The Running Man

by Ben Benson

  “You can make out with her,” he said.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Seriously,” he said. “I mean it. Pull over to the side of the road. Go ahead. My brother and I won’t mind. We’ll even go for a little walk. Won’t we, Betsy?”

  She smiled. “You sure will. And our friend here looks like he’d appreciate it. And he’s the type who’ll show his appreciation, too.” She twisted and looked up at me. “Won’t you, sweetie?”

  I felt tiny beads of perspiration on my upper lip. “And how would I show my appreciation?”

  Top laughed. “Now, that’s pretty dumb. With money, of course. What other kind of appreciation is there?”

  I looked ahead. Through the trees, two hundred yards in front, I could see the orange sign of a gas station. I pulled over onto the shoulder of the road and stopped.

  “Hey,” Top said. “Not here. Too open. You don’t want to stop here. Get onto some little side road—”

  “Right here,” I said. “Because I don’t want to make out with your wife.”

  “Sure, you do,” he said.

  “I might be a married man,” I said. “So I’d be crazy to get mixed up in a deal like this. You’d better get out of my car. The three of you. Right this minute.”

  Top shook his head. “Now, what do you want to act like that for? You drive ahead, Buster. I’ll tell you where it’s best to park.”

  “No,” I said. “Get out.”

  “For that,” Top said, “it’s going to cost you.”

  “It’s going to cost me what?”

  “I think two hundred dollars. You made an indecent proposal to my wife before.”

  I twisted around and stared at him. “What kind of a badger game are you running?”

  “You made an indecent proposal,” he said. “There’s three of us here who’ll swear to it. Three against one.”

  “Take me to court,” I said.

  “You’d have no chance in court,” he explained patiently. “Any man who’d take advantage of three poor young people trying to get along, would have no chance in court. You bastards are all the same. You see a young girl and you make an indecent proposition to her and her husband. Why? Because you know they’re hard up and need money bad.”

  “If this wasn’t so funny,” I said, “my heart would bleed for you.”

  “That’ll cost you exactly two hundred bucks, and you can bleed all you want.”

  “And if I don’t pay?”

  “Oh, you’ll pay. You’ll pay with a smile. Otherwise you get pinched. Your wife wouldn’t like the publicity one bit. You’d look bad to your soap company and your boss would fire you. So two hundred is letting you off easy. You ought to be really grateful to us, Buster.”

  “You happen to be way off course,” I said. “I don’t have any two hundred.”

  “How much do you have on you?”

  “Fifty-three dollars.” I thought for a moment. “You want my watch instead?”

  “Your watch?” he asked scornfully. “What do you take us for? Thieves or something?”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “Why would I think that?”

  “Two hundred cash,” he said.

  “I’ve got fifty-three dollars on me,” I said. “How are you going to get the rest of it?”

  “We trust you,” he said. “You’ll mail it to us. Money order.”

  “I’ve got no choice, have I?” I said.

  “No. So we’re wasting time.”

  “I hate to be taken for a sucker like this.”

  “That’s life, Buster. Don’t worry, you’re not the first. You’ve had lots of company.” He looked around. “We can’t do business here, though. Too open. You drive up past the gas station and stop where I tell you.”

  “And that’s all there is to it?”

  “That’s it.” He grinned wolfishly. “When we get out, maybe Betsy will kiss you good-by.”

  I reached for the keys in the ignition, took them out and put them in my pants pocket.

  He looked at me with amazement. “What did you go and do that for?”

  “I decided you can take me to court.”

  “You’re a real nut,” he said. “I never in my life saw anybody do what you just did. Get out the keys and drive the car.”

  “I’m not driving anywhere. I’m going to sit here and wait for a cop to come along. I want to be taken to court for insulting your wife.”

  “You’re not going to any court, you nut. I’ve got my own court.”

  The revolver had been concealed in his lap all the time and I had not seen it. When he brought it up and pointed it at the side of my head, I saw it had a short, blued-steel barrel and it was either a .32 or .38 caliber. Top thumbed the hammer back and said, “This is my court, you nut. This here. Now, you take your money out real careful—with a smile. After I count it, I might blow your head off—and I might not. Depends on my mood. Right now I don’t feel so good about you, and I’ve killed for less.”

  “My mistake,” I said quickly. “I was just testing.”

  “You sure made a mistake,” he said. “You sure did.”

  “Let’s not get trigger happy,” I said. “I’m going to have to put my hand in my pocket to get my money. Okay?”

  “Make it quick,” he said. “I’m getting awful itchy.”

  “Just take it easy,” I said. “I don’t want you to kill me like you did that Somers fellow.”

  “That’s right,” he said hurriedly. “So make it snappy.”

  On the back seat beside him, his partner, Algie, stirred. He plucked at Top’s sleeve, saying, “Top, I don’t like this. Too much in the open.”

  “You goddam fool,” Top said to him, without heat. “He put the damn keys in his pocket. What do you expect me to do? Waste a lot of time with him?”

  Algie said stubbornly, “Not in the open like this. Too many cars going by. They’ll see the gun.”

  “I want his money in my hand before he tries any more tricks,” Top said. “So shut up.”

  His eyes flicked from me to Algie and back to me again. In the meantime, the girl had edged away from me. She lounged against the door, watching us without any special interest.

  With each movement planned in advance, it was not hard to do. First I brought out my wallet, held it up and removed the bills. “Empty,” I said to Top, showing him the empty wallet and shaking it. Then I passed the bills over to him, coming halfway up out of my seat as I twisted toward him.

  He reached out for the money with his left hand. I had my heel on the seat for leverage. I flipped the empty wallet at him and whipped my arm around, closing it hard over his gun hand. I brought my arm down, twisting his hand in toward the weak side, the inside of his wrist.

  He started to gasp. As I half-stood in the seat and bore down more, the pain and pressure increased. He screamed and cringed away, ramming into Algie. I stayed with him, going over the top of the front seat and pushing him, pinning him into a rear corner.

  Algie struggled helplessly under him. Top blubbered and mouthed inarticulate words. “My hand,” he said. “My hand. Please, you’re breaking my hand.”

  The girl made the first move against me. I saw her rummage in her handbag as she rose up out of the front seat toward me, crying, “Leave him alone, you dirty, sneaky bastard.”

  She lunged toward me, the long-bladed knife in her hand flashing upward. I kicked out sideways at her, without a qualm, catching her with my heel across her right temple. She dropped the knife and sank back down with a screech of horror and pain. I still had Top’s revolver hand locked in my grip, and I twisted it down and back with one quick yank.

  The wrist snapped—not with a loud crack—but with more of a crunch. Top yelped loudly, then began to cry like a baby. The revolver oozed through his limp fingers. I grabbed it.

  Algie managed to squirm out from under Top, his face sweaty and red. I held the revolver by the barrel and showed him the butt, saying, “Stay there, you. I’d just as soon ram this down your throat,
your teeth with it.”

  “I want my teeth, mister,” he said in a subdued voice. “I’ll stay put.”

  “Stick out your right hand,” I said to him.

  Algie put out his right hand. I brought out my handcuffs and snapped one of the bracelets onto his wrist. Then I reached over the front seat, pulled up Betsy’s arm and snapped on the other bracelet.

  Algie stared at the bracelet on his wrist with shocked eyes. “Handcuffs,” he said. He looked over at Betsy and said, “Of all the stupid hustlers, you win the marbles. You miserable bitch. You went and thumbed a ride with a cop.”

  I picked up the long-handled switch knife first. Then I pushed aside the mewling, sobbing Top and searched Algie. I found a black, woven-leather blackjack on him. In the girl’s open handbag there were four crumpled dollar bills. I had no time to look in her hatbox.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s go over to the gas station and make a phone call.”

  Chapter 11

  I phoned the Concord Barracks. Sergeant Constanza sent Bob Littlefield racing to the gas station in his cruiser. The wide-eyed attendant watched as we put the three hitchhikers into the car and drove away.

  By the time we arrived back at the barracks, Top’s wrist had swollen badly and he was moaning constantly. The girl, Betsy, had a red welt across the side of her forehead, but it had done no damage to her vocal cords or language. She was able to direct a steady stream of profanity toward Bob Littlefield, who was nearest her.

  Shortly afterwards, the state policewoman came from Troop A headquarters in Framingham, and Betsy was searched. The hat bag contained soiled underclothing and nothing else. The men were thoroughly searched. They carried no money and no other weapons.

  The doctor arrived at the barracks and, with Sergeant Constanza watching closely, Top was examined. Then Top was driven in a cruiser to the Emerson Hospital in Concord, where his broken wrist was X-rayed, set and put into a cast. A trooper stayed there to guard him.

  Because no State Police substation had facilities for women prisoners, the policewoman took Betsy to the Town of Concord jail, where there was a matron. That left Sergeant Constanza and me alone with Algie.

  We brought him out of his cell. He sat down in a chair in the guardroom, looking around dully. When we tried to question him, he shook his head and said to Constanza, “It’s a frame, Sergeant.”

  “Yes?” Constanza said with interest.

  “This wise-guy trooper,” Algie said, warming up and nodding toward me, “started to drag Betsy into his car and we tried to protect her. He began to use rough stuff and before we knew it—”

  “Start over again,” Constanza said softly.

  “I’m telling you,” Algie said.

  Constanza yawned. “I can wait. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Algie began his story again, giving a vivid, fanciful description of attempted rape and the two men’s staunch defense of the girl.

  Constanza listened without expression. When Algie was through, Constanza said, “Now once more. Tell me what happened. Start back where you came from.”

  Algie stared at Constanza’s face. I don’t know what he saw there, but suddenly the weird story dissolved in his mind. And, like so many others, he was now eager and anxious to unburden himself. He said his real name was Arthur Algeria and he came from Seattle, Washington, and he was twenty-two years old. The girl was Betsy Topp, spelled T-O-P-P, and the tall one, Henry Topp, was really her husband. Nobody called him Henry, though. His nickname was “Top.”

  Topp was twenty-five, Algeria said, and had been married to Betsy three years. The girl was twenty-four, and when Algeria said that, I looked up at the ceiling and scoffed at my own guess of twenty. A woman’s age always did escape me, anyway.

  Constanza asked, “How did you three get together?”

  In Seattle one night, Algeria said. They had become acquainted at a bar. Algeria had been sitting at one end of the bar and Topp and the girl were in a booth. A drunk got up and staggered out of the place and Algeria saw Topp and the girl get up and follow immediately.

  Algeria went out, too. He saw Henry Topp drag the little drunken man into an alley and try to roll him. The drunk fought back. Algeria came over. As he did, Topp rose up defensively, like a predatory animal over its prey. But Algeria pitched in to help him, explaining that it took two men to mug a victim properly, one in back with the forearm pressing hard against the throat, the other in front going through the clothing. They had found almost nothing on the drunk that night, but they did form a partnership for the future.

  After that they tried all kinds of tricks to get money without working. Betsy and her husband had no morals whatsoever. They used her for shoplifting in supermarkets and department stores, for badger games worked out of seedy hotels. When they began to attract notice and suspicion, they sent her out alone onto the street to hustle. Finally, the Seattle police caught up with them and ran them out of town.

  They hitchhiked east. For expenses they lived off motorists. The ones they were not able to blackmail with their little game, they beat up and robbed. They followed a zigzag route to avoid police alerts. When they came to El Paso, Texas, they had acquired enough money to buy a cheap secondhand car.

  From El Paso they headed northeast through Arkansas, and there, along the vast stretches of cotton fields, the car broke down and had to be abandoned. Once more they began to hitchhike. They never really planned anything, Algeria explained. Everything they did was more or less haphazard and on the spur of the moment.

  Sergeant Constanza pointed to the revolver, which was properly tagged now and lay on the other end of the table, ready to be transported into Boston and the ballistics laboratory. “Where did this .32 revolver come from?” he asked.

  “It happened like this,” Algeria said. “We were picked up by a guy in Milan, Tennessee. The guy had a gun in his glove compartment. When we threw the pitch at him, he went for the gun. We beat him to it. Top worked him over good and we dumped him out. We dumped the car, too, just before we hit the border of Virginia. But first we punched his tires with an ice pick. The Dyer Act.”

  I asked, “What about the Dyer Act, Algie?”

  “You take a stolen car from one state to another and the Feds hit you with a felony charge. The Dyer Act. We knew that. That’s one thing we were smart about. And another part of the deal was to keep away from the heavy stuff. I mean, no gunplay and stuff. And we’d always listen to the radio and watch the papers to see if these guys were beefing to the cops. Most of the time we heard nothing. These guys took their lumps and clammed up. Also,” he continued, pride creeping into his voice, “I had a share of Betsy when I wanted her. That was part of the deal, too.”

  “Nice accommodating husband,” Sergeant Constanza said. He turned to me. “What do you call it in French, Ralph?”

  “Ménage à trois,” I said. “But it’s usually the other way around.”

  “Top didn’t care,” Algeria said, blinking his eyes. “Funny that way. It never bothered him to send his wife out on the street to hustle. There are guys like that. He’d say to her, ‘Go out and go to work.’ And she’d go.”

  “And she didn’t mind either?” I asked.

  “Naw, she didn’t mind at all.”

  “All right,” Constanza said, “the last you were telling us you were in the Commonwealth of Virginia.”

  “Oh, yes, not far from Washington,” Algeria said. “Well, you know three people can eat up dough fast. We never seemed to be able to lay away a few bucks. We figured we’d come north for the summer. Betsy could hit some of those rich sugar daddies at the New England resorts.”

  They had no special plans, Algeria went on to say. But they had learned in their hitchhiking that most of the married drivers were a soft touch for blackmail. They used Betsy as they had used her this morning, always trying to pick out married men, refusing rides from big truck drivers or those who looked as though they might be policemen.

  “We never made a real big hit, t
hough,” Algeria complained. “Nobody with a big, fat bankroll. Once in a while a guy would put up a fight. Top would get tough and start slugging. It all depended on the situation, how we handled it. But I kept warning Top I didn’t go for the rough stuff.”

  “Yes,” I said to him, “and we took a blackjack off you, didn’t we?”

  “Oh, that,” Algeria said disparagingly. “Well, you see, after Top took the gun off the guy in Tennessee, he started to go a little more for the heavy stuff. I needed something to hold up my end of the partnership. So I picked up the blackjack. I never even used it once, Officer.”

  Sergeant Constanza smiled at that, saying, “We’re going to send for your record in Washington state, Algie. How bad is it?”

  “Not bad, Sergeant. I fell only a few times.”

  “What for?” Constanza asked.

  “Small stuff. Breaking and entering. Stuff like that.”

  “And Top?”

  “I guess he’s got a record, too.”

  “What about his wife?”

  “She’s got a little record. Boosting, I think.”

  “Shoplifting?”

  “Yes, sir. She got sent up for it once.”

  Constanza leaned forward in his chair. “All right, Algie. Now tell us how you met Eugene Somers.”

  He blinked. “Who?”

  “Eugene Somers,” Constanza said carefully. “Remember? He picked you up exactly two weeks ago. Friday morning, June seventh, in Baycroft.”

  “I don’t remember the guy,” Algeria said, shaking his head slowly. “That Friday I don’t remember good at all. June seventh? I don’t even think we were around here yet.”

  “Sure, you remember,” Constanza said. “Think.”

  “I’ve been hitting the sauce off and on for a couple of weeks now,” Algeria said, “so my memory ain’t so good. But I’m pretty sure that Friday we were in jail in Providence. Vagrancy. We didn’t get out of there until Saturday morning, the eighth.”

  “Think again,” Constanza said.

  “I’ve been drinking a lot, Sergeant. It’s a little fuzzy.”

  “I don’t go for these convenient drinking bouts and sudden losses of memory, Algie. I don’t buy them at all. You’d better remember Eugene Somers in Baycroft.”