Брендан Дюбуа - Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 51, No. 7 & 8, July/August 2006

But when we went in, we found that Georgie was in fact sitting with his head in his hands, bleeding copiously onto Gerald’s white leather sofa. Carl cursed. Georgie looked at us.

Gerald said, “What the hell happened?”

Georgie said, “I let one of them get behind me. The blond number said she had to go for a pee. The other one was taking off her blouse.”

Paula taking off her blouse? I don’t know what my expression looked like, but if it looked anything like Gerald’s, it must have been ludicrous.

Carl said, “Right. How long ago was this?”

Georgie said, “I dunno. The blond one hit me with something, I been out for a bit. I dunno how long.”

Carl said, “Right. Up.” He jerked Georgie to his feet. Georgie moaned. “Out. Now.” He didn’t even bother to look at Gerald or me, but snatched up Georgie’s ski mask from the sofa and marched him to the door.

Then he turned and said, “I don’t need any grief, but if I get any, I cough. All right?”

Gerald said, “Right,” as though he was having trouble making his lips work. “Right,” he said again. And then Carl and Georgie were gone. We heard the door slam.

“Well,” I said, “there’s a turn up. Nice one from the wives there.”

“Oh shut up,” he said. “I’ve got to think. All right, so they’ve gone for help.”

“Why didn’t they just phone?” I said

“How the hell should I know?” he said irritably. “Wanted to get a breath of air. How do I know?”

He was pacing the lounge.

“The thing is,” he said, “nothing’s changed. We got a look at Georgie, and so did the girls probably. But that’s nothing.”

I went and poured myself a stiff brandy from the drinks table. Gerald came over and did the same.

“All we have to do is wait for them to arrive with the cops,” he said, “and tell our story.”

“Right,” I said. “Right.” I sat down.

After two hours, at about one in the morning when it was clear that no one was coming, I looked at Gerald. He was sitting holding his glass hanging between his knees, staring at the carpet.

“Gerald,” I said.

“What?” he said.

“Open it up,” I said.

He remained still for a moment and then sighed deeply and got heavily to his feet. I followed him upstairs to the bedroom. He went to the large mirror that hung on the wall and swung it aside. He worked the dial. I could see from where I was that his fingers were trembling.

“What’s the combination?” I said. “Your birthday? Hers?”

“Hers,” he said shortly. I closed my eyes. Not for long, just long enough for him to swing open the safe and show us what was inside, which was a lot of nothing.

Afterwards, back in the lounge we were trying to work out how much of the plan was left without the wives and decided that there wasn’t much, even with the bloody Claverhouses.

Gerald said with a sort of gloomy flippancy, “Well, you have to hand it to them, don’t you?”

“Well,” I said, “yes, yes you do. Because if you don’t, they’ll find a way to get it anyway.”

He nodded.

“Gerald,” I said, “you told her, didn’t you?”

“Not as such,” he said.

“You told her.”

“I just—” he waved his hands about, “I just said she shouldn’t be worried if something happened.”

“You told her. And you and Cassie were going to disappear with the lot and leave poor old Pete to oversee the liquidation of a bankrupt jewelry business.”

He shook his head miserably. There was nothing he could say.

Of course he had told her. Because she’d told me. About how they had planned their own little wrinkle, Cassie disappearing, Gerald shrugging his shoulders, Sorry Pete, but there’s nothing I can do, what can I tell you, Cassie’s gone off with the lot. Then, after a decent interval, him going to find Cassie at the prearranged rendezvous. The two of them free to start up somewhere else, Spain maybe, for choice. It was a good plan as far as it went, and Cassie and I hadn’t had to modify it much, simply replacing Gerald with me.

But Cassie and Paula had obviously decided that they had an even better idea and now, given the time we’d wasted, easily enough for them to drive to the airport, they were loose somewhere in Europe with the jewelry and Gerald’s little black book of addresses. I sighed. I couldn’t blame Cassie for preferring Paula to Gerald. But what did rankle a bit was that she clearly preferred Paula to me.

I wondered idly whether if I phoned the Rembrandt Hotel in Amsterdam I would still find Cassie booked in under the name of Botham, a name we had decided was easy to remember, being the name of her maternal grandfather and also of one of my all-time favorite cricket players.

I decided that, on balance, all things considered, I probably wouldn’t. Paula and Cassie have never liked cricket.

Copyright 2006 Neil Schofield

Coby Pierce, soaked to the bone in his denim jacket and black jeans, watched as the old Lincoln slewed onto the shoulder of the state highway, no more than fifty rainy feet beyond his outstretched thumb. Shuddering in amazement and shouldering the duffel bag, he ran toward the car’s passenger side, noticing its license plate had a logo stamped into it. The stick figure of a cripple.

Easy pickings, unless there were others along for the ride.

Once at the rear window, Coby could see — even through the worms of water sliding down the glass — that it was just a geezer behind the steering wheel. Coby yanked open the heavy door and pitched his duffel onto the back seat, where it landed next to a pair of those shiny metal braces he’d seen on the TV news once about polio freaks from, like, the 1950s.

Even better: Dude can’t walk straight, much less run away.

Coby slammed the rear door, pulled open the front one, and slid onto the passenger seat. It was covered by thick, clear plastic, with the same under the geezer.

Old guy probably pees his pants; he can’t get to a toilet in time.

Coby closed the front door too. Another solid thunk, the way a car door should sound, not the tinny sound of the last Jap coupe he’d boosted. Though he couldn’t complain about the driver of that one.

No, he couldn’t complain about her — or the things Coby made her do for him — at all.

“Welcome,” the geezer said, lips barely moving as he extended his hand. “My name’s Oswald.”

“Jim,” Coby lied, just in case anything went wrong later. “Jim Davis.”

They shook to seal the introductions, the dude’s limp grip more like a dead fish.

Letting go, Coby said, “Hey, you got the same name as the guy killed one of the Kennedys?”

“Yes, though Oswald is my first name, not my last.”

When the geezer didn’t go on, Coby just said, “Well, Oz, thanks for the ride.”

“My pleasure, Jim, but please fasten your seat belt before I re-enter traffic.”

Re-enter traffic. Both old and odd, this guy.

The click of the buckle connected to the shoulder harness was solid, just like the door. Coby flat-out loved big American cars.

Speaking of which, Oswald then put the car in gear with his right hand, but instead of just driving away, he used his right again to work a lever on the dash, the car’s engine revving as he checked both mirrors, then slowly edged back onto the road.

There were lots of other buttons and switches around the thing Coby was interested in, so he pointed. “What’s that lever?”

Oswald glanced over to him. “I had polio when I was a boy, Jim.”

The word bingo! popped into Coby’s brain.

“I need these braces behind me for walking, and my feet aren’t reliable on even the pedals. This lever lets me throttle the gas, and this one—” The geezer’s left index finger tapped another lever on the other side of the steering wheel. “—is for the brake.”