by Ed Gorman
Nona, his secretary, had told him there was a woman to see him before she fled for lunch. Radio station WYHA was broadcasting live over the noon hour in celebration of the warm, exuberant seventy-degree weather the city of Prescott, Illinois was experiencing. If you gave a quarter to the bond drive you were eligible to win $25 of free clothes at Maurer’s Department store. Nona won stuff. All the time. There was almost something supernatural about it.
“Well, if you’re in a hurry, we can talk right here.” The Mayor’s Office of Community Relations was a recent development. Prescott was a quiet, conservative town ninety miles due west of Chicago. Until six months ago. That was when the U.S. Government decided to construct a boot camp on the northern outskirts of the town. The population now included 8,000 mostly young recruits who had to know, given the headlines, how many Americans were dying in this year of 1942. So they pursued girls, liquor and other assorted pleasures with a desperation that sometimes became violent.
The local citizens had so many complaints about the Army base that the Mayor, who hoped to win re-election in two weeks, created this office and manned it with a man he knew he could trust as both investigator and negotiator. He was the liaison between the community and the camp. He couldn’t offer Delancy his old job back— department rules didn’t allow for a crippled cop—but this was the next best thing. He had also seen to it that the request for Delancy’s private investigator’s license had passed through quickly. As a private investigator, Delancy had certain legal privileges that helped him do his job.
“My name is Beth Hewitt, by the way. And I’m afraid you may not like hearing what I have to say.”
“Well, why don’t you say it and we’ll see how it goes.”
“Your police department is either corrupt or stupid. Either way, they’ve let my daughter’s killer go scot free.” Some of her quiet appeal disappeared in the taut and angry look of her face. “And if you won’t help me, then I’m going directly to my uncle.”
“Is that somebody I’d know?”
“Oh, I think so, unless you’re as stupid as everybody else in town. He happens to be the governor of this state.”
2
“They’re out there again,” Donna Wainwright said.
“I know. I saw them when I walked down the hall,” Laura Tierney said. “I’m just glad I don’t have windows in this office so I don’t have to look at them all day.”
Donna, a heavy woman given to black business suits, touched long fingers to her attractive face. “My face is still burning.”
“From what?”
Laura Tierney ran Safe House, a former two-story hospital that had been converted into a shelter for the runaway kids who had crowded the town as soon as the army base went into operation. Safe House was always overcrowded with teenagers who’d left homes and school because they’d bought into all the myths about army towns. They would find wealth, excitement and sex. Not a thought to what might happen if it didn’t work out that way. Not a thought to what the future might bring.
What virtually all of them found was danger, venereal disease, poverty and despair. Many of them turned to prostitution to survive. And about ten percent of them killed themselves. The police had recently arrested a twelve-year-old for selling her wares in the area of the city known as the Zone.
When they’d run out of hope, they came to Safe House. Laura immediately contacted their parents. Sending the kids back home— even the eighteen-year-olds who were technically old enough to make their own decisions—was always the first choice. But for those whose home situations had been intolerable—Laura had been shocked by the number of incest stories the girls had told her—Laura tried to place them in home situations here in Prescott. A good share of parents were lonely for children—theirs being overseas fighting a war.
“So why is your face still burning?” Laura said.
“One of the picketers said I was a disgrace for working here. You know, with you.”
“You mean ‘Satan’s Mistress?’ “ Laura laughed.
“You think it’s funny?”
Donna was perfect as a counselor for a certain kind of teenager, one who thrived on daily melodrama. Donna’s office was rarely without a soap opera playing on the radio in the background. She loved emotional problems the way Mr. Bela Lugosi loved blood in his role as Dracula.
“If they give you any more guff, Donna, just remind them about the statistics the county health board put out this morning.”
“Good?”
“Venereal diseases reported in the 15–21 year old category down twelve per cent last month. So you can tell them for me—or I’ll tell them myself—that I’m very glad I did what my cousin did in Akron, Ohio.”
Her cousin Tina, who ran a similar shelter in Akron, was so appalled at the rate of VD among teenagers that she asked for and got permission to purchase prophylactics at bulk rates and to make them available everywhere teenagers hung out.
The problem was nationwide. And it wasn’t just runaways and street girls who were driving the rate up. A lot of “good girls” felt it was their patriotic duty to give themselves completely (as all those Frankie Sinatra songs always sang about) and not worry if their parents approved or not.
Well, maybe the girls only gave themselves to two or three boys but the young soldiers might have slept with more than a dozen bar girls who weren’t careful at all. Venereal disease was now such a problem that even the Red Cross made prophylactics available to soldiers and town kids who wanted them.
“They’re going back to the city council tomorrow,” Donna said. “And try again to get it overturned.”
“I’m assuming that the council will split the way it did last time, with one vote in our favor.”
“I hope so. It’s scary to think what’ll happen otherwise.”
Laura was glad her phone rang. She was tired of the subject. She was a controversial figure in this community— “A pretty, spoiled rich girl who thinks she can push everybody around” a city councilman was quoted in the paper recently—but she was willing to put up with the scorn and mockery—even the occasional death threat—if it would help not only her own charges but the young people of the whole community.
Donna waved goodbye as Laura picked up the phone, her clear blue eyes resting on the framed photograph of her husband David. It was a head-and-shoulders shot of a sleek, blond young man in a captain’s uniform. He was presently island-hopping as the Americans started making fragile headway against Japanese strongholds.
Before she had time to think about it, the voice on the other end of the phone gave her a momentary jolt of pure pleasure—somebody she was happy to hear from. Then came the realization of what the voice symbolized—her doing something of which she was ashamed—and she was not happy to hear the voice at all.
Nick Delancy said, “This is a business call.”
She hesitated.
Which gave him time to say— “I’m sorry about the other night. It was all my fault and it won’t happen again. We have a good working relationship and that’s all it’ll be from now on.”
“It was my fault as much as yours, Nick. But let’s talk about something else.” She felt flushed, anxious.
“Good enough. I wondered if I could swing by and look at your file on Sarah Hewitt and maybe talk to a few of her friends at the shelter.”
“Sarah? You mean the police are actually going to investigate it? That would be something.”
He could understand her anger, even though he knew it was misplaced. The Prescott crime rate had quadrupled since Pearl Harbor. Between home grown teenage thugs, runaway teenage thugs and young soldiers who seemed determined to get into serious trouble— maybe court martial and prison were preferable to facing the war— crimes such as assault, car theft, mugging, breaking and entering, robbery, arson and murder had overwhelmed the local cops. At the moment, one of his former detective pals had told Delancy, they were dealing with twelve open homicide cases.
“They do their best.”
/>
“Not in Sarah’s case, they didn’t.”
“Well, I’m going to start my own investigation. But I’ll need your help. Would you round up a few of her friends? An hour be all right?”
She reached for the small green roll of Tums that was always on her desk. The best friend a harried runaway shelter manager ever had.
“An hour. Fine. See you then.”
3
“Hi, Nick,” Donna Wainwright said.
“Hi, Donna. I’m supposed to see Laura.”
“Afraid she had to go to this meeting downtown all of a sudden. But we found two girls for you to talk to.”
Delancy tried to read her pleasant face for the real truth but Donna was too practiced at looking sweet and innocent.
I’m getting out of here before he gets here, Donna. I’d appreciate it if you’d cover for me.
He was pretty sure that something like that had been said. He was also pretty sure that Donna would have pushed a little to find the reason for the tension between Laura and Nick who had, after all, been working together effectively for more than a month. But Laura would give nothing away. In the propaganda movies where Japanese soldiers tortured Americans, many of the Yanks (excepting the hero, of course) gave up their secrets. But it would take weeks of round the clock brutalization to get anything out of Laura. She was that private.
“Well, fine, let’s get to it then,” Delancy said, hoping his tone didn’t sound contrived. He wanted to keep his disappointment secret.
The ground floor of the shelter was set up for relaxing, studying and taking meals. There were three table model radios, a junior-size pool table, a ping pong table and small tables for playing checkers and chess. The offices were also on this floor.
Bunkbeds took up two large rooms on the next floor, one room for girls, the other for boys. These were at opposite ends of the upper level. Each room had its own toilet and shower facilities. A youth counselor from Mt. Prescott College sat in the area separating the rooms from ten o’clock till five o’clock. He did homework.
This time of day, most of the residents were out working at various jobs or getting themselves ready to return home. The place had echoes of its hospital days, ghosts; the smell was of tobacco and soap with disinfectant.
Donna led Delancy to the counselor’s desk and said, “I’ll be right back.”
She returned moments later with two girls. One was dressed in bobby-soxer fashion—white anklets, black penny-loafers, blue skirt, white blouse with Peter Pan collar, blue barrette in her blonde hair. She looked crisp, friendly, bright. She looked like the daughter of the middle class.
The other girl was more of the street-girl stereotype. Shorn hair, a small face set permanently on belligerent, a sweatshirt that revealed ample breasts for somebody who was probably fourteen or so, and a pair of dungarees that were the tightest fit Delancy had ever seen.
Once the girls were seated at the table, Delancy took out the type of nickel notebook he used back when he was a detective.
“By the way, Nick,” Donna said, pointing to the blonde girl. “This is Angie Coleman and her friend is Mike Foster. Mike for Michelle.”
“Mike,” snapped the girl.
“Mike, it is,” Donna said. “So I’ll leave you alone. I need to get back downstairs and answer the phone, anyway.”
When Donna was gone, Mike said, “I shouldn’t be here anyway. I don’t like cops.”
“I’m not a cop.”
“The same thing. Some kind of invest-igator. And I couldn’t stand Sarah. She was a lying bitch.”
“I kind of don’t blame her for saying that,” Angie said. “She took Mike’s boyfriend.”
“He wasn’t my boyfriend. I never liked him all that much.”
“Is that why you told me you were in love with him?”
“How about you, Angie, did you like her?”
She thought a moment and then pointed to Delancy’s package of Old Golds on the table. A book of matches sat on top of the smokes. He shoved them both to her.
After she got her own cigarette going, he pushed pack and matches to Mike.
Angie said, “She pretty much thought she was better than everybody else. But I think she was like her mother. Kind of insane. Her mother had been in and out of mental asylums a lot ever since she was a teenager. And she wasn’t real nice to anybody.”
Mike said, “Except for boys. She was always nice to them. If they had a girl friend.”
“It was kind of a game with her. She did that with a couple of the boys I liked here at the shelter.”
These two were supposed to be friends of the dead girl’s. Her enemies must really be bitter.
“Did she talk much about why she ran away?”
Mike shrugged. “Because her dad killed himself and she blamed her mother. She hated her mother. She said she’d do anything to get even with her.”
“Any idea why she blamed her mother?”
Angie started to say something and then stopped herself. “You’re really not supposed to speak ill of the dead.”
“I’m glad she’s dead.”
“No, you’re not, Mike,” Angie said. “Not deep down you’re not.”
“You were going to say something, Angie,” Delancy said.
She glanced at Mike then looked at Delancy. “Her mother was having this affair with a family friend and she wouldn’t stop. Sarah said her father couldn’t take it anymore.”
A curly male head edged into the frame of the doorway then jerked back before Delancy could see much of it. Somebody listening.
He decided to go on with the girls as if he wasn’t aware of the kid at the door.
“How about boys Sarah saw around here? Anybody special she talked about?”
“She must’ve been seeing somebody who had some money,” Mike said. “She bought a lot of clothes.”
“She looked older than seventeen.” Angie inhaled deeply, let out a stream of smoke blue in the stream of sunlight through the window. “When she got dressed up, she didn’t even get carded at bars.”
“Any idea which bars she went to?”
“Out in the Zone,” Mike said.
“She had this ribbon once,” Angie said. “Some kind of military insignia. Probably from an Army jacket or something. As soon as I saw it on her bunkbed, she grabbed it and hid it. She was in one of her moods so I didn’t ask her any more about it.”
“Could you describe the insignia?”
“It was just a gold bar in the middle of this patch.”
An Army second looie.
He had already filled a page and a half of his notebook.
“Anybody else you can think of?”
“That guy in that Packard, remember?”
“Oh, right, Mike. This big new Packard pulled up about half a block down from the house here. We were just coming back from the picture show when we saw it. You don’t see a lot of cars like that in this neighborhood.”
“How do you know Sarah was in it?”
“She got out of it then leaned back in and talked to the driver for a few minutes. They were having an argument. Sarah got pretty loud and nasty when she was mad.”
“Could you hear anything of what they said?”
“No,” Mike said. “Then she slammed the door and the Packard flipped a U turn and took off real fast.”
“Then she walked up to us and said not to say anything about the Packard to Laura because Laura would start asking questions.”
“Did either of you mention this to Laura or to the police after they found Sarah’s body?”
“Not until now,” Mike said and for the very first time—national holiday—smiled. “You smoke my brand of cigarettes so I told you.” She was even a bit flirty.
“I’ve got a carton in the car,” he said. “So you can keep these.”
“Gosh, I don’t believe this.” Angie held the pack up to check out how many cigarettes remained. It was nearly full. With the war on, smokes were as precious a commodity as gasolin
e and meat.
“I might have to call you with some more questions but this is a good start.”
Angie laughed. “I feel like a stoolie in a Jimmy Cagney movie.”
Mike scowled at her friend. “Nothin’ funny about bein’ a stoolie. Nothin’ at all.”
The impulse was to jump up from his chair and move on the kid at the doorway. Surprise him. But the impulse died as soon as he stood up and the edge of his prosthetic leg bit into his flesh.
He put a finger to his lips so the girls wouldn’t give him away and he hobbled to the door as quickly as he could. The kid was running down the hall by the time Delancy reached the doorway. The kid’s feet slapped hard against the wooden floor.
“You know a curly black-haired boy, slim, maybe five-six, five-seven?” he asked the girls when he came back to the table.
“He was probably listening in,” Angie said. “His name is Dwight Abernathy.”
“He was real scared when the cops came,” Mike said. “A lot of the kids told the cops that he got into an argument with Sarah the night before she died. More stoolies. He’s a good kid, though.”
“He was really in love with her,” Angie said. “He used to write poetry to her. He found her diary once and wrote about twenty poems to her. She got really mad. She always hid her diary.”
“The police didn’t find it?”
Mike said, “But they couldn’t pin it on him because he had an alibi. Him and a couple of other kids went to a picture show and all the kids stuck up for him. And they couldn’t find the diary, either.”
Delancy got everything down in his notebook, thanked the girls and left.
4
Single working girls shared apartments —sometimes as many as a dozen girls in three rooms—because while one group was working, another group could be home sleeping. Or getting an early buzz on in one of the nightclubs.