Chapter One
Blonde Sky-Bait
Joe Hilton was going to jump from the back of the truck and then roll into the ditch. He picked a curve on the highway, where the truck would have to slow down. It was a moonless night, dark and cloudy. The driver up front in his cab wouldn’t ever know that he’d smuggled a man out of the prison yards.
The driver had picked up a girl hitchhiker a few miles back, and he was making senseless cracks about how a pretty youngster like her was taking a chance when she thumbed a ride. He was telling her how lucky she was to draw a respectable family man like himself, for instance. He was telling her if she was tired, it was perfectly safe to lean against his shoulder, him being married and all.
Yeah, thought Joe. That driver’s about as safe as a C-note in a poker game, girlie. But Joe was glad the girl was up there. If his jump did make any noise, the driver wasn’t likely to notice. His eye wasn’t strictly on the rear vision mirror.
Luck seemed to be with him. There were no cars behind to spotlight the back of the truck. He leaned out on the curve, landed in a crouch on the soft shoulder, and rolled into the ditch.
Now he was fifty miles away from the cell that had been home for two years. Now he’d done the thing that had kept him awake planning, ever since his first night in that little apartment back there that had been leased for the next eighteen years, rent-free. He’d broken the lease at last. He’d crushed out.
He lay there for a few minutes, watching a whole sky full of clouds and stars, drinking it in — the bigness of it, the freedom of looking as long as he wanted. Back there, some punk was around to tell you what you could do and what you couldn’t do. That’s what had made it impossible to stick it out. He’d never been able to take orders from anybody and he’d never been able to take a pushing around, either.
He stood up, remembering his real reason for wanting to be free. Not to stare at the sky and breathe on his own time. He didn’t care how long he breathed, just so he got to Lois Baum.
Ten minutes with Lois was all he wanted. He wasn’t fooling himself that he could last any longer than that. Even with luck, he would have to play it quick and rough the way he had planned.
They’d have him marked as soon as he commandeered a car, stole the driver’s clothes and cash. He didn’t want to kill the driver, so there would be a report. But he hoped to make enough quick, daring moves to keep ten minutes ahead of the law.
He would ditch the first car, steal a second, ditch the second car, switch to a train, get off before his ticket reading, switch to a bus and double back, catch another bus and go on in. Once in the city, there would be no more stalling. He knew exactly where he was going and what he was going to do.
He had it all figured out, right down to the schedule of the last bus out of Belleville for St. Louis. At best, it would take him a week to reach Lois Baum.
It would take him a week to reach her, and only ten minutes, or less, to kill her.
After that, they could come and get him. He didn’t care. Everything would be all right with him the minute he gave her what she had coming. She wasn’t going to get away with it, that was all. She wasn’t going to get away with it!
The girl had soft blonde hair that was as natural as all the looks she was getting from the men who walked past her into the cocktail lounge.
She was dressed in cool green silk, the color of watermelon rind where the pink leaves off. You couldn’t tell at first whether the dress was buff, yellow, or green, but it was mostly green — and her eyes were the same pale, clear shade, almost translucent, wide and lovely under the dark lashes. Her brows were darkened a little, too, which set off her light hair, eyes, and skin.
Interest varied in the eyes of the men who saw her. Whatever they saw first, seemed to catch and hold the attention. Each man who passed was cheated out of the whole enticing picture by not being able to shift his gaze.
She sat stiffly, as unobtrusive as possible, in a heavy, uncomfortable chair of carved oak in the foyer of the May-fair. She looked at her watch often. She wasn’t used to waiting for people and, plainly, didn’t like it.
Finally, he came.
This man didn’t cheat himself. He started with the tip of her toe as he left the revolving door, and timed his vision so that he was looking directly into her eyes when he stood in front of her.
“Darling, I got here as soon as I could. What’s wrong, anyway? You sounded so upset on the phone. But never mind right now. Let’s crawl into dry martinis while you tell me.”
He maneuvered her deftly into the Hofbrau, and they found a table in the corner that was private enough if voices didn’t rise above the wired music.
He chattered away. He always chattered. Hank Irby, glib and gay, could talk anybody into anything. He always could, even though one sometimes had a faint suspicion that he might be talking strictly for his own advantage.
“Your call caught me in the middle of a board meeting. Can’t just walk out on those things, you know. Horrible bore, too. Curtis was spouting off as usual about the coming depression. Did you wait long, Lois?”
Their drinks arrived and the waiter went away.
“It seemed long. Hank, I didn’t want to talk about it over the phone, but he’s out!”
“Out?” Hank sampled his drink, connoisseur-fashion.
“Joe’s escaped. Haven’t you seen the papers?”
“So what, baby?” Hank lifted his glass again. “Don’t be silly. Drink up before the chill leaves the glass.”
“But Hank—”
“Now, now. He won’t get ten miles before the cops nab him. Joe isn’t smart enough to play a thing like that smoothly. You know how he is. He’ll snort around and be dramatic and daring, thinking his muscle makes up for his brains. He won’t even get close, honey. I can promise you that.”
She gathered enough confidence from Hank to drink the cocktail she needed so badly. But she wasn’t really convinced.
“He must have used brains to get out of prison, Hank. They think he hid in one of the trucks, but they’re not even sure which one. He certainly didn’t accomplish that much with just muscle.”
“Maybe not, but it took him two years to figure a way. That’s pretty slow thinking when you get right down to it.”
“I don’t know, Hank. It seems to me that you’ve taken about the same length of time to do something about Melissa.”
His eyes got soft and tender, as they always did when she mentioned it. He reached for her hand and curled her fingers with an absent touch of intimacy.
“Darling, that takes a different kind of figuring. You’ll never know how hard I’ve been working on it. Every minute of the day I’m dreaming of the time I can claim you openly. But I want to get the money in there, too. All for you, honey. Surely, you know I’m making all my plans in that direction!”
She returned the pressure of his hand. When his eyes looked like this, when he talked to her like this, she trusted and loved him. There was only one Hank Irby in the world and she wanted to hang on.
“I guess you mean it, Hank, and it’s all right, really. But I can’t help this funny feeling I have about Joe. If I weren’t alone in the apartment, I might not be so jittery about it.”
“Don’t worry, baby. Tomorrow you’ll read that the police hauled him back for the rest of his sentence, or shot him down trying.”
She puckered her brows with anxiety. She felt safe here with Hank, with other people around, but she wasn’t forgetting the panic she’d experienced just that morning, alone in her apartment.
She had known it was too soon to expect Joe, but her imagination had taken over.