Innocent Bystander

by Craig Rice

  He got to the raised Diving-Bell and stepped through the open door. A foot-wide shaft ran through the center of the bell. On the shaft were an enormous steering-wheel and a mess of supposedly necessary marine gauges. Phonies, Smith thought. The bell was only about ten feet across. Obviously no one could be hidden in it. But he looked anyhow. It was empty.

  Smith backed out of the bell. He stood at the wooden railing and looked down into the slime-green depths of the water into which the bell submerged. He saw shadowy figures slithering about. Tropical fish, he remembered from the signs—and shark. He shuddered and turned to leave.

  Just as he turned, he caught sight of something in the water almost directly behind the bell. He leaned over the railing to get a better look.

  It was the body of a dead man, floating head-downward.

  The search was over, Smith thought. Well—it would save the state the cost of executing Tony. As he stood on the platform and watched the body being slowly drawn to within reach of the waiting cops, he saw two attenuated shadows in the water, following the body.

  Sharks.

  He hoped there would be enough left of Tony for identification purposes.

  In a short while he stood over the water-logged stiff huddled grotesquely in a pool of brackish water. One of the coppers kicked the body over with the point of his shoe. The corpse was too heavy for him alone. Smith stuck his toe under it and pushed hard.

  The body rolled over. The gray, wet face stared up, the hair plastered over the forehead. The sharks had already begun to nibble at the cheeks. But there was enough of the face remaining for Smith to grunt disappointedly.

  It wasn’t Tony’s body, at all.

  It was the New York hoodlum.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  DESPERATE DIVE

  A perfunctory examination ok the body revealed the source of death, the bullet hole in the groin. Smith didn’t even consider that the Feds might be responsible for this death.

  “This guy and his pal were gunning for Tony,” he explained to Ellen. “They must have had a running fight and Tony got this bird. The other one got away. Maybe Tony got it, too.”

  He left a man to watch over the body. Now he was all the more determined to get Tony. Three killings. One positive: Tony’s fingerprints on the knife handle would prove that. Witnesses who had seen him grab the knife off the concession counter.

  This second killing could be proved by the ballistics department, comparing the bullet in the stiff with those in Tony’s gun, if they could find it—or him.

  The third was McGurn. That would be a harder one to pin on Tony. But the motive was there, in each of them, for that matter. There was no doubt about it. He had Tony nailed for certain. Of course, there was that alibi the old dame had ready for Tony. But they’d break that. There was enough against him to get him convicted, even by a deaf, dumb, and blind jury. Now to find Tony—or his body.

  “I’ll get you out of this soon,” he promised Ellen.

  She looked up at him gratefully. Her lips were inviting him.

  Later, he thought. That’ll all come later.

  He started off to search through the remaining section of the Diving-Bell compound. The other cops followed. Ellen trailed behind.

  They went down the cement ramp that led to the aquarium. Steel-ribbed glass portholes lined the walls of the tank. Through them could be seen the greenish water of the tank, with occasional tropical fish swimming by.

  Smith got around to the rear of the aquarium walk. A small door opened from the wall opposite to the tank. Smith pushed it open. It revealed a sort of work-yard. Rusted steel girders and wires lay around together with the impedimenta of repair work. About ten feet ahead, though, was a wooden tool shack. It looked promising. Smith withdrew his gun from its hip-pocket holster, released the safety catch with his thumb, and held it out in front of him in readiness. Before starting off for the shack, he turned and warned Ellen to remain behind.

  “He still might have his gun,” he whispered.

  Then he stepped forward. The other cops fanned out behind him.

  Ellen waited behind at the door of the aquarium.

  Smith got to the door of the shack without making a sound and stood there listening intently for a while. There was nothing. He stepped aside, his back to the wall of the shack, and kicked open the door with the heel of his shoe.

  It swung open with a rusty creak.

  Still nothing happened.

  “Come on out, Tony!” Smith called out.

  There was no reply.

  “We’re coming in shooting, then!” Smith shouted.

  He stepped quickly into the shack. It was dark. At first he could see nothing. Gradually, however, his eyes became adjusted to the darkness. And he saw, outlined against a window, the shape of a small army cot.

  “Flash your light on it,” he told one of the cops.

  A beam of light shot across the room. It fell on the cot, revealing what appeared to be a body lying under a dirty, patched, khaki blanket.

  “Get up!” Smith commanded.

  There was no reply from the cot.

  “I’ll shoot if you—”

  Smith’s voice stopped as he looked down at the floor directly under the cot. He saw a pool of blood which was widened by a steady series of drops.

  Fresh blood from a fresh kill.

  Smith stepped up to the cot and inserted the muzzle of the gun under the blanket before he pulled it up away from the body.

  The bedclothes oozed blood. It flowed with the pulsating regularity of blood still being pumped by a beating heart. It flowed around a knife protruding from the flesh of the dying man’s back. Another kitchen knife.

  It was little Amby.

  The dying man’s eyelids fluttered open slightly. His parched lips fell apart. Weakly he tried to raise his hands to Smith. The trembling fingers fashioned themselves into the symbols of dee-dee speech.

  Smith stared down at Amby, his face rigid with suppressed rage. The dying man was trying to tell him who had wielded the knife. That was obvious. To have a death statement presented to him without being able to accept it!

  He turned hastily to the coppers. “Any of you savvy dee-dee lingo?” he demanded harshly.

  None of them did.

  With a whispered curse Smith turned once again to Amby. The dying man was still trying to manipulate his weakening fingers.

  Ellen. The thought came to him that Ellen had told him she could talk dee-dee. He wheeled and rushed out of the shack. Ellen was still standing where he had left her, at the door of the aquarium.

  She was lovely, standing there in the darkness, the moonlight silvering her. He ran to her.

  “Come on!” he said quickly. “Amby’s dying. He’s trying to tell me something in dee-dee talk!”

  He took her arm and ran back into the shack with her.

  Ellen hesitated for a moment when she saw Amby in the pool of light being furnished by the flashlights of three policemen. Then she walked slowly up to the cot.

  Amby’s wavering eyes seemed to dilate at her approach. With considerable effort he turned his head to Smith. There was an imploring, pleading expression on his face. Then, with a frenzied burst of ebbing energy, he brought his hand up and wagged his fingers. Even his lips were moving now, as though he were making one last violent spurt of communication.

  Then a sound did come from his throat.

  A death rattle.

  His hand dropped to his side. The fingers continued to quiver a moment, even after death.

  Ellen straightened up from where she had been bent over the dying man. Tears were coming out of her eyes. She leaned forward and fell against Smith. He put his arms around her gently.

  “What did he say?” he asked.

  Ellen looked up into his face. “He said Tony did it.”

  “Is that all he said?” Smith asked.

  “I couldn’t understand it very well,” Ellen said, “but he seemed to be saying something about seeing Tony on the F
erris wheel—Tony and McGurn.” She burst into another freshet of tears. “He died before he could finish.”

  Smith held her tenderly. She’s such a kid, he thought.

  He looked down at the dead man as he waited for the return of the detail he had sent to bring in Mamie, the old fortune-teller.

  “The same kitchen knife,” he told Ellen. “There’s no doubt about it. And the motive fits like it was hand-tailored,” he added. “It was Amby who had seen something happen on the Ferris wheel, not you, Ellen. Amby must have seen Tony kill McGurn on the wheel. While he was sketching you or before you came up to have him do your portrait. That’s why Tony killed him, to shut him up.”

  Mamie came shuffling into the shed, followed by a couple of coppers. “What do you want?” she asked in a toneless voice.

  Smith turned and pointed to Amby’s body. “Know him?” he asked.

  Mamie looked over to the bed. “Little Amby,” she muttered thickly.

  “Tony killed him, too,” Smith said.

  Mamie’s eyes glazed. Her lips moved wordlessly.

  “You alibied for Tony,” Smith went on. “You told me Tony was in your shop when McGurn was killed. I didn’t think you told the truth. If you had, Tony wouldn’t have been released. He could have been kept from killing three more people.”

  He had been speaking softly and gently. His voice was hard as he went on. “Now, you tell me,” he said. “Tony wasn’t with you that night, was he? Was he?”

  A long period of silence followed. Tears flooded the old woman’s eyes and ran down over her cheeks.

  Then she shook her head. “No,” she said falteringly. “Tony wasn’t with me. He came to my place and asked me to say he was with me. I loved him like he was my own son. I didn’t know it would lead to this. Killing a harmless old man. A friend.”

  She began to sob. Smith signaled for one of his men to take her away. “Hold her,” he said, “and get a signed statement from her when she feels better.”

  Ellen stepped back to the door of the shed to permit the copper to pass by with Mamie.

  Smith reached over the cot, grabbed hold of the edge of the blanket, and drew it over the dead man’s face.

  He handed the second kitchen knife to a copper. “Take this down to Headquarters,” he said, “and tell them to take a gander at it for prints.”

  As he was talking, a hand reached into the doorway.

  It crept around Ellen’s shoulder. Then it clamped tightly over her mouth.

  Another hand came around her waist and pulled her through the open doorway.

  Smith continued to talk to the cop.

  Half carrying, half dragging Ellen, Tony staggered across the littered yard to the door in the aquarium. It was closed, and he had to release his hold over Ellen’s mouth to open it.

  She screamed.

  Inside the shed, Smith heard the scream. He looked quickly around for Ellen. He ran to the door, pushing aside a couple of men who stood in his way.

  He was barely able to discern Ellen’s white dress in the dark, disappearing into the aquarium door. He rushed across the yard, through the door, and on through the aquarium passageway. When he reached the top of the ramp opening to the street, he looked around frantically.

  He saw Ellen in the arms of a man. She was being dragged across the wooden walk that led from the ticket booth of the Diving-Bell concession to the Bell itself, looming in the center of the water tank.

  “Stop him!” Smith shouted. But there was no one around to hear. He continued onward, taking the five steps that led up to the wooden walk in a leap. By the time he reached the walk, he saw the steel door of the Diving-Bell slam shut. He reached the Bell just as it began to submerge with a grind of motors and a splash of water.

  Helplessly Smith clawed at the steel door.

  “Open up, Tony!” he screamed. “Open up!”

  But the Bell continued to sink slowly into the green depths of the water.

  Smith watched it disappear under the water’s surface with a sucking noise and then a splashing roar.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  LOVE ON THE BOTTOM

  Ellen leaned against the side of the Diving-Bell, gripping the handrail. She watched Tony as he manipulated the controls of the Bell, her face a white blob of color.

  “I know how to run this thing,” Tony said. His voice was emotionless. “I learned how in Atlantic City. I know more about this Diving-Bell than the people who own it.”

  He glanced at her, at her frightened little face. His heart turned over.

  Suddenly the Bell bumped to an abrupt stop.

  Tony grabbed hold of a sheaf of rubber-covered electric wires that connected the control mechanisms with the air-pump outside that raised and lowered the Bell. He tugged at it viciously until the entire sheaf was ripped out and dangled loosely. The solitary globe that hung from the ceiling went out, leaving the bell in darkness save for the weird light which came in from the illuminated water in the tank outside.

  “Well, baby,” he said, “here we are.”

  Ellen looked at him. He still showed signs of the beating he had taken at O’Mara’s hands. His coat was dirty, muddy, and torn. One sleeve was ripped away almost completely. His right eye was nearly closed and gleamed out between puffed, bruised, livid flesh. He was breathing heavily from the exertion of running and of dragging her into the Diving-Bell.

  “You don’t need to be afraid, baby,” he whispered. “Not of me.”

  He put one arm around her trembling body and led her to one of the portholes looking into the water. Almost gently he turned her face to gaze into the green lucidness.

  Curious undersea creatures swam by, magnified to frightening proportions by the glass porthole.

  “See that?” Tony said. “That’s a man-eating shark.”

  They stood there like a couple of tourists.

  Outside the Bell, Smith was frantic.

  He had dispatched a copper to look for the bell’s attendant and while he waited for them to return, he had nothing to do but think about what Tony was going to do to Ellen. He rushed down the ramp to the portholes in the wall of the aquarium surrounding the Diving-Bell tank, hoping to see inside the sunken Bell. All he could see was murky, green water, with an occasional fish swimming by, eyeing him mildly. Once a shark crossed his vision and he jumped back sharply. For a moment he considered breaking open the glass window and allowing the water to pour out. But when he realized that he’d still be unable to get into the locked door of the Bell, he changed his mind.

  A few minutes later the copper returned with someone who claimed to know about the Bell’s mechanism. Smith hurried him to the platform, where a board full of marine gauges and various mechanisms was located.

  The man seemed to know what he was doing. He had worked around the Bell occasionally, he said. He immediately threw one of the switches. “That’ll bring it up,” he said.

  But nothing happened.

  The man tried still another switch. Then he shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but there’s no current. No spark jump here,” he said, pointing to the contact points.

  “We’ve got to bring up that Bell!” Smith said. “Before it’s too late.”

  The man shrugged his shoulders. “I can’t see how,” he said. “Someone’s monkeyed around with the circuit. There’s no juice going through the line. In the Bell, maybe,” he added. “There are a lot of loose wires down there.”

  “What about air?” Smith almost screamed. “If there’s no juice, can they get air?”

  The man stared down at the gauge board. “Don’t look like it,” he said. “This here gauge shows the air pressure’s going down.”

  Smith grabbed hold of the man and shook him. “You’ve got to do something!” he said. “There’s a murderer down in that Bell. With a girl. He’s out to kill her. You’ve got to get this bell up.”

  The man started to fiddle with more of the controls.

  Nothing happened.

  Finally h
is face brightened. “Wait,” he said, “this here gadget is on a different wire. It’s on battery, not on the electric line, and it’s connected with the microphone in the bell. I can throw it on and we can hear what they’re saying down there.”

  “Throw it on, then!”

  The man pushed the switch down. Again nothing happened.

  “The radio tubes have to warm up first,” the man explained.

  Smith waited. Then, very low at first, but increasing in volume, a voice came from the loudspeaker.

  Inside the Bell, Tony tightened his arm around Ellen.

  He repeated, “A man-eating shark. You know, baby, that’s the one thing in the world all mankind agrees about. Nobody loves the man-eating shark.”

  She tried to pull away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He wheeled to face her, tightening his hands on her shoulders. “Yes, you do. McGurn was a man-eating shark. He deserved to be killed. And the same thing goes for O’Mara.”

  Her shoulders seemed to grow colder under his touch.

  Behind them the pale green water moved by with its own monsters.

  “I could have helped you get away with it, baby. I would have. But you didn’t have to kill little Amby. He never hurt anyone in his life.” He paused. “That’s why I’ve got to do this.”

  “Tony! I thought you loved me.”

  “I do love you. That’s why we’re here. Listen, my lost darling, you killed McGurn for the fifty thousand dollars he had tucked away in a safety-deposit box. You’re smart, you get around,” he paused. “Maybe I ought to say, you used to get around until now—”

  “Tony—you wouldn’t hurt me—”

  “Not if I can help it. But you knew McGurn had promised me that fifty grand. You knew he’d let me take a rap for him when they knocked over one of his gambling-joints, and then he wouldn’t pay off. I was the perfect fall guy, so you got the Murphy kid to phone me and give me a message that McGurn would be on the wheel at a certain time. And then you sat and let Amby draw your picture-so you could watch and make sure I did what you knew I would do—”

  “I swear I didn’t, Tony—”

  “How did you get McGurn there, baby? What did you promise him, a new thrill on the wheel?”