James Chase - Hit and Run

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 J anitor 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: Mi ss 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.