I wandered away from the car and Andy and the assistant, and made my way out of the circle of fishermen and police who had come up to hear and watch the man with the string tie. I went down to the water a little ways along the dock.

A big, split beam was set into the gravel. Below, sludge, thick and dull, slopped the rocks. I walked along the beam, looking down.

It was floating near a piling. A muddied island, with four small islands around it, its back bobbed in the oil, wood chips, and algae. The head must have been hanging straight down—if it still had one.

It bumped the pile, floated a few inches away, was carried in, and bumped again. I watched it awhile. Then I looked back at the crowd.

Four policemen were circling the gathering.

One was Whitey.

He glanced at me, saw I was watching him—suddenly he left the others, with a gesture to keep on going, and came over. “Hey, boy.” He nodded, put his hand on my shoulder and said, real quiet: “Look, I don’t got time to mess with you now. But after they finish up with this thing, if they don’t put me on no special detail—” His pale eyes flicked back to the other policemen, then swiveled, like small lights, to me—“I’ll meet you right there where we was foolin’ around before, okay? Then I’ll really throw some dick into you and you can have you a—”

While he was talking, I looked down at the water.

Whitey glanced too—and his eyes got bigger, and brighter; suddenly, they got real small. Then they opened up again. “Jesus—!” He dropped his hand. Three times as loud, he said: “Oh my God …!” Then he whirled, calling: “I found it! Hey, I found it, right here!”

People in the crowd turned.

About six of them hesitated, then—one was the nigger orderly with the shaved head and the round glasses—started over.

From the barge, the gray-haired man in the rumpled suit called: “What you got?”

“I found the goddamn baby!”

The whole crowd started for us. Other cops were coming too. People reached us, pushed around us. In the crowd, the director was making large semaphore gestures at the assistants, who were trying to keep the cables from underfoot. The man with the string tie was coming forward too, talking into his mike the while. But you couldn’t hear him because other people were shouting too much. A lot of niggers got in my way and somebody else—it was the white orderly; I looked down and saw his red socks flash below his jean cuffs—pushed me back.