Hit and Run (8 page)

I shook hands with him. My hand felt cold in his.

'No, Jack won't be down until August. He never comes down before then,' I said.

'I took a chance. I was on my way to Palm Bay. I'm staying at the Paradiso Hotel for a couple of weeks. The wife comes down by train tomorrow. She can't travel for long in a car: gets car sick.' He laughed easily. 'Not that that's any skin off my nose. It gives me a little time to myself. I thought if Jack was here we might have a drink and a yarn together.'

'He won't be down until August.'

'Yeah, so you said.' He looked at me. 'If you've got nothing better to do, why don't we go some place and have a drink? The night's still young.'

'I'd like to, but I have a date.'

He looked past me towards the dark bungalow and he grinned.

'Well, if it's like that. I just had an idea we could make up a little party. Two's company, eh?' He moved back to look at the Pontiac. 'Good old bus. Going well?'

'Fine.'

Waving his hand, he went back to the Buick, slid under the steering wheel, gunned the engine and drove away.

I stood motionless, watching his red tail lights disappearing down the road, mf hands gripping the top rail of the gate, my heart slamming against my ribs.

'He saw me,' Lucille said, and her voice was unsteady. She came down the path and joined me at the gate.

'He saw I had a girl with me,' I said as calmly as I could, 'but he couldn't have seen enough of you to know you again. There's nothing to worry about.'

I took her arm and led her to the Pontiac. We got in.

'Are you quite sure I shouldn't tell Roger?' she asked in a small tight voice.

This was more than my jumping nerves could stand. I swung around, reached out, put my hands on her shoulders and gave her a hard little shake.

'Once and for all! I said no and I mean no! He can't do anything for you!' I was shouting at her now. 'If you tell him, you'll make him an accessory! Don't you realize that? If he doesn't hand you over to the police, he could get a sentence. You've got to leave this to me! I'll tell you what we will do tomorrow.'

She shrank away from me, and taking out her handkerchief she began to cry.

I drove fast towards Palm Boulevard.

II

On the highway I came suddenly on a long line of cars, crawling towards the city. I had never seen such a traffic jam, and I knew at once that it had to do with the death of this speed cop.

I had trouble in forcing my way out of the secondary road from my bungalow into the stream of traffic. Finally, someone gave way to me and I got into the line of the creeping cars.

Lucille stopped crying when she saw what was going on.

'What is it?'

We crawled on. Every now and then I looked at the clock on the dashboard. The hands showed ten minutes to twelve, and we still had about two miles to go before I got her home.

Suddenly the cars ahead of me crawled to a stop. I sat, gripping the wheel, staring into the darkness ahead of me, seeing only the red tail lights and maybe a hundred cars stretching in a long motionless line up the road.

Then I saw the cops. There must have been a dozen of them. They were moving down the line of cars, powerful flashlights in their hands, and as they passed, they threw the beams over each car.

That brought me out into a cold sweat.

'They're looking for me,' Lucille said in a voice tight with fear and she made as if to get out of the car.

I gripped her arm.

'Sit still!' My heart was thumping and I was thankful I had been smart enough to use Seaborne's car. 'They're not looking for you! They're looking for the car. Sit still and keep quiet!'

I could feel her shaking, but she had enough sense not to move as one of the cops neared us.

A big, broad-shouldered man got out of the car just ahead of us. As the cop came up to his car, the big man said in an explosion of rage: 'What the hell is this? I'm trying to get to Palm Bay. Can't you guys keep this goddamn road clear?'

The cop sent his beam over him.

'You can come down to the station and make a complaint if that's the way you feel about it,' he said in a voice that could have peeled rust off the keel of a ship. 'You'll go when we're good and ready for you to go, and not before.'

The big man seemed to lose some of his size.

'What's going on anyway, officer?' he asked in a much milder tone. 'Are we likely to be long?'

'A hit-and-run job. We're checking all cars going out of the city,' the cop said, 'and you won't be long.'

The cop, a thickset man with a face that could have been carved out of flint, looked at me, his light swinging first on me and then on Lucille, who cringed back, catching her breath sharply. He didn't seem to notice anything for he moved on to the car behind us.

I put my hand on her arm.

'Take it easy. There's nothing to be frightened about.'

Frightened? Cold sweat was rolling off me.

She didn't saw anything. She sat, her hands gripped between her knees, and see breathed like an old woman of seventy after a climb up a flight of stairs.

The car ahead of me began to move, and I went after it. We crawled on in silence for four or five hundred yards, then the pace quickened.

'They were looking for me, weren't they, Ches?' she said, her voice shaking.

'They were looking for the car, and they didn't find it.'

'Where is it?'

'Where they won't find it. Now look, will you stop working yourself into a panic? Just sit still and keep quiet!'

Ahead of us was the intersection that led to Palm Boulevard. I pulled out of the line of traffic and increased speed. I reached the entrance to the Gables as the hands of the dashboard clock showed ten minutes after twelve.

I got out, went around to the off-side door and opened it.

'I'll see you at my place tomorrow at ten,' I said.

Slowly, as if her legs were cast in lead, she got out of the car.

'Ches! I'm frightened! They were looking for me.'

'They were looking for the car. Now look, go to bed and try to get this thing out of your mind. There's nothing either of us can do until tomorrow.'

I drew in a long, slow breath.

'No,' I said, trying to keep my voice from rising. 'He can't help you. I'm the only one who can handle this. You've got to trust me.'

'I just couldn't bear to go to prison.'

'You won't go to prison. You've got to stop working yourself into a panic. We'll discuss it tomorrow.'

She seemed to make an effort to pull herself together.

'Well, all right. I'll wait until tomorrow if you say so,' she said. 'But, Ches, if you don't think you can handle it, I must go to Roger.'

'I'll handle it. Now go to bed and leave it with me.'

For a long moment she stared at me, then turned and began to walk unsteadily up the drive towards the house.

I watched her go until I lost sight of her.

Then I got into the Pontiac and drove back to the bungalow.

CHAPTER FIVE

I

BY ten minutes to ten the following morning, I was in such a state of jitter, I did something I have never done before. I drank two double whiskies, one after the other, in an attempt to steady my nerves and quell the sick apprehension that had been gnawing at me all night.

I had had very little sleep, and at seven o'clock I began to prowl around the bungalow, waiting for the boy to deliver the newspapers. For reasons best known to him, he didn't arrive until past eight. As I went out to pick up the papers he had tossed on to the porch, Toti, my Filipino servant, arrived.

Afraid to look at the paper, while he was around, I told him to wash up the coffee things and then get off.

'I'm not going to the office this morning, Toti.'

He looked at me in concern.

'You sick, Mr. Scott?'

'No. I'm just taking the weekend off,' I said, moving towards the terrace, the newspapers burning my hand.

'You look sick,' he announced, continuing to stare at me.

'Never mind how I look,' I snapped. 'Get rid of the breakfast things, and then get off.'

I was frantic to look at the papers, but I somehow managed to control myself. Toti was a smart boy. I didn't want him to suspect anything was wrong.

'I planned to clean up the kitchen this morning, Mr. Scott,' he said. 'It needs it. I won't be in your way.'

Speaking slowly and controlling my voice with an effort, I said: 'Leave it till Monday. It's not often I have a weekend off, and I want to potter around here on my own.'

He shrugged his shoulders.

'Okay, Mr. Scott, anything you say.'

'Oh, Mr. Scott ...'

'Well? What is it?'

'Could I have the key to the garage?'

My heart skipped a beat. He would naturally want to know what the Pontiac was doing there and where the Cadillac was. The Cadillac was one of his great prides. He kept it clean, and it was due to his continual attention that the car still looked brand new after eighteen months of hard driving.

'What do you want it for?'

'There's some cleaning rag in there I want to take home, Mr. Scott. My sister said she'd wash it out for me.'

I went out on to the terrace and sat down. I didn't move until I heard him go into the kitchen, then with an unsteady hand I unfolded the papers.

In banner headlines splashed across the front pages, the newspapers screamed that this was the hitand-run case to end all hit-and-run cases. This, they yelled, was the most callous, ruthless motor killing of all time.

According to the Palm City Inquirer, Patrol Officer Harry O'Brien, the dead man, had been one of the most popular officers on the City's force. All three newspapers carried a picture of the dead man who looked a typical hard, brutal cop: a man around thirty years of age with small, granite-hard eyes, a lipless mouth and coarse heavy features.

The Palm City Inquirer said he was a good Catholic, a good son to his parents and a hard-working, conscientious police officer.

'Only two days before he was so ruthlessly struck down, O'Brien had told friends that he was planning to get married at the end of next month,' the account went on. 'It is believed his fiancée is Miss Dolores Lane, the popular entertainer at the Little Tavern nightclub.'

The editors of all three newspapers shrilly demanded that the City's Administration should find the driver of the car and punish him as he deserved.

John Sullivan, Captain of Police, in a press interview held late last night, said that not one of his men would rest until they had found the driver who had killed O'Brien.

'Make no mistake about it,' Sullivan had concluded in a ten-minute speech in which he had extolled O'Brien's qualities, 'we will find this man. This is no ordinary accident. There have been police officers in the past who have been unlucky enough to have been killed in motoring accidents, but the drivers involved have faced tip to a court hearing. They didn't run away. By running away, this man has branded himself as a killer, and I will not tolerate killers in this city. I will find him! We know his car is badly damaged. Every car in this city is going to be checked. I mean exactly that. Every car owner will be given a clearance certificate. Any driver damaging his car after the time of the accident must report the damage to the police or he will find himself on a hook. He will have to convince my men just how the damage was done, and if he can't, then I'll talk to him and I'll be sorry for him if he can't convince me. Road blocks have been set up. No car can leave the city without being checked for damage. I am satisfied we have the killer's car trapped. It's hidden somewhere and we only have to find it. And when we've found it, I'll teach the owner it is damn bad medicine to kill one of my boys and run away.'

So by the time it was ten minutes to ten, by the time I had got rid of Toti, by the time I had thought over what I had read, I was glad to drink two double shots of whisky.

It seemed incredible to me that the police should be planning to check every car in the city. The task would be enormous, but then I remembered once reading of how a police force had searched practically every refuse bin in a city while hunting for a murder weapon, and after four days of incredible labour and patience, had found it. I told myself it would be dangerous to under-estimate Sullivan. If he really meant what he said, and if he wasn't just putting on a show for the press, it might perhaps be possible to check every car, even if it did take weeks.

At ten o'clock, I went down the path and stood at the gate to watch for Lucille.

I hadn't had much time to make up my mind what my immediate moves should be, but I had come to two important decisions. I decided there was no question of going to the police and telling them the truth. I also decided that if the Cadillac was found, I would have to take the blame for the accident.