Hit and Run

I lay listening to his quiet, dangerous voice, and I kept wondering about Lucille. I was scared to ask him if she were still in my bedroom in case she had got free and had left the bungalow before he arrived. There was just a chance that she had got free.

'In case things went wrong,' he went on, 'I took the precaution to provide myself with an alibi. Only Mrs. Hepple and Lucille know I didn't break my leg. Mrs. Hepple has been with me for years and I can trust her. Lucille ...' He broke off and shrugged his shoulders. 'Let me tell you about Lucille. She was one of the dancers at the Little Tavern. When I bought the place, I was careful no one at the club except Claude should know who I was. I used to go there as a customer. The girl appealed to me. A mistake, of course. She was pretty and gay and young, but a man soons gets tired of a girl when she has a head as empty as Lucille's. However, the one thing in her favour is she does what I tell her to do, and so does her oaf of a brother, Ross, who also worked at the Little Tavern when I took it over. I explained to these two what I wanted. I told them if O'Brien continued to blackmail me, the Little Tavern would shut down; Ross would lose his job and Lucille would find herself married to a poor man. It was my suggestion that Lucille should ask you to teach her to drive – a good suggestion, I think.' Again, the thin lips lifted in a sneering smile. 'When I was ready, I told her to take you down that beach road. I had arranged to meet O'Brien down there. His monthly pay-off was due. We met down there. While I was talking to him, Ross came up behind him and knocked him senseless. In the meantime you and Lucille were acting out your little drama. I had instructed her exactly how she was to behave. It was essential that you should attempt to seduce her, thus providing you with a guilt complex. It was also essential that she should run away with your car. I know enough about male psychology to be sure you would act the way I wanted you to act, and you did.' He leaned forward to tap ash off his cigarette. 'Lucille brought the car to me. The accident wasn't difficult to stage. I had O'Brien lying in the road. I ran the car over him. Then I drove the car fast and hard into his motorcycle I had placed on its parker in the middle of the road. It was quite a smash. Then I turned the car over to Lucille and Ross and told them to take it to your bungalow.'

'You made a mistake,' I said. 'All killers make mistakes. You ran O'Brien over with the off-side wheel and you hit the motorcycle with the on-side front wing. That told me there was something phoney about the accident. It wouldn't have been possible to have killed O'Brien accidentally the way you staged it.'

He lifted his eyebrows.

'It doesn't matter. You obligingly got rid of the mistake by having the car repaired. That was a smart move of yours, Scott, the way you switched the number plates. But it did give Ross a chance to get a photograph of you and when he showed me the photo I knew then I had you where I wanted you.' He stretched out his long legs and stared up at the ceiling, 'It's a pity you got too smart. It's a pity too that you ran into that Lane woman. It complicated things for me. I knew I would have to get rid of her sooner or later as I was sure O'Brien had told her he was blackmailing me, and she would probably guess his death hadn't been an accident. I had my men watching her all the time, and she knew it. She and Nutley were scared. They wanted to get out of town where I couldn't reach them, but they lacked funds. So when you appeared on the scene, she saw her chance of getting some money to leave town. I was told you were going to her apartment. I arrived a little late, but not late enough to hear she had double-crossed you. I was waiting outside her apartment as she came out and I killed her. I very nearly lost track of Nutley, but fortunately one of my men had been watching him and he reported to me that you and Nutley had got together at the Washington. I went along there and shot him. The night clerk had to go too. He cost me a hundred dollars to go up to Nutley's room. On my way out, I had to kill him. He would have known me again.' He rubbed his red, fleshy face and his glittering eyes stared at me.

'Killing comes easily, Scott, after you have killed your first man, but it also becomes complicated. You kill someone, then you kill someone else to cover up the first killing, and then you have to kill again to cover up the second killing.'

'I guess you must be out of your mind,' I said huskily. 'You can't hope to get away with this.'