near the lockers was a kerosene lamp mounted in gimbals. I stepped over and lighted it. It cast a very weak yellow glow across the room.

  There were eight bunks, but only five of them held mattresses. The deck was littered with cigarette butts and two or three pairs of sea-boots kicked partly out of the way under the lower bunks. Oil-skins dangled from the after bulkhead. Over most of the bunks were pin-ups clipped from girlie magazines. Two of the uppers which didn’t have mattresses were loaded with seabags and beat-up old suitcases. There was a new plastic suitcase in one of the lower bunks.

  I grabbed down one of the seabags, dumped its contents on the mattress of one of the bunks, and pawed through the stuff. It was all clothing. I repacked it and searched another, with the same negative results. Next I hauled down one of the old suitcases and opened it. It held more clothing, some shaving gear, a few old magazines, some contraceptives, and a deck of cards, but no letters or photographs or identification of any kind.

  The next one was no more profitable, except that it did contain a savings account passbook made out to a Raoul Sanchez. In the third I found a packet of letters in a girl’s handwriting addressed to Karl Bjornsen. I sighed wearily and replaced them all on the upper bunk. There was nothing left now except the new plastic job, and I had a hunch it would be locked. It was.

  I cast about for something with which to jimmy it open. I saw nothing that would do, but then remembered I still hadn’t searched the lockers. I went over and began pulling them open. They held more foul-weather gear—shoes, stacks of magazines and paperback books, and a couple of half-empty bottles of rum. But lying in the bottom of one of them was a large screwdriver and a marlinespike.