Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 34, No. 13 & 14, Winter 1989

“There’s one thing I don’t understand, Fred,” I said. “If you aren’t Hannibal Coggins, why did you try to bribe your way out of jail? Wouldn’t it have been simpler — and cheaper — just to wait until the sheriff proved that you weren’t Coggins?”

Fred sighed. “I was afraid you’d think of that. And if you work on it a little more, you’ll probably come up with the answer.” He pressed open the glove compartment of my car and began rummaging around.

“What are you looking for?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, “but almost anything will do.” He found a screwdriver. “If the sheriff had processed my fingerprints in Phoenix, he would have discovered that Hannibal Coggins isn’t the only person in the world who’s wanted by the police.” He regarded me severely. “Ever been stabbed by a screwdriver?”

“No,” I said uneasily. “I can’t say that I have.” I experienced the familiar tension stitch in my side and winced.

“Relax,” Fred said. “Killing isn’t my trade. That’s why I went through the trouble of turning in what I thought was Hannibal Coggins. I thought that way I might be saving some innocent people’s lives.”

I felt a certain amount of relief.

He hefted the screwdriver again. “Just the same, remember that this weapon puts me in charge of the situation.”

Some two hundred yards ahead of us I could make out the shadowy bulk of a car parked slightly to one side of the narrow road.

Fred gave an order. “Stop the car right here.”

I put my foot on the brake. The car swerved to the right as we came to an abrupt stop and Fred fell over me.

He quickly untangled himself. “Now, watch that! You could have gotten yourself killed if it were anybody else but me.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “but the car swerves when I step on the brakes. I think one of the front tires is soft.”

Fred took my car keys out of the ignition and pocketed them. “I’ll leave the keys in the road when I leave. Now just sit right there and don’t move until I’m gone.”

Obviously Fred didn’t want me to get close enough to his car to copy the license number.

He picked up the road map on the seat next to me and pocketed that too. “I wouldn’t want to get lost again.” He opened the car door and left with the two gallon can of gasoline, glancing back occasionally as he made his way to the shadows of his car. After a while his lights went on and the car pulled away.

I watched the taillights diminish in the distance and then got out of my car and walked down the road.

In the bright moonlight I had no trouble finding my car keys where Fred had said they would be.

I looked once more at the fading taillights and then made my way back to the car.

Poor Fred, I thought, he’s heading for Nelson’s Butte.

With the two gallons in his tank, he should be able to get there and a little beyond — or a little back — depending on his decision. That was all, however.

On the map there is an asterisk next to Nelson’s Butte. Yet so many people, it seems, cannot find the footnotes on a map, and evidently Fred was one of them. Nelson’s Butte is a ghost town and not a soul has lived there in over seventy years. Fred wouldn’t find any gas stations there, and the nearest live town was more than forty miles farther on.

I started my car, carefully negotiated a turn, and drove back to the highway.

If I’d been an honest citizen, I would have driven back to Everettville and told the deputy approximately where he could pick up Fred.

However, I wasn’t an honest citizen.

I, too, have my trade and I play it well. When I had stepped on the brakes at Fred’s order, I had turned the steering wheel slightly so that he would fall against me.

Now I patted the side pocket in which I had Fred’s wallet. It contained at least five hundred dollars.

Not bad for one night’s work.

Barbarossa and Company by Kathryn Gottlieb

On the last Monday in hot and gritty August, I found myself marooned, to all intents and purposes, on the island of Manhattan. In my pockets were my flight ticket back to Geneva, an ancient address book, and not much else. I hadn’t expected to stay more than a day. When I finally did get away, my pockets were bulging, my heart subverted, and my mind reeling.

Had she? Hadn’t she? Had I aided and abetted? As to what happened, some will consider me an opportunist and some something worse, but — outside of the White House, or should I say Washington? — where are the moralists? The moral, of course, are everywhere.