Innocent Bystander

by Craig Rice

  “I’ve never even seen the report,” he said. “You’d better make out another one.”

  Art Smith bit his lower lip, then said, “I’d like to see him in hell.”

  “Why?” Lee Dickson asked.

  “Because—if Tony Webb finds her first—”

  “He’ll kill her,” Lee Dickson said. “And her with a mouth like a bruised rose.”

  Art Smith stared at his boss. For a moment he considered leaping at him and pounding the fat, leering face into jelly. Hot acid boiled in his stomach. Then he turned on his heel and stalked out of the office, slamming the door shut behind him.

  Dickson looked thoughtfully at the closed door, picking at a loose bit of skin on his lip. The insistent buzzing of his intercom interrupted his thoughts. He flipped the key abstractedly.

  “O’Mara’s here. Got that artist.”

  “Send him in,” Dickson said. He eased himself back into his chair.

  The door opened and O’Mara came in, swaggering. Behind him, two uniformed cops were helping Amby into the office. O’Mara dismissed them with a nod and held Amby upright with hands under his armpits.

  “I’m sorry, boss,” O’Mara said with pretended deference, “but we had a little trouble with the guy.”

  Dickson chewed on an unlit match and looked across his desk at Amby. He had been gone over, but good. His right eye was puffing into a black, blue, and purple blob. His lips were swollen, the skin shiny with distention. A rivulet of blood penciled down from his nostrils.

  “I see you had,” Dickson said. “A little.”

  O’Mara shoved Amby toward the sofa, where he collapsed onto the worn leather like a sack of potatoes.

  “Found him hiding out in a shed on the Pier,” O’Mara said. He twisted an unlit cigarette between his fingers. “Had to rough him up a little. But the stubborn bastard won’t talk.”

  The thought of his failure roused O’Mara’s anger again. He turned to the frightened little figure on the sofa, and deliberately kicked him in the groin. Amby doubled up with pain and threw up his arms protectively. But no sound came from his lips. Not a word. Not even a faint whimper.

  “You’re faking!” O’Mara roared at him. “I’ve handled guys like you before. And I’ve made them talk, see?”

  Then Amby did whimper. That infuriated O’Mara again. Once more he kicked Amby, this time in the ribs. Amby doubled up and drew his body into a tight ball, like a frightened kitten, backing into the corner of the sofa as far as possible.

  “Who was the girl?” O’Mara demanded.

  Amby shook his head helplessly.

  O’Mara walloped Amby’s face with the flat of his hand. “I said who was the girl?”

  Amby sobbed voicelessly.

  O’Mara grinned and reached for his back pocket.

  “All right,” Dickson said sharply. “That’s enough, O’Mara. Take it easy.”

  “I know how to make these bastards talk,” O’Mara said. He pulled out a leather-covered sapper and moved closer to the cowering Amby.

  “Okay,” he said cheerfully, “you asked for it.”

  The door was flung open. O’Mara paused, sapper in hand.

  Art Smith came in, his face still pale. “Dickson, I’ve been thinking,” he began. He paused, took in the scene at a glance.

  He took two quick steps, one well-practiced swing, and knocked the sapper out of O’Mara’s hand. Dickson suddenly began to examine the pile of memos on his desk. O’Mara grabbed his weapon from the floor and slapped it against the flat of his hand.

  “This guy won’t talk,” he said.

  Smith managed to control his temper, but it colored the sound of his voice. “Of course he won’t talk,” he said. “The guy’s a dee-dee. Deaf and dumb. Or can’t you remember even that much overnight?”

  He walked over to the couch, shoving O’Mara aside, and looked down at the cowering Amby. The frightened little man shrank away, and that hurt him. He tried to manage a reassuring smile.

  “He’s faking,” O’Mara said.

  Smith turned to him. “Get the hell out of here,” he said coldly, “before I throw you out.”

  O’Mara turned scarlet. He looked questioningly at Dickson.

  Dickson jerked his head in the direction of the door.

  O’Mara hesitated only a minute. Then he shrugged his shoulders and walked out, still slapping the sapper into his hand.

  There was a long silence, broken only by Amby’s heavy breathing. Smith walked to the water cooler, wet his handkerchief, walked back to the couch, and gently wiped the blood from Amby’s face. He brought Amby a drink of water, patted him on the shoulder, then turned to look, silently, at Dickson.

  The fat police officer flipped a button on the intercom. “Send up Louie,” he said curtly. “Yeah, the guy who knows finger talk.”

  He snapped back the switch and began to pick at the loose skin on his lip, avoiding Smith’s eyes.

  “Well,” Dickson said, “what do you want me to say?”

  Smith continued silent. He rinsed out the handkerchief and wiped a little more blood from Amby’s lips.

  “Art,” Dickson said, “we’re both cops. We’ve both made mistakes. O’Mara made a bad mistake, that’s all.”

  Smith said nothing.

  “Hell,” Dickson said defensively, “everybody knows there are a few bad cops here and there.” He eased himself out of the chair with a long groan.

  Louie came into the office. Dickson indicated Amby with a nod of his head.

  Louie moved his wad of chewing gum into the other cheek and said, “Whaddya want me to ask him?”

  “Ask him,” Dickson said, “if he knows anything about the girl.”

  Louie’s fingers moved fast. Amby raised his hands weakly and flickered a few signs.

  “No,” Louie said.

  “What else is he saying?” Dickson barked.

  “He says his belly hurts him.”

  Dickson wheeled around and stared out the window.

  Louie said, “Anything you want to tell him?”

  “Tell him we’re sorry,” Dickson said in a surprisingly soft voice. He paused. “Ask him if there’s anything he wants.”

  There was a little silence. Then Louie said, “He says he wants to go home.”

  Dickson nodded. “Better let the doc have a look at him. Then let him go.”

  He continued to gaze out the window as Amby was half carried, half dragged from the room. At last he turned around.

  Art Smith had reached the door when Dickson said, “By the way—” He wheeled around to see the fat police officer fingering the papers on his desk.

  “O’Mara found the girl. Tony Webb outsmarted him and got her away. Want to read the report?”

  Smith all but tore it out of his hands, glanced through it, dropped it again.

  “Think you can outsmart Webb?” Dickson laughed. It was a nasty laugh. “O’Mara found her. But Tony Webb’s got her.”

  Without a word Smith turned and left the office. This time he didn’t bother to slam the door.

  For a long time Dickson stared down at the memos on his desk, still picking speculatively at the skin on his lip.

  He picked up one memo, looked at it, dropped it again.

  Finally he mumbled, “A mouth—like a bruised rose.”

  Chapter Nine

  PERFUME FOR THE DEAD

  Amby didn’t know that he was being followed by Art Smith. His belly hurt. One of his ribs had been cracked by O’Mara’s kick, and felt like a knife pricking into his flesh. His right eye was now completely closed; the other had been reduced to a mere slit. His whole body was a mass of pain and quivering fear.

  The doctor had been gentle and kind. He’d wished he could understand what the doctor and the two cops had been saying. Maybe it was just as well that he hadn’t been able to. Because the doctor had been saying, “Hospital,” and one of the cops had been saying, “Gotta get him out of here, fast.”

  The two cops had been kind to him, too.
They’d let him ride up front in the squad car. He’d found himself getting sick, not from pain but from fear, and one of the cops helped him out of the car and held him while blood and slime came up from where the pain was worst.

  He couldn’t hear, of course, what the two cops were saying.

  “Some day, somebody’s going to get that son of a bitch O’Mara.”

  “Let’s stop and get this poor little bastard a drink.”

  There was a brief stop. One cop got out, came back quickly. As the squad car moved on, he took a drink, passed the bottle to the driver, who shook his head, then handed it to Amby.

  The frightened look began to fade from Amby’s face. He wiped a few drops of blood from underneath his nose with the back of his hand, and took the bottle timidly. He took one small sip and handed the bottle back.

  The cop shoved Amby’s arm back and said, “Take a good one.”

  The driver said, “The little guy can’t hear you, remember?”

  The cop grinned, nudged Amby, held up the bottle to Amby’s lips and let him drink deeply. Then he tucked the bottle inside Amby’s coat pocket.

  “Universal language,” he said.

  Amby felt the liquor run warmly through his body. The terrible fear began to leave him. One of the two cops handed him a cigarette, lighted it for him.

  The squad car pulled up at the entrance to the Pier. One of the cops indicated it was time for Amby to get out. Amby stumbled to his feet, took a breath, and began to signal desperately for a piece of paper and a pencil. He grabbed at the pad that was handed to him, worked slowly and carefully over the letters. Finally, he handed it back. The blood was beginning to run down from his nose again. He wiped it away with his forefinger and smiled.

  He had written: Thancs. Frens.

  Amby walked stiffly and painfully to the Pier’s entrance.

  Art Smith had trailed him all the way.

  By this time night had fallen. The entire battery of Pier lights was turned on full, flooding the sky with unfallen stars.

  From the Pier itself came the music of the Merry-Go-Round’s Wurlitzer, the loudspeakers’ blaring phonograph music, the shrill cries of the barkers and the general hum of the crowds. The sharp rat-tat-tat of the shooting-gallery punctuated the night’s noises.

  Amby continued to shuffle through the entrance.

  Smith hung back, seating himself on one of the stone benches that lined Pier Avenue. He made certain that he had an unobstructed view of the Pier and the people who entered it.

  The odor of fried potatoes wafted to his nostrils. His mouth watered. He was hungry. But he didn’t dare desert his watch. Anything could happen in five minutes. Anyone could take that opportunity to slip into the Pier without being observed. Anyone who wanted to know how Amby made out with the cops and to find out how much the cops knew.

  Anyone like Tony Webb.

  Maybe the girl would be with him.

  For a moment Smith was tempted to dig into his inner pocket and take out his half of the girl’s portrait. But he stifled the urge. Anything could happen. In five seconds, for that matter.

  Besides, he remembered every line of it. The words ran through his mind again. “A mouth like a bruised rose.”

  Damn Dickson!

  He felt his face grow hot. What the hell had made him write that crazy line into his report? Like a fool school kid writing his first love poem.

  But he couldn’t seem to shake the phrase from his mind.

  She was just a tramp, he reminded himself. Otherwise, what would she have been doing at the Pier by herself? She was mixed up in murder. The murder of a crooked gambler.

  Sure, she was only involved as a witness. She’d only happened to be there, he reminded himself. He’d only seen her picture.

  But years of police work had given him an instinct about people, and he had seldom been wrong. Sure, she was just an innocent bystander, the witness to the murder of McGurn. But she was a bad penny with a high gloss. From too much usage.

  Dickson’s remembered words startled him like a hot needle. “O’Mara’s found her—Tony Webb’s got her—”

  A phrase from the Police Manual followed in his thoughts: Duty is … as much to prevent a crime … as to …

  The lines deepened on his tired face. He reassured himself; he was on the trail, wasn’t he?

  He concentrated on every face that passed through the gate to the Pier. Weary faces, happy faces shining with anticipation, empty faces, young, old, black, white, yellow.

  Wisps of conversation floated by with the passing crowd.

  “… six dollars to win a lousy kewpie doll.”

  “… but Ma said I got to be home early, and …”

  “… sort of like Burt Lancaster, only much better looking.”

  “… ella no entiende. Rose, ella ore que estoy enfermo, yeah, Rose …”

  Art Smith winced. Why did that damned guy have to bring it back again?

  A mouth like a bruised rose.

  No wonder Dickson had laughed.

  Tony told the cab driver to park as close to the Pier as he could. He spotted a car pulling out of a parking-space almost at the Pier’s entrance. The cabby backed into it.

  “Wait here,” Tony said. “I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”

  The driver nodded. Might as well wait for the fare, he told himself. This guy was no deadbeat; he’d left a bunch of packages in the back seat. He turned on his radio. As it warmed up, he idly watched Tony swing down the sidewalk onto the boardwalk and step into the crowd of people going into and coming out of the gate.

  Art Smith had seen Tony emerge from the cab. He turned his body, enough to mask his face but not too much to prevent his watching Tony’s movements from the corner of his eye.

  At almost the same moment he saw two men detach themselves from the crowd and start after Tony. One was tall, and one was short and squat. He recognized them from police photographs. They knew something about McGurn.

  They knew plenty about McGurn.

  Maybe they could tie Tony to McGurn.

  Maybe latching on to them would wind up the case.

  But there was the girl.

  Hell, he could have this pair picked up any time.

  He pushed his way through the crowd to the side street where the cab was parked.

  “Where’d you pick up your fare?” Smith asked.

  “Nonna your business,” the driver snapped.

  Smith hated to flash his badge, but he did so now. The cab driver caught its beam. He sat up quickly, glad to be of service.

  “Well?”

  The driver told him. Smith opened the door and got in. “Take me there,” he said wearily.

  He looked at the packages beside him. Suddenly he ripped one open. A handful of pink chiffon fell across his lap. In a sudden rage his strong policeman’s hands ripped it to shreds. He dropped it to the floor of the cab, trampled it beneath his feet, then picked it up and flung it angrily through the window of the cab.

  Tony stared down at Amby’s face.

  It was old stuff to Tony. He’d seen faces like that before. He’d been given birth in violence. He had lived all his life in violence. Somehow he knew that some day he was going to die in violence. Right now Amby’s brutally beaten face was a symbol of all the violence in the world.

  Gently, Tony shook the sleeping man. Amby groaned. A soft little whimper of remembered pain bubbled up to his lips through the dried blood. He opened his eyes. Terror was in them at first. He recognized Tony. His fingers tried to move.

  Tony signaled back, “Quiet, take it easy.”

  He warmed water over the makeshift stove, bathed Amby’s bloodied face, found the bottle, and poured a drink between the split lips.

  Warmed and awake, Amby found that his fingers could talk again. He told Tony the whole story, of how O’Mara had found him and of how at last he had been released.

  Tony felt the bandages. Yes, they had been properly applied. The broken rib would be painful, but it would he
al. He warmed more water, sponged Amby’s bruised body, made him comfortable in the mess of blankets. He found a can of soup, heated it, and fed it, spoonful by spoonful. At last he slipped a ten-dollar bill into Amby’s hand, signaled him good night, and started back toward his taxi.

  He knew too well why Amby had been released. Bait. Jail bait for Tony Webb. The police thought Amby would lead them to Tony.

  He hastily scanned the small alley in which Amby’s shanty was hidden. It was empty. Then he slid out of the door and walked quickly to where the alley jutted out from the main part of the Pier. He opened the door of the fence that separated the alley from the street. He peered out.

  McGurn’s men were waiting across the street, idly smoking cigarettes.

  Tony swore under his breath. He turned quickly and retraced his steps to the rear door of the dart concession. The attendant winked him through and whispered, without moving his lips, “The two hoods are waiting.”

  Tony acknowledged the warning with a slight motion of his head and continued through the back of the concession to the adjoining booth. He went on through the shadows, booth by booth. Once he shot a glance over the counter of the shooting-gallery. He spotted the two men still waiting for him back at the alleyway. He vaulted over the counter, ducked into the crowds walking to the gate, and headed for the side street where he had left the cab.

  The cab was gone. He swore again. Another fare must have come along. He remembered the things he’d bought for Ellen.

  He flagged another cab and climbed in. He leaned back against the cushions and closed his eyes. He tried to close his mind, too. Against Amby’s battered face. Against Ellen’s face, poor little kid, and the way it would look later. He felt his stomach tying itself into a knot.

  The cab suddenly screamed to a swaying stop that bounced his eyes wide open. He salt bolt upright, lights flashing past his eyes and then stopping.

  A freight train was crossing the street in front of the cab.

  “Sorry,” the driver said, “we got trapped.”

  Trapped. That was the word. That was what had happened to Ellen. Sweet face. A sweet little-girl face. A trusting face. It was going to look sweet, and little, and trusting, on a slab in the morgue. Tony tried to smother a moan.