A Killer is Loose by Gil Brewer Page B

Through all the pain in my head, I heard him say, “Steve, you shouldn’t do that. Don’t act that way. I know you get excited, but there’s no reason for you to take it out on your pal, Steve.”
    Somebody called up on the street.
    “Hey, there! Anybody down there?”
    Neither of us said anything. I went toward him and he was finishing loading the clip. I couldn’t move fast on the muck bottom, my feet kept sliding, and I heard myself sobbing with the effort and the failure. Sobbing with him standing there, now, putting the box of shells into his pocket and standing there and slapping the clip back into the gun.
    “Come on, Steve,” he said. “There’s some stairs, right there.”
    We were by a pier and I kept hearing myself sobbing. The car was nose down over the sea wall, with the right side hanging over the water, the right front wheel propped up on the wooden pier. If we’d missed the pier we would have gone all the way in. Damn the pier.
    “Come on, pal. Up the stairs.”
    Angers pushed me to the stairs and I started up. I was still plenty foggy from being hit with the gun. He waited till I was on the pier, then he said, “Go ahead, pal. Walk out onto the street, there.”
    He was a wise bird now, all right. His eyes were kind of shining down there, where he stood in the water. He was plenty wise now. I stepped away from the head of the wooden steps, and he came up fast, watching me.
    “You shouldn’t have done that, Steve,” he said.
    A man walked toward us on the street. We stepped over the sea wall into the street. The man came on toward us. He was in his shirt sleeves, holding a pipe in his hand. He was probably around sixty years old, with a very anxious face. He looked over his steel-rimmed glasses and said, “You men all right? That was a bad one.”
    “Listen,” I said. “Go back home, quick.” I was reeling.
    “Been drinking, eh?” the man said.
    “The blueprints,” Angers said.
    The man said, “I heard the racket there and you tore up considerable of my lawn, I reckon. This is a bad one. A wonder you weren’t killed.”
    “Please, go home,” I said.
    “Have to report this,” he said. “You can use my phone.”
    “Please,” I said. Angers was standing there, looking at the man.
    “Didn’t hurt the car much, though, I don’t reckon,” the man said.
    Angers started for the car. The man turned and touched Angers’ arm. “You all right?” the man said.
    Angers turned, without pausing, and shot him in the chest. Just once he shot him, and kept on walking over to the car. The old man collapsed on the brick pavement. His pipe jumped from his hand and rattled along to the sea wall and I heard it go
plunk
into the bayou water.
    • • •
     
    “They’re all right,” Angers said.
    I looked over at him. He was standing there beside the car with his beloved blueprints in his hand. The big roll of paper was all right.
    “Come on,” he said. “We’ll never get this car out of here.”
    “Maybe we can,” I said, stalling.
    “Come on.” He came over by me, glanced once at the man lying in the street. A car came along, coming fast from the other direction. “Cross the street, pal.”
    We went across the street in front of the car.
    “Keep walking,” Angers said. “There’ll be a crowd of people around here in a little while.”
    We slogged along across the road, up over the curb, and started across a lawn. Our clothes were soggy and they stank of fish and muck. Every step I took, my shoes squished. We kept on moving.
    The car out there had stopped and a man said, “Somebody’s there in the road. An accident.”
    I glanced back. A man and woman left their car and went over to where the old fellow was lying in the road. I wondered if he was dead. He probably was.
    “Hey, you, there!” the man called. He’d seen us.
    “Keep walking,” Angers said softly. “Don’t turn around again and don’t stop, pal.”
    “Hey, you guys going to phone in about this? Better