River Girl

by Charles Williams

  “It might be, at that.” He sat down across from me on the sofa and looked at me. “You have any ideas? Don’t worry about Dianne. Where information is concerned, she’s a one-way street.”

  “Good,” I said. “I wasn’t worried about her.” Actually, I didn’t like this talking in front of her. Not that I didn’t trust her, or had any reason to believe she talked too much, for after all he trusted her and he was no fool, but in something like this you increase your risk a thousand times for every additional person who knows what you’re up to. However, there wasn’t much I could do about it. If I insisted on talking to him alone, he’d probably tell her all about it later anyway, and it would be the same except that that way she might be angry about it and more likely to talk.

  “All right,” I said. “We’re in the middle. We might as well admit it. Sometime tomorrow or the next day they’re going to start issuing subpoenas by the dozen to find out what’s been going on here. And you know as well as I do that that thing about the Waites girl is going to stir up a hell of a stink. It isn’t anything that can be hushed up, especially now that her father will probably go to the pen over it. And Abbie Bell won’t have any choice in the matter but to tell the truth when they get to her. She’ll be under oath, and she’s been around long enough to have heard of the perjury laws. ‘Why, I’ve just been paying the sheriff’s office for protection,’ she’ll say. ‘Doesn’t everybody?’”

  Buford nodded. “But we know that. Let’s hear something new.”

  “That’s right. But I just wanted to be sure we were both starting from the same place. Now, here’s where we split. As top man, you’re going to be the one they turn to for the answers. But balanced against that is the fact that I’ve been doing the collecting, at least for a long time now; that is, they’ve never actually given you anything direct. They gave it to me. And that’ll be what they testify. However, the people investigating the thing will know who got the money unless you’re able to show them otherwise. What you need is a goat.”

  He nodded again. “I’m still with you.”

  “However, you can’t make a goat out of me without my consent. It’s too easy to tell the truth on a witness stand, as we both know. But, on the other hand, if you had a goat who wasn’t here to take the stand, you might get by with it.”

  “In other words, if you ran.”

  “That’s right. And running is expensive.”

  He took the case out of his pocket, selected a cigar with extreme concentration, bit the end off it reflectively, and flipped the lighter. “How expensive, Jack?”

  “Five thousand,” I said. I looked across at him and then at Dinah. She had her elbows on her knees and was staring at my face almost enraptured.

  “I haven’t got that much,” he said. “But disregarding the figure for the moment, let’s look at this running angle. Just how long do you think you could keep from being caught? You ever look at yourself in a full-length mirror? Put you in any group of a hundred people and you’d stick out like a platinum blonde with two black eyes and a French poodle. You’re six feet two, or thereabouts, you weigh over two hundred, your face is as flat as an Indian’s and two shades darker, and you’ve got coal-black hair with a curl in it you couldn’t take out with a Negro’s anti-kink solution. You wouldn’t be away a week.”

  “Yes, I know,” I said. “But if they thought I was dead, they wouldn’t look very hard. Not in that way.”

  It startled him. He had the drink in his hand, and now he put it down and looked at me. “All right,” he said. “Let’s have it.”

  “There’s a man up there in the head of the lake where I was fishing the other day who’s wanted for murder and escape. I ran into him, thought his face was familiar, and tonight I looked him up in the files. You can verify this by looking yourself. His name is actually Lewis Farrell, but he’s going under the name of Shevlin now. He’s been on the run since 1943. Now, if I took one of the county cars tomorrow morning, drove down to the foot of the lake, rented a boat and motor, and went up the lake to arrest him and never did come out, what would be the natural conclusion after your searching parties found the abandoned boat floating around in some God-forsaken part of that swamp? Remember, this man is dangerous, and he’s wanted for murder, not petit larceny or crap-shooting.”

  I could see the idea take hold of him. “By God, that sounds all right, Jack.” And then doubt began to show itself in his eyes, and he shook his head. “It’s good, all right, but it’s going to look like too much of a coincidence. Two weeks ago, or even last week, it would have worked all right. But now—”

  “No,” I said. “You haven’t looked at all of it yet. I couldn’t be running from anything that’s going to happen here, because I don’t have the faintest idea anything is going to happen. Bernice is gone. Waites has never said a word because they told him not to, the letter is down there where he dropped it, and I’ve never seen it.”

  “Say, you’re right!”

  “Of course he’s right,” Dinah said excitedly. “Mr. Marshall, that’s good.”

  Buford thought about it for a minute. “But how about this Farrell or Shevlin, or whatever his name is? If he gets caught—”

  “There’s practically no chance of it,” I said, wondering just how much he was guessing now. “The man’s no fool, or he couldn’t have dodged everybody all these years. And if I get careless and let him give me the slip as I’m bringing him in, do you think he’s going to hang around for me to make a second run at him? He’ll be clear out of the country in less than a day. And then, when he reads in the papers that he’s being hunted for killing me, he will make himself scarce.”

  Buford nodded his head approvingly. “You’re right about that, too. That would take care of you, all right, but how about me? So I tell them that this deputy of mine who just got himself killed was a crook, that I’m sure he was because he’s not here to defend himself, so everybody has a good laugh.”

  “Yes I know,” I said. ‘There has to be more to it than your unsupported word. That can be taken care of.”

  “And there’s Louise. Do you think she’s going to hold still for it? Obviously, in a setup like this, you can’t take her with you, unless you expect the grand jury to believe that she was both clairvoyant and a practical believer in suttee. So she’ll be here, yelling her head off to get on the stand and deny that you ever took anything.”

  “Yes. I’m coming to that.” I leaned forward in the chair and looked at both of them, and particularly at Dinah. I didn’t know how she was going to take this. “But suppose Louise suddenly lost interest in defending my good name, if she has any anyway. Remember, she doesn’t know I turned any money over to you. All she knows is that I didn’t give it to her. Suppose it turned out that all this time I had been paying the apartment rent and buying Lincoln convertibles for a girl friend named Dinah.”

  Buford put down his drink. “Well, I’ll be damned!”

  But I was more interested in Dinah’s reaction. Her eyes met mine very gravely except for a flutter of humor far back in the depths, and she inclined her head. “Mr. Marshall was such a nice gentleman and I appreciate everything he did for me, and I’m sure I never had the faintest idea he was married.”

  Sixteen

  Buford went to the kitchen to mix another drink. After he had gone out the door I looked across at Dinah and said, “I hope you didn’t mind my suggesting that. I mean, there’s no reason you have to get dragged into it.”

  The gray eyes crinkled up in a smile. “I don’t mind at all. I’d love it.”

  She puzzled me a little. I hadn’t paid much attention to her, under the circumstances, with that thing this afternoon eating away at the back of my mind and the rest of it in a whirl from trying to cope with all this other mess, but still I was conscious of something a little disturbing about her each time she got mixed up in my thoughts. The different sides of her you saw didn’t add up to anything you would normally expect, and it made you wonder where she had come from an
d what made her operate. Small, chic, and smooth, completely feminine and disturbingly good-looking with the clear skin and slender face and the hair like polished copper rings, she looked like the classic example of what you would collect if you had the true collector’s spirit and plenty of money, but when you looked at her again you were aware of the vitality and the restlessness and the audacious spirit in the eyes. You got the idea in a little while that she took excitement the way some people took drugs, and you wondered how she liked this bird-in-a-gilded-gun-collection existence she was living now.

  Buford came back in a minute with the drinks. As he handed me mine he asked, “Where did you say this Shevlin lives, Jack? How far up the lake?”

  “It must be about twenty miles up from the store,” I said. “There’s not much of anything except swamp above where he is.”

  He looked thoughtful for a minute. “That’s over the county line, I think. Most of that swamp is in Blakeman County.

  I shrugged. “Well, it doesn’t make any difference. I don’t think that anyone will ever take the trouble to look into whether I went a little beyond the line without knowing it.”

  “No. I guess not. Well, here’s luck.” We drank, and then got back to the question of money. I asked for five thousand again. He insisted he couldn’t get hold of it on short notice, especially without attracting attention, but that he could put his hands on three thousand in a safe-deposit box at the bank the first thing tomorrow morning.

  “O.K.,” I said. That would do. After all, I had originally planned on having to do it on the two hundred odd I got for my fishing equipment.

  I stood up. “I’ll see you in the morning. It’ll be better if you bring up this Shevlin job in front of the others. But then, you know how to handle it.”

  He nodded. “Leave it to me.” He got up from the sofa and held out his hand. “I won’t be able to tell you good-by tomorrow, so here it is. Good luck.” He paused, and then went on quietly, with his eyes directly on mine. “And remember, I’m buying a one-way trip. Don’t come back, or we’ll both be in trouble.” It wasn’t until later that I knew just how he meant that.

  I didn’t go directly home. I was too restless to go back to the house. And in a way, though I didn’t want to admit it to myself, I knew that I was a little afraid. Ever since eleven o’clock this morning I had been going at a full run and my mind had been furiously intent on this problem, to the exclusion of everything else, but what was it going to be like when I lay down in the darkness with the problem solved and the movement stilled, with Shevlin putting his hand up to his chest in that terrible gesture and turning to look at me as his knees gave way under him and he started to fall? Was that what I would see when I tried to close my eyes? Or would there be nothing?

  I turned and drove out north of town, past the lake where we used to swim in summers a long time ago when I was a boy. The bathhouse was gone now and the lake was filled with weeds, but as I sat there in the car in the summer night I could see the dazzling sunlight and hear the splash and the laughter as the sixteen-year-old Jack Marshall did a belly-buster trying to jackknife off the high board to impress a girl, coming out of the water stinging and crimson from the impact. Circling through streets that were quiet now and almost deserted, I went past the high school and the football field, remembering October afternoons and the sweat and the dry taste in the mouth like copper pennies and the way the ground jarred, tilting crazily against your face. The old grammar school had burned, and there was a box factory there now, but I could see the corner where she had waited while I chased the dog, trying to get the paper from his mouth, and I could hear the school bell ringing, telling us we were late. I’ll never see any of this again, I but it’s all gone now anyway.

  It was midnight when I put the car in the garage and walked through the hot, dead air in the kitchen, hearing my footsteps echo through the house. I had changed into pajamas and was sitting on the side of the bed smoking a cigarette and wondering whether there would be any use in trying to sleep when it suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. I padded barefoot out into the kitchen and started looking through the refrigerator, finding nothing except a bottle of milk that had been there for two weeks and was sour. In a cupboard I came across a can of salmon. I opened it and had started to dig it out onto a plate when the telephone rang. I started a little, surprised at the unexpected sound. Buford, I thought. My God, has something else happened? I went down the hall to the stand.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Mr. Marshall?” It was a girl’s voice.

  “Yes. Who is it?”

  “Dinah Weatherford. I tried to get you a while ago, but I guess you were out. You haven’t gone to bed have you?”

  “No,” I said. “Not quite. Has something happened?”

  “Not exactly. But could I come over for a minute? There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

  “Why yes,” I said, wondering. “Do you know how to find the place?”

  “I think so. You’re sure it’s all right?”

  “Sure. I was just opening a can of salmon. I’ll find you a clean fork.”

  She laughed. “I’ll have you know I’m not a cat. Or am I?”

  She hung up and I went back to the bedroom and put on a dressing gown and some slippers. It was hot, and I turned on the electric fan in the kitchen, sitting under it with my elbows on the table. What did Dinah have on her mind? I wondered if Buford had asked her to tell me something.

  Glancing up at the clock, I saw it was nearly half past twelve and knew Doris would be at the hotel now. I thought of her alone and scared and tried to imagine what she would be doing at this moment. Was she trying to sleep, with a light on in the bathroom to drive away the dark? Was she standing at the window staring out into the streets at busses and neon signs and the hot bright lights of restaurant fronts and the people going home from shows, feeling the strangeness of it after a year of living burial in that swamp? Was she counting the hours, as I was? Tomorrow, and tomorrow night, I thought, and part of another day…

  I heard the car pull up and stop in front of the garage. When I went outside she had cut the lights, but I heard the car door slam shut and she came toward me out of the darkness in the yard. I followed her into the kitchen. She had changed into a white linen skirt and a Russian-looking sort of blouse with long, full sleeves quite tight at the wrists, and when she turned under the light and smiled at me her eyes were alight with that excitement I had seen in them before.

  “Let’s go into the living room,” I said. She shook her head. “This is all right. I just wanted to tell you something.”

  I pulled out a chair and she sat down at the table. I sat down across from her, watching the play of light against the burnished copper hair and the audacious tilt of the head. “What’s up?” I asked.

  “I think I can help you.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “How?”

  “I got to thinking about it after you left and after Buford went home. This thing you’re doing, I mean. It interested me.” She stopped, her elbows propped on the table and her chin resting on her hands, looking at me. “You interest me.”

  “Why?” I asked. I didn’t see what she was getting at.

  “Imagination. You shouldn’t have any, but you do. Imagination, plus the gambler’s instinct. Don’t you see?”

  “No,” I said. “All I see is a chump who got in over his head and is trying to wiggle out.”

  “Maybe you’re not looking from where I am.” She smiled, and then went on, “But let me tell you what I had in mind. Tonight when you told Buford what you were going to do, you didn’t make any mention of what was going to happen after you abandoned the boat there in the swamp. Have you thought about that? You don’t mind my asking, do you?”

  “No,” I said. “Not at all.”

  “Good. You realize, of course, don’t you, that you’re going to be afoot and that when you get out to the highway you won’t be able to flag a ride becaus
e whoever gives you a lift will remember you. And, naturally, you can’t take your car. Also, even if you walked to the next town, you wouldn’t dare get on a bus there. They might remember you.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I know that. It’s not very good, that part of it, but it can’t be helped.”

  Actually, I had an idea about it, but I didn’t see any point in telling her. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her, but there just wasn’t any reason she had to know. There was a railroad across on the far side of the swamp, and at one place a water tank and siding where freights went in the-hole for passenger trains. I planned to hang around there tomorrow night and get on a southbound freight.

  She leaned a little across the table. “Well, there’s where I can help you. You’ll be afoot, so I can pick you up on the highway after dark.”

  “Why?” I asked. “I mean, I appreciate it a lot, but it would be risky for you, and there’s no reason you have to get mixed up in it.”

  “Yes,” she said eagerly. “Don’t you see I want to do it? Listen, Jack! I can call you Jack, can’t I? It would be so easy. You just tell me where you’ll be, say at nine o’clock, and I’ll come by very slowly. I’ll flip my headlights up and then down a couple of times so you’ll know who it is, and then stop. If there are too many cars in sight, I’ll go on and turn around and come back for you.”

  “And then what?” I asked.

  “I’ll give you a lift to Bayou City. You can get a bus there without attracting attention. That’ll be far enough away. I’ll tell Buford I just went down there shopping. I do it quite often.”

  “He doesn’t know about this, then?”

  “No,” she said quietly. “He doesn’t know about it.”

  I was thinking. This was a lot better way of getting out of the swamp than the other. I’d get to Bayou City the same night, and I wouldn’t have to go to the hotel looking like a tramp from having ridden all night on a freight, providing I even got on one. It was just what I needed, but I still hesitated a little. Nobody does anything for nothing. What did she want to get mixed up in it for?