River Girl

by Charles Williams

  He came in then with three highballs on a tray. “Hello, Jack,” he said, quite calmly, and I knew that if he intended bawling me out any more about running off that way he wasn’t going to do it in front of the girl. He was always an odd one; he was dangerous enough to kill you if the necessity for it ever arose, but there wouldn’t be any breach of good manners.

  We sat down and he got right to it. Lighting a cigar, he looked at me across the coffee table. “Don’t worry about Dianne,” he said, which meant we could talk freely in front of her.

  It seemed to me she had said her name was Dinah, but I let it go. “What happened?” I asked.

  “It’s your friend Abbie Bell. She’s in the hospital. In bad shape.”

  “What!” I put down the glass. “What happened to her?”

  “Some man jumped her with a knife and chopped her up pretty badly. She’s in serious condition; they think she has a chance to pull through, but nobody can see her yet.”

  “Who did it? Did you get the—” I caught myself, thinking of the girl.

  “That’s the funny part of it, and the part that’s got me worried. We’ve got him in jail, but we don’t know who he is or why he did it. No identification of any land on him, and as far as we can find, he hasn’t got a record.”

  “Was he drunk?”

  “No. Cold sober. And he shut up like an oyster when we arrested him. Not a word out of him.”

  “And now?” I asked.

  “It’s dangerous. If Abbie dies, there’ll be an awful stink, naturally, for allowing a place like that to operate. And the man’ll have to stand trial, of course. And it isn’t just what’s on the surface here that worries me. Something tells me there’s a lot more underneath.”

  “Who picked him up?” I asked.

  “Hurd.” Bud Hurd was the other deputy here in town. “It was about three this afternoon. The phone rang, and it was some Negro girl who works down there at Abbie’s. The maid, I guess. She was screaming her head off, not saying anything but, ‘Miss Abbie! Miss Abbie!’ over and over, so I shot Hurd down there to find out what the hell was going on. He said the place was a madhouse. The Negro girl and a white one were screaming out in the hall, and when he went in the room where the rest of the racket was, Abbie was folded up across the end of a sofa with her clothes half torn off and a cut down one arm and another bad one in the back. The man was still waving the knife and swearing, and when Bud came in he made a break for the door but Bud collared him and hit him once with the sap to get the knife away from him. He called the ambulance and they took Abbie to the hospital. We can’t get in to see her, and he won’t talk, so we don’t have any idea what it was all about.”

  “How about the girls?” I asked. Somebody should know what started it.

  “They had disappeared. I guess there was only the one white girl left there, besides the Negro maid, and they both lit out while Bud was getting the man calmed down. They didn’t seem to have taken anything with them.”

  “And they didn’t come back?”

  “No. Bud went back later and couldn’t find them.” I stood up. He looked at me questioningly. “You got any ideas?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “But I think the girls will come back, if their clothes are still there.”

  Dianne, or Dinah, looked at me across the rim of her glass, the reckless gray eyes alight with interest. “Yes,” she said, nodding. “They’ll probably come back now that it’s dark. Can I go too? I’d like to see the inside of one of those places.”

  “No,” Buford said shortly.

  She said nothing, but the eyes shifted, studying him thoughtfully, and then she shrugged. You got the impression she’d never spent a great deal of time in her life asking permission of anyone, or paying much attention to refusals.

  “I’ll be back in a little while,” I said, glad she wasn’t going, and anxious to get started.

  So far it was just a confused mess in my mind. I hadn’t had a chance to sort any of it out, and as I got in the car and started down there my mind was busy with it. I was sorry about Abbie, of course, and hoped she would pull through, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. And, of course, the main thing was trying to figure out what bearing it was going to have on what I was trying to do. On the surface of it, it would have none, for if I had any luck and found out what I hoped I’d find about Shevlin, I’d be gone tomorrow and they could have this load of grief all to themselves from now on. But when you looked at it again, it wasn’t quite that simple. With this thing flaring up and a grand-jury investigation a very real possibility, my disappearing the very next day was going to make the long arm of coincidence look as if it had been pulled out at the socket. I didn’t like it. And I wasn’t just running from a bribery charge now. If they got to sniffing around too much over the place where I’d disappeared, it would be Shevlin they’d find.

  The square was full of people joy-riding to escape the heat and heading for the movies. I shot down the side street and stopped the car a block away from Abbie’s. The beer joint was an island of light and juke-box noise, and beyond it the hotel was completely dark. A drunk came out of the saloon and lurched past me, headed across the street for the chili place, but there was no one else around. I went softly up the steps and opened the door, standing very quietly for a moment in the front room. Maybe the girl and the maid had already been there and gone. I could tell by turning on the lights and looking in the rooms upstairs to see if any clothes were left, but that would mean that if they started to come back now they’d see the light and run again. I was trying to make up my mind about it when suddenly I heard a footstep and the click of a switch in the hall on the second floor and I could see the reflection of light above the stairs.

  I went up them, trying not to make any noise, and had reached the top before I heard a sharp cry of fright, and the door to the room slammed shut. This left me in total darkness, for the light had been inside the room, but I could see the thin crack of it under the door and walked toward it. The door was bolted.

  “Who is it?” the girl inside cried out in fright. “Marshall,” I said. “Open up. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “Who?”

  “Jack Marshall. From the sheriffs office.”

  “I didn’t see anything! Honest, I didn’t.” I knew why she had run. She was afraid of being called as a witness in the trial in case Abbie died, and she didn’t like the idea. In her profession, she probably figured the less she had to do with the courts and police, the better off she was.

  I know,” I said. “I’m not trying to take you in as a witness. I just want to talk to you.”

  “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

  “You don’t. But you can’t get out as long as I’m standing here, so you might as well open up and see.”

  “All right,” she said hesitantly. I heard the bolt slide back, and pushed the door open.

  There was an open suitcase on the bed and she had just started to put her clothes in it. She stood near the dresser, still holding a pair of stockings in her hand, her face pale and the large brown eyes watching me uneasily. I suddenly remembered this was the room that boy’s clothes had been in.

  “You’re Bernice, aren’t you?” I asked, trying to calm her a little.

  “Yes. But I didn’t see anything down there. You don’t want me for anything, do you?”

  “No,” I said. I came on into the room. “Would you like a cigarette?”

  She took it and I lighted it for her. This seemed to ease her mind a little, and she sat down in the chair near the head of the bed, sitting up straight on the front edge of it as if she might fly away any minute. Her hands turned nervously in her lap and I wondered if she’d burn herself with the cigarette. She must have been around twenty-eight, not a very pretty girl, but with a rather docile, not too bright face, which must have been pleasant and good-natured when she wasn’t scared like this, and her eyes had something of the timidity and shy friendliness of an old dog’s. Her hair
had been very dark at one time and was now hopelessly fouled up in some shade between maroon and black as a result, apparently, of some attempt to dye it red.

  She saw me looking at it. “Miss Abbie thought one of us ought to be a redhead, so I told her I’d try it,” she explained bashfully. “It didn’t come out very good, did it?”

  I was conscious of wondering somewhat crazily if I didn’t have anything better to do than sit here and talk about this girl’s hair problems, but got hold of myself enough to make some sensible and halfway civil reply. Maybe it would get her to relax enough to tell me what she knew about that mess downstairs.

  “I think it looks all right,” I said. “But why red?”

  “Well, you see, there was already a blonde here and two brunettes, and Miss Abbie thought maybe a redhead would be nice.”

  Christ, I thought, what the merchandise in one of these places goes through. But I wanted to get back to what I’d come here for.

  “I guess you’re leaving,” I said, looking at the suitcase.

  “Yes.” She nodded. “Now that Miss Abbie’s hurt…” She looked down at her hands in her lap. “There won’t be nobody to run the place now. And I was afraid they’d arrest me for a witness. You’re not going to, are you?” The big eyes regarded me apprehensively. “You promised.”

  “No,” I said. “I just want to ask you a couple of questions. Did you see what happened down there? The first part of it, I mean.”

  “No,” she replied. Her eyes avoided me and kept looking down in her lap. I knew she was still afraid and was lying.

  “Well,” I said, “that’s too bad. But you go ahead packing and I’ll give you a lift up to the bus station with your suitcase. Have you got enough money to get away on?”

  “No-o, not very much,” she said hesitantly. “I don’t know for sure just how much a bus ticket to Bayou City is, but I might have enough. You wouldn’t like to—to—” We had started to be friends now, and she had a little trouble getting back suddenly to the strictly commercial plane.

  “No.” I shook my head. “But I’d be glad to lend you twenty or twenty-five if it’d help any. It’s kind of tough for a girl—”

  “You would?” She said at me with surprise.

  “Sure,” I said. I took out the wallet and removed a couple of tens from it and handed them to her. I can get it back from Buford, I thought. “Now, you go ahead with your packing.”

  I smoked a cigarette and watched her get her meager clothing together, making no more reference to the fight. She knows something, I thought, and she’s just about convinced I’m not going to get rough with her or take her in.

  In a minute she paused, looking down at the suitcase. “Thank you for the money. It was right nice of you. Not many people…”

  “It’s all right,” I said.

  She went on, still not looking at me. “I didn’t see much of that down there. It scared me. You know how us girls have to live. The least little thing, the police—”

  “Yes. I know. It’s a tough racket,” I said, waiting and trying not to seem impatient.

  “It wasn’t Miss Abbie’s fault.” She turned away from the suitcase and looked at me now, the big eyes very earnest and full of loyalty to Miss Abbie. Now we’re getting somewhere, I thought. “She kept telling him she didn’t know where the girl was.”

  “He was looking for some girl?” I prompted casually, trying not to be too insistent.

  She nodded. “Yes. He was looking for his daughter That young kid that was here, the one that talked so mean.”

  She didn’t have to draw me a picture. I knew what girl the man was looking for, and I knew just how quiet this whole thing was going to be the minute he decided to open his mouth.

  Fourteen

  There was a lot of it that didn’t make sense. How had he known the girl had been here? And why had he shut up like that the minute he was arrested? I lighted another cigarette and ground the old one out on the floor. “Look, Bernice,” I said, trying to be as offhand as possible, “why don’t you sit down and tell me all about it? You’ve got plenty of time before your bus leaves.”

  “All right.” She sat down on the bed and I stepped over and took the chair.

  “Try to remember what this man said,” I went on. “You were there when he came in, weren’t you?”

  She nodded. “Miss Abbie and me was both downstairs. This man come in the front door and looked at me first and then at her and said, ‘Are you Miz Bell?’ He wasn’t a very big man, kind of scrawny, with his face all brown and wrinkled up with the sun grins, like he was a farmer or something, but he was dressed up in his town clothes, a kind of shiny old black suit and tan shoes, but he didn’t have no tie in his shirt collar. It was buttoned, but didn’t have a tie. But that don’t matter, I reckon. I do remember, though, that he had a kind of wild look in his eyes. Anyway, when Miss Abbie said she was Miss Abbie, they went in that other room, the one in back of the lobby, a kind of parlor. At first I didn’t hear ‘em, because they wasn’t talking loud, and then his voice kept getting stronger. ‘Ain’t no use you lying,’ he kept saying over and over. ‘I know she was here.’ Then he was cussing and yelling something awful and I began to be afraid he’d have the police after us. ‘I’ll show you how I know she was here,’ he says. “This is how I know. Jest look at that and then tell me you ain’t seen her.’ Miss Abbie was beginning to yell by this time, and I could hear her telling him she didn’t have no idea where the girl was.”

  “Hold it a minute, Bernice,” I interrupted. “You couldn’t see them from where you were, could you?”

  She shook her head. “No. They was in that other room. The door wasn’t more than half closed, but I couldn’t see ‘em.”

  “Did you go back in the room after the police had been here and gone? I mean, after they took Abbie away?”

  “No. Kate and me run down the street. First, Kate called the shurf’s office, and then later, when the shurf got here, we run.”

  I nodded. It must have been a letter the man was showing Abbie. But where was it? If he’d had it on him when Kurd brought him in, they’d have found it when they searched him, when they took his money and belt and things. And Abbie couldn’t have been carrying it when she left, for she wasn’t in any condition to be carrying anything. Could it have been on the floor down there? If so, why hadn’t Hurd seen it?

  I stood up hurriedly. “You finish up your packing, Bernice,” I said, “and I’ll drop you off in town. I’m going down to that room and have a look.”

  I went down the stairs in the dark and along the lower hall until I found the door. When I was inside I struck a match to locate the light switch, closed the door, and snapped on the light. There wasn’t much evidence of a fight, but when I thought about it I realized there couldn’t have been any great struggle, as small as Abbie was. He’d just chopped her with that knife and she’d fallen over onto the sofa, and now she might be dying. There were blood spots on the rug, but they weren’t what I was looking for. There was no sign of a letter.

  I went across and looked at the sofa. There was blood on one end of it, on the arm. It sat in the corner, with the arm only about a foot from the other wall. Leaning over, I looked down. There it was. I squatted on the floor and reached an arm in after it and pulled it out. It was typewritten, on good stationery, and when I glanced down at the signature I could feel a draft blowing up my back.

  Dear Mrs. Waites:

  It is with extreme reluctance and with sadness and an almost overpowering sense of futility that I am forced to write you this letter. It appears that I have failed—at least so far—in all efforts to locate or get in touch with your daughter, and the only information I can pass along to you is that she has indeed been here in town but has now departed and I cannot even tell you where she has gone.

  It goes without saying that I was pleased to receive your letter—apart from the sad tidings that occasioned it, of course—for it is always gratifying to be remembered by the members of one’s for
mer congregations. And, believe me, my dear Mrs. Waites, I have left no stone unturned in my efforts to locate your daughter, for I believe that if I could find and talk to her I could help her to see the right way of life. You must believe me when I say that I know she is a good girl at heart, for I remember her quite well, and had I been able to get in touch with her I could have prevailed upon her to return home to you.

  But she is not here. I made arrangements to visit personally, with the police, of course, that establishment of which you spoke, that Miss or Mrs. Bell’s, and can assure you she is not there. I wish that I could also, with honesty, tell you that she had never been there, but I am afraid that this is impossible. I have reason to believe—from other sources, not from the police—that the information given you by young Mr. Elkins is quite accurate, though I can but wonder at his motives in bringing a sorrowing mother any such additional burden of sadness as that. I do agree, however, that you both were wise in keeping the information from your husband. I feel that he has been far too harsh with the girl in the past, and any further rashness on his part would only make a bad matter worse than it is now.

  Rest assured that I have not given up, that I shall continue to do everything in my power to get in touch with your daughter if she is in this part of the country at all, and that my prayers are with you both in this trying hour.

  With deepest regret that I have not been able to bring any better tidings, I am, as ever,

  Your obedient servant,

  RICHARD SOAMES

  I read it over again and folded it up slowly and stuck it in my pocket. Buford was going to be interested in seeing this. Well, I thought, he had an idea there was more here than showed on the surface.