Innocent Bystander

by Craig Rice

  The driver called back, “You okay, brother?”

  Tony gulped and said, “Okay. Got the hiccups.”

  “It’s that Wisconsin beer,” the driver said. “Gets you every time.”

  Suddenly Tony said, “I want to make a couple of stops.”

  He went back to the shops he’d visited before. He bought another nightgown. Pink. Pink, that was her color. None of that black lace-and-chiffon stuff. Buying it, he felt groggy. He found himself wanting to pull out every dollar he had in the world and say, “Give me one of everything.”

  The sharp-eyed, dark-haired salesgirl said, “Anything else? How about a bottle of perfume?”

  He wanted to laugh. Perfume for the dead. He said, “Yes. Something that smells like real flowers. Like walking into a florist’s shop on a rainy day. Or something that smells like a high-class funeral. Just—flowers.” He realized that she was looking closely at him. He laughed and, as lightly as he could, said, “Sorry, honey. I’m a little drunk. Just give me a bottle of perfume that smells like—like roses.”

  He left the cab a block from the motel and walked the rest of the way, his arms heavy with packages. As he reached the door, he could hear, faintly, in the distance, the sweet strains of waltz music which came to him from the Merry-Go-Round Wurlitzer.

  He knocked softly on the door. There was no answer.

  He turned the knob of the door and pushed it open.

  The room was empty.

  He let the packages drop from his arms. He looked for a note, a message of some kind, any indication of where she had gone, or of what had happened.

  There was nothing at all.

  Chapter Ten

  MORE MAN THAN COP

  Art Smith leaned so far back in his office chair that it screamed in protest. He clasped his hands behind his head. Silently he stared across the room to the worn brown leather couch.

  There she was. Picked up and brought to Headquarters, protesting every half-inch of the way. Still protesting now, though she was doing it silently and motionlessly, curled up there on the couch like an angry cat sullenly waiting for a chance to spring.

  She was the girl of the picture, all right. A bitch and a half if he’d ever seen one, and he’d seen plenty.

  He said, pleasantly, “Well?”

  She was too smart to snarl at him, he could see that. She relaxed a little, sank back into the corner of the couch, her knees crossed, showing an inch of skin where the stockings left off. Her cold blue eyes said, “Well?” right back at him.

  Art Smith sighed and flipped the lever of his intercom. “Dickson in yet?”

  “Nope,” came from the operator.

  “Tell him to come in soon as he gets here.” He flipped the lever back into place. He pulled a cigarette out of a rumpled package, started to light it, then pretended to remember the girl. He threw the packet to her; it landed on her lap.

  “Have one.”

  “Thanks, copper.”

  She drew out a cigarette slowly and lighted it with a match from her purse. She exhaled a slow trickle of smoke through her nostrils and went on staring at him.

  Art Smith took a long drag on his own cigarette and said, “Still won’t talk, huh?”

  “Nothing to say.” She shrugged her shoulders provocatively.

  “How about McGurn?”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Why did you run away from O’Mara?”

  “I didn’t. He was talking to me, and suddenly he beat it.” She smiled with one side of her pink mouth. “You might say he ran away from me.”

  “How about Tony?”

  “I told you about Tony. He’s just a nice kid. He was helping me find a place to stay.”

  “Oh?” Smith made it a long-drawn-out word, deliberately insulting.

  She flicked her lighted cigarette at his face. It hit his quickly upraised elbow instead. He stamped it out on the carpet and said, “Cut that out!” Anger rose in him like a sudden flame. This damned little bitch had all the answers to all his questions, and she was just sitting there grinning and flashing her knees at him.

  “You coppers are all alike,” she said. “You and O’Mara.” This time she smiled with both sides of her mouth.

  Art Smith flipped the intercom lever again. “Send O’Mara in,” he ordered harshly.

  He sat looking at the girl while he waited. Amby had done a good job, all right. That soft-looking brown hair, curling around her shoulders. The provocative, wicked mouth, the lower lip a little too full, smiling seductively and still mockingly. That strangely pale shade of pink.

  He found himself saying, “Why do you—” and then stopped.

  She lifted her eyebrows at him.

  He’d caught himself just in time, on the verge of asking, “Why do you wear that shade of lipstick?” He changed it to, “Why were you having your picture drawn down on the Pier last night?”

  She yawned, cat-like, and pulled a cigarette from the crumpled pack. “I don’t know. I had a little time to kill, and I thought it might be fun. What business is it of yours, anyway?”

  “Plenty,” Smith said. “What did you see while you were having that picture drawn?”

  “I’ve told you already. Not a damn thing.”

  Smith sighed. “Why did you tear the picture up and throw it away?”

  “I decided I didn’t like it.”

  O’Mara came in before Smith could phrase another question. He didn’t see the girl sitting on the couch and walked directly to Smith’s desk.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “What case are you on?” Smith asked.

  O’Mara sensed trouble. He shifted his cigarette to the other side of his mouth. “The McGurn killing,” he said, “as you damn well know.” The contempt was plain in his voice. “The McGurn killing, with you.”

  Smith’s eyebrows shot up. “With me?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  Smith jerked his head toward Ellen on the couch. O’Mara looked around. His lower lip dropped for a moment when he recognized her.

  “I see you got her,” he said at last, lamely.

  “So you’ve seen her before,” Smith said.

  O’Mara took the cigarette out of his mouth and turned back to Smith. He felt a moment’s panic, wondering what the girl might have said.

  “Sure,” O’Mara said. “I went up to her hotel to—”

  “Why wasn’t I told? Why did you report to Dickson?”

  O’Mara floundered. “Well—I thought—”

  “You thought!” Smith snarled.

  He jumped up from his chair, whipped around the desk, and grabbed hold of O’Mara’s lapels. “You deliberately held out on me.”

  “I tried to phone you.”

  “When?”

  “Four o’clock.”

  “I was here.”

  “The operator said she couldn’t reach you.”

  Smith let go of O’Mara’s lapels and shoved him away as though the contact was contaminating.

  “Hell,” he said bitterly, “it’s my job you’re after, isn’t it? You’ve been dying for a promotion ever since you were put in my detail. I could see it standing out all over you.”

  O’Mara straightened out his coat. “You’ve got me all wrong,” he protested. “I don’t want your damn job.” The funny thing, he reflected, was that he was telling the truth.

  Smith leaned against the corner of his desk and glared at O’Mara. “All right. What else did you find out about the girl?”

  For one crazy minute O’Mara was on the verge of blurting out everything he had learned from the records, just to watch Smith’s face. No, this wasn’t the time. Smith would get the credit for it. O’Mara had already made up his mind what to do. He’d turn in a report with just enough information to make Smith look like a fool, and the rest of what he knew—well, he had plenty of use for that.

  “Nothing,” O’Mara said. He stamped out his cigarette. “Not a goddamned thing.” He decided to elaborate on the one thing Smith
could blame him for. “I got a tip that she was hiding out at the Rienzi Hotel, on the walk. So I went up there. I picked her up just as she came in and—”

  He was interrupted by the girl’s laugh. A dirty, scornful laugh.

  Smith said, “Yeah, I know. She got away from you. And you a cop!”

  He returned to the chair behind his desk and started to examine the papers on the desk. His attitude was one of dismissal.

  O’Mara looked at him silently for a moment. Twenty-four hours ago he would have been picturing himself behind that desk. Now his lips formed one silent word. “Sucker!”

  As he passed the couch he grimaced at Ellen as though to say, “Watch out, baby.” Then he left.

  Smith sat at his desk, turning over papers without seeing them.

  “You know, copper,” Ellen said, a sneering laugh in her voice, “you guys will never get anywhere, fighting among yourselves like that.”

  Smith looked up from his papers at her. He tried to push the thought back in his mind. But it came. A mouth like a bruised rose.

  “Look, babe,” he said, hoping his voice sounded calm, “you’re in enough trouble already without going around asking for more.”

  “Such as?” Her voice was deliberately taunting.

  The door opened and Lee Dickson waddled in.

  “Something, Art?” Dickson asked.

  Smith indicated Ellen’s presence with a curt nod of his head. Dickson turned to her. He grinned.

  “Well, well, well,” he said, in a satisfied tone. “The girl herself, huh.” He sat down next to Ellen. The couch sagged almost a foot under his immense weight. He put a hand on Ellen’s knee and patted it paternally.

  “So you’re going to be a little canary,” he said amiably.

  Ellen pulled her knee out from under his hand. “Keep your dirty paws off me.”

  Dickson grinned. Then he gurgled with laughter. “Our little canary must have eaten the cat.” He patted her again and said, “That’s all right. I like girls with spirit.” He turned to Smith, his face serious now. “She sing yet?”

  Smith shook his head. He didn’t like what was going on, but he knew he was powerless. What was worse, he wasn’t quite sure what was going on.

  “I don’t think she knows anything,” he said at last.

  Dickson examined the girl again. This time his practiced eye took in every detail. The carefully studied languor of her body as it sprawled in the depths of the couch. The artfully displayed legs, shimmering in nylon. The unplucked eyebrows that seemed to say, “Well?” The mocking mouth, painted a curiously pale pink. The very blue eyes that managed to be steely and sultry at the same time.

  “I think she knows everything,” Dickson said. “Don’t you, cutie?”

  The pink mouth spat two words at him.

  “My, my!” Dickson said mildly. With a groaning effort he got up from the couch. “Well, Art, you can let her go. Or you can have her held as a material witness. Or,” a sly smile creased his fat face, “have her placed in protective custody.” Again he laughed. The sound of it was like bubbles coming out of a bottle.

  At the door he paused, glanced leeringly at the girl, grinned at Smith, and said, “Not bad! Not at all bad!”

  When the door had slammed shut, Smith got up from behind the desk and walked slowly to the couch. He paused immediately in front of her and looked down at her. Below her face, with its mocking, defiant mouth, he could see the little triangle of skin between her breasts.

  Suddenly he reached down, grabbed her elbows, and pulled her to her feet.

  Strangely, it surprised him that her body was so soft, so pliant. Like melting wax. Wax that could be molded into—anything. He kissed her brutally, laughter bubbling in his stomach as it had bubbled in Dickson’s fat throat.

  He released her as suddenly as he had embraced her.

  For one fraction of a second he saw a girl who was startled, even a little frightened. A girl whose lip quivered, whose very dark blue eyes widened with terror—and something else.

  He turned away from her and said, “You’d better get out of here.”

  There was a little silence. Then her footsteps, very soft. Like rain falling on autumn leaves. The door closed like a whisper in the dark.

  What was the perfume that she used? He remembered it from somewhere. A smell like the inside of a florist shop. Or a garden after a spring rain. He’d smelled it before.

  His forehead wrinkled, he was trying to remember. It hadn’t been too long ago.

  Smith lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and looked out the window. He’d let her go. Hell, why shouldn’t he? She had nothing to tell him.

  He’d let her go. To Tony. Tony would be watching for her. His eyes closed again. Tony, just out of prison. Tony, handsome and virile as a young bull. Tony, who’d just killed a man and who would have to kill a witness who could prove it.

  He’d let her go. To her death.

  Suddenly he walked swiftly from his office and down the hallway to Dickson’s.

  There was something about the fat man’s posture that suggested he was waiting for Smith’s appearance. When the door opened, he sighed almost audibly.

  “I let her go,” Smith said.

  Dickson said softly, “I knew you would.”

  The muscles in Smith’s jaw tightened. The veins in his temples stood out, pounding with the rush of blood.

  “Damn it. You know why I did.”

  “You’d like to think it’s because you’re going to tail her to Tony,” Dickson told him.

  “Don’t you think so?”

  “No.” Dickson looked up and smiled. “We can pick up Tony Webb any time we want him. But we haven’t a thing on him until this babe breaks down and cracks his alibi. For some reason she won’t talk. Why didn’t you keep her here and make her talk?”

  “Now listen,” Art Smith began.

  Dickson lifted a fat white hand. “You did a good job of bringing her in. Then you let her go again. What the hell are you, a cop or a lover?”

  “Wait a minute,” Art Smith said angrily.

  “And,” Dickson went on relentlessly, “she should have been kept here or somewhere, where she’d be safe. Until she talked. You let her go. Tony Webb is going to find her again, sure as God made male and female goldfish, and when he finds her, he’s going to rape her first and then kill her. And you can drop a few pink roses on her grave and remember that you sent her to her death.”

  “Damn you,” Smith said. His breath caught in his throat. “Okay,” he said quietly. “I’ll bring her back.”

  “I knew that without your telling me,” Dickson said. “You’ve got enough cop in you to follow your instincts. But right now there’s more man in you than cop. Your motives are all mixed up.”

  Smith jerked his head up. He snapped, “Sure. Like this department is all mixed up.”

  Dickson said, “Hmmm?”

  “O’Mara,” Smith said. “Either I can take him off this case, or I shove off.”

  “Who do you want instead?”

  “Nobody.”

  “The lone wolf, huh?”

  Smith relaxed into a smile. “You and your damned corn.”

  “Okay,” Dickson said, “O’Mara’s out. Now what?”

  “Now,” Smith said, “I’ll—” he paused. He didn’t know just what he was going to do. “Never mind.”

  He walked to the door and had his hand on the knob when Dickson called. He wheeled around.

  “Take a look in a mirror before you go,” Dickson said softly.

  Art Smith glared at him.

  Dickson grinned. “That bruised rose left some rouge on your lips.”

  Chapter Eleven

  FLIGHT

  Tony stepped back from the kitchen table and surveyed the results of his shopping. Baked ham, potato salad, toasted French bread rubbed with garlic, a bottle of wine. The delicatessen man had said it would go good with baked ham. Personally, Tony would have preferred beer. Or better, rye.

  The t
hought of it sent him to the bottle he had hidden under the sofa pillow. He took a deep swig of it, recorked the bottle, and hid it again. No telling how a girl like Ellen might feel about drinking.

  Would she come back?

  Had she ditched him? Why? Who with? Where had she gone?

  He decided to give her half an hour and then start looking for her.

  She seemed like such a nice kid.

  Too bad she had to be sitting for Amby when he had been with McGurn on the wheel. Too bad she had seen too much, knew too much. Too bad that a smart cop could make her remember it.

  Tony tried to shake off his conflicting thoughts. He unearthed the bottle of rye and lowered its contents another inch. Only half of it remained now. He felt warmed, more comfortable. The rye had stiffened his spine, given him courage, made him see things clearer. Things about Ellen. About everything. About life and death.

  Sure, that was it! Why hadn’t he realized it before? She’d remembered and gone straight to the cops. She’d gone to tell them what she’d seen on the Ferris wheel. Even if she did like him a little, she’d feel she had to tell the cops the truth. She’d think it was her duty. She was that kind of a nice kid.

  Tony shoved his hand savagely into his armpit and withdrew the gun. He made sure the safety was off. If she came back with the cops, it’d be too bad for them. For him, too, of course. But he’d go down fighting. And if she came back alone, well, it would be too bad for her.

  He walked to the back door, opened it, and squinted out. Nobody there. The getaway was clear. He wheeled and went to the window. Throwing it open wide, he leaned out and surveyed the brown dead grass and the vacant lot beyond the low fence. Nobody was there, either. Another getaway.

  He didn’t like thinking of it. Of afterward, if he got away. Sure, there were plenty of people who’d hide him, help him get out of town. Mamie, for instance. But he’d always be hunted. Always be living with the chance that someone would turn him in.

  Much better to be in the clear, laugh at the cops. He would be, too. He had an alibi that would stand up under any amount of questioning. Unless Ellen broke that alibi.

  He returned to the bottle of rye under the sofa pillow and tipped it end up for another long gurgling drink.