Manhunt. Volume 2, Number 10, December, 1954

The next day was Thursday. At noon I phoned City Hospital and learned John Lischer’s condition was charted as unchanged. Two hours later the colored maid Alice again let me into the foyer of the Powers home.

This time, instead of making me wait while she checked with her mistress, she merely said, “Mrs. Powers is expecting you, sir,” walked off and let me find my own way to the sun porch.

Thick carpeting in the big living room and dining room muffled my footsteps so that Mrs. Powers couldn’t hear me coming. I stopped at the open door of the sun porch.

Perhaps Mrs. Powers was expecting me, but apparently she had also expected the maid at least to announce my arrival, because she wasn’t exactly dressed for company. As yesterday, she was stretched out in one of the deck chairs with sun flooding her body. Her eyes were closed, though she didn’t seem to be asleep, and she wore nothing but a bra and a pair of yellow shorts as brief as the red ones she had worn the previous day.

A man can stand only so much temptation. When she looked up at me with no expression whatever on her face, I dropped a hand on each of her smooth shoulders, pulled her against my chest and kissed her.

She made no resistance, but she made no response either. She just stood there, her lips soft but unmoving, and her eyes wide open. After a moment I pushed her away.

“Was your mother frightened by an ice cube?” I growled at her.

“Maybe you’re just not the man to melt the ice, Mr. Calhoun.”

Turning, she padded across the enclosed porch on bare feet to a small table. A brightly-colored straw bag lay on the table, and she removed a banded sheaf of currency from it.

“Your fee,” she said, returning and handing me the money. “One hundred fifties.”

“How about the settlement?”

“We don’t know what that’s going to amount to, do we?” she said. “Harry wants to see the agreements releasing me from further claims in writing before he pays any more money. When you bring me those, I’ll see that you get whatever money the agreements call for.”

“Harry is smarter than I thought he was,” I remarked.

I riffled through the bills enough to make sure they were all fifties, then stuffed them in a pocket without counting them. “I’ll pay my personal expenses and the car repairs out of this, and you can pay me back when it’s all over.”

Without comment she returned to her deck chair.

“I’ll try to have all three agreements drawn up by tomorrow,” I said. “Is it all right if I take them directly to Cushman for approval instead of bringing them here?”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I’d like to get that part of it settled before I take off with the car. So I won’t be in quite so much of a jam in case I get picked up driving it. By the time I deliver the agreements to you, you relay them on to Cushman and I call to get them back again, it will already be Monday.”

After reflecting she said, “I suppose that will be all right. I’ll phone Harry to expect you sometime tomorrow.”

“I’ll pick up the car about eight thirty Monday night. Leave the garage unlocked and the keys in the car.”

“Hadn’t I better phone you first?” she asked. “Suppose Lawrence changed his mind at the last minute and didn’t go?”

“Yeah,” I said after a moment’s thought. “Maybe you better.” I gave her my home number.

5

My plan was to contact the injured John Lischer before I got in touch with either of the other two men, as there would be no point in trying to settle with the others at all if Lischer refused to co-operate. But before even doing that, I decided it would be smart to find out just how much of an interest the police were taking in the case.

In St. Louis the Homicide Squad investigates all hit-and-runs in which there’s personal injury, even if the injury isn’t serious. This procedure is based on the sound theory that if unexpected complications happen to develop and the accident victim dies, Homicide has been on the case from the beginning and doesn’t have to pick up a cold trail.

So I dropped in on Lieutenant Ben Simmons, head of the St. Louis Homicide Squad.

I found him alone in Room 405, morosely going over a stack of case records. Ben Simmons is a big man, nearly as big as I am, with an air of restrained energy about him. He hates desk work, which makes up a good part of his job, and usually’s glad of any excuse to postpone it. While we’re friendly enough, we’ve never been intimate pals, but because my arrival gave him an excuse to push his case records aside, he looked up at me almost with relief.

“Hi, Barney,” he said. “Pull up a cigarette and sit down. I was just getting ready to take a break.”

Sliding a chair over to one side of his desk, I produced a pack, offered him a cigarette and flipped another in my own mouth. He furnished the fire.

Simmons leaned back in his chair and blew an appreciative shaft of smoke across the desk. “If you came in to report a corpse, walk right out again. I’m up to my neck now.”