“I’m going to tell you good-by here,” I said,
“because I’m going to drop you off a block or so from
the bus station and run. There will be a bus for
Bayou City sometime this evening, around seven, I
think. You’ll arrive there a little before midnight. Go
to the State Hotel. It’s a small one, quiet, and not too
expensive, but still not crumby enough for the cops
to have their eyes on it. Register as Mrs. Crawford
and just wait until I show up. Try to buy yourself a
few clothes, but make the money go as far as
possible, because we’re going to have to travel by
bus. I won’t be able to bring the car the way things
are going to work out. And be sure to remember
this: When I get there, don’t recognize me. It may be
safer for us to travel separately until we get clear
out of the state. You can slip me the number of your
room on the quiet, but don’t let anybody see that you
even know me.”
I took her face in both my hands. “I won’t see you
for forty-eight hours, and after that we’ll be together
River Girl — 105
for the rest of our lives. So this is two days’ worth of
good-by, and then there’ll never be another one.”
She held onto me, and when she finally stirred and
pushed back on my chest her eyes were wet.
“Jack,” she whispered, “I’m afraid.”
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” I said. “Just hang
on.”
“But you’re up to something.”
“No,” I said. “It’s not anything dangerous. Not as
dangerous as running now would be.”
“But what is it? Don’t you see I have to know?”
“All right,” I said. “But it may not pan out. That’s
the only reason I didn’t want to tell you. It all
depends on what I find out in town. I’m going to try
to make it look as if he killed me.”
River Girl — 106
Thirteen
It was nearly seven when I got back to town. The sun
was down, but the air was still and heat lay stagnant
and suffocating in the streets. I started to go on up
to the courthouse, but remembered it would be
closed now, and since I’d have to get the custodian
to let me in the building there was no use in
hurrying. He probably wouldn’t be there to start
cleaning up until nearly eight. Impatient and savage
at the delay but still trying to tell myself there was
no hurry, that I had all night to find out what I
wanted to know, I turned in at the house. At least I
could get out of the sweaty fishing clothes and take a
shower.
As I was turning the key in the back door I heard
the telephone ringing inside. The key stuck for a
minute, and while I worked with it I could hear the
ringing going on with that shrill, waspish insistence
a telephone always has in an empty house. Just as I
got the door open and started through the kitchen it
quit. Well, the hell with it, I thought.
There was a postcard from Louise, the usual
picture of a yellow beach covered with parasols and
a Prussian-blue ocean in the background. “We’re
having a fine time,” she said. I threw it in on the bed
and started to undress for the shower. At least, I
River Girl — 107
thought, she didn’t ask for money this time. The
shower felt wonderful. I turned it on hot, then cold,
then hot again, feeling my nerves begin to unwind
and a little of the tightness go out of me. And then,
in the middle of it, the telephone started in again.
Oh, for Christ’s sake, I thought, and let it ring. It
went on, seeming to grow shriller and more angry as
the seconds passed, and finally I turned off the water
and reached for a towel. Just as I came out of the
shower stall it stopped.
I dried myself, wrapped the towel around my
waist, and went out in the kitchen. Getting a couple
of ice cubes out of the refrigerator, I poured a glass
half full of bourbon and ran a little water in it. By the
time the first two swallows had gone down I could
feel myself settling like a punctured balloon. I hadn’t
realized how taut I’d been now for hours. It’ll be all
right in a few days, I thought. It’ll wear off, and I
won’t think about it. I know I won’t. The telephone
started again.
This time I got to it, still carrying the drink.
“Hello,” I said impatiently. “Marshall speaking.”
“Where have you been?” It was Buford, and I could
hear the cold anger in his voice. “I’ve been trying to
get hold of you for hours.” I could feel the tightness
coming back. Something had happened.
“I had a little private business to attend to,” I said.
I knew I had a bawling out coming to me for going
off without telling him, so if he wanted to give it to
me now, this was as good a time as any.
“Well, next time how about letting me know about
it? I might have to get in touch with you.”
“Right,” I said. “I see what you mean.”
“No. You don’t. You don’t know how much I mean.
I want to see you right away.”
“All right. What’s up?”
“All hell’s broken loose. But I can’t talk about it
over the phone. Get over here as fast as you can.”
“Where are you?”
River Girl — 108
“A friend’s place. That four-story apartment house
on Georgia street. Apartment Three.”
“I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.” I hung up. I
had an idea about the “friend’s place,” but I’d never
been there or even known where it was. Buford was
a bachelor and lived with his mother in a big ugly
gingerbread house built by his grandfather back in
the eighties, but I’d always been pretty sure he had
another place somewhere, for he could disappear
right here in town at times and nobody could find
him. It wasn’t any of my business, however, and I’d
never thought about it much except to wonder once
or twice why he didn’t marry the girl, whoever she
was. Maybe he didn’t believe in marriage.
I finished the drink and went into the bedroom to
throw on some clothes. The car was still in the
driveway, and I backed out and headed across town.
Apartment 3 had a private entrance. I pressed the
buzzer and the door clicked. There was a short hall
at the top of the stairs, and the door to the livingroom
was on the left. It was a big room on the corner
of the building, looking out into both streets, but the
curtains were drawn now and the Lights were on, for
it was dusk outside.
It was beautifully furnished, with a beige rug and
blond furniture, a big console phonograph, and
shelves full of record albums and books, but the two
things that would hit you in the eye as you walked
into it would be first the girl, and then the guns. She
was on the sofa with her legs curled under her, and
as I came in she uncoiled and stood up with the
connected flow of movement of a cat turning on a
rug, a small girl with a vital, somehow reckless face
and short-cropped hair in tight rings close to her
head like curling chips of copper. She was wearing a
blue dressing gown that just touched the floor under
her feet and was pulled chastely together at the base
of a creamy throat with a large silver pin in the
shape of an Oriental sword. I had seen her around
town a number of times, driving a Lincoln
convertible, but never had known who she was
except that someone had said she was married to an
River Girl — 109
Army engineer working on something in Alaska. The
story had probably been started by Buford.
“Mr. Marshall?” she asked, smiling. “I’m Dinah.”
“How do you do?” I said.
She saw me looking around inquiringly. “Mr.
Buford is out in the kitchen mixing a drink. He won’t
let me do it; he says no woman should ever be
trusted with a loaded gun or a cocktail shaker.”
I nodded, and looked around at the wall. She must
have seen the wonder on my face, for she laughed.
“How do you like my gun collection?” I looked
back at her and saw the amusement in the gray eyes.
Somehow you got the idea that the very incongruity
of it tickled her probably as much as it did Buford,
this idea of a girl’s apartment—traditional in every
other respect, secluded, anonymous, tastefully
furnished—with one whole wall covered with guns.
There were expensive shotguns, which he used
during the bird season, rifles all the way from .22’s
to large-caliber things I’d never seen before, and a
beautiful collection of antique firearms probably
going back to Revolutionary days.
“They’re nice,” I said. Any other time I would have
gone over and looked at them more closely and
probably would have paid more attention to her, this
amazing flame-haired figurine who found
amusement in sharing a love nest with an arsenal,
but right now I had too many other things on my
mind. Impatience was making me jumpy and I
wished Buford would come on and tell me what he
thought was so damned important and get it over
with so I could go on with what I wanted to do, get
over to the courthouse and find out what I could
about Shevlin.
He came in then with three highballs on a tray.
“Hello, Jack,” he said, quite calmly, and I knew that
if he intended bawling me out any more about
running off that way he wasn’t going to do it in front
of the girl. He was always an odd one; he was
dangerous enough to kill you if the necessity for it
River Girl — 110
ever arose, but there wouldn’t be any breach of good
manners.
We sat down and he got right to it. Lighting a
cigar, he looked at me across the coffee table. “Don’t
worry about Dianne,” he said, which meant we could
talk freely in front of her.
It seemed to me she had said her name was Dinah,
but I let it go. “What happened?” I asked.
“It’s your friend Abbie Bell. She’s in the hospital.
In bad shape.”
“What!” I put down the glass. “What happened to
her?”
“Some man jumped her with a knife and chopped
her up pretty badly. She’s in serious condition; they
think she has a chance to pull through, but nobody
can see her yet.”
“Who did it? Did you get the—” I caught myself,
thinking of the girl.
“That’s the funny part of it, and the part that’s got
me worried. We’ve got him in jail, but we don’t know
who he is or why he did it. No identification of any
land on him, and as far as we can find, he hasn’t got
a record.”
“Was he drunk?”
“No. Cold sober. And he shut up like an oyster
when we arrested him. Not a word out of him.”
“And now?” I asked.
“It’s dangerous. If Abbie dies, there’ll be an awful
stink, naturally, for allowing a place like that to
operate. And the man’ll have to stand trial, of
course. And it isn’t just what’s on the surface here
that worries me. Something tells me there’s a lot
more underneath.”
“Who picked him up?” I asked.
“Hurd.” Bud Hurd was the other deputy here in
town. “It was about three this afternoon. The phone
rang, and it was some Negro girl who works down
there at Abbie’s. The maid, I guess. She was
screaming her head off, not saying anything but,
River Girl — 111
‘Miss Abbie! Miss Abbie!’ over and over, so I shot
Hurd down there to find out what the hell was going
on. He said the place was a madhouse. The Negro
girl and a white one were screaming out in the hall,
and when he went in the room where the rest of the
racket was, Abbie was folded up across the end of a
sofa with her clothes half torn off and a cut down
one arm and another bad one in the back. The man
was still waving the knife and swearing, and when
Bud came in he made a break for the door but Bud
collared him and hit him once with the sap to get the
knife away from him. He called the ambulance and
they took Abbie to the hospital. We can’t get in to
see her, and he won’t talk, so we don’t have any idea
what it was all about.”
“How about the girls?” I asked. Somebody should
know what started it.
“They had disappeared. I guess there was only the
one white girl left there, besides the Negro maid,
and they both lit out while Bud was getting the man
calmed down. They didn’t seem to have taken
anything with them.”
“And they didn’t come back?”
“No. Bud went back later and couldn’t find them.”
I stood up. He looked at me questioningly. “You got
any ideas?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “But I think the girls will
come back, if their clothes are still there.”
Dianne, or Dinah, looked at me across the rim of
her glass, the reckless gray eyes alight with interest.
“Yes,” she said, nodding. “They’ll probably come
back now that it’s dark. Can I go too? I’d like to see
the inside of one of those places.”
“No,” Buford said shortly.
She said nothing, but the eyes shifted, studying
him thoughtfully, and then she shrugged. You got
the impression she’d never spent a great deal of time
in her life asking permission of anyone, or paying
much attention to refusals.
River Girl — 112
“I’ll be back in a little while,” I said, glad she
wasn’t going, and anxious to get started.
So far it was just a confused mess in my mind. I
hadn’t had a chance to sort any of it out, and as I got
in the car and started down there my mind was busy
with it. I was sorry about Abbie, of course, and
hoped she would pull through, but there wasn’t
anything I could do about it. And, of course, the main
thing was trying to figure out what bearing it was
going to have on what I was trying to do. On the
surface of it, it would have none, for if I had any luck
and found out what I hoped I’d find about Shevlin,
I’d be gone tomorrow and they could have this load
of grief all to themselves from now on. But when you
looked at it again, it wasn’t quite that simple. With
this thing flaring up and a grand-jury investigation a
very real possibility, my disappearing the very next
day was going to make the long arm of coincidence
look as if it had been pulled out at the socket. I
didn’t like it. And I wasn’t just running from a
bribery charge now. If they got to sniffing around
too much over the place where I’d disappeared, it
would be Shevlin they’d find.
The square was full of people joy-riding to escape
the heat and heading for the movies. I shot down the
side street and stopped the car a block away from
Abbie’s. The beer joint was an island of light and
juke-box noise, and beyond it the hotel was
completely dark. A drunk came out of the saloon and
lurched past me, headed across the street for the
chili place, but there was no one else around. I went
softly up the steps and opened the door, standing
very quietly for a moment in the front room. Maybe
the girl and the maid had already been there and
gone. I could tell by turning on the lights and looking
in the rooms upstairs to see if any clothes were left,
but that would mean that if they started to come
back now they’d see the light and run again. I was
trying to make up my mind about it when suddenly I
heard a footstep and the click of a switch in the hall
on the second floor and I could see the reflection of
light above the stairs.
River Girl — 113
I went up them, trying not to make any noise, and
had reached the top before I heard a sharp cry of
fright, and the door to the room slammed shut. This
left me in total darkness, for the light had been
inside the room, but I could see the thin crack of it
under the door and walked toward it. The door was
bolted.
“Who is it?” the girl inside cried out in fright.
“Marshall,” I said. “Open up. I’m not going to hurt
you.”
“Who?”
“Jack Marshall. From the sheriffs office.”
“I didn’t see anything! Honest, I didn’t.” I knew
why she had run. She was afraid of being called as a
witness in the trial in case Abbie died, and she didn’t
like the idea. In her profession, she probably figured
the less she had to do with the courts and police, the
better off she was.
I know,” I said. “I’m not trying to take you in as a
witness. I just want to talk to you.”
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
“You don’t. But you can’t get out as long as I’m
standing here, so you might as well open up and
see.”
“All right,” she said hesitantly. I heard the bolt
slide back, and pushed the door open.
There was an open suitcase on the bed and she
had just started to put her clothes in it. She stood
near the dresser, still holding a pair of stockings in
her hand, her face pale and the large brown eyes
watching me uneasily. I suddenly remembered this
was the room that boy’s clothes had been in.
“You’re Bernice, aren’t you?” I asked, trying to
calm her a little.
“Yes. But I didn’t see anything down there. You
don’t want me for anything, do you?”
“No,” I said. I came on into the room. “Would you
like a cigarette?”
River Girl — 114
She took it and I lighted it for her. This seemed to
ease her mind a little, and she sat down in the chair
near the head of the bed, sitting up straight on the
front edge of it as if she might fly away any minute.
Her hands turned nervously in her lap and I
wondered if she’d burn herself with the cigarette.
She must have been around twenty-eight, not a very
pretty girl, but with a rather docile, not too bright
face, which must have been pleasant and goodnatured
when she wasn’t scared like this, and her
eyes had something of the timidity and shy
friendliness of an old dog’s. Her hair had been very
dark at one time and was now hopelessly fouled up
in some shade between maroon and black as a
result, apparently, of some attempt to dye it red.
She saw me looking at it. “Miss Abbie thought one
of us ought to be a redhead, so I told her I’d try it,”
she explained bashfully. “It didn’t come out very
good, did it?”
I was conscious of wondering somewhat crazily if I
didn’t have anything better to do than sit here and
talk about this girl’s hair problems, but got hold of
myself enough to make some sensible and halfway
civil reply. Maybe it would get her to relax enough to
tell me what she knew about that mess downstairs.
“I think it looks all right,” I said. “But why red?”
“Well, you see, there was already a blonde here
and two brunettes, and Miss Abbie thought maybe a
redhead would be nice.”
Christ, I thought, what the merchandise in one of
these places goes through. But I wanted to get back
to what I’d come here for.
“I guess you’re leaving,” I said, looking at the
suitcase.
“Yes.” She nodded. “Now that Miss Abbie’s hurt…”
She looked down at her hands in her lap. “There
won’t be nobody to run the place now. And I was
afraid they’d arrest me for a witness. You’re not
going to, are you?” The big eyes regarded me
apprehensively. “You promised.”
River Girl — 115
“No,” I said. “I just want to ask you a couple of
questions. Did you see what happened down there?
The first part of it, I mean.”
“No,” she replied. Her eyes avoided me and kept
looking down in her lap. I knew she was still afraid
and was lying.
“Well,” I said, “that’s too bad. But you go ahead
packing and I’ll give you a lift up to the bus station
with your suitcase. Have you got enough money to
get away on?”
“No-o, not very much,” she said hesitantly. “I don’t
know for sure just how much a bus ticket to Bayou
City is, but I might have enough. You wouldn’t like to
—to—” We had started to be friends now, and she
had a little trouble getting back suddenly to the
strictly commercial plane.
“No.” I shook my head. “But I’d be glad to lend you
twenty or twenty-five if it’d help any. It’s kind of
tough for a girl—”
“You would?” She said at me with surprise.
“Sure,” I said. I took out the wallet and removed a
couple of tens from it and handed them to her. I can
get it back from Buford, I thought. “Now, you go
ahead with your packing.”
I smoked a cigarette and watched her get her
meager clothing together, making no more reference
to the fight. She knows something, I thought, and
she’s just about convinced I’m not going to get rough
with her or take her in.
In a minute she paused, looking down at the
suitcase. “Thank you for the money. It was right nice
of you. Not many people…”
“It’s all right,” I said.
She went on, still not looking at me. “I didn’t see
much of that down there. It scared me. You know
how us girls have to live. The least little thing, the
police—”
“Yes. I know. It’s a tough racket,” I said, waiting
and trying not to seem impatient.
River Girl — 116
“It wasn’t Miss Abbie’s fault.” She turned away
from the suitcase and looked at me now, the big eyes
very earnest and full of loyalty to Miss Abbie. Now
we’re getting somewhere, I thought. “She kept
telling him she didn’t know where the girl was.”
“He was looking for some girl?” I prompted
casually, trying not to be too insistent.
She nodded. “Yes. He was looking for his daughter
That young kid that was here, the one that talked so
mean.”
She didn’t have to draw me a picture. I knew what
girl the man was looking for, and I knew just how
quiet this whole thing was going to be the minute he
decided to open his mouth.
River Girl — 117
Fourteen
There was a lot of it that didn’t make sense. How
had he known the girl had been here? And why had
he shut up like that the minute he was arrested? I
lighted another cigarette and ground the old one out
on the floor. “Look, Bernice,” I said, trying to be as
offhand as possible, “why don’t you sit down and tell
me all about it? You’ve got plenty of time before your
bus leaves.”
“All right.” She sat down on the bed and I stepped
over and took the chair.
“Try to remember what this man said,” I went on.
“You were there when he came in, weren’t you?”
She nodded. “Miss Abbie and me was both
downstairs. This man come in the front door and
looked at me first and then at her and said, ‘Are you
Miz Bell?’ He wasn’t a very big man, kind of
scrawny, with his face all brown and wrinkled up
with the sun grins, like he was a farmer or
something, but he was dressed up in his town
clothes, a kind of shiny old black suit and tan shoes,
but he didn’t have no tie in his shirt collar. It was
buttoned, but didn’t have a tie. But that don’t
matter, I reckon. I do remember, though, that he had
a kind of wild look in his eyes. Anyway, when Miss
Abbie said she was Miss Abbie, they went in that
River Girl — 118
other room, the one in back of the lobby, a kind of
parlor. At first I didn’t hear ‘em, because they wasn’t
talking loud, and then his voice kept getting
stronger. ‘Ain’t no use you lying,’ he kept saying
over and over. ‘I know she was here.’ Then he was
cussing and yelling something awful and I began to
be afraid he’d have the police after us. ‘I’ll show you
how I know she was here,’ he says. “This is how I
know. Jest look at that and then tell me you ain’t
seen her.’ Miss Abbie was beginning to yell by this
time, and I could hear her telling him she didn’t have
no idea where the girl was.”
“Hold it a minute, Bernice,” I interrupted. “You
couldn’t see them from where you were, could you?”
She shook her head. “No. They was in that other
room. The door wasn’t more than half closed, but I
couldn’t see ‘em.”
“Did you go back in the room after the police had
been here and gone? I mean, after they took Abbie
away?”
“No. Kate and me run down the street. First, Kate
called the shurf’s office, and then later, when the
shurf got here, we run.”
I nodded. It must have been a letter the man was
showing Abbie. But where was it? If he’d had it on
him when Kurd brought him in, they’d have found it
when they searched him, when they took his money
and belt and things. And Abbie couldn’t have been
carrying it when she left, for she wasn’t in any
condition to be carrying anything. Could it have been
on the floor down there? If so, why hadn’t Hurd seen
it?
I stood up hurriedly. “You finish up your packing,
Bernice,” I said, “and I’ll drop you off in town. I’m
going down to that room and have a look.”
I went down the stairs in the dark and along the
lower hall until I found the door. When I was inside I
struck a match to locate the light switch, closed the
door, and snapped on the light. There wasn’t much
evidence of a fight, but when I thought about it I
realized there couldn’t have been any great struggle,
River Girl — 119
as small as Abbie was. He’d just chopped her with
that knife and she’d fallen over onto the sofa, and
now she might be dying. There were blood spots on
the rug, but they weren’t what I was looking for.
There was no sign of a letter.
I went across and looked at the sofa. There was
blood on one end of it, on the arm. It sat in the
corner, with the arm only about a foot from the other
wall. Leaning over, I looked down. There it was. I
squatted on the floor and reached an arm in after it
and pulled it out. It was typewritten, on good
stationery, and when I glanced down at the
signature I could feel a draft blowing up my back.
Dear Mrs. Waites:
It is with extreme reluctance and with
sadness and an almost overpowering
sense of futility that I am forced to write
you this letter. It appears that I have
failed—at least so far—in all efforts to
locate or get in touch with your daughter,
and the only information I can pass along
to you is that she has indeed been here in
town but has now departed and I cannot
even tell you where she has gone.
It goes without saying that I was pleased
to receive your letter—apart from the sad
tidings that occasioned it, of course—for it
is always gratifying to be remembered by
the members of one’s former
congregations. And, believe me, my dear
Mrs. Waites, I have left no stone unturned
in my efforts to locate your daughter, for I
believe that if I could find and talk to her I
could help her to see the right way of life.
You must believe me when I say that I
know she is a good girl at heart, for I
remember her quite well, and had I been
able to get in touch with her I could have
prevailed upon her to return home to you.
But she is not here. I made arrangements
to visit personally, with the police, of
River Girl — 120
course, that establishment of which you
spoke, that Miss or Mrs. Bell’s, and can
assure you she is not there. I wish that I
could also, with honesty, tell you that she
had never been there, but I am afraid that
this is impossible. I have reason to believe
—from other sources, not from the police
—that the information given you by young
Mr. Elkins is quite accurate, though I can
but wonder at his motives in bringing a
sorrowing mother any such additional
burden of sadness as that. I do agree,
however, that you both were wise in
keeping the information from your
husband. I feel that he has been far too
harsh with the girl in the past, and any
further rashness on his part would only
make a bad matter worse than it is now.
Rest assured that I have not given up, that
I shall continue to do everything in my
power to get in touch with your daughter
if she is in this part of the country at all,
and that my prayers are with you both in
this trying hour.
With deepest regret that I have not been
able to bring any better tidings, I am, as
ever,
Your obedient servant,
RICHARD SOAMES
I read it over again and folded it up slowly and
stuck it in my pocket. Buford was going to be
interested in seeing this. Well, I thought, he had an
idea there was more here than showed on the
surface.
It wasn’t too hard to piece it all together. Elkins
must be that big crazy kid, the one who’d gone
berserk when he found the girl down here. So as
soon as he got out of jail he went back home,
wherever it was, and told the girl’s mother about it,
or she had got it out of him some way. And the
mother, knowing what a violent hothead like her
River Girl — 121
husband would do when he heard it, had made the
kid promise not to tell him, or maybe the kid hadn’t
because he was still sore at the old man. The mother
had written Soames, knowing he was in the same
town, and asked him to find the girl and talk to her,
try to send her home. And then the old man had got
hold of Soames’s reply and headed for here with
blood in his eye. It all added up, all right. The only
trouble with it was that no matter how many times
you added it, you couldn’t get any total you liked.
Soames knew, then, that the girl had been here.
He knew, and Waites knew, and the whole country
was going to know as soon as this thing had time to
explode, that a brothel operating with police
connivance had been harboring a fifteen-year-old
girl, that a woman was dead, or might be, and that
the girl’s father was likely to be tried for murder as a
result of it. The smell of bribery and police
corruption was going to be so powerful the grand
jury wasn’t going to be able to ignore it any longer.
Just then I heard Bernice coming down the stairs.
She had the suitcase in her hand and was ready to
go. I flipped the light off and we went out.
“The car’s up in the next block,” I said. “Just stand
here out of the street lights while I go get it.”
I brought it down and stopped and she climbed in.
No one had seen us, or paid any attention,
apparently. Dropping over one block to miss the
square, I headed back to town, stopping on a quiet
street a block from the station. I ought to get a job
driving a station wagon at a girls’ boarding school, I
thought. How many times have I done this?
“So long, Bernice,” I said, and held out my hand.
“Just forget everything you told me and don’t ever
tell anybody else and you’ll be safe enough.”
“‘I won’t,” she said. “I don’t want to get mixed up
in nothing.”
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