1949 - You're Lonely When You Dead

by James Hadley Chase

  Before I could think of anything to say to that one, she went on brightly, ‘That was a lovely highball. Could I have another?’

  While I was mixing the drink she got up and walked over to what I call my casting couch. It was a big, comfortable settee I had bought at an auction sale, thinking it might come in handy, and over a period of years, it had, from time to time, come in very handy indeed. She sat down and swung up her legs, and in doing so managed to get her long, full skirt caught up. From where I was standing I could see one long, silk-clad leg up to her knee.

  I carried the drink over to her.

  ‘Your skirt’s up around your neck,’ I said and pointed. ‘It’s your affair, of course, but you don’t want to catch cold.’

  She flicked her skirt into place. If her eyes had had teeth they would have bitten me.

  ‘I don’t want to hurry you, Mrs. Cerf,’ I went on, handing her the drink, ‘but I have a lot of work to do before I turn in.’

  ‘There’s time for work and time for play,’ she said. ‘Don’t you ever play?’

  ‘Sure, but not with the wives of clients. You may not believe it, but I’m not all that fond of sudden death.’

  ‘He doesn’t care a fig for me,’ she said, staring into the glass, ‘and I don’t care a fig for him.’ She looked up suddenly, and there it was in her eyes as plain as a poster on a wall. ‘But I like you. Come and sit down,’ and she patted the settee.

  I nearly did.

  ‘Not tonight,’ I said. ‘I have work to do. It’s time you went home.’

  She was a trier. I’ll say that for her. The smile was just as inviting as she put the glass down and stood up. She came close and I could smell her perfume.

  ‘I don’t have to go yet,’ she said, and put her hand lightly on my arm. ‘I could stay a little while if you want me to.’

  All I had to do was to step up and take her in my arms. It was the kind of push over you dream about if you have those kind of dreams, and the kind of girl too.

  I gave her hand a sympathetic little pat. I was as sorry for her as I was for myself.

  ‘If you did stay I still wouldn’t tell you what you want to know. Ask Cerf. Maybe he’ll tell you. I’m off duty now, and I like to get away from my clients. Be a nice girl and go home.’

  She still smiled, but her eyes had hardened.

  ‘Change your mind,’ she said, and slipped her arms round my neck. Before I could stop her, and I didn’t try very hard, she was kissing me. Her lips were cool and experienced, and we stood like that maybe for a couple of seconds as a sort of workout. As I saw it, the idea was to push her away at the last moment to show her what a strong-willed, well-controlled guy she had to deal with, only somehow something went wrong: a cog slipped and I forgot to push her away. I found myself kissing her mouth, hard, and bending her back the way they do on the movies, with my hand supporting the small of her back.

  She knew how to kiss all right, and her arms felt cool against my neck, and she gave a faint, sighing little moan that got me going the way nothing else would have got me going.

  We were down on the couch now and I could feel her breath beating against the back of my throat and her hand inside my shirt, touching my chest. But just before I was going down for the third time I took a look at her and she wasn’t expecting it. The cold, calculated expression in those wide grey eyes was like a smack in the face. I jerked away from her, stood up, and tried to get my breathing under control. We looked at each other for a long minute.

  ‘We must try that again when your husband has paid me off,’ I said in a voice that sounded like I had run a couple of miles uphill. ‘I’m a lot more enthusiastic when there are no strings tied to it. Let me see you to your car.’

  She shifted her eyes from my face to the carpet, the half-smile flickered on, and her hands gripped her evening bag so tightly her knuckles showed white. She sat like that for perhaps ten seconds, then she got up.

  ‘All right,’ she said suddenly. ‘If he wants a divorce he can have it, but only on my terms, and it’ll cost him plenty. You can tell him it’s no use having me watched. I won’t be caught that easily, and you can tell him I only married him for what I could get out of him, and if I’d known he was going to be such a goddamn awful bore even his money wouldn’t have bought me.’ She didn’t raise her voice, and her anger and disappointment was nicely controlled. ‘You can tell him if he wants to watch someone he’d better start spying on that sour-faced bitch of a daughter of his. He’ll get a surprise.’ She laughed suddenly. ‘And as for you - you should warm up a little. You don’t know what you’re missing,’ and still laughing she went across the room, jerked back die curtains and took herself and her diamonds down the wooden steps into the darkness beyond.

  V

  The telephone bell, ringing like an hysterical fire alarm brought me out of a heavy sleep with a start that nearly capsized the bed.

  I groped for the light switch, turned it on, and as I grabbed at the receiver I looked at my bedside clock. It was four minutes past three.

  ‘Is that you, Malloy?’ a voice barked in my ear. This is Mifflin, police headquarters. Sorry to wake you, but a guy’s just brought in a handbag that belongs to Dana Lewis. She’s one of your operators, isn’t she?’

  ‘You didn’t wake me up to tell me that, did you?’ I yelled.

  ‘Take it easy. We’ve called Miss Lewis but can’t get an answer. Besides, there’s something wrong. There are bloodstains on the sand near where the bag was found. At least that’s what the guy says. I’m going out there right away. I thought maybe you’d want to go with me.’

  I woke up then.

  ‘Where was it found?’

  ‘On the sand dunes about a mile from your joint. I’ll be over in ten minutes, and I’ll pick you up.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, slammed down the receiver back on its cradle and scrambled out of bed.

  By the time I had dressed I heard a car pull up outside the cabin. I snapped off the lights and ran down to the gate.

  Mifflin and two cops in uniform were waiting for mc in a big radio car.

  Mifflin was a short stocky guy with a fiat, red battered face and a nose like a lump of putty. He was a good, tough cop, and we had worked together off and on for some time. I liked him and he didn’t exactly hate me, and whenever we could we helped each other. He opened the car door, and as soon as I was in, the driver sent the car jolting along the beach road.

  ‘It may be a false alarm,’ he said as I settled beside him, ‘but I thought you would want to be in on it. Maybe the guy’s talking through the back of his neck about bloodstains, but he seemed pretty definite about it.’

  ‘What was he doing out there at this hour?’

  ‘Snooping around. He’s quite a character in these parts. A guy named Owen Leadbetter. He’s a bit queer in the head. One of these nuts who spy on courting couples and makes out he’s bird watching. But he’s harmless enough. We know him well. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

  I grunted. I wasn’t interested in flies.

  ‘Was Miss Lewis on a job?’ Mifflin asked.

  ‘Not to my knowledge,’ I said cautiously.

  When I told Cerf I guaranteed secrecy I wasn’t fooling. I had made it a rule, no matter what happened, never to mention a client’s name without his permission.

  ‘We’re about there,’ the driver said suddenly. ‘He said the first line of sand dunes, didn’t lie?’

  ‘That’s right. Put on the searchlight, Jack, so we can see what we’re doing.’

  The small but powerful beam of the auxiliary spotlight went on and lit up the stretch of sand dunes before us. It was a lonely, forlorn spot. Coarse, scrubby bushes grew out of the sand in big clumps. To our right, and in the distance, we could hear the sea beating on the reef, and there was a chilly wind that whipped up the sand every now and then into scurrying whirls.

  We got out of the car.

  ‘You stick right here, Jack,’ Mif
flin said to the driver. ‘If I shout, turn the light on me.’ He handed me a flashlight.

  ‘We’ll keep together. And you, Harry, you start looking to the right. We’ll go to the left.’

  ‘Why didn’t you bring Leadbetter with you?’ I asked as we tramped over the loose sand. ‘It would have saved time.’

  ‘I didn’t want to be bothered with him. You have no idea how that guy talks once he lets his clutch in. He’s marked the spot with a pile of stones. It shouldn’t be hard to find.’

  It wasn’t. We found the pile of stones about a couple of hundred yards from the car.

  Mifflin shouted to the driver, who focused the searchlight on the spot. We stood a little to one side and examined the ground. The sand had been trampled flat in places, but was too loose to hold footprints. Near the pile of stones was a patch of red. It looked like blood, and the flies seemed to like it and it gave me a hollow feeling. Dana was a fine kid. She and I had been pals for some time.

  ‘Looks as if someone’s been around,’ Mifflin said, pushing his hat to the back of his head. ‘The stuff’s no good for prints. That’s blood, Vic.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said.

  The other policeman, Harry, came over.

  ‘If she’s anywhere around she’ll be in there,’ he said, pointing with his nightstick to a large clump of shrubs.

  ‘There’s been a trail to that clump, but it’s been smoothed over.’

  ‘Let’s have a look,’ Mifflin said.

  I stayed right where I was while the other two went across the sand and began to search among the shrubs. My mind was a blank as I watched their bright flashlight beams probing among the thick undergrowth.

  Both of them suddenly stopped and I saw them bend down. I took out a cigarette, put it between my dry lips but forgot to light it. They remained bending for a minute or so.

  It seemed like a year to me. Then Mifflin straightened.

  ‘Hey, Vic,’ he called. His voice was sharp. ‘We’ve found her.’

  I threw away the unlighted cigarette and walked stiff-legged across the sand and joined them.

  In the hard glare of their flashlights she looked like a doll.

  She lay on her back, sand in her hair and eyes and mouth.

  She was as naked as the back of my hand, and the front of her skull was smashed in. Her hands were like claws, stiff in death, held before her face. From the look of her scratched, sand-smeared body she had been dragged along face down by her feet and dumped there the way you would dump a sack of garbage, and with as much feeling.

  The stark horror on her face turned me cold.

  chapter two

  I

  The grey dawn light was showing above the line of skyscrapers as I came out of Police Headquarters. It was five-fifty-five, and I felt low enough to walk under a duck’s tail.

  While the prowl boys were bringing Dana in, I had put through a call to Paula. She had asked me to go over to her place as soon as I was through with the police, and I said I would. I could tell by the sound of her voice how shocked she was, but neither of us said much. We were both aware we were talking through the police exchange board and pretty sharp ears were certain to be listening in to what we were saying.

  Mifflin had asked a lot of questions, but without telling him about Cerf I couldn’t be of any help, and I didn’t tell him about Cerf. I said I had no idea why Dana had been shot and that she wasn’t working on a job for me. He went over the ground again and again, but it didn’t get him anywhere.

  Finally he said he would have to to talk to Brandon, Captain of Police, when he came in, and that I would hear from them during the morning. I said I’d be around and made tracks for the door. He seemed reluctant to let me go, but he hadn’t any reason to keep me there.

  The policeman guarding the entrance scowled at me as I walked down the steps. There was nothing personal about it.

  The cops of Orchid City were picked for their meanness. I scowled right back at him and went on to the end of the street, where I picked up a taxi to take me to Paula’s apartment on Park Boulevard.

  I was surprised to find her dressed, and looking as neat as a new pin when she opened the front door.

  ‘Come on in,’ she said. ‘I have coffee for you. I bet you need it.’

  Paula was a tall, dark lovely with cold, steady brown eyes and a mouth as business-like and as hard as a rattrap. She was quick on the uptake, unruffled and easy to work with, and it says a lot for her force of character that during the years we had worked together I had never made a pass at her, although once or twice I had been tempted. Maybe it was because we had worked together during the war. She had been a cypher officer attached to the O.S.S. where I worked with the cloak-and-dagger boys. It was she who had encouraged me to launch Universal Services and had lent me money to tide me over the first six months. We had taken the rough with the smooth together for about five years. We had seen each other at our best and worst. It got so I didn’t look on her as a girl any more, not that she wasn’t attractive, she was, but we knew too much about each other to encourage a romance, and she had a way of nipping that sort of thing in the bud with a sarcastic remark that I or any other guy wouldn’t risk running into a second time. But for all that, we got along fine together.

  ‘Never mind the coffee,’ I said. My nerves were still jangling from the shock of finding Dana. ‘I want you to go over to Dana’s apartment. She may have left duplicate of her reports there. I’m off to see Cerf.’

  ‘Take it easy, Vic,’ she said calmly. ‘That’s all been taken care of. I’m just back from seeing Cerf, and Benny’s over at Dana’s place now.’

  ‘I might have known you would have got going,’ I said, and sat down. ‘So you went to see Cerf. Was he up?’

  ‘No, but he soon got up,’ she said, pouring a large cup of black coffee. She went over to the sideboard and fetched a decanter of brandy and floated a spoonful of the liquor on the coffee. That was one of her fads. She maintained black coffee was a better stimulant than whisky. ‘This is a dreadful thing, Vic. That poor kid....’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘What did Cerf say?’

  ‘He’s acting like a crazy man. You didn’t tell the police Dana was working for him?’

  ‘No. I stalled Mifflin, but I don’t know how long it’ll be before he finds out. Mifflin’s nobody’s fool. Cerf’s holding us to our guarantee, of course?’

  ‘Is he not!’ Paula said, pouring a second cup of coffee. ‘If we tell the police Cerf hired us to watch his wife we might just as well go out of business.’ She went through the brandy ritual and came over to sit opposite me. ‘He swears he’ll deny anything we say, and if we do talk he threatens to sue us for libel.’

  ‘He doesn’t care a damn that we’re heading for an accessory rap, I suppose?’

  ‘Of course he doesn’t.’

  ‘Well, we’ve given him the guarantee so we can’t go back on it. I don’t like it, Paula. That rule wasn’t intended to cover murder.’

  ‘Any ideas why she was killed?’

  ‘Nothing solid. Maybe she came upon this guy who’s blackmailing Anita and he silenced her.’

  ‘How was she killed?’

  ‘Shot through the head with a .45 at about fifteen yards range by someone who could shoot. What beats me is why he took her clothes.’ I finished the coffee, stood up and began to pace up and down. ‘We’ve got to find this killer, Paula.’

  ‘You mean we’re handling this on our own?’

  ‘You bet we are. From now on we’re not taking any other job until we’ve got this guy. When we’ve found him we’ll have to work out how we’re going to fix him without involving Cerf.’

  ‘Couldn’t we take Mifflin into our confidence?’ Paula asked. ‘You get on well with him. He might be prepared to keep Cerf under cover.’

  ‘Not a hope. He would have to report to Brandon, and you know how Brandon loves us. No. We can’t tell the police anything. They’d want to interview Mr
s. Cerf. That’s something Cerf wouldn’t stand for. If he says he’ll swear he didn’t call us in, that’s what he’ll do. We have no proof that he did call us in. He hasn’t paid our fee yet, and by the look of it, he won’t. His first contact with us was by phone. All we’d get from him would be a libel suit that’d break our backs.’

  ‘I don’t like it, Vic. If the police find the killer and he talks we’re going to be chopped.’

  ‘Yeah, but I don’t see how they will find him. They have nothing to work on. We hold all the clues and that’s why we’ve got to clear up the mess. And besides we have a personal interest in this killing. No one’s going to shoot one of my operators and get away with it.’

  ‘What’s the first move then?’

  ‘I’m going to talk to Mrs. Cerf right away.’

  Paula shook her head.

  ‘It’s not going to be that easy. She’s skipped.’

  I stared at her, the flame of my lighter hovering before my cigarette.

  ‘She has?’

  ‘I asked to see her, but Cerf refused. He said he was arranging for her to leave town right away. She’s gone by now.’

  ‘We’ll have to find her. She knows the killer.’

  ‘That’s what I told Cerf. He said she knew nothing, and if we interfered with her or tried to find her we’d be answerable to him.’

  ‘We’ll find her all right,’ I said quietly.

  ‘Don’t be too sure the blackmailer is the killer, Vic,’ Paula said. ‘We have only Cerf’s word for it there is a blackmailer. She may be helping a lover.’

  ‘I’ll have a word with the daughter. She hasn’t any time for Anita and might be glad to talk.’

  ‘That’s an idea. Who else is there to work on?’

  ‘There’s the guy who found the handbag: Owen Leadbetter. I don’t know whether to let the police milk him and get the information from Mifflin or have a go at him myself. If Mifflin finds out we’re making inquiries he might smell a rat. Leadbetter might give us away.’