1973 - Have a Change of Scene

by James Hadley Chase

  I walked across the dreary lobby into the even more dreary breakfast room. I drank a cup of bad coffee, smoked and read the local rag. The picture of the seven moronic looking youths, wet-eyed and mourning their vanished Hondas, gave me a feeling of intense satisfaction.

  Around 10.00 I left the hotel and walked to the only florist in the town. I bought a bunch of red roses, then walked to the city hospital. On the way, I met people who smiled at me and I smiled back.

  Eventually, after a long wait, I arrived at Jenny’s bedside. She was looking pale and her long hair was done in plaits and lay either side of her shoulders.

  A nurse fussed around with a vase for the flowers and then went away. While she was fussing I looked down at Jenny, feeling ten feet tall. She wasn’t to know that I had evened the score. I had not only fixed Spooky but I had now dismounted his seven moronic buddies: dismounting them, destroying their Hondas was, to them, having their genitals cut off.

  ‘Hi, Jenny, how goes it?’ I asked.

  She smiled ruefully.

  ‘I didn’t expect to see you. After the way I talked to you I thought we were through.’

  I pulled up a chair and sat down.

  ‘You don’t get rid of me that easily. Forget it. How do you feel?’

  ‘I can’t forget it. I’m sorry I said you didn’t know kindness. I was angry, and I guess some women, when they are angry, say things they don’t always mean. Thank you for the roses they’re lovely.’

  I wondered what she would think when she heard about the seven destroyed Hondas.

  ‘Forget it,’ I said. ‘You haven’t told me how you feel.’

  She made a little grimace.

  ‘Oh, all right. The doctor says I’ll be around again in three or four weeks.’

  ‘They fixed that trip wire for me. I’m sorry you had to walk into it.’

  There was a long pause as we looked at each other.

  ‘Larry if you feel you can, you could be helpful,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to worry about the office: that’s been taken care of. The City Hall has sent a replacement, but there is a special case would you handle it for me?’

  A special case.

  I should have told her I was through with this welfare racket. I should have told her the racket was strictly for suckers, but my destiny nudged me.

  ‘Sure. What is it?’

  ‘Tomorrow, at eleven o’clock, a woman is being released from prison. I’ve been visiting her. I made her a promise.’ Jenny paused to look at me. ‘I hope you will understand, Larry, that to people in prison, a promise means a lot. I promised her I would meet her when she came out and I would drive her home. She has been in prison for four years. This will be her first experience of liberty, and I just don’t want to let her down. If I’m not there, if nobody is there, it could undo all the work I’ve done on her so would you meet her, tell her what’s happened to me and why I couldn’t keep my promise, be nice to her and take her to her home?’

  Jesus! I thought, how can anyone be so simple minded! A woman who has been locked up in a tough prison for four years just had to be tougher than steel. Like all the other women who scrounged on Jenny, this woman was taking her for a ride, but because it was due to me that Jenny had a broken ankle, a broken wrist and a fractured collarbone, I decided I would go along with her.

  ‘That’s no problem, Jenny. Of course I’ll be there.’

  I got her warm, friendly smile.

  ‘Thank you, Larry you’ll be doing a real kindness.’

  ‘So how do I know her?’

  ‘She will be the only one released at eleven o’clock. She has red hair.’

  ‘That makes it easy. Why is she in prison or shouldn’t I ask?’

  ‘No, you shouldn’t ask. It doesn’t matter, does it? She’s served her sentence.’

  ‘Yes. So where do I take her?’

  ‘She has a place off Highway 3. Her brother lives there. She’ll give you directions.’

  The nurse came fussing in and said Jenny must rest. She was probably right. Jenny looked drained out.

  ‘Don’t worry about anything.’ I got to my feet. ‘I’ll be there at eleven o’clock. You haven’t told me her name.’

  ‘Rhea Morgan.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon and tell you how it went.’

  The nurse shooed me out.

  As I walked away from the hospital, I realised I had most of the day ahead of me with nothing to do.

  Although I didn’t know it then, by tomorrow at eleven o’clock, when I met Rhea Morgan, the scene would change.

  * * *

  At 11.04 the grille guarding the entrance to the Women’s House of Correction swung open and Rhea Morgan walked into the pale sunshine that struggled with the smog and the cement dust.

  I had been sitting in the Buick which I had had fixed, for some twenty minutes and seeing her, I nicked away my cigarette, got out of the car and went over to her.

  It is difficult to give a description of this woman except to say she had thick hair, the colour of a ripe chestnut and she was tall, slim and dressed in a shabby black dustcoat, dark blue slacks and her shoes were dusty and scuffed. There are beautiful women, pretty women and attractive women, but Rhea Morgan didn’t fall into any of these categories. She was strictly Rhea Morgan. She had good features: a good figure, long legs and square shoulders. Her extraordinary deep green eyes made an impact on me.

  They were big eyes, and they regarded the world with suspicion, cynical amusement blatant sexuality.

  This was a woman who had done everything. As we regarded each other, I had a feeling she was years older in experience than I was.

  ‘I’m Larry Carr,’ I said. ‘Jenny is in hospital. She’s had an accident. She asked me to fill in for her.’

  She regarded me. Her eyes took off my clothes and studied my naked body. This was something I had never experienced before. I reacted to her slow examination as any man would react.

  ‘Okay.’ She looked at the Buick. ‘Let’s get out of here. Give me a cigarette.’

  She had a low, husky voice as deadpan as her green eyes.

  As I offered my pack of cigarettes, I said, ‘Don’t you want to know how badly hurt Jenny is?’

  ‘Give me a light.’

  Anger surged up in me as I lit her cigarette.

  ‘Did you hear what I said?’

  She dragged smoke down into her lungs and expelled it, letting it drift down her thin nostrils and out of her hard mouth.

  ‘Is she?’

  The indifference in her voice told me as nothing else could tell me what a sucker Jenny was.

  ‘A broken ankle, a broken wrist and a fractured collarbone,’ I said.

  She took another drag at the cigarette.

  ‘Do we have to stick around here? I want to go home. That’s your job, isn’t it to take me home?’

  She moved around me and walked to the Buick, opened the offside door, slid in and slammed the door shut.

  Cold rage gripped me. I jerked open the car door.

  ‘Come on out, you bitch!’ I yelled at her. ‘You can walk! I’m not a sucker like Jenny! Come on out, or I’ll drag you out!’

  She took another drag at the cigarette as she eyed me.

  ‘I didn’t think you were. Don’t get your bowels in an uproar. I pay off. Take me home and I’ll pay the fare.’

  We looked at each other. Then this sexual urge I had had the previous evening took hold of me. It was as much as I could do to restrain the urge to drag her out of the car and lay her on the dirty, cement-dusty road.

  The emerald eyes were now pools of promise.

  I slammed the door shut, walked around the car and got in under the steering wheel.

  I drove fast down to Highway 3.

  While I waited to edge the car into the fast traffic at the intersection, she said, ‘How come you got mixed up with that little dope? You seem to talk my language.’

  ‘Just keep your mouth shut. The more I hear from you th
e less I like you.’

  She laughed.

  ‘Man! You really are my thing!’

  She dropped questing fingers on my lap. I threw her hand off.

  ‘Shut up and stay still or you’ll walk,’ I snarled at her.

  ‘Okay. Give me another cigarette.’

  I flicked my pack at her and started along the highway. Five minutes of fast driving brought us past the Plaza restaurant.

  ‘So that still exists,’ she said.

  I suddenly realised this woman had been locked away for four years. This thought gave me a jolt. I eased up on the gas pedal.

  ‘Where do I take you?’ I asked, not looking at her.

  ‘A mile ahead and the first sign post to your left.’

  Following her directions, a mile ahead, I swung the car off the highway and on to a dirt road.

  I glanced at her from time to time. She sat away from me, smoking, staring through the windshield: in profile, her face looked as if it had been cut out of marble: as cold and as hard.

  I thought of what she had said: I’ll pay for my fare. Did she mean what I thought she meant? My desire for sex sent wave after wave of hot blood through me. I couldn’t remember ever having this violent feeling before and it shook me.

  ‘How much further?’ I asked huskily.

  ‘Turn left at the end of the road and there we are,’ she said and flicked the butt of her cigarette out of the open window.

  It was another mile up the road, then I turned left. A narrow lane faced me and I slowed the Buick.

  Ahead of me I could see a clapboard bungalow that looked lost, broken and sordid.

  ‘Is this your home?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  I pulled up and regarded the building. To me, there could be no worse place in which to live. Tangled weeds, some of them five feet high surrounded the bungalow. The fencing had gone, smothered in weeds; several oil drums, empty food cans and bits of paper lay scattered around the approach to the bungalow.

  ‘Come on!’ she said impatiently. ‘What are you gaping at?’

  ‘Is this really your home?’

  She lit another cigarette.

  ‘My stupid punk of a father lived here. This is all he left us,’ she said. ‘Why should you care? If you don’t want to go further, I can walk the rest of the way.’

  ‘Us? Who is us?’

  ‘My brother and me.’ She opened the car door and slid out. ‘So long, Mr. Do-gooder. Thanks for the ride,’ and she started over the rough, debris strewn ground with long, quick strides.

  I waited until she had reached the front door, then set the car in motion, pulled up when the road petered out and leaving the car, walked up to the bungalow.

  The front door stood open. I looked into the tiny lobby. A door to my left stood open.

  I heard a man say, ‘Jesus! So you’re back!’

  A wave of cold, bitter frustration ran through me. I’ll pay my fare, had been a con.

  I moved forward, and Rhea, hearing me, turned.

  We stared at each other.

  ‘You want something?’ she asked.

  A man appeared. He had to be her brother: tall, powerfully built with the same thick chestnut-coloured hair, a square-shaped face, green eyes. He was in something that looked like a dirty sack and soiled jeans.

  He would be some years younger than she: twenty-four, probably less.

  ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘I’m Larry Carr,’ I said. ‘A welfare worker.’

  We regarded each other and I began to hate him as he gave a sneering little chortle.

  ‘The things that go with you,’ he said to Rhea. ‘Maggots out of cheese now a welfare worker!’

  ‘Oh, shut up!’ she snapped. ‘He’s a do-gooder. Any food in this stinking place?’

  I looked from one to the other. They were right out of my world. My mind flashed back to Paradise City with its fat, rich old women and their dogs, Sydney, buzzing and fluttering, the clean, sexy looking kids in their way-out gear, and yet this sordid scene had a fascination for me.

  ‘How about having a wash?’ I said. ‘I’ll buy you both a meal.’

  The man shoved Rhea aside and moved up to me.

  ‘You think I need a wash?’

  Then I really hated him.

  ‘Sure you certainly do, you stink.’

  Watching, Rhea laughed and moved between us.

  ‘He’s my thing, Fel. Leave him alone.’

  Over her shoulder, the man glared at me, his green eyes glittering. I waited for his first move. I felt the urge to hit him. He might have seen this in my expression for he turned and walked across the shabby, dirty room, pushed open a door and disappeared.

  ‘Some homecoming,’ I said. ‘Do you want me to buy you a meal?’

  She studied me. Her emerald-green eyes were jeering.

  ‘Man! Don’t you want it!’ she said. ‘When you have me, it’ll cost you more than a meal.’

  This was a challenge and a promise and I grinned at her.

  ‘I’m at the Bendix Hotel, anytime,’ I said and walked out of the bungalow and to my car.

  Sooner or later, I told myself, we would come together: it would be an experience worth waiting for.

  * * *

  I drove back to Luceville, had lunch at Luigi’s, then bought a bunch of grapes and went to the hospital.

  Jenny was looking brighter. She smiled eagerly as I sat on the hard backed chair by her bedside.

  ‘How did it go?’ she asked, after thanking me for the grapes.

  I gave her an edited version of my meeting with Rhea Morgan. I said I had met her, and driven her to her home and had left her there. I said her brother seemed tricky and hadn’t welcomed me.

  But Jenny wasn’t that easy to fool. She looked searchingly at me.

  ‘What do you think of her, Larry?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Tough.’ I tried to give the impression that as far as I was concerned, Rhea meant nothing to me. ‘I told her you had an accident and I was filling in.’

  She smiled her warm smile.

  ‘She didn’t care, did she?’

  ‘No she didn’t care.’

  ‘You’re still not right, Larry. People do react to kindness.’

  ‘She doesn’t.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right, but a lot of people do, but of course, some don’t. She is a difficult case.’

  ‘You can say that again.’

  A long pause as we looked at each other, then she said, ‘What are you going to do? You won’t stay on here, will you?’

  ‘Tell me something. You’ve been in hospital now for two days. How many visitors have you had, apart from me?’

  It was a rotten thing to ask, but I wanted to know.

  ‘Just you, Larry. No one else,’ and again she smiled.

  ‘So all the old women who pester you for handouts haven’t been to see you?’

  ‘You’re not proving anything, Larry. You don’t understand. They are all very poor, and it is a tradition that when you go to a hospital you bring something. They haven’t anything to bring, so they stay away.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Thanks for explaining it.’

  She asked suddenly, ‘How’s your problem, Larry?’

  ‘Problem?’ For a brief moment I didn’t know what she meant, then I remembered I was supposed to have a problem, that I was grieving over the loss of Judy, that I had been in a car crash, that I couldn’t concentrate on my work and her uncle had advised a change of scene. For the past two days, I hadn’t even thought of this problem.

  ‘I think the problem is lost,’ I said.

  ‘I thought so.’ She regarded me. ‘Then you had better go back. This town isn’t your neck of the woods.’

  I thought of Rhea.

  ‘I’ll stick around a little longer. Anything I can bring you tomorrow?’

  ‘You’re being an angel, Larry. Thank you. I’d love something to read.’

  I bought a copy of Elia Kazan’s The A
rrangement, and had it sent to her room. I thought this book was about her weight.

  FOUR

  I drove to Jenny’s office, found parking with a tussle, then walked up the six flights of stairs.

  Since I had left Jenny, I had returned to the hotel. I had stayed in my dreary little room for around half an hour, during that time I had thought of Rhea Morgan. I had paced up and down while my mind dwelt erotically on her. I wanted her so badly it was like a raging virus in my blood. The thought of stripping off her clothes and taking her made sweat run down my face, but I reminded myself of what she had said: Man! Don’t you want me! When you have me, it’ll cost you more than a meal.

  But I wasn’t a sucker like Jenny. When I had her, as I was going to have her, it wasn’t going to cost me a dime.

  But first, I had to know a lot more about her. Jenny would have kept her record and I now wanted to read it. It might give me a lever to turn an attempt to bargain into a sale.

  This was my thinking, so I drove to Jenny’s office.

  I paused outside her office door. Through the thin panels I could hear the clack of a typewriter, and this surprised me. I knocked, turned the handle and walked in.

  A thin, elderly woman sat behind the desk. Her face looked as if it had been chopped with a blunt axe out of teak. Squashed in a corner was a teenager doing a peck and hunt routine on the typewriter. They both stared at me as if I had landed from the moon.

  ‘I’m Larry Carr,’ I said and gave Hatchet face my best smile. ‘I’ve been working with Jenny Baxter.’

  She was a professional welfare worker - not like Jenny: no sucker. I could imagine the old women would take one look at her and then scuttle.

  ‘Yes, Mr. Carr?’ She had a voice a cop would envy.

  ‘I thought I’d look in,’ I said, my eyes moving to the filing cabinets that stood behind the teenager who had stopped typing. She was just out of High School, very earnest, completely sexless and a drag.

  Somewhere in those cabinets, I thought I would find Rhea’s background. ‘If I can be of help,’ let it hang.

  ‘Help?’ Hatchet face stiffened. ‘Are you qualified, Mr. Carr?’

  ‘No, but I’ve.’ I stopped. I was wasting my breath. I was sure she knew about me.