And the Girl Screamed by Gil Brewer

Author:Gil Brewer [Brewer, Gil]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery & Detective, Noir, Fiction
ISBN: 9781440542114
Google: MEgDASt9fQwC
Publisher: F+W Media, Inc.
Published: 1984-01-01T11:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

STILL HOT around the edges, I stopped in at a road-house on the way back toward town. There had been no sign of a police car, but I knew it was only a matter of time before they’d get out to the Harrington house. I needed a drink. I went inside and ordered a double rye and drank that and ordered another and drank that, then looked around at the faces at the bar. Men and women in work clothes, drinking small beers for the most part. Two women in shorts were playing shuffle-board across the room. A juke box, turned very low, gave out sympathetic hill-billy music with stereotyped twangs. I paid the barman with the last of the money before dipping into Andy’s ten.

Inez Harrington was remarkable.

Walking back out to the car, what had happened seemed suddenly impossible. I opened my shirt pocket and took out the sheet of paper with the list of names and addresses she had given me. It was real; it felt exactly like paper, and the writing was legible.

I stood beside the car, feeling the whisky buzz a little in my head, and tried to find air to breathe. There wasn’t any. The night was as flat and hot as trapped air in a furnace pipe.

I knew I would go through life reacting sharply to the color red.

As I climbed under the wheel, a police car whistled past out on the road. It took the red light at the intersection, headed toward the Harrington house on Melbourne. Now they would knew what I was driving.

• • •

The first name Inez had given me on the list was Sam Roberson, over on Lowell Court. The street wasn’t too far from the business section, up above Sixteenth. It was subdued and the homes nicely kept, the lawns trimmed and mowed. The Roberson place was set well back, between two large banyan trees. Cicadas droned and fizzed in unseen bushes. They had one of these big crystal balls on a cement pedestal in the front yard. Beside the large cement stucco porch three stalwart plastic flamingoes stood on long spidery legs and craned their necks at endless nothing.

I wondered if all kids were like Inez. They couldn’t be. I wondered if Jinny had been; somehow, I didn’t think so. They had been close friends, but Inez Harrington had a way with her—many ways, and that was stating it mildly.

I parked the car down the street, in the shadows again, thinking of how the police could come along at the same time I did. So far, I’d been lucky in keeping ahead of the law. How long would it last? I wanted very much to know how Eve was making out, and just thinking of her hurt plenty.

Thayer would be riding me right now, every possible way. He wouldn’t leave any pebbles unturned, trying to make me really look bad.

I got out and walked along the grass toward the house. I had to keep shoving Eve out of my mind.

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