When I got my first gander at the girl witness they were questioning, I lost interest. Ernie Gault and I had been on our way home that night when the cruiser radio crackled, ordering a prowl car to investigate a robbery-murder at Climonte’s grocery, corner of Third and Halsey. I was tired, riding with my head on the back rest, hat tilted over my eyes, but I could feel Ernie tense at the wheel. Ernie Gault was a cop twenty-four hours a day. He slowed the black police sedan, pulled the speaker off the hook and told the dispatcher we were in the neighborhood and would meet the prowl car at Climonte’s.
I sat upright, sighing, but not bothering to protest. Third was almost deserted in the pelting rain that danced off the Plymouth hood. Dim lights of street lamps and closed shops shone palely in the puddled gutters.
Ernie parked outside Climonte’s grocery behind a cruiser, and was out of the car before the motor died.
I got out, checking the shabby, deserted street. This was Ernie’s neighborhood, but I felt a cramp in my guts, the way I always did in a place like this. I shivered. The street brought back all the poverty and hunger and hell of my childhood.
I followed Ernie across the streaming pavement, feeling the rain pepper my shoulders. A bell rang when I opened the door of the dingy corner store. Two prowl cops glanced up, then turned back to question the girl.
Sam Reynolds, a robbery-detail man, had beaten us here and was trying to calm her enough to make sense of what she was saying.
She couldn’t stand still; her splayed fingers wove nervously through her thick black hair, and when Sam turned from her to tell Ernie he’d called an ambulance, she tried to run.
Ernie touched my arm and I followed behind the counter and along the stacked shelves to where the grocer lay with blood gurgling from a hole in his stomach.
“Take it easy, Mr. Climonte,” Ernie said. Mr. Climonte was breathing fast, like a hummingbird, because he had been robbed and shot and because every time he breathed, the spurting blood and the pain reminded him he was going to die, that he was almost dead.
“Can you tell us anything, Mr. Climonte?” Ernie squatted beside the man on the floor. Somebody had propped Climonte’s head on an old jacket
I leaned against the shelves behind the counter, checked the small store once for any signs of the armed thieves, knowing I wasn’t going to find anything.
“Can’t you tell us anything at all, Mr. Climonte?” Ernie repeated. He put his hand under the old grocer’s head and lifted it gently. Ernie glanced up at me then, his face stricken, said, “Mr. Climonte is a friend of mine, Mike.”
“That so?” I watched the rain oozing along the front window, large swollen drops spilling across the old-fashioned lettering: CLIMONTE’S CORNER GROCERY. It figured. Climonte would be a friend of Ernie’s; this was the type of friend Ernie cultivated.
“Yes. A good friend.” Ernie stared around the store. “Where’s that damned ambulance? You said you called one, Sam.” Realizing that his frantic tone was upsetting the old man, Ernie tried to smile. “We trade here with Mr. Climonte. Isn’t that right, Mr. Climonte?”
Climonte was in his late sixties, a round man with a round head, and tufts of white hair over his ears. His clothes were shabby, even his apron was torn. The big supermarkets had put him out of business ten years ago, only he had refused to recognize the fact. He stared up at Ernie Gault, too full of agony to answer.
“Doctor.” His voice quavered. He clawed at the blood-fountain in his pot belly.
Ernie tried to pull his hands away, but they scrabbled back.
“Doctor’s coming, Mr. Climonte.” Ernie nodded again and again. “Just hang on.”
Suddenly the girl talking to Sam and the two prowl-car cops up front let out a scream. The sound ripped through the small store.
Ernie replaced Mr. Climonte’s head on the folded jacket and jumped up, looking around.
“What’s the matter, Mike? What’s happened?”
I shrugged. “Relax.”
“What happened?”
Ernie saw the girl was fighting at the cops, clawing and wailing. He hurried toward them, a small, wiry man in a cheap suit and scuffed, resoled shoes. He was very plainclothes. His collar was loose, his wrists hung from shrunken shirt cuffs and tight coat sleeves, his shoulders were round with the worries he dragged around on them.
“What’s going on now?” he asked Sam.
“Girl’s all upset, Mr. Gault,” Sam answered. He was big, beefy and young, but he showed Ernie a lot of respect. Most of the men in the department did. Ernie was so honest you couldn’t even laugh about it. Since he’d been promoted to lieutenant, I was about the only one with detective rank who called him by his first name. But then, I was the only one in the department he owed money to. A debt four years old and still plaguing the poor little bastard. I had told him to forget it, but I knew he never would.
“What’s the matter, Miss?” Ernie put his hand on her shoulder, trying to soothe her.
“Don’t touch me!” She trembled convulsively as she backed away. That was a laugh. Ernie was old enough to be her father, and all he ever thought of was his job.
“She’s had a bad time, Mr. Gault” The detective nodded toward bruises on her arm. “She was in here when those young punks came in. They— roughed her up some. She—saw them shoot the old man back there. She’s all shook up.”
“I see.” Ernie glanced around, as if looking for the ambulance that still hadn’t arrived. “Take it easy, girlie. You’re all right now. When the doctor comes, he’ll give you a sedative.”
“I’m—all right” The girl swallowed hard. She twisted her mouth, trying to smile at Ernie. “I’m sorry I acted up. It was so terrible, all so terrible.”
I spent half a minute looking her over, fighting down a grudging admiration for the way she was laying it on. Thirty seconds was more than I would ordinarily have spent on her kind, but two or three things about her were off key.
She wore her thick black hair shoulder length. Its curls were snarled, partly from the rain and maybe partly because someone had waltzed her around the stacked canned goods with a grip on that hair. A cheap orlon sweater sagged on her. Though something in her face pegged her as sixteen at least, even without makeup—and she wore none—the sweater front was as flat as a boy’s, or that of a girl under twelve.
I checked the hips in the cheap skirt, slim legs and feet encased in bobby sox and spattered saddle shoes.
I didn’t bother looking at her anymore.
“Mister.” Climonte was writhing on the floor. “Please—help me.”
“Hang on. I told you. The ambulance is on its way.”
“Mister. If—you—you’d ever been shot like this—you’d know—”
The rain was harder now at the window. “I had one, pop. Just like it. So I know the score, and I can do you just one favor.”
His round head nodded, sweated. “Yes?”
“I can tell you. Calm down. The more frantic you are, the more blood will pump out of that hole.”
He stared up at me, his eyes filled with silent panic. He didn’t answer.
Ernie Gault came along the aisle behind the counter. From the street came the distant cry of the ambulance siren.
Ernie knelt beside the dying man. “The ambulance will be here in a minute, Mr. Climonte.”
But Climonte couldn’t pull his eyes off my face. He was staring up at me as if he were looking into the face of the devil himself.
Ernie touched the old man’s shoulder in a soothing gesture, stood up. “One break, Mike.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“The girl. Thirteen. She saw it all. Got a good look at the two punks that shot Mr. Climonte.”
I tried to keep my lips from twisting with the bitter taste of contempt in my mouth. “She giving your boys a full description, huh?”
“Like I say. She got a good look at them.”
The front door pushed open and rain blew in. A man with a medical kit shut the door with his shoulders. He stood a moment, looking around in a nearsighted, muddled way.
Ernie saw him and hurried toward the front of the store.
Doc Yerrgsted recognized me. “Mike Ballard.” He waved to me, smiling.
He was a slender man in his late fifties, with thick wavy hair deeply indented at the temples of his high forehead. His brows were thick and the nose over his heavy gray and brown moustache was large. His chin was strong but his eyes were weak, the color of bourbon, and focused with difficulty.
I nodded toward him and Ernie stopped him near the front of the store. “Doc. This girl here is in a pretty bad way. Needs a sedative.”
“I’m no G.E, Gault,” Yerrgsted said. “I’m just the medical examiner. Where’s the stiff?”
“Back here, Doc.” I grinned at him. “Only you’re a little early. He’s still alive.”
Climonte moaned at my feet.
Yerrgsted scowled, paused long enough to glance at the girl. As his eyes focused I saw them grow cold. He had spotted the thing I had noticed about her. He shrugged, stepped around Ernie without speaking and walked back to where I stood over Climonte.
He stared at the man twisting on the floor.
“What the hell is this?” Yerrgsted said. “They told me there was a corpse. They got me out of a warm bar.”
“They tried to kill him,” I said. “But he’s a tough one—he’s hanging on. Is there anything you can do for him, Doc?”
“Not unless he’s dead.” Yerrgsted pressed his fingers against his eyes. “I don’t have to remind you, Ballard, I’m the M.E.”
“Please, Mister.” Climonte raised a blood-streaked hand.
“See what you can do, Doc,” I said. “Mr. Climonte is a good friend of Ernie Gault’s. The Gaults trade here. Charge account.”
Doc Yerrgsted winced. He glanced first at Climonte’s round face that was becoming very white, then at his own trembling hands. He laughed in a dry, self-deprecating way. “He’s a friend of yours, Gault, and you want me to touch him?”
Ernie stood looking down at the grocer. “God knows we’d appreciate anything you can do, Doc.” His head jerked up and he glared at the front window “That damned ambulance. Thirty minutes to get here.”
Yerrgsted shivered almost imperceptibly. He knelt beside the man on the floor. His voice took on an old smooth bedside tone. “You understand there might be some trouble with the G.P.’s if I were to take that bullet out of you?”
“Please. Help me.”
“They might charge I was drumming up trade for myself as medical examiner. No. Better leave that bullet where it is. Fleshy part of your belly.” He opened his kit, took out a hypodermic and needle. “Few little things I can do to make you comfortable and stop that bleeding, fix you up so you’ll ride safely to the hospital—after that I can’t guarantee you a thing. Right?”
His voice was smooth, cheerful, as if there were some huge joke on himself, Climonte, and the world, and he was working swiftly as he talked.
The ambulance screamed into the curb out front.
A young intern, in hospital white, stethoscope around his neck, strode in, followed by two white-clothed assistants—they seemed unaware that thirty minutes had elapsed since they’d been alerted on this call.
The attendants moved directly through the store to us.
Doc Yerrgsted stood up. “Get a litter in here,” he ordered.
They paused, almost ready to ask who he thought he was, but something in his face changed their minds. They moved swiftly toward the store front
The girl stared a moment at the intern and wailed, writhing free of the two uniformed cops beside her.
Sam explained to the young medic that the girl was upset, asked if she could be given a sedative. The doctor looked her over, nodded.
“Will you hold her, please?” The doctor nodded at the two cops, then placed his kit on a counter. He said something to the girl. She tried to pull free, her hair flailing wildly. The doctor nodded toward the cops and they bent the girl over toward the shelves. Her skirt was pulled up above her waist and tucked under her belt line to keep it out of his way.
He caught her pink panties on both sides of her hips and rolled them down almost to her knees; I glanced at Ernie to see if he noticed the round fullness of those pink shining cheeks.... But Ernie was such an honest man, that he saw only a girl being attended by a doctor.
The intern got a hypo from his kit, slid one hand along the inside of her left leg to hold her steady. She screamed, trying to lurch free of the two cops.
The medic tightened his grip. “You’ll have to hold her steady,” he said to the cops. He thrust the needle into the soft pink roundness.
She wiggled, but he went on holding her with his left hand until she quieted down.
I glanced at Yerrgsted and the twisted smile around his moustache and bourbon-soaked eyes.
“Couldn’t they have shot her in the arm, Doc?”
The countless wrinkles around his eyes tightened.
“You’re an old-fashioned man, Ballard.”
Ernie caught his breath. “God, Mike, what a dirty mind you have. That girl is only thirteen!”
“That so?” I grinned at him.
“Thirteen, eh?” Yerrgsted shook his head. “Interesting.”
“You don’t believe it?” Ernie said.
I shrugged, watching the attendants wheel Climonte out of the store toward the ambulance. “I just don’t give a damn. I’ll tell you what, Ernie. I’ve decided against going on home. Doc’s got his car with him, I’ll check out with him.”
Ernie frowned up at me. “What are you talking about? We got a robbery-assault case here—”
I nodded, watching them push Climonte into the ambulance. “Robbery. Yes. But no corpse. This case is nothing to me without a corpse.”
“Sometimes I don’t understand you, Mike.” Ernie shook his head.
“Nothing for me here, either.” Yerrgsted snapped his ancient medical kit shut “Come on, Mike. I’ll let you buy me a drink.”
“You make a hell of a lot more than I do.”
“True. But I’ve many more bartenders to support than you do, my boy.”
Ernie’s face was taut. He caught my arm. “Mike. I need you here.”
I glanced around the store. “What for? This is a case for the vice squad. Robbery detail. I haven’t been on the vice squad in four years. I’m homicide now, Ernie. Remember?”
His voice was hard. “We got a witness. We can get descriptions, break this thing.”
“I don’t think so.”
“What are you talking about, Mike?”
I thought carefully. I didn’t want trouble with Ernie Gault. I didn’t want trouble with anybody. “Do I have to spell it out for you, Ernie?”
“I think you’d better.”
I wiped the back of my hand across my mouth. “Well, first, there’s your witness.”
“What about her?”
“Like I say, I been off the vice squad for four years. But I’d recognize her in a chorus.”
“I’m listening, Mike.”
“Boy, I do have to spell it out, don’t I? Well, she’s nineteen if she’s a day. She’s got her breasts tied down flat under that cheap sweater. She’s lying as fast as she can talk and, more than that, she’s hopped up on dope.”
Ernie stared first at the girl across the store, and then at me, mouth sagging.
Doc Yerrgsted grinned. He slapped my shoulder. “One hundred percent my diagnosis, Ballard. You’re becoming almost as observant as I am. Maybe I will buy you a drink, my boy—just one.”