Dames Fight Harder

by M. Ruth Myers

  No. Not the current. The Smith & Wesson. It had saved me dozens of times. Now any small chance of saving myself depended on discarding it, so I did. That little bit made me more buoyant, but I’d taken only half a dozen strokes when the current spun me. The bank where I’d gone in — I thought it was where I’d gone in — seemed impossibly far away already.

  A tree branch that had snapped off somewhere upstream rushed at me. In an effort to escape impact, I tried to duck under. It caught my foot. I kicked and kicked free and managed to surface, choking on water.

  I wasn’t a strong swimmer. I’d probably been in the water no more than a minute. It felt like a lifetime. I couldn’t tell if I was making any progress or was being swept haphazardly along. I knew I was going under too often.

  Both shores seemed equally distant. My arms cut through the water with every ounce of strength I had. Then the torrent of the Mad River slammed into me from the east, spinning me. I choked on waves and swallowed water. I grabbed at a limb on a dead tree floating past, but got only a scrape on my hand.

  Snatches of memory shot through my head: My father smiling down at me as we walked along with my hand in his. The warmth of Connelly’s arms around me.

  Another log was coming toward me. My fingers wrapped around a nub of it, but it started to roll, taking me along with it. As the log rotated and the waters pulled me under for a final time, I felt infinitesimally small and alone. My last conscious thought was wondering what it would have been like to sleep with Connelly.

  ***

  Hell was colder than I’d expected. It smelled worse, too. And it was empty... so empty... Hell was a void wasn’t it? Something about darkness... Where were the screams?

  The emptiness wavered. A blob. Coalescing. Looming over me. Foul, foul breath. The smell of death. The devil.

  “Get back or I’ll shoot you!”

  Was that thin croak that passed for a voice ... could that be me? Could you shoot the devil?

  I reached for my .38. It wasn’t there. A figure scrabbled back from me like a crab, hands raised.

  “Don’t shoot, lady. Didn’t mean you no harm. Just dragged you away from the water some in case a wave come, and was trying to turn you onto your side so’s you could breathe better.”

  I blinked vision back to my eyes. I could make him out now. A hobo.

  “Sorry.” I started to say more, but rolled to the side and vomited river.

  When I’d finished, the hobo was still waiting. Close enough I could still smell him. Or maybe that was me. Bits and pieces of what had happened began to return. I pushed up on my elbows. Everything tumbled inside me. Brain. Stomach. Gurgling like the river that had almost drowned me.

  Had been meant to drown me.

  I felt weak as a kitten.

  I tried to sit and didn’t make it. The hobo reached out an arm, which I grabbed gratefully, and held as I eased myself back to the ground in defeat. Goose bumps covered my body from chill night air joining forces with sodden clothes.

  “Let me try this again,” I said after several minutes had passed. Or maybe I’d nodded off. The hobo offered his arm again. This time I succeeded.

  It felt good to be upright, even though everything around me rocked as if I were still in the water. After a moment the sensation ebbed, though it didn’t vanish completely. I sat and concentrated on breathing.

  “Help me back to my car and I’ll give you two bucks,” I said. “I keep a couple hidden there for emergencies.”

  Along with my automatic.

  “Lady, you ain’t fit to walk anywhere, help or no help. I thought you was dead when I first saw you.” The hobo sat on his haunches, eyeing me curiously. “Sure is a wonder you’re not, lying more in the water than out the way you was. Current must of washed you in, same as it did that ol’ log that was there beside you.”

  A tilt of his head indicated direction. I looked and in the dark could make out the shape of a log twice the size that I was. My head hurt.

  “Lots of driftwood gets washed up on that shingle, ‘specially in spring,” he was saying. “Good for fires. Only it has to dry out first, and I don’t have no matches.”

  My eyes kept wanting to close. I had to get someplace safer.

  “Where are we?”

  “Don’t know what you mean, ‘zackly. City’s called Dayton.”

  “No. Where ... in Dayton?” What little energy I had was dwindling fast.

  “Oh. Well. Just north of downtown, then, right past where the two rivers come together. Deeds Point’s right across there.”

  So I was across from where I’d gone to meet Gloria. Across from where I’d been thrown in. The Great Miami had carried me downstream and the current of the Mad River joining it had hooked me east.

  “Emmet Street?” I croaked.

  “Emmet’s over there a ways.”

  I hadn’t gone far in the water, but it had been more than enough to drown me. It was a miracle I hadn’t.

  My shivering intensified. Now it came as much from realization of how close I’d come to dying as from the chilly evening. I pushed the thought away and tried to think. Had the time in the water affected my brain?

  “...blanket up under them bushes,” the hobo was saying. “If you can make it up there, you can wrap up in it and keep warm while I go for the police.”

  “No police.” They would give me a ride to the station and I’d be warm, but they’d want endless explanations. Right now all I wanted was to dry off and sleep. “Thanks on the blanket, but I want my clothes to dry out.” And to not get lice.

  Matt and Ione Jenkins lived in a small Moorish style apartment house not far away. I’d spent more than a few nights on their couch when the three of us sat up late drinking and talking. They had a car, and because of his work on the paper, Jenkins was used to being roused in the middle of the night.

  “Is there anyplace open where you can make a telephone call?”

  “Little beer joint that doesn’t always close when it’s s’pposed to. Reckon they might let me use theirs.”

  He sounded uncertain.

  Ever since I’d been on my own, I’d carried a two-dollar bill tucked into the cup of my bra for emergencies. A discreet shift of my arm assured me it was still there, plastered against my skin. Turning away, I extracted it.

  “Make it worth their time to let you use it. Get yourself a beer. The rest is yours too.” I held it out. “Make the call before you have the beer, though. And you’ll have to remember the number. I don’t have paper.”

  He repeated it back.

  “Oh, and my name’s Maggie.”

  I thought I managed to say it before my eyes closed, but I wasn’t certain.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  I awoke to the feel of water sloshing over me again and yelped.

  “Shhh,” a voice soothed. “I’m washing your hair. Keep your eyes closed.”

  The voice was familiar. The water was warm. My face was well above it.

  Softness enveloped me. I was wrapped in a cloud. I was warm. I felt safe. Somebody spoke to me, but I couldn’t answer. I drifted.

  After awhile the cloud parted. Something cold and round moved over my chest as I muttered a protest. A pair of stubby fingers opened my eye and shone a light in.

  Murmurs.

  The cloud closed around me again.

  My leg got cold. A needle stabbed into my bottom. A faint laugh. Blissful sleep.

  ***

  Click click click clickity-clackity click click clickity-click.

  Rhythm. Nice rhythm. Happy rhythm.

  Hearing sound, recognizing it, drew me into consciousness. Or maybe I’d been waking anyway and heard it. I needed to relieve myself. I managed to sit. My head felt thick and hot. So did my eyes. I recognized my surroundings, though. I was sitting on the couch at Jenkins’ apartment. Somewhere in the apartment Ione was typing away at one of the stories she sold to magazines.

  “Maggie?” Her face swam into view. “Good heavens, you’re sitting.”


  “I need to go to the bathroom.”

  The next time I woke, Ione was shaking my shoulder.

  “I need you to drink some water. Now, take these.” She handed me two tablets. “Try and finish the water. You’ve got a fever.”

  I obeyed meekly. Ione wiped my face with a cool washcloth.

  “There’s a lovely old doctor who lives on the floor above us. He looked you over and gave you a jab to protect you against some of the nasty things you might have gotten exposed to in the river. He’s rather worried your fever might turn into pneumonia, so don’t you dare let it. My reputation as a nurse is on the line.”

  ***

  The next time I woke, it was to someone poking me. Not a gentle touch like Ione had used several more times to give me water and tablets, this was a poke.

  “Ah, you are awake,” Jenkins said cheerfully.

  A lamp glowed somewhere in the room. Daylight crept through a nearby window, but its paleness told me it was evening. I sat slowly up. For the first time I discovered I was wearing very nice tailored pajamas. They must be Ione’s unless Jenkins went for pale pink sateen.

  “What day is it?”

  “Wednesday. How are you feeling?”

  I took a drink of water from a glass on the gate leg table set up beside me.

  “I had to toss my shoes. I had to toss my gun. I almost drowned. I’m mad as hops is how I feel.”

  “Oh, good. She’s better.”

  Ione materialized with a cup of tea and a saucer holding a single slice of toast. My thoughts stuck on the dawning implications of losing my gun.

  “Anything metal’s hard to come by now—”

  “Well, don’t get any ideas about melting one of my cameras down to make one. One of the cops you know’s bound to know how you can get a replacement.”

  “They probably have a drawer labeled ‘Guns Maggie Sullivan has taken from crooks’,” Ione said. “Now drink your tea.”

  They pulled up chairs.

  Tea had never tasted so good. One simple joy of being alive, even though I was still hot with fever.

  “Someone pushed you into that river, didn’t they?”

  Jenkins leaned forward intently, hands dangling between his knees. All signs of his teasing had vanished. Behind his wire-rimmed specs, his eyes were somber.

  I chewed some toast. “Yes.”

  “Were you meeting someone over there at Deeds Point?”

  I nodded.

  “A witness I’d been hunting.”

  I told them about it.

  “So, which one of you was the target? Did you walk in on something you shouldn’t have, or was someone after you?”

  The question, or something akin to it, had bumped its way into my consciousness a time or two.

  “I don’t know.”

  The following day, my fever began to go down. The doctor I didn’t remember stopped by again and promoted me to broth and a coddled egg. While Jenkins and Ione had supper that night, I took a bath. I was back on the couch when Jenkins ambled in with a handful of eight-by-ten photos. He hitched up a chair and perched like a satisfied grasshopper.

  First he told me some things he’d told me before but I’d only half remembered. That he’d driven Ione to retrieve my car and return it to a spot in front of Mrs. Z’s. She’d also popped in to tell my landlady I’d been taken ill and was staying at their place. Jenkins had spun the same story for Heebs and called Finn’s to spread the word there so they wouldn’t worry. Thanks perhaps to his press card, he’d managed to have a brief word with Joel Minsky to relate as many details as he knew about what had happened to me.

  Then he showed me the pictures in his hands as he explained them. He’d returned to Deeds Point and found a set of footprints next to the privy, the point from which someone had rushed out toward Gloria. He’d followed them back to tire tracks from a car that had been parked in a brushy area two streets over. Two sets of footprints led to the car, the ones from the privy, and a second set that had come from a gravel area near the park entrance. Those had come from a man considerably bigger, wearing shoes squared off at the toe, like a work boot.

  Hawkins.

  ***

  “If you wanted to swim, Mo has a pool at her place she’d let you use.”

  I chuckled. It was Rachel. When I opened one eye from my mid-morning drowse, she was standing above me with arms crossed.

  “I’ll put this in the kitchen.” Ione, the soul of discretion, gestured with a jar she was holding and left.

  “Mama sent you some soup.” Rachel sat on the edge of the couch. “She says if what we’ve heard about you nearly drowning is true, I’m to bring you home so she can take care of you. I have to admit there’s no better nurse.”

  I sat up and scrubbed at my face to banish the cobwebs.

  “Tell her thanks, but I’m just about back on my feet. I thought I’d have Ione drive me back to my place this evening.”

  “Maggie, what in the name of—” Rachel broke off, shaking her cloud of dark hair. “Give me the high points, if you’re up to it. Joel wants to know.”

  Her dark eyes had a dangerous sheen when I finished.

  “Well. Joel said tell you that while he considered your float down the river a bit extreme, it was just what he needed to get a postponement. Attempted murder of his investigator. Subsequent loss of a crucial witness. Things along those lines.” She had her lighter out, rotating it in her fingers, but not lighting up.

  “But I lost her!” I said in frustration. “I don’t know if she’s alive or dead. I don’t even know if the woman who called and set it all up was really Gloria. She talked as if she’d taken off, which Gloria had, and she sounded nervous. The super’s wife where she lived had gotten a call from her a few days earlier saying she was coming back and wanted a check for her unused rent. The woman who called me wanted money, so that fit too.”

  I paused.

  “I’ve been set up before, Rachel, but never when the person I was meeting demanded money.”

  “Maybe you turned up where someone wasn’t expecting you.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I need to be on my way.” Rachel got up. “Mo and Esther are waiting for me in the hall, and I don’t want to tire you.”

  “In the hall—”

  “They don’t mind. The whole family’s concerned. So’s Pearlie. He called today and I told him.” She hesitated, then bent and brushed a kiss on my forehead. “Call if you need anything.”

  ***

  “You haven’t mentioned whether you liked the sewing machine,” I said as Ione cleared away the bowl that had held Mrs. Minsky’s wonderful chicken soup and a sort of Jewish dumpling I’d had once before and found delicious.

  “Good thing you didn’t ask when I had you in the bathtub that first night. I’d have finished what those people who tried to drown you bungled.”

  I meant to laugh but mostly coughed instead. Ione thumped my back.

  “I don’t know what the man was thinking. I suppose I might be glad of it someday, if it gets to the point where we can’t buy new things. McCall’s magazine already says there won’t be anything wool, or girdles or brassieres either once whatever’s in stores now is gone.”

  “You’re not telling me you might make a girdle on that thing.”

  “Of course not. That would take rubber for one thing, which is why we won’t be able to get them in stores. The fact is, I couldn’t make anything on it. I don’t have the faintest idea. My mother would be glad to have it if hers broke, though, so I’ll gnash my teeth quietly. I need to run out and get some veal for dinner. Be a good girl and nap.”

  I heard the front door close behind her. Almost immediately, it opened again.

  “My, but you have an admirer! This was outside the door.” She set the largest box of chocolates I’d ever seen on my lap. “No having one yet, though. Your poor tummy would rebel.”

  Adjusting her hat microscopically, she left again. I sat staring at the foil box, which was nearly as deep a
s it was wide. It didn’t seem like the sort of gift anyone I knew would send, and not that many people knew I was here. Someone in Rachel’s family?

  An envelope waited under the blue satin bow. I slid it out. The letters forming my name were printed and didn’t call to mind any I recognized. Sliding my finger under the flap of the envelope, I broke the seal and opened the plain white note card it contained.

  You’ll like the bottom layer best.

  It’s a better size for you.

  There was no signature, not even initials. Wary now, I examined the box from all angles. Finally I undid the ribbon tying the box and lifted the lid.

  Chocolates. Fine quality. What was I going to find on the bottom layer?

  Using both hands, I removed the stiffened cardboard supporting the top layer. As it cleared the edge of the box, I stopped so abruptly a chocolate tumbled off to the floor. Along the edges of the bottom two layers, several rows of chocolates remained at the ready in their cardboard wells. The center rows had been removed. Nestling in the resulting space was a .38 Smith & Wesson. It was shorter than mine, a three-inch barrel, but it was a dandy.

  Only one person I could think of would have sent it.

  Pearlie.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Ione pressed me to stay one more night at their place, but I suspected having me around was deterring her and Jenkins from making whoopie. I argued that getting back to Mrs. Z’s on Friday night when most of the girls were out on dates would mean fewer questions. She relented. Back in my own bed I slept on and off for most of the weekend. By Sunday afternoon I was sitting up reading. On Monday I got into my DeSoto and inhaled deeply, in charge of my life again.

  When I opened the door to my office, I stopped in surprise. There, enthroned behind my desk, was Heebs.

  “Boy, sis, are you a sight for sore eyes!” He sprang to his feet. “Here, sit down.”

  “Heebs, what are you doing here? I’m pretty sure I sent word that you could go back to peddling papers.”

  “Yeah, that camera guy from the paper came and told me. He said you were real sick. It didn’t seem right just to walk out, with you in the midst of a big case and all. Not after you stepped in and looked after me and saw to it I didn’t get sent to that orphan asylum and all.