Hit and Run

I

The Little Tavern nightclub was a typical roadside joint with a circular drive-in, a lot of coloured neon lights, a gaudy doorman and a big parking lot crammed with the less expensive cars.

I found space in one of the rows, cut my engine and turned off my lights.

Then I walked back between the alley of cars to the entrance of the nightclub.

The doorman turned the revolving door for me, touching his cap as he did so.

I entered a large ornate vestibule. A hat-check girl, clad in a frilly thing that showed her knees, hipswayed towards me, showing her even white teeth in a smile of welcome. The smile slipped a little when she saw I had no hat and had nothing to leave with her for her to earn a possible dollar tip.

I moved around her, giving her one of nay boyish smiles, but for the impression it made on her, I might be offering a beggar the time of day. She turned and hip-swayed back to her station. For build, she and Marilyn Monroe had a lot in common.

I went up the red-carpeted stairs to a passage lit by ceiling lights and headed towards a pale-blue neon light that flashed Bar at me.

I paused in the doorway and surveyed the scene.

The room was big, with a horseshoe-shaped bar at the far end, and a lot of tables and chairs to cope with the hundred odd people who were getting liquored up for the night.

It wasn’t what I would call a smart crowd. None of the men were in tuxedos. The women were a mixed lot: some of them looked like businessmen’s secretaries out for the night in return for past services rendered; some of them looked like slightly soiled young ladies from the back row of unsuccessful musicals; some of them were obviously professionals, and they sat alone at various tables, discreetly distant from each other, and there were a few elderly women waiting impatiently for their gigolos: the usual crowd you can see any night of the week in the less smart nightclubs of Palm City.

I looked over the bar. There were two barmen coping with the rush: neither of them was Ross: two small men, Mexicans to judge by their sleek, black hair, their dark oily skins and their servile, flashing smiles.

I didn’t expect to find Ross serving behind the bar. I guessed it was his night off.

As I looked around I was aware that at least ten of the women on their own were staring pointedly at me. I took care not to meet their inviting eyes.

I wandered over to the bar and waited my turn beside a fat man in a slightly creased, tropical white suit who was being served with a rum and lime juice and who looked three parts drunk.

When my turn came, I ordered a Scotch on the rocks, and while the barman was fixing the drink, I asked him what time the cabaret started.

‘Half past eleven, sir,’ he said, sliding the drink over to me. ‘In the restaurant, second on the left down the passage.’

He went away to serve a tall, bony blonde in a sea-green evening dress whose elderly escort seemed to begrudge her the champagne cocktail she was whining for.

I glanced at my wrist watch. The time was twenty minutes past eleven.

The fat drunk next to me turned and grinned sheepishly as if to apologize for intruding. He said on a rum-ladened breath: ‘You don’t want to waste good money on the cabaret, friend. It’s the worst swindle in town, and that’s saying a lot.’

‘No girls?’

He made a face.

‘Well, yes, there are girls, if you can call them girls.’

I twiddled my glass.

‘I heard this Lane dish is worth catching.’

He sucked up some of his rum and lime juice, and then closed a heavy eyelid.

‘If you could catch her, I’d say she would be pretty satisfactory, but she’s hard to catch. I’ve tried, and all I’ve got out of it is a couple of evenings listening to her sing, and that’s something she can’t do.’

‘So what’s good about this joint?’

He looked over his shoulder to see if anyone was listening, then leaning close and lowering his voice, he said: ‘Between friends, they have a roulette table upstairs. The table stakes are up to the ceiling. All the rest of the muck here is just a front. But keep it under your hat, friend. I’m doing you a favour, telling you.’

‘Maybe I might see what I can lose.’

He lifted his fat shoulders.

‘They’re pretty strict who they let up there. It’s strictly illegal. You might have a word with Claude: he manages the joint. You can mention my name if you like: Phil Welliver.’

‘Thanks. Where do I find him?’

He nodded across to the bar to a door.

‘In there.’ Then he pushed himself away from the bar. ‘I’ve got to move along. I promised the wife I’d take her out tonight. Went right out of my mind until five minutes ago. I’d better not be too late.’

I watched him lurch across the bar, and when I was sure he had gone, I went the same way, again aware of the twenty staring eyes on me as I walked to the exit.

I found the restaurant on the left of the passage: an oval-shaped room with dim lighting, rose-pink mirrors and blue decor. There were about sixty people finishing dinner, and the room was full of the hum of voices and cigarette smoke.

The head waiter, a jaded young man with red-gold wavy hair, came up to me, his face set in a professional smile.

‘I wanted to catch the cabaret,’ I said, ‘but I don’t want the dinner.’

‘Certainly, sir: perhaps a drink and a sandwich…?’ He let his voice die away as he waved his hands apologetically.

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I’ll have a whisky sour and a chicken on rye bread.’

He led me around the back of the tables to a small table a little too near the band for comfort, but I didn’t argue about it.

He went away and I sat down.

The band was a four-piece job: four well-built Negroes: a trumpet, drums, double bass and a saxophone. They played as if they needed a vacation and were going to strike at any moment if they didn’t get it.

After a while the waiter brought my chicken sandwich and my drink. The rye bread was a little dry and the chicken looked as if it had had a sharp attack of jaundice before departing the earth. I let the sandwich lie. I’ve drunk worse whisky sours in my time, but not much worse.

Around quarter to twelve, the floor was cleared and four girls came prancing in. They wore Gstrings, halters and guards-men’s hats. They were pretty terrible, and there was one of them who had dirty knees. They were strictly for the drunks, and after they had shown themselves off and made eyes at the habitués they bounced out more enthusiastically than they had bounced in. As my rum and lime juice friend had said: as a cabaret, it was a swindle.

A little after midnight, Dolores Lane came in and stood holding a microphone the way a drowning man hangs on to a life-belt.

She was wearing a gold lame dress that fitted her like a second skin, and she looked pretty good as she stood there under a white spotlight. She sang two Latin-American songs. Her voice was small, but at least she could sing in tune. Without a microphone, no one would have heard her. She sang listlessly as if she were bored with the whole thing, and the applause she collected could have been packed into a thimble without overflowing.

She went away, her eyes glittering, and then the crowd began to dance again.

I found a scrap of paper in my wallet and wrote the following message:

Will you have a drink with me? I hope you didn’t get sand in your shoes this morning.

A nutty note to send her; but I had an idea it might book her. I grabbed a passing waiter, gave him the note and a five-dollar bill and told him to get some action. He made sure the bill was for five dollars before he said he would fix it.

I was working on my second whisky sour when the waiter came back.

‘She’ll see you in her dressing-room,’ he said and gave me a curious stare. ‘Through that door, turn left, and it’s the door ahead with a star on it.’

I thanked him.

He paused just long enough for me to reach for my wallet if I felt inclined, but as I didn’t, he moved off.

I finished my drink, settled the check which was three times too much, and then, made my way through the door the waiter had indicated into a typical behind-the-scenes passage.

Facing me was a shabby door with a faded, gold star on it. I rapped and a woman’s voice said: ‘Come on in.’

I turned the handle and stepped into a small room with a lighted mirror, a small dressing-table, a cupboard, a screen in a corner, two upright chairs and well-worn carpet on the floor.

Dolores was sitting in front of the mirror doing things to her face. She had on a red silk wrap which fell open above her thighs to show me her sleek legs in nylon stockings.

On the dressing-table was a bottle of gin, half-full, and a glass with either gin and water in it or just gin.

She didn’t turn, but looked at my reflection in the mirror as I closed the door and moved over to the upright chair.

‘I thought it would be you,’ she said. ‘Want some gin? There’s a glass somewhere around.’

I sat down.

‘No, thanks. I’ve been on whisky. The idea was for me to buy you a drink.’

She leaned forward to peer at herself in the mirror. She picked up a rabbit’s foot and dusted the powder off her dark eyebrows.

‘Why?’

I had an idea she was a little drunk, but I wasn’t sure.

‘I liked your act. I thought it was worth a bottle of champagne,’ I said, watching her. ‘Besides, I wanted to talk to you.’

She put the rabbit’s foot down and drank from the glass. By the way she grimaced, and then shuddered, I knew the glass contained neat gin.

‘Just who are you?’

Her eyes were slightly glassy and slightly out of focus. That told me she was three parts drunk, but not drunk enough not to know what she was saying or doing.

‘The name’s Chester Scott. I live and work in this city.’

‘Scott?’ Her eyebrows came down in a frown. ‘Chester Scott? Where have I heard that name before?’

‘Have you?’

She screwed up her eyes, grimaced, then shrugged.

‘Somewhere… so you liked my act?’ She held out her hand. ‘Give me a cigarette.’

I gave her one, gave myself one and lit hers, then mine.

‘The act was fine, but the background didn’t jell.’

‘I know.’ She blew smoke to the ceiling, then took a little more gin. ‘Did you hear the way they applauded? You would think to hear them, they had blisters on their hands.’

‘It’s the wrong crowd for you.’

She grimaced.

‘An artist who is worth a damn can handle any crowd,’ she said and turned back to examine her face in the minor. She; picked up an eyelash brush and began to stroke up her eyelashes with quick, deft movements. ‘What were you doing down there this morning? I didn’t fall for that swim story.’

‘Looking the place over. What were you thinking about, marrying a cop?’

She put down the eyelash brush and turned her head slowly. Her glittering eyes were now more out of focus.

‘What’s it to you who I marry?’

‘Nothing much. It seemed odd to me a girl like you should want to marry a speed cop.’

Her lips curved into a smile.

‘But then he was a very special cop.’

‘Was he?’ I reached forward to drop ash into an empty tobacco tin that stood on the dressing-table. ‘How special?’

She put her hand to her mouth to cover a gentle belch.

‘He had money.’ She got to her feet and crossed over to the screen and went behind it. She moved unsteadily. ‘Have you any money, Mr. Scott?’

I edged my chair around so I could stare at the screen. I could just see the top of her head as she stripped off her wrap which she tossed on the floor beside the screen.

‘I have a little money,’ I said. ‘Not much.’

‘The only thing in this world that means anything, that has any importance, is money. Don’t let anyone kid you otherwise. They say health and religion are good things to have: but I’ll settle for money,’ she said from behind the screen. ‘If you haven’t got it, you might just as well buy a razor and slit your throat. Without money you’re nothing. You can’t get a decent job, you can’t go anywhere worth going to; you can’t live in a place worth living in; you can’t mix with the people who are worth mixing with. Without money, you’re just one of a crowd, and that’s the lowest form of life to my thinking—being one of the crowd.’

She came out from behind the screen. She now had on a red silk dress that showed off her curves to advantage. She moved unsteadily to the dressing-table to fix her dark hair.

‘I’ve been in this racket for ten years,’ she went on as she ran a comb through her hair. ‘I have a small talent. The words aren’t mine. They were dreamed up by my drunken agent who hangs on to me because he can’t find anyone else to bleed. But the small talent doesn’t bring me in any money worth speaking about. It provides me with a living if you can call it that, and that’s all. So when this redfaced cop started to work on me, I let him, because he had money. For the past ten years I have been in practically every nightclub along this lousy coast, and although I have been propositioned countless times, I have never had an offer of marriage. Then this cop comes on the scene. He is tough and crude and utterly horrible, but at least he wanted to marry me.’ She paused and finished the gin in her glass. ‘He had money. He gave me presents.’ She pulled open a drawer in her dressing-table and fished out a gold powder compact. She held it in her hand so I could see it. It was an expensive, impressive ornament. ‘He gave me this and he didn’t j expect me to throw my clothes off the moment I got it. He gave me a squirrel coat and I still had my clothes on. He said if I would marry him he’d give me a mink coat for a wedding present.’ She paused to pour more gin in her glass. She sipped and grimaced with disgust at its taste. I guessed she wouldn’t be talking like this if she hadn’t been three-quarters tight, but I was listening: listening as hard as I could. ‘He had a bungalow out at Palm Bay. It was nice. There was a terrace overlooking the sea and the rooms were tricky: one of them had a glass floor with lights under it. I would have married that man if he had stayed alive long enough, even though he was so crude he used to come in here with his hat on, put his feet up here on the dressing-table and call me "Baby Doll". But he had to be dumb enough to get killed.’ She finished the gin and put the glass down, shuddering. ‘He had to be dumb enough just when he and Art Galgano…’ She broke off, squinting at me, as if trying to get me in focus. ‘I guess I’m drunk,’ she said. ‘What am I talking like this to you for?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘People talk to get things out of their systems. You’re not boring me. He couldn’t help getting killed. You should feel sorry for him.’

‘Should I?’ She stubbed out her cigarette. ‘You mean I should feel sorry for myself.’ She splashed more gin into her glass. ‘Are you looking for a wife, Mr. Scott?’

‘I can’t say I am.’

‘What are you looking for?’

‘I’d like to find out how O’Brien got himself run over.’

She lifted the glass of gin and sniffed at it.

‘This is filthy stuff. It’s only when I’ve done my act and get the applause I got tonight, that I use it.’ She peered at me. ‘What’s O’Brien to you?’

‘Nothing. I’m just curious to find out how he got run over.’

‘No reason—just curious?’

‘Just curious.’

She studied me.

‘What did you say your name was again?’

‘Scott.’

‘And you want to know how Harry got himself run over?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I could tell you.’ She sipped the gin, then with a movement of disgust, she crossed the room and poured the gin into the small, grimy toilet basin. ‘I could tell you. How much is it worth to you, Mr. Scott?’

I dropped my cigarette into the tobacco tin.

‘You mean how much in money?’

She leaned her solid hips against the toilet basin and smiled at me: it wasn’t a nice smile, and it made her look as hard as if her face had been hacked out of stone.

‘Yes, I mean how much in money. Chester Scott—of course. I know who you are now. You’re the man Oscar is blackmailing.’

‘What makes you think that?’ I asked, keeping my face expressionless.

‘I hear things,’ she said. ‘I don’t approve of blackmail. I need money, Mr. Scott. I can give you information that can take you off Oscar’s hook, but it’ll cost you. I won’t rob you. I’ll put you wise for five hundred. It’s cheap. I know what Oscar’s asking. Five hundred is nothing.’

‘What information?’

‘Have you five hundred dollars, Mr. Scott?’

‘Not on me.’

‘Can you get it tonight?’

‘I might.’ I thought of the eight hundred dollars we kept in the safe at the office. I could borrow that and pay it back when the bank opened on Monday. ‘What makes you imagine the information you have would be worth all that to me?’

‘Give me another cigarette.’

I crossed over to her, gave her a cigarette and lit it. As she dipped the cigarette end into the flame of my lighter, she put her hand on mine. Her flesh felt hot and dry against mine.

I moved away from her, watching her draw in smoke, then let it out slowly down her nostrils.

‘I can get you off Oscar’s hook,’ she said. ‘I know the whole set-up. You can have it for five hundred. I’ve got to get out of this town and I want a get-away stake.’

‘How do you get me off the hook?’ I asked, wondering if she were taking me for a ride.

‘I’ll tell you when you produce the money and not before. When you get bitten by a snake, you use an antidote. I can give you the antidote to Oscar’s bite. If you don’t want to spend five hundred to save thirty thousand, then you’re a fool. Can you give me the money tonight?’

If she really knew how I could fix Oscar, five hundred would be a give-away price.

‘Yes, I can get it.’

‘I’ll be home just after two,’ she said. ‘You’ll find me at apartment 10 Maddox Arms. So you know where it is?’

I said I knew where it was.

‘Bring the money with you, Mr. Scott, and I’ll give you the antidote. Be there sharp at two. I have a train to catch.’ She went over to the door and opened it. ‘I’ve got to sing to those lousy drunks again. See you later.’

I moved past her into the passage, then turned and looked at her. Her face was tense and her eyes were glittering in the hard, ceiling light just above her head. I had an idea she was frightened.

We stared at each other for a long, steady moment, then she gently closed the door in my face.

II

As I drove out of the parking lot, I noticed a black Clipper edge out of the second row of cars and move after me.

I thought nothing of it at the time even though it kept behind me all the way back to town and only passed me when I pulled up outside my office block, but I was to remember it later.

The time was now a quarter to one. I had a key to the main door, but I knew if I opened the door I’d set the alarm off, so I rang for the janitor, hoping he hadn’t gone to bed.

He came eventually and peered through the plate-glass door at me. Then he turned off the alarm and let me in.

‘I hope I didn’t get you out of bed,’ I said. ‘I forgot some papers I want to work on over Sunday.’

‘That’s okay, Mr. Scott,’ he said cheerfully, ‘I was just about to turn in, but I wasn’t in. Will you be long?’

‘Five minutes,’ I said.

‘Then I’ll wait for you here and shut you out. You certainly work late hours.’

I made a non-committal remark and crossed over to the elevator.

It took me only a few minutes to unlock my office and open the safe. I exchanged an I.O.U. slip for the five hundred dollars I took from the cash box.

During the run down from Mount Cresta I had been doing some thinking. Dolores had said she would give me an antidote to Ross’s bite. That could only mean she was going to give me information that I could threaten him with so he wouldn’t dare use the information he had against me.

As I stowed the five hundred dollars away in my hip pocket, I wondered what the information was and just how far I could trust Dolores. Going down the elevator I recalled that Ross had said he had to leave town. Dolores had said she needed money to leave town. Could these two have been hooked up in some racket that had gone sour now that O’Brien was dead?

Obviously O’Brien was a character worth investigating. A speed cop who can promise a mink coat and who owned a bungalow with a glass floor must have a pretty handsome private income, so why had he remained a cop?

The janitor was patiently waiting for me as I crossed the lobby. I said good night to him and he let me out.

As I walked to where I had parked the Buick I saw a man standing in a shop doorway on the opposite side of the road. As I looked at him, wondering what he was doing there, he drew back into the shadows.

By the time I had reached the Buick and was driving towards the residential quarter of Palm City, I had forgotten him, but, like the black Clipper, I was to remember him later.

Maddox Arms was a block of apartments on Maddox Avenue in the less fashionable quarter: a brown stone building that had been put up some fifty years ago, and looked as if nothing had been done to the outside since then.

I climbed fifteen steep steps to the front entrance and walked into a dimly lit lobby with a line of mail boxes on the right, an ancient elevator facing me and a door marked Janitor on my left.

I learned from the wall indicator that apartment 10 was on the third floor. As I got into the elevator, I glanced at my wrist watch. The time was three minutes to two o’clock.

The elevator dragged me up to the third floor in a way that made me feel that any moment the cage might part from its cable and plunge me down into the basement. I was glad when it came to a creaking standstill and I got out.

I stepped into a narrow passage: at either end were doors. The one on the left was the door to apartment 10.

I went down the passage and paused outside the door. There was a card fixed to the door panel with a thumb tack which read: Miss Dolores Lane.

I pressed the bell push and heard a bell ring sharply somewhere inside the apartment.

There was a pause while I stood there, pretty tense and wondering if within the next ten minutes I would be in a position to fix Oscar Ross.

Then I heard the sound of movement behind the door, which opened an inch or so and came to rest on a chain lock.

‘Who is it?’ Dolores asked, not showing herself.

‘Scott,’ I said. ‘Who did you think it was?’

The door closed for a moment while she slid off the chain, then she opened up.

She was wearing a lightweight travelling coat over a grey dress. Her expression was tense, but she managed to give me a small, meaningless smile.

‘Come in. When you live alone in a dump like this, you have to be careful who you open the door to at two o’clock in the morning.’

I stepped past her into a fair-sized room, sparsely furnished with the kind of furniture you will see only in furnished apartments: junk that no one in their right minds would buy for themselves. It told me that she was living the hard way, and had probably been living like that for some time.

‘Don’t take any notice of this,’ she said, seeing me look around. ‘Thank goodness I’m leaving it. The only thing in its favour is it’s cheap.’

I moved away from her.

There was a door standing half open near me. Through the open doorway the room beyond appeared to be a bedroom. At the foot of the bed was a fair-sized suitcase. It looked to me as if she were ready to go.

‘Did you bring the money?’ she asked and I caught an anxious note in her voice.

‘I brought it,’ I said, ‘but I’m not parting with it until I’m satisfied the information you have is worth buying.’

Her lips twisted into a bitter smile.

‘It’s worth buying. Let me see the money.’

I took from my hip pocket the wad of bills and held them so she could see them.

She stared hungrily at them. ‘Five hundred dollars?’

‘Yes.’

‘Now I’ll show you what I’ve got,’ she said and moved over to a shabby desk that stood in one of the corners of the room. She pulled open a drawer.

All along, at the back of my mind, I had an idea I couldn’t trust her, but I was vain enough and stupid enough to believe, because she was a woman, I could handle her.

She dipped her hand into the drawer, then turned to face me. She had a .38 automatic in her hand which she pointed at me, and there was an expression in her eyes that sent a chill crawling up my spine.

‘Don’t move,’ she said softly. ‘Put the money on the table.’

For a long moment I stared at her and at the gun. It was pointing rock steady at my chest.

This was the first time in my life that anyone had ever pointed a gun at e and I didn’t like it. The gun looked terribly dangerous and horribly lethal.

I had often read in detective thrillers of the hero being held up by a gun, and I have accepted the author’s impression that his hero could face such a situation without turning a hair. I now discovered that I wouldn’t be much of a hero in fiction. I found my mouth had turned dry and there was a cold, empty feeling in my stomach.

‘You’d better put that down,’ I said huskily. ‘It might go off.’

‘It will go off if you don’t put the money on the table.’

There was a scraped, bleak look on her face and her dark eyes were glittering. She moved slightly to her left, keeping me covered. Her hand groped behind her, found the control knob on the oldfashioned radio that stood on a table against the wall and turned the set on.

‘There’s no one on this floor to hear the shot,’ she went on, speaking rapidly. ‘The old fool below us is deaf. He’ll think it’s a car back-firing or he probably won’t hear anything.’

The room suddenly became full of the sound of strident, violent jazz as the station came through the loudspeaker.

‘Put the money on the table or I’ll shoot you,’ she said, a vicious hiss in her voice.

I continued to stare at her. My heart gave a little bounce when I saw the expression in her face and saw she wasn’t bluffing. I saw too the skin of her knuckles tighten as she started to take up the slack on the trigger. I had a bleak feeling that any second the gun would go off.

She drew in a sharp breath and slightly lowered the gun. Even with her pancake make-up, I could see she was sweating.

‘Back up against the wall!’

I backed up against the wall and watched her scoop up the bills and stuff them into her overcoat pocket.

‘You won’t get far,’ I said, speaking as evenly as I could, which wasn’t anything to be impressed about. ‘The police will pick you up.’

She smiled at me.

‘Don’t kid yourself. You tell the police about me and I’ll tell about you. I know too. Don’t think I like doing this. I’m not a thief and I’m not a blackmailer, but I’ve got to get out of this town and this is the only way I can do it. Don’t turn suddenly brave and try to stop me leaving here or you’ll get shot. Now turn around and face the wall and don’t move.’

There was a ruthless, frightened expression in her glittering eyes that warned me she would shoot if I didn’t do what she said. I turned around and faced the wall.

I heard her go into the bedroom and then come out almost immediately. By the heavy way she walked, I guessed she was carrying the suitcase.

‘So long, Mr. Scott,’ she said. ‘You’ve been useful to me. Sorry for the double cross, but if you’re fool enough to fall for it, you can’t blame me.’

The door banged shut and I heard the key turn.

I moved away from the wall and taking out my handkerchief I wiped my sweating face. Then I crossed the room and snapped off the radio. The sudden silence in the room was almost as violent as had been the strident jazz.

I was moving towards the door when I heard Dolores, out-side in the passage, suddenly scream out: ‘No! Keep away from me! No… don’t…’

I stood there, my heart beginning to thump. The note in her voice was loaded with terrified panic.

Then she gave a piercing scream that went into me like a knife-thrust. The sound was followed by a scuffling noise and then the sound of a heavy fall.

She screamed again: a scream I still hear from time to time in a nightmare.

Then there was silence.

I stood there, tense, my heart hammering, listening.

I heard the grille of the elevator slam shut and then the creaking noise of its cable told me the elevator was descending.

After a long, tense minute the creaking stopped, and then faintly, three floors below, I heard the grille slam back.

Somewhere on the street a car started up and drove away fast. I still stood there, feeling sweat on my face, listening to the silence that now cloaked the whole of the apartment block, then faintly, I heard a horrible gasping sigh that came from the other side of the door: a sound that turned my blood cold.