Alley Girl

  * * *

  Alley Girl

  Jonathan Craig

  This page formatted 2011 Munsey's.

  http://www.munseys.com

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

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  http://www.munseys.com

  Alley Girl is a hard book, cold and cruel, peopled with toughs and alcoholics, a nymphomaniac and an unfaithful wife, a savage cop and a young pervert. It is also a fine novel, written with rare and stark simplicity by the talented young author, Jonathan Craig.

  Chapter One

  FOR SEVERAL minutes now Detective-Lieutenant Steve Lambert had sat quite motionless on the side of the bed, his heavily-muscled shoulders slumped a little, staring through the window at the Riverton skyline forty blocks away. Behind him, on the same damp sheet, he could hear the soft sleep-rhythm of the girl's breathing. But she was only pretending, he knew. When she really was asleep, she made no sound at all.

  To hell with her, he thought. To hell with her and to hell with all the rest of them.

  He put his hand up to the back of his neck and kneaded the damp flesh viciously, wincing from the hangover pain which had begun to localize itself just behind his eyes. It was going to be another rugged day, he knew; one of the real bruisers.

  In the apartment next door, where the radio always went on at exactly six o'clock every morning and stayed on until well past midnight, an announcer interrupted the dance music to say the time was seven-ten.

  Steve sighed and reached down between his bare feet for the bottle. Seven-ten. Twenty minutes until time to meet Dave Kimberly. Twenty minutes until the rat race started all over again.

  He closed his eyes and lifted the nearly empty bottle to his lips, shuddering a little even before the whiskey touched his throat.

  Behind him the girl said, “I'll never understand how you can do that.”

  He took two deep swallows of the whiskey, set the bottle down very carefully on the floor again, and turned slowly to look at her.

  She lay on her back, hands and wrists hidden by the loose dark waves of her hair, smiling at him through the black-lace curtains of her lashes.

  “There's a lot of things you'll never understand,” he said softly. “A hell of a lot of them.”

  Her smile widened. “You think so?”

  “It's just possible. Like you'll never understand how a guy can get sick of looking at nothing but skin all the time.”

  She laughed and drew one knee up slowly. “Don't look, then.”

  “It's getting so you even sit down on the table and eat that way. Like last night.”

  “You didn't seem to mind—last night.”

  “Why don't you pull the sheet up?”

  “It's too hot.”

  He studied her a moment, wondering if now might be as good a time as any to tell her. No, he decided. Eighteen-year-old girls as pretty as Jean weren't easy to come by. And anyhow, kicking one girl out before you had a replacement for her was just plain stupid.

  Her eyes licked down to her pink-white body, as if to reassure herself, and then she turned over on her side and reached for the cigarettes on the bed table.

  “You did it again last night, Steve,” she said, striking a match. “You went to sleep with that bottle cradled up against your chest, just like a baby. You can't imagine what you look like when you do that. I lay here for half an hour, waiting for you to break into a lullaby.”

  “Go to hell,” Steve said. He got up and walked around the foot of the bed and into the kitchen. The next thing Jean would have brought up, he knew, was that he'd been impotent again, the way he always was when he drank more than a fifth.

  He took a can of beer from the refrigerator and punched it open and stood leaning against the refrigerator's curved cool top while he drank. He felt better now. The whiskey had taken hold almost immediately. The pain behind his eyes was already fading to a dull ache, and his hand, when he held the splayed fingers level with his eyes, trembled only slightly.

  He finished the beer, dropped the empty can into the garbage pail beneath the sink, and walked out to the bathroom for aspirin and a cold shower.

  As he was closing the door behind him he heard the creak of springs from the bedroom. Jean would be going out to the kitchen to start breakfast now, he knew. Jesus, she had a constitution like a horse. She'd drunk as much as he had last night, lying there on the bed passing the bottle back and forth, and yet this morning her eyes were as clear as they'd ever been and she'd probably eat enough breakfast for two people. He wouldn't be surprised if she'd never had a hangover in her life.

  He pushed Jean's nylons down to one end of the shower rod and turned the cold water on full force.

  He stepped into the shower, turning his face up to the water, fists clenched hard against the icy pound of it.

  It's funny, he thought, how they get to figuring they own you. It always starts out the same way. The girl looks like she's been around a little; and she says, sure, she knows it's just for laughs and maybe it'll last one night or a hundred but not for keeps. And then all at once you know it's over, because the girl starts forgetting she's a mistress and starts making with the mother act. She starts dropping little hints, like how nice it would be if you and she had a house instead of an apartment, and how wonderful her sister's kids are, and all the time she's trying to make you over into something you aren't and never want to be.

  And suddenly you know you have to get rid of her, because you've lost your mistress and you sure as hell don't want a wife.

  Still, Jean was going to be a tough kid to kick out. She'd come a lot closer to getting to him than any of the others had.

  He turned his head aside long enough to take a deep breath, then tilted his face up again to the needle-whip of the shower.

  It might be a little rough on her, he reflected, what with her being just the right age for a hard fall and all, but that was the way the ball bounced. She'd walked into this with both eyes open, and she could walk out the same way, only maybe with them open a little wider. A real beauty like Jean, a kid just eighteen with an old man out East somewhere to foot her bills and send her money every month—hell, she'd be better off without him, anyhow.

  Over the drone of the water he heard the sudden, insistent ringing of the phone in the foyer off the living room. He turned the shower down to a thin spray, listening to see whether Jean was going to answer it. In a moment her high heels clicked past in the corridor outside the bathroom and then faded as they crossed the parquet of the living room.

  He stood there, frowning, wondering what new trouble was in wait for him. It had to be either the station house or central homicide, of course, but calls from either place at this time of morning were rare.

  Jean's heels came back across the parquet and stopped in front of the bathroom.

  He waited a moment. “All right,” he said impatiently. “Who was it?”

  “Didn't give his name,” Jean said. “I told him you were in the shower and that you'd call him back. But he wouldn't leave his number. Said he'd call again in a few minutes.”

  Steve swore softly and turned the shower back on to its full force.

  Another damned crackpot, he thought. It isn't bad enough that they pester hell out of you at the station house. Oh, no. Now they start calling yo
u up at home... Jesus, you'd think they'd wear themselves out after a while. They never did, though. Some of the guys on the switchboard at the station house said they averaged between a hundred crackpot calls a week, and a lot more whenever the papers were playing up anything juicy.

  Then he suddenly remembered he had agreed to meet Dave Kimberly half an hour earlier than usual this morning, at seven-thirty, and he turned the shower off and reached angrily for a towel.

  There's another foul ball, that Kimberly, he thought. He's a homicide sergeant eight months and already he's bucking for lieutenant.

  God, the world was full of them.

  Ten minutes later he had finished dressing, except for his suit jacket, and was standing at the bedroom window, idly spinning the cylinder of his short-barreled .38 and watching the morning sun stripping away the last of the fog from the tops of the downtown skyscrapers. “Breakfast, Steve,” Jean called from the kitchen. He spun the .38's cylinder again, listening carefully to the soft oily purr of it. There were two other hand guns in his dresser drawer—another .38 with a regulation barrel and a .357 Magnum—but the snub-nosed belly-gun was his favorite. He pressed it, a little reluctantly, into the clip under his left shoulder and walked to the closet to get his jacket. It had been a long time since he'd had a chance to use the stubby Colt, he reflected. Too long.

  He slipped into his jacket and went out to the kitchen for another can of beer.

  Jean was sitting at the white enamel table, sipping a cup of coffee. She was wearing shoes and a pink-lace petticoat, and nothing else.

  “You didn't shave,” she said.

  He ignored her, keeping his back to her while he took the beer from the refrigerator and punched holes in top of the can. As he drank, he glanced at the wall clock over the stove. The time was seven-twenty-five.

  “Aren't you going to have breakfast?” Jean asked.

  He took another long swallow of the beer.

  “Steve, what's wrong with you, anyhow? You've been acting like a spoiled little brat lately.”

  He lowered the can a moment, swirled the beer around in it, sighed, then took another long swallow.

  “Steve—”

  “Knock off with that routine,” he said mildly. “You want to talk about something, give me a run-down on why you'd make out like you're asleep when you aren't, the way you were doing a little while ago. What's it get you to lie there and watch me like that?”

  Maybe he ought to give Jean the go-by right now, after all, he thought. Why not? Today, tomorrow, next week —what was the difference?

  But he knew the difference. The difference was that Jean, now that the worst of his hangover was gone, had suddenly started looking very good to him again.

  She was silent a long moment. Then, “All right, Steve —who is she?”

  “What do you mean, who is she?” He turned to face her now, assuming a burlesqued expression of innocence. “Good gosh, Jean—do you mean you think I'd cheat on you?” He shook his head sadly. “Lord, that I should ever live to see this day!”

  She stared at him coldly. “I didn't ask whether you would. I know damn well you would. I asked who she was.”

  He smiled at her. For the first time since he had awakened, he was beginning to enjoy himself. Jean had surprised him. Now that he thought of it, he couldn't remember a single previous instance when she had displayed the slightest indication of jealousy. It amused him, and he found himself debating the best way to make the most of it.

  She got to her feet and walked toward him, the petticoat swirling around her hips and legs like a pink mist.

  When she was directly in front of him, she put her hands on her hips and tilted her dark head back to look up into his face.

  “Well?” she said tightly.

  He shrugged. “Hell, Jean, I never remember names. You know that.”

  “That's why you couldn't do anything last night. Or night before last, either.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “Might have had a lot to do with it. Now that you mention it, I can see where—”

  “Damn you! Tell me who she is!”

  He rubbed his chin, frowning as if in concentration. “Funny thing... I just can't seem to remember. But I know I'll come up with it. Just give me a minute and—”

  She slapped him.

  He stood there, grinning at her, while she drew back her hand and slapped him again. There were cold fires behind the dark eyes now, he saw, and the full lips that seldom needed rouge were very pale.

  “Please don't hit me, Jean,” he said. “It isn't the slaps that hurt—it's the idea that you'd want to.” Then he brought his right hand up quickly, caught a firm, bare breast in it, and squeezed with all the strength of his broad, spatulate fingers.

  Jean's mouth opened to scream. But there was no scream; there was only a choked sob, and for an instant Steve thought she was going to faint.

  She shuddered, staring down at herself with sick, frightened eyes, and then she walked unsteadily to the table and half fell into her chair. She sat staring at the livid imprint of Steve's fingers, eyes a wet blur now, shoulders trembling.

  The phone in the foyer began to ring again.

  Steve turned and walked along the corridor to the living room, a dark, brooding expression on his face. As he walked he brought his hands up and massaged both temples with the tips of his fingers. Jean's slaps had jarred him just enough to revive his headache.

  As he crossed the foyer and jerked open the front door, he glared at the ringing phone.

  “And to hell with you, too,” he said, and slammed the door behind him.

  Chapter Two

  STEVE GLANCED at his wrist watch as Dave Kimberly's ancient Ford drew up at the curb in front of the apartment house. It was exactly seven-thirty. His headache was fading again, but there was still enough of it left to be bothersome.

  Dave's pleasant young face was shaved so closely it was pink. He nodded to Steve and got the Ford under way again, threading it skillfully into the heavy downtown traffic.

  “Looks like another scorcher today, Lieutenant,” he said. “You can tell already. Worst hot spell the Midwest has had in twelve years, the paper said.” He grinned. “A man could melt right down to the floor in weather like this.”

  “So it's hot,” Steve mumbled. “So what?”

  Dave shrugged. “So nothing.” He looked along his eyes at Steve, grinning a little less confidently now. “I appreciate your going in early with me this way,” he said. “I'm sorry I got those reports fouled up, but—”

  “Forget it,” Steve said sourly. “The sooner we get them straightened out, the sooner the whole squad stops wasting time on account of them, that's all. Hell, I'm not helping you out just to do you a favor.”

  “Just the same, I appreciate—”

  “I said forget it.”

  For a full minute Dave drove without speaking, a wiry, blond young man who would have been handsome except for the slight tilt of a broken nose and the faint tracery of scar tissue around each eyebrow, mementos of his years on the department's boxing team.

  Finally he said, “You mentioned something about turning Tommy, Nolan over to me today, Lieutenant.”

  “Yeah,” Steve said. “Well, you've got to start earning your pay sooner or later.”

  Dave smiled. “How'd you make out with him last night?”

  “No good. I knocked off about eight, and he hadn't so much as opened his yap. You'd think the guy had lockjaw.”

  “He must be a pretty tough boy.”

  “Tough, hell. I could find out in about five minutes whether or not he killed that Bruce Wingate. Five minutes, that's all. Tough? You take a wet towel and slap a man across the belly with it hard enough and long enough, and he'll tell you everything you want to know. And there won't be a mark on him, either. I'd have done it last night, if it hadn't been for the Old Man screaming like hell.”

  Dave moistened his lips, stared straight ahead.

  “The Old Man's gone soft now,” Steve went on.
“But there was a time when he was a pretty good cop. He had a habit of making an arrest and then kicking the guy in the leg so he couldn't run very fast if he tried to make a break while the Old Man was calling the wagon.”

  Dave shook his head, frowning.

  Steve stripped the cellophane from a cigar, bit the end off it, and worried it around in his mouth without lighting it, smiling now, knowing that Dave despised police brutality above all else.

  “You figure Nolan's holding back?” Dave asked.

  “Sure. But, so far, all we've got is circumstantial crap. Without the murder gun and a confession, the D.A.'s up the creek. And then there's the little item of finding the woman that was seen running away from there.” He spit out the window. “The whole thing would be simple, if they'd leave me alone with Nolan a little while. And maybe they will. The D.A. wants all the indictments he can get. If he puts enough heat on the Old Man, the Old Man'll maybe have to look the other way and let me use that sock, after all.”

  “Jesus,” Dave said softly.

  Steve studied him. “You aren't just a little too squeamish for a cop, are you, Dave? Listen. Either Tom Nolan botched a heist and killed a florist, or he didn't. Either the D.A. gets an indictment and fries Nolan, or he doesn't. What the hell—it's no skin off yours or mine, either way.”

  Dave pulled up for a red light. “You know how I feel about some of the methods you use, Lieutenant.”

  “Yeah, I know. Just make sure you don't bleed all over your own car.”

  “It's just that I can't figure Tommy Nolan in a deal like this. Here's a guy with no record, and a wife and kid, and—well, I've got a hunch that—”

  “Hunch, hell,” Steve said flatly. “After all these years you still think there are some guys who just couldn't knock anybody off; right? Sure you do. You haven't learned a damn thing.”

  Dave shrugged. “Maybe.”

  Steve grunted, studying the faces of men and women along the sidewalk, matching them against the thousands of stored-up mugg photographs in his memory. He had done this so often over the years that he did it almost unconsciously. And yet, in the last year alone, he had spotted nearly a dozen wanted men in this way.