After the brief trial, Tom Rivas saw the girl out in the corridor. She was standing in a corner, lighting a cigarette. There was a long purple bruise on one cheek bone, poorly disguised with heavy pancake make up. She was wearing a sheer blouse, gray skirt, high heel pumps. A cheap patent leather purse was hugged under her left arm. Her clothes across her bosom, hips and thighs were tight, and Tom thought about how she had looked last night and a warm flush came up his throat.
He walked over to her. “You should have told the truth in there,” he said gently. “You didn’t have to be afraid of him. We would have put him away where he wouldn’t hurt you any more.”
She glanced quickly up. Her eyes were numb and a little frightened. She looked at him the way any of them from Hunkytown would look at a policeman, with a mingling of fear and hatred. Damn it, Tom thought, even when you were trying to help them, they were afraid of you.
He took a card out of his pocket with his home telephone number on it. “If he tries to hurt you again, call the station, or call me. I’ll come down even if I’m not on duty.”
She gazed at the card for a long moment with wide eyes, as if not entirely comprehending. Then, as if she had been ordered to do so, she took the card and put it in her purse. She started to turn and leave, but he caught her arm.
“What’s your name?” he asked, with an undercurrent of desperation in his voice.
She stood there with her eyes lowered. Finally, she whispered, “Cherry.” Then she walked away.
After Szykora was released, Tom had Jake Smith drive through that neighborhood several times a night so he could check on the house.
“I don’t know,” Smith swore. “She’s nothing but a little twist. Not particularly pretty. I don’t see why you’re knocking yourself out over her. So her old man beats her up sometimes — so what? It happens to dozens of them every night. They like it.”
“I just don’t like a man that’ll do that to a woman,” Rivas said, rubbing his right fist into his left palm. “If he does it again, I’ll kill him.”
Smith shot him a disturbed glance. They’d been working together for several months. Smith had taken him under a wing because he was a rookie and he felt responsible for him. “Look, kid,” he advised, “that blue suit you got on don’t make you God. It don’t even give you permission to bust into another man’s house without a warrant. You’re liable to get in trouble, doing what you did to Szykora the other night. Take it easy, will you?”
Tom Rivas started going down to her neighborhood when he was off duty. He’d sit in the saloon by the hour, hoping to get a look at her. Sometimes he’d see her walking by, then he’d go out and make her stop and talk with him. She was always afraid, when he did this. She’d keep looking around, like a nervous animal. But he’d make her talk to him, anyway. He was going crazy, wanting her and worrying about her.
Szykora was still beating her up. She denied this, but she couldn’t cover up all the bruises and marks. Once, she went in a bar with Tom for a beer. They were sitting in a booth together in the back of the room and she was swearing that Mack Szykora wasn’t hitting her any more. With a swift movement, Tom caught her wrists in one hand and with his other, flicked the hem of her dress back up to her waist. Her thighs were firm and white above her stocking tops — except for the long red stripes where a belt had cut into the tender flesh.
She put her hands over her face and cried softly.
“Listen, Cherry,” Tom begged, “leave him before he really hurts you. Before he kills you some night.”
She took her hands away from her face and got out of the booth. “Leave me alone,” she whispered miserably. “Just leave me alone!”
How could you help a girl whose eyes were dead, the way hers were? A girl so afraid of a man, she was letting him slowly kill her?
One night Tom was on Prescott Street, off duty, in plain clothes. He stood in the thick shadows and listened to them row. It was worse tonight. They’d been keeping quiet since that night Rivas had arrested Szykora. But tonight the big iron worker was too drunk to be cautious. The sound of him cursing and slamming around inside the house could be heard across the street. In the saloon, Harry served a foaming glass of keg beer to a customer and they exchanged knowing smiles.
Sweat covered Tom Rivas’ face. He couldn’t stand any more of it. He threw a half-smoked cigarette into a gutter and started toward the house. Just then the front door burst open and Mack Szykora came reeling out in his shirt sleeves. The big man stumbled across the yard, headed to the saloon for more beer.
Tom met him in the shadows. “You dirty bastard,” Rivas cursed. “I told you to leave that woman alone.”
Szykora reeled and blinked, picking out Tom Rivas’ features in the darkness. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said thickly, “it’s th’ copper. And without his monkey suit.” A giant paw caught the front of Tom’s coat. “You listen, you damn copper. You keep away from here. You leave my wife alone. I know you been sniffin’ around her. I heard talk.” Szykora was whipping himself into a murderous rage. “She’s my wife. What I do to her’s my business — you hear me, copper?”
Rivas slapped the big man’s hand away from his coat, and hit Szykora with all his force. It was like throwing your fist at the side of a stove. Szykora shook his head and swept Rivas up like a rag doll, hurling him against the dark wall of a warehouse. Then Mack Szykora picked up a rock the size of a large cabbage and came at the half stunned policeman, raising it to smash Rivas’ head.
Numbly, Tom drew his service revolver and, lying there propped on one elbow, shot Mack Szykora in the face. Doing it gave him a great deal of pleasure.
Tom Rivas got in no trouble over the killing. Some men had come out of the saloon and they testified that it was justifiable homicide.
After the funeral and after the grand jury acquitted him, he went down to Hunkytown to see the girl. “It’s going to be all right now, Cherry,” he said, taking her gently into his arms. “I’m going to treat you right. You don’t know what it’s like for a man to treat you right.”
“Thank you, Tom,” she said numbly. She registered absolutely no emotion, neither grief nor joy at Mack’s death. Submissively, she allowed Tom to kiss her, but her lips were like clay under his.
He realized that he had never seen her display any kind of emotion; she was a strange woman.
Tom figured that her natural emotions had been stifled by the years of fear she had lived through in Mack Szykora’s house. She’d married him when she was sixteen. It would take a lot of tenderness and patience on his part to make her warmly human again.
As the weeks passed, he was good to her. As good as a man could be to a woman. He brought her gifts. He took her to fine restaurants where she had never been.
But she never showed a thing, other than to say, “Thank you,” very politely. She allowed him to kiss her whenever he wanted. She didn’t refuse a thing — she was like a statue that he could use in any way he wished. Several times he parked and kissed her and got a little more intimate, unbuttoning her blouse or brushing his hand along her leg. She was completely submissive, allowing him anything he desired. But he did not claim her. He wanted her more than anything in the world. He wanted to marry her. But not until she could come to him as a woman should, with fire on her lips and a warm response in her beautiful body that was made for a man to love.
He was living under a great strain, now. It was telling on him. He was thin. There were great shadows under his eyes which burned with a dark, restless fire. A man could stand only so much of what he was going through.
One night after he had been wooing Cherry for three months, he went down to Hunkytown to pick her up for their usual date. He went down to Prescott street to the house across from Harry’s Place, her house now, since the death of Mack Szykora.