Brett Halliday - Last Seen Hitchhiking

“I don’t carry money. It distorts the real things. Just a dollar for fruit and milk.”

“A dollar won’t buy you much public transportation.”

They were now moving at a legal speed. He glanced at her, shaking his head.

“Jesus wouldn’t want me to pass on the other side of the road, would you, Jesus?” He looked aloft. “I’m getting off at Pompano, and I really do mean it’s a damn-fool thing for you to be out doing right now, hitching. O.K., chances are that most of it’s propaganda, but it gives people ideas. Like somebody hijacks an airplane in a certain way, and all the copy-cats go to work and do just exactly the same thing. Everybody driving an automobile these days has to be a little cracked.” He hooted sharply. “Except me! And with all these rapists around who dig the sight of a couple of nice tits, you’ve got the only two on the road today, and the guys are going to be bumping fenders to get first crack at you.”

“I doubt that.”

“I’m coming up from Key West, and you’re the first girl single I’ve noticed all afternoon. That hair is crazy. I like it, and the rapists are going to like it. If they’re going the other way, they’ll turn around and come back. So if you’ve got a five or ten under the sole of your boot, blow it on busfare.”

“The difference between you and me is,” Frieda said, “I’m not paranoid.”

“In fact,” he went on, “do you absolutely have to travel? A week from now, if no more bodies turn up, the hitchers will be moving again, and you won’t stand out this much.”

“I can’t hold still and grow roots. I’ve got to move.”

He sighed. “All right. Show me your ID and make me a solemn promise to pay me back, and I’ll advance you for the ticket. I’ve been working a charter for some wealthy people, and the tips have been good.”

She let him persuade her to stop hitchhiking, and when they left the highway at the Pompano Beach exit, she admitted her financial situation was better than she had made out and she wouldn’t require a loan. At the bus depot, they exchanged names and addresses.

“And just in case I didn’t convince you,” he said before driving off, “stay off the big road, for the love of Jesus. So far nobody’s been raped on Route One.”

She remained on the sidewalk until he was out of sight. Shayne pulled up and she got in.

“Don’t say one word, Michael Shayne,” she said, furious. “Back to the highway, and if you want to make yourself popular around here, keep your mouth shut.”

“Did the subject of rape come up at all?” he said with a slight smile.

“It came up,” she said, tight-lipped.

“I clocked him at a hundred and seven.”

“With one eye closed. Now shut up!”

At the interchange, he pointed out that the afternoon sun was uncomfortably hot, and he had ice, gin, tonic, and glasses in the back seat. She allowed him to make drinks, and found herself beginning to relax.

“Sorry I snarled, Mike. There was a flight of angels overhead, and for a minute I thought they were going to swoop down and pick us up.”

This time she tried the southbound ramp. She took a brief ride with a tanned man in a new Cadillac with a New York license, heading for Miami Beach. His clothes were expensive, and one of the things they had been designed to do was disguise the fact that any doctor would have labeled him an excellent candidate for a heart attack.

He kept glancing across at her. After five miles he offered her a hundred dollars to keep him company for the night. He liked adventurous, independent-minded girls. Dinner was included in the invitation, and if she wanted to go watch the dogs or the horses or the jai-alai, that would be just fine.

Presumably a rapist doesn’t offer his victims large sums in cash and an evening’s entertainment, and Frieda declined and asked him to let her out. Until that moment he had seemed supremely confident. He wore three rings, expensive shoes, and he had an expensive smell. But the unexpected rejection by a shabbily dressed nobody caused the flesh around his mouth to whiten. He spoke stiffly, as if under novocaine.

“I just thought — the Beach is one hell of a place when you’re there on your own.”

“You can get somebody. Stand in the hotel lobby holding that hundred-dollar bill.”

“But it’s so damn awkward with that kind of person. I never know what to say. You’re a customer, and they despise you for it.”

“Don’t you have anyone regular, a wife, for instance?”

The novocaine effect spread to his lower jaw. “Haven’t had time. My mother’s still living, and she’s very — time-consuming. I’m a business success, everybody’s afraid of me, but I’m really a rather empty person. I came on too fast, didn’t I? If I’d waited till we were about there—”

“It was too fast for me,” she said. “It may work with somebody else. I don’t know why you should have any trouble. Everybody I see in Miami Beach with this kind of car has a woman with him in the front seat.”

“I’m the big exception. I don’t suppose you’d be interested in the same program, minus the sex? A peck on the cheek, if that’s as far as you care to go.”

He had pulled over. “I don’t want to start feeling sorry for people,” she said, unlatching the door. “Feeling sorry for myself is a full-time job. Good luck.”

“Maybe rape is my answer,” he said bitterly.

“What do you mean?” she said, turning. “What kind of pleasure would that give you?”

“I’m not talking about pleasure! But not to pay for if, for once. I was just listening to the news. But I know me,” he added gloomily. “I don’t think I could.”

The next car to stop was a Volkswagen bus, already carrying a full load. But all they had was a banjo and a mouth organ, and they told Frieda they’d be glad to make room for a guitar. She looked in at the happy riders, as intertwined as a litter of drowsy kittens. Too bad, she said, she was carrying the guitar for a friend and couldn’t play it herself.

Hands reached for her. “Plenty of room. Beautiful Miami.”

She stepped back. “I get carsick with too many people.”

A police car swung in. The driver of the bus picked up its arrival in his side mirror, and announced, “Pick up a hitchhiker? It’s against the law, didn’t you know that?”

He clashed his way into first and the bus moved off.

The trooper dismounted.

He was a year or two younger than Frieda, and gave the impression of having taken the last remaining uniform that morning, although it was a size too small. His hat sat square on his head. Sunglasses covered the upper half of his face like miniature windshields.

“Hitchhiking. Get in. It’s a hot day, and give me any trouble and I’ll give it right back. Because I am purely pissed off at you people.”

He wrenched open the back door of the cruiser.

“There was a friend of mine in that VW,” she said. “They stopped to see if I wanted a lift. You heard me say no. I’m meeting somebody.”

The trooper had heard the excuse hundreds of times, and he didn’t think much of it. Leather creaked as he moved. The sunglasses showed only the absence of emotion, but his voice became ropier.

“I said get in the vehicle, baby-doll. This is what is called an arrest. Resist arrest, and I’m at liberty to use appropriate force.”

“All right, general. Before you pop a seam—”

She was on the point of producing her investigator’s license, but there was a strange mechanical quality about the way he moved, coming down hard on his heels, jerkily, with his ankles locked. One hand touched the butt of his issue revolver, which had been polished so lovingly it had its own halo. His other thumb was hooked between the broad leather belt and the overhanging belly. His mouth was small, with pointed teeth set in too-conspicuous gums. He eased himself at the crotch, and the thought jumped into Frieda’s mind that this might be the man. A single cop cruising the highway — it was a perfect cover. She fell back a step, her hand raised.