James Chase - Like a Hole in the Head

I sat on the bed while Raimundo took the only armchair.

Before arriving at the hotel we had driven past the Imperial Hotel and past the apartment block, under construction. We had luck as the night traffic was heavy and we could crawl without attracting attention. We even got into a solid jam of cars right outside the apartment block. I was able to take a good look at the building. Part of my Army training was to sum up a situation. I probably saw a lot more than Raimundo did. He was driving as I wanted to examine the set-up I was going to walk into.

Along the sidewalk in front of the entrance to the apartments was a line of parked cars. As we crawled by them I spotted a Buick in which two men were sitting. There was no one hanging around the entrance to the block which was in darkness. To the left of the block was a builder’s crane, its long steel arm stretching up to the top floor positioned immediately over the roof. The feet of the crane were in a vacant lot, high with weeds, and there was a big hoarding announcing another apartment block was to be built there.

“How do you see it, soldier?” Raimundo asked.

“I’ll climb the crane.”

He gaped at me.

“You’ll never do it. That goddam crane is twenty storeys high.”

“That’s the way I’m going. It’s the only way.”

“You think Savanto’s men haven’t thought of that?”

“Sure. So what do they do? They put a man or a couple of men in the

vacant lot to see no one gets near the crane.” I looked intently at him. You and I will fix them… then up I go.”

“It’s a pipe dream, soldier. You’ll never get up there.”

“I’m going to bed. We do the job tomorrow night. By that time the guards will have got slack. It’s tricky, but it can be done.”

When we got back to the hotel, I stripped off and took a shower. By the time Raimundo had taken his shower I was asleep.

I have this knack of relaxing before a dangerous operation. During my years in the Army I had schooled myself to sleep. I had all day tomorrow to think about what I had to face the following night : now was the time to sleep.

I came awake with a start to find Raimundo shaking me. The morning sunlight was coming through the faded blind, making me screw up my eyes.

“Wake up! Listen to this !” Raimundo was saying and the note in his voice brought me fully awake.

A voice was talking on the radio on the bedside table.

“Mr. Bill Hartley claims he saw the killing,” the voice said. “When the police arrived with Mr. Hartley after he had raised the alarm the bodies he claimed to have seen had disappeared. There was no evidence that the shooting had occurred. The police are continuing their enquiries but Chief of Police Terrell has hinted that this could be a hoax. We have Mr. Bill Hartley with us in the studio.

“Mr. Hartley, you tell me you are a bird watcher and you often go to the Cypress swamp early in the morning to observe wild life. That is correct?”

A voice like gravel going down a chute said : “Yeah. I don’t give a damn what the police say. I saw this killing. I was up a tree with my glasses and I saw these two…”

“Just a moment, Mr Hartley. Could you give us a description of these two people you saw?”

“Why, sure. I told the police. There was a man and a woman. The man was a giant. He looked around seven foot to me: thin, swarthy and wearing a pair of black cotton trousers. The woman was blonde and pretty and she was wearing a white bra and white slacks. The thing I particularly noticed about her was her hair was cropped short like a boy’s. Well, these two were running along the sand. He was hanging on to her hand, dragging her along…”

“Mr. Hartley, how far do you reckon you were from these two?”

“How far? Five hundred yards, perhaps a little more. I use very powerful glasses.”

“They were running along the beach. Did you get the impression that they were running away from someone?”

“I certainly did. They looked like frightened people and they were running like hell.”

“Then what happened, Mr. Hartley?”

“They got shot. There were only two shots. The first shot hit the woman. It was a head shot. She fell down and rolled into the surf. The man went down on his knees beside her and there was a second shot. He was hit in the head. I saw the spray of blood and he dropped face down on the woman. It was a hell of a thing to see.”

“What did you do, Mr. Hartley? You didn’t see the killer?”

“No, I didn’t see him, but from the sound of the gun he wasn’t far from me. I was scared and shocked as you can imagine. The tide was coming in fast. After five or six minutes, I got down from the tree. It took me half an hour to reach a phone. I called the police. They came out pretty fast. I took them to the place where these two were shot, but by that time the tide had come in. There were no bodies, no footprints, no nothing. The police think I’m a nut, but…”

I turned off the radio.

Raimundo said quietly, “I warned you, soldier… I’m sorry.”

I felt a trickle of cold sweat run down my face and I flicked it away with my finger.

“I had lost her anyway,” I said.

I thought of Lucy, her laugh when she was happy, the way her bottom twitched, her freckles and her eyes that scared easily. Yes, I had lost her in every sense now. She had found this long slob and she had said they thought alike. Thinking about them, I realised they would have made a better pair than she and I had done.

I lay back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling.

“Ask them to send up coffee,” I said and closed my eyes.

A bright-eyed, coloured boy came up with a tray of coffee. As he set it down, I said, “Do you want to earn five dollars?”

His eyes grew round.

“I sure do.”

“Is there a sports’ store around here?”

“A sports’ store? Yeah… at the end of the block.”

“I want a Levison hunting knife : I want two of them. They cost around thirty dollars each. There’s five bucks in it for you if you go along and get them for me.”

He gaped at me, a little uneasily.

“A Levison hunting knife?”

“That’s it. They’ll stock it. Okay?”

He nodded, looking from me to Raimundo and from Raimundo back to me.

“Give him the money,” I said.

Raimundo took out his two one hundred dollar bills and gave one of them to the boy.

“Well, it’s your money,” the boy said. “I’ll get them if that’s what you want,” and he left the room.

“What’s the idea?” Raimundo asked.

I poured the coffee.

“Knives are silent,” I said.

We had been lying on our beds for the past two hours. Raimundo seemed to sense the mood I was in. He lay flat on his back, his eyes closed. He was probably dozing. I mourned for Lucy and I buried her. It was a mental thing, but realistic. I gave her the funeral I thought she would like with lots of flowers and organ music and a tall, dignifiedlooking padre. I even said a prayer for her : the first prayer I’ve said since I was a kid. I then thought over the six months we had spent together, picking out the highlights, then I closed the memory book. It had a lock on it and I turned the key and threw the key away. There were now other things to think about. I didn’t imagine I would think of her again. I had lost a lot of buddies during the war. I had gone to their funerals, but never to a memorial service. When I say goodbye, there is nothing else to say.

“When Savanto gets a hole in his head,” I said suddenly, “what will you do?”

Raimundo lifted his head from the pillow and looked at me. “It’s a pipe dream, soldier. I wish I could make you believe it.”

“Don’t answer the question if you don’t want to. Why should I care?”