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?
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