Gulf coast girl: original title, Scorpion reef - By Charles Williams Page 0,18

long. I began to be afraid of the barge. If I miscalculated and came up under it I might not get out. Then my head broke surface. I took two deep breaths and went under again. Maybe he was already beyond help. It had taken me too long to realize that with the tide ebbing he would have gone down at an angle and was lying somewhere back under the pier among that tangle of pilings.

I picked up the light and swam in with it. A whole jungle of pilings began to grow up around me. I thought of those barnacle-encrusted lateral timbers above me, and the bottom of the barge itself. If I lost my bearings I’d never get out. Then I saw him. He was lying beside a pillar with the side of his face in the mud as if he were asleep. I dropped the light and reached for him.

I was trying to get a grip on his shirt collar when I saw the plume of dark smoke drifting out of his head to thin out and disappear downstream in the tide. I reached around and put my hand on the back of it. It was like a broken bowl of gelatin.

He was dead. It was only the pressure that was making him bleed. He turned a little as I jerked my hand away, and settled on his back in the muck. His eyes were open, staring at me. I fought the sickness. If I gagged, I’d drown.

Four

I don’t remember coming out, or how I did it. The next thing I was conscious of was hanging to the wooden ladder on the side of the barge, being sick. I’d left him there. The police could get him out; I didn’t want to touch him.

I climbed up to the deck and collapsed, exhausted. I was winded, and water ran out of my clothes as from a saturated sponge. The cut places on my face were stinging with salt. My right hand hurt, and when I felt it with the other it was swollen.

I had to get out to the watchman’s shanty and call the police. Then I sat real still and stared at the darkness while the whole thing caught up with me. This wasn’t an accident I had to report. I’d killed him in a fight.

I hadn’t intended to, but what difference did that make? I’d hit him and knocked him off the pier, and now he was dead. It wasn’t murder, probably, but they’d have a name for it—and a sentence.

Well, there was no help for it. There was nothing else to do, and sitting here wasn’t going to bring him back to life. I started wearily to get up, and then stopped. The police were only part of it. What about Barclay? And the others I didn’t even know?

I’d already come to their attention by being with that girl. Now I’d killed one of their muscle men, and strangely enough just the one who’d wanted to beat me up and question me about Macaulay in the first place. They wouldn’t mind, would they? Forget it, Manning; it was just one of those things. Drop in and kill one of us any time you’re out our way.

Then, suddenly, I realized I wasn’t thinking of the police any more, or of Barclay’s mob of hoodlums, but of Shannon Macaulay. And the Ballerina. Why? What had made her come into my mind at a time like this? Of course, the whole thing was off now. Even if I didn’t get sent to prison, with those mobsters after me and convinced I had some connection with Macaulay I was no longer of any use to her.

No. I wouldn’t do it. The hell with reporting it. Sure, I regretted the whole thing. And those sightless eyes would probably go on staring at me for years. But I was damned if I was going to ruin everything just because some vicious little egomaniac couldn’t leave well enough alone. Leave him down there. Say nothing about it—I stopped.

How? Christiansen knew he was in here. There was no way out except right past the watchman’s shack. I was all marked up from the fight. In a few days, in this warm water, the body would come to the surface, with the back of his head caved in and bruises all over his face. I didn’t have a chance in the world. He’d merely come in here to see me, and had never come