1970 - There's a Hippie on the Highway

by James Hadley Chase

‘You’re bluffing!’ he shouted, smashing his huge fists down on his desk. ‘I don’t believe Mitchell is Donahue! You’re lying!’

  ‘Washington says Mitchell died in 1967,’ Lepski said in a bored voice. ‘Maybe your barman reads the papers.’ He turned to one of the patrolmen. ‘Get the barman, Alec.’

  A few moments later, Joe came in, sweating, his eyes rolling.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Lepski asked.

  ‘Joe Small, boss.’

  ‘Okay, Joe, have you ever heard of Dave Donahue?’

  Joe gaped at him.

  ‘Have you or haven’t you?’ Lepski barked.

  ‘Ain’t he the guy who killed all those girls?’

  Lepski smiled, reached forward and patted Joe’s shoulder.

  ‘That’s right. You read about him in the papers. You remember he was a big blond guy, huh?’

  ‘Yeah boss. A fighter.’

  ‘That’s it. Okay, Joe, beat it.’

  When Joe had gone, Lepski stared at Solo who was now looking ten years older. His face was the colour of cold mutton fat.

  ‘Satisfied, Solo? You want to make up your mind. This guy does it slow, but they’ve been out there some time now. There’s still a chance if you hurry.’

  ‘I’ll tell you about it on the boat,’ Solo said huskily and got to his feet.

  ‘Okay,’ Lepski said, ‘Come on, boys, let’s go.’

  While the police launch raced towards Sheldon Island, Solo sat in the cabin and talked.

  ‘Mr. Carlos wanted to get a big consignment of cigars out of Cuba,’ he told the two detectives. ‘They were his property but there was this ban on Havana cigars - there’s big money in cigars, you understand: everyone wants them - so he planned to smuggle them in. He hired Baldy Riccard who was a Castro fan to fix the deal and gave him money to pay off Castro s boys and bring the cigars back. There was three hundred thousand dollars involved. Cortez who works for Mrs. Carlos, overheard Carlos and Baldy talking. He came to me because I have a boat. Now,

  I’m no Commie, Mr. Lepski, so I thought it would be in the National interest to hijack Baldy’s boat as it took off for Cuba. I was planning to hand the money over to the Customs authorities as soon as I got it.’

  ‘Yeah? I can imagine,’ Lepski said with his evil grin. ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Cortez and me intercepted Baldy’s boat off Sheldon. It was pretty dark and instead of stopping, Baldy tried to run for it. Cortez got kind of annoyed. He had a sub machine gun and there was some shooting.’ Solo looked hopefully at Beigler who was taking all this down in his notebook. ‘I didn’t want any shooting, you understand? I thought Baldy would heave to and there would be no unpleasantness. In the darkness he got away, but the boat was pretty hard hit, and after we had wasted a lot of time searching for it, we decided it was sunk and that was our bad luck.’ Solo licked his lips, hesitated, then went on, ‘A couple of months later, Baldy walks into the restaurant. Seeing him shook me because I thought he was drowned. He tells me he wants to hire my boat. I could tell by the way he talked he had no idea it was me who had tried to hijack him. Well, I wasn’t going to lend him my boat, but I told him he might get one at Vero Beach. As soon as he had gone, I called Cortez and told him to meet me at Vero Beach and Nina and I drove out there in my car and found Baldy. Cortez turned up in Mrs. Carlos’s car as his wasn’t running so good.’ Again Solo hesitated. ‘Well, Cortez played rough. He persuaded Baldy to tell us what happened to his boat.’

  ‘You mean Cortez stuck Baldy’s foot in a fire and kept it there?’

  Solo wiped his sweating face with the back of his hand.

  ‘That’s what he did. I want you to understand, Mr. Lepski, I didn’t like it.’

  ‘And I bet Baldy didn’t like it either.’

  ‘No, I guess he didn’t. In fact, Mr. Lepski, he had a heart attack or something. Anyway, he died on us.’ Solo looked hopefully at Lepski. ‘You understand I had no idea he would do a thing like that.’

  Lepski wagged his head.

  ‘Tough on you.’

  ‘That’s right, Mr. Lepski. It upsets me a lot. He was an old friend. It upset me.’

  ‘But you did persuade him to tell you what happened to the boat before he had a heart attack?’

  ‘Oh, sure. He told us that. When Cortez started blasting off with his machine gun, Baldy’s crew got killed and Baldy took the wheel. He headed for Sheldon. It was dark so we didn’t see him. Somehow he got through the Funnel and into the blue grotto. The tide was right. Once he was in the grotto, he decided to hole up there until we got tired of looking for him. But he didn’t know about the tide and when he got ready to leave, he found he was trapped. Well, he stayed there for three weeks until the food began to run out and then he got desperate. He put on a lifejacket and towing a rubber raft, he got swept through the tunnel and back to the mainland. He went to Carlos and told him what had happened. Carlos knew about the Funnel and knew the tide would be right on the 27th of this month. He told Baldy to get another boat and go to the Funnel on 27th and get the money off the other boat that was trapped. Well, when we knew Carlos was expecting to get the money by 27th we had to act fast. Right when we were wondering how to get into the grotto before the 27th, Randy Roache telephoned and told us about this guy Mitchell or whatever his name is. He said he was an Olympic swimmer. Nina figured a real top swimmer could get into the grotto and get the money out. If he was that good, he could help her through the tunnel so she could make sure he didn’t double-cross us. So we hit on the idea of planting Baldy’s body on this guy so we could have a hold on him if he didn’t cooperate. We borrowed a caravan, Nina used Baldy’s car and the plan went off without a hitch.’ Solo turned and looked anxiously at the island that was now in sight. ‘Can’t this goddamn boat go faster?’

  Beigler handed his notebook to Solo.

  ‘Initial each page and sign the last page, Solo,’ he said. We’re going as fast as we can.’

  Without even bothering to read what Beigler had written, Solo did as he was told.

  Lepski made a sign to one of the patrolmen who quietly drew his Billy and balanced it in his hand.

  ‘You can relax, Solo,’ Lepski said. ‘Harry Mitchell’s come back to life.’ He took the second Telex from his wallet and handed it to Solo.

  Solo read it, crumpled it in his great fist and glared with vicious fury at Lepski who grinned.

  ‘You hit me, Solo, so I hit you. Never hit a cop; it’s bad medicine.’

  With a roar of rage, Solo launched himself at Lepski but the club, wielded with scientific precision smashed down on his skull and he spread out on the floor of the cabin.

  * * *

  ‘Passenger? I don’t know what you mean,’ Nina said and backed away.

  ‘I had an idea either Solo or Cortez was in the locked cabin,’ Harry returned.

  ‘No one was in the cabin! We’re wasting time! Let’s get these boxes on deck!’

  Harry regarded her, then shrugged. He carried the boxes, one by one, out of the cabin and laid them in a row on the deck. Nina came up with the four lifejackets. In a few moments they had strapped the jackets around the boxes. Then Harry found a length of rope and roped the boxes together.

  He helped Nina adjust her aqualung, then adjusted his own.

  He shoved the boxes overboard. They landed with a splash in the water, the jackets giving them enough buoyancy to float. He looked at Nina who nodded and they both dived off the boat. Harry picked up the floating rope and began towing the four boxes towards the mouth of the tunnel.

  Nina swam beside him. They reached and entered the tunnel.

  The strong current swept them forward. Nina caught hold of one of the boxes and hung on as she was buffeted and bustled through the darkness.

  The first indication that warned Fernando Cortez that the operation had been completed was the sight of the four wooden boxes in life jackets as they floated out of the mouth of the tunnel. He was lying behind a rock on the platform where Harry had left h
is bag. He held the .22 target rifle in his fat, sweating hands, the butt dug hard into his shoulder. He levelled the rifle sight on the boxes, his finger taking in the slack of the trigger and he waited.

  He, Solo and Nina had agreed that as soon as Harry appeared from the tunnel, Cortez was to kill him. Harry would have served his purpose, and a rifle bullet was all that was necessary to put period to his usefulness. The plan was for Nina to swim the boxes to where Cortez was hiding, return to the boat and bring it around the island to the lagoon. Cortez would load the boxes onto the boat and they would return to the mainland. Cortez would receive his share, give Solo the value of his boat and sail for Yucatan: a long trip, but in Solo’s boat and at this tune of year, a safe one.

  Always suspicious of a double-cross, Solo had been uneasy about the plan. Suppose, he argued to Nina when Cortez had gone, Cortez took it into his head not to return to the mainland?

  Suppose he killed her as well as Harry and grabbed all the money? Nina had argued him out of this thinking. Cortez, she had told Solo, was in love with her. When Solo’s face turned dark with rage, she had assured him that if Cortez was the last man left alive she wouldn’t dream of marrying him. ‘Marry that fat, stupid pig?’ she had said and had laughed scornfully, but the fact that he was so madly in love with her assured her safety. She had, she told Solo, already hinted to Cortez that once the share out had been made, she would go with him to Yucatan, and Cortez was hopeful. Again she had laughed. ‘I’ll leave you to handle him, Papa, when he learns I won’t be going.’ So good was her acting that Solo was convinced. Her acting had been good because she was speaking half-truths. She was in love with Cortez, and they were planning to go on from Sheldon to Yucatan with the money. There was something about the fat, brutal Mexican that stirred Nina’s blood. The thought of escaping from Solo’s supervision, living with Cortez in Mexico City and spending three hundred thousand dollars was heady wine to Nina. What she didn’t know was that Cortez already had a fat, ugly wife and three fat, ugly children living in Taxco. Cortez had no intention of marrying Nina. He planned to live with her until the money began to run out and then he would quietly drop out of sight.

  As he squinted along the barrel of the rifle, Cortez’s eyebrows came together in a worried frown.

  He could see the four boxes floating just below him, but where was Mitchell? Then he remembered that Mitchell was wearing an aqualung. Cortez told himself Mitchell would come to the surface any moment now, and when he saw a head bob up out of the water some yards from the boxes, he quickly shifted his aim and squeezed the trigger. In the split second before the rifle fired, he realised it was Nina’s head he was aiming at and not Harry’s.

  He saw Nina half spring from the water and throw up her arms.

  He saw blood appearing on the mask covering her face, then he watched her drop limply on her back and remain floating, blood making a dark circle around her.

  Cortez remained motionless for a long minute, then he cursed loudly and vilely. Feverishly, he scanned the surface of the lagoon, looking for Harry, but couldn’t see him. He looked down at the floating boxes far out of his reach. He would have to get back to the boat and bring it round to the lagoon, he told himself.

  But where was that damned Mitchell?

  He got to his feet.

  ‘Hold it! Drop that gun!’

  He looked over his shoulder, his lips coming off his teeth in a savage snarl.

  Standing above him was Lepski, and slightly behind was Beigler. Both detectives had guns in their hands. Like a trapped animal, Cortez swung his rifle around, firing at the same time. Lepski’s bullet took him between his eyes and he reeled back and splashed into the sea.

  ‘That’s two to be fished out,’ Lepski said in disgust. ‘Now where’s Mitchell?’

  Watching all this from the far side of the lagoon, concealed in the heavy shadows, Harry decided it was time to go. He gently submerged and swam invisibly out of the lagoon and headed back to Solo’s boat.

  Beigler told the four patrolmen to strip off and bring the two bodies and the boxes to the rock side where they could be dragged out.

  While the patrolmen were undressing, Lepski continued to survey the surface of the lagoon.

  ‘Do you think he’s still in the grotto, Sarg?’ he asked.

  ‘Who is still in the grotto?’ Beigler asked.

  Lepski stared at him.

  ‘Mitchell for God’s sake!’

  ‘How would I know?’ Beigler said indifferently. ‘Instead of jumping around like you want a pee, suppose you get into the water and do some work.’

  Lepski reacted as if he had touched with a hot iron.

  ‘Who . . . me? Get in there! Mitchell may be getting away!’

  ‘You heard me!’ Beigler snarled. ‘Get in there!’

  Thirty minutes later, and only with great difficulty, they got the bodies of Nina and Cortez onto the rock platform. Finally, they began to get the boxes up.

  As Lepski was cursing and struggling with one of the boxes, he heard the sound of a boat engine starting up.

  ‘That’s Solo’s boat, Sarg,’ he bawled, and leaving the box, he swam to the side and heaved himself up onto the platform.

  ‘Mitchell’s getting away!’

  ‘Does that bother you?’ Beigler asked. ‘I don’t remember telling you to break off operations.’

  ‘But he’s getting away?’ Lepski cried excitedly.

  Beigler regarded him.

  ‘Is he? We don’t know he was ever here. We have only Solo’s word for it and he’s a known liar. We don’t even know for sure that Mitchell wasn’t killed in action.’

  Lepski began to say something but there was a look in Beigler’s eyes that stopped him.

  ‘I don’t get it, Sarg,’ he said uneasily.

  ‘Look at it this way, Tom. You and me were goddamn lucky not to have to serve in Vietnam,’ Beigler said. ‘My kid brother was killed out there. Any guy who did his three years in that mess deserves a break. He’s in the clear anyway. If we pull him in, he goes to jail, until the law decides he is in the clear. That would spoil his vacation.’ Beigler squinted at Lepski. ‘Do you want to spoil his vacation?’

  Lepski could no longer hear the drone of the boat’s engine.

  He grimaced, then shrugged.

  ‘I guess not,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t thought of it that way.’

  ‘That’s why you’ll never make a sergeant,’ Beigler said with smug satisfaction. ‘Suppose you get your ugly carcass back into the sea and get those boxes out!’

  * * *

  The setting sun was making long shadows as Harry Mitchell reached The Stop ’n Eat restaurant some fifteen miles north of Vero Beach, fronting highway 1. He had taken Solo’s boat back to the Dominico restaurant. He had gone to his cabin and collected his things. As he packed, he had heard Manuel snoring in the adjacent cabin. A silence hung over the restaurant buildings.

  The beach looked lonely and deserted. He paused for a last look around, then he had walked to Randy’s cabin, opened the door and looked into the empty room. He had nodded his satisfaction.

  So Randy had taken his advice . . . he had gone.

  Then he had started for the highway.

  He had walked all day, feeling like walking and making no attempt to stop any passing car. It was Sunday and the trucks were taking a rest. He wondered if there was a police alert out for him. Life had become too vivid, like looking through a high—powered telescope for him to care. He had seen Nina die and he had guessed that Cortez had made a mistake. He had seen Cortez die and that had given him a feeling of satisfaction. He had wanted some sun and sea air: this was what he had got: some vacation!

  He was ready for a meal when he reached the restaurant. The time was 19.15. He had been walking steadily all day and now he was tired.

  As he moved towards the entrance to the restaurant he saw, parked in the only occupied parking bay, a dusty blue Chevrolet.

  He climbed the steps, pushed open the door and
entered a brightly lit rectangular room with a bar and some forty unoccupied tables with two forlorn looking negro waiters hovering around them with the sad air of men with nothing to do.

  At the bar, a glass of whisky and ice in his hand, was a short, fat man with a red, good-natured face, a balding head, wearing a city suit that looked in need of pressing.

  As Harry reached the bar, the fat man looked at him, then nodded. His brown eyes went over Harry with the close stare of a man who likes to sum people up to decide the best angle with which to approach them.

  ‘Hi!’ the fat man said, smiling. ‘Dave Harkness. I’m breaking a rule . . . drinking on my own. Save me!’ His smile widened. ‘Let me buy you a drink.’

  ‘Harry Mitchell.’ Harry leaned on the bar. ‘Thanks: a beer, please.’

  Harkness signaled to the negro barman.

  ‘Looks like things are slack here,’ he said. ‘You eating?’

  ‘I aim to.’

  ‘May as well put the bibs on together then. That’s another thing I don’t like. . . eating alone.’

  ‘Sure.’

  The beer arrived and Harry drank. He sighed, lit a cigarette, not offering his pack as Harkness was smoking a cigar. He asked to see the menu. Harkness leaned forward and read it with him. They decided on the chicken dinner.

  ‘You’re just out of the Army?’ Harkness said.

  ‘Everyone seems to know that.’

  ‘Not so hard. You on vacation?’

  ‘It’s over. I’m heading for New York.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Harkness again regarded Harry thoughtfully. ‘I’m in wholesale fruit. Been in the game for twenty years.’

  They moved to a table and ordered beer. Harkness talked of this and that. He asked questions about Vietnam but when he saw Harry was bored with the topic, he switched to the racial problems and the new taxes.

  It wasn’t until the meal was over and they had paid their checks that Harkness said, ‘I’m going through to New York want to come along with, me?’

  Harry shook his head.

  ‘Thanks, but I plan to stop off at Yellow Acres. I want to revisit friends. I promised I’d call in on my way back.’