Innocent Bystander

by Craig Rice

  Smith nodded his head gravely.

  “You don’t look like a man who wouldn’t want to.”

  Hard, hard, tough and hard, he thought. Too hard. As if she was putting it on. Too tough. As if she was trying to impress him with her flintiness. Why? What reason could she have for trying to impress him? Was she all she was supposed to be, he wondered. Was she just a material witness? Was she—

  She had raised her glass to him. “Here’s how!” she said.

  He raised his own glass and touched it to hers. “How!”

  Smith returned to the kitchen and came back with the bottle of Scotch.

  “Might as well kill this,” he said.

  “Yeah!”

  He seated himself next to her on the couch. He knew that she was laughing at him. There was a mocking curve in the shape of her lips. A devilish lilt in the irony of her brittle eyes.

  “What’s so funny?” he demanded abruptly.

  “Us.”

  “How?”

  Ellen laughed. “Imagine me in a copper’s house, drinking booze with him and—!”

  “And?”

  She started to play idly with a loose button dangling from the front of his coat. “None of your damn business,” she said. But it had the quality of a teasing, Wouldn’t you like to know?

  Now, he tried to tell himself. Now’s the time for it. She’s open, wide open for me. He couldn’t take his eyes away from her lips. Like a bruised rose, he thought. But as he felt drawn to her, at the same time he felt a sense of repulsion. Behind the invitation there seemed to be a warning.

  It was his goddamned copper’s suspicion, he told himself. Never take anything for granted. Doubt everything. The ingrained training and adherence to the Police Manual.

  He tried to think back, to marshal together all the facts he knew about her that might furnish a basis for his suspicion. But he could think of nothing. All he had against her was that she had happened to have her portrait drawn near by when a big-shot gambler was murdered. But what did he know about her—about her background—about her life before she had become involved with murder? Nothing. A blank. Zero.

  Smith yawned. If he’d only been able to get enough sleep, he’d be able to think more clearly, he thought.

  “The company?” she asked pertly.

  He reached over and grabbed her in his arms. It was an awkward position and he cursed himself for it. Like when he had kissed his first girl—Leona her name was, Leona Farr. His struggle to get his arms around her. Her giggles. The silly, adolescent kiss planted on her ear.

  He pulled Ellen to him and kissed her. The blood pounded in his temples. He wanted to tear off all her clothing, see her nakedness glow warmly under his eager eyes.

  When he withdrew his lips from hers, he saw she was still fiddling with the loose button on his coat. The bitch hadn’t even reacted to him. She was hard. Cold. Steely. Flinty. Playing him for a sucker, that’s what she was!

  She leaned back and regarded him with laughing, mocking eyes. “I thought you brought me here to protect me from Tony.”

  He could have killed her then, himself.

  Instead, he got up and poured another shot of Scotch for each of them. She watched him move about, observing every action. Like a cat watching a mouse, playing with it.

  He yawned again.

  She leaped up from the sofa. “Here,” she said, “you lie down here. You’re tired.”

  She took hold of him firmly and pulled him to where she had been seated. Then she pushed him down into the couch.

  “Rest!” she said.

  “Tell me about yourself,” he said. “Who are you? Where’d you come from?”

  Ellen seated herself on the floor near his head. Drawing her knees up almost to her chin, she wrapped her arms around them and stared off into a void.

  “A place called Hyattville.”

  “Never heard of it.” He yawned.

  “Nobody has. It’s a dump. That’s why I left it. My mother died when I was a kid. I don’t even remember what she looked like. My old man never kept any picture of her. Said she was a tramp. Maybe she was. I don’t know.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Then what?”

  “I got a job as a waitress at the hotel. The old man found out and beat hell out of me. Said I was going to be like my mother. Then he got drunk. And I left him and Hyattville.”

  As she continued, Smith tried to keep his eyes from closing. The drone of her low-pitched voice seemed to act as a soporific, lulling him to sleep. He tried to fight it off but the periods of wakefulness grew shorter and shorter. And the periods of dozing stretched longer and longer.

  “—that’s when I came here,” he heard her say.

  “That’s when I came here,” he repeated to himself. Again and again he repeated it, trying desperately to use it as a capstan to which he could anchor his consciousness.

  But before he was aware of it, consciousness had slipped away. Soon he had fallen fast asleep.

  Ellen continued with her unheard story.

  He didn’t want to. He told himself he wasn’t going to. But he did, anyhow. Tony went back to Ellen’s hotel.

  She wasn’t back yet.

  Again against his will, he made for the Merry Gardens. The ballroom was jam-packed with dancers. Ace Hudkins and his Merry-Makers were swinging it sweet and low. Tony wandered down the sides of the ballroom, scrutinizing each face. Then he went out on the beach. The fog had lifted. From his vantage point atop the ramp that led down to the beach he could see the entire sweep of sand all the way down to the third life-guard platform.

  No sign of Ellen or the cop.

  The sound of the Merry-Go-Round’s Wurlitzer incised itself into his mind.

  Tony turned and hurried down the boardwalk to the Pier’s entrance, pushing his way through the crowds of people that thronged the street. Somehow his mood lightened as he got closer and closer to the Pier. This was his life, he knew. These were his people. His kind of people. He walked through the entrance arch of the Pier with a lighter step. He might even bump into her there.

  When he passed Mamie’s place, he looked into the doorway to say hello. Mamie was busy with a sucker. He winked a broad hello to her and was off before she could reply.

  At the shooting-gallery Tony took out his own gun and put three shots through the bull’s-eye.

  “Back in form, Tony?” Happy Jack chortled.

  “Thanks for helping me out at the hotel!”

  Happy Jack grinned. “You should have seen that cop’s mug.”

  Tony continued onward up the main drag. The barkers outside the Movieland joint and the Fun House recognized him with personal greetings interlarded into their spiels.

  Tony waved to them and continued on.

  It was meat and drink to him. The carnival lights made him glow. The mechanical blare of the Wurlitzer was sweet music to his ears. The greasy smell of the French-fried nuts, the sweet odors coming from the cotton-candy place, the dark brown smell of mustard and hot dogs, the acrid ozone odor of the electric contacts from the Duck-mobile concession; all these were familiar odors that made him feel at home. The excitement of the crowds, the jingle of money, the laughing cries of the suckers, the gurgle of coffee in the percolators, the roar of the concession gasoline motors, the creak of the steel girders on the High-boy ride, the rattle of the hoist chains, the multifarious sounds and sights and odors of the carnival spirit on the Pier combined to give him a feeling of belonging again.

  Ellen realized Smith had fallen asleep when she became aware of the gentle snores. For a long time she sat looking into his face. A curious smile crooked the corners of her mouth. She saw the loose button hanging by a thread from the front of his coat and grinned widely.

  “Sucker!” she whispered to herself.

  Then she did a strange thing. Reaching for her purse on the end table, she opened it and took out a small sewing-kit. From it she took needle and thread. Then she began to sew on the loose button.
r />   The button secured, Ellen rose, replaced the sewing-kit in her purse, and started for the door.

  After opening the door, she hesitated momentarily, turned and surveyed the room as if for the last time. Smith was still snoring gently, deep in sleep.

  She turned, slipped out, and closed the door softly behind her.

  Chapter Seventeen

  CORNERED

  Back in her hotel room, the moment Ellen closed the door behind her she knew someone was there with her. Some deep-seated animal sense warned her. She stood still, listening, wondering, fearful.

  She reached out and groped along the wall for a light switch. “Tony!” she called.

  No answer.

  “Who’s there?” she cried out.

  Still no answer.

  Her fumbling fingers closed over the light switch and snapped it on. The overhead globe blossomed into light. Ellen made a startled, soft intake of breath when she recognized the intruder.

  It was Jack O’Mara.

  He stood at the window and chewed nervously at the unlit cigar in his mouth. His face was covered with an oily grin. He took the cigar from his mouth and laid it thriftily on the window sill.

  “Hi, baby!” he said.

  He started to walk slowly from the window to where Ellen was standing. She watched his every move, like a bird staring at the hypnotic eyes of a snake. When he got to the door, she moved away from him.

  “Afraid of me?” he asked.

  Her eyes narrowed; her mouth tightened to a taut line of disgust.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

  O’Mara grinned.

  “I came to see you,” he said easily.

  “Why?”

  “I like you.”

  “I can’t say the same about you.”

  He took a step forward to her. She stepped back away from him. His mouth drooped with an expression of pretended hurt.

  “Why am I poison to you?” he whined. “You’re the kind of girl I can do business with. All kinds of business.” He winked. “If you know what I mean.”

  “I don’t!” she said. “And what’s more, I don’t care to find out!”

  “Oh, baby!” He advanced closer to her. She continued to step back out of his reach. “That’s no way to act to a guy who can do you a helluva lot of good!”

  “You?” she snorted. “Don’t make me laugh!”

  His face contorted. Lashing like a whip, his hand came sweeping around and smacked her full against the cheek. She reeled backward with the impact of the blow.

  “I’ll make you laugh on the other side of your face, you bitch!”

  He followed her as she fell backward, slapping her face first with his right hand and then with his left hand.

  He roared, “Go ahead and laugh! Laugh!”

  Sobbing with pain, terrified with fright, Ellen backed away until she found herself cornered. All she could do was to throw her arms up over her face in a vain attempt to ward off his punishing blows.

  “Go ahead and laugh!” he taunted. “Lemme see you laugh!”

  Suddenly he stopped slapping her. Quickly he wrenched her arm and twisted it around her back, lowered his face, and started to kiss her. Ellen recoiled sharply. Scratching, biting, kicking, spitting, gouging, she fought him, tearing long, bloody, jagged stripes down his cheeks.

  He laughed aloud.

  Holding her in an iron grasp, he roared in laughter while she fought and struggled and panted, as the breath went out of her. At last her strength wore out and she subsided in his arms like a limp rag doll.

  “What do you want?” she sobbed.

  “You!” he whispered hoarsely. “You and what comes with you!”

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

  O’Mara released his arms from around her and led her to the bed, where he eased her down as gently as he could. “Look,” he said, “I know all about you!”

  “What do you know about me?” she said slowly.

  “Plenty!”

  “What?”

  “Can we talk business?”

  “That depends.”

  O’Mara rubbed his hands together gleefully. “Good! That’s the way I like to see you. I’m a good joe. I just gotta be handled right.” He saw his face reflected in the dresser mirror. He grinned when he saw the livid scratches oozing droplets of blood. “What a gal! Right after my own heart! Now I know you and I can get along together.” He took out his handkerchief and tamped it down on the scratches to blot up the blood.

  “What do you know about me?” Ellen demanded almost tonelessly.

  O’Mara looked down at her. “What are you worried about?” he said. “Take it easy. We got time. A lotta time.” He reached down and stroked her cheek with his hand. “All you gotta do is be a nice girl, like you are now.”

  “Cut it out!” Ellen said. “You’re trying to pull a fast one! You don’t know anything about me. Because there’s nothing about me I might be afraid to have you know. Nothing!”

  O’Mara laughed again. “Now I wouldn’t be too sure about that, if I was you. I come across a certain little paper that was given to me by a certain little stoolie. And it’s full of writing all about a certain little girl with the name of Ellen Haven.” He paused. “Know a doll with that monicker—Ellen Haven?”

  “Everyone knows that’s my name!”

  “Everyone know about Barney Genaro?”

  The question brought a scowl to Ellen’s face. She bit her lip nervously. Then she tried to pass off the question with a strug of her shoulders. “Never heard of him.”

  “How about a guy named McGurn?”

  “He was murdered. I read about it in the papers.”

  O’Mara’s voice took on a wheedling tone. “Look, girlie,” he said, “I know a thing or two about you. You know a thing or two I’d like to know. Now, let’s you and me get together and pool what we both know.”

  He paused again, dabbing his handkerchief to his bloodied cheek. “Look, baby. I ain’t talking copper now. You don’t have to be afraid I’ll turn you in. I’m done with the Force. All I got was peanuts for ten years. Now I’m out for the big dough. For fifty thousand bucks! And there’s twenty-five thousand in it for you if you come across with the information. Twenty-five thousand bucks—and me, I go with it.”

  “You’re no bargain!”

  “Is twenty-five thousand bucks?”

  In answer Ellen suddenly darted up from the bed and ran to the door. But she wasn’t fast enough for O’Mara. He got to her before she could open the door, grabbed her arm, and pulled her away from it so hard that she went twisting across the room and landed on the floor in a heap against the bed. He strode quickly to her and kicked her in the back.

  “Don’t pull that stuff on me!” he growled.

  Ellen sobbed.

  “Art Smith is going to hear about this.”

  O’Mara scowled. “You ain’t gonna sing to him again if I can help it.” He bent over, lifted her, and with one arm held her against the wall. With his free hand he began to slap her face. First with the flat of his hand and then with the back of his hand, her head bobbing from side to side to avoid the vicious swipes.

  The door opened and Tony came in.

  He was at O’Mara with one headlong leap. O’Mara turned just as Tony came up. With one blow to the chin he sent Tony sprawling across the room to the floor. Then he started to tug at the service pistol in his hip pocket. Tony writhed on the floor, trying to collect his senses.

  As O’Mara got his gun and leveled it at Tony, Ellen slipped her shoe off and brought its sharp-pointed heel down on the enraged copper’s wrist. He let out a howl of pain. The gun dropped from his fingers. Ellen side-swiped it under the bed with a kick of her stockinged foot.

  Deprived of his gun, O’Mara rushed for Tony. Tony kicked him in the belly as he came lumbering in. O’Mara doubled up, his arms crossed over his paunch, and howled. Then Tony leaped up from the floor and was on O’Mara again. Two solid punches to
the copper’s jaw forced him to bring his arms up from his stomach to protect his face. The blood oozed again from the scratches Ellen had torn in his cheeks. Wildly he lashed out at Tony.

  The fight was all over before it could really get started.

  Tony sent a short right jab into O’Mara’s guts. Once again he was forced to bring his arms down. Then a left uppercut sent O’Mara’s head snapping back. He reeled backward from the blow, stumbled, and went crashing to the floor. His head smacked sharply against the corner of the chest of drawers. He lay there quietly, out completely.

  Tony rushed to where the big man had fallen and stood over his inert body waiting for him to come back for more. He was puffing heavily. When he saw that the copper was really out, he raised his left hand to his lips and sucked at the blood oozing from his raw knuckles.

  Ellen looked down at the fallen cop, her eyes wide.

  Still panting from the exertion, Tony took her arm. “Let’s scram out of here!” he said quietly. “He’ll get out when he comes to.”

  He watched Ellen sharply. Was she sufficiently afraid of O’Mara to come away with him?

  “You’d not want to be here when he comes out of it.”

  She nodded almost like an automaton.

  “You’re right.”

  They hurried out of the room and down to the sidewalk.

  The fog had crept in again. The lights of the Pier glowed dully through vaporous mists. They could discern only a few of the people that still thronged the boardwalk. The fog obliterated everyone outside the periphery of a ten-foot circle. The sounds of the Pier came to them as if from a plane of existence outside their own, yet still adjacent to it.

  Ellen shivered. Tony put an arm around her. He noticed that she didn’t draw away. But perhaps that was because there were people within the sound of her voice, if she should cry out.

  “Why did you do it?” he asked.

  “Smith?”

  “Yeah!”

  “I don’t know why.” She shook her head as though trying to throw off a daze. “I guess I wanted to make you jealous.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What happened?” Tony steeled himself for a blow.