1973 - Have a Change of Scene

by James Hadley Chase

  The bell buzzed again.

  I was out on the terrace. Fel followed me.

  ‘You can get down quick! Take my car. I’ll keep them talking.’

  Shivering, his mouth working, Fel leaned far over the balustrade to look at the balcony below. I moved up behind him, then hooking my fingers into the cuffs of his trousers, I heaved up.

  He gave a scream of terror and his gun went off, then he plunged down into space as I heard the front door burst open.

  * * *

  It had been so easy, I thought as I drove up the freeway, heading for Luceville, so absurdly easy.

  Now I had made one big step forward: one mouth silenced. Now for Rhea.

  Sergeant Hess had come to the penthouse and he had questioned me, but I knew by his manner and by the way he treated me he thought I was lucky to be alive.

  I told him that when I had let myself into the apartment, I had realised that someone was in there but before I could get out Morgan had appeared, gun in hand. He had threatened to shoot me if I raised the alarm. I explained how he had started drinking and had become garrulous. how he had told me he had been living in the mangrove swamp and was starving. He had demanded food and I had got him a meal from the restaurant. After he had eaten, he had demanded money. This, I said, was my chance. I knew Sydney’s safe was wired to police headquarters. When the police arrived, Morgan had panicked. He had rushed out on to the terrace and had tried to climb to the lower balcony. I had tried to stop him. He had fired at me, then lost his hold and had fallen.

  All this added up when Hess went over the penthouse. There were signs that Morgan had slept over— night and his filthy handprints were everywhere.

  ‘Well, we know now he and his sister are the two,’ Hess had said. ‘Now, we have to find her.’

  But not before I do, I told myself. I went on to tell him how Rhea had ditched her brother and had made off with the necklace.

  Here was my chance to confuse the hunt and I took it.

  ‘Morgan said they planned to drive to Key West and they had a friend there who could get them to Cuba. He was sure Rhea was heading for Key West when she ditched him.’

  Hess grimaced.

  ‘Cuba! If she’s there we’ve lost her.’

  The newspapers gave Fel’s death a big play. I was sure Rhea would read about it, but she wouldn’t know that Fel had told me about Spooky Jinx. Maybe she wasn’t holed up in his pad, but it was worth a try. I had to silence her. I would have no future unless she was dead.

  I waited until Fel’s inquest was over and then I told Hess I was going to Frisco for a change of scene.

  He asked me to keep in touch with him. If they caught up with Rhea, I would be the principal witness, but from his expression, I got the impression he now hadn’t much hope of finding her.

  Before leaving Paradise City for Luceville, I called Claude, Sydney’s manservant. I asked him if he would work for me, explaining I was moving into the penthouse.

  ‘I appreciate the offer, Mr. Larry,’ he said, ‘but I could never work for any other gentleman after working for Mr. Sydney. But if it would be helpful, I will try to find someone reliable for you.’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ I said, and hung up.

  To be turned down by a fat, elderly queer soured me. I would have paid him as much as Sydney had paid him who the hell did he think he was?

  Then thinking about it, I saw his point. Why should he want to work for anyone now? Hadn’t Sydney taken care of him handsomely? But I knew this wasn’t the real reason. I knew Claude despised me for moving into Sydney’s home as I was beginning to despise myself.

  Three days after Fel’s inquest, I got in the Buick and headed for Luceville.

  The previous day I had driven to Miami and had bought myself a hippy outfit: a flowered shirt, jeans and black sneakers. I had gone to one of the waterfront hock shops and had bought a .38 police special automatic with a box of slugs. I then went to a gimmick shop and bought a black, candy floss wig, a broad belt with a miniature skull for a buckle and a flick knife.

  Back in my apartment, I made a solution of earth, oil and water, taking the earth from the flower boxes on my terrace, and thoroughly dirtied the shirt and jeans.

  Twenty miles from Luceville, I stopped at a small town and garaged the Buick, then carrying a suitcase containing the hippy outfit I went along to a used car lot and bought a battered Chevy.

  On a lonely stretch of beach, I changed into the hippy outfit, and put on the candy floss wig. I hadn’t shaved for three days and now, looking at myself in the driving mirror, I decided I could walk past even Jenny without her recognizing me.

  I was now ready to go.

  I sat behind the driving wheel and stared through the dusty windshield and took stock.

  I had no feeling of remorse for Fel Morgan. I was sure he would have blackmailed me for the rest of my days. I had no qualms for what I was planning to do with Rhea if I found her it was my life or hers.

  But I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. She might not be holed up with Spooky, although I had a feeling she was, and even if she was, I had to trap her and then kill her.

  Trapping and killing her would be as dangerous and as difficult as trapping and killing a wild cat.

  But it had to be done.

  TEN

  I drove into Luceville as the City Hall clock struck six. Because of the smog and the cement dust I drove as other drivers were doing with dipped headlights. I felt the dust gritty around my collar and it gave me a feeling of nostalgia.

  To reach Spooky’s pad on Lexington I had to cross the centre of the city and I got snarled up in the home-going traffic.

  As I crawled past Jenny’s office block I wondered if she was up there on the sixth floor, her hair untidy as she scribbled on a yellow form. But this was no time to think of Jenny. The time to think of her, I told myself, was when I knew for certain I was safe. Until then, she must remain like something one urgently longs for but knows one can’t afford.

  I dumped the Chevy in a parking lot within easy walking distance of Lexington, then taking my hold-all, containing a spare shirt, shaving kit and the .38 automatic, I walked through the slums until I came to Lexington.

  It was dark now and the street lights were on. Apart from a few old drunks, sitting on trash bins, a few coloured kids kicking a ball around in the street, Lexington at this hour was deserted.

  Opposite No. 245, Spooky’s pad, was a dilapidated four-storey tenement house. Two snot-nosed, dirty, white kids sat on the steps. With their grimy little fists clenched between their knees, their tiny shoulders hunched, they stared, for something better to do, at the collection of filth lying in the gutter: it included a dead cat.

  On the transom above the battered front door was written: Rooms. Vacancies

  This seemed to me to be too good to be true. I paused to look across the street at No. 245, then started up the steps, moving around the kids who squinted up at me, their tragic little eyes suspicious. I entered a lobby that smelt of urine, stale body sweat and cats.

  An old biddy stood in an open doorway, digging with a splinter of wood at what she had left of her teeth. What hair she had was greasy rats’ tails. Her coverall was stiff with dirt. She couldn’t have been less than eighty, probably more.

  I paused before her. She took me in from the candy floss wig down to my scuffed sneakers. I could see by her sneering expression she didn’t like what she saw.

  ‘You got a room, Ma?’ I said, putting down the hold-all.

  ‘Don’t call me Ma, you young bastard,’ she said in a voice thick with phlegm. ‘Mrs. Reynolds to you and don’t you forget it.’

  ‘Okay, Mrs. Reynolds. You got a room?’

  ‘Twelve bucks a week, paid in advance.’

  ‘Let’s take a gander.’

  I knew the dialogue was strictly from a B movie and from her sneer she knew it too.

  ‘Second floor. Number five. The key’s in the lock.’

  I walked up the creaky uncove
red stairs, not touching the filthy banister rail to the second floor.

  Number five was at the end of a smelly corridor.

  The room was about ten-feet square. It contained a bed, a table, two hard backed chairs, a closet and a threadbare carpet. The wallpaper was peeling by the window. There was a grease covered bench on which stood a gas ring.

  Leaving my hold-all, I went down the stairs, paid the old biddy twelve dollars, then walked to an Italian store where I bought enough groceries to last me a few days. To the various cans of food, I added a bottle of whisky. Then I went to a hardware store and bought a small saucepan and a frying pan.

  Mrs. Reynolds was still propping up her doorway when I returned.

  ‘Where do I wash?’ I asked.

  She eyed me, scratched under her left armpit, then said, ‘Public baths at the end of the street. There’s a crapper on every floor. What more do you want?’

  I carried my purchases up to the room, shut and locked the door, set everything down on the table, then examined the bed. The sheets were clean enough, but the two thin blankets carried suspicious looking stains. I wondered when the bugs would appear.

  A change of scene?

  I thought of Sydney’s luxurious penthouse which I had inherited. This ghastly little room was something I had to endure if I were to keep the penthouse and Sydney’s millions.

  Turning off the light, I pulled a chair to the window and began my watch. There were eighteen dirty windows facing me across the street: five of them showing lights. One of these windows belonged to Spooky. I had no idea which of the eighteen was his, but sooner or later, if I watched long enough, I would spot him.

  I sat there, smoking and watching. People moved in the lighted squares of their windows: most of them young, wearing way-out gear. On the fifth floor, third window to the left, a handsome young Negress wearing only stretch pants was jiggling to a soundless radio, cupping her naked breasts in her hands.

  Watching her, I felt lust stir and forced my eyes away from her.

  Around 20.00 I got hungry. I left the window, pulled down the blind and turned on the light. While I was heating a can of beans I heard the roar of an approaching motor bike. Turning off the gas and the light, I moved fast to the window and pulled aside the blind. There was Spooky astride a glittering new Honda, pulling up outside No. 245.

  I watched him as he climbed off the machine and strutted up the steps leading to his pad.

  This was the moment. I watched him disappear into the darkness of the block, then I waited for a light to come on in one of the darkened windows. While I waited, I watched the Negress who had put on a flowered shirt and was stirring something in a saucepan.

  After a fifteen minute wait, I realised that in whichever room Spooky lived the light was already on when he entered for no light came up in any of the darkened windows. Did that mean that Rhea was in Spooky’s pad? Why not? Why should she sit in the darkness? I began to examine each lighted window.

  Three of them were without curtains and I could see who were in the rooms. The two remaining windows had flimsy curtains, but not flimsy enough to see through. One was on the third floor. The other on the top floor immediately above the room occupied by the Negress. It seemed to me that one of these rooms must be Spooky’s.

  I dropped the blind, put on the light and reheated the beans. For a start this first day hadn’t been bad. I was making progress. At least I now knew Spooky either lived on the third or top floor of this block.

  I ate the beans, then turning off the light and raising the blind, I sat again before the window.

  Around 21.00 the light in the window on the third floor went out. I now concentrated my attention on the lighted window on the top floor. I watched for almost an hour, then suddenly a shadow moved across the curtains. I recognised Spooky’s silhouette. It was unmistakable. If I hadn’t been watching continuously I would have missed this fleeting shadow. So he was on the top floor, but was Rhea up there with him?

  I sat there, watching. The lights in the various windows began to go out. The Negress picked up a large handbag, went to her door and flicked up the light switch. Finally, the only light in the building came through the windows of Spooky’s pad.

  Then I saw him come running down the steps and get astride his Honda. The machine burst into an ear-splitting roar. Clapping his helmet on his greasy head, he took off, but the light in his window remained on.

  This could mean either of two things: either Spooky didn’t give a damn about his electricity bill or else Rhea was up there in hiding.

  But how to find out?

  I was a stranger in the district. It would be too dangerous to wander into Spooky’s block even though it looked now that everyone had left the building.

  I lit a cigarette and surveyed the street below. Like rats appearing when darkness falls, the street was becoming active. Elderly ragged men and women came shuffling down the steps of the various tenement blocks in search of a bar.

  Then I saw the Negress. She was leaning against the rusty railings, swinging her large handbag and I then knew what she was - a prostitute.

  I knew her room was immediately below Spooky’s pad. Here was my chance. Maybe I could get confirmation that Rhea was up there.

  I thought of the Negress as I had seen her dancing, half naked, in her room. She was pretty and beautifully made. I hadn’t had sex since I had met Judy: that seemed a long, long time ago.

  Pushing back the chair, I stood up, groped my way across the dark room to the door and moved out into the smelly corridor.

  On my way down the stairs I met no one. Mrs. Reynold’s door was shut. Through the thin panels came the sound of a TV set. I lounged down the steps into the cement-dusty night. The street’s flotsam - youths, girls, drunks and old people - swirled around me. I looked across the street at the Negress who had spotted me. She was looking towards me. I waited until two beat-up cars had roared past me, then crossed the street.

  She was moving towards me as I reached the opposite side walk.

  ‘Hi, honey,’ she said softly, her white teeth gleaming in the lamp light. ‘Lonely?’

  I stood by her, looking at her. Her skin was the colour of milky coffee. Her ironed-out black hair framed her face. Even the importance of finding Rhea and silencing her went out of my mind. I had to get this repression that had built up in my body purged.

  ‘You can say that again,’ I said huskily. ‘Let’s do something about it.’

  She surveyed me, her big, black eyes probing.

  ‘It’ll cost you ten bucks, honey,’ she said. ‘You got ten bucks?’

  I thought of my offer to Rhea of five hundred dollars.

  ‘I’ve got it,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t look as if you have two bucks.’ She smiled at me. ‘You’re new around here, aren’t you?’

  I dug into my hip pocket and showed her a ten-dollar bill. Her slim brown fingers snapped the bill out of my fingers the way a lizard nails a fly.

  ‘Let’s go, honey,’ she said. ‘It’s all action from now on.’

  She led me into the tenement block that smelt worse than my block. She wriggled her bottom at me as she climbed the stairs with me just behind her. It was a long climb and by the time I reached her landing, I had a hard-on that really hurt.

  She acted up to me and it was good. In the past when I couldn’t be bothered to chase after some girl, I had taken a tart. I had never had value for money. Usually they lay staring up at the ceiling, some even smoking, most of them giggling but this little Negress did an act that made me feel I was stirring her, although I knew I wasn’t.

  When it was over and I had rolled away from her, she didn’t do what most of them did - slide off the bed and begin dressing. She lay by my side, reached for a pack of cigarettes, lit two and gave me one.

  ‘You certainly wanted that, honey,’ she said, cupping her breasts in her hands.

  Yes, I had certainly wanted it. Now I felt completely relaxed as if a boil that had been tormenting m
e had burst. I dragged smoke down into my lungs and stared up at the dirty ceiling. Then I became aware of footsteps overhead. I had been in such a state before I had laid this girl everything had gone out of focus.

  Now I heard these footsteps. click-click-click of a woman’s heels, pounding over my head. Then I remembered Rhea and why I was in this sordid little room with a young, naked Negress lying by my side.

  I listened.

  Backwards and forwards this woman walked above my head: non-stop. Click-click-click.

  The Negress crushed out her cigarette.

  ‘I’ve got to get back to work now, honey,’ she said. ‘Did you have a good time?’

  ‘What goes on up there?’ I said and pointed to the ceiling.

  ‘Why should you worry?’ She sat up and swung her long legs off the bed. ‘Up on your feet, honey. I have to go to work.’

  I put my arm around her slim waist and pulled her against me.

  ‘No hurry . another ten dollars buys me your time.’

  She spread her warm body down on mine.

  ‘You mean that?’

  ‘Want the money now?’

  ‘Always now, honey. I have to live.’

  I got off the bed, went over to where I had left my pants, found another ten-dollar bill and handed it to her. As I laid down, she threw her leg across me and began to nibble at my ear. I let her work on me while I listened to the footsteps moving across the ceiling.

  ‘What goes on up there?’ I asked. ‘Sounds like a marathon.’

  ‘A nutter.’ The Negress began to stroke the back of my neck. ‘She drives me crazy. Day after day, night after night, she walks. If it wasn’t for Spooky, I’d go up there and bawl her out, but she’s Spooky’s piece and he’s a big noise in this craphouse.’

  ‘Have you seen her?’

  She lifted herself on her elbow and stared down at me, her big, black eyes quizzing.

  ‘Why the questions, honey? Let’s have some action.’

  All the time she was speaking, I could hear the footsteps.

  ‘Spooky’s girl?’