1970 - There's a Hippie on the Highway

by James Hadley Chase

  Danny O’Brien was seventy-three years of age. His only extravagance was a harmless Sunday night orgy when he hired two girls to mime the sexual act while he watched, beer in hand and projected his mind back to the time when he had been the participant and not the spectator.

  Lepski found him at his workbench, a watchmaker’s glass in his eye, lovingly applying a coat of scarlet to the trappings of a cavalry officer, made perfectly in lead.

  Lepski kicked the door open and breezed in, his thin, tanned face set in a cop scowl, determined to stand no nonsense from this old coot and to rip his arm off if he had to.

  Danny looked up, then removed the watchmaker’s glass. He was frail looking, balding with a high dome of a forehead. His green eyes were misty and his smile kindly, but vacant. He looked harmless; a nice old man, slightly senile who could be trusted with children. Lepski knew otherwise. Behind the domed forehead was a needle-sharp, cunning brain that might just possibly be now losing some of its edge, but this Lepski doubted.

  ‘Mr. Lepski!’ Danny laid down his model soldier and smiled the smile of an old man who has been given an unexpected and expensive present. ‘How nice! How are you, Mr. Lepski, and how is Mrs. Lepski? Can I congratulate you yet on your promotion?’

  Lepski pulled up a straight-back chair and sat astride it.

  ‘Listen, Danny,’ he said in his cop voice, ‘cut the oil. Baldy Riccard was in town last Tuesday. He stayed for three days. I want to know what he was doing during those three days . . . so go ahead and tell me.’

  ‘Baldy Riccard?’ Danny sat back, his old eyes widening with surprise. He was here? Well!’ He shook his ageing head. ‘Mr. Lepski, I must confess I am a little hurt that he didn’t come to see me. After all, one time, we were good friends.’ He heaved a sigh that knocked down three of his model soldiers. ‘There it is. Ex-criminals don’t keep friends. They lead lonely lives. Of course a man with your contacts and with your ambitions, Mr. Lepski, couldn’t know nor appreciate what it means to be lonely.’

  Lepski smiled: an unpleasant smile of a cynical cop.

  ‘Danny, you may not guess it, but you’re heading for a load of trouble,’ he said. ‘You are going to sing about Baldy or else . . .’

  Danny was far too old a hand to react to anything that sounded like a bluff ‘You have nothing on me, Mr. Lepski. I told you I haven’t seen Baldy.’

  ‘I’m not deaf. Those two whores who come here every Sunday night and perform . . . I’m tossing them in the tank. When they are not wriggling about on your goddamn carpet, they are shoplifting. So they’ll go away for a couple of years, and I’ll tell them it was you who put the finger on them. How would you like that?’

  Danny blinked, telling Lepski from the blink he wouldn’t like it.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Lepski.’

  ‘You’re wasting my time. When I have those two bags in the tank, I’m coming after you. How would you like another five years in the cooler, Danny?’

  Danny flinched.

  ‘I’ve done nothing.’

  ‘Of course you haven’t, but suppose I found a couple of packets of the white stuff in this hovel? Do you imagine you could talk yourself out of that rap?’

  ‘You wouldn’t do a thing like that to an old man, Mr. Lepski.’

  There was now a whine in Danny’s voice.

  Lepski grinned evilly at him.

  You can bet your rotten old life that I would and will. Now, are you singing or do I get busy?’

  Danny knew when he was beaten. He sat back, his eyes defeated.

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  Lepski nodded approvingly.

  ‘That’s my fella. I knew you’d get smart. Baldy came to see you, didn’t he?’

  ‘If I tell you, Mr. Lepski, will you leave those two girls alone?’

  ‘Sure . . . why should I bother with them? I’ll leave you alone too, Danny. . . can’t be fairer than that, can I?’

  ‘Yes, he came here. First, he went to Solo, but Solo wouldn’t help him, so he came to me. He wanted to borrow five hundred dollars.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He said he wanted to hire a boat. I hadn’t five hundred dollars so he had to do without his boat.’

  ‘Why did he want a boat?’

  Danny hesitated, then seeing Lepski was getting impatient, he said, ‘He told me he had to get to Cuba.’

  Lepski stared at him.

  ‘Cuba? Why the hell didn’t he hijack a plane? Everyone is doing it now, and what the hell did he want to go to Cuba for?’

  ‘He was taking stuff with him. He’s a Castro fan.’

  ‘Stuff . . . what do you mean . . . stuff?’

  ‘I don’t know, but he had to have a boat so I guess it was something pretty big and heavy.’ Danny paused, then went on, ‘He was frightened, Mr. Lepski: really frightened. Just looking at him scared me.’

  ‘What do you mean . . . he’s a Castro fan?’

  ‘Didn’t you know? Baldy is a rabid Commie. He thinks Castro is the greatest man who ever lived.’

  Lepski snorted.

  ‘What was this job he pulled in Vero Beach, Danny?’

  ‘I don’t know. I heard things, but that means nothing. All I do know it was something big.’

  ‘What did you hear?’

  ‘Rumours. They said Baldy was onto the biggest deal of his life.’

  ‘Who said?’

  Danny waved his hands vaguely.

  ‘You know how it is, Mr. Lepski. You stand in a bar and you hear talk. You run into the small men and they talk.’

  ‘And they’re saying Baldy’s dead, aren’t they?’

  Danny nodded. ‘That’s right, but it doesn’t mean anything. He could be alive.’

  ‘No, I guess he’s dead,’ Lepski said firmly. ‘Who killed him, Danny?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know. I’m not even convinced he is dead.’

  Lepski believed him.

  ‘Baldy was a vain bastard,’ he said. He always covered his baldpate with a wig. That tells me he had an eye for the girls. Who is his present doll, Danny?’

  ‘I was never close enough to him to talk about his women, Mr. Lepski,’ Danny said, but by the way he blinked, Lepski knew he was lying.

  ‘I’ll ask that question once again, then those two whores of yours will be in the tank by this afternoon. Who was his girlfriend?’

  Danny licked his dry lips, then again made a little gesture of defeat.

  ‘I heard her name was Mai Langley.’

  ‘Who is she . . . where does she hang out?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  This time Lepski knew Danny was speaking the truth.

  ‘Gimme the telephone book.’

  Danny got up and walked over to his desk. He found a dog-eared telephone book and handed it to Lepski.

  It took Lepski only a few seconds to locate Mai Langley. Her address was 1556b Seaview Boulevard, Seacombe.

  ‘Okay, Danny. Keep your mouth shut, and if I were you, I’d cut out this Sunday night caper. It could get you a lapful of the Vice Squad.’

  Lepski left the apartment and ran down the stairs, taking two at the time.

  Danny waited for a moment, then he went silently to the door and leaned over the bannister rail, watching Lepski as he rushed down the stairs. He returned to his room, shut the door, then checked Mai Langley’s telephone number. He dialled the number, thinking it was only fair to give her an anonymous tip-off. The bell rang for some minutes before he decided she wasn’t in.

  * * *

  Captain of Police Frank Terrell, a big man with sandy hair, with white streaks in it and a jutting aggressive jaw, strode into the Detectives’ room and looked around.

  Beigler was talking on the telephone. Jacoby was hammering at his typewriter. Fred Hess, in charge of Homicide, short, fat and shrewd, was checking through a report he had just written.

  The three men looked up as Terrell closed the door.

  Beigler said, ‘The Chief’s her
e now. Yeah, I’ll tell him. He’ll be here for the next hour,’ and he hung up.

  As Terrell moved to his small office, he said, ‘Joe and Fred, come on in. Max, you take care of the desk. Where’s Lepski?’

  ‘Talking to Danny O’Brien,’ Beigler said, following Hess into Terrell’s office. ‘Should be here any time now.’

  Terrell sat down.

  ‘Charley bringing coffee?’

  Like Beigler, Terrell found serious thinking hard without coffee.

  ‘He’s coming,’ Beigler said as the door opened and Charley Tanner, the desk sergeant of the Charge room, came in with three cartons of coffee which he set on the desk.

  ‘Thanks, Charley,’ Terrell said, and when Tanner had left, he looked at Hess. ‘Well, Fred?’

  ‘It’s the car Baldy hired all right,’ Hess said. ‘Miami got the Hertz man from Vero Beach to identify it. The Lab boys are working on it now.’

  ‘Chief Franklin said he would phone a report any moment now,’ Beigler put in.

  Terrell nodded.

  ‘Lepski?’

  ‘He thought it might pay off to talk to O’Brien,’ Beigler said and grinned. ‘He’s bursting with ideas.’

  Terrell puffed at his pipe, frowning.

  ‘All this talk about Baldy pulling a big one,’ he said, looking at Hess. ‘Do you think it means anything?’

  ‘Yes . . . there’s too much talk for it not to. It’s my guess he pulled a hijack . . . that’s why there’s been no complaint.’

  Outside, they heard an excited voice bawl: ‘Is the Chief in?’

  ‘Lepski,’ Beigler said with a grin. He got up and opened the door. ‘Come on in Sherlock.’

  Lepski shoved by him and rushed up to Terrell’s desk.

  ‘Chief, I’m on to something hot!’ Concisely, he told the three listening men of his interview with Danny O’Brien, carefully omitting how he obtained his information, knowing his method would have been frowned on by Terrell. ‘So I did a quick think and came up with Cherchez le femme.’ He too had been slightly influenced by Jacoby’s efforts to better himself.

  ‘La femme, stupid,’ Hess said.

  ‘Who the hell cares?’ Lepski cut the air impatiently with his hand. ‘I knew Baldy had to have a piece of tail: that wig of his pointed to it. So I dug around and found her name and address. I went out there after her but she had scrammed and in a hurry. The old biddy who runs the apartment block told me she went off with Baldy on Thursday afternoon in her Volkswagen car.’

  Terrell absorbed this, then turning to Beigler, he said, ‘Let’s pick this woman up, Joe. We know her, don’t we?’

  ‘Sure. Mai Langley. One time taxi dancer. Three times convicted for possessing reefers. Now working as a hostess at the Spanish nightclub.’

  Lepski gaped at him,

  ‘How the hell did you know that?’

  ‘She’s well known as Baldy’s girl. I keep tabs on girls like her.’

  Beigler looked insufferably smug. ‘That’s why I’m a sergeant, Lepski.’

  The telephone hell rang stopping Lepski’s frustrated retort.

  Terrell scooped up the receiver.

  ‘Frank?’ Terrell recognised the voice of Chief of Police, Miami. ‘I thought I’d save you the run out. The lab report’s just come through.’

  Terrell listened for some minutes while the other three officers watched him.

  Then Terrell said, ‘Fine . . . thanks, Phil. I’ll get my boys moving. No, thanks . . . I can manage. Tell your boys from me they’ve done a good job and I appreciate it.’ He hung up. ‘That was Franklin. The Mustang is clean of prints. Someone has gone over it very carefully: not one print, but the Lab boys have identified the sand found in the tyre treads. It’s from Hetterling Cove: that out of the way bay outside Miami.’

  ‘I know it,’ Beigler said, getting to his feet. ‘It’s a good place for a burial.’

  ‘That’s right, Joe. So we get a dozen men with spades and we’ll take a look.’

  Beigler left the office, went to his desk and picked up the telephone receiver.

  ‘Fred, when the gang’s ready, you take charge,’ Terrell went on. He turned to Lepski. ‘I want Mai Langley. Find her car number and put out an alert for her.’

  Lepski went tearing out of the office to his desk.

  ‘That guy sure works at it,’ Hess said sourly.

  ‘When I eventually promote him,’ Terrell said, shaking his head, ‘he probably won’t work at all.’

  * * *

  By 17.00 that evening, Baldy Riccard’s tortured body had been lifted out of the sand dune.

  The group of policemen who had dug him out, sweat streaming off them from their labours in the sweltering sun, stood back, some with handkerchiefs to their noses while Dr. Lowis, the Medical Officer, with two Interns, had the unenviable task of examining the bloated, half-cooked body.

  By 22.00 Terrell was reading the M.O’s report while Beigler, a carton of coffee in his hand, sat opposite him and while Hess stared out of the dusty window at the ribbon of traffic moving along Main Street.

  Finally, Terrell sat back and laid down the report.

  Looks like you’re right, Fred,’ he said. ‘It smells of a hijack. His left foot was held in a fire until his heart gave out. He had three minor stab wounds, not enough to cause death, but he bled a lot. There are no bloodstains in the Mustang so he wasn’t carried to the Cove in the Mustang, but in some other vehicle.’ He paused to think, then went on, ‘Fred, check along Highway 1. See if you can find anyone who saw the Mustang. Check every bar, cafe, gasoline station . . . I don’t have to tell you . . . check.’

  Hess grunted and moved his short, heavily built body with surprising swiftness from the small office.

  Terrell leaned back in his chair and reached for his pipe.

  ‘Any ideas, Joe?’

  ‘A few.’ Beigler sipped some of the half-cold coffee. ‘This Commie angle . . . the Cuban angle . . . the fact Baldy wanted a boat. If you want to go to Cuba these days, it’s dead easy to hijack a plane . . . so why didn’t he do it? Danny says he had stuff with him . . . too heavy to take on a plane. So I’m asking myself what did he steal that was too big and too heavy to take on a plane and something Castro would want?’

  ‘You think he was working for Castro?’

  ‘It adds up, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Terrell looked worried. We’ll give it a couple more days, then if we don’t come up with something, we’ll have to hand it over to the C.I.A.’

  Beigler grimaced.

  ‘So let’s come up with something in a couple of days, Chief,’ he said.

  * * *

  The guidebook tells us that Vero Beach is a citrus shipping port, extending across Indian River to the open sea. It is also a small, busy town with streets bordered with coconut trees, date palms and flowering shrubs.

  Lepski arrived at the waterfront around 18.00. He had driven fast with his siren blasting, taking a delight in scaring the traffic the hell out of his way: Lepski still had something of the little boy in him.

  During his years as police officer, he had made it his business to develop contacts in every town within two hundred miles of Paradise City. His contact in Vero Beach was Do-Do Hammerstein who ran a waterfront restaurant called The Lobster & The Crab which was a meeting place for the big and little crooks, the drug pushers, and the hot boys who stopped off at Vero Beach to find a motorboat that would take them out of reach of the long arm of the F.B.I, and the C.I.A.

  The Lobster & The Crab was a shabby three-storey wooden building sandwiched between a Bottled Gas Suppliers and a Deep Sea Fishing Tackle Emporium. Even as Lepski approached it, he could smell lobsters grilling and the whiff of garlic that Do-Do used in all her sauces. His stomach rumbled with appreciation, but he knew he would have no time for a free meal.

  He shoved open the double swing doors and entered the big room, crowded with tables at which sat an assortment of Do-Do’s regular clients: flashily dressed men, most of them dar
k skinned, small with flat gangster eyes and their raucous women, most of them wearing stretch pants and minute bras which squeezed their soft breasts into gross balloons.

  There was an immediate hush as Lepski made his way to the bar. Four men, sitting near the entrance, abruptly got up and slid out into the fading sunshine. The rest, their faces sudden blank masks continued to pick at their lobsters. Even the women, compulsive talkers as they were, lowered their voices so the roaring sound that Lepski had first encountered as he had entered was like a bellowing transistor abruptly tinned down.

  Do-Do regarded him with a furious how-could-you-do-this-tome expression as Lepski came to rest at the bar. She was a big woman with an enormous, floppy bosom, dyed red hair and an uninteresting face that could have been carved out of hard pig fat. Only her eyes showed that behind the facade of fat and floppiness, she was as hard as teak and as unreliable as a greased pole.

  ‘Scotch,’ Lepski said, resting his elbows on the counter. ‘How are tricks, Do-Do? You look good enough to be stuffed and put in an oven.’

  Do-Do poured the drink.

  ‘Do you have to come in here?’ she asked, keeping her voice low. ‘Haven’t you enough brains to see you are ruining my business?’

  ‘I want to talk to you. I’ll go around the back in a moment. Be there.’

  Do-Do scowled at him and moved away.

  Lepski took a little time with his drink, then when he had finished it, he dropped a dollar on the counter and made for the door. As the door’s swung after him, the noise of voices started up again.

  Five minutes later, he was sitting in Do-Do’s private living room on the first floor nursing another Scotch while she stood by the window, looking down at the busy harbour where the sponge fishing boats were unloading.