Man on the Run

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.

I grabbed up the marlinespike and attached the lock on the suitcase, inserting the point and prying upward. It was tough, but after a couple of minutes it gave up and flew open. I felt a little flutter of excitement as I looked in; this one seemed more promising. Right on top, wrapped in a silk scarf, was a German Luger. Beside it was a whole deck of filthy pictures, held together by a rubber band, and three letters postmarked Havana, Cuba, and addressed in a feminine hand to Sr. Ernie Boyle. Under them was a photograph of a man and a girl at a table in a sidewalk cafe. There was something vaguely familiar about the man. I was just lifting it out for a closer look when I tensed up, listening. Somebody had come aboard. I heard his footsteps as he walked aft along the deck above me. I crossed to the lamp in two quick strides, and blew it out.

The beam of a flashlight probed downward from the deck, splashing against the steps of the companion ladder. I leaned back against the bunks on the starboard side. He came on down the ladder. I could see nothing but the big black shoes and the light, pointed downward. He stopped at the bottom, some twelve feet from where I was standing and started to raise the light. It swept along the bunks on the port side and then came abruptly to a stop when it hit the jimmied suitcase. I could hear his breath suck in. “Ladrones!” he said, and began to curse in Spanish. The light swung and splashed against my face.

I dived for him, but the light blinded me, and he was too far away. When I got there I met nothing but a fist, which crashed just under my ear, and the railing of the companion ladder. I plowed into the railing with my left shoulder and for a moment my whole arm went numb. I fell back against the bulkhead, straightened, and reached out for him. The light splashed against my face again, and at the same time the fist smashed against my jaw. I fell forward this time, grappling wildly with my arms, and caught him by the shirt. It tore. I swung and managed to hit him on the side of the face, but I was off balance and there was no power behind it. Then the light swung in a short, chopping arc, something smashed against my head, and I fell.

A whole ocean of pain was sloshing around in my head, and when I tried to move, something was holding me and somebody was tugging at my feet. I opened my eyes. There was light in the room now; the kerosene lamp was burning again. I was lying on my right side in one of the bunks with my arms twisted behind me. My hands were tied. I looked down at my feet.

He was a big Mexican or Cuban kid of twenty-two or so, dressed in a leather jacket and dungarees. He was muttering to himself in Spanish and tying my feet to the stanchion of the bunk. He had broad shoulders and a square and rather pleasant face, but when he looked at me his eyes were filled with nothing but anger and contempt.

“Ladron!” he spat at me.

“You speak English?” I asked.

He checked the knots in the line, and straightened. “Sure, I speak English, Jack. And how low can you get? Coming on a pot like this to steal from the crew.”

“I didn’t come here to steal,” I said.

”Of course not,” he said contemptuously, and turned away. He started up the companionway: “Where are you going?” I asked.

“Where else?” he said. “Out to the phone to call the cops.”