Man on the run

by Charles Williams

  There was no sound of movement, but he laughed. “Mate, you didn’t think I’d fall for that stupid trick, did you?”

  I grabbed the Luger in my right, leaned back, and slammed it forward as hard as I could throw, straight at the sound of his voice. There was a sickening sound of impact and something brittle and sharp like breaking bone, and he cried out in pain and rage. The knife clattered on the deck, and I heard him collapse against the ladder.

  I rushed forward, swinging the marlinespike. It rang against the handrail of the ladder. I drew it back and swung it again, straight down, and felt it hit him. An arm encircled my legs, and he laughed. It was a terrible sound, bubbling and full of gravel, as if he had blood and broken teeth in his mouth. He heaved upward. I left the deck and crashed over backward, feeling the weight of him as he surged after me. I slashed at him with the marlinespike. It hit him. I put out a hand to find his head so I could hit him where it counted and I felt the hand slide as it came up against the bloody mess of his face, and I swung the steel again and again. A big hand caught my wrist and twisted, and the spike slipped out of my grasp. It rolled away in its crazy circle in the darkness.

  Now neither of us had a weapon. I wondered what I could do to him with my bare hands when I couldn’t even hurt him with a solid steel bar. A big fist crashed against the side of my face, and lights exploded in back of my eyes. I rolled, trying to get away from him, and kicked at him with my feet. And then, miraculously, I wasn’t in contact with him anywhere. We were separated and lost from each other in impenetrable darkness like two eyeless and primitive forms of life circling in combat in the ooze at the bottom of the sea. I didn’t know where he was nor where I was myself. All sense of direction was lost.

  I knelt, absolutely motionless, and tried to quiet the tortured sound of my breathing. My ribs were pressed against the rail of a bunk, but there was no way to tell whether it was a starboard bunk and I was facing forward, or a port bunk and I was facing aft. I held my breath and listened for him but could hear nothing for the pounding of blood in my ears. He would try to stay between me and the ladder, but he didn’t know where he was either. For some reason, I thought of Suzy Patton. He had probably killed her. I was filled with rage and wanted to get my hands on him. That was insane, and I knew it; the only way I’d ever get out of here alive was to stay away from him until I could find the ladder. I couldn’t fight him. He was like a gorilla; he could kill me with his hands as easily as he’d killed Frances Celaya.

  Then I heard something. It was a hollow, tinny sound, and I knew he’d brushed against one of the lockers or bumped it with a shoe. He was completely away from the ladder, at the forward end of the foc’sle. The sound had come from my left, so I stood up and started to move softly in the opposite direction. I put out a hand and touched one of the railings of the ladder. Then he hit me. I fell against the steel steps with his weight on top of me. He was trying to get his hands on my throat. I pushed up with my arms and legs and we fell backward off the ladder and rolled. We crashed into the stanchion of one tier of bunks and it gave way and mattresses spilled down on top of us. I twisted from under him and then I was across his back with both arms locked around his neck. I pulled back. He came up to his knees, carrying me with him, and then to his feet. I tightened my grip and he lurched sidewise and fell, and we plowed headlong into the row of sheet metal lockers. They came adrift and fell over on us.

  He broke my grip around his neck and threw me off him. The lockers rattled and crashed as we fought our way out from under them. A fist caught me on the jaw and slammed me back against the bulkhead. It dazed me. I tried to get up and fell over one of the lockers. He caught me and slammed my head back against the bulkhead. One of the big hands tightened around my throat. I was strangling and beginning to lose consciousness. I thought I heard somebody running along the deck above us.

  The beams of flashlights stabbed downward from the deck, and men were coming down the ladder. Boyle released me and sprang up. I pushed myself up to my knees, and swayed, just in time to see him lunge for something shining in the lights that splashed on the deck near us. It was the marlinespike.

  “Police!” a voice barked. “Stay right where you are!”

  Boyle grabbed up the piece of steel and lunged toward the lights. “Drop it!” a voice warned. He took one more step and the gun crashed. He fell forward against the bulkhead near the ladder and slid to the deck.

  I tried to stand up. Everything drained out of me at last and I started to fall. And my last thought as I slid into blackness was that now I had lost them all. Frances Celaya was dead, and now they’d shot Boyle, and there was nobody else who knew how it had really happened.

  Fourteen

  I opened my eyes. I was lying on a hospital bed in a small white-painted room. It was daylight. Across from me a uniformed policeman was seated in a chair tilted back against the wall, reading a paper. He glanced up and saw I was awake.

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  “Eleven-thirty,” he said. He went to the door and spoke to someone just outside it. I couldn’t hear what he said. He came back and sat down again. I moved my arms and legs, and everything seemed to work except that I was sore and stiff and my side hurt. I felt the right side of my face. It was painful.

  I thought of Suzy. They might know what had happened to her, but I couldn’t even ask. There was a chance she was still all right, and if I even mentioned her name it would implicate her. They knew somebody had been helping me.

  “Can I make a telephone call?” I asked the uniformed man.

  “No,” he said.

  “Is Boyle dead?”

  He put down the paper. “Don’t ask me any questions. There’ll be a man here in a minute that’s been wanting to ask you some for a week. All I’m here for is to see that you don’t run down the drain in the wash basin or through the keyhole or something and disappear again.”

  I lay back on the pillow. In about twenty minutes the door opened and a big man in a rumpled suit came in. He had a tough, competent look about him. There was a stubble of beard on his face, and the rather hard eyes were red-rimmed, as if he hadn’t slept for some time. He nodded to the uniformed man, who got up and went out.

  He lighted a cigarette, stared at me for a moment, and sighed. “I suppose if I killed you, I’d find out there was some stupid city ordinance against it. But it’s a beautiful thought. Who was hiding you?”

  ”What do you care now?” I asked.

  He rubbed a hand across his face. “I guess I don’t, really. I just get scared when I think there might be two of you loose on the same continent. What was her name?”

  “What makes you think it was a girl?”

  “Because you said ‘he’ when you talked to me on the phone. You could see that was real subtle.”

  “Then you’re Lt. Brannan?”

  “I’m Brannan. I’ll see whether I’m a Lieutenant when I get back to the office.” He pulled the chair over by the side of the bed and sat down, “Brother, it’s a lucky thing for you that Mexican guy Sanchez ran out and called us. In about one more minute you’d have been dead.”

  “Is Boyle dead?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  I said nothing. I’d tried, but maybe it had been hopeless from the start.

  He sighed and gestured with the cigarette. “All right. You win. I was going to make you sweat, you pig-headed mick bastard, but I guess I haven’t got the heart. Boyle didn’t die until about an hour ago, and we got a statement from him.”

  The breath oozed out of me, and I seemed to melt. I tried to say something, but nothing came out. “Here,” he said. He stuck a cigarette in my mouth and lighted it..

  “Was he Ryan Bullard?” I asked, when I was able to talk again.

  He nodded. “He was shot through the chest, and the medics said he didn’t have much chance. He asked for a priest, and Father O’Shea got him to make a complete statement. We checked his prints, of course, after he died, and verified the identity. He
was Bullard.”

  “Will the statement do any good?” I asked. “He wasn’t even there when she killed Stedman. He was at sea.”

  “Sure,” he replied. “There’s no doubt about any of it now. It was a death-bed confession, and it all ties together. He admitted plotting with her to kill Stedman, the same way they got Purcell, but she jumped the gun when she saw the chance after that stupid fight of yours there in his apartment. He almost killed her then, when she told him about it, because it was a dumb thing for her to do. If you’d surrendered when you found out he was dead, and made a sensible statement, there’d have been an investigation that’d have turned the two of ‘em up. It might have taken a little time, but you’d have been in the clear. But you had to take off like a ruptured duck so we spent the next seven days chasing you all over the goddamned country. Naturally, everybody thought you were guilty.”

  “I know,” I said. “I panicked. Then it all started with the holdup of that Shiloh Tool outfit?”

  He nodded. “Frances Celaya was a niece of that Jiminez woman Ryan Bullard knew in Tampa. When he came over here on that fishing boat that first trip back in November, he looked her up. That’s when he began to think of the holdup. He and this girl of his in Havana wanted to buy a boat. I think they had some kind of smuggling operation in mind; God knows what it was, but something crooked, anyway, since it was Bullard. Anyway, he approached Danny about the holdup, and introduced him to Frances. And I guess she fell for Danny like a ton of bricks. She gave him all the routine on the payroll operation there at the plant, and they planned the whole thing. They were plenty cagey about it, too; nobody ever did know they were even acquainted. They knew the employees would be checked out afterward. Danny lined up the visiting punk from Oakland. They pulled it off. The California hoodlum was killed, but the two Bullards got away. Danny took the money to his apartment to hide out with it until the split. Ryan couldn’t very well take it aboard the Marilyn. But then Stedman and Purcell came along the next afternoon to question Danny about the liquor store job.”

  I nodded. “So when they found out Stedman and Purcell had killed him and filed a report saying he resisted arrest, with no mention of the Shiloh job or the fourteen-thousand they figured it was just cold-blooded murder, for the money?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you think it was?” I asked.

  He stared moodily at the end of his cigarette. “No. At least, I hope not. They went sour, all right, but not that sour. He probably did pull a gun, so they had to shoot, and then they stumbled onto the money afterward while searching the apartment.”

  ”Have you found the money yet?”

  “Yeah. They put it in safe deposit boxes. We located them this morning.”

  “Do you suppose the Celaya girl and Ryan Bullard expected to find it in their rooms?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “With the girl, I think it was revenge, pure and simple. Apparently she was completely gone on this Danny Bullard, and she thought he’d been gunned down by two crooked cops in cold blood. Ryan Bullard probably just figured he’d been gypped. He was a cold-blooded killer by instinct.”

  I thought of Suzy Patton again, and I could feel my nerves jumping. “Did he confess to any other killings?” I asked, looking down at my cigarette.

  “A couple,” he said. “Didn’t have anything to do with this, though.”

  I tried to keep my voice casual. “What were they?”

  “That seaman, during the strike here several years ago. And one of the witnesses to it. Why?”

  It wasn’t a matter of her being in danger—not now. She was either already dead or all right, and telling him wouldn’t help or change anything. It would just drag her name into it. “Oh, nothing,” I said. “How did they get Purcell?”

  “He left that gate open for her and she left it open for Bullard. They killed him, and then she went back out and he locked the gate and climbed over the fence. Neither of them ever showed in front at all. He says she was the one who actually shot him. So in the end, she got both of them.”

  “Are there any charges against me?” I asked.

  He sighed. “Not a thing, aside from assault and battery, resisting arrest, trespass, breaking and entering, purse-snatching, and illegal entry. Oh, and piracy, except that Sanchez took that boat back to whoever you borrowed it from. I don’t know where you clouted that lion-strangler’s coat you had on when we brought you in, but I’m not going to look into it.”

  “I got it from an astronomer,” I said. “We traded.”

  “It figures, I guess.”

  “Are you going to hold me?” I asked.

  “No,” he said wearily. “We had a conference about it in the Skipper’s office awhile ago, and somebody came up with a good idea. Maybe if the City Council would vote Southlands Oil a tax reduction of some kind they might give you back your job and ship you the hell out of here. That way we could put the Department back on a forty-eight hour week, and some of us could go home and see if we’re still married. That is, if it’s all right with you.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  He stood up. “Incidentally, the medics say they can’t find anything wrong with you except for bruises and lumps and lacerations. Anybody else, of course, would be dead. They took some pictures of your belly, but there’s apparently nothing wrong inside. I’m going to turn those reporters loose on you now, and as soon as they get through with you I’ll drop you back at your apartment house.”

  He went, out. Six or eight reporters and photographers surged in and began snapping pictures and firing questions. It was about twenty minutes before they left. I dressed. Brannan and I went out and got in the patrol car in front of the hospital. While we were crawling through the midday traffic of downtown, headed for Forest Avenue, he turned to me with a hard grin, and said, “We could run this on the siren, if you’d like to hear one up real close.”

  “If I never hear one again, anywhere, it’ll be close enough,” I said.

  He let me out in front of the Wakefield. We shook hands, and he drove off. It felt strange to be standing there in the open, perfectly free, in broad daylight, without cringing or looking behind me. I wondered if I’d ever get used to it again. I let myself in the front door and hurried up the stairs to the apartment. Nothing had changed in it, but it was like coming back to a place you hadn’t seen in years. I closed the door and reached for the phone. I dialed Suzy Patton’s number. It rang and went on ringing. There was no answer.

  I hung up, waited two minutes, and tried again. Maybe she’d been in the bath. Or asleep. I listened to the futile ringing with a cold lump of fear in my stomach. Everything had turned out fine for me, but she’d got killed for helping me. I could see her lying there on the living room rug— Breaking the connection, I dialed for a cab and hurried out front.

  It seemed to take forever to get there. When it came at last and I gave the driver the address, it occurred to me that Brannan might be having me followed so he could find out who’d hidden me. I watched out the rear window as we jockeyed through the downtown traffic and out the arterial going north. There were dozens of cars around us all the time, but I couldn’t see any that appeared to be following us.

  It was shortly after noon now, and warm and sunny. When we pulled to the curb in front of the apartment house, I tossed the driver two dollars and hurried up the walk. I pushed the button of 703, and waited. There was no answering buzz at the door. I leaned on it again. Nothing happened. Turning, I hurried down into the garage. The blue Olds was there in its stall. I was badly scared now. I ran back to the front door, found the manager’s number, and buzzed it.

  He answered. I went in and ran up the stairs to the second floor. The apartment was 203. I rang the bell. He opened and looked out. He was a big, relaxed guy holding a can of beer. “What can I do for you?” he asked.

  “It’s Miss Patton, in 703,” I said. “She doesn’t answer the phone or the buzzer. I wondered—”

  He took a sip of the beer. “Mayb
e she’s not home. That happens.”

  “Her car’s in the garage. And she didn’t answer last night, either. Look, I’m a friend of hers, and I’m worried. How about going up with me and having a look?”

  “All right.” Then he regarded me doubtfully. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

  “Come on,” I said impatiently.

  He got a key and we took the elevator. The morning paper was still lying in front of her door. I didn’t like the looks of that, either. I waited, dreading what we might see, while he inserted the key and pushed the door open. He cocked his head as if he were listening for something. Then I heard it too. It was a typewriter. It sounded like a kid tearing past a picket fence with a stick.

  “Friend,” he said, “take my advice and duck—”I paid no attention. I shoved past him and ran across the living room to the door of her study. It was thick with drifting layers of cigarette smoke, and she was sitting before the typewriter dressed in the Capri pants and not much of anything else except a white shirt that wasn’t even buttoned. The white hair was rumpled and her face looked tired, but her eyes were blazingly alive. There were sheets of paper all around her on the rug and in the wastebasket and on the stand on both sides of the typewriter.

  “Suzy!” I said. “Thank God, you’re all right.”

  She made an erasure and started banging the machine again. “What the hell do you want?” she asked, without even looking up.

  I stared at her. “I’ve been worried sick about you.”

  “Oh?” she said. She picked up one of the pages, read something she had written and studied it, frowning.

  “Miss Patton,” the manager called uncertainly from the front door. “Do you know this man?”

  She looked up then, for the first time. “Oh, it’s you.” She waved an arm at the manager. “Yes, I know him. But what the hell is this, the middle of US 1? Or Times Square on New Year’s Eve? You’d think on the seventh floor of an apartment building with the door locked—”