Hit and Run

I

WHEN I reached town, I bought a couple of Sunday newspapers and took a quick look at the headlines as I walked back to the Buick. I expected to find the murders of Dolores and Ed Nutley plastered over the front page, but there was, as far as I could see, no mention of them.

I got into the car, and as I was in a no-parking zone, I drove fast to Slim’s bar where I could examine the papers and have a sandwich and a beer before deciding on a plan of campaign.

The bar was nearly empty, but sitting in one of the booths with a man I didn’t know was Joe Fellowes. Both were drinking beer and eating hamburgers. Joe spotted me before I could duck out of sight.

‘Hey, Ches! Come on over.’

There was nothing I could do but to wave to him and say I’d be with him. I ordered a sandwich and a beer from Slim, then carried the drink and food over to Joe’s booth.

‘I thought you were playing golf,’ Joe said. ‘Sit down. Meet Jim Buckley. He’s the star man on the Inquirer.’

‘Only the Inquirer doesn’t know it,’ Buckley said and grinned. He was short, fat and middleaged with a pair of probing ice-blue eyes.

He stared pointedly at the scratches on my neck.

‘Boy!’ he said in wonder. ‘She certainly sold her honour at a high price.’

Joe too was staring.

‘Don’t get ideas.’ I said. ‘One of those things. There was a guy bothering a girl, and like a dope, I interfered. It turned out she liked him bothering her and didn’t like me interfering. It’s a wonder I got away with my life.’

They both laughed, but Joe looked wonderingly at me, his eyes puzzled.

‘What are you doing here on a Sunday?’ I asked him, to change the subject.

‘I had arranged to spend the day on the beach with this louse,’ Joe said, jerking his thumb at Buckley, ‘and now he tells me he has to work! So we eat together and I go on the beach alone unless you have nothing to do and will keep me company.’

‘I’d like to, Joe, I said, ‘but I’m tied up.’

‘So long as she’s tied up too, that’ll make a pair of you,’ Buckley said and bellowed with laughter.

I thought of Lucille lying on my bed. He was unconsciously getting a little too close to the truth.

‘Is that the Inquirer you’ve got there?’ he went on, looking at the paper I’d laid on the seat.

‘Yes. You want it?’

‘I haven’t had a chance to see what they did with the stuff I filed last night.’ He reached out, took the paper, shook it open and glanced at the front page. He snorted, opened the paper, turned several pages, then paused. Finally, he refolded the paper and handed it back to me. ‘Three thousand words, written in blood and Scotch, and the black-hearted punk cuts it down to two hundred. Why I work for this rag beats me.’

Joe said: ‘Jim’s covering this hit-and-run case.’

I bit into my sandwich and chewed.

‘Is that right?’ I said. ‘I haven’t had time to read the paper this morning. Anything new?’

Buckley took a long swig from his glass, sat back and lit a cigarette.

‘New? Listen, bud, this is going to be one of the major sensations of the year. This is going to be something that could get the whole of our beautiful Administration tossed out on its fat neck.’

‘Suppose you skip the build-up and let’s have the dope,’ Joe said. ‘If it’s all that hot, why isn’t it hitting the headlines?’

‘Because we’re not ready yet,’ Buckley said. ‘Wait until tomorrow. We reckon to bust this thing wide open tomorrow if we have any luck.’

‘What thing? What are you talking about?’ Joe asked impatiently.

‘I’ll tell you,’ Buckley said. ‘If O’Brien hadn’t been killed no one would have got on to him for maybe years. All that crap Sullivan gave out about what a fine guy O’Brien was sounded all right until we started to investigate him. Then the cloven hoof came to the surface. Know what? O’Brien had a bank balance of a hundred and twenty-five thousand bucks, and he owned a bungalow out on Palm Crescent that is about as fancy as any movie star could wish to own. When a cop lives like that, there’s only one explanation—graft. There were two people who might have known what his racket was. The woman he planned to marry: a nightclub singer, and her agent, a guy named Nutley. Know what happened to them last night?’

Joe was staring at him with round eyes.

‘What happened to them?’

‘They were both knocked off. Nutley was found in the Washington Hotel, shot through the heart and the night clerk bashed over the head. The killer walked in, persuaded the night clerk to tell him in which room Nutley was, then killed him. He then walked upstairs and shot Nutley to death. He killed the girl as she was leaving her apartment.’

‘It’s not even in the paper,’ Joe said indignantly.

‘Yes, it is. It rates ten lines; but boy! it’s going to hit the front page tomorrow. We’re working on it now. We’re trying to get a line on O’Brien’s racket. The police commissioner thinks he was hooked up with some gang. Sullivan thinks he was a blackmailer.’

‘How about the guy who ran over him?’ I asked. ‘Haven’t they found him yet?’

Buckley shrugged his shoulders.

‘They have twenty-three damaged cars at police headquarters and they’re checking every driver’s alibi. They reckon they’ll find the killer among these twenty-three drivers, and I guess if they do find him, they should give him a medal. If O’Brien hadn’t been killed, this would never have come out.’

‘This girl who was killed last night: didn’t she sing at the Little Tavern?’ I asked as casually as I could.

‘That’s the one: a nice-looking wren who couldn’t sing for dimes.’

I asked an inspired question.

‘Who’s behind the Little Tavern?’

Buckley lifted his shoulders.

‘That’s something I’ve tried to find out when I have had nothing better to do. It’s registered in the name of Art Galgano, but no one seems to know who he is. I don’t reckon he lives in town. The joint is run by Jack Claude, who is no better than he could be. What makes you ask?’

‘I heard last night there’s a roulette table upstairs and the stakes are high.’

Buckley stared at me, then shook his head.

‘That’s just talk. Gambling is out in this town. A number of smart operators have tried it, but the commissioner has slammed them shut before they have had a chance to wear the shine off the ball. The Little Tavern has been going now for three years. We’d have heard about it if they had a table there.’

‘Would you? Sure? I was in there last night, and a guy told me there was a table upstairs.’

Buckley stroked his thick nose. His eyes showed his interest.

‘Now wait a minute,’ he said, staring fixedly at me. ‘O’Brien covered that sector. He could have kept them in the clear. Say, this could be something! Maybe that’s where he got his money from! You go there often?’

‘I don’t go there often,’ I said. ‘I go there sometimes.’

‘You couldn’t find out for sure if there is a table upstairs, could you?’ Buckley asked, squirming forward on his seat.

‘Hey!’ Joe broke in. ‘You have a nerve, haven’t you? Why should Ches do your dirty work for you?’

Buckley waved his hands impatiently.

‘I have as much chance of finding out if there’s a wheel up there as a cop has,’ he said. ‘This guy goes to the place. If he feels like it, why shouldn’t he help me?’

While they were arguing, I did some quick thinking.

‘I’ll find out for you if I can,’ I said. ‘I’ll go out there this afternoon, and if I have any luck I’ll telephone you.’

Joe stared at me as if he thought I had gone crazy, but Buckley reached forward and patted my arm.

‘That’s the boy, and let me tell you, the Inquirer won’t forget. The next time your salesmen come to us for space, I’ll see you get what you want.’ He took a card from his wallet and gave it to me. ‘If I’m not around, ask for Jack Hemmings. He’ll handle anything you give him. If there’s a table up there, then we’ll really start trouble. Listen, suppose you come down to my office and I’ll give you a camera. If you can get a photograph of the table, we’ll really have them on ice.’

‘I don’t imagine they’d stand for that,’ I said.

He closed one heavy eyelid.

‘Wait until you see the camera. It fits in your buttonhole. All you have to do is to press a shutter release, hidden in your pocket. The lens and the film will take care of the rest. Get us a picture of the table, Scott, and you’ll practically own the paper.’

‘I’ll expect to.’

He patted my arm.

‘I’ll guarantee it. Come on, let’s get the hell out of here. Let’s go talk to my boss.’

As I got to my feet, Joe grabbed my arm.

‘Wait a minute, Ches,’ he said. ‘You could be sticking your neck into trouble. Suppose you and me go? What’s the matter with that?’

‘No, Joe,’ I said. ‘Two would be a crowd. Take it easy. I’m not walking into anything. I’ll handle it.’

‘Sure he will,’ Buckley said. ‘There’s nothing to it. It’s my bet there isn’t a table in the joint, but if there is—boy! won’t we shake the commissioner right out of his pants.’

‘All the same,’ Joe said obstinately, ‘I want to go with you. Two may be a crowd but, in trouble, a crowd is pretty cosy.’

‘No, Joe,’ I said. ‘The chances are I won’t even get upstairs. Two of us would be a little too obvious.’ I slid out of the booth. ‘And another thing, the table may not be operating in the afternoon.’

Joe joined me, his expression still obstinate.

‘I’m coming with you, Ches. Even if I have to wait outside.’

If I were to get anywhere, I knew I’d only succeed on my own.

‘I don’t want you around, Joe. I’m combining business with pleasure, and you’ll be in the way.’

‘Yeah, go and drown yourself, Joe,’ Buckley said. ‘My pal and me have got business. You go swim in the sea.’ He slapped Joe on the shoulder, then, taking my arm, he hustled me out of the bar to where I had parked the Buick.

As we drove to the Inquirer’s office I said: ‘Have the police any idea who killed the Lane girl?’

‘They don’t know his name, but he’s practically in the bag,’ Buckley said. ‘They have a description of him and they have his fingerprints. I guess he must have been either a nut or a complete amateur. He left prints all over the place. He was seen leaving the girl’s apartment and he was seen leaving the Washington. His prints were found in the girl’s room and also in Nutley’s room. They say he was a big fellow, dark, around your age; good looking. Lieutenant West reckons it’s only a matter of hours before they get him.’

I felt a sinking sensation inside me.

‘Is that right?’ I said, staring through the windscreen, aware my heart was beginning to thump.

‘Yeah. They’re driving the girl who saw him around town in the hope she spots him on the sidewalk. Maybe she will. Then all they have to do is to take his prints, and he’ll be sniffing cyanide before he knows where he is.’

II

I arrived at the Little Tavern nightclub at a minute or so after two o’clock. The parking lot was crammed with cars and I had trouble in finding a place.

It was one of those hot, airless afternoons you get sometimes in Palm City when you long for a breeze, when the dust gets under your shirt and makes your skin irritable, and tempers get frayed and quick on the trigger.

On the big terrace, packed with tables, men and women in gay weekend clothes were working their way through the elaborate menu.

I walked up the steps. No one paid me any attention, except the doorman, who looked jaded and less impressive in the sunshine than he had done in the moonlight. He touched his cap, recognizing me, and spun the revolving door for me as gently as if it were made of eggshells.

The hat-check girl recognized me. She didn’t bother to move out of her station. She gave me a thin smile, then looked away. A guy without a hat was as interesting to her as a man with no arms and legs.

I moved to the bar, but I didn’t go in. It was packed tight with weekenders, soaking up liquor, talking in voices just too loud, spending their hard-earned money while they tried to make an impression on the blondes, the brunettes and the redheads they had dragged along with them.

Oscar Ross was behind the bar. The two Mexicans were there too. They were all pretty busy. Ross was concentrating on the female custom. I could see he was making quite a hit with three women who were drinking champagne cocktails.

I moved back a little. I didn’t want him to see me, and I looked around the bar, hoping to find my rum-and-lime juice pal of last night.

I finally spotted him as he moved away from the crush at one end of the bar and headed my way.

‘Hello,’ I said as he neared me. ‘Remember me?’

He was a little drunk, but after screwing up his eyes to get me in focus, his friendly smile told me he had recognized me.

‘Hello, pal,’ he said. ‘Come to drown your sorrows?’

‘I’ve come to see if I can win some money,’ I said and moved with him into the lobby. ‘Could I get into a game upstairs, do you think?’

‘Why not? I’m going up now. Come with me.’

‘I thought maybe there would be a little trouble.’

‘That’s okay. I’m known here. What did you say your name was?’

‘Scott’

He swayed a little, then steadied himself by taking hold of my arm.

‘The same as in Great Scott?’

‘The same man.’

He bellowed with laughter: a guy who was easily and quickly amused.

‘Pretty good. Well, come on, Scott, let’s see you lose your money.’

He led me across the hall to a door which he opened. He moved down a passage and I followed him. We reached an automatic elevator, big enough to hold four people. We stood side by side as the elevator took us up two floors with a movement that was gentle enough to be a caress.

While we travelled, Welliver breathed rum fumes over me with the benign air of a bishop blessing his flock.

This seemed a little too easy to me.

I had the tiny camera Buckley had give me, pinned to the back of my coat lapel. The lens just showed through the buttonhole of the lapel. You would have to have the eye of a Davy Crockett to spot it. I fingered the shutter release that lay in my jacket pocket. Just one photograph, Buckley had stressed.

There would be no chance to change the minute film. He had begged me not to rush the job.

‘A chance in a lifetime,’ he had said. ‘If we can get a picture of that table—if there is a table—we will tear this city wide open.’

He seemed to nave overlooked the fact that if I were caught taking the photograph I would be the one to get torn wide open and not the city.

The elevator came to a silky stop and the doors opened with a whisper of sound.

Welliver moved out into a hall where two bouncers filled up most of the space, flexing their muscles. They looked as if they could have handled Joe Louis and Rocky Marciano in their prime without having to exert themselves into more than a light sweat.

They gave Welliver a hard stare, then their eyes moved to me.

They stared at me the way a Masonic gathering would stare if a bubble dancer had dropped into the middle of one of their most mystic rituals.

Welliver was walking briskly towards double doors that faced us across the hall, and I kept pace with him. I managed to look as unconcerned as anyone out for a Sunday airing.

The bouncers were so taken out of their stride, we very nearly made the double doors: very nearly, but not quite.

One of them said in a voice that could have loosened a rusty nut off the propeller of a liner: ‘Hey! You! Where do you think you’re going?’

The voice hit us at the back of our necks and brought us to an abrupt stop.

Welliver turned and scowled. The voice had shaken him, but, after all, he was a member of the club and he didn’t expect to get that kind of treatment.

‘You talking to me?’ he asked, but beside the bouncer’s effort, he sounded as harmless as a kitten.

‘No—him!’ The bigger of the two moved up to me, making me feel as if I were being crowded by a bulldozer. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

‘He’s a friend of mine,’ Welliver said with as much dignity as he could muster, which wasn’t much. ‘I’m taking him in. Any objections?’

‘Mr. Claude okayed him?’ the bouncer asked.

‘Of course he has,’ Welliver said, and taking me by the arm, he shoved me towards the double doors, leaving the two bouncers staring suspiciously after us.

We moved into a big room full of men and women, soft lights, cigarette smoke and a buzz of excited conversation.

In the middle of the room was a roulette table. Clustered around it was a bunch of the upper strata of Palm City’s social register. Welliver had said the stakes were high. I had only to; look at the piles of chips out on the table to see he hadn’t been letting his imagination run riot. There could have been around forty to fifty thousand dollars out on the table for this one throw.

‘Let this one ride,’ Welliver muttered to me after casting an expert eye over the stakes. ‘We don’t want to tangle with crazy men.’

Everyone’s attention was rooted on a fat, elderly man with a vast pile of chips in front of him. As I moved closer, he leaned forward and pushed a stack of chips on number five black.

A number of people, betting small, followed his example, then the wheel began to spin, the ball was tossed in, and after a while it made up its mind and settled in five black.

There was a soft sigh around the table as the croupier, a dark, poker-faced Mexican, scooped in the losers’ chips and then shovelled more chips towards the fat man.

I found myself behind a blonde woman who smelt a little too strongly of Chanel No. 5. I edged my way forward until I was against the back of her chair. From there I had an uninterrupted view of the whole table. The lights were strong, and lit up the mass of chips before the big gamblers. It was the perfect angle for a picture.

Buckley had told me all I had to do was to stand square to the table and press the shutter release I had in my pocket. The lens was so fast and the film compensated to such a degree, I couldn’t go wrong.

I saw Welliver had moved away from me, hunting for a seat. I got myself in the right position and my fingers closed over the push button of the shutter release. I held my breath and myself steady, as Buckley had told me to do, then I gently squeezed. I was vaguely aware of hearing a very faint click that told me the shutter had operated.

Then things happened.

I’ll never know if the guys who were watching the players, keeping check on the bets, spotted me or if I gave myself away by my tense expression or if the croupier had spotted the tiny lens in my buttonhole. Anyway, that is neither here nor there: what mattered was I suddenly felt two hard bodies move against mine. Hands that felt like steel braces caught and held my wrists: a man on each side of me.

With my heart doing a rock ’n’ roll, I looked first to the right and then to the left.

These two guys weren’t bouncers: they were professionals. Two thin-faced men, almost twins in their cold, remote professionalism. One was a little taller than the other: one was fair and the other dark; both had hatchet-shaped faces; bleak eyes; flat and expressionless; both had lipless mouths and square jaws.

They both looked hard, tough and ruthless, and they both looked very, very lethal.

‘Okay, buster,’ the fair one said softly. ‘Don’t let’s have any trouble. The boss wants a word with you.’

There was a professional method in which they gently eased me out of the crowd. Both my arms were paralysed in their grips. I suppose I could have kicked and screamed, but the idea didn’t occur to me.

Welliver, who had just found a seat at the table, glanced over at me, his face showing surprise, but he had found a seat and he wasn’t going to lose it, so he smiled drunkenly at me and said something about seeing me later.

As the two men moved me out of the crowd, I had an unpleasant feeling deep down inside me that I would be lucky if I saw anyone later.

The fair one said: ‘Take it easy, buster, let the legs walk. We can handle it if you want to get rough.’

They released my wrists but, like two expert sheep dogs, they managed to keep me moving by jostling me gently forward with their shoulders.

No one in the crowded room paid any attention to us.

I suppose I could have started to sling punches and yell for help, but I was sure it wouldn’t get me anything except a blackjack behind the ear while the fair one or the dark one explained to the crowd I was just another tiresome drunk.

So I walked with them across the room to a door which the dark one opened. They eased me through as if I were a millionaire invalid with four days to live and who hadn’t as yet paid his doctor’s bill.

We went down a short passage to another door.

The fair one knocked while the dark one breathed gently down the back of my neck.

A voice said: ‘Come in,’ and the fair one turned the handle and pushed open the door.

The dark one nudged me into a room that didn’t seem to know quite whether it was an office or a sitting-room. It had a desk by a big window hidden by flame-coloured drapes. There was an executive chair behind the desk and to the right was a steel filing cabinet. The rest of the room was full of lounging chairs, a radio set with a separate corner horn, a small bar and a divan covered with a Spanish shawl.

Behind the desk, in the executive chair, sat a fat, big man in a tuxedo. His hair was a mixture of grey and red; his fleshy face was set in one of those bland expressions that mean nothing; his small, ice-grey eyes were motionless and slightly out of focus as if he were thinking of something pretty important when we interrupted him by coming in.

At a guess, he was around fifty-five to sixty, still in good physical shape in spite of his fat. His hands, slightly freckled and covered with fine red hair, lay relaxed on the snowy white blotter on his desk.

The dark one edged up to the desk while his companion shut the door. I could have been mistaken, but I was pretty sure I heard the key turn in the lock.

I was feeling uneasy by now. If they found the camera on me, I would be in trouble.

The man at the desk stared at me, then looked inquiringly at the dark one and lifted his eyebrows.

‘Non-member,’ the dark one said in a soft drawl.

The fat man who I guessed would be Jack Claude shifted his ice-grey eyes on me again.

‘Sorry about this, friend,’ he said in a deceptively mild voice, ‘but you can imagine we don’t welcome gate-crashers. Could I have your name?’

‘I’m Chester Scott,’ I said. ‘What’s all the excitement about? Phil Welliver brought me up here. He’s a friend of mine.’

Claude didn’t seem particularly impressed.

‘Where do you live, Mr. Scott?’ he asked.

I told him.

He reached forward, picked up the telephone book that was lying on his desk and checked my address.

‘Mr. Welliver should know by now he can’t bring friends up here without my say-so and unless his friends pay the subscription fee.’

I began to get less flustered.

‘I didn’t know that,’ I said. ‘Welliver didn’t mention a fee. I’m willing to pay it. How much?’

‘Twenty-five bucks,’ Claude said. His eyes shifted away from me to the dark one who still remained at my side.

‘Do we know anything about Mr. Scott?’

‘He was in last night,’ the dark one said. ‘He went back-stage and talked to Miss Lane.’

I began to sweat again.

A remote look came into Claude’s eyes. He shifted in his chair, then, as polite as a dentist asking me to open wide, he said: ‘You know Miss Lane, Mr. Scott?’

‘No. I heard her sing,’ I said. ‘I thought she was pretty good. I asked her to have a drink with me.’

‘And did she?’

‘No.’

‘But you talked to her in her dressing-room?’

‘Yes: we talked. Why all these questions?’

‘What did you talk about?’

‘This and that,’ I said. ‘What makes it your business?’

Claude looked at the dark one.

‘Anything else?’

‘Not that I know of.’

There was a pause, then Claude said: ‘Sorry to be bothering you, Mr. Scott. That’ll be twenty-five bucks.’

I took out my wallet, found two tens and a five and laid them on the desk.

He wrote a receipt and handed it to me.

‘We have to be careful, Mr. Scott,’ he said. ‘I don’t have to tell you that. I hope we see you here often.’

‘You probably will,’ I said, not believing it had smoothed out this easy.

The dark one and the fair one had moved away from me. Their faces were now bored and disinterested.

I put the receipt in my wallet and my wallet in my pocket.

‘Well, thanks,’ I said and began to back away.

Then I heard the door open behind me and I looked around.

Oscar Ross came in.

He had on his barman’s coat and he carried a tray on which stood a bottle of Scotch, a glass and a container of ice.

He didn’t see me until he was half-way into the room, and then he didn’t recognize me until he had put the tray down on Claude’s desk. Then he stared at me as if he wasn’t sure if he could believe his eyes.

I started across the room to the door, trying not to run, but covering the ground to the exit at a pretty fast clip.

Ross stood rooted, staring at me.

I turned the door handle, but the door was locked.

The fair one moved towards me to unlock the door when Ross said in a strangled voice: ‘Hey! Don’t let him out of here!’

The fair one paused.

The key was in the lock. I turned it and as I was opening the door, the fair one moved like a swift shadow and his foot jammed against the door.

‘What’s he doing in here?’ Ross demanded.

The fair one, obviously puzzled, looked over at Claude for guidance.

I set myself and slammed a right at his jaw. My knuckles connected and I felt a jar run up my arm. He went over backwards and his head crashed against tie wall.

I turned the key and opened the door.

‘Hold it!’

This was from the dark one.

I looked quickly at him. He had a .38 automatic in his right fist and it was pointing at me.

I decided recklessly that it was more than he dared do to let off the gun in the confined spaces of the club and ignoring his threat, I jerked open the door.

Ross came at me fast. His hands were seeking me, his eyes were vicious and alarmed.

I got into the corridor as he arrived to close with me. His right fist sailed towards my face as I spun around to grapple with him. I got my face out of the way just in time and I planted my fist in his mouth. He reeled backwards and I turned and hared down the passage to the door into the roulette room.

Something that felt like a tank thudded into the back of my knees and brought me to the floor. I twisted over as the dark one slammed a punch at my jaw. I managed to get my head moving, but the punch connected, just a shade too high up to cause much damage, but hard enough to make me grunt.

I kicked the dark one away and got unsteadily to my feet as Ross came charging out of the room and towards me.

If there was one thing I wanted more than another, it was to get one more bang at him. I slipped the punch he tossed at me, moved in close and hooked him with a right-hand punch that had all my weight and most of my strength behind it.

But that was as far as I got.

I had a vague idea that the dark one had picked himself off the floor and was moving towards me with the speed and the grace of a ballet dancer.

He came at me too fast for me to do anything about it I started to turn so I could face him, but I was much, much too late.

I heard the swish of a descending cosh and I tried to get my head out of the way. As the softly lit passage exploded before my eyes, I knew I had shifted that second too late. After all he was a professional. When he sapped you, you stayed sapped.