James Chase: Fast Buck

Baird left the booth, looked swiftly around the drug store, spotted a door behind the counter, jumped over the counter and wrenched open the door.

Outside, not far away, he heard the shrill blast of a police whistle. He ran down a dimly lit passage and up more stairs. He was cold and unflurried, and his one thought was not to be seen. So long as no one saw him, Olin couldn’t pin the killings on him. Already his calculating brain was at work on an alibi that would fox Olin. As soon as he could safely do it, he must get rid of his gun. That, and that alone, so far, could take him into the gas-chamber.

Ahead of him he saw a glass panelled door that led to the roof of the building. As he opened it, he heard a sudden clamour of police sirens outside the building. He ran to the edge of the roof, and peered cautiously over it into the street below. It was alive with running police. Prowl cars were skidding to a standstill, and from them poured more police, guns in hand. Rushing around the corner came a truck, carrying a searchlight which went on before the truck came to a standstill. The great white beam of light flashed up the side of the building and lit up the roof with blinding intensity.

Baird didn’t hesitate. He swung up his Colt and fired down the long beam. There was a crash of glass and the light went out. The darkness that followed was as blinding as the previous intense light.

Someone down below let off with a sub-machine-gun, but Baird was already running across the roof to the shelter of some chimney stacks. He ducked behind them, looked right and left, decided to go for a higher roof, and bending double, ran swiftly to a steel ladder, swarmed up it and reached fresh shelter as the first of the police came bursting on to the lower roof.

Still unruffled, Baird made his way silently across the roof, keeping the chimney stacks between himself and the police. He could hear them whispering together, unwilling to show themselves, not sure if he was waiting for them or getting away.

‘Well, get on with it!’ a voice bawled up from the street.

Looking down, Baird spotted Olin standing up in the middle of the street, gun in hand. He was glaring up at where his men were sheltering.

Baird was tempted to shoot Olin as he stood there, but realising his chance of escape depended on keeping the police foxed as to where he was, he resisted the temptation, and made his way across the roof to look below on the far side of the building.

Another roof, fifteen feet or so below him, stretched out in a gentle slope, terminating in a low wall.

There was no escape that way. He looked to his left. A higher roof seemed more inviting, and he could see a ladder that would take him up there.

Bending double he ran towards the ladder. Half-way up it, he heard running footsteps, and looking back over his shoulder he caught a glimpse of the silhouette of a policeman’s flat cap against the night sky. The policeman was going to the lower roof, and apparently hadn’t seen Baird on the ladder.

Baird swarmed up the remaining rungs of the ladder. In his haste to get under cover, he forgot to keep low, and for a second or so he was outlined against the sky as he reached the top of the ladder.

From the opposite roof came a crack of a rifle. Baird felt a violent blow against his right side a split second before he heard the shot. He staggered, went down on one knee, got up again, and swerving to right and left, ran blindly across the roof to the shelter of more chimney stacks.

The rifle cracked again, and he heard the slug whine past his head.

‘He’s up on the upper roof,’ a voice bawled from the opposite building. ‘I’ve winged him.’

Baird felt blood running down his leg, inside his trousers. Jagged wires of pain bit into his side as he moved unsteadily across the roof to the far edge. Below was a flat roof with a skylight.

He swung his legs over the edge, dropped heavily on the lower roof. He caught his breath in a gasp as the pain in his side grabbed at him.

He put his hand to his side, feeling the wet stickiness of his bleeding. He was losing a lot of blood, and he began to be worried.

They were close behind him. He couldn’t go on like this, running from roof to roof. If he didn’t stop the bleeding he was going to pass out.

He went over to the skylight, hooked his fingers under it and pulled. It came up soundlessly, and he peered down into a dimly lit passage.

He lowered himself awkwardly down into the passage. It was as much as he could do to reach up and close the skylight. Sweat was running down his face. He leaned against the wall, the .45 heavy in his hand, while he struggled against the feeling of faintness that gripped him.

Making the effort, he began to move slowly along the passage, aware he was leaving a trail of blood behind him. It came to him with a sour bitterness that this was the end of him. Even if he hid somewhere in this building, they’d search him out. They knew they had winged him, and the blood would give him away. He would be cornered and shot down like a mad dog.

Well, he wouldn’t go alone, he told himself. If only he could stop this damned bleeding, he might still give an account of himself. He wasn’t afraid; only bit er at the thought of ending it this way. He wouldn’t have cared if he hadn’t been wounded. If he could have shot it out with them, knowing his aim was straight and he was taking some of them with him, he would have rather glorified in such an end.

But as it was, his gun was now growing so heavy it was as much as he could do to keep it level, let alone shoot with it.

He approached a door. His hand, creeping along the face of the wall, guiding and supporting him, touched the door which swung open.

He paused, drawing back his lips off his teeth as a bright light came from the roof into the passage.

He leaned against the doorway, staring into a bright but sparsely furnished room. His eyes took in the divan bed, the threadbare rug on the stained boards, a sagging armchair covered with a cheap but gay chintz, the cream-painted walls and the screen that probably hid the toilet basin.

He wedged his shoulder against the doorway, trying to give his buckling knees support. The shaded electric lamp hanging from the ceiling was beginning to spin around. He felt his fingers opened against his will, and heard a far away thud of the Colt as it dropped on the floor.

This was how they would find him, he thought savagely. Helpless and unable to hit back. They would drag him down the stairs, handcuffed, into the street for the crowd to gape at: there was nothing now he could do about it.

As he began to fall into the black chasm of unconsciousness, he had a vague idea that a hand came out of the darkness and caught hold of his arm.

As he poured whisky into a glass, Preston Kile noticed his hand was unsteady, and he frowned. He shouldn’t be drinking this, he told himself. He was drinking too much these days. But what else could he do? A man must keep himself going somehow. He wasn’t sleeping well. There was a woolliness in his brain that alarmed him. He had felt it coming on slowly like a deadly, creeping paralysis over the past year. It was blunting his mind. It made thought an effort. At one time he had been able to make lightning decisions, and the right decisions at that. He had also been willing to take any risk, no matter how dangerous it had seemed. He had had a shrewd recklessness, if you could put it that way, that had carried him from a poorly paid desk job in a bank to a position that had made him the most feared man on the Stock Market. But that was two years ago. He had gone to pieces. He wasn’t the same man. His confidence had gone. He had lost his guts for a fight. Risks frightened him now. He found himself putting off making a decision until it was too late. And now, to worry him still more, there was this fantastic Rajah business.