Anthony Boucher - Ed McBain’s Mystery Book, No. 1, 1960

Orlando Street was a lower-middle-class residential street bisected by the highway. Jacaranda trees bloomed like low small purple clouds among its stucco and frame cottages. Fallen purple petals carpeted the narrow lawn in front of the Brocco house.

A thin, dark man, wiry under his T-shirt, was washing a small red Fiat in the driveway beside the front porch. He must have been over fifty, but his long hair was as black as an Indian’s. His Sicilian nose was humped in the middle by an old break.

“Mr. Brocco?”

“That’s me.”

“Is your daughter Alice home?”

“She’s home.”

“I’d like to speak to her.”

He turned off his hose, pointing its dripping nozzle at me like a gun.

“You’re a little old for her, ain’t you?”

“I’m a detective investigating the death of Ginnie Green.”

“Alice don’t know nothing about that.”

“I’ve just been talking to your older daughter at the Highway Patrol office. She thinks Alice may know something.”

He shifted on his feet. “Well, if Anita says it’s all right.”

“It’s okay, Dad,” a girl said from the front door. “Anita just called me on the telephone. Come in, Mister— Archer, isn’t it?”

“Archer.”

She opened the screen door for me. It opened directly into a small square living room containing worn green frieze furniture and a television set which the girl switched off. She was a handsome, serious-looking girl, a younger version of her sister with ten years and ten pounds subtracted and a pony tail added. She sat down gravely on the edge of a chair, waving her hand at the chesterfield. Her movements were languid. There were blue depressions under her eyes. Her face was sallow.

“What kind of questions do you want to ask me? My sister didn’t say.”

“Who was Ginnie with last night?”

“Nobody. I mean, she was with me. She didn’t make out with any of the boys.” She glanced from me to the blind television set, as if she felt caught between. “It said on the television that she was with a man, that there was medical evidence to prove it. But I didn’t see her with no man. Any man.”

“Did Ginnie go with men?”

She shook her head. Her pony tail switched and hung limp. She was close to tears.

“You told Anita she did.”

“I did not!”

“Your sister wouldn’t lie. You passed on a rumor to her — a high-school rumor that Ginnie had had something to do with one man in particular.”

The girl was watching my face in fascination. Her eyes were like a bird’s eyes, bright and shallow and fearful.

“Was the rumor true?”

She shrugged her thin shoulders. “How would I know?”

“You were good friends with Ginnie.”

“Yes. I was.” Her voice broke on the past tense. “She was a real nice kid, even if she was kind of boy crazy.”

“She was boy crazy, but she didn’t make out with any of the boys last night.”

“Not while I was there.”

“Did she make out with Mr. Connor?”

“No. He wasn’t there. He went away. He said he was going home. He lives up the beach.”

“What did Ginnie do?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t notice.”

“You said she was with you. Was she with you all evening?”

“Yes.” Her face was agonized. “I mean no.”

“Did Ginnie go away, too?”

She nodded.

“In the same direction Mr. Connor took? The direction of his house?”

Her head moved almost imperceptibly downward.

“What time was that, Alice?”

“About eleven o’clock, I guess.”

“And Ginnie never came back from Mr. Connor’s house?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know for certain that she went there.”

“But Ginnie and Mr. Connor were good friends?”

“I guess so.”

“How good? Like a boy friend and a girl friend?”

She sat mute, her birdlike stare unblinking.

“Tell me, Alice.”

“I’m afraid.”

“Afraid of Mr. Connor?”

“No. Not him.”

“Has someone threatened you — told you not to talk?”

Her head moved in another barely perceptible nod.

“Who threatened you, Alice? You’d better tell me for your own protection. Whoever did threaten you is probably a murderer.”

She burst into frantic tears. Brocco came to the door.

“What goes on in here?”

“Your daughter is upset. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, and I know who upset her. You better get out of here or you’ll be sorrier.”

He opened the screen door and held it open, his head poised like a dark and broken ax. I went out past him. He spat after me. The Broccos were a very emotional family.

I started back toward Connor’s beach house on the south side of town but ran into a diversion on the way. Green’s car was parked in the lot beside his restaurant. I went in.

The place smelled of grease. It was almost full of late Sunday lunchers seated in booths and at the U-shaped breakfast bar in the middle. Green himself was sitting on a stool behind the cash register counting money. He was counting it as if his life and his nope of heaven depended on the colored paper in his hands.

He looked up, smiling loosely and vaguely. “Yes, sir?” Then he recognized me. His face went through a quick series of transformations and settled for a kind of boozy shame. “I know I shouldn’t be here working on a day like this. But it keeps my mind off my troubles. Besides, they steal you blind if you don’t watch ’em. And I’ll be needing the money.”

“What for, Mr. Green?”

“The trial.” He spoke the word as if it gave him a bitter satisfaction.

“Whose trial?”

“Mine. I told the sheriff what the old guy said. And what I did. I know what I did. I shot him down like a dog, and I had no right to. I was crazy with my sorrow, you might say.”

He was less crazy now. The shame in his eyes was clearing. But the sorrow was still there in their depths like stone at the bottom of a well.

“I’m glad you told the truth, Mr. Green.”

“So am I. It doesn’t help him, and it doesn’t bring Ginnie back. But at least I can live with myself.”

“Speaking of Ginnie,” I said. “Was she seeing quite a lot of Frank Connor?”

“Yeah. I guess you could say so. He came over to help her with her studies quite a few times. At the house, and at the library. He didn’t charge me any tuition, either.”

“That was nice of him. Was Ginnie fond of Connor?”

“Sure she was. She thought very highly of Mr. Connor.”

“Was she in love with him?”

“In love? Hell, I never thought of anything like that. Why?”

“Did she have dates with Connor?”

“Not to my knowledge,” he said. “If she did, she must have done it behind my back.” His eyes narrowed to two red swollen slits. “You think Frank Connor had something to do with her death?”

“It’s a possibility. Don’t go into a sweat now. You know where that gets you.”

“Don’t worry. But what about this Connor? Did you get something on him? I thought he was acting queer last night.”

“Queer in what way?”

“Well, he was pretty tight when he came to the house. I gave him a stiff snort, and that straightened him out for a while. But later on, down on the beach, he got almost hysterical. He was running around like a rooster with his head chopped off.”

“Is he a heavy drinker?”

“I wouldn’t know. I never saw him drink before last night at my house.” Green narrowed his eyes. “But he tossed down a triple bourbon like it was water. And remember this morning, he offered us a drink on the beach. A drink in the morning, that isn’t the usual thing, especially for a high-school teacher.”