LITMIR.BIZ

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retailer in Rocky Spring, a friend of mine. Rocky Spring lies about twenty miles south on the highway, and by the time I got there my friend had gone to bed. I woke him, got him to go to his store. There he duplicated the key for me, and I drove back to Cheyney, returning the original to old Barbara.

      THERE IS AN OLD BLACKTOP ROAD SOUTH OF ROXY’S PLACE that is a quick way into town. It winds for four miles through farmland and is called Foundry Road because of an old ironworks built along it somewhere. The kids like the road because it’s always dark and rarely used and there are many dirt side roads.

      Heat lightning glimmered in the thick clouds over the river valley to the north and there was a musty wet smell of rain in the air as I drove along the road, away from Roxy’s. As I took a curve my headlights revealed a truck pulled almost off the road. A man stood beside the truck. I slowed as I saw the car in the ditch on the other side.

      I pulled across the road and parked facing the truck. It was carrying a load of furniture with a tarpaulin stretched tight and lashed to the body. The Negro driver leaned against the front fender and watched me come with a tight sick expression.

      I showed him the badge and he looked at it without eagerness. A few drops of rain were falling. The shoulders of the road were already soft from a rain the night before.

      “What happened?”

      He waved his hand at the ditch on the opposite side. “That car came roarin’ at me ninety miles a second. Straight at me, officer. I pulled clean off the road and he pulled out, too. I never heard such a noise. He musta laid down fifty feet of rubber. He went into that soft shoulder and couldn’t bring it back. Went nose down into that ditch. Not more’n half a minute ago.”

      “Anybody hurt?”

      His throat moved darkly as he swallowed. “I don’t know. I’m afraid to go and look. He went over with an awful whump. I thought I saw one of ’em throwed out.”

      I swore to myself. “All right. You got a flashlight in that rig?”

      “Yes, sir.”

      “Get it and stand back of my car. If anybody comes along slow him down. I’ll go down and count the pieces.”

      He walked toward the cab of the truck, his feet heavy. “Oh, God,” he moaned. There was more rain, falling straight down, silently.

      I went to my car, a ’53 Oldsmobile, the down payment on which I had paid out of what I had saved buying clothes at Starkey’s, got a slicker from the back seat and a flashlight from the dash compartment. I crossed the highway and started down the steep slope of the ditch.

      There was a woman in slacks lying face up on the bank about halfway into the ditch. Her face was bloodless. I kneeled beside her and let the light play over her. She was out cold, but nothing seemed to be broken. Her breathing was all right.

      I turned my light on the car, a new black Chrysler, wedged in at the bottom of the ditch between the two steep sides. The light fell on a man leaning against the side of the Chrysler, holding his stomach with one hand. There was a dark cut on his forehead.

      I walked up to him, holding the light in his face. He was good-looking, with lean jaws and heavy eyebrows and a wide mouth. His gray eyes were dulled from fright or pain. I recognized him right away.

      “Hurt?” I asked him.

      “Steering wheel caught me in the gut,” he said carefully, as if he wasn’t quite sure he would be able to talk without pain. “Not too hard. Knocked the wind out of me. I think I cut my head.”

      “You did. It doesn’t look bad.” I stepped closer to him. He was breathing with his mouth open, and I could smell the whiskey he had been tucking away. He didn’t look drunk, though.

      “That’s some breath you got there,” I said. “It should go point one five on the drunkometer, easy.”

      “Who are you?” he said suspiciously.

      “Sergeant Randall, Cheyney police.”

      “Jesus,” he said sardonically, “am I lucky tonight.” He still held his stomach. “Why don’t you go away and let somebody else rescue me?”

      “How fast were you traveling, hot rod?”

      “Too fast. I know. Listen, I’m not drunk. I’ve had a couple, but I’m not drunk. I could handle the car. I could handle it all right. It was the soft shoulder that did the damage.”

      “Yeah.”

      His voice strengthened as he became angry. “Hell, nobody was hurt, so why make a fuss?”

      “You ought to see the look on the face of that colored boy you almost ran down. Ask him why the fuss. Ask the lady. She’s not taking a nap up there.”

      He seemed almost disgusted. “She got panicky when we started to slide. Jerked the door open and bailed out. She probably passed out when she hit, that’s all.”

      His forehead was wrinkled. He passed a hand over his eyes and straightened up uncertainly. He took his hand away from his belly and nothing fell out so he turned around and leaned into the car and took something off the front seat. It was a half-full fifth of whiskey.

      As he brought it up I reached out and took it away from him, put it in my raincoat pocket. He seemed about thirty years old or so but he looked like a kid when he got indignant.

      “The driver’s license,” I said.

      He leaned against the side of the car again. “I guess it’s time for you to learn something,” he told me, with a smug look in his eyes that said I was sure going to fall over when I heard it.

      “I know,” I said. “You’re Nathan Hale Fisher, you’re a selectman of Cheyney Township, and you’re liable to be Works Commissioner come next election. And also your family is a big deal in these parts.”

      His face sagged a little as I spoiled his surprise. He rubbed a hand over his slack jaw. “Wait a minute. I’m a little fuzzy here. What was that name again?”

      “Randall.”

      “You the detective was in charge of that Smithell mess?”

      “The same.”

      He nodded gloomily. “Sure. Listen. I know it by heart. ‘Well, I noticed lights on over at the Smithell house. It was about midnight, I guess. I thought he hadn’t gone to bed. I was worried about the ring my wife had given me, so I . . .’ Will you please give me my bottle back for a second before you impound it?”

      “Sure.” I took the bottle out of my raincoat pocket, pulled the cork and let the whiskey spill out on the ground. He reached for it but I held the bottle out of the way until it was empty. Then I gave it to him. He took it with a sort of sneer and threw it away.

      He put a hand on the fender of his car. “Now how the hell am I going to get this out of here?” he said. Falling rain had plastered his black hair against his forehead.

      “Don’t you think we ought to see about the lady?”

      He blinked. His eyes were full of some terrible pain. “Leave her alone,” he said, with weary unconcern. “She’s no better than the mud she’s lying in.”

      I looked at him for a few seconds. He was grinding his back teeth together. He held one hand tight to his temples.

      “Pickup?”

      “Yeah. Yeah. I found her in one of Roxy’s joints.”

      “You know Roxy Marko?”

      He held up two fingers together. “Like this,” he said.

      I turned away from him and walked up the bank toward the woman, slipping some in the mud. The rain had brought her to and she looked up at me, scared, her face and hair sodden, her slacks tight on her legs. She moaned, front teeth edging over her underlip.

      “You all right, lady?”

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