1963 - One Bright Summer Morning

by James Hadley Chase

  With his arm around her, he walked with her into the bedroom where Junior, in his cot, was kicking his fat legs and making his usual routine noises.

  “You stay right here. I won't be a couple of minutes.”

  “No!” Carrie gripped his arm. “Don't leave me, Vic! You mustn't leave me!”

  “But, darling . . .”

  “Please! Don't leave me!”

  He hesitated, then nodded.

  “Okay, okay, now don't get worked up.”

  He went over to the open window that looked out onto the staff cabin, some two hundred yards away. Leaning out, he shouted, “Di-Long! Hey! Di-Long!”

  Only silence greeted his shout. The small cabin with its tightly closed green shutters showed no sign of life.

  “Di-Long!!”

  Carrie was slipping into a pair of slacks and a lightweight sweater. Her movements were hurried and clumsy.

  He turned away from the window.

  “That guy sleeps like the dead,” he said. “Come on, Carrie. Let's go over and wake him. Bring Junior.”

  With Carrie carrying the baby, they walked along the path between the two squares of lawn, kept green by concealed sprinklers, over to the staff cabin.

  Vic knocked on the door. They waited, feeling the sun now hot on their backs. Junior, blinking in the sunshine, doubled his fat hand into a fist and attempted to push it into Carrie's eye, but she was used to this move and avoided the probing fist by a quick jerk of her head.

  “I'm going in,” Vic said impatiently. “You wait here.”

  He turned the door handle and the door yielded. He walked into the sitting room.

  “Di-Long!”

  There was no movement. A tap dripped steadily in the kitchen. There was no other sound.

  Vic hesitated, then he crossed the room and pushed open the door that led into the bedroom which gave off a faint acrid smell and was in darkness. He groped for the light switch, found it and turned it down.

  The small, neat room was empty. The single bed, against the far wall had been slept in. Vic could see the impression of Di-Long's head on the pillow. The single sheet had been thrown aside: the bottom sheet was slightly crumpled. He paused only long enough to satisfy himself that Di-Long wasn't there, then he went into the kitchen. After a quick look round, he joined Carrie.

  “He's gone!”

  Carrie visibly relaxed.

  “You mean he stole the guns . . . and Bruno? Do you think that's what happened?” she asked, holding Junior close to her.

  “Could be.” Vic was puzzled, but now he also was relaxing. This seemed to be the solution to the mystery. “He wasn't happy here. He adored Bruno. Yes . . . I guess that's what he did. He probably got a pal of his to fetch him on the motorcycle.”

  “But the guns?”

  “Yeah.” Vic ran his fingers through his hair and he frowned. After a moment's thought, he went on, “You never know with these Vietnamese. He may belong to some secret society who need guns. Looks as if he put the phone out of order to get a clear start.”

  “But how could he have taken all those guns on a motorcycle . . . and Bruno?” Carrie asked.

  “Maybe he's taken one of the cars. I'll go and see. Look, we'll drive down to Pitt City. We'll get the police up here. This is a job for them to handle.”

  Carrie nodded. Vic was relieved to see she no longer looked frightened.

  “I'll get things ready for Junior. You get the car.”

  Vic watched her walk quickly to the ranch house. He started towards the garage, then paused. A thought struck him. He went back to Di-Long's bedroom. The closet in which Di-Long kept his clothes and his possessions stood against the wall to the left of the bed. Vic opened the doors. He looked at the three neat suits and the white uniforms that Di-Long kept immaculate. On one of the shelves was the electric razor that Vic had given Di-Long last Christmas. By its side was a Kodak camera Vic had also given him when Vic had changed to a Leica: two of Di-Long's most treasured possessions.

  Vic stood staring at these two articles, feeling his heart beginning to thump. Di-Long would never have left these behind unless something extraordinary had happened to have forced him to do so . . . but what could have happened?

  Turning quickly, he walked with long strides to the garage and swung up the big door. The blue and white Cadillac and the Mercury estate wagon stood side by side. It was a relief to see them. He got into the Cadillac. The key was in the ignition lock and he turned it, then put his foot down on the gas pedal to start the engine. There was a whirring noise, but the engine didn't fire. He tried three times to start the car, but the engine refused to fire. He got out of the car and crossed over to the estate wagon and attempted to start that. Again he was greeted with the whirring noise, and again this engine refused to start.

  He got out of the estate wagon and wiped his sweating hands on the seat of his cotton pants. Then he opened the hood of the Cadillac. He had little knowledge of cars, but he saw at a glance that all the sparking plugs had been removed. A quick look at the estate wagon told the same story. Someone had removed the plugs from both cars and they were now immobile.

  Vic stood motionless in the big garage between the two useless cars. He felt a drop of cold sweat run down his face and he wiped it away with the back of his hand. If he had been alone, this situation would have been a challenge to him, but he kept thinking of Carrie and the baby and he felt frightened. What was going on? he asked himself. No Bruno, no Di-Long, no guns, no telephone and now no cars. He suddenly remembered that Carrie was alone with Junior in the ranch house. He left the garage and with long strides he ran across the lawn.

  He found Carrie in the bedroom, packing a small suitcase with baby things. She turned as he came into the bedroom and he paused. They looked at each other. He saw her stiffen. Her hand went to her mouth. He realized he must be looking pretty scared and he tried to control himself without much success.

  “What is it?” Carrie asked sharply.

  “This could be trouble,” he said. “The cars have been put out of action. We are marooned here. I don't know what it all means.”

  Carrie sat abruptly on the bed as if she no longer had any strength in her legs.

  “What's happened to the cars?”

  “Someone's taken the plugs. Di-Long left his camera and razor. I'm willing to bet he wouldn't have left them unless . . .” Vic stopped, frowning, then he sat on the bed beside Carrie. “I don't want to frighten you, but this could be serious. I don't know what it's all about, but someone has been here . . . someone who . . . “ He stopped short, realizing he was talking too much.

  Carrie stared at him, her face pale.

  “Then you don't think Di-Long stole the guns?”

  “Not now. He would never have left his camera or his razor if he had walked out on us. I just don't know what to think.”

  “Then what's happened to him? What's happened to Bruno?”

  “I don't know.”

  Carrie got abruptly to her feet.

  “Let's get out of here, Vic!” Her voice was a little shrill. “Now! I'm not staying here!”

  “We can't get out of here!” Vic said. “It's fifteen miles to the highway. The sun's getting hot. We can't walk all that way with Junior.”

  “I'm not staying here! We'll walk! Anything but staying here! You carry Junior. I'll bring his things. I'm not staying here a moment longer!”

  Vic stood up, hesitated, then shrugged.

  “It'll be a hell of a walk. Well, all right. Let's walk then. We should have something to drink. I'll fill a vacuum flask. In another hour the sun will be fierce.”

  “I don't care . . . hurry, Vic!”

  He went into the kitchen and filled a flask with ice-cold Coke. He put two packs of cigarettes in his shirt pockets. He went into his workroom and took his chequebook and three one-hundred dollar bills he always kept by him for an emergency. These he stuffed into his hip pocket, then he returned to the bedroom.

  “You'd better wear
your sun hat. I'll use an umbrella to shade Junior,” he said. “Take your jewels, Carrie. We’ll . . .”

  He broke off as Carrie gave a sudden suppressed scream.

  She was looking at his feet, all colour drained from her face.

  Vic followed her staring gaze down to his white sneakers.

  The right shoe, along the inner edge, was stained red . . . the red was unmistakable.

  Somewhere during his walk around the estate he had stepped into a puddle of blood.

  CHAPTER TWO

  To understand what had been happening at Wastelands, it is necessary to go back three months to the day on which Solly Lucas, a Los Angeles attorney, put an automatic pistol to his mouth and blew off the top of his balding head.

  Although, as a gangster's mouthpiece, Solly Lucas had a disreputable reputation, he was considered generally as a very smart cookie with a golden touch for the Stock Market. He was sixty-five years of age when he finished his life. For the past thirty years he had been the mouthpiece and investment fixer for one of the most notorious criminals since Al Capone: a man known as Big Jim Kramer.

  Kramer, now close on sixty years of age, had begun his criminal career as bodyguard to Roger Touhy. He had risen slowly and murderously to a gang boss, had been elected a member of Murder Incorporated and had eventually become the iron hand that ruled the Bakery and the

  Milk Unions: a man who finally amassed a fortune of six million dollars from the rackets and had been smart enough to have paid some of his income tax.

  Although the Federal Bureau of Investigation had known that Kramer was a major criminal, a vice-king and the brains behind some of the biggest bank robberies, they had never been able to pin a charge on him. The combination of Kramer's guile and Lucas's brilliant legal smoke screens had proved too much for them.

  When he had reached his fifty-fifth birthday, Kramer decided to pull out of the rackets. It is never easy for a gang boss to quit the rackets. Usually, the moment he appears to be chickening out, some hood arrives with a gun, and that is the end of the gang boss, but Kramer was no fool. He knew this. He had six million dollars salted away. He parted with two million to buy himself security and future peace. These two million dollars so greased his exit that he was one of the very few important gang bosses who was able to quit the rackets and retire in comfort, security and obscurity.

  With four million dollars and Lucas as his investment manager, Kramer had no fears for the future. He bought himself a luxury villa at Paradise City, not far from Los Angeles and settled down to enjoy the social life of retirement. While he had been a gang boss he had married a nightclub singer, Helene Dors, a slim, big-eyed blonde, older than she looked, who accepted Kramer for what he was, not because of his money nor for his power but because she was unfortunate enough to fall in love with him.

  But once away from his criminal activities and his associates, Kramer became a surprisingly genial man who played an excellent game of golf, a sound game of bridge, who could drink without making a nuisance of himself and who was accepted by Paradise City's society - who had no idea of his past activities - as a well-off, retired business man and was generally popular. Paradise City's society also took to Helene who, although a little overweight now and slightly faded, had still a gay, lyrical voice and could sit at a piano and improvise songs a little risqué, but never vulgar and caused fun on those evenings when the Country Club could get dull.

  There were times when Kramer was on his own, when Helene had gone to Los Angeles for a day's shopping, when rain cancelled a golf date, that he would hanker for the excitement of being a gang boss again. Although he hankered for his lost power, he did nothing about it. He was in the clear and that was something that seldom happened to a man with his criminal past. The F.B.I. had never caught up with him. Solly was turning his money over at an excellent yearly profit. He was, he kept reminding himself, well out of the rackets and a lucky guy.

  In spite of his determination to keep out of the rackets, Kramer spent some of his spare time planning a spectacular robbery, a kidnapping or a bank raid. These plans, blueprinted to the final details, helped to pass the time and were to him like chess problems. He could select the Chase National Bank in Los Angeles and conceive a plan where five men could walk into the bank and walk out again with a million dollars. On a wet evening, while Helene was working on her petit point he would work out a blueprint for the kidnapping of the daughter of a Texas billionaire with a ransom of several million dollars. These exercises in crime not only amused him, but kept his mind alert. He had no intention of putting them into practice. Never once did he confide in Helene what he was thinking about in those long hours when he sat silent, staring into the flickering fire. Had she known what was sometimes going through his mind, she would have been horrified.

  On the morning that Solly Lucas shot himself, Kramer had had one of his best rounds of golf. He and his partner entered the club bar, and they ordered double gins with a lime chaser.

  It was while Kramer was setting down his glass after a thirsty drink that the barman said, “There's a call for you Mr. Kramer, from L.A.”

  Kramer got to his feet, went over to the booth and shut himself in. He lifted the receiver, humming happily under his breath. The humming quickly ceased. The harsh, unsteady voice of Abe Jacobs, Solly Lucas's chief clerk, told him the news.

  “Shot himself?” Kramer repeated and he suddenly felt a vacuum forming inside him.

  He had known Solly for thirty years. He had known him to be a brilliant if crooked attorney with an uncanny instinct for making money, but he had also known him to be a fool regarding women, and an extravagant and reckless gambler. Lucas wouldn't have killed himself unless he had come to the end of his financial road. Kramer felt cold sweat break out on his forehead. He had a sudden sickening fear for his four million dollars.

  It took two weeks of concentrated ferreting to discover just why Solly had ended his life. It seemed that he had four important clients . . . Kramer being one of them. Each of these clients had trusted him with large sums of money.

  Lucas had used this money for his own purposes. He had been unlucky, or perhaps it was he was getting too old for a speculative gamble. He had thrown in more and more of his clients' money to hold off disaster. Land, building and stock speculations had finally sunk him into a bottomless pit. When the crash came he was in the hole for nine million dollars, including Kramer's four million. Lucas knew Kramer. This was something Kramer would never forgive. He saved Kramer the trouble of killing him; he killed himself.

  It took Kramer some time to accept the fact that Lucas, who had been his prop and his friend for the past thirty years, had betrayed him into poverty. Apart from five thousand dollars in his bank, his shares, his bonds and even the cash in his safe deposit had vanished with Lucas's death.

  He sat in Lucas's big, luxury office, facing Abe Jacobs, a tall, thin man with an egg-shaped head and close-set, shifty eyes.

  Jacobs said quietly, “There it is, Mr. Kramer. I'm sorry. I had no idea what he was doing. He never confided in me. You're not the only one. He's lost something close on nine million dollars in two years. I guess he must have been crazy.”

  Kramer got slowly to his feet. For the first time in his life, he felt old.

  “Keep me out of this Abe,” he said. “I haven't lost a dime . . . hear me? If the Press get on to me, I'll get on to you!”

  He went out into the sunlit street and got into his car.

  He sat for some minutes, staring blankly through the windscreen, seeing nothing but his bleak, dollarless future. Should he tell Helene? He decided he wouldn't tell her, anyway for the time being. But what was he going to do? How was he now going to live? He thought of the new Cadillac he had ordered. There was this mink stole he had promised Helene for her birthday. He had booked a suite on a luxury liner for a trip to the Far East: not paid for yet, but Helene was wildly excited and could talk of little else. He had several commitments that involved a large sum of money. The pal
try five thousand dollars in his bank would be swallowed up within a week if he tried to meet these commitments.

  He lit a cigar, started the car engine and drove slowly back to Paradise City. During the drive, his mind was active. Something had to be done, and done fast. Kramer hadn't been known as a dangerous criminal for nothing. Okay, he told himself, savagely chewing on his cigar, he had been financially wiped out. Well, he wasn't too old to start again, but how? That was the question . . . how? To make four million dollars when you are sixty years old wanted some doing . . . an impossible task . . . unless . . .

  His slate grey eyes narrowed. His heavy sunburned face with its square jaw, lipless mouth and long thick nose set in a hard, expressionless mask while his brain poked and probed for a way out of this financial hole. He arrived back at the villa to find Helene preparing to go out. She looked anxiously at him.

  “Did you find out why he did it?” she asked as Kramer came heavily into the lounge.

  “He got caught short,” Kramer said curtly. “He was a little too smart . . . like the rest of them. Look, baby, run along. I've things to think about.”

  “You mean he went bust?” Helene stared: her green-blue eyes horrified. She had always regarded Solly Lucas as a kind of financial wizard. It was unbelievable to her that Solly of all people could lose his money.

  Kramer grinned mirthlessly.

  “That's about it. He went bust all right.”

  “Why didn't he come to us? We could have helped him,” Helene said, wringing her hands. “Poor Solly! Why didn't he come to us?”

  “Are you going out?” Kramer said, his face darkening. “I've things to do.”

  “I thought I'd drive down town . . . the mink stole. The girl wanted me to approve the skins.”

  Kramer hesitated for a brief moment. This wasn't the time to buy a mink stole, he told himself, but he had promised it to Helene. There would still be time to cancel the order if things got really rugged. He patted her arm.

  “Go ahead. I'll be seeing you,” and he walked into his study: a big room with books, a desk, three lounging chairs and a view of the rose garden.