by Al Fray
Open country again, and the soft green of rolling hills. I kept a steady pace and made a careful survey of the cars swinging up from behind. The load wasn’t heavy and the rig wasn’t laboring, just breezing along at moderate truck speed, and then I picked up a car that wasn’t in any special hurry. For half a dozen miles he seemed to be in and out of my rearview mirror and I loosened the gun stuck into the seat near me.
A Lincoln Capri, from the grill glittering in the noon sun. Black and low and fast, but somehow he seemed to like the pace I was setting. I eased off and let the rig slow another five miles. He closed, then cut his speed and gave me back my lead, and when he did that I romped on the gas and forged ahead. He paced me once more and kept bouncing back into the glass. Whistling softly, I made a mental rundown of the spots between me and River City that would be likely places for a hijack job.
The underpass? I didn’t think so—it was a little too close to the end of the line and he wouldn’t want to risk having me slide in safely. But if he had some special place in mind he’d have waited for me rather than chase the rig from behind. Or would he? Not unless he was sure of the timing, sure that no other cars would be close enough to spoil his fun during those few minutes when he boarded me and another driver took over the wheel.
It was beginning to figure now. He had to stay with me until there was a stretch of clear road ahead and some more behind. He wanted to ride on my tail until a break in traffic came along, an open space between cars, enough to give him a moment or two of comparative seclusion. Traffic had thinned some; he shouldn’t have long to wait, I thought grimly. The highway was divided, a wide terrace between the two directions, and around the next bend he began to make the play.
I saw him suddenly gaining, the big black car slipping into the left lane for a pass. I rolled the window partly up and got a grip on the forty-five with my right hand, the fingers of my left tight on the wheel. The black car swung alongside and out of the corner of my eye I got one fleeting look at the driver—Fradkin—and then I riveted my gaze on the road ahead. Someone yelled, “Pull over,” and I risked another glance toward the car, and this time a heavy automatic pointed from the front seat and the business end of a sawed-off shotgun protruded from the rear window.
“Pull over, McCarthy!”
I jockeyed along another few seconds and tried to make some sensible plan to cover the next move. Fradkin couldn’t be sure I recognized him—if I fought it through to the end, forced the black car behind and kept it there, I still had an outside chance to square myself with Ward and Vehon.
I weighed the odds in a gunfight—two men with two hands each, two guns for sure and the driver almost certainly had another one. I hadn’t even test fired the forty-five and I had to drive a truck with one hand. The odds were all on the other side and I dropped my weapon, fell off to the right side of the cab, and brought the wheel to the left. Brakes squealed and there were voices cussing but there weren’t going to be any shots right away—not at me as long as several tons of semi hurtled along the path I’d given it. I straightened up in the seat and brought the rig under control, floored the gas, then glanced quickly in the rearview. He’d run the Lincoln off into the left or inside shoulder and he was just getting his wheels back on concrete now. I held the wheel steady and ran right down the center of the three lanes going in my direction.
He came on again and tried to slip up on the right side but I cut over and once again there was the screeching sound of tires biting into concrete as he braked to keep from feeling the impact of the semi’s van.
One more time, I thought grimly. Just try to take me one more time.
With a light load and perfect control, the big rig handled fine and this time I moved over to the right to give him a little more room. Staying way over on the inside lane, he began to gain and this time I didn’t close the hole. I let him come in and when I had it figured he was too close I eased over just a hair. He held it there, neither gaining nor dropping back, and he didn’t seem to notice a culvert coming up a hundred yards ahead. Or maybe he figured a simple cut across his bows again, but that wasn’t what I had in mind. We were balling the jack now, the big rig nudging seventy and the Lincoln bristling with firepower right outside my cab window. I kept one eye on that concrete culvert and when we were past the point of no return, I swung sharply left, then hard right.
I could feel the tail end swing out, then whip in again, the heavy duals skidding as she lurched sideways, and then I heard the scrape of metal as the rear of the van slammed against the Lincoln and bunted it to the left. There was the scatter of gravel, shouts, the momentary squeal of brakes in a hopeless attempt to slow the thundering car, and then the tearing impact as two tons of hurtling automobile piled into the unyielding concrete culvert rim. The black car buckled, half turned, and then began to roll.
Stop now? The law said so, but there wasn’t anything in the law to tell me whether or not I could collect on a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of fur if I lost this load. It looked like a time to take a chance on running in so I slowed down but kept going. The dust hadn’t settled over the skid area when the black car faded in my mirror. Pacing along steadily, I made River City and swung off the highway toward the department store with my fur coats. When I had the truck backed down against the loading dock and they began to take off the merchandise I stood by to help check, and when the van was empty I went to a phone.
“Police Department,” the voice said, after I’d dialed my number.
“I want to report an accident,” I said.
“Where? And who’s calling, please?”
“McCarthy. Warner McCarthy. And the wreck is on the highway.” I told him where and gave him a few of the details and then he cut in on me.
“Got that’n already. The state highway boys put it on the air a few minutes ago—they’re looking for the other car.”
“Not car, an eight-ton semi. I’ll be at Tyler Trucking in a few minutes and you can reach me there.”
“They’ll be reaching you all right. And they’ll have plenty of questions—that report said the Lincoln Capri you nudged into a culvert was carrying more armament than a light cruiser, McCarthy.”
“I know,” I said, and hung the receiver.
I didn’t break any speed laws getting back to the truck yard. There were a lot of angles to be weighed and I needed time to run them across the scales. A local job, of course, but where was the leak? Someone had known that those fur coats were coming into town—someone besides Tyler Trucking and the outfit that was supposed to receive them. Maybe Ward had a connection with the warehouse in the city. Big money invites hard company whether the dough is in green bills in the bank vault or in a truckload of fur, and hijacking isn’t anything new on the crime scene.
And from there I went to the situation in River City and some of the possibilities. It wasn’t the biggest town in the world but it was a good money town. There was plenty of wealth to attract some of the second-class mobsters spilling over from the city.
Or for first-class operators if the organization was small! It was a thought worth weighing.
And from there I went to McCarthy’s standing with Sam Ward and Vehon. Trouble could be waiting for me in that direction but I was in too deep now and I’d have to push through whatever was in store. I worked on that a little as the big rig rolled along slowly, and before I made the turn into Tyler’s I’d figured a way to ease myself out—maybe even bluff enough to swing things around to my side of the ledger.
“Something wrong, Mac?” Gail asked as she came toward the truck. There was a worried look in her eyes. “I thought you were going to give me a ring as soon as you unloaded the fur, then drive over to Carson’s Furniture Store for a load of—”
“Something wrong!” I said. “Take a look at this rig.” I went back to the left rear corner and pointed out the marks where steel had scraped steel and the paint was gone.
“An accident, Mac? A wreck?” Gail asked anxiously.
“A
wreck, yes, but it wasn’t an accident.” I nodded toward the office and followed her in, and when she had sat down at the desk I said, “The fur coats are delivered and signed off, but we have one other problem. Someone tried a hijack job. Luck was with me and I managed to break clear and roll the merchandise on into River City; but we may still be on the hook for hit-and-run.”
“But, Mac, I don’t understand—”
“So I’ll explain,” I said, and started over from the time I loaded the fur coats at the warehouse. When the phone rang and she reached for it, I caught her hand.
“Whoever it is will call again,” I said. “We’ve got work to do. First, who knew about the shipment and how valuable it was? Who besides you and the department store officials?”
“No one. No one in River City, I mean, except the department store, and they only knew the approximate date of delivery.”
Gail stopped as tires crunched in the driveway and a car rolled up behind the semi. The two men who got out were in the uniform of the state police and they took a quick turn around the rig, then stopped at the left rear corner of the van. I looked at Gail and followed her out to the truck.
“You McCarthy?” one of them asked. He was blond and young but he was cool and collected. I admitted being McCarthy.
“This the rig you were driving when you forced the Lincoln off the highway?”
“It is. But let’s be reasonable; the local police said that you found a carload of armament in that black wagon. This was strictly a heist job—what was I supposed to do, stop and patch up their wounds?”
“They didn’t need first aid, they needed a mortician.”
“All of them?”
“All three. And stop fighting us. You aren’t in any trouble yet; on the surface it looks like you’ve done pretty well, McCarthy. How about a rundown from your angle on how the thing happened.”
“Sure,” I said, and put the record on for one more playback. When I finished the two state boys had a second look at the corner of my truck and kicked a tire.
“The Lincoln is mostly junk now. Those concrete culverts are put there to stay and they don’t give much. From the looks of the small scars the truck has and the way you sideswiped the car, you were handling this big rig like a watchmaker putting in a mainspring, McCarthy, but there are still some angles to be considered. The local boys will be along in a minute and we’ll kick it around some more.”
Gail smiled and linked an arm through mine. “I’m glad you’re driving for me, Mac,” she whispered softly.
“Thanks,” I said. “Some days you play in luck and this time we hit it all down the line.” Which might have been a somewhat hasty remark because Domms rolled into the truck yard then and he looked a little disturbed.
“Damned outfit seems to be pretty good at getting involved in trouble,” Domms griped. “Now what the hell is this all about, McCarthy?”
“I’ve already told the state men,” I said.
“So now you tell me! And they can listen to see if you forget how the story goes.”
“Be my guest,” I said, and went through the thing once more. I started with when I first noticed the black car behind me and went all the way up to the cloud of dust over the wrecked car as I drove away, and when I finished Domms was striding back and forth in front of me, a cigar unlit between his teeth.
“Know any of the men in that Capri?” he barked.
“Hell no. Should I?”
“Maybe. Notice the driver?”
“No. But I noticed a couple of guns pointing my way. They sort of captured my attention, Captain.”
Domms grunted and turned to the state police. “You get the same story when he told it to you?” They nodded slowly and Domms paced again, then stopped and jerked a thumb toward his car.
“Get in, McCarthy,” he said heavily. “We’re going to spend a little time on this. I think you knew the guy at the wheel at least, maybe the others.”
“Who the hell was it?” I asked quickly, but Domms started toward his car.
And it developed into a damn long session. No sweat-box, no slapping around in a third degree, but he kept at me for more than four hours, his questions coming fast and repetitiously as he piled up mileage over his office floor.
“You admit knowing Fradkin. You admit playing pool with the man.”
“For the tenth time, yes,” I said wearily.
“But you didn’t see him in the car, McCarthy? You didn’t recognize him?”
“No. I’ve told you. I saw the guns and I was scared as hell and I did what anybody else would have done. That’s all there is to it.”
“And you didn’t have any idea at all that it was Fradkin in the back of that sedan?”
A switch. At the truck yard Domms had all but said Fradkin was the driver. “No idea at all,” I said. “And I wouldn’t recognize anyone in the car now. I was busy.”
“Suppose you had a deal. A deal for a phony hijack job and then you chickened out. Now let’s see where that might fit the picture. You—”
Domms went along spinning theories and trying to force the facts into place, but he came to no conclusion. He played back tape recordings and listened to my answers while I sat there sweating; but when it was well past dinner time he sat down and folded his thick hands on the desk. He wasn’t too bright but he was smelling a mouse, a strong hunch. Yet the pieces wouldn’t fall into place.
“All right, McCarthy, on your way. I’m still not sold but for now you look clean. When it goes to the grand jury you’ll be called but unless something new comes up—”
“I’ll be on tap. Just phone Tyler Trucking when you want me,” I said, walking toward his office door, and for most of the following week I worried over how it would go when I faced the hearing. And needlessly; the grand jury spent less than an hour on the case. The state men were there, and Captain Domms, and I watched them draw diagrams and skid marks and dotted lines for the paths of the two vehicles. But a cut down shotgun, a battered short-barreled revolver, and a shiny .38 automatic lay on the table. They’d been taken from the wrecked Lincoln and pretty well told the story.
Later that evening when I got home I took out the bottle of rum, squeezed part of a lime into a glass, and prepared a tonic for the inner man. It went down smooth. I had another, this time heavy on the rum, then scrounged the icebox and finally settled on fried eggs and bacon, toast, and a cup of instant coffee. The house was beginning to feel warm and homelike so I snapped on the sun lamp and read a while; but before long my mind wandered back to that strip of highway, the big Lincoln Capri speeding along beside me, and the grim grinding of metal as she tore into that concrete culvert.
I went to the kitchen and had a straight shot and it was good. And another, but halfway through I caught the perspective and poured the thing into the sink. There is a social value to drinking for a friendly warming group situation, but this was strictly the other kind. Hitting the bottle for release is a fast route to the skids and I couldn’t afford to start viewing that accident through the bottoms of too many glasses. I went back to the living room and busied myself with a chore that had been hanging fire for some time. The replies had come back on both of my letters to California. One was from a Father Thomas and I burned the letter but kept the envelope bearing the printed return address of the Catholic church in Brawley. Taking a plain piece of paper and using a large scrawling hand, I fixed a date on the upper right hand corner and then wrote myself a nice breezy letter but reasonably correct in grammar and devoid of any naughty words. The content was short but homey, complete with the mention of a few friends of mine the good father had seen around town lately. They’d mentioned me, I wrote in the letter, and then I asked myself when I was coming back west, signed the thing Father Thomas, folded it, and put it into the envelope bearing the Brawley postmark.
The second letter was from the Bank of America in Long Beach and suggested that I contact my local bank and, if the amount to be transferred was large, simply use a bank draft. I burned
that letter too, changed pens and wrote another and more personal letter running to the “Mac-you-no-good-loafer-how-the-hell-are-you” type of thing. I put in a few little tidbits such as “we solid white-collar boys at the bank shouldn’t really be having any truck with sowers of wild oats and the old man would spin his top if he knew I was squandering bank time on you, Mac, boy,” and I ended it with a crack about sticking the bank for postage too, signed it Al, and folded it into the envelope. Then I dropped the two phony missives on the night stand and crawled into bed for another go at a few winks. Sleep was slow to come but surprisingly enough, when I finally dropped off, I slept soundly.
Tuesday I expected the roof to fall in but for some reason I heard no word from either Ed Vehon or Sam Ward. Wednesday the same. I made my truck runs daily and sweated the time away. By Thursday I decided that it was just possible Fradkin had been in this on his own and there wouldn’t be any contact. When I hit Fogarty’s that same evening things got a bit quiet as I came through the door but the tension didn’t hold for long. Ken Miller wasn’t in the kelly game. Some of the boys put out a feeler or two about the wreck now four days past and I said how tough it was. We shed verbal tears over Fradkin and some of the boys allowed that they’d never known a better guy. Which was stretching the facts one hell of a way, considering that he’d been on the fringe of things for so long, but I didn’t bother to point that out to anyone. An hour later I racked my cue and went down the street and turned into the union hall. Ed Vehon sat at his desk and when he saw me he dropped the paper he’d been reading and his eyes narrowed.