1958 - Hit and Run

  Table of Contents

  chapter one

  I

  II

  chapter two

  I

  II

  chapter three

  I

  II

  chapter four

  I

  II

  chapter five

  I

  II

  chapter six

  I

  II

  chapter seven

  I

  II

  chapter eight

  I

  II

  chapter nine

  I

  II

  chapter ten

  I

  II

  chapter eleven

  I

  II

  chapter twelve

  chapter thirteen

  I

  II

  chapter fourteen

  I

  II

  Hit and Run

  James Hadley Chase

  1958

  chapter one

  I

  Roger Aitken was the kind of boss who never mixed his home life with his business life. It wasn’t until he fell down the Plaza Grill steps and broke his leg that I went to his home and I met his wife.

  It had never bothered me that he hadn’t ever invited me back to his house. To my thinking there is nothing worse than the Big Wheel who looks on his employees as part of his family. I have always regarded the man who invites his employees to his home for a monthly nightmare dinner where no one dares take a drink or raise his voice as a boss to be avoided like a plague.

  There was nothing like that about Roger Aitken. He was strictly the feudal type of boss. He picked the men and women who worked for him with searching care, paid them a quarter more than any other advertising agency, and if they didn’t make good in their first week, he’d put his foot under their tails and out they’d go. You weren’t given a second chance with Aitken: it was strictly deliver or out!

  Before coming to work for the International and Pacific Agency, the biggest and best agency on the coast and which was managed by Aitken, I had been working for a crummy little outfit that had one foot in the financial grave and a boss who was later hauled off to a home for incurable alcoholics. This was some two years ago. At the time I remember I was sitting at my desk wrestling with a scheme to promote a new kind of dishwasher that couldn’t even shift the gravy stains off a plate when I had a call from Roger Aitken’s secretary. She said Aitken wanted to talk to me on a personal matter and would I come over around six o’clock?

  I knew Aitken, of course, by reputation. I knew he ran the agency for a board of rich businessmen and had made a wonderful thing out of it. Naturally enough I wondered if he were going to offer me a job. Naturally enough I was pretty excited: a job with the International was the ambition of every ad man on the coast.

  At six, dead on the second, I was in his outer office, and at five past six, I was standing before his desk, getting the treatment from a pair of steely blue eyes that went through to the back of my head like the proverbial hot knife through the proverbial pat of butter.

  Aitken was a big man, just over six foot two, massively built, with a whisky complexion, a mouth like a gin trap and a high executive’s aggressive jaw. He was around fifty-seven and thick around the middle, but if it was fat, it was hard, solid fat. He looked the kind of man who kept himself in pretty good condition.

  He stared at me for maybe ten seconds before he got up and thrust out his hand with a knuckle-cracking grip.

  ‘You Chester Scott?’ he demanded in a voice you could hear in the outer office without having your ear to the keyhole.

  I don’t know who else he thought I could be since I had had to give my name to at least four minor officials before breaking into his office.

  I said I was Chester Scott.

  He opened a file on his desk and tapped the contents with a thick finger.

  ‘This your work?’

  The folder contained about two dozen layouts clipped from various newspapers and journals I had been working on over a period of four or five months.

  I said they were my work.

  He closed the folder and began to prowl around the room.

  ‘They’re not bad,’ he said. ‘I can use a man like you. What are they paying you?’

  I told him.

  He paused in his prowling to stare at me as if he wasn’t sure if he had heard aright.

  ‘Do you know you’re worth more?’

  I said I did.

  ‘Then why haven’t you done something about it?’

  I said I had been pretty busy recently and hadn’t had time to get around to it.

  ‘Work more important to you than money, huh?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that,’ I said. ‘It’s just that I’ve been pretty busy.’

  He stared at me some more, then went behind his desk and sat down.

  ‘I’ll give you a hundred a week more than you’re getting now: you can start Monday.’

  That’s how I came to work for the International.

  And now, two years after this meeting, I was second in charge and only responsible to Aitken himself. I was pulling down a salary that two years ago would have seemed just a pipe dream. I had a Cadillac convertible, a three-bedroom bungalow that faced the sea, a Filipino boy to take care of me, and a respectable balance in the bank.

  Don’t imagine I moved into this class by sitting on my seat and smoking cigarettes. When you go to work for Aitken, you go to work. I was at my desk at nine o’clock every morning, including Saturdays, and there were times when I didn’t get away until around midnight. If the International paid well, Aitken took good care he got his pound of flesh. I don’t think I have ever worked so hard, but I enjoyed it, and I had a good team working with me: every one of them was a handpicked Aitken man or woman, and that meant something. I was sitting right on top of the world. I looked set to go on sitting right on top of the world, but it didn’t work out that way.

  One hot July evening, the whole set-up suddenly exploded in my face. I was working late at the office. The time was just after nine o’clock. Only Pat Henessey, my secretary, and Joe Fellowes, my layout artist, were with me. The rest of the staff had gone home. We were working on a promotion scheme to put over a new toilet soap. It was a big job, with a TV hook-up and a two-million dollar allocation.

  Fellowes was showing me some pulls of the ad he intended to run in the weeklies: good stuff, and Pat and I were chewing the rag about it when the telephone bell on Pat’s desk came alive.

  She went over and lifted the receiver.

  Pat was a lovely looking girl: tall and long-legged with honey-colour hair, big blue eyes and a complexion that looked too good to be real, but was. She was around twenty-six and as sharp as a razor. She and I worked as a team. Without her to nudge my memory I would have been hard pressed to keep pace with the stuff Aitken kept piling into my lap.

  I didn’t pay any attention to what she was saying on the telephone. Joe and I were altering one of his layouts. I wasn’t too satisfied with the girl he was using as a model.

  ‘Look, Joe, if a girl had a bosom like this in real life,’ I said, ‘she’d get it caught in the first revolving door she tried to go through.’

  ‘That’s the idea,’ Joe said with his direct simplicity. ‘That’s exactly what I want to convey. I want the fellas, as soon as they see this ad, to ask themselves what a dame like this one does when she gets to a revolving door. It’s a psychological drawing.’

  I threw the layout at him, but that didn’t stop me from laughing, then Pat hung up and said in her quiet calm voice, ‘Mr. Aitken has broken his leg.’

  ‘Now if you had said h
e had broken his neck ...’ Joe began, then broke off to gape. ‘You kidding?’

  Pat looked at me.

  ‘That was Mr. Aitken’s housekeeper,’ she said. ‘Mr. Aitken slipped on the steps of the Plaza Grill. He has broken his leg.’

  ‘That’s just like R.A.,’ Joe said unfeelingly. ‘Trust him to break his leg somewhere high-toned. Did she say which leg?’

  ‘Will you shut up, Joe?’ I said. To Pat: ‘Where is he? In hospital?’

  ‘They took him home. He wants you. The housekeeper said for you to go right on over.’

  It was then I realized I didn’t even know where Aitken lived.

  ‘Where do I find him?’ I asked, getting to my feet.

  ‘He has a little shack out on Palm Boulevard,’ Joe said with a cynical smile. ‘A twenty-four bedroom job with a lounge big enough to serve as a bus garage; just a throw away: a weekend cabin.’

  I ignored him, looking at Pat.

  ‘The Gables, Palm Boulevard,’ she said briskly. ‘Third house up on the right.’

  She began to open drawers and files, taking out papers and dumping them in a folder.

  ‘What are you up to?’ I asked, staring at her.

  ‘You may need these. I can’t imagine R.A. wants to see you so you can hold his hand. There’s a board meeting tomorrow. You’ll have to handle it. He’ll want to see all the papers, and here they are,’ and she thrust the folder at me.

  ‘But he’s broken his leg! He won’t want to talk business.

  ‘He’ll be in pain. Maybe they’ll have given him a shot by now.’

  ‘I’d take them, Ches,’ Pat said seriously. ‘You could need them.’

  And as it turned out, she was right. I did need them.

  The Gables was a vast house standing in a two-acre garden with a view over the sea and the distant hills. I wouldn’t have said it had twenty-four bedrooms, but it had at least ten. It was a nice house: the kind of house I would have liked to have owned. The kind of house your friends would have to admire even if they secretly hated you.

  There was a fair-sized swimming pool to the left of the house and a four-car garage which housed R.A.’s Bentley, a Cadillac tourer, a Buick estate wagon and T.R.2 runabout.

  The garden, a mass of rose trees, begonias, petunias and such like, was floodlit. The swimming pool was floodlit too, and looked lonely as I drove up the sanded drive: it was the kind of pool that would only look its best when dressed with bikini-clad beauties.

  I was slightly stunned by this affluence. I knew R.A. was a Big Wheel, but I had no idea his earnings could run to a show this big and this lavish.

  I left my car, toiled up twenty marble steps that led to the front door and rang the bell.

  There was the usual short delay before the door opened and a tall, fat man wearing an English butler’s outfit raised white eyebrows at me. I learned later his name was Watkins, and he had been imported from England at a considerable cost.

  ‘I’m Chester Scott,’ I said. ‘Mr. Aitken is expecting me.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Will you step this way?’

  I followed him through a large hall, down some stairs and into a room R.A. obviously used as his workroom. There was a desk, a dictaphone, four lounging chairs, a radio and about two thousand books lining the walls.

  ‘How is he?’ I asked as Watkins turned on the lights and made ready to fold his tent and steal away into the distant spaces of the house.

  ‘As comfortable as can be expected, sir,’ he told me in a voice a mortician would have envied. ‘If you will wait a few minutes, I will tell him you have arrived.’

  He went away, and I took a turn around the room, staring at the book titles.

  After a while Watkins came back.

  ‘Mr. Aitken will see you now.’

  Clutching the bulky folder Pat had forced on to me, I followed him along a passage and into an elevator that hauled us up two storeys. We walked across a fair-sized landing to a door, Watkins rapped, turned the handle and stood aside.

  ‘Mr. Scott, sir.’

  Aitken was lying in a single divan type of bed. The room was large and one hundred per cent masculine. The drapes were drawn back from the big window that looked on to the moonlit sea.

  Aitken looked as he always looked, except it seemed odd to find him lying down instead of standing up. He had a cigar between his teeth, and there were papers strewn over the bedspread. A bedside lamp made a pool of light around him, the rest of the room was in shadows.

  ‘Come in, Scott,’ he said, and I could tell by the rasp in his voice that he was pretty testy. This is something, isn’t it? Pull up a chair. I’m going to make some fool pay for this! I’ve sent my attorney down to take a look at those steps: they’re a damn death trap. I’m going to sue the ears off them for this, but that doesn’t mend my leg.’

  I pulled up a chair near him and sat down. I started to express my sympathy, but he brushed that aside.

  ‘Save it,’ he said irritably. Talking about it won’t do any good. I’m going to be out of action for at least four weeks if I can believe that fool of a doctor. When you get to my age and weight a broken leg can be tricky. If I don’t watch out, I’ll be lame, and that’s one thing I’m not going to be. So I’ll have to stick here. There’s that board meeting tomorrow. You’ll have to handle it.’ He stared at me. ‘Think you can do it?’

  This was no time to be modest.

  ‘You tell me how you want it handled,’ I said, ‘and I’ll handle it.’

  ‘Got the papers with you?’

  That’s when I blessed Pat. I would have looked four kinds of a dumb cluck if I hadn’t listened to her. I took the papers from the folder and offered them to him.

  He looked at me for a long ten seconds, then his hard face creased into the resemblance of a smile.

  ‘You know, Scott,’ he said as he took the papers, ‘you’re a pretty smart fella. What made you bring these? What made you imagine I wouldn’t be laid low and unable to work?’

  ‘I couldn’t imagine you being laid low, Mr. Aitken,’ I said. ‘You’re a man who isn’t laid low easily.’

  ‘That’s a fact.’ I could see I had said absolutely the right thing. He put the papers down and reached forward to knock ash off his cigar into the ashtray on the bedside table.

  ‘Tell me something, Scott: have you got any money?’

  This unexpected question startled me, and for a moment I stared at him.

  ‘I have just over twenty thousand dollars,’ I said.

  It was his turn to look surprised.

  ‘Twenty thousand, eh? As much as that?’ Then he chuckled. This was the first time since I had known him I had ever seen him look jovial. ‘I guess I haven’t given you much time to spend your money, huh?’

  ‘It’s not that bad,’ I said. ‘Most of it came to me in a legacy.’

  ‘I’ll tell you why I asked,’ he said. ‘I’m getting tired of working for a bunch of eggheads. I’m planning to set up on my own in New York. For the next four weeks you’re going to run the International. I’ll tell you what to do, but you’ll have to do it, and there will be times when you will have to make a snap decision without consulting me. I don’t expect you to keep calling me up and asking me this and that. I’ll give you the broad policy to work on, but you will have to implement it. If you make a success of it, and when I get back, I’ll give you a chance every man in this racket would give his ears to have. I’ll make you my partner in New York if you are willing to put your money into the business. It’ll mean you’ll run the place up there while I keep die International going. That way both of us will make a lot of money, Scott. What do you think?’

  ‘Why, sure.’ I sat forward, my heart thumping. ‘You can count on me, Mr. Aitken.’

  ‘Okay, we’ll see. You run the International without a mistake and you’re in. Slip up and you’re out. Understand?’

  I hadn’t any time to think what this chance would mean, for we got right down then to the board meeting, but later, when I had
the time to think about it, I realized how big this chance could be. It could easily give me the opportunity to break into Aitken’s class, and sooner or later set up on my own. With a twenty-thousand dollar stake, with the opportunities New York can offer to a go-ahead advertising man and with Aitken’s backing, I really had a chance, as he had said, that any man in the racket would give his ears to have.

  I was with Aitken for two and a half hours: going through the board meeting minutes, and then on to policy matters that he would have had to tackle himself during the coming week. Pat had given me every paper we needed. She hadn’t missed out on one, and that made a big impression on Aitken. Finally, around eleven-thirty, a tall, thin woman in a black silk dress, who I afterwards learned was Mrs. Hepple, his housekeeper, came in and broke it up.

  ‘It’s time you had a little sleep now, Mr. Roger,’ she said with a I’m-standing-no-nonsense-from-you expression in her eyes. ‘Dr. Schulberg said you had to be asleep by eleven, and it’s gone half past.’

  I expected R.A. to tell her to go to hell, but he didn’t.

  ‘That damned quack,’ he grumbled, not looking at her as he pushed the collection of papers towards me. ‘Well, all right. Take this junk, will you, Scott?’

  As I put the papers in the folder, he went on: ‘This is what I’ll have to put up with for the next four weeks. Give me a call as soon as the board meeting is over. Watch out for Templeman. He’s the troublemaker. Come and see me tomorrow night. I want to know how you’re handling the Wasserman account. That and Beauty Soap have got to be watched every second or we’ll lose them.’

  I said I would take care of everything, hoped he would get a good sleep and eased myself out of the room.

  I crossed to the elevator, pushed the call button, but nothing happened. Someone who had used the elevator must have left the grille gate open, I decided, and I moved along the corridor to the stairs.

  Halfway down, I saw below me a landing with several doors opening on to it. One of the doors stood wide open, and a light came out and made a bright rectangular pattern on the green-and-white carpet.

  The carpet on the stairs was thick and muffled my footfalls. I guess that was why she hadn’t heard me coming down.