1973 - Have a Change of Scene (22 page)

‘What’s it to you? You leave her alone. She’s poison! Forget her, she’ll sell the necklace and she’ll fade. Forget her.’

I tipped more whisky into his glass. He grinned and picking up the glass, he drained it.

‘Man! Do you bastards live well!’ He reached for the whisky bottle and poured more spirit into his glass. ‘My goddamn sister! You know something, buster? She doesn’t give a goddamn for anyone except this creep of hers. What a punk! What a goddamn pisspot! I bet right now she’s having it off with him!

That stinker really turns her on!’

‘Using my car, Fel, you won’t have any trouble,’ I said. ‘As soon as it’s dark. after ten o’clock, all you have to do is to get in the car and take off.’

He half shut his eyes. I could see he was pretty drunk.

‘How about the money?’

‘That’s no problem. I have it right here.’

He peered at me. I could see he was having trouble in focusing me.

‘Right here?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who do you think you’re conning? Let’s see it.’

‘You’ll see it. Who is this creep Rhea’s with?’

He blew out his cheeks.

‘Who cares for a stick of crap like Spooky?’ He giggled. ‘Boy! What a creep! Just proves what a stupid bitch she is to get turned on by a stinker like him he’s ten years younger than she is.’

‘Spooky Jinx?’ I asked.

‘Yeah you know him?’

‘I ran into him in Luceville quite a character.’

‘You can say that again.’ He leaned back. ‘Wow! That was some meal!’

‘How come Rhea has hooked up with Spooky?’

‘You tell me! She was having it off with him before she went to jail. As soon as she comes out, she chases after him. Nuts! A creep like that!’ He frowned, shook his head, then rubbed his dirty hands across his eyes. ‘I guess I’ve drunk too much wanna sleep.’

‘Go ahead,’ I said. ‘Have a sleep.’

An animal instinct brought him upright.

‘Show me the money, buster. You say you have it here show it to me.’

This was it.

‘It’s in the safe.’ I got to my feet.

‘Safe, what safe?’

I walked over to the Picasso picture, lifted it off the wall, revealing the safe.

‘Well, for hell’s sake!’ Fel lurched to his feet. ‘Never thought of looking there! You got money in that can?’

‘That’s where it is.’

‘Go ahead, buster open it!’

I twisted the dial, knowing that by doing so, I was setting off an alarm at police headquarters.

‘I’m not too sure how to open it,’ I said. ‘I have the combination, but it’s tricky.’

‘So it’s tricky,’ Fel said, breathing whisky fumes down my neck as he stared at the dial. ‘So go ahead and open it.’

I spun the knob, clicking up the numbers, knowing by now a prowl car would be on the way.

‘Two-double-one, five-double-eight, six-double-nine,’ I muttered as I flicked the dial around. This was not the combination which, because of poor Sydney’s hopeless memory, was a simple 1 - 2 - 3 told to me by Tom Luce. I pulled the knob, then shook my head. ‘Must have made a slip. Here, Fel, you try. I’ll call the numbers.’

‘Me? I’m goddamn drunk!’ He lurched against me, sending me staggering. ‘You open it! Come on, you punk! You damn well open it.’

I began to move the dial around. How long would I have to wait before the police arrived? I began to sweat.

‘Two-double-one-five-double-eight,’ I intoned, moving the dial. ‘Six-double-nine. That’s it.’ I pulled at the knob. ‘Well, for God’s sake!’

‘Can’t you open it?’ Fel’s voice was a snarl. ‘You conning me?’

‘That’s the combination,’ I said. ‘Why the hell won’t it open?’

Then the telephone bell rang.

We both turned and looked at the telephone. Leaving Fel, I took two quick strides, lifted the receiver and said, ‘Hello yes?’

‘Mr. Carr? This is Harry. I’ve two police officers here. Are you all right up there.’

‘No you have a wrong number,’ I said and hung up.

I turned to see Fel lurch across the room and pick up his gun.

‘A wrong number?’ he said, squinting at me.

‘Yes.’

We stared at each other.

‘You aren’t trying to con me, you bastard?’

‘Oh, shut up!’ I crossed to the safe, my heart thumping. As I began to turn the dial yet again, the front door bell buzzed.

I turned around and looked at Fel who was motionless, staring through the open door of the living room into the lobby.

‘Open up!’ a tough voice snapped. ‘Police!’

Fel lifted his gun and pointed it at me.

‘You bastard!’

‘Quick! Out on to the terrace. I’ll stall them!’ I moved by him, my body cringing. would he shoot?

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 uncovered 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.