Ричард Деминг - Hit and Run

“Explain it to the judge,” the trooper said. “Pull over on the shoulder, mister.”

Dejectedly the little man climbed back in his car and drove off on the shoulder. He was no more dejected than Calhoun.

“Why couldn’t it have been the bandits?” he muttered under his breath. “Instead of a couple of lousy fish hogs.”

“What?” Helena asked.

“Nothing,” he said wearily.

The car ahead was waved on, and Calhoun drove the Buick into the checkpoint.

As he got out of the car and handed over the registration certificate and two drivers’ licenses, he said to the officer who was peering into the back seat, “I’m afraid I can’t open the trunk. The lock’s jammed.”

“Yeah?” the trooper said. He finished his examination of the car’s interior. “Let’s have the key, sir. Maybe I can work it.”

Calhoun handed him the key ring. “This one,” he said, indicating the Packard trunk key.

The trooper tried it. Then he tried the ignition and glove-compartment keys, but neither of them would work, either.

Handing the keys back to Calhoun, he said, “Pull over on the shoulder, sir. Afraid you’re going to have to wait.”

Then he called to a trooper seated in a state patrol car parked on the shoulder, “Jammed trunk lock, Jim. Better put in a call for Brady.”

Calhoun retrieved the registration and licenses from the other trooper, got back into the car and drove over onto the shoulder ahead of the patrol car. The black Ford had parked behind it, and the little driver was sullenly giving personal data to a trooper who was taking down the information in a notebook.

Calhoun climbed from the car and went back to the patrol car.

“Who’s Brady?” he asked the trooper named Jim.

“Lock expert, sir. Take him maybe fifteen minutes to get here.”

“Oh,” Calhoun said. Then, after a pause, “I suppose it’s that payroll loot you’re looking for, isn’t it?”

“That’s right, sir.”

“Well, you certainly can’t think we have it. The bandits were two men, not a man and a woman. And they’d probably be in a stolen car. We’re on vacation up here and our papers are in order. Why do we have to be held up?”

“The orders are to search all cars, mister. Sorry, but you’ll have to wait.”

Calhoun went back to the car.

Helena said, “Shall we chance making a sudden break and running for it?”

Calhoun shook his head. “We’d never make it. Besides, they have our names and license number.”

She settled back, drew a cigarette from her purse, and lit it with the dash lighter. Examining her face, he saw that it was completely calm.

“You don’t look very worried,” he said.

She shrugged. “Why worry about the inevitable? We’re caught. I don’t intend to wring my hands over it.”

Despite himself, he had to admire her fatalism.

Ten minutes dragged by. Then the officer named Jim climbed from the patrol car.

He called to the men working the checkpoint, “You can knock it off, boys. Checkpoint Three just called in that they’ve been netted.”

One of the troopers who was checking car interiors and trunks paused in the act of unlocking a trunk. “Yeah?” he said. “The loot, too?”

“The works. No shooting. They surrendered like little lambs. Captain says to break it up and come in.”

The officer withdrew the key from the trunk lock and handed it back to the car owner. The trooper named Jim walked forward to the Buick and said to Calhoun, “Guess you can move on, sir. Sorry you were held up.”

In a voice he barely managed to keep steady, Calhoun said, “Thanks.”

He started the engine, drove on a half mile, then pulled over on the shoulder and lit a cigarette with shaking hands.

Helena said, “Why are you nervous now? The crisis is over.”

He controlled an impulse to bat her.

The roadblock had delayed them nearly twenty minutes. It was a quarter past nine when they drove down the dirt road and stopped next to the boat livery. Calhoun had Helena synchronize her watch with his.

“I’ll give you a half hour,” he said. “Blink your lights exactly at nine forty-five, then again every five minutes after that until I dock. Okay?”

“I understand,” she said.

He collected his fishing gear from the back seat, leaving the anchors and sash cord, and got out of the car. Helena drove off without a word.

Calhoun found the old man sitting on the screened-in porch again, still reading a Bible.

“Evening,” the old man said. “Beginning to think you wasn’t coming.”

“You saved my boat, didn’t you?” Calhoun asked quickly.

“Oh, sure. No call for it anyway. And it’s paid for.”

He led Calhoun down to the boat dock to show him his boat.

Another boat with two men in it was tying up at the dock just as they got there.

The old man called, “Not quitting so soon, are you?”

“Ran out of bait,” one of the men called back. “Just came in to get more. They’re really hitting.”

He held up a string of about a dozen fish averaging about a half pound each.

“Nice string of calicoes,” Calhoun commented.

The old man gave him a curious glance. “Yeah,” he said after a moment.

The boat the old man gave him was a flat-bottomed scow about ten feet long. In addition to the motor, it contained a pair of oars and a gas can with an extra gallon of gas. The Coleman lantern had a bolt welded to its bottom that fitted into one of the oarlocks.

Calhoun had to wait while the old man picked two dozen night crawlers from a large box of moss. Calhoun didn’t have a use in the world for them, but it would look peculiar to go fishing without bait.

When he was settled in the boat, the old man said, “Looks like a good night for walleyes.”

Calhoun looked out over the water, which was as smooth and moonlit as it had been the previous night.

“Yeah,” he said sardonically. “Just a little choppy.”

The old man cackled. “Them little six-inch perch is good eating anyway, even if they ain’t much sport. You ought to catch a bushel. Or maybe some of them enormous crappies like the other fellers just brought in.”

Calhoun started the motor and pulled away while the old man was still cackling at his own humor.

For about a quarter mile Calhoun set a course straight out from shore; then he swung right and followed the shoreline for what he judged to be about a mile. The water was dotted with lights of other night fishermen, some farther out and some between Calhoun and the shore.

At nine forty he picked a spot several hundred yards from the nearest fisherman’s light, cut the motor, and let the boat drift. There was a slight inshore current, but he figured he would maintain the same relative position to the other boats because they would be taking advantage of the current for drift trolling instead of anchoring and doing still fishing.

At nine forty-four by his watch he began studying the shoreline, concentrating on the point he judged would be Crestwood Beach. Minutes passed and nothing happened.

With his eyes straining at the shoreline, dotted here and there by cottage lights and silhouetted by the lights of moving traffic on the highway beyond it, he sat motionless for minutes more. Finally he risked lowering his gaze long enough to glance at the time, and was shocked to see it was five of ten. By now Helena should have flashed her lights three times.

Just as he raised his eyes again, a pair of headlights blinked twice off to his right, a good quarter mile from where he had been searching for them. He barely caught them from the corner of his eye, and they blinked on and off too fast for him to take a fix. There was nothing to do but wait another five minutes with his gaze fixed in that direction.