Innocent Bystander

by Craig Rice

  Routine check of bank vaults, the Manuel of Police Procedure said. Questioning of vault attendants.

  But who had the key? Was that what Tony was after? Was that why he knocked off McGurn? For the key? What about the motive of revenge? For framing him? Or was that the red herring that had thrown him off all the time.

  And what about the girl? What had she to do with the key? With McGurn? With Tony?

  Or was she just an innocent bystander?

  Suddenly the tiredness drained out of him, like water from an umbrella standing in the corner. He leaped from the bed and made for the door.

  The New York boys had told him where Tony had hidden her out. They had sung like experienced canaries. But Tony would have moved her by this time. Tony was smart. Art Smith scratched the back of his head and remembered that he was smarter. He’d find her. It was a matter of routine police procedure.

  “Yeah,” the little guy had said, “with guns. It’s a brand-new angle we thought up for rasslers.”

  Smith grinned as he left his place. He felt good.

  The trouble with Jack O’Mara was that he’d gotten a good sniff of the smell of money.

  Fifty thousand bucks! For the taking. For anyone’s taking. For anyone who found the safe-deposit vault key and got to the swag first.

  Fifty thousand bucks!

  The little affair in Art Smith’s office was a setback, of course. Dickson had taken him off the McGurn killing and had sent him out to the sticks to dig up some son-of-a-bitch nut who had been sending poison-pen letters to one of the movie stars.

  That had been an easy pinch. A harmless crackpot who would stay put where he was now living for some time. Enough time so that O’Mara could follow up on the dope he’d picked up about the girl.

  The girl! What he wouldn’t give to get his hands on her! He grinned when he thought of it. She’d be somewhere around the Pier. That was Tony’s hangout. And where Tony was, O’Mara was sure he’d find the girl.

  He leaned against the corner cigar store and watched the Pier crowds walk by. A couple of zoot-suiters strolled past him, snickering about some private joke, horsing around with the girls they were trying to make.

  O’Mara grinned when he thought of the swell time he had had during that crazy zoot-suit race riot. God! How many of those coffee-colored punks had he sapped? The way their legs writhed under them when they fell.

  Fifty thousand bucks!

  What he couldn’t do with a hunk of dough like that! Take a trip around the world, maybe. He’d have to duck out, of course.

  But why? Who’d know he’d grabbed off the dough? He could hang around and live off the fat of the land. Go to the races every day. Go fishing for tarpon in Acapulco Bay. He remembered his last trip. The tug of the giant fish at the end of his line. Pulling it in. Fighting it. Getting it landed. And then that satisfying bop on its head with a baseball bat—the blood oozing out of its ruined mouth.

  Fifty thousand bucks!

  His thoughts skidded to a stop when he saw Art Smith emerge from the crowd of boardwalk strollers.

  O’Mara wheeled to the cigar store’s open show window and ordered a couple of fifty-cent cigars from the clerk. He argued for a minute or so to pass the time. Then he turned around slowly.

  Smith was gone. O’Mara wiped his sweaty forehead with the back of his pudgy palm and again took up his stand. He could wait.

  Chapter Fifteen

  RIPE FOR THE PLUCKING

  Ordinarily Tony would have been happy, dancing with Ellen at the Merry Gardens. He loved to dance. Not especially the waltzes that Ellen seemed to enjoy so much. He went more for the hot stuff. But now his mind wasn’t on his dancing. It was on Ellen, on what she said she had dreamed, on the harm she could do him.

  As she lay in his arms, swaying to the music, he could feel the impress of her soft, young body against him. The firmness of her apple-rounded breasts against his chest drove the questions from him momentarily.

  Then the thought hit him.

  If he could feel her against him, could she feel the hardness of the gun in its shoulder holster under his arm? Would she wonder about who he was going to use it on? What was she thinking now as she lay in his arms, pressing her firm young breasts against the hard bulk of a gun?

  He looked down at her. “Have you remembered what you were dreaming?”

  Her eyes were almost misty. For a moment it seemed to him that her face wore the same expression he had seen on it just after she had wakened that afternoon.

  “Have, you remembered?”

  “Yes!” She whispered it.

  Something in the way she looked at him made him press her even closer. In the next instant she pulled away from him. He could see the color drain out of her face, her eyes widen with fear.

  She’d felt the gun, all right. What would she do? Call for help? Try to run away from him?

  There was no time for speculation. He had to work fast now. “I’m hot,” he said. “Let’s go out on the beach and cool off.”

  She tried to slip her arm out of his grasp. “Let’s not. Let’s dance another waltz.”

  “Come on. I don’t feel like dancing.”

  His hand tightened on her arm, and he threaded his way through the other dancers. He took occasional side looks at her. She was very pale, her eyes were wide and very bright. Almost as though she’d been hypnotized, he thought.

  Outside the Merry Gardens the night gloomed dismally. A fog had blown in and covered the beach in a ghostly pall of grayish clouds. It wasn’t the all-enveloping kind of fog that rolls in so silently, changing the scene into a sea of shadows. Instead, it was formed of intermittent little lakes of fog that hid only parts of the surroundings and left other parts clear.

  “Let’s take a walk along the beach,” Tony suggested.

  He was already leading her down the ramp that connected the entrance of the Merry Gardens to the adjoining beach. She hesitated and then pulled back as a swirl of fog suddenly enveloped them.

  “I don’t want to, Tony. Let’s stay up on the Pier.”

  “Come on,” he said, “don’t be afraid.” There was a touch of exasperation in his voice. “I’ll take care of you.” He added that grimly.

  He half led, half pulled her down from the ramp and onto the sand of the beach. The hollow, mournful moan of a distant buoy echoed through the night. A rasping krooi-krooi suddenly swept almost directly over them, followed by the crescendoed whish of a heavy bird’s wings. Sea gulls. The heavy wash of the ocean’s waves on the beach followed at rhythmic intervals.

  Suddenly Tony put his arms around her, almost tenderly at first. Something about her smallness, her help lessness, had taken hold of him. His arms tightened. The momentary feeling of tenderness had changed to longing and a kind of despair.

  Why had he taken her out to the beach, in the night, in the fog? A guy could pull any kind of job here, he thought. Knock a man over the head with a rock. Or a gun. Shove his head under the water. And that would be the end of everything.

  Or—if it was a girl—Ellen, for instance—

  Now if they were in that heavy patch of fog just a little way up ahead. There’d be no one around. Only the two of them. And then, maybe, there’d be only one.

  Her arms crept around him. Soft, smooth, loving arms. She lifted her face toward his.

  “Tony, let’s go back to the Pier.”

  He released his hold, took her arm firmly in his grasp.

  “No. Let’s go ahead a little bit.”

  Again she pulled back. “Why?”

  “I like this kind of weather. Sort of makes you feel you’re alone in the world. Like as if the whole world’s gone smash. And you’re all that’s left.”

  He tugged at her unwilling arm, and she was drawn forward into the swirling, grayish mists. Again the sudden, swooping krooi-krooi of a gull startled them. The buoy moaned in the distance like a lonely ghost, and the waves rumbled against the beach. Only a few feet away now. And then they were in the very depths o
f the fog.

  Then, from out of the mists, came the faint, steady tread of feet behind them. Tony stiffened apprehensively.

  He reached for his gun. “Yeah,” he whispered thoughtfully. “Yeah.”

  The footsteps grew louder and louder.

  “Keep quiet,” he hissed at her.

  McGurn’s goons, Tony thought. He smiled grimly to himself as his fingers curled around the warm butt of his holstered gun. Just a couple of guys. Bump ’em off. Throw ’em in the big drink. And who could say Tony Webb did it? Rub them out. The words had a satisfying sound when he remembered the going over the two had given him at McGurn’s place. Rub them out! And then—

  “Ellen!” a man’s voice called out, close up.

  Tony reached quickly to put his hand over her mouth. But before he could make it, she called back, “Here I am!”

  For a moment the fog lifted. He shook her shoulder fiercely. He glowered down at her, his eyes smoldering. “What was the big idea?”

  Ellen put her hand to her mouth as though to stop the already spoken words. “I’m—sorry—”

  The footsteps were almost upon them now.

  “Who is it?” Tony barked out.

  There was no answer for a moment. Then a figure stepped out of the fog and almost bumped into them.

  It was Art Smith. “Hi!” he said brightly.

  Tony swore under breath. “Wadda you want?” he demanded.

  “A dance.” Smith advanced closer to them. “Any objections?” he added. He grinned affably, disarmingly, at Tony.

  “How’d you know we were here?” Tony asked.

  “It was a cinch,” Smith explained easily. “I just remembered what the Police Manual advises. Routine questions. When I learned Ellen wasn’t at the hotel, I got to talking with the clerk. He told me he overheard you saying something about a wonderful delicatessen dinner. That meant Jake’s. I got ahold of the waitress who took care of you there. She heard Ellen say something about wanting to dance. That meant the Gardens. So I went there. I saw you two come out here. And here I am. Routine stuff. That’s why a guy’s a dope if he thinks he can get away with anything”—he paused meaningfully for a moment—“like murder, for instance.”

  Tony grunted. “Thanks for the advice,” he said. “Now, what does the Police Manual say about scramming out where you’re not wanted?”

  “It says the police officer is to use his own judgment.”

  “Well?”

  Smith turned to Ellen, who had remained silent. “May I have the next dance?” he asked with mock gravity.

  Ellen’s face was white; there were tiny beads of perspiration on her upper lip. She looked first at Tony and then at Smith. Suddenly a smile shadowed her mouth.

  “Sure,” she said. “Why not?” She stepped away from Tony and hooked her arm in Smith’s elbow.

  Smith turned to retrace his steps back to the ramp that led up to the Merry Gardens boardwalk. “I hope you won’t be sorry. My dancing’s little rusty.”

  “I won’t be. Not as long as it’s a waltz.”

  In the next moment they were completely enveloped in the fog.

  Tony’s first impulse was to leap after them and get Ellen away from Smith by force, if necessary. But he knew he couldn’t get away with it.

  And now they’d be waltzing, Ellen would certainly tell him about that dream. That dangerous dream. A kind of helpless rage swept over him like a flame.

  There was something else. He wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone, not even to himself. Tony Webb was jealous.

  Ellen danced only once with Smith. He was obviously out of his element on the dance floor. As they retired to a side of the ballroom, she stood like a stork and rubbed the toe of her left foot against the calf of her right leg. She looked up at Smith, who was perspiring from the untoward effort of dancing.

  Smith grinned apologetically. “I’m sorry. But I warned you.” His voice grew serious. “What frightened you?”

  She looked at him blankly, innocently.

  “You know what I mean. You were trembling when I brought you up from the beach.”

  “It was cold down there,” Ellen said.

  “Not that cold.” He took her arm and led her out of the ballroom.

  Dickson had told him to pick her up again. Question her again. Protect her from Tony. Well, he had picked her up. Even if the methods hadn’t exactly been taken from the Police Manual.

  By rights, he ought to take her straight to Headquarters. But it was late. No reason for her to spend the night in a cell. It would be time enough to deliver her to Dickson in the morning. In the meantime—

  “Where are we going?”

  “To some place where Tony can’t find you,” he told her.

  “Why?”

  “You know one damn good reason. And I’ll show you another one.”

  They left the ballroom and went down the ramp that led to the Pier boardwalk. Patches of fog still swirled about them. The lights from the Pier stores shone only dimly through the thick pea soup of the fog. When they got to the boardwalk, Smith stopped Ellen suddenly.

  “Look,” he said, “straight ahead of you.” He indicated the two New York gunmen lolling against the Corn-on-the-Cob booth in the center of the walk. One of them was munching at a steaming cob. The other smoked a cigarette as he scanned the faces of the passers-by.

  “Know who they’re waiting for?” Smith asked.

  Ellen shook her head.

  “Tony. They think he knows where McGurn’s money is. And they’re out to get that dough. Even if they have to knock off Tony—”

  “But—” Ellen got out.

  Smith continued, “Or anyone who’s with him. That’s why I tried to get you away from Tony. He’s bad medicine.”

  “Tony can take care of himself.”

  “Yeah,” Smith said thoughtfully, “but can you?”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah! Why do you suppose Tony’s taken such an interest in you? You’re a witness to what happened at the Ferris wheel when McGurn was bumped off.”

  “I didn’t see anything!” Ellen protested.

  “Tony thinks you did. Once he’s positive you did, he’s going to see to it you won’t be able to tell us what you saw. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what he was planning on doing in the fog—when I butted in.”

  “I don’t believe it,” she said.

  “What about those two hoods?” Smith asked.

  “What about the police?” Ellen countered. “Isn’t it your job to protect innocent people from being shot down by gunmen?”

  “They haven’t done anything yet,” Smith said. “And a cop can’t step in until the crime’s been committed.”

  “Why are you stepping in now?” Ellen asked. She looked at him with leveled, calm eyes. “I mean between Tony and me?”

  Smith returned the level gaze.

  “It isn’t the cop that’s stepping in,” he said.

  “Oh!”

  “It’s the man.”

  Ellen flashed her crooked, mocking smile on him. “What are you trying to tell me?” she asked.

  “Do I have to tell you?”

  A provocative laugh gurgled in her throat. “A girl likes to be told those things,” she said.

  Art Smith could scarcely contain himself. This was it, he knew. She was ripe for the plucking. What the hell was it about her that grabbed hold of him this way? Why was he acting like a kid now? He could just barely talk, what with that lump coming up into his throat and choking him. Like when he was boy, he thought. When he had taken his first woman. Somehow in the back of his consciousness he knew she would be poison to him, and he just didn’t give a damn!

  “Look,” he said. “You’ve got to be somewhere safe.”

  “What do you suggest then?”

  Smith gulped. “Stay up at my place tonight,” he said. “Then we’ll see about getting you somewhere else.”

  There was only a slight pause between Smith’s suggestion and Ellen’s reply. And s
he replied by linking her arm into his elbow.

  “Let’s,” she said gaily.

  Smith stepped off with her to the side street where his car was parked. He deliberately steered her to where the two New York gunmen were lolling, and stopped in front of them.

  “Waiting for Tony?” he asked.

  Before they could answer, he frisked them, slapped his hands at their pockets. He withdrew a gun from the inside pocket of the shorter one.

  “For that new rassling gimmick?” he asked.

  The short guy grinned sheepishly. “Yeah,” he said. “We’re waiting for him now. He’s the strong man in one of the side shows, see?”

  “Where’s your permit to carry it?”

  The tall one whipped one out. The gun was to be carried by a New York City deputy sheriff.

  “Wise guy!” the tall one sneered.

  Smith broke the gun’s barrel and shook out the cartridges. After pocketing the bullets, he handed the gun back to the shorter guy. “Just in case,” he said, “in case you might want to use them. With the rassler,” he added, as he tugged at Ellen’s arm and drew away.

  Ellen looked up at Smith. Her expression was one of frank admiration. She squeezed his biceps.

  “My, my!” she said.

  Smith looked down at her. He felt like a proud kid.

  Chapter Sixteen

  BEDTIME STORY

  It felt good to get out of the fog. Smith turned on the wall heaters in his apartment as soon as he got in. Ellen made herself comfortable on the couch.

  “Name your poison.” Smith tried to say it as easily as possible.

  “Anything you got.”

  He poured a couple of shots of his best stuff—Pinch Bottle Scotch. Then he brought them into the living-room. Some of the glass’s contents spilled over onto his fingers.

  “Nervous?” Ellen asked as she took the glass.

  Smith grinned. “You’re the first girl I’ve ever had up here,” he said.

  Ellen’s eyebrows rose dubiously. “No kidding?” An amused smile crept into her face.