SQUEEZE PLAY

by James McKimmey

chapter one

He awoke in the strange room and stared at the ceiling, puzzled. The ceiling was a cool pale green. He turned his head to the right. Dark green drapes with a modern yellow pattern that appeared to be abstract dragons were pulled across the broad window. Through the fabric, he could see bright sunlight. In front of the drapes was a chair made of white bleached wood and black iron and a fabric cushion that matched the drapes. On it, carelessly dropped, was his suit jacket. No, he thought, I’m not at home.

He rolled his head, looking to the left. There was a small night stand with a brass lamp which was turned on. Then there was a twin bed matching the one upon which he was lying; it had not been used. Beyond that were two more chairs, a writing table and a mirrored vanity, on the surface of which was a half-empty bottle of Gordon’s gin. An open doorway showed a small bath. He lifted his hands, which seemed peculiarly heavy, and rubbed his palms over his eyes. No, he thought, I’m not at home.

He sat up suddenly. A wave of dizziness and nausea went through him. He shook his head, then turned to look at the gin bottle on top of the vanity. All right, he thought, I must have gotten drunk. Then. . .

He remembered Elaine. He drew his palms over his eyes again, all at once remembering the cocktail lounge, the Martinis, checking out a room in the large expensive-looking office of this motel, getting Elaine from the bar and driving her around to this room, coming in, having another drink, and then. . .

After that it was blank. He turned his wrist, looking at his watch. 10:22. He stood up, surprised that he felt no crashing headache, only a sluggish kind of dizziness that persisted even after he’d gone into the bathroom and held cold water against his face with cupped hands.

He looked at his face in the mirror above the sink. His face was lean, like his tall frame, and a dark shadow of beard was showing now. Dark brown hair, thinning back from an originally prominent forehead, was damply rumpled. He saw nothing in that normal, reasonably handsome thirty-six-year-old face that gave him a clue about his lapse during the night, only an odd dilation of the pupils of his brown eyes.

Where, he wondered, was Elaine? Had she gotten up early and left? And what had happened with her, anyway? He thought back to the way she had looked, just before the blankness had started. That good body—and he couldn’t remember a thing.

He walked back into the room, light-headed, his movements seeming slow and detached, wondering now about Binny. Was she at home right now, worried because he’d at last reversed himself and pulled one of her own tricks? Well—there was one thing to do. Go home and find out.

He put on his jacket, wondering at the peculiar dizzy feeling that stubbornly stayed with him. He combed his hair, unable to do anything about the darkening of beard, and stepped outside, deciding to leave the liquor behind. He’d apparently had enough of that, although he could not remember drinking enough to black out over two or three times in his life.

*

His car was parked in the small adjoining car port. The keys, he saw, were in the ignition. He suddenly checked his wallet. Most of the money from his paycheck was there—enough missing to account for the drinks, the cost of the motel, perhaps ten or fifteen dollars over that. They hadn’t got to dinner, he remembered that.

He drove out of the car port and around the vastly sprawling collection of units hubbed by the large modern light gray central building which contained the office, a restaurant, a coffee shop, a cocktail lounge, a small liquor and novelty shop. The motel was near the edge of the bay, south of San Francisco.

He was distinctly remembering, now, registering in the office, feeling a growing excitement, knowing that Elaine was waiting for him. He’d registered as Mr. and Mrs. Carl Hatfield, the first name that came to mind. Then he’d driven her around to the unit, and. . .

What, he wondered, was the reason for his peculiar, stupor-like feeling?

A half mile from the motel, he turned onto the ramp that crossed the Bayshore Freeway and curled around to come down the highway, heading south, toward his home in Palo Alto. A bright sun was shining. The Saturday morning traffic on the six-lane highway was thin.

Absently he turned on the radio and lit a cigarette—it tasted oddly flavorless. He kept noticing how his mind seemed to fall wearily into a lapse, a comfortable nothingness.

Yet, he kept reminding himself, he’d just spent the night in a motel with a beautiful girl who was not his wife—though she had obviously left that motel hours before he had awakened. It was the first time since he’d married Binny that he had been untrue to her. And he did not seem to care.

Well, there was no use trying to rationalize revenge. But Binny had no right to expect anything else from him, not the way it had been going. And perhaps she would never find out about it. He remembered now that he’d called home late yesterday afternoon. She had not answered. Maybe she’d gotten drunk herself again, and would awaken only after he got home, never realizing he had spent the night out of the house.

But he hoped it wouldn’t be that way, because she deserved something harder than that. Coldly, he remembered how, the week before, she had come in late that night, not remembering who had taken her home, not remembering what he might have done to her on the way.

Yes, he’d hated her that night, there was no doubt of that. And if he’d slept with a secretary from his office last night, it was little enough compared to what she’d already done to him. . . .

He was traveling under the Dumbarton overpass at the edge of Palo Alto, when a news report interrupted the music on his radio and he heard his name: ". . . Jack Wade, an engineer with a San Mateo electronics firm, is being hunted by the police. The sheriff’s office at Lake Tahoe, on the Nevada side, reports that the brutally beaten body of Mrs. Wade was discovered by a deputy from his office at nine forty-five this morning. Police say that they feel there is a definite relationship between the murder of Mrs. Wade and the equally savage murder of famous San Francisco herb dealer, Charlie Wing, who was found by a Tahoe Boy Scout similarly beaten to death not far from his motel cabin near the lake. It was revealed by authorities from nearby casinos that Wing habitually carried large quantities of money on his person. Wing had been seen in the company of Mrs. Wade in one of the casinos earlier in the evening. . . ."

He blinked once, stunned, then looked in the rear-view mirror. He could see, coming up in the center lane, a police patrol car.

He turned off into East Palo Alto, feeling dazed. Binny dead? Murdered at Lake Tahoe? And how was she mixed up with someone called Charlie Wing? Now they were hunting him. . . .

He looked at the mileage on his speedometer, shaking his head slowly. He’d had the car lubricated Thursday and noted the mileage then. He’d driven home, then back to work in San Mateo, and finally to that motel with Elaine—yet the meter now announced that his car had traveled an additional four hundred and fifty miles since Thursday.

He looked in the mirror again. The patrol car had followed him off the freeway. He pressed his foot down on the accelerator and crossed the creek into Palo Alto proper. He took a corner hard and raced into a quiet residential section. He drove wildly, hearing a siren behind him now. His wife was dead. The police were after him.

Sweat broke out on his forehead, as he careened through the quiet neighborhood. Had he, for God’s sake, gone mad and killed her? Blanked out, so that now he could not even remember leaving that cabin until this morning?

He pulled ahead of the angry siren, then suddenly braked, rocking to a screeching stop. He jumped from the car and ran down toward the creek. He crashed through thick ferns, splashing through the shallow water, listening to the siren approaching. Then his mind went blank, and he was simply running. . . .

 

Copyright© 1962 James McKimmey

***

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