“Here comes one,” she said. A bus passed us and pulled into the curb up ahead. Fifteen or twenty people got off, but they were all men carrying lunch boxes.
“It’s still too early for any of the office force,” she reminded me.
“Yes,” I said. I wondered how much further into left field we could go before we were up against the wall. We were looking for a girl we’d never seen. We weren’t even positive she existed. Red could have been mistaken. And if he weren’t, it was over a month ago. And there was no evidence at all that the girl he’d seen in the Sidelines had had anything to do with Stedman other than that he’d picked her up. He did that all the time.
More buses came by, still loaded with workmen. It was after eight now. I slipped out and put a nickel in the parking meter.
“That Shiloh Machine Tool Company,” she said musingly. “I keep thinking there’s something familiar about the name.”
“Wasn’t it a battle in the Civil War?” I asked.
She gestured impatiently. “Yes, of course. In April of sixty-two, just south of Pittsburgh Landing on the Tennessee, Grant and Buell against Johnston and Beauregard. It was a very bloody and disorganized affair, green troops hacking away at each other in isolated detachments lost in the thickets—” She broke off. “But I didn’t mean to get started on that. What I meant was I’ve seen the name somewhere recently. It keeps bothering me. Oh, well, I suppose it wasn’t important.”
Cars began coming into the Comet parking lot, and office workers were getting off the buses now. Some of the girls were dark-haired. Each time I saw one I felt a surge of hope, but none of them ever answered the description Red had given me.
“She might have changed her hairdo in a month,” Suzy said. “It could be cut short.”
“She could even be a blonde by now.”
She grinned. “Don’t fire, men, until you see the roots of their hair.”
By nine o’clock we knew we’d drawn a blank. She pulled out of the parking place and drove down toward the beach. On the way we passed the big Southlands Refinery. As we drove by the Marine Department gate I stared longingly at it. She noticed it. “You’ll make it yet, Irish,” she said.
I didn’t answer. I felt too rotten to say anything.
“What would they do with your clothes and license and things?” she asked. “I mean, when the ship had to leave without you?”
“Take them off and hold them there in the Marine Department,” I said. “Captain Bryce’s office—”
I broke off suddenly, freezing with fear. A siren had cut loose in a short burst not a hundred yards behind us.
“Don’t panic,” she whispered. “I think I was just going too fast.”
The police car snarled its way up abreast of us in the inside-lane and the driver waved us over. She eased off onto the gravel shoulder and stopped. He stopped ahead of us, got out, and walked back. My mouth was dry, and I shoved my hands in the pockets of the topcoat to hide their trembling.
He leaned an arm on the window on her side and looked in. I fought an impulse to turn my face away. He was about thirty, lean, alert, with a wind-burned face and unemotional gray eyes. He scarcely glanced at me. “Lady, that’s a twenty-five-mile zone past the refinery.”
“Oh,” she said contritely. “I—I’m sorry, Officer. I guess I was going a little faster than that, wasn’t I?”
“Forty,” he said, somewhat less sternly. She was pretty and sorry, and far too smart to gush or turn on too much charm. “Can I see your driver’s license?”
I breathed softly and went on fighting that impulse to turn and try to hide my face. Thank God she was so spectacular; he couldn’t see past her. She handed him the license. He checked it, tapped it thoughtfully against his thumbnail, and handed it back.
“All right,” he said. “We’ll let it go this time. But watch it. Those signs mean what they say.”
“Thank you, Officer. I’ll be careful.”
For the first time, then, he looked past her at me. For an instant his eyes were squarely on my face. It was like a year. Then he turned away and walked back to his car. Once he paused, as if about to turn around. She pulled back on the pavement, and as we went past him he stared thoughtfully after us.
We were drawing away now. I watched the mirror, holding my breath. Then I saw him slip behind the wheel and slam the door. The car clawed its way back onto the pavement and was after us like a big cat.
“Here he comes!” I said. “He recognized me.”
“Maybe I can outrun him. Until you can get out—”
“No,” I said harshly. “Listen, when he waves you over, stop. After he grabs me, go to pieces. Say I was threatening you with a gun in my topcoat pocket. Take it from there.”
He wasn’t using the siren now, but he was closing on us as if we were standing still. He came up abreast and motioned us over. She pulled off. He stopped behind us. There was no use trying to get out and run; he’d cut me down before I could get twenty feet.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Remember, I forced my way into the car.”
He came up on her side and looked in. There was a sheepish grin on his face. “It didn’t sink in at first,” he said. “Those first names threw me. You’re Suzy Patton, aren’t you?”
He wondered if she would autograph a book for his wife if she brought it over. His wife was crazy about Suzy Patton. She gave him the address. He thanked her and tipped his cap. We drove off. After about a mile I took out cigarettes and tried to light one with hands that were as limp and useless as jelly.
Eight
Neither of us said anything until we came down to the beach and she parked near the jetties at the entrance to the ship channel.
“I can see why fugitives crack after awhile and get caught,” she said.
I nodded. “Nobody could take more than a few of those.”
It was warmer now. The water was sparkling and blue in the slight offshore breeze. A tanker came down the channel, headed seaward. I could see the men on the flying bridge, taking her out, and felt sick. I’d never be up there again. They’d catch me. Today, tomorrow, sometime. I’d spend the rest of my life in a cell.
She had fallen silent. “What are you thinking about?” I asked
“Shiloh,” she said.
“The battle? Or that machine tool company?”
“A little of each, I think. And fugitives. And what it’s really like to be a fugitive.” She fumbled absently in her purse for a cigarette. I lighted it for her. “Take a Union soldier,” she went on. “Maybe he was captured when Prentiss’s division was cut off and sent to the rear. And then escaped behind the Confederate lines after Bragg’s rearguard action and the withdrawal toward Corinth. He was wounded and in enemy territory—” Her voice trailed off and she stared out over the water.
“But what does this have to do with the factory?”
“Nothing.” Then she glanced at her watch. “But we’ve got to get back if we’re going to catch the coffee break.”
“I’ll take it from here,” I said. “You drop me and go on back to the apartment.”
* * *
She let me out three blocks away and I walked slowly up Denton Street in the sunlight. It was ten-fifteen. Just as I reached George’s coffee shop two girls came out of the gate at the Comet Boat Company across the street. One was brown-haired, the other blonde. I opened the screen door and went inside.
There was a long counter at right angles to the doorway, and to the right were ten or twelve booths. I went on around to the far end of the counter and sat down facing the door. There were two men and a girl at the counter, and I was aware of some more people at two of the booths, though I hadn’t looked at them yet. I set the briefcase on the counter and unzipped it to take out one of the letters Suzy had typed.