James Chase - Hit and Run

I CAME out of darkness to feel hot sunshine on my face and a blinding light against my closed eyelids.

There was also a feeling of movement. It took me several seconds to realize I was in a car, being driven somewhere at high speed.

I wanted to groan because the back of my head was expanding and contracting and pain crawled up my neck over the top of my head and into my eyes like a beetle with red-hot feet.

But I didn’t groan. I let myself stay limp and slack and I rolled with the motion of the car until I felt good enough to open my eyes and take a quick look around.

I was on the back seat of my hired Buick. There was a man sitting beside me. I recognized the irongrey suiting of his trouser leg. It was the dark thug: the one who had sapped me.

Sitting in front, driving, was the fair one. He had put on a light grey slouch hat which he wore at a jaunty angle over his nose. Keeping my eyes half closed, I checked out of the window to see where we were.

We were passing through one of the back streets of Palm City: empty as a hole in the wall on this hot Sunday afternoon.

I kept quiet and wondered where we were going. I didn’t have to wonder for long.

The next five minutes saw us leaving Palm City behind us, and we got on to the highway leading to the beach road where I lived. I decided they were going to dump me back in my bungalow.

There was a light travelling rug across my knees to hide my wrists and hands. My wrists were crossed and strapped with what felt like adhesive tape. They were strapped so tightly I could feel tie blood pounding in my veins, and although I very gently tried to ease them a little, they were tight against each other as if screwed down in a vice.

Turn right at the intersection, Lew,’ the dark one said suddenly. ‘His joint is three hundred yards down on the right: a nice lonely spot for a guy to live in: I wouldn’t mind living in it myself.’

Lew, the fair one, laughed without humour.

‘Why not ask him to leave it to you in his will?’ he said. ‘He won’t be needing it now.’

‘Aw, hell! I don’t want it that bad,’ the other said.

The car drove on.

I found myself suddenly short of breath, but I didn’t have the time to wonder what they meant, for the car suddenly slowed down and finally stopped.

‘This is it,’ the dark one said.

‘Okay, let’s get him out,’ Lew said.

I remained limp, my eyes closed, my heart slamming against my ribs.

I felt the dark one leave the car, then I heard the off-side door open. Hands laid hold of me and pulled me out of the car.

As I slid on to the ground, Lew said: ‘You didn’t hit him too hard, did you, Nick? He should have come to the surface by now.’

‘I hit him right,’ Nick, the dark one, said. ‘He’ll snap out of it in a few minutes.’

Between the two of them they half carried me, half dragged me up the path and dumped me on the front step.

‘Got his keys?’ Nick asked.

‘Yeah. This is the one.’

I heard the lock on the front door snap back, then I was dragged across the hall and into my lounge and dumped on the settee.

‘You sure he’s all right?’ Lew asked.

A hand moved on to my neck: expert fingers touched my pulse.

‘He’s fine. He should be up and coming in another five minutes.’

‘He’d better be.’ There was an uneasy note in Lew’s voice. ‘Galgano will be mad if this punk croaks before he can talk to him.’

‘Relax, big head. He’s all right. When I tap ’em, I tap ’em right. In five minutes, he’ll be dancing the can-can.’

I gave a low groan and moved a little.

‘You see? He’s coming out of it already. Gimme the rope.’

I felt a cord tighten around my chest, pinning me to the settee. I opened my eyes as Lew was fastening the cord to the legs of the settee. He stared at me, his face expressionless, then he stepped away.

‘That fixes it,’ he said and leaning over me, he patted my face. ‘Relax, buster. The boss wants to talk to you. He’ll be along in a little while.’

‘Come on,’ Nick said impatiently. ‘Let’s get out of here. Have you forgotten we’ve got to walk?’

Lew cursed.

‘Why couldn’t that punk Claude have sent a car?’

‘You ask him,’ Nick said.

He came over to me and examined the rope across my chest critically, then checked the tapes around my wrists. He grunted, stepped back, and stared at me and a tight, meaningless smile hovered on his thin lips.

‘So long, sucker,’ he said.

They went across the lounge and out into the hall, pulling the lounge door half shut. I heard them open the front door, then close it behind them.

After a second or so a silence settled over the bungalow that made the ticking of the clock on the overmantel sound unnaturally loud.

I exerted a useless effort for a minute or so against the tape around my wrists and found there was no way of breaking free so I lay still, panting a little from my exertions.

It was then that I remembered Lucille who I had left tied on my bed. Maybe she had managed to get free. Maybe she would set me free.

‘Lucille!’ I called. ‘Lucille! Can you hear me?’

I listened, but there was no sound except the ticking of the clock and the gentle flapping of a curtain against a window as the breeze disturbed it.

‘Lucille!’ I raised my voice to a shout. ‘Are you all right?’

Again silence, and I suddenly felt cold sweat on my face. Had something happened to her? Or had she got free and left the bungalow?

‘Lucille!’

Then I did hear something. A soft movement of a door opening: a door somewhere down the passage, possibly my bedroom door.

I lifted my head to listen.

The door squeaked a little and that told me it was my bedroom door. I had been meaning to oil the hinges for weeks and had been too lazy to do it.

‘Is that you, Lucille?’ I said sharply.

I heard someone move out into the passage: a slow, heavy step, and I was suddenly more frightened than I had ever been before in my life.

Lucille couldn’t have moved like that. The slow, stealthy footfalls I was listening to were too heavy for a woman’s. It was a man coming down the passage: a man who had come out of my bedroom where I had left Lucille trussed and helpless on the bed,

‘Who’s that?’ I said, my voice off-key, my heart hammering.

The slow, heavy footsteps came down the passage and stopped outside the lounge door. Then there was silence.

I lay there, listening, sweat on my face, hearing gentle, unhurried breathing from the other side of the door.

‘Come on in, damn you!’ I exclaimed, my nerves crawling. ‘What are you skulking out there for? Come on in and show yourself!’

The door began to open slowly.

The man out there intended to frighten me, and he succeeded.

I was practically ready to hit the ceiling as the door swung fully open.

The man who stood in the doorway was massive and tall. He had on a dark blue sports jacket, grey flannel trousers and reserve calf brown shoes. He stood there, his hands in his pockets, his thumbs outside and pointing at me.

I lay staring at him, scarcely believing my eyes, a sudden chill gripping my heart.

The man in the doorway was Roger Aitken.

Heavy footed, slow and deliberate, an expression on his face that really put the fear of God into me, Aitken came in to the room.

I was immediately aware that he didn’t limp and he was walking as he always walked, and yet a few days back he had fallen down the Plaza Grill steps and had broken his leg.

The whole situation took on a nightmare aspect. It was Aitken, and yet it wasn’t Aitken. This tight-set face with glittering eyes made me feel here was another man inside Aitken’s skin: a man I didn’t know and a man who scared me. Then the familiar voice said: ‘I seem to have given you a fright, Scott.’