The sound of the word seemed to do something to Helen Kirsch. She crumpled forward suddenly above her own lap, as though she had a folding pain; covered her face. This time the tears came good; hot and heavy. “I didn’t mean to!” she sobbed strangledly. “I didn’t! Oh, I didn’t, I tell you!”
“Were you alone there in the room with him?”
She saw her head nod reluctantly in the gloom.
“Did you have a gun in your hand?”
The nod came even slower, but it came once more.
“Did you fire it at him?”
“It went off—”
“They always do. Funny how they always do, with girls like you. Always go off of their own accords, and with darned good aim too. Did he fall down when it went off? Answer me. Did he?”
“Yes.” She shuddered at the recollection. “He fell, and he pulled me down with him. I couldn’t get clear for a minute. I tore myself away from him, and I got up and I ran.”
“But he didn’t. Did he lie there after he’d fallen? Did he lie there still, or did he get up and chase you?”
“He... he didn’t get up and come after me.”
“You fired a gun at him. He fell down. He lay there. All your welshing won’t change what that is. Little sister, you’ve got yourself a murder on your hands.”
Helen Kirsch squealed like a stuck pig. Or like a puppy dog that’s been accidentally stepped on. She burrowed her face rearwards into the corner seam of the cab, almost as though she were trying to squeeze her way out through there, burst it asunder. Her hand beat a reflex protest on the padding.
“I didn’t mean to! Oh God, hear me! I didn’t mean to! I didn’t want to go to that party. This other girl, where I work, she talked me into it! I didn’t want to go. I’d never done a thing like that before, behind Harry’s back. Then when I got there and saw there were only four of us, just the two couples, I didn’t like the way it looked, I didn’t want to stay. And then the other couple slipped off somewhere, before I knew it they’d gone, and I was alone with him.”
Bricky tried to buck her up, the only way she knew how. “What’re you so afraid of anyway?” she said brusquely. “You’ll never even do a stretch on it, probably. You’ve got the perfect defense. They always take the woman’s word in a case like that. And this time, there
Her head didn’t go up. It went lower, if anything, in utter prostration.
“It isn’t that— It isn’t that— How can I ever live with Harry any more, after? He won’t have me.”
“He’ll forgive you for going to what you thought was just a harmless party.”
“They never do, they never do — for that.”
Suddenly Bricky understood, completely, devastatingly.
“Oh,” she said in a crushed voice. “You fired at him—”
“I fired at him
The cab slowed, came in for a stop.
Bricky paid him from the seat, then they got out. Bricky took her by the wrist, said, “Stand here a minute till the cab drives away.”
They stood there motionless; the cab rolled off, leaving its ghost in blue exhaust-tracery on the night air. Its going rugged at their skirts and flared them a little. Then they stood there alone on the edge of the curb.
“What are you going to do to me now?” Helen Kirsch quailed in pitiful helplessness.
“Show me where you ditched the gun. That’s what I want to know first. You lead the way.”
Her hostage went down that street there, bearing east; Bricky close beside her like an upright shadow.
Bricky thought: “She went out of her way first, over this way, to discard the gun; then doubled back along the same street to the avenue once more and got into the cab there. That was an erratic thing to do.” She didn’t comment on it, went with her unquestioningly.
They crossed the arid grandeur of Park Avenue, with its double width and stepped-up wedges of safety in the middle; dead to the world, scarcely a light showing in a window along it for the twenty blocks or so that the eye could encompass. Most of the bedrooms along here were to the rear, anyway. The most overrated thoroughfare in the world.
They went on. They came to Lexington, narrower, more human, more alive at least. They still went on, toward Third. They crossed that, under the iron tracery of the El, went on toward Second.
Bricky said at last, “What brought you so far over?”
“I was going the wrong way. I didn’t know where I was at first. I was, like dazed, when I first came out.”
Yes, Bricky thought, anyone would be, immediately after taking someone’s life.
The Kirsch girl spoke again in a moment or two. “It’s in one of these alleys between the buildings along here. There was a row of ashcans standing there, waiting to be dumped. The first one had a lid on it. I lifted that and chucked it underneath.” Then she said, “Maybe they’ve been emptied already.”
“They don’t come around until just before daybreak,” Bricky said.
“I think that’s the one. There it is, in there. See them? There’s about six of them in a row.”
“Stay with me,” Bricky warned. “Come over next to me while I look.”
All the other girl said was, “I’m playing the game. You played it back at my place.”
