James Chase - Strictly For Cash

I was sweating now.

“You’ve got to get that money! Don’t you understand he’ll shoot both of us if you don’t go? Take this key and get out!”

“Oh no,” Hame said. “Not if that’s the way she feels about you. She stays here. We’ll start from the beginning again.”

Around the half-open kitchen door I saw the white cat come in.

“Then let me go,” I said my muscles tightening. “She means everything to me. I’ll come back. You can trust me to come back.”

“No woman’s worth a quarter of a million. We’ll all go.”

The cat brushed against his trouser leg. He hadn’t seen it come in, and feeling something against his leg startled him. He looked down with an oath.

I was waiting for that moment. I sprang at him, my right hand grabbing at his gun arm, my left at his throat.

The gun went off with a crash that rattled the windows. Hame staggered back, then went down with me on top of him. I fastened on to his wrist and smashed his gun hand down on the floor. The gun went off again, but it fell from his hand.

For a minute or so we fought like a couple of animals. He was as strong as a bull, and knew every dirty trick in the box. We rolled to and fro, upsetting the furniture, while we punched, kneed and butted each other. It was like getting tangled up with a buzz-saw, trying to hold him.

He got his hands on my throat and began to squeeze. He had a grip like a monkey-wrench, and the air was cut off from my lungs. I dubbed him on the bridge of his nose and flattened it, crashing the back of his head on the floor. For a second or so he was dazed and the strength went out of his hands. I tore his fingers from my throat, twisted clear, crawled up on hands and knees. He was up on his feet a shade after I had straightened up. His face was a snarling mask of blood which poured from his broken nose.

At long range I knew I could take him, but hugged in those iron muscles he could lick me. I had to keep clear of him.

Maybe he had forgotten I was a boxer. He didn’t act as if he thought I knew how to fight. He rushed at me, his arms reaching out for my waist, to bring me down into another murderous clawing wrestle on the floor. But I had had enough of that. I slipped to one side and jolted my right in his face. That hurt him, but it didn’t stop him. He was tough. It’d take more than a slam in the face to put him down.

He came at me again, and this time I went in at him. We met like two charging bulls. I felt his hands grab my coat front. I grinned into his savage, blood-soaked face, then I brought over the left hook: the same punch that had broken MacCready’s jaw, that had floored Waller, that had put paid to the Miami Kid. It landed flush on the side of his jaw, and I felt the jar run up my arm. I didn’t care. He was out long before he hit the floor.

Gasping for breath I turned to look for Ginny, but she wasn’t there.

“Ginny!”

I rushed into the passage. The front door stood open. Turning, I ran back into the sitting-room and to the window.

I saw her running down the long drive towards the gates. She was staggering as she ran, and she was holding her hands in her face. I leaned out of the window.

“Ginny! Wait for me!”

But she didn’t look round, although she must have heard me. She kept running, and beyond her, at the gates I saw two prowl cars swing to the kerb. Two cops tumbled out of the first car and started up the drive. She ran slap into them. She was falling as she reached them, and one of them caught her and lowered her to the ground. Two more prowl boys spilled out of the second car and came pounding up the drive.

They looked up and saw me. I was looking at Ginny. There was a tightness in my throat and a sick, empty feeling inside me. I had a premonition I was looking at her for the last time. Then I turned and ran into the kitchen.

Benno lay stiff in death, his fat, vicious face seemed to snarl at me. I jumped over him, climbed into the box elevator and loosened the brake.

Seconds later I was running down the weed-covered path to the back gate. No one fired at me. I jerked open the gate and scrambled into the waiting Packard. I was shooting down the narrow alley that led to the boulevard when I heard police whistles. At least I had a car under me, and a fast car at that.

Where was I to go? The general alarm would be out in a few minutes, and every patrol car would be looking for me.

Who would hide me from the police? I thought of fat Zoe Elsner who ran the Liberty Inn on Bay Street. If I could reach her I might buy a hide-out.

I headed for Bay Street.

Half-way down Lincoln Avenue that runs parallel with Lincoln Beach’s main street, I spotted a cop ahead, looking towards me from the sidewalk. He began waving at me. I shoved down the accelerator and the Packard surged forward.

The cop ran out into the street. He had a gun in one hand and a night-stick in the other. The people on the sidewalk stopped to stare. He was a pretty brave cop, but at the very last second he jumped aside. His night-stick came hurtling at me, and instinctively I ducked my head. The stick smashed a jagged hole in the windshield. I heard shooting behind me and felt the thumps of slugs as they made holes in the back panel of the car.

I kept on, switched the car around the corner and came out on to the wide boulevard that runs the length of the promenade and terminates at the gates of the casino.

I wouldn’t get far now with a smashed windshield. Already people on the sidewalks were staring at the car as I shot it towards the big underground car-park.

I pulled up behind a line of parked cars at the bottom of a brilliantly lighted ramp. I was out of the car and opening the boot when a white-coated attendant came up. I saw his eyes go to the smashed windshield.

“What happened to that?” he asked.

“Hit a bird,” I said, hauling out the suitcase. “I’ll be back...”

I saw his eyes light on the bullet holes in the back panel. I closed my fist and smashed it at his jaw. He went down, his head bouncing off the fender.

I looked to right and left. At the far end of the park three white-coated attendants stood around a car, talking. They didn’t look my way. There was no one else in the park to pay me any attention. I walked rapidly up the ramp. The suitcase weighed a ton. I wouldn’t be able to travel far with this burden hanging at the end of my arm. But I wasn’t going to ditch it. With all that money I might still buy my life: without it I was done for.

As I reached the top of the ramp I spotted two prowl cars coasting along the boulevard, and heading in my direction. Across the way a cop stood on the edge of the sidewalk. On the corner, fifty yards farther on, was another cop.

I had to get under cover, and at once. There was no hope now of reaching Liberty Inn.

Within ten yards of the cop opposite me was the imposing entrance of the Lincoln Hotel, a forty-storeyed skyscraper that dominated the promenade.

I crossed the street with a crowd of sun-worshippers as the traffic lights turned red. I kept in the middle of them, rubbing shoulders with a fat man in a beach wrap and on the other side a blonde in halter and shorts. She looked curiously at me.

The bulk of the crowd were headed for the hotel. I went with them. As I was pushing through the revolving doors I looked back over my shoulder: a mistake. The cop on the sidewalk caught my eye. He stiffened, stared, then started towards me.

I kept pace across the lobby with the blonde in the halter and shorts. She and a couple of tanned lounge lizards got into the elevator. I got in with them.

The starter looked sharply at me.

“Tenth,” I said curtly, before he could open his mouth.

The cop came through the revolving doors like a jet-propelled rocket. He was charging towards the elevator as the doors swished to. No one in the elevator had noticed him, except of course, me.