Murder Without Tears. Leonard Lupton

the palm of my hand where he could see it. The sap is a leather pouch, weighted with shot, the handle short but flexible. There was once a leather wrist thong on it, but I had cut that off.

      I said, “You’re bigger than I am, Major, and all things being equal you could beat me up. But all things are not equal, as you’ve just pointed out.” I hefted the sap. I said, “I’m my own bouncer and this is only in case two people give me trouble at once. You’re as big as two people. Were you thinking of giving me trouble?”

      He didn’t say anything for a minute. He looked the situation over. He wasn’t afraid. I’m sure of that. He would have walked into me and taken the chance that I knew how to use that sap. But as angry as he was, there was a calculating glint in the depths of his squinted eyes. I couldn’t actually see it there, but I could sense it.

      He said, “Broome, you’re a bigger fool than I thought you were. I could understand your having a gun, but not that sap. They never issue licenses for those things. It’s a concealed weapon and you’re not a police officer, and you have threatened me. You’re in trouble, Broome.”

      “Why don’t you go down to town, Major, and round up a couple of the boys in white helmets? Or don’t the boys in white helmets recognize your rank any more?”

      It didn’t work. He said, “For a little while, Broome, I thought you might be going to be a problem. I overrated you. You’re not any problem at all, now.” He turned away and started across the gravel toward his car. It was a little satisfaction to me to see that I had guessed right about that—it was a fish-tail convertible, at least a five grand raytop, inelegantly. But that was about all the satisfaction that I did get from the incident.

      I expected to hear from him again, but not quite the way it happened. The next I heard of him, Major Craddock was dead.

      I went back into the barroom after Major Craddock had left. It was Saturday night, the big night of the week at River House. At the bar I told Armando to give me Black Label. I swallowed the drink down fast. He had the chaser ready but I shook my head and gave him back the empty shot glass and he filled it again. I never drink more than two in succession like that and although I wanted a third, I walked away from the bar without it.

      My date with Anne Cramer was obviously off for tonight. And yet it didn’t seem reasonable to me that the general, or Major Craddock either, could dictate to Anne. I had not given much thought to her age, but it seemed quite apparent that she had been long enough out of school to be well-started down her twenties. She was a free agent, an adult. Wasn’t there a chance that she might ignore her father and come anyway?

      As I moved around the room, never quite sure to whom I was speaking, I had one eye on the door. But Anne Cramer did not put in an appearance, nor did I see anything more of Major Craddock.

      At closing time I walked with the last of the guests to the blue drive. When the parking lot was empty, I went back inside and got the cash deposit bag and went around to my own car. I gave the motor a half-minute to warm up, wondering if I was making a mistake to go down to the bank alone at this hour of the night. I wonder about it every Saturday night, though nothing has ever happened. Newburyport has a good and efficient police department.

      I cut off Brickyard Avenue into Water Street and slowed to the legal limit. Prowl cars often cruised here. I saw a couple of drunks rolling home, and a girl too young for what she was doing leaned out from the curb and made an elaborate pick-up gesture. I grinned at her and went on, but when I stopped in front of the bank and went over to the bronze plate of the night depository she hurried along the street and stopped beside me.

      “You look lonesome, honey,” she said. “Ain’t nothing worse than being lonesome at this hour.”

      Her dress was a sleazy thing with a transparent upper half that showed a white brassiere and lots of flesh beneath it. She stood on spikes too high for her, and her smile was a brittle mask, covering her youth and inexperience.

      I said, “Kid, you ought to be home in bed.”

      She giggled. “Let’s you and me make a night of it.”

      Jailbait, maybe. It was hard to tell the age under that mask of powder, rouge and mascara. I had seen too many like her on the Via Roma. It bothered me that it could happen here.

      I made my deposit and turned back. “Broke, kid?”

      She pulled her dress up and there was a wad of bills in the top of her stocking. “What do you think?”

      I might have come up with a fin to pay her to take herself out of my way quickly, but just then we both heard the car coming. The red light on the roof wasn’t flashing and the siren was stilled but we could both see the lettering: POLICE.

      She said, “I’ll see you at the foot of the block,” and dodged down River Street. I shook my head and crossed to my car. The prowl wagon went past, both cops turning for a brief look But a man making a night deposit was a common enough sight along Water Street.

      I drove back toward Brickyard Avenue and River House, wondering about the girl, about her home life, about how she got that way. My thoughts were impersonal, detached. I decided idly that probably it had been fortunate for me that the police had come along just when they did—they had saved me a fin and the trouble of getting rid of the girl . . .

      How was I to know that Major Craddock was dead by now and that a good, sweet alibi was all ready to cover me—or would have been, if two cops hadn’t come down Water Street past the bank at three-thirty on a Sunday morning and seen me talking to a tart?