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?”
“I’m dying,” she said. “I’m dying.”
“Why don’t you try to get up?” I said. She smelled worse than Fisher.
“No,” she said. “I’m dying.”
“Come on,” I said. “This is no place for it. Come on and get up.”
“I got a pain,” she said. She put her hand on her abdomen. “I got a pain here.”
“I hope it’s a boy,” I said politely.
At this, she moved around and lurched to her feet like a colt learning to walk. She had hair only a little darker than orange peel and a sagging chin and pouches under her eyes. She looked about thirty-five.
“Goddam sonbitch,” she muttered, shivering. “Gon’ sue goddam sonbitch drive so fast.” She slipped and fell against me, legs dragging. “I’m dying.”
I picked her up and carried her out of the ditch, placing my feet carefully on the slippery bank. I carried her across the road and tucked her away in my Oldsmobile. On the floor of the back seat. I didn’t want my seat covers ruined. She was due to puke her head off.
It was raining harder as I climbed back down the bank. Fisher was still beside his car. He stood there in the rain with water dripping from his hair, his forehead lined with pain, his teeth chattering. He looked bad.
He
