And the Girl Screamed (Prologue Crime)

by Gil Brewer

  There would be cops crawling all over the place in another two minutes. I got the car going, made a U-turn, and passed the Foster home, Foster was standing in the side yard. He looked up as I drove past, but it didn’t mean anything to him.

  I took alleys until I was well out of the section. Once I heard a siren, but it cut off sharply.

  • • •

  I headed out Melbourne, pushing the old convertible. It really rolled, but somebody had beat the hell out of it. Melbourne Boulevard was rough and the car wobbled all over the road. I didn’t like thinking about those two people back there and what they felt now that they knew I wasn’t with the police, was, in fact, the chief suspect.

  Then I remembered the letter I’d picked up out on the beach and muttered at myself for not recalling it before. I managed to drag the car over to the shoulder of the road, under a street light. I turned the ignition off and lit a cigarette with some matches I found jammed in the glove compartment of the Merc. I got the letter out of my pants pocket. It was badly crumpled, but readable.

  Honey-baby,

  How long you going to keep this up? You know how it is with me, baby, damn it. Quit making me ache. Seeing you wiggle down the hall will drive me to drink. Everybody but me, now, and don’t try to kid me because it’s all around what’s going on and I’m not forgetting last summer. How could you forget? Ha-ha. I can’t stand it! ! ! How’s about us having a little party? I’ll see you in study hall. I’m drunk right now, so see what you’re doing to me? Hic-hic! Please, Doll—I want some candy, too!

  Burn this.

  PS—I’ve got a new car. It isn’t broken in yet!

  Waiting, Tal.

  I sat there a moment, thinking it over and not liking any of it. You hear these stories about high-school kids and you read about them, and then you have something like this in your hand. Innocent, of course. I thought about Jinny Foster’s home and her parents, then I put the letter back in my pocket again.

  Tal who?

  Well, maybe Inez Harrington would be able to answer that.

  I started the engine and learned about the accelerator all over again, then pulled up on the road. As I came along Melbourne, leaving the town further and further behind, it was as if I moved like an ant across a desert. It seemed damned slow and futile, and everything was right behind me. It would only be a matter of time before they caught up.

  I hoped Inez was home.

  Chapter Ten

  INEZ was a tall girl in a yellow sweater and very tight dungarees. Her hair was black and wild and short and her eyes were blacker than her hair. She stood behind a screen door with the light shining across her shoulders from the hall, and jammed her hands into the waistband of her dungarees.

  “Nobody’s home,” she said.

  She had spoken with a finality that told me nobody walked over her. Her voice was low and slightly affected, each syllable carefully pronounced. Her eyes were very wide and brash.

  “I was just asking,” I said. “About—”

  “You can’t come in.”

  I grinned at her.

  “You a friend of Jinny Foster’s?” I asked.

  “She send you over here?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What’d she send you over here for?” she said, her pronunciation slipping for a moment.

  “I didn’t say she did,” I said.

  She didn’t move a muscle. The screen door was like a steel wire grate between us. She stood perfectly still, watching me with eyes that were Slightly metallic looking.

  “May I come in?”

  “No.”

  “I’m from the police,” I said.

  “That’s a hot one.”

  I watched her take her hands out of the waistband, place them flat on the backs of her hips. She watched me with a sly look. She rocked up on her toes and shook her head.

  “You can’t come in,” she said. “What’s with Jinny?”

  I reached over and pulled on the handle of the screen door. It didn’t open. It was locked. She didn’t move, ‘and then she frowned. Her breasts were very pronounced beneath the yellow sweater. It was damned inspiring.

  “I’ve never met you, have I?” she said. “Or have I?”

  “No. I don’t believe you have.”

  She shrugged her shoulders, a vital spectacle.

  I decided the only way to deal with this type was to hit hard, so I gave it to her straight about how Jinny was dead, and told her Jinny’s folks sent me here. “It happened tonight—not so long ago.”

  She didn’t know whether to believe me or not. It didn’t seem to bite down into her. She was thinking about it, and there was something in her mind, but all she did was blink and watch me.

  “You’re her friend,” I said. “I need some information. I’d like the names of her boy friends, and anything else you have to offer.”

  She gave a little snicker through her nose. Once I had attended a church funeral, and during a long prayer a man had suddenly broken out into hysterical laughter, uncontrolled and loud. They way she acted, her attitude toward the whole thing, was something like that—but deliberate.

  I thought of what the Fosters had said about her parents. It wasn’t good to think about, not if it had done this to her. I also remembered that the Fosters might tell the law they had directed me to the Harrington home. On the other hand, this might be the safest of places for a short while. The police would still be beating the bushes back there, and they would figure on my thinking they would show here, and head someplace else. I had to take the chance.

  “How old are you?” I said.

  She didn’t even blink now. The police would have one swell time with this one if they ever got to her at all. I could see Al Calvin trying to get her to talk. He would go into a snit, sure as hell.

  “I can wait all night,” I said. “I can go back and bring some uniformed officers with me, if that’s what you really want, Inez. They’ll be along soon, probably. Jinny Foster is dead—now, what do you want to do?”

  She swallowed, thinking some more. But she apparently didn’t want to do anything. The way she kept looking at me now was fierce.

  “You could help us a lot,” I said. “Only the quicker you do, the quicker we can act. We can locate other friends, of course, but Mrs. Foster said you were Jinny’s best friend.”

  She stood silent.

  “All right,” I said. “Would you rather I took you downtown?” I made my voice a little nasty now. “Is that what you’re asking for? We can question you down there.”

  “Try that,” she said.

  Neither of us moved.

  “What’s Mrs. Foster’s first name?” she said.

  I sighed. “Martha. Her father’s name is Frank. They live at two-nineteen Palm Drive. Mrs. Foster is badly broken up about this.”

  “Let’s see your credentials.”

  I cleared my throat. There was a slight cramp in my neck.

  “Working in plain clothes, sometimes we don’t carry credentials.” That was weak as hell and I wondered if it would get by.

  “Where’s your buzzer?”

  The hell with her. We would stand here all night like this. She was a beaut. I let her know it, the way I looked at her, and something must have clicked somewhere, because she reached out and flipped the hook loose, gave the screen door a nudge with her right knee.

  “Come on in.”

  We stood in the hallway now. From somewhere at the back of the house, soft music was playing. The beat was very heavy.

  “I appreciate this,” I said. “Now, if you’ll just answer a few questions, Miss Harrington.”

  “No more Inez?”

  “I guess not.”

  She changed suddenly. She moved very close to me and looked at me just as closely.

  “Is it true?” she said. “Is Jinny really dead? Really?” And the timbre of her voice altered, too. The way she said that, she was just a kid again. For a time she had been far removed from childhood. If you closed you
r eyes and just listened, it was all right; otherwise, the whole thing was incongruous. She wore a lot of perfume, and it was a good perfume, only it was all you could smell in the house. She must have sprayed it on the walls. Up close you could see how really young she was; the white and pink of her cheeks and the very clear milky whites of her eyes, the very tender lips with too much purplish lipstick on them and with just a little of it on her very white teeth. The sweater she wore had probably been given to her as a birthday present about six years ago. The soft tendrils of hair at her temples were damp, and Inez Harrington exuded heat and vim.

  “Yes,” I told her. “Jinny Foster is dead.”

  The way she looked, you knew she had made up her mind. She wasn’t going to believe me. She was going to fool around, only she said she wanted to help now. She took me out of the hall into the living room and this was somewhat different from the Foster place. It was a long room. The house hadn’t looked like much from the outside, frame and sprawling, but in here it was different.

  If she could help me list Jinny’s boy friends, I didn’t give a damn what she believed. Only I didn’t want to stay around here any longer than I had to.

  “In here,” she said.

  The room was forty or fifty feet long, with a black stone fireplace at the far end. A thick rug was strung along the entire length of the room, the nap of that trip-you-up variety. A couch about double length was near the hall against the front wall. Low bookcases went from the couch down to the fireplace wall. Low cocktail tables were sprinkled around with cold-looking white ashtrays on them. The rug was cream, the tables black, the trays glaringly white. The walls of the room were about the color of a tangerine, the ceiling dark brown. There was a pile of newspapers beside a lounge chair and the TV set at the other side of the room was on, but the sound was turned off. I imagined this was one of those places where the set ran all day long. The room struck you in the face with a blunt and broken fist. On second look, you could see that the walls had been painted over flowered wallpaper, some of the flowers showing with a kind of dirty silvery shadowing. The couch was green. It was crazy; the whole thing was crazy.

  “Sit down,” she said. “I’ll be right with you.”

  She did not leave until I was seated on the couch. Then she sort of smiled, not exactly smiled, but sort of—and left the room with a hip-swinging stride, and those dungarees were the tightest I had ever laid eyes on.

  I sat there and waited for her. I could hear her rummaging through things someplace, her feet stomping on the floor. The noises echoed through the house along with the slow beat of the music from back there someplace.

  She came hurrying back into the room with a pencil and a piece of paper. She lunged at the couch, turned at the last instant and landed softly. She looked at me and laughed, then went dead sober. She had remembered why I was here.

  Watching me from the corners of her eyes, with her head slightly tilted, she reached one foot out and hooked a corner of a round cocktail table, and dragged it up to the couch. She wet the end of the pencil, smoothed the paper on the table and painstakingly wrote down three names. She dotted i’s and crossed t’s and underlined and made periods with tiny circles. Then she smoothed the paper again, laid the pencil down with a flourish, turned and handed me the paper, holding it by the tips of her fingers as if it were hot.

  “They’re the ones,” she said. “I put their addresses down, too—see?”

  “Yes.”

  “They’re her—well, I mean.” She laughed, fell back on the couch and leaned against me. I watched the woolen strands of the sweater. You could feel the stirring vitality.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Now, this Talbot Swanson. Who’s he?”

  She leaned against me and looked at me, blinking.

  I moved slightly away. She smiled and dampened her lips, rubbing one over the other. The lipstick didn’t smear.

  “Would he be called Tal, maybe?”

  “That’s right. His daddy is filthy.”

  “I see.”

  “Filthy rich. You’re cute,” she said. “There’s nobody home.”

  “Your folks?”

  “I said, there’s nobody home. They aren’t coming home, either.” Her voice seemed to tense a litle, or maybe I was just looking for some normal feeling in her.

  “Not all night,” she said. “So why don’t you relax.”

  “Your folks leave you alone often?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “I just asked, that’s all.”

  “Sure. They’re never home. But I don’t care—I like it this way.”

  “Mighty lonely, I’d think.”

  “That’s all you know about it.”

  I shrugged. For a moment she seemed to withdraw; then the expression on her face changed and she was easy to read. I felt damned sorry for her, and it was hard to feel sorry for her, the way she looked.

  “Relax,” she said.

  The music poured softly through the house from the dark distance. She turned on the couch so she faced me, up very close, and scrunched one leg under her. Everything she wore—which wasn’t much—must have had strong seams. She must have been taller than I’d thought, because she was wearing nylon stockings under the dungarees, and no shoes. The dungarees had slipped to her knees, one leg was over her knee. Her legs were beautifully shaped, like her whole body. The curve of her calf was a line of complete perfection, the ankle slim, the foot a thing of beauty. The nylons were smooth and sleek, and her knee was something you could look at for a long time realizing it was the first step toward intriguing promise.

  She snickered through her nose again.

  “You don’t have to kid me,” she said. “Where did Jinny meet you?”

  I turned away and stared at the list of names on the paper in my hand. It blurred a little.

  “You weren’t fooling about these names?” I said.

  “No. How’d you come to think that? They’re Jinny’s best. Talbot isn’t really, but he will be. He’s got an inside track, or something.” She inched herself along the couch, riding on her feet, until her legs pressed against me. I could feel the warmth; she generated heat. She kept moving her knee. I was trapped against the low rounded arm of the couch. She leaned forward.

  “You’re no cop,” she said. “Cops don’t drive beat-up Mercs. Not that beat-up. I saw you park it down there. I was out in the yard. There’s been a prowler. Got to watch it. But you’re no prowler.”

  I folded the paper and tucked it in my shirt pocket.

  “Watch,” she said.

  She moved her arm toward me along the back of the couch. Two lamps in the room went out. There was only a soft red glow that suffused the room around the ceiling, glowing down on us. I looked at her and her flesh had taken on a warm red tinge; everything was bleeding in the room, the walls, the floor, the tables, the ashtrays, and Inez Harrington had suddenly become something more than just a kid in a pair of dungarees.

  She laughed softly and her fingertips touched the nape of my neck, moving gently, barely touching me. I heard her breathing above the soft sounds of music. The warm red glow in the room seemed to become warmer.

  “Honey,” she said, whispering. “If Jinny sent you, then it’s okay. I’d like it. I’ll fix you up. Your have any special way you like it, honey?”

  I looked into her eyes. They were very black and there was nothing behind them but now.

  “She tell you to give me this line?” she whispered.

  “No.”

  Her face became strained. She moved still closer and smiled and the hand palmed my neck, very warmly. There was just the faintest trace of nervousness in the smile, not enough to matter. And it might be only because she was anxious.

  “Jinny tip you about my specialty?” she whispered, speaking very slowly, dragging it out with lots of tongue, putting everything she had behind it. “I’ll fix you up for free, honey—I like you.”

  I started to get up. She was maybe sixteen, this kid, and she squirmed
against me. She was moving a lot, but her lips brushed hot and wet against my neck. I looked down and she was pulling her dungarees off. Before I could get away from the tangle of her arms, she wore nothing but that tight yellow sweater which was red now, and the nylons rolled high on her legs, biting into the flesh—nothing else. She opened her mouth, her kiss suddenly vicious. Then she fell back, yanking her sweater up across her breasts. It was like being swathed in red fire. There was the music and the blistering red lights and this twisting, writhing mass of young female on the couch. Somehow or other, I got to my feet. I knew I had to get out of there.

  She moved on the couch, grinning up at me, her eyes excited. Then she went still and just lay there like that.

  Her voice was small.

  “Are you really a cop?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m a cop.” I couldn’t look at her and stand there. It was either leave right now, or leap into the mouth of that furnace.

  Her voice was very small, and there was suddenly a trace of shame in it. “Then—then Jinny really is dead?”

  “Inez,” I said. “I didn’t lie to you. Jinny Foster is dead—murdered.”

  She believed it now. It had been a long time getting to her. You could see it wash down through her, you could see it behind her eyes, taking hold now—really reaching her. I turned away and almost ran out of there. I found the hall, then the screen door and went blindly out onto the porch.

  I heard her running toward me.

  “Wait—wait—I didn’t know—”

  I left the place.

  I went down to the car and got behind the wheel. I was shaking again. I wished I had said something that might help her. She was fighting out against loneliness, rebelling in the one way she knew, right then. It would take a lot more than talk to get her back in line—she needed love, and not the kind she was getting. I would have liked to spend fifteen minutes alone with her father.

  As I turned the car around in the driveway, I saw her standing at the screen door. She held her breasts with her hands and rocked on her toes.

  Chapter Eleven

  STILL HOT around the edges, I stopped in at a road-house on the way back toward town. There had been no sign of a police car, but I knew it was only a matter of time before they’d get out to the Harrington house. I needed a drink. I went inside and ordered a double rye and drank that and ordered another and drank that, then looked around at the faces at the bar. Men and women in work clothes, drinking small beers for the most part. Two women in shorts were playing shuffle-board across the room. A juke box, turned very low, gave out sympathetic hill-billy music with stereotyped twangs. I paid the barman with the last of the money before dipping into Andy’s ten.