Hit And Run
Why, suddenly, did lovely Lucille want so badly to learn to drive a car ?
Why was patrol officer O'Brien slain on a lonely beach road when he should have been on a highway some miles distant ?
Why were there bloodstains on the off-side wheel of Chester Scott's Cadillac when they should have been on the near-side ?
And the key question - how could a blackmailer know so much when he couldn't possibly have been on the scene of the 'accident' ?
Extract:
Heavy footed, slow and deliberate, an expression on his face that really put the fear of God into me. Aitken came into the room.
I was immediately aware that he didn’t limp and he was walking as always he walked, and yet a few days back he had fallen down the Plaza Grill steps and broken his leg.
The whole situation took on a nightmare aspect. It was Aitken, and yet it wasn’t Aitkin. The tight-set face with glittering eyes made me feel here was another man inside Aitken’s skin : a man I didn’t know and a man who scared me. Then the familiar voice said : ‘I seem to have given you a fright Scott.’
It was Aitken all right. That voice and that smile could belong to no one else.
He still looked impressive, with his big frame, his well-fitting clothes and his massive, whisky-red face, but he wasn’t impressive to me anymore.