Ричард Деминг - Hit and Run

Without comment she returned to her deck chair.

“I’ll try to have all three agreements drawn up by tomorrow,” Calhoun said. “Is it all right if I take them directly to Cushman for approval instead of bringing them here?”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I’d like to get that part of it settled before I take off with the car. So I won’t be in quite so much of a jam in case I get picked up driving it. By the time I deliver the agreements to you, you relay them on to Cushman, and I call to get them back again, it will already be Monday.”

After reflecting, she said, “I suppose that will be all right. I’ll phone Harry to expect you sometime tomorrow. You know where he lives?”

“I looked it up in the phone book. I’ll pick up your car just after dark Monday night. Around nine thirty. Leave the garage unlocked and the keys in the car if you’re not going to be home.”

“Hadn’t I better phone you first?” she asked. “Suppose Lawrence changes his mind at the last minute and doesn’t go?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe you better.” He gave her his home number.

Calhoun’s plan was to contact the injured John Lischer before he got in touch with either of the other two men, as there would be no point in trying to settle with the others if Lischer refused to cooperate. But before doing even that, he decided, it would be wise to find out just how much of an interest the police were taking in the case.

After leaving the Powers home, Calhoun drove straight to Police Headquarters. He found Captain Ben Simmons alone in his office, morosely going over a stack of case records.

The head of the Accident Investigation Bureau was a big man, nearly as big as Calhoun, with an air of restrained energy about him. He hated desk work, which made up a good part of his job, and usually was glad of any excuse to postpone it. Although he and Calhoun were friendly enough, they had never been intimate. But because the private detective’s arrival gave him an excuse to push aside his case records, he looked up at Calhoun almost with relief.

“Hi, Barney,” he said. “Pull up a cigarette and sit down. I was just getting ready to take a break.”

Calhoun slid a chair over to one side of the desk, produced a pack, offered Simmons a cigarette, and flipped another in his own mouth. The captain furnished lights.

Simmons leaned back in his chair and blew an appreciative shaft of smoke across the desk. “If you came in to report an accident, walk right out again. We’re up to our necks now.”

“Just killing time,” Calhoun said. “Thought maybe I could dig up a client from among your cases. I haven’t had a job in five weeks.”

The captain laughed. Calhoun reflected that policemen always seemed to enjoy hearing that a private investigator wasn’t doing so well.

“You should have stayed on the force,” Simmons said. “Probably you’d be a sergeant by now.”

“Probably I’d still be pounding a beat. Anything stirring that I might get a finger in?”

“Like what?” the captain inquired. “People involved in auto accidents hire lawyers, not private eyes.”

“I was thinking of hit-and-runs,” Calhoun said. “Maybe somebody’d pay to have a hit-and-runner tracked down.”

“We have a Hit-and-Run Squad attached to the Accident Investigation Bureau,” Captain Simmons said with a shade less friendliness.

“I know. But you guys are always screaming about being understaffed. You ought to welcome a helping hand at no expense to the taxpayer. Besides, I really need a case, Ben. Give me a break.”

Simmons said gruffly, “Sorry, Barney. There’s only one unsolved hit-and-run on the books, and there wouldn’t be anything in it for you.”

“Any insurance companies involved?”

“Not for the dead guy,” Simmons said. “He didn’t have any insurance. There was a little property damage covered by insurance, but not enough to pay the insurance company to hire a private eye to track down the hit-and-runner.”

Apparently he was talking about a different case, Calhoun decided. John Lischer had been neither dead nor in immediate danger of dying when Calhoun had checked with Emergency Hospital at noon.

He said, “You’ve only got one unsolved hit-and-run?”

“At the moment. The thing happened about two thirty A.M. Tuesday, and the guy’s condition was listed as fair up until one P.M. today. Then he suddenly conked out. The Hit-and-Run Squad just got the call an hour ago.”

Calhoun felt his insides turn cold. Forcing his tone to sound only politely interested, he asked, “Who was he?”

“Old fellow named John Lischer. All he had was a fractured hip, but he was pushing eighty and I guess he couldn’t stand the shock. His heart gave out.”

Calhoun calmly puffed his cigarette, but his mind was racing. Up to that moment his actions hadn’t been exactly ethical, but the most he had been risking was his license. Once he had arrived at settlements with the three injured parties, there would have been little likelihood of his getting into serious trouble for not reporting what he knew to the police, even if the whole story eventually came out.

But the unexpected death of John Lischer changed the whole picture. Suddenly, instead of merely being guilty of somewhat unethical practice, he was an accessory to criminal negligence, or possibly, if the district attorney decided to make an example of the case, even to manslaughter.

Both were felonies.

He asked casually, “Got any leads on the case?”

“A little green paint and a bumper guard. Enough to identify the car as a green Buick.”

That did it, Calhoun thought. So much for Mrs. Powers’ assurance that she’d left no clues at the scene of the crime. With the case now a felony instead of merely a misdemeanor, there’d be a state-wide alert for a damaged green Buick. Even Rochester wouldn’t be safe.

Somehow Calhoun managed to get through another five minutes of idle conversation with Ben Simmons. Then he pushed himself erect with simulated laziness.

“Guess I won’t pick up any nickels here,” he said. “See you around.”

“Sure,” the captain said. “Drop in any time.”

It was nearly three thirty when Calhoun left Headquarters. He debated returning to the Powers home at once, then decided it was too close to the time Mr. Powers would be getting home from the bank. Instead he phoned from a pay station.

The colored maid Alice answered the phone, but Mrs. Powers came on almost immediately.

“Barney Calhoun,” he said. “There’s been a development. I have to see both you and Cushman at once.”

“Now?” she asked. “I expect my husband home within minutes.”

“Arrange some excuse with Alice. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t urgent. Can you get in touch with Cushman?”

“I suppose.”

“Then both of you come to my place as soon as you can get there.” He gave her his lower Pearl Street address. “West side of the sheet, just right of the alley. Lower right flat. Got it?”

“Lower Pearl Street,” she said with a slight sniff. “That isn’t a very nice neighborhood.”

“I’m not a very nice person,” Calhoun told her, and hung up.

Buffalo’s lower Pearl Street is a neighborhood of dusty shops, second-rate taverns, and low-rent apartment buildings. It is not a slum section, but neither is it a very good residential area.

Barney Calhoun lived in a four-unit apartment building flanked by a hand laundry on one side and a tavern on the other. The two upper flats were occupied by the family of the Chinese man who operated the laundry and by a man who operated a hand book. The flat across from Calhoun was rented by a pair of streetwalkers who used it for business purposes.