“I don’t know anything about any detective, or anybody like that.”
“Neither do I, but I plan to find out. All I know, you’re being investigated by somebody—the F.B.I. or a detective or someone. I ain’t run into this investigator myself, as yet, but I’ve heard tell.”
“It must be a mistake.”
“Well, maybe and maybe not. I heard about it, and I’m going to look into it. I’ve already been looking into you, Harsh. And let me tell you, I got the stuff on you. You’re one of these packs of jack-leg grafters who are traveling around our small towns skinning the people out of their money. That’s what you are, and we been having trouble with your kind. Complaints, that’s what. We been wanting to lay our hands on one of you skunks.”
“Officer, shouldn’t you be looking for the guy who sideswiped me? Isn’t he the real criminal, not me?”
“Never mind that. Where is the rest of your pack of crooks?” The officer was scowling. “You birds work in gangs. Where’s the rest of your outfit?”
“Officer, under the circumstances, I guess I got to give you the right answers.”
“Well, what is the right answer?”
“To hell with you, you son of a bitch.”
The officer started back. Anger came over his scrubbed and shaven face. “You are a dumb one, Harsh.”
“I must be, if you think you can walk on me.”
“We already located your gang, Harsh. One of them anyway. Over in Edina, east of here. A young woman named Vera Sue Crosby. Miss Vera Sue Crosby. She said it was Miss, and I would say it was Miss. You know it is Miss Vera Sue Crosby, don’t you, Harsh?”
“Officer, as you say, I’m pretty dumb, I don’t remember.”
“Maybe you would like us to speak of her as Mrs. Walter Harsh, your wife. That’s how she’s registered in this hotel in Edina. Mrs. Walter Harsh. But she admits her name is Miss Vera Sue Crosby. You see what I got on you, don’t you, Harsh?”
“What you haven’t got, Officer, is somebody to show you how to do your duty, to kick your fat ass into finding that hit-and-run driver who smacked into me.”
“Miss Vera Sue Crosby, of Quincy, Illinois. You get it, Harsh. Quincy, Illinois. Edina, Missouri. A state line is in between those two towns, Harsh. You see now what I got? Statutory rape.”
“How was that last?”
“Statutory rape. You’ve had it, mister.”
“I may be dumb, but Mrs. Harsh never raised any kid dumb enough to have that hung on him.”
“I’m talking about what the law says, Harsh. Here is a fifteen-year-old girl, and you bring her from Illinois into Missouri, which is across a state line, and you shack up with her. That is violating the Mann Act. That is statutory rape. That is up to twenty years in the Jefferson City pen.”
The sides of Harsh’s face felt like china saucers. The officer had not frightened him appreciably until he brought in the thing about Vera Sue being fifteen years old. Good God, she could be fifteen years old, although she had told him she was twenty-three and he had chosen to believe her. If she was fifteen and she had lied, and if they scared her into getting up in court and admitting some other things, then the cop was right, he’d had it.
The officer watched him. “What’s the matter, Harsh? Don’t you want to call me another dirty name? You brought a fifteen-year-old girl across the state line for immoral purposes, and that makes you the kind of a rat I like to hear call me names. That’s the way I feel, only it ain’t really half the way I feel.”
“I’m a sick man, officer. I got an arm broken all to hell. You come back after I get some strength, I’ll tell you about how I feel. I’ll spit in your eye while I do it.”
“I accept your invitation, Harsh, to come back. I’ll bring a pair of handcuffs, too.”
“You do that, while I save up spit.”
“You want to tell me who this stranger is who’s fishing around about you?”
“There is no such guy, and you know it.”
The officer opened the door to leave. “Fellow, you are in a real mess. I hope you can see that.” He went out, and Harsh lay for several minutes waiting for him to come back, but he didn’t. There was a rubber sheet under Harsh, and he had perspired such a pool on it that when he turned over there was a wet sucking noise like a pig in a mud puddle.
FOUR
“Hey, Doc.”
“Yes, Harsh.”
“You gotta fix it so I can use a phone.”
“You’re in no shape to do any telephoning, Harsh.”
“Listen, I got to hit the telephone, Doc. It’s urgent.” He was talking around a thermometer the doctor had stuck in his mouth.
The doctor came over and took out the thermometer, put on his glasses, and threw his head back to see through the bifocals. Then he took Harsh’s pulse.
“The cop sort of upset you, eh?”
“Sort of.”
“He’s a pretty nice guy, really.”
“Yeah, it was easy to see what a nice guy he is. What about me and the telephone?”
“Well I tell you what, you rest a few hours, get some sleep. Then we may fix you up with a telephone call.”
“Doc, it can’t wait.”
“Well, it can try.”
Walter Harsh lay on the hospital bed and thought about the photography business. The way it was, anyone who could get together a dollar ninety-eight could be a photographer, for that would buy a cheap box with a piece of windowglass for a lens and a roll of low-cost film. That put anyone in business, the snapshot business, and that was the trouble, since that was all the value the public put on it. The twelve-jumbo-size-prints-for-thirty-five-cents roll film finishing business was another problem, a picture for less than a nickel. That was the price tag John Q. Public liked to put on a picture, and anything above that, they called it robbery. That made it a difficult business.
Harsh was a good portrait photographer, he was sure of that. He had started out very young with a cheap snap box when he was a kid on the farm, securing his camera for the labels off five sacks of hog supplement and a dollar. He sold muskrat pelts to buy a roll of film, sold more muskrat hides and a mink he was lucky enough to trap and bought some D76 and hypo and contact paper. Later when the army got him, he talked his way into a photo section, where he learned a lot. He used the G.I. Bill of Rights to go to a photographer’s school in Kansas City and another portrait school in New York. By then he was a good portrait man. He was no Bannerman, no Kirsh, but he was an above average portrait man.
He had thought that would be enough, but it wasn’t. He soon decided there were only two ways up as a photographer, and both ways required a gimmick. The best gimmick, which was out of his reach, was a plushy downtown studio with chrome-edged showcases and plenty of gold-toned sepia samples and a blond office girl and a reputation for high prices and being twenty years in the business. The other way up was to go out and knuckle doors. That had its drawbacks, since just about every town had an ordinance against door knocking and an out-of-towner needed a gimmick to get around this. Harsh knew he was right about one thing, the ordinances were barriers the local sit-on-his-bottom photographer had talked the city fathers into passing to protect his laziness. So Harsh felt no remorse about the gimmick he was using.
Harsh’s gimmick was tailored for small towns. He would send a woman with a nice-sounding voice into the small town a few days in advance to rent desk space and a telephone and buy some spot announcements over the local radio station. Then the woman would sit down at the telephone in the rented desk space and turn to A in the directory and call every subscriber through to Z. “Good morning, Mrs. Aarons. This is Miss Crosby, with National Studios of Hollywood. Mrs. Aarons, you have heard our program on the radio, no doubt. If you can answer today’s quiz question, you will receive an absolutely wonderful big free prize of three size eight-by-ten portrait photographs of yourself and any other two members of your family. If you heard our sponsored program today, you will receive an extra listener’s prize.”