Ричард Деминг - Hit and Run

“You think it’s a pipe dream?” Joe asked.

Calhoun shrugged. “What difference does it make? I don’t know her, I don’t know Cushman, and I didn’t know the old man who was killed. Did you?”

Joe shook his head. A customer up the bar called for service, and he moved away to tend to him. As soon as he finished, he came back to Calhoun.

“I just had another pipe dream, too,” Joe said. “I thought about it before, but since you came in it’s getting stronger.”

“Yeah?”

“That night of the accident. You went out the front way just a couple of minutes before it happened. When you came back in, you said you didn’t see it. But now all of a sudden you’re loaded. I don’t mean to be personal, but it’s a long time since you laid anything bigger than a one on this bar.”

Calhoun frowned at him. “What’s the connection?”

“You haven’t been doing a little shaking down, have you? Without cutting in your old buddy who gave you the steer?”

Calhoun said coldly, “I told you before I haven’t sunk to blackmail yet. I don’t like the suggestion.”

“No offense meant,” Joe said with a humorless smile. “But you can’t blame me for asking. I’d hate to think I gave you a steer that paid off and you forgot my commission.”

“‘You didn’t,” Calhoun assured him. “If you want to go in for blackmail, work it yourself.”

Joe shook his head. “I’m strictly a finger man. But I don’t like to be crossed. Sure you don’t want to throw me a bone?”

Calhoun growled. “I’ll throw you five knuckles if you keep it up.”

Joe’s nostrils flared a little. “Let’s put it this way, Barney. If Cushman or Mrs. Powers did pay you off, they might get a little sore if the cops came nosing around anyway.”

“Why would they come nosing around?”

“I’m just sorehead enough to phone them an anonymous tip to look over her car. I told you I don’t like to be crossed.”

Calhoun’s eyes narrowed. Was it a bluff, he wondered? Silently he cursed his luck at having spent his last small bill at the previous stop. This was the first time all evening he’d laid more than a five on a bar.

He contemplated throwing the bartender a fifty-dollar bill to shut him up, but immediately realized that this would constitute admission that the man’s guess was right. And it couldn’t be anything but a guess. Even if the man carried out his threat to phone the police, nothing could be proved now that the car was repaired. He probably wouldn’t phone anyway. He was merely running a bluff on the chance that if he had guessed right, he could shake a commission from Calhoun. It was safer to risk Joe’s vindictiveness than to risk letting him know for certain that there were grounds for blackmail.

“You phone anybody you want, Joe,” Calhoun encouraged. “Meantime, why don’t you go to hell?”

Scooping up his bills and change, he walked out without leaving a tip.

Outside, he sat in his car moodily smoking a cigarette, thinking over the conversation. Eventually he decided he had taken the best possible action under the circumstances.

His desire to get drunk had passed. He started the car and headed for home.

Sunday evening Helena phoned Harry Cushman at his apartment.

“Thank God!” he said in a relieved tone when he recognized her voice. “Where have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you all week.”

“I had to take a little trip,” she said enigmatically. “Did everything go well?”

“No trouble,” he said. “But I’ve been going crazy every minute since, wondering what was happening on your end.”

“Everything is under control,” she told him.

“You got him to New York all right?”

“I said everything is under control.”

“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “Are you sure you told me everything? How’s it happen Calhoun didn’t raise his fee again for a service like this?”

“I don’t think we’d better discuss it over the phone, Harry.”

“Why not?” he asked. “They’re both private lines. There’s no operator to listen in on dial phones.”

She said, “I just don’t think we should.”

“Can I come over, then? Or can you come here?”

“Not tonight, Harry. I don’t think it would be wise until my business with the police is finished. I just phoned to let you know everything is all right. I’ll call you again in a day or two.”

“A day or two?” he complained. “I want to know the details of all this. I’ve got a dozen unanswered questions on my mind.”

“They’ll have to wait,” she said firmly. “We can’t afford to be seen together now. You wouldn’t want anyone to notice how closely your description fits Lawrence’s, would you?”

“Good God, no!” he said fervently.

“Then just be patient for a day or two, dear. I’ll phone you as soon as I think it’s safe.”

After she broke the connection, Helena dialed Alice’s home and told her she could come back to work the next morning.

Monday morning Helena met American Airlines flight 785 at the Buffalo airport. It came in on time at 9:24, and she waited patiently until the last passenger had come up the stairs.

Then she went to the American Airlines desk and inquired about the passenger list.

“He had a reservation on the flight,” the clerk told her. “Made from Buffalo at the same time he made his reservation to New York. But he didn’t verify it from that end and didn’t cancel either. Apparently he just didn’t show. There’d be a notation here if he’d called in to change his reservation to some other time.”

Helena managed to look puzzled. “Where can I send a telegram?” she asked.

The clerk told her and she sent a wire addressed to her husband from the airport. Then she went home and waited.

At noon she got a call from Western Union informing her that her telegram was undeliverable. Immediately she sent a wire of inquiry to convention headquarters. At one thirty a return wire informed her that her husband, though expected, had never checked in at the convention.

Before phoning the police, she practiced her worried-wife act on Alice by rushing into the kitchen and asking the maid what she thought of the situation. Apparently it was an impressive exhibition, for the maid became even more upset than Helena was pretending to be. She hung over Helena’s shoulder wringing her hands when Helena phoned the police.

Helena succeeded in putting over an excellent imitation of a desperately concerned woman holding her panic in check when she explained matters to the desk man at Police Headquarters. His tone was politely sympathetic when he told her the police would institute inquiries and inform her if anything turned up. He asked for a full description of her husband, including the clothing he wore the last time she saw him.

“A brown suit,” she started to say, then caught herself when she realized she ought to describe the clothing Harry Cushman wore on the plane rather than what her husband had worn that day. “I mean a light-gray suit, beige summer loafers, a light-blue shirt, and a maroon necktie.”

After she hung up, Alice said worriedly. “You got that all wrong, Mrs. Powers. The mister was wearing a brown suit and brown shoes that day.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Helena said imperiously. “That was to work in the morning. He changed before I took him to the plane.”

“He did?” Alice said doubtfully. “I thought when he come up for your handkerchief, he still had the brown suit on. Maybe I was mistaken.”

“You were,” Helena said in a firm tone. “Let’s not confuse the police by giving different descriptions of his clothing. He wore a gray suit and beige shoes.”