Detective Story Magazine March 1953 by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Pulp
Publisher: Detective Story Magazine
Published: 1953-03-04T04:00:00+00:00

I went down to the Gulf Breeze Bar, but George Brown had gone. I ordered a beer, and after a while Frank, the barkeep, came back and said casually:

“Are you looking for another job or something, Tod?”

“Not that I know of. Why?”

“Well, there was a fella in here asking a lot of questions, like what kind of cop you were—when you were a cop—and like that. Sounded as if he was looking for a character reference or something. I told him as far as I was concerned you were a heluva nice guy. You’re not looking for a job?”

“Not me. Maybe they’re putting me in Who’s Who.”

Frank scratched his ear. “I didn’t like to say too much, Tod. After all, I didn’t know the fella, and he was pretty tough looking. Know what I mean?”

“I know just what you mean.”

I tried a few other bars, but wherever George Brown was, he wasn’t where I was.

I tossed and turned so much in bed that night that you could have called me Revolving McMahon. ‘It wasn’t Brown himself that bothered me; it was just that I couldn’t figure out where I had seen that face before.

I was down on my boat the next morning about eight, just kind of fooling around and hoping for a charter, when I saw Brown come walking down the dock carrying a rod and a tackle box. He was dressed in a T-shirt and shorts. His legs were heavy, but not fat-heavy, and the muscles on his thick arms looked like the kind of stuff they plate battleships with. He was scowling, as usual—or maybe it was that black bar of eyebrows over his eyes that made him look that way.

“I want to hire your tub for the day, Mac,” he said.

“That’s what it’s here for,” I said. “It’ll be forty bucks in advance. But I might as well tell you right now that there’s nothing out there but grouper. The kingfish run won’t start for another week or two.”

“I like grouper, whatever they are,” he said.

He jumped down into the cockpit and, for all his solid bulk, landed as light as a feather. He handed me a fifty and told me to lay in some ice and a case of beer.

When I got back with it, he had the engine hatch open and was looking down at my power plant.

“Twenty-four jewel movement,” I said. “At great expense, I had the bearings replaced with blue sapphires.”

He gave me a look that could have been quarried in Vermont. “What the hell are you talking about?” he demanded. “Let’s get out of here.”

No sense of humor. But neither had the Barkers, Dillinger, or Mad-Dog Coll.

I went in to the controls and loosened the .30-30 in its scabbard. I carried it to scare off sharks during the tarpon season.

He stood outside in the cockpit, watching the shore, until we were across the bay and through the pass into the gulf. Then he came inside and sprawled on the bunk, smoking a cigarette.

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