Trial by Fury

by Craig Rice

  Jake sighed faintly, wished he were back at the hotel, sipped his gin rickey, and blinked. “The liquor is a little different here, too.”

  “Don’t you like it?” she asked anxiously, pushing the button beside the table.

  “I like it,” he assured her, “but it’s a little sudden, when you’re not expecting it.”

  The bartender, a big, muscular youth with damp black hair, came out to their table and leaned on it, scowling.

  “What did you put in these?” Cora Belle demanded.

  “Dollar Gin,” the bartender said, as though he were surprised that anyone should ask. He looked at Jake and added, “That’s our most popular brand, Dollar Gin. If you don’t like it, say so, but—”

  “Oh, I like it fine,” Jake said. He noticed Cora Belle’s glass was empty. “You’d better bring us a couple more.”

  As the bartender walked away Cora Belle said, “You ought to be here some nights. When there’s a crowd here.”

  “I can hardly wait,” Jake said.

  “Of course,” she said, “it must seem pretty dull to you after Chicago night clubs.”

  Before Jake could answer, a fight broke out in the bar-room, resulting in the violent eviction of a couple of lively young farm hands. By the time it had quieted down, Cora Belle had changed the subject.

  “It’s a terrible place to live. Jackson, I mean. Everybody knows everything everybody else does, and the women just live on nasty gossip. And it’s the dullest place in the world. Nothing to do but go to the movies or go roadhousing.” She giggled coyly. “Still, I always say the principal entertainments are the same all over the world. Drinking, gambling, and you-know-what-I-mean. So it doesn’t matter much if you’re in Jackson or Chicago.”

  “A very fine philosophy,” Jake said gallantly.

  “But,” she added, “Jackson really is a terrible place.”

  “Then why do you live here?” Jake asked.

  She leaned confidingly across the table. “Maybe when I know you better, maybe I’ll tell you.” She put her head on one side and smiled fetchingly. “But let’s talk about you. Tell me all about yourself.”

  Rule two, Jake thought. Get the man talking about himself. He looked thoughtfully across the table at Cora Belle. From the chin down, she was definitely stocky. Not plump, plumpness had a certain soft curviness to it. Cora Belle was solid. The girdle under her bright print, short-sleeved dress didn’t fit any too well, either. But her face was thin, almost too thin. It seemed a little too small for the rest of her. as though it had once been a pretty, piquant little face that belonged on a tiny, appealing girl.

  Perhaps it was seeing that small, tilted nose and babyish mouth in her mirror every morning that encouraged Cora Belle to wear her metallic blond hair in ribboned curls. Her voice didn’t have a lisp, but her wide eyes did. The total effect would have been good, if it had stopped at the neck.

  In Jackson, he decided, she could get away with being the village siren. In any other place she’d have been just another blond barfly.

  Two drinks later she suggested that they move on down to Harvey’s. He observed that she nestled a little more closely in the front seat of the convertible than she had on the ride out from town. He fought back an impulse to deliver her back to her door, without pursuing his inquiries, and go back to the hotel for Helene. Helene could have a wonderful time in a roadhouse. Still, a promise was a promise.

  Harvey’s turned out to be a small shanty between the Jackson-Milwaukee highway and the riverbank, a two-room building housing a bar, a dance floor, and three booths. They paused at the bar for a drink while Cora Belle carried on what passed for gay conversation with the bartender and the two male customers, and while Jake decided that he was developing a preference for Dollar Gin. Either that, or after the first three drinks you stopped tasting it. He wasn’t sure.

  The booths in Harvey’s were smaller and more intimate than in the Den. Jake gave up trying to avoid Cora Belle’s knees under the table, and said, “If you dislike Jackson so much, why do you live here?”

  “Because,” she said, with a devastating mock shyness. “Just because.” She assumed a look of extreme self-importance and added, “If you knew the things I know about Jackson, Wisconsin, you’d be amazed. You really would, you’d be amazed.”

  Jake ordered another drink, lit a cigarette, and sat regarding her. There was a kind of woman he’d come to know well from his newspaper days, a drunken, indiscriminate, and not too good-looking kind of dame, who had read Laurence Hope’s poetry and the earlier prose of Ben Hecht, who assumed a look of extreme anguish at hearing either the Tchaikovsky “Fifth” or My Buddy, and who always gave the impression of being “in the know” on everything from City Hall staircase politics to the private lives of the upper tenth. Cora Belle seemed to fit into that category.

  The hell of it was, though, not infrequently those babes did know about half of what they pretended to be in on. You never could tell.

  “Nonsense,” he said coldly. “You can’t tell me anything would go on in a place like this.”

  “That’s what you think,” she said confidingly. She finished off the gin rickey in a neat gulp. “You’ve been wondering why I’m here. All right, I’m going to tell you.” She leaned so far across the table that she was breathing on his necktie. “It was because nobody asked me to the Junior Prom.”

  “A good reason,” Jake said gravely.

  “You think I’m kidding, don’t you? All right, you just listen. In a place like this, everybody’s all mixed up together. There’s no sorting out in fancy private schools and plain public schools and slum schools. It’s all one. Flo Peveley and Cora Belle Langhoff, the saloonkeeper’s daughter, right in the same high-school class.”

  Jake said, “That’s democracy.”

  “Democracy hell,” Cora Belle said indignantly. “Do you think those babes like Flo Peveley—well, I take that back, she wasn’t so bad—but Nellie Proctor, and Kathleen Hansen, and Maybelle Smith—can you imagine them inviting me to come over for supper, or stay all night after a date? Oh sure, all the boys wanted to make up to me.” She paused to light a cigarette, a little unsteadily.

  “I can’t imagine any boy not wanting to,” Jake said. He knew this was not the occasion for subtlety.

  “But not in public, you understand,” Cora Belle said. “Sure, their fathers hung out in my old man’s speakeasy. But you wouldn’t catch one of them taking me to a movie. It was all right to date me up to go out for a ride, but if we got a drink or a hamburger on the way home, we got it somewhere out of town. My old man bought me the swellest clothes of any girl in Jackson, but you wouldn’t catch anybody walking home from school with me.”

  “I think I can stand one more,” Jake said, pushing the bell to call the bartender. “How about you?”

  “Oh sure,” she said. “I can stand a lot more. Well, anyway, along comes the Junior Prom. I knew I wasn’t going to be dated for it, but you know how a kid that age is, I kept right on hoping something would happen, right up to the last minute. Well, a few days before I heard a couple of girls talking down in the high-school toilet, about some guy who hadn’t been able to get a date for the Prom, some awful jerk. One of the girls finally says, ‘Oh well, he can always take Cora Belle,’ and they both haw-hawed about it. That was the finish for me. I stole some money from my old man’s pants, and took all the stuff he’d ever given me that I could hock, left a note for him, and beat it to Milwaukee.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Jake said. “But why did you come back?”

  “I always intended to come back,” Cora Belle said. “I had a couple of jobs in Milwaukee, but I always kept my eyes open for a good chance. Well, along came Danny Fromm and we got married. He was a racketeer, but he was a swell guy, and when we finally split up he settled a big hunk of money on me. So I just moved back to Jackson—my old man was dead by that time—and bought that cute little house, and I’ve been here ever since. And do these dames here hate me!”

>   “Maybe it’s this gin,” Jake said. “But I don’t get it.”

  Cora Belle laughed nastily. “Because they have to be polite to me. They don’t know what I might do if they weren’t. Sure they don’t invite me to join the Music Study Club and they don’t drop over for visits, but they sure are polite when they meet me on the street. Because they know their husbands and boy friends are taking me out, every chance they can get. And just to make it worse, they see me going around in swell clothes they can’t afford, and driving a nifty new Chrysler roadster. They hate me like poison, and they have to stand it, and that’s just how I intended it would be.” She emptied another glass of Dollar Gin and soda water. “And that, pal, is why I stay in Jackson, Wisconsin.”

  “I see,” Jake said. He felt a little vague about things.

  “And I know plenty about all of ’em,” Cora Belle said. “Like that old biddy, Ellen McGowan. She’d like to see me ridden out of town on a rail, just because her nasty little brother hangs around me. She’s just so damn refined I can’t stand it. But you just ask her sometime. Her father was supposed to go to California for his health, wasn’t he? Well, you just ask her sometime if she ever got a letter from him. Just one letter, all the time he was away. And ask her if she can produce anybody who saw him out there. Just ask her.” She pounded on the table and called, “Harvey!”

  Jake’s brain whirled a little, but he thought it was more the Dollar Gin than anything Cora Belle had said. Perhaps one more would clear his head a little.

  After that outburst, Cora Belle did not seem disposed to discuss Jackson, Wisconsin, and Jake couldn’t think up any of the right questions. They moved on to a slightly more ornate roadhouse called Lakeside Inn where Jake managed to ignore the pointed advertisements for tourists cabins, “by day, week, or hour,” and to a tiny crossroads tavern called The Owl’s Nest where Cora Belle fed a dollar’s worth of nickels into a slot machine.

  It might not be the gin, Jake decided. It might be the weather. The one-room interior of The Owl’s Nest was like a small steam bath, heavily scented with stale beer and Dollar Gin. The line of stuffed birds and animals over the bar seemed to feel the heat too, their fur or feathers hung limply, and their glass eyes were dull. The bartender himself was lethargic and half asleep.

  Jake yawned heavily, and suggested to Cora Belle that the outside air might be cooler. She dropped one more nickel into the slot machine, and agreed.

  Night life in Jackson County, Jake thought.

  There was an agonizing quality about the drive back to town that he knew he would never be able to forget. Dollar Gin appeared to have an entirely deadening effect. It was hard to keep his hands on the wheel. Cora Belle nestled close to him, her damp, sweaty hair spread over his shirt front. The edges of the road were faintly blurred, he drove slowly and with painstaking care, slowing almost to a stop whenever the headlights of an approaching car appeared. It wasn’t that he was afraid of being killed, but it was Helene’s car he was driving.

  Besides, it had suddenly begun to rain. Hard.

  Poor little Cora Belle, he thought. What a miserable life for such a nice girl. He slowed the car down to the barest minimum of speed and glanced at her. Her pretty little face looked drooping and sad.

  It was a dirty trick to take a nice girl like this out just to pump information from her.

  That reminded him that he’d been singularly unsuccessful in his attempt. He blinked and shook his head once or twice, in the vain hope that it would clear a little.

  Dollar Gin was hardly the stuff with which to ease into drinking again after a long stretch on the wagon.

  The idea of pouring Dollar Gin into a sweet kid like Cora Belle, just to learn something from her. The poor, pathetic little creature. He wished he could do something nice for Cora Belle. Maybe she’d like another drink.

  She said that she would, and indicated a tavern just on the edge of Jackson. Jake never did learn what its name was, or remember much of what it looked like.

  The drink did settle his head a little. He resolved to be very stern. Mustn’t let good old Jerry Luckstone down. A little coaxing might help.

  He slipped an arm around Cora Belle and managed a few rather tentative pats on her neck. She giggled. It was all in a good cause, he told himself, but couldn’t quite remember what the cause was. They went back to the car. His resolve slipped away from him momentarily, and he began driving down the road again.

  The exigencies of driving down the wet, blurred highway drove her temporarily out of his mind. He gripped the wheel with a desperate determination, his teeth clenched.

  The drive across the bridge was a thousand miles long.

  He turned off at Milton Street, turned one more corner with meticulous care, and stopped approximately in front of Cora Belle’s house.

  The streetlight shone on her face through the rain, hiding the wrinkles and the loosened skin and the make-up. Just a poor little high-school girl, Jake murmured, and everybody picking on her. Including him. A very nasty thing to do.

  Nothing personal about this, he reminded himself, as he patted her again. All in a very important cause.

  She nestled down against his shoulder.

  “Cora Belle,” he said thickly, “who murdered ’at man in the courthouse?”

  She giggled again. “Bet you wish y’knew.”

  “Bet you don’t know,” he said, picking up the cue.

  “Bet I do too. Know who wanted to, an’ why. Know who blowed up the bank, too, an’ why. Know that much, anyway.” She hiccuped.

  “Bet you don’t,” Jake said monotonously. “Bet you can’t tell me.”

  She hiccuped again, faintly, and was silent. Jake waited awhile before he looked at her closely and realized she was going to be silent for a long time, probably hours.

  Well, at least she did know. He’d learned that much.

  She looked very comfortable there. Jake gave up trying to hold his eyes open, and settled back on the seat for a good, long nap.

  Chapter Nineteen

  He didn’t know what he’d done, Jake decided, but whatever it was, he would never do it again.

  The back of his head materialized first. It ached. Then suddenly it vanished, and his forehead came to life. For a little while nothing existed save his forehead. At last his stomach entered the picture, behaving in the most unpleasant way possible.

  He was, he realized, in bed. Just what bed, and how he had gotten there, was a mystery that would have to be taken up later. He opened one eye just enough to discover that it was daylight, and closed it again hastily.

  For a while he was content to lie there and suffer. Then little by little he began trying to think things over. It was a painful effort and singularly unsuccessful.

  Something vague about carrying someone—he couldn’t recall who—up a short flight of steps, and banging his knee in the process. Something equally vague, and faintly terrible, about trying to find his way home through a maze of streets that kept twisting and wheeling to confound him. Then a definite gap in memory.

  Someone laid a cold cloth, scented with menthol, on his face. It felt wonderful. Kind hands bathed his face with cool water. It was even more wonderful. He opened his eyes and saw that a blonde angel was holding a cup of coffee to his lips.

  The coffee was strong and reassuring. It was no more than safely down when a voice on leave from some angelic choir said, “Take this, darling.”

  He obediently swallowed a couple of small tablets and a few drops of water and lay back on the pillow to await improvement. The blonde angel went on bathing his face and reapplying the cold cloth on his forehead. The throbbing ache began to fade.

  He had never seen anyone so beautiful, so gentle, or so kind. That long golden hair that fell over her shoulders, the filmy white gown that clung to her—he couldn’t quite decide if it was an angel’s vestment or a nightgown—the cool, exquisite, heavenly touch of her hand.

  Suddenly she threw her arms around him, kissed him, and clung to him
for a moment. His head spun. This might be an angel, but definitely not a celestial one. He tried desperately to remember where he was, how he had gotten here, and above all, what accounted for the presence of the angel. It was no use. Everything was terribly vague, and his thoughts went round and round. Maybe he had amnesia. Or was amnesia a medicine? Milk of amnesia. No, amnesia was a confused state, like California. California had the tallest trees. He opened his eyes suddenly and looked at the angel.

  “Trees a crowd,” he said happily.

  Her answer was to stroke his forehead.

  “Darling,” he said, gazing at her, “you’re wonderful. You’re beautiful. You’re an angel. Darling, will you marry me?”

  Her answer was to kiss him lightly on the forehead and say, “Yes, dear.”

  He fell back on the pillow and closed his eyes, reflecting on his good fortune. Sixty seconds later he sat bolt upright in bed, his eyes wide. He’d just remembered who the angel was. Helene.

  He groaned.

  Helene poured out another cup of coffee from the thermos bottle on the dresser and handed it to him. Then she lit a cigarette and slipped it between his shaking fingers.

  “It’s all right,” she said soothingly. “I don’t know what you’ve done, but I forgive you.”

  He drank the coffee, complained that the cigarette had been made of old mattresses, and said, “Well, I didn’t. I guess she expected me to, but I didn’t.”

  Helene asked, “Who?”

  “Cora Belle. Cora Belle Fromm.”

  Helene said, “Oh.”

  There was a longish pause before Helene announced furiously, “If you think I’d suspect you of any kind of hanky-pank with that faded blonde floozy, you’re an insane man. Did you find out anything from her, and what gave you the idea in the first place?”

  Jake swung his feet to the floor, sat up a minute, then hurriedly lay down again. “If I weren’t already in love with you,” he declared, “I’d fall in love with you now. Or maybe you have second sight, like Buttonholes.”