Masters of Noir: Volume 3

Attack by Ed McBain writing as Hunt Collins

I stood in the open door of the cabana, the sullen swish of the waves on the beach behind me. The moonlight filtered in through the louvred windows, throwing long, grasping bars on the floor and on the bed. I stared at the bed, and for a second I thought it was the moonlight playing tricks with my eyes.

She lay there like a crooked stick, her long blond hair fanned out on the pillow behind her. I recognized the hair, and that was all. The rest of her was a broken travesty of Eileen, not the Eileen I’d left ten minutes ago. Ten minutes. A short time. Barely time enough to pull the speedboat up onto the beach into the protection of the cove. Just time enough to do that and then hurry back to the cabana.

Just time enough for a murder.

I didn’t look at her again. I walked straight past the bed, stopping beside the dresser. I moved quickly, like a man in a dream, my body performing actions while my mind raced far ahead. The .38 was in the top drawer where I’d left it. I took it out now and felt the strong feel of the Walnut grip in my palm. Then I left the cabana.

He’d left a clear track in the wet sand. His footprints were large, and they ploughed deep into the sand. I tried to picture him as I followed the prints. A big guy. Muscular, maybe. Wild-eyed. Crazy enough to have beaten Eileen’s face into...

I felt my fingers tighten around the grip of the gun. A fresh breeze was blowing off the ocean, and it played with my hair, flirted with the back of my neck. My feet whispered in the sand as I followed the tracks. Far off, down near the shelter of the rocks, I saw the red and white speedboat bobbing gently on the swells, her bow up on the sand, her stern squatting in the water.

I looked down at the footprints, suddenly realizing where they were heading. The sweat broke out on my forehead in a fine, gritty film. The speedboat!

I saw him then.

The moon suddenly popped from behind a cloud, spilling onto the beach like molten silver, spreading over the silent dunes, catching the man in a noose of glittering moonlight.

He was as big as I thought he’d be. He wore white flannels that flapped in the wind as he ran heavily up the beach. He almost looked comical, a big balloon of a man with his clothes flapping around him like a circus clown’s. He looked funny except for the glint of gun-metal in his right hand.

Except for that, and the fact that it wasn’t funny at all. None of it. Not one bit of it.

He turned abruptly, glanced nervously at the water, and then looked back at me. I stopped dead. The wind carried a fine spray over the sand, slapped it against my face. I tasted salt on my lips and squinted across the beach, waiting.

“Go back!” he shouted.

His voice was strange, or maybe it was just the wind that lifted it and carried it to me in a rush. It was thick and rasping, and somehow raw.

“I’m coming after you, you bastard!” I called. The wind lifted my voice, drowned it beneath the greater roar of the waves striking the long finger of sand.

“No!” he shouted. “Go away.”

He turned and started running up the beach again, heading for the speedboat at the water’s edge. I stood where I was, crossing my left arm in front of my chest, resting my gun hand on it and taking careful aim. I pressed the safety catch, and then I squeezed the trigger. An orange lance of flame licked out at the darkness. The explosion was loud in my ears, and I smelled the stench of cordite, heard the slug as it whistled across the beach. A little burst of sand ploughed up about two feet away from his heels. He dropped to the sand and whirled, the gun glinting in the light of the moon.

I saw a sudden streak of fire, and then I heard the loud bellow as the gun thundered in his fist. I dropped down, my cheek against the cold moistness. I thought fleetingly of Eileen, of the warmth of her, the way I had drowned myself in the softness of her mouth. The thought sent a hard knot to my stomach, and I got to my knees and began crawling forward.

I heard a faint scraping, and then the sound of an engine coughing into life. The man laughed shrilly as I jumped to my feet and started running toward the speedboat. I heard the motor catch and then hum as he pulled the throttle wide. I had crossed the beach now, and I plunged into the icy water, the waves springing up around my knees in a numbing embrace. I leaped forward, the gun in the waistband of my trousers, both hands clawing for the stern of the boat. The boat seemed to fight me. It pulled away in a sudden spurt of energy, tearing skin from the palms of my hands. I reached out again, getting a good grip this time, pulling myself over the fantail as the boat headed out from the shore, moving at an oblique angle toward the breakwater.

I dropped down into the stern-sheets and reached for the .38 at my waist.

“No,” his voice said.

I looked up. He was holding a .32 on me, a small gun in a fat fist. He held the fist steady, his fat forefinger barely squeezing into the trigger guard. The moon came out then, slipping from behind the cloud, lighting his face. He had practically no chin. His face seemed to end with flabby lips that were tilted now in a vacuous smile. Above his lips, his nose sat like a steel rivet, compact, hard.

I looked at his eyes, then, and they gleamed dully in the moonlight, the pupils wide and staring. A shudder ran down my spine like a drop of ice water. I looked down at the gun again, and then up to his eyes. He was hopped to his hairline. That crazy little light danced in his eyes, the dream-light, the gleam that spelled drug addict. He was snow blind, and I could see the puncture marks on the layers of fat that hung from his arms now.

He kept smiling, his mind toying with a half-remembered idea, his eyes staring at me with a false look of concentration.

“What now?” I asked. He was half-turned away from me, one huge paw clutching the wheel of the boat.

“Don’t talk,” he said. He said it quickly, as if I’d stepped on a dream he was having.

“Why’d you kill her, you lousy bastard?”

“Her? Kill? Oh, yes... yes...” He kept smiling, and I wanted to reach out and wrap my fingers around the folded fat on his throat.

“I saw her through the window,” he said. “I was walking by and I saw her through the window.” His eyebrows lifted slightly, and he grinned, as if he were sharing an obscene joke with me. “She was undressing. She took off her clothes and hung them on the chair, and I watched her and...”

“Shut up!” I said. In a minute, I was going to jump him and tear out his throat. One minute. One min....

“She was nice. A piece, you know? She was standing there without a stitch, and that’s when I went in. Man, she was nice. I grabbed her, and I began feeling her and...”

“Shut up!” I screamed. “You lousy filthy bastard!” My fingers itched, and I wanted to pound my fists into his face. I took a step forward, and the gun came up, leveling on my chest.

I looked at the gun, and then I looked out over the bow of the boat, saw the rocks ahead. I backed away, not saying anything. I shifted my eyes back to his face, and they didn’t change position as he went on speaking.

“She fought me. You dig that? She fought me!” He acted surprised, and I thought of Eileen under his clutching fingers and the hate boiled up inside me. The bow sliced through the waves, heading toward the rocks on the breakwater. He didn’t turn around. He kept looking at me and smiling, the gun pointed at my chest.

We hit the rocks with a splintering crash, and my gun was out of the waistband almost before we struck. He screamed and tried to turn the wheel, and then he remembered he had a passenger aboard. He whirled rapidly as the boat tossed to starboard, the .32 coming up automatically, the crazy light still in his eyes. The smile had vanished from his face now, and his lips were drawn tight across his teeth. I let him bring the .32 all the way up.

I fired then, and the gun flew out of his hand as the bullet struck it. I saw bone splinters pierce his skin, saw the blood suddenly appear in the palm of his hand like a squashed tomato.

I was breathing hard. I took a step closer to him, and he backed up against the wheel, terror in his eyes. “All right,” I said. “All right.”

I fired again, right at his face. He brought his hands up an instant after the bullet smashed the bridge of his nose. I kept saying, “All right, you bastard, all right,” and I kept yanking on the trigger, the .38 bucking in my hand, the blood bursting out of his eyes, spilling from his mouth. I kept firing until the gun was empty, and his face was a wet sponge that splashed against the deck as he toppled forward.

He was lying in the bottom of the boat when I left him, his white flannels dripping with red. I walked back on top of the breakwater, finally reaching the beach, and padding across the wet sand to the cabana.

She lay on the bed while I packed. She lay very still.

I put the .38 back into its holster, and then I took my police shield from the drawer and shoved it into the suitcase beside the gun. The boys would be surprised to see me back so soon. I was supposed to have two weeks. They’d be surprised.

I didn’t bother taking any of my things out of the drawer. I just snapped the lid of the suitcase shut and looked at the writing scrawled across the top.

Just Married, it said.

I stared at it until it began to blur. I looked over at Eileen just once more, and then I left the cabana.