A. Fair - Owls Don't Blink

“I was out with a man in an automobile. We drove around just killing time, and then turned in to one of the parks, and — stopped.”

“Necking?”

“Yes.”

“Then what?”

“At that time they were having quite a bit of trouble with a love bandit, a chap who lay in wait in the places where the necking parties went on. I suppose you know the procedure.”

“Holdup?”

“He’d take money from the men, and then — well, then he’d borrow the woman for a while.”

“Go on.”

“We were held up.”

“What happened?”

“This man made a pass at me and my escort wouldn’t stand for it. The bandit shot him — and got away.”

“Were you suspected?”

“Suspected of what?” she asked, her eyes getting wide.

“Of having had anything to do with it.”

“Good heavens, no. Everyone was just as sympathetic and nice to me as they could be. But — well, it clung to me. Of course, the people where I was working knew all about it. They’d keep talking about it. Once when I went out with a fellow one of the girls in the office didn’t like she came to me and told me that a man had given his life in order to protect my honor, that I shouldn’t hold it cheaply.”

“What did you do?”

“I wanted to slap her face. All I could do was to smile and thank her.

“I quit my job, went to work in another place. In about two months they found out all about me. It was the same thing over and over. I suppose I’m just a damn heathen. I didn’t love this man. I liked him. I was going with him off and on, but I was also going with some others. I had no intention of marrying him. If I’d known what he was going to do, I’d have stopped him. I didn’t want him to give his life for me. It was a brave thing to do. It was a wonderful thing to do. It was so — so damned quixotic.”

“I think it was what any man would have done under similar circumstances.”

She smiled. “Statistics prove that you’re wrong.”

I knew she was right, so didn’t say anything more.

“Well,” she went on, “what with having all of my friends whispering around behind my back, and what with the memory of the tragedy gnawing at the back of my consciousness — I decided to travel. I went to New York. After a while I got a job as a model, advertising some lingerie. For a while things were all right, then people recognized my photographs. My friends started whispering again.”

“I’d had a taste of complete freedom. It had lasted for almost a year. I knew what it was like to be just a common, average person, free to live my own life in my own way—”

“So you disappeared again?” I asked.

“Yes. I realized that I’d had the right idea but had made the mistake of getting into a profession where I was photographed. I decided to go to a new place, begin all over again, and smash the first camera that was pointed in my direction.”

“New Orleans?”

“Yes.”

“Then what?”

“You know the rest.”

“How did you meet Edna Cutler?”

“I don’t know now just how it was. I think it started in a cafeteria or a restaurant-it may have been the Bourbon House. Come to think of it, I guess it was. That’s something of a Bohemian place, you know. Most of the people who eat there regularly get to know the other people who eat there regularly. Quite a few of the prominent authors, playwrights, and actors eat there when in New Orleans. It’s an unpretentious little place, but it has the atmosphere, the real, authentic, aged-in-the-wood brand.”

“I know.”

“Well, anyway, I got acquainted with her. I found out she was running away from something, too. She hadn’t had as much of a success at it as I’d had, so I offered to take over her identity for a while and let her really disappear.”

I said, “I’m anxious to get that straight, Rob. Did you make the offer to her? ”

She thought for a moment and said, “Well, she paved the way for it. I guess it was her idea.”

“You’re certain?”

“Definitely, yes. Can I have another drink, Donald? You’ve made me get cold sober, talking about this thing. I didn’t want to get sober tonight. I wanted to ring doorbells and have some fun.”

I said, “There’s a little more I want you to tell me first, little details about, for instance, when you first heard about Nostrander’s death.”

She said, “Put yourself in my position. One murder had been committed over me already. I was trying to dodge notoriety. Well, when this thing happened, I–I just acted on instinct. I wanted to run away from it.”

“Not good enough, Rob,” I told her.

“What isn’t good enough?”

“That reason for running.”

“It happens to be the truth.”

I looked her straight in the eyes, said, “You know better, Rob. No one had thought you might have been implicated in the murder of that young man with whom you were riding back in 1937, but two murders in a girl’s life are just too many murders. They’d begin to ask questions about that old murder, and they wouldn’t be the same kind of questions they asked you five years ago.”

“Honest, Donald, I never thought of that. But-well, I guess it’s an angle to take into consideration. It’s something to think of, all right.”

“Let’s go back to that love bandit. Did they ever catch him?”

“Yes.”

“Did he confess?”

“Not to that crime. He always denied having had anything to do with that. He confessed to a couple of others.”

“What did they do with him?”

“Hanged him.”

“Did you ever see him?”

“Yes. They took me down to see if I could identify him.”

“Could you?”

“No.”

“Did you see him alone or in a line-up?”

“They showed him to me in a line-up, in one of those inspection boxes where a person stands on kind of a stage with a lot of lights beating on him and a white screen stretched across the front so he can’t see you, and yet you can see him perfectly.”

“And you couldn’t pick him out of the line-up?”

“No.”

“Then what did they do?”

“Then they put him in a darkened room where there was just a little light, put an overcoat and a hat on him, just the way he’d been dressed at the time of the crime, and asked me if I could identify him.”

“Could you?”

“No.”

“The man who killed your friend wore a mask?”

“Yes.”

“Did you notice anything about him, anything at all?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“He walked with a limp when he came out of the bushes. After the shooting, when he ran away, he didn’t limp.”

“Did you tell the police that?”

“Yes.”

“Did it mean anything to them?”

“I don’t think so. Can’t we quit talking about this and have a drink?”

I called the waiter over. “Same thing?” I asked her.

“I’m tired of wine. Could we have something else?”

“Two Scotch and sodas,” I said. “How’s that, Rob?”

“That’s fine. And then do something for me, will you, Donald?”

“What?”

“Don’t let me drink any more.”

“Why?”

“I want to enjoy the night and not just get dizzy and a little sick and pass out and wake up in the morning with a head.”

The waiter brought the drinks. I drank about half of mine, then excused myself and started in the general direction of the men’s room. I detoured over to the telephone booth, got a couple of bills changed into twenty-five-cent pieces, and called Emory G. Hale at the hotel in New Orleans.

I had to wait less than three minutes while the operator put the call through; then I heard Hale’s booming voice.

Central sweetly told me to start depositing twenty-five-cent pieces, and my quarters played a tune on the gong in the pay box.