Innocent Bystander

by Craig Rice

  He was interrupted by the sound of the door opening.

  Tony recorked the bottle and threw it back on the sofa without bothering to hide it. But he did shove his gun back into its holster.

  It was Ellen.

  He stood up and confronted her, waiting for her to talk first.

  She did. “Hello,” she said wearily. She saw the delicatessen stuff spread out on the table. Her eyes lit up. “Gee!” she said, “That looks good. I’m starved.”

  “Where you been?” Tony growled.

  She turned to him, surprised. “I’ve been talking to the police.”

  Tony stiffened. The gun felt hard and reassuring under his arm. He strode over to her, took hold of her arms and drew her close to him, so that his face was barely an inch away from hers.

  “The cops, huh?”

  She was frightened. His clutching fingers dug into the soft flesh of her arms. Hurt her. Her eyes widened with fear.

  She tried to free herself. “Please. You’re hurting me.”

  “Talking to the cops, huh?”

  “Please. Lemme go!”

  “Why did you go to them?”

  “I didn’t!” She pulled herself loose, and rubbed the angry red spots on her arms. “One of them—Smith, his name was—he came here after you left. And he took me to the station. He wanted to know about that murder on the Pier, just like you said.”

  Tony’s eyes narrowed. He felt his breath catch in his throat. This was it, he told himself. Yes, this was it. She’d told them what she’d seen. Now, it was too late for him to do anything about it. He should have made sure she wouldn’t be able to talk. He cursed himself bitterly for taking such a chance.

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Nothing.” Her intensely blue eyes were bewildered and unhappy.

  Tony grabbed her again. “You’re lying!”

  Tears began to stream down her face. “Tony, please don’t,” she moaned between frightened sobs. “I’m not lying. I’m not!”

  Tony slapped her face.

  “What did you tell that cop?”

  Unable to speak now, Ellen kept on crying.

  Tony finally let her go and she sank to the floor, weeping silently into her hands. He strode to the rear door and looked out again. No sign of cops. At the open window he peered out. Nobody. He turned and looked at Ellen on the floor.

  A pang of pity for her racked him. It was the rye in him that had made him sore at her, he told himself, that had made him slap her.

  Suddenly a vast feeling of regret swept over him. He crossed the room to Ellen, reached down, and lifted her gently from the floor.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry I hit you.”

  He led her to the bed, where he seated her on the faded counterpane. “It’s only on account of the cops. I was sure you’d gone to them.”

  Ellen looked up at him. The tears stopped. A tiny smile, like a rainbow, followed in their wake. “Why would I want to do that?” she asked simply. “I don’t know what they want me for, anyway. I couldn’t tell them anything, because I don’t know anything.” She looked up at him anxiously. “Why do you care?”

  “I just don’t like cops,” Tony told her.

  The alcoholic mist that had clouded his brain began to melt away. The trusting smile that curled her pink mouth did something to him, softened him. Suddenly he looked over to the table. “Let’s eat!” he said.

  He pulled her to a standing position. “Look at all that swell delicatessen going to waste!”

  Wiping the tears from her face, Ellen allowed herself to be led to the table. Tony opened the bottle of wine; Ellen refused it. He got up from the table to wash his hands—actually, he wanted to put the bottle of rye back under the sofa cushion.

  Sure, he thought, she’s a good girl. A damned good girl.

  Later on, after they had finished eating, Tony lay back on the bed, taking deep satisfying drags from his cigarette. Ellen had consented to smoke one, too. She stood by the open window, looking out into the night.

  “Who are you?” Tony asked suddenly.

  She turned from the window. “I’m Ellen. Remember?”

  Tony rose to a sitting position. “No,” he said, “I mean, where did you come from? What did you do before you came here? Who was your old man—your old lady? All that stuff.”

  Ellen puffed at her cigarette, letting the smoke curl lazily from between her lips.

  “All I know about you is your name,” Tony said.

  “There’s not much to know about me.” She began to walk slowly around the room as she talked. “I’m a nobody. Like most people. I come from a little town.”

  “What little town?”

  “Clinton,” she said. “Clinton, Iowa. I was brought up in an orphanage there. My folks died in a car smash-up. I didn’t have any other relatives, so the county took me over. I was five then.”

  She paused at that point. A tiny frown creased her face, like a summer cloud.

  “Then?” Tony asked gently.

  Ellen sighed. “Well, I guess it was like any other orphanage. I didn’t like it. I stuck it out until I was sixteen, then I ran away.”

  “And?”

  “And here I am.”

  “What did you do in the meantime?”

  Ellen paused to take another puff at her cigarette. “Oh, the usual things. Drifting from job to job. Worked in a dime store. Waited on tables. Carhop, at a drive-in. Once I worked in a taxi-dance hall. Only one night, though. It was too rough for me.”

  He phrased his next question carefully, slowly. “What brought you to the Pier?”

  She laughed. It was a gay, almost childlike laugh. “I’ve always been crazy about amusement parks. I thought maybe I could get a job here.” She hesitated. “I did work in one of the concessions. Just two nights, though. It was—well, I didn’t like it.”

  No, Tony thought, she wouldn’t like the job in the Dunk-the-Girl concession. Sitting there in a scanty bathing-suit calling out ribald come-on remarks to the men in the crowd.

  “Tell me,” Tony said, “don’t you have any family, anywhere? Any close friends?”

  She shook her head. Warm lights danced on her soft, brown hair. “Not even a boy friend. I’m all alone in the world.”

  That was good. No one would wonder, no one would ask questions if she disappeared. Mrs. Murphy, at the Rienzi Hotel, would hold her luggage for thirty days and then sell it for storage charges. What was it Bill had said? “They come and they go. Who knows?”

  But suddenly he realized that nothing could happen to her, now. Someone might have seen him hurrying her out of the hotel lobby. Someone might have noticed them on the little bus. The landlady, with her leering eyes—yes, she’d remember. And Art Smith had been here.

  She smiled at him, hugged her arms, looked around the sordid room. “It’s not pretty, but I like it here. I feel so safe.”

  “Baby,” Tony said, “you couldn’t be safer in a church.”

  He got up from the bed holding the cigarette between his fingers. He looked around for an ash tray. Finding none, he walked over to the door, adjusting the stub gingerly so that he could flip it out.

  “What’re you going to do now?” he asked casually.

  “I dunno.”

  “Maybe—”

  He didn’t finish the sentence. Just as he opened the door and was about to send the stub arching into the night, something caught his eye. The flare of a match in the dark.

  He cursed as he slammed the door shut. Quickly he switched off the overhead light. A thin shaft of light came from the almost closed door of the bathroom.

  “What is it?” Ellen whispered.

  “Shut up!” Tony whispered back hoarsely. He readied her in one quick move, grabbed her arms again, and began shaking her. “You did tell the cops.”

  She tried to pull away from him. He saw a scream forming on her face, slapped a hand over her mouth, and held her still for a moment. When he felt her relax against him, he took the
hand away.

  “Tony, no. I didn’t.”

  “Then who’s casing this joint?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  Tony released her and walked silently back to the door. He opened it a fraction of an inch and strained his eyes peering through the darkness. He saw a cigarette glow across the street and closed the door again.

  “I’m sorry,” he said softly as he walked back to her. “It’s not the cops.” No cop would make a fool move like lighting a cigarette in the dark.

  And she hadn’t talked to the cops. Otherwise they would have tailed her and be out there, watching.

  “Who is it?”

  Tony grinned. “Couple of friends.” He mentally added, Friends of McGurn’s. He said, “One friend, anyway. And I think I know where the other one is.”

  He walked quickly and quietly back to the rear door and opened it cautiously, just enough to peer out. There was a dim figure leaning against a telephone pole in the alley. He closed the door silently and returned to Ellen.

  “They think they’ve got me cornered,” he said.

  “Who, Tony? Why?”

  “Never mind.”

  “But what are you—we going to do?”

  “We’re going to beat it. What do you think?”

  He stuffed his cigarette pack into his coat pocket. Then he took a last look around the room. There was one bundle he stuck under his coat. He slipped the bottle of rye into his pocket. No point in letting the frowsy old landlady get that last two inches. One more look around the room. No, nothing he couldn’t leave behind.

  He took Ellen’s arm.

  “Come on, baby,” he whispered. “Just trust me.”

  He eased himself out the open window, after first looking around to make sure he wasn’t being observed. Then he helped her out. It was only a few yards to the low fence, and it was easy for them to climb over it. That done, they snaked their way across the weed-grown empty lot.

  Once out of the side street, Tony flagged a cruising cab. They abandoned it twenty blocks later, walked a block, and hailed another cab. Satisfied at last that he had thrown any trailers off their trail, Tony told the driver to take them to the Pier.

  Ellen sighed. “I wish I could go home. I’m so awfully tired.”

  Tony looked at her thoughtfully. Her face was pale, and faint shadows were under her eyes.

  He might as well take her home, he reflected. Smith had found her and talked with her; maybe he’d leave her alone now. Or maybe he wouldn’t. But it wasn’t going to matter by the time Smith found her again.

  “I guess it’s safe to take you there,” he said. “But I’ll be near you in case you need protection.”

  Her gratified, tired smile gave him a sudden pang of remorse. Because it wasn’t her protection he was thinking of, it was his own.

  She opened the door, switched on the lights, led the way into the dingy little room and threw herself on the bed.

  “I’m so tired,” she breathed.

  Tony watched her eyelids close. In a few minutes she had drifted off to sleep. He waited a few more minutes, then tiptoed across the room and turned off the light. He tiptoed over to the bed and drew a blanket over her, gently, so as not to waken her.

  A soft glow came through the window, reflected from the lights of the Pier. He looked down at her sleeping face for a long time. She trusted him. God, how she trusted him, he thought. Too bad, too bad.

  He eased himself quietly into the cretonne-covered chair near the bed and looked around the room. It was an ordinary, cheap hotel room except for one feature. The dressing-table was cluttered with prizes, obviously won at concessions. Gaudy dolls. Strange-colored plaster cats. Painted vases. Cheap make-up kits. Stuffed toy animals.

  He smiled at the sleeping girl. She was as great a sucker for the games as he was for the rides. She was crazy about amusement parks; she wanted a job in a concession.

  Maybe he could talk to her. Tell her the truth. Ask her to stick with him. They’d head for Rainbow Pier, for Riverside Park, for Carnival City. Hell, they might even get married.

  He looked back at the dressing-table. There was even a tiny merry-go-round, with a music box. Tony grinned. She’d won that at the horse-race game. Took a lot of wins, too. For an instant he was tempted to turn it on, hear the faint, sweet, tinkling strains of a Strauss waltz. But no, he didn’t want to wake her.

  The music of the Pier Merry-Go-Round came softly through the window. Suddenly Tony ripped open the bundle he had carried under his coat. He pulled out the pale pink nightgown with its blue ribbon bows. He took the bottle of rye from his pocket and gulped quickly. He bowed to the nightgown and said, “Would you care to dance?”

  He finished the rye in one more gulp and dropped the bottle into the wastebasket. He dug through the crumpled papers that were the remains of the bundle and found the bottle of perfume. He set it on the dressing-table beside the merry-go-round.

  Suddenly he sniffed. Perfume. A perfume that he had smelled before. A memory that bothered him.

  He sank into the cretonned chair and fell into a troubled sleep, one fold of the pink nightgown in his hand.

  Chapter Twelve

  THREE MEN IN SEARCH OF A KEY

  The morning sun across her eyelids and the smell of fresh coffee woke Ellen in the morning. At first she buried her head in the pillow, nuzzling into the warm and friendly darkness. Then suddenly she leaped out of bed, the events of the night before flashing through her memory.

  The little dime-store coffee percolator was on the gas plate, still hot. A cup and saucer waited for her on the oilcloth-covered table.

  She looked around the room. She saw the pink nightgown with the blue bows, draped over a chair. With a little cry of delight she picked it up, held it at arm’s length, then brought it to her shoulders.

  The clothes she’d worn since yesterday felt soiled and sticky against her skin. She turned on the water in the old-fashioned bathtub, threw in a handful of bath salts, and luxuriated in a long, languorous bath.

  She tied the blue ribbons of the nightgown around her slender waist and sat down before her mirror, brushing out her soft brown hair, applying the pale pink lipstick with a skillful touch. It was then that she saw the bottle of perfume. And the note tucked under it.

  Coffee’s on. Going to see the cops. They got nothing on me. Don’t talk to anybody. See you later. Take it easy. Tony.

  She smiled. Slowly she unscrewed the top from the bottle of perfume, lifted the bottle near her face, and sniffed delicately.

  Roses. The sweet, sickly smell of roses.

  She screwed the cap back on the perfume bottle and smiled again. A very peculiar smile.

  The fresh girl on the switchboard said softly to Art Smith, “Hold on to your hat, kid.”

  Art Smith scowled into the phone. The Manual of Police Procedure didn’t quite cover the situation. He felt that he ought to say something about dignity. Instead he said, “Well, honey?”

  “Tony Webb’s here to see you. I sent him right on in.”

  There was a knock at the door.

  Art Smith said, “Nice work, honey,” and hung up. He called, “Come in?” as though he had no idea who was on the other side of the door.

  Tony strolled in nonchalantly. “I understand you’re looking for me.”

  Smith smothered a grin. There was something so damn likable about Tony. Something about his air of here-I-am-and-what-the-hell-are-you-going-to-do-about-it?

  “Nice to see you,” Smith said. “But where did you get that idea?”

  “Cut it,” Tony said.

  Smith rose from behind his desk, shoved his hands into his pockets, and walked deliberately around Tony, his face creased into an amused smile.

  “Oh, that,” Smith said at last. “I did think perhaps you might be able to help us out a little on the McGurn killing.”

  “How?”

  “That’s what I thought you could tell me.”

  Ton
y sat down on the edge of Smith’s desk. “I told you everything I knew down at the Pier—the night you found McGurn.”

  “Yeah—I know. That’s what you said then. But what have you got to say now?” Smith sat down on the sofa, resting his arm on the sofa’s back. “You’ve got something more to say. Isn’t that why you came here now?”

  “No.” Tony smiled. “I heard you were looking for me, so here I am. Why should I put you cops to a lot of work, when you’ve got enough to do and I’ve got nothing to hide? You know all about my working for McGurn. So what? You can’t pin a murder rap on me because I used to work for a tin-horn gambler. He had a lot of other guys working for him same time as I did.”

  “But he framed you—not them.”

  “You cops say he didn’t,” Tony said easily.

  “You said he did—before you went to San Quentin.”

  “That was yesterday,” Tony said.

  “I can hold you as a material witness,” Smith said.

  Tony didn’t answer. He laughed. Suddenly Tony’s face grew serious. “Smith, I don’t know a damn thing about this, and even if I did I wouldn’t tell you. Not even if you turned that damn dumb bastard of an O’Mara loose on me—the one who worked over little Amby.”

  Smith winced.

  Tony continued ruthlessly, “One of these days, that guy’s gonna wake up in hell. And I hope I’ll be the character who puts him there.”

  “You’re threatening an officer of the law,” Smith said.

  Tony spat out a nasty word. “What law? The one you guys passed saying that you can kick the hell out of a guy because he’s a poor ignorant dee-dee—because he can’t even understand the questions you bastards throw at him?”

  Smith walked to the window and looked out. “That was a mistake,” he said at last.

  “Your mistake as much as O’Mara’s,” Tony said. “You’re his boss.”

  “Go to hell,” Smith said. He turned around and said, “All right. Where’s the girl?”

  “What girl?” Tony asked innocently.

  Smith took a step toward him. Tony smiled and didn’t move. “Take it easy, copper,” he said. “This is one guy you’re not going to rough-house.”

  “Where is she?” Smith demanded. “The old woman at the motel said you both high-tailed it.” He glared at Tony. “The old woman described you perfectly. Where’s she now?”