And the Girl Screamed (Prologue Crime)

by Gil Brewer

  I found half my trousers hanging by a thread to the other half. I wiped my hands on the shirt, rolled the trousers up and started back toward the pier. My foot knocked against something. It was a bottle. The gods were with me. I picked it up. It was three quarters full of Old Overholt. The cap was on tight. I uncapped it, sniffed it to make sure it wasn’t one of their neat little tricks. It was the goods. I rinsed my mouth out with some and spit that out, then took four good swallows and capped it again.

  Thank you, men.

  I went back along the beach to the pier, climbed up and walked across the asphalt parking lot to the closed hotel. I checked, and at the rear I found what I was looking for, a spigot. I tried it. Water ran. I set the bottle and trousers aside, turned the water on full blast, and started washing.

  Clean, I put the trousers on and belted them. They were something, all right, but they’d have to do. I took another couple of swallows of whisky and walked around the hotel to the front.

  Then it hit me. Maybe it was the sound of a slowly running car, creeping along one of the Jungle Acre streets, that put it in my mind. The Merc … it was sitting out there. If the cops found it—

  I started down the street, hugging the shadows. A car’s headlights shone through the woods. It was coming along toward me, moving mighty damned slow. I went into the underbrush and waited, thinking about the Merc. I had to have that car. A police car came around a curve, then began to speed up. By the time it went past me, it was doing about forty. Dust sifted through the underbrush, and a warm, gasoline-tinged wind breathed against me. I waited until they were gone. Then I headed for the Merc.

  I knew I had passed the spot where it was parked.

  I began to run back along the dark street, hearing the crickets and insects in the woods, disregarding the pain. In the middle of the street, halfway down the block, I just stood there. The car was gone.

  The cops must have taken it away.

  This was fine. I started walking along toward the hotel again, trying to think. Something flashed against my eye from the woods to my left—bright, metallic. I ran in there.

  It was that sweet old Merc convertible.

  • • •

  The car was all right. Those kids had obviously shoved it into the woods to help make it rougher on me when I tried to find it. Inadvertently, they had maybe saved my neck. They couldn’t have had time to work it over. I knew they would have demolished it if they’d had the time. I got in under the wheel and sat there and calmed down. It felt damned good, just sitting there, and then I thought, Maybe they’ll come back for a look at things.

  I drove away from there fast.

  There was only one place to go. I had to have clothes and some more money. Andy Leonard. And, driving into town, all the little things began to come back into me again, filtering into my mind like slow touches of fire.

  I had to ditch this car. It was too hot now.

  A lot of the night had been wasted. I had no idea how things had progressed with the police. I had to see, or talk to, Eve.

  I took another drink, and got the convertible rolling. The wind slamming around the windshield was good.

  That’s all a bunch of guff, Sam Roberson had said.

  Sure. That was all it was, just guff.

  The rules didn’t mean anything now. You couldn’t pin anything down to what it was supposed to be. I could see that clearly enough. Perhaps they had thought I was a cop, or perhaps not—it didn’t really matter. They would have done what they’d done regardless. Something had started them off, and I couldn’t hinge on what it might be. They must have been the bunch from the Swanson place—but were they mixed up in the murder of Jinny Foster? Or had they simply resented me?

  Resentment wasn’t enough. It couldn’t be enough. It happened, maybe, but I felt it was bigger than that. There had been whispered asides in the woods, between them, that pointed to something else.

  • • •

  Andy Leonard tried to get rid of me the minute he answered the front door. He started to talk even before he saw me. And when he did see me, it didn’t make much difference. He looked me over, then leveled his eyes at me. He came out on the porch, still wearing the red and white polka dot pajamas. He closed the door.

  “Leave the car and get going,” he said. “Now.”

  “Take it easy.”

  “I mean it, Cliff. Listen, what happened to you? Get it off your chest.”

  “No time to talk. I need clothes and some more money.”

  He stared at me.

  “Are you crazy?”

  “I didn’t ask you for asylum.”

  “I haven’t got any clothes. Where’re yours?”

  I reached for him and he backed a step.

  “Keep your hands off me,” he snapped.

  “Either you get the clothes and the money, or we fight, right here and now—and look at me and see if I give a damn about anything right now.”

  He didn’t speak. He just stood there, looking sad.

  “I want some decent clothes, Andy. You’ll get them back—or something just as good—as soon as I can swing it. Right now, I can depend on you and nobody else.”

  “You can’t depend on me,” he said. “They’re hot on you, Cliff. Harnett’s turning handsprings, the way you slipped those two cops at the Foster place.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  He held up one hand. “We know it was you. Cliff, what the hell do you expect me to do? They’re mad, man. They’d have had you at the Harrington place—should have had you, only the Fosters didn’t speak up about where they’d told you to go until it was too late. All the excitement.”

  “I don’t have time to talk, Andy. You going to move, now, or do I start making trouble for everybody?”

  He looked at me and shook his head.

  “I want shoes, socks, underwear, a shirt, and trousers. You can make it one of your old sport shirts, if you like—but not too loud. I don’t want loud colors tonight.”

  “Where’re yours?”

  “Move. And don’t worry about a fit. They’ll fit well enough.”

  He turned and went inside. The porch light went off.

  I waited. All he would have to do was pull a sweet one, now, and call the wrong people. I waited, though, banking like hell on the fact that we’d been friends for a long time, and on the slim fact that he might think he owed me his life—which he didn’t. But it was all right to let him think that.

  He was going through plenty of hell himself. He knew—and I knew—what could happen to him for doing all this.

  He returned, and motioned me around the side of the house. He stopped me by the hibiscus bushes. He dropped the pile of clothes on the cement walk.

  “Hurry up,” he said. “Put them on.”

  The shoes were a little tight, and the trousers were tight, but they looked all right, and they’d have to do. The shirt was white. He was thoughtful. There was something in the pocket of the shirt. I fingered it, left it alone. It was a thin wad of bills. I took my own belt off my old trousers and slipped it through the loops and fastened it.

  “All right,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “You can leave now, Cliff. Fast. I don’t want to talk with you. Don’t make me. It’ll only put things in a worse light than they are already. If I see you again I’ll run yon in. I’m on the case now. Just going to get dressed. No sleep for the rest of the night and Christ only knows when.”

  “What in hell do you mean?”

  “What I said,”

  “You can’t work tonight. It’s late. There’s nothing to work on this late, you know that.”

  “We’ll bo on duty, though. Yon know than.”

  “What’s up?”

  He waved his arm, pointing down the street. “And don’t take the car with yon. I’m tanking a chance, just taking to you Get going• cliff.”

  “How else can I find what’s going on?”

  “You can’t. You aren’t supposed to … all right, you’re the
chief suspect, Cliff. And they think the girl was pregnant. They’re not sure yet, but the report’ll be in pretty quick.”

  I whistled softly.

  “Now, get a move on.”

  “Thanks, Andy.”

  “Don’t thank me.”

  I started away down the walk.

  “Listen,” he said, jogging across the lawn. “I know you wouldn’t do a thing like this, Cliff.”

  “Thanks again.”

  “I don’t know what in hell’s happened to you tonight, but take it easy. You look wrecked. And you’d better stay low for your own good.” He stopped and looked at me. “Damn it, everything about what you’ve been doing smells. This Eve Thayer business. The boys are onto that.”

  “I’ll get going.”

  I walked off. Once I looked back. He was still standing there on the lawn, looking wretched. I knew he hated to act the way he had, but he didn’t want to lose his job. He could lose a lot more than that if they found out he was talking with me and had lent me the car and clothes and money.

  He flagged his arm at me, turned, and moved back toward his house.

  I went on down the street. No car now. At the corner, I waited for a bus. Everything was fixed just fine, now—all tied up into a neat bundle with a fancy knot, and I was in the bundle.

  Taking a bus was taking another long chance. It was possible they had my description out on radio and TV. But I had to take that chance, along with all the rest. It was doubtful anyone would figure on my riding a city bus.

  It was getting damned late. The night was cool. Standing there, I let one bus pass me by, thinking things over. I decided to take a stab at trying to see Eve. I had to know how she was; there was no use trying to get around that. Sooner or later, I’d end up hanging around her place.

  So I took a bus over that way and, sitting there, listening to the squeaks and squawks as we lurched over the bricks, I thought about Edward Thayer some more. He’d been in my mind a lot lately, for one reason and another. Thayer was on my back again.

  I got off the bus a block from Eve’s house.

  I needed some food.

  Chapter Fifteen

  THE NIGHT was still hot and without wind. High up in the oaks along the street, a wind sighed with a soft loneliness. Down here there was nothing but the breeze you made with your own walking, which was next to nothing they way the heat was. The bus had been stifling.

  As I approached the Thayer house, I slowed down. The lights were out, except for the upstairs bedroom where Edward was ensconced. He would be sitting up in bed, studying the law books, studying all the things he couldn’t get.

  Her bedroom, downstairs, was blacked out. I followed a hedge along the side of the house, then cut over toward her windows between some softly singing cedars—singing only in their tops.

  “Hey!” I whispered, rapping on the sill under the screens.

  The windows were open and I could see her in there. She was undressing in the dark, standing in front of the mirror on her closet door. A street light down the block found its way inside her room, paling the darkness, making it just right.

  “Oh, God!”

  She came over to the window.

  “You scared me, Cliff. What are you doing here? They just left, fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Take it easy.”

  “Cliff—”

  She had on a thin dressing gown, and I saw she was trembling and afraid, her face as white as the sheets on the bed behind her. I could hear her breathe and it was the kind of breathing that goes hand in hand with panic.

  “He phoned, Cliff.”

  “Wha phoned?”

  “He-the guy who killed Jinny Foster.”

  I booked at her, feeling fear inside I had ever known. I was afraid for her and I didn’t know what to do. I sat on the outside sill and leaned my face against the screen. She put her hand against the screen on the other side and her palm was cold and damp.

  “What did he say?”

  “He warned me not to say anything about seeing him. The police were right here when I answered the phone. I had to tell them it was a friend. I didn’t know what to do. You said—”

  “Yes. Please, Eve, try not to worry.”

  It seemed almost impossible that it had only been a few hours ago that I’d picked her up out front. There had been the one thing on my mind, then—His arm bends the wrong way. It seemed weeks ago that that had happened. And it all was a part of everything else, all the little ends joined together to make up the hell Eve and I lived in.

  “He said he’d get me.”

  I didn’t know what to say to her. I was as scared as she was now, and I felt utterly helpless. There was nothing I could do. It seemed that everything I had done was futile.

  “Cliff, what am I going to do?”

  I wanted to tell her something, anything, that would help her. But I didn’t know what.

  “Try not to worry,” I said.

  “I’ll scream, if you don’t stop, Cliff. You should hear Edward! He cried, Cliff.”

  “Well, I’m sorry. I mean it. I really am sorry about that, damn it.”

  “Something’s the matter with Edward.”

  I rapped lightly on the screen and when she was silent, I told her some of what had happened to me. She listened with a set expression of fright on her face, shaking her head slowly from side to side.

  “Cliff, are you all right now?”

  “I’m all right.”

  “You’re sure, darling?” Her voice was very soft.

  “I’m sure.” I didn’t want her worrying about me.

  “Only it’s no help at all,” she said. “You haven’t really found out anything.”

  “I know it,” I said. “I’m a flop as a cop, I am. I guess it’s best I stick to the fishing camp, after all. I’ve been going like mad every minute since I saw you. I’ve come up with nothing but some fresh bruises and a whisky breath.”

  “You’re a good cop. Nobody could do anything.”

  I looked at her and wished we could just walk out on all of this.

  “Eve. Exactly how did this guy sound?”

  She sat on the inside windowsill and pressed against me. The screen bulged and bent, but it didn’t give.

  “Loosen the screen,” I said. “Take it off.”

  She did. I climbed through the window and held her, kissing her. It was very good, holding her again.

  I had to keep asking her and I didn’t want to.

  “How did he sound?”

  “It wasn’t good, Cliff.”

  “How?”

  “Mushy—potato-mouthed. As if he was chewing shredded carrots, or something.”

  “Handkerchief,” I said. “Trying to disguise his voice. It’s silly, because you don’t know him.”

  “He said he recognized me because I was so well known because of Edward. He’d seen our pictures in the paper. He sounded scared, Cliff—panicked. It wasn’t long ago that he phoned:”

  I hoped she didn’t sense what saying these things did to me. She was cold in my arms now, and I knew that when I left her she would be very much afraid. I didn’t want that, but there was nothing to do. I was afraid for her, and I wanted something to fight out against. I kept trying to find, even now, something in my mind that I could hang onto; something that would lead me somewhere other than a pit.

  “His voice sounded shaky,” she said.

  “Believe me, he is scared. Whoever it is, he’s all alone, and frightened.”

  “And maybe desperate, Cliff.”

  “Yeah. All right. I’d better go.”

  There was no smile on her face, and she was trying to smile and couldn’t. The corner of her mouth twitched, and that was all, her fingers biting into my arms.

  “You do as he said,” I told her. “Now, how did you make out with the law?”

  “All right, I guess. I insisted I took a walk. They insisted I didn’t. They said I was with you and I should quit trying to cover up. They tried to he gentlemanly in a
rather cruel way. Edward kept trying to argue and explain. I stuck to my story, though.”

  “Good girl. That’s the only way. Listen,” I said. “You just keep right on the way you’re doing. I’ll let you know in the morning. Something’s got to break.”

  “Yes. That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  “It can break good as well as bad.”

  She nodded, watching me with that strained and pale face.

  “If I can stay away from the police long enough, they’ll get a lead. They’ll be on the job, at least. If they have me, they won’t be doing a damned thing. Just questioning me, trying to pin this on me. They’d lose the time they need.”

  “I was going to say something about that. About turning yourself in, Cliff.”

  “What?”

  “Well, they know you. They couldn’t really think that you’d anything like this.”

  “Oh, baby,” I said. “You have so much to learn about this world. They’ve got my wallet with a letter from you and pictures of you. That’s enough to make them hot—just because they feel they should get hot. And they think you’re lying.”

  “But why would you murder a young girl?”

  “They’ll have’ reasons all over the place. Pages of them, Eve. You let me handle that part.”

  “All right.”

  “Without me, they can’t touch you.”

  “Cliff, you’d better go.”

  “All right.” I looked at her, then kissed her quickly, and thrust her away. I climbed out of the window into the flower bed. An odor of broken petals reached me, of green things crushed underfoot. “Good night, Eve,” I said.

  “Cliff, be careful.”

  “I wish I could stay.”

  “I wouldn’t let you.”

  “You’ll be sorry,” I said, trying to get her to smile.

  “Just be careful.”

  And I was to remember those parting words in not too long a while, and brood over them, wishing I hadn’t said them.