1978 - Consider Yourself Dead

Table of Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

One

F
rost got talking to a high-class hooker in a dimly lit, chromium-plated bar off Broadway. She explained she was waiting for a client who was generally late as he had a wife problem. Frost told her he was just waiting. She was blonde and very chic with a traffic stopping body. Making chitchat, she said she was going to Paradise City at the end of the month.

‘That’s where the real action is,’ she said, her blue-grey eyes sparkling. ‘There’s more money to be picked up there than in any other city in the world.’

There were two things that interested Frost, apart from women: money, and then more money. He said he had never heard of Paradise City. What was so good about it?

She was one of those girls, given an audience, who never stopped talking. This, of course, Frost thought, didn’t make her unique. He could say that of all the girls he knew and had known.

‘Whereas Miami is known as the millionaire’s playground,’ she told him as if reading from a guidebook, ‘Paradise City is known as the billionaire’s playground. The extra naughts make all the difference.’ She closed her eyes and made yum-yum noises. ‘Paradise City is around thirty miles south of Miami. It is super de luxe where anyone with what it takes, can pick up a load of the green stuff.’ She leaned back and looked searchingly at Frost. ‘Now a stag like you could have a real ball there.’

She went on to explain that fifteen percent of the City’s population represented the stinking rich. Fifty percent represented the various well-paid serfs who kept the stinking rich in luxury. Thirty percent were the workers who kept the City ticking over, and five percent were the girls and the boys who latched on to the stinking rich and, if they were smart enough, picked up enough folding money to keep them happy until the following season when they descended once again on the City.

As Frost was urgently looking for money, he expressed interest.

Again she regarded him. If he hadn’t been sure that she would cost him the whole of his payroll to haul her into bed, he would have taken a very serious interest in her, but he knew a doll of her class was way out of his money bracket.

‘What’s your line?’ she asked.

‘The same as yours - the fast buck.’

‘Apart from your looks, what’s your talent?’

Frost frowned. What was his talent? This was something he hadn’t thought about before. He was now thirty-two years of age. For the past twelve years he had scratched up a living, always on the lookout for the big money, but up to now, never finding it. Right now he was unemployed. He was in New York, hoping to find an opportunity that paid well without too much sweat.

‘Security,’ he said. ‘Using my muscles. The last job I had was riding a truck as a guard. I goosed the old man’s secretary, and got the gate.’ He grinned at her. ‘Right now, I’m looking for something.’

‘With your looks and build,’ she said, ‘you could get yourself a rich old woman in Paradise City who would pour bread into your lap.’

Frost grimaced. He said rich old women weren’t his thing.

She flicked her fingers at the waiter and ordered another dry martini. Frost still nursed his Scotch, but he did make motions of reaching for his wallet when her drink came, but she shook her head.

‘I run an account here.’ She accepted the cigarette he offered, then said, ‘If you really are after the fast buck, here’s what you do. Go to Paradise City. Contact Joe Solomon. You’ll find him in the book. He handles all us folk who are after the fast buck. Tell him you are a friend of mine, and I’ll hate him if he doesn’t fix something for you. I’m Marcia Goolden.’ She looked across the barroom and heaved a sigh. ‘Here’s my freak. Call Joe.’ She gave Frost a sexy smile. ‘See you in Paradise City. You and I could have fun together. Joe’ll tell you where to find me.’ She finished her drink at a gulp, slid off her stool and walked over to a fat, balding man who was staring around like a fugitive from a chain gang. She hooked her arm in his and led him out into the hot, humid sunshine.

Frost had been in New York for five days. He had been offered a job here and there, but the money didn’t interest him. He thought about what Marcia had said.

Why not? he thought. What have I to lose except the airplane fare?

Frost believed in conserving his money. When he had booked into the Hilton hotel, he had with him a shabby suitcase containing the bare necessities and his oldest suit.

His best clothes in a good suitcase he had left in the left-luggage depot at the airport. He spent one more night at the Hilton, then leaving his oldies to take care of the check, he took a flight to Paradise City with his better possessions.

From Marcia’s description, Frost was prepared for the City, but when he came out of the airport, he found himself gaping. Every car, waiting to pick up passengers, was either a Rolls, a Bentley, a Caddy or a Benz. He asked the cabby to take him to a cheap hotel.

The cabby stared at him as he picked his gold teeth with a gold toothpick.

‘There ain’t such an animal, bud,’ he said. ‘The cheapest is the Sea Motel. It costs thirty a day, but I wouldn’t put my old mother there.’

Frost said the cabby’s mother could be more fussy than he was, and if that’s the cheapest the cabby could suggest, he was prepared to try it.

Frost had one thousand dollars saved, but as he was driven through the City, he felt his money shrinking. Sky-scrapers, luxe hotels, the fantastic beach with sun umbrellas, shading well nourished, brown bodies, the vast stores, the luxe boutiques, the moving crowd, all looking a million dollars, made, to Frost, an alarming picture of wealth, but once through the City, the scene changed.

The cabby explained this was the district where the workers lived. The small villas, the seedy-looking walk-up apartment blocks and the weather-beaten clapboard cabins made a sharp contrast to the gold-paved sidewalks of the City.

The Sea Motel was hidden away, as if ashamed of itself, up a cul-de-sac. Twenty cabins, all in need of paint, built in a semi-circle around a plot of yellowing grass restored Frost’s confidence and swelled the money in his wallet.

The reception clerk, ageing, sun-bleached, gave Frost a welcome. He said he had a nice cabin at forty a day. This cabin had a tiny bedroom, a small living, shower and toilet.

In the living room there was a sagging armchair, a settee with grease marks, a table, two upright chairs, a TV set that would have delighted an antique dealer, and a threadbare carpet, pitted with cigarette burns. The view from the window gave on to dusty palms and a row of over-flowing trash bins.

Frost haggled for ten minutes and finally got the rate down to thirty a day. With a dismal expression, the reception clerk said there was a snack bar across the way.

As soon as he had taken himself off, Frost looked up Joe Solomon in the book. He found the number and called.

A cool female voice said, ‘This is the Solomon Agency.’

She made it sound as if she were announcing the White House was on the line.

‘I want to talk to Mr. Solomon,’ Frost said, and swatted at a fly that was crawling up his sleeve. He missed the fly that came back to crawl over his hand, sneering at him.

‘Who is this, please?’ Her voice sounded bored as if she had asked the question a million times.

‘Mr. Solomon wouldn’t know me. I’m looking for a job.’

‘Please write in and state your credentials,’ and the line went dead.

Frost stared into space. He felt lonely, although he had the fly for company. He was playing this all wrong, he told himself. This was Big Time. Unless you were Small Time, you didn’t talk to a snooty chick who was paid to give the brush off, you talked to the Boss. After thought, he went over to the reception cabin.

The aging clerk was propping himself up on the counter, staring at nothing. Two flies were taking their morning constitutional walk over his baldhead. He paid them no attention.

‘Can I borrow a typewriter for a couple of hours?’ Frost asked.

The reception clerk stared at him as if he had just landed from the moon.

‘What was that again?’

Frost pointed to the battered looking typewriter on the desk behind the reception clerk who looked around, stared at the typewriter as if he hadn’t seen it before.

‘Can I borrow that?’ Frost produced a dollar bill.

The reception clerk eyed the bill, let the two flies play tag in what was left of his hair, then nodded.

‘Help yourself.’

‘Got any paper?’

The reception clerk thought about this, then reluctantly heaved himself to the desk and produced some sheets.

Frost gave him the dollar and lugged the typewriter back to his cabin. He spent a sweaty hour typing. When he returned the typewriter, the clerk was still in the same position, but another fly had joined the other two.

The book had told Frost that Joe Solomon had an office on Roosevelt Boulevard.

‘Where do I find Roosevelt Boulevard?’

‘City centre: runs parallel with Paradise Boulevard.’

‘How far from here?’

The reception clerk pulled at his nose, thought, then said, ‘Give or take, five miles.’

‘Have you a car I can rent?’

‘Five bucks a day. That one over there in the last bay,’ and he pointed.

The car was a beaten up VW. Frost decided anything was better than walking five miles in this heat. The car got him to Roosevelt Boulevard without falling to bits.

Joe Solomon’s office was on the tenth floor of an impressive high rise with four express elevators, air conditioning, and important looking people moving around the vast lobby with that busy, preoccupied air of ants on the march.

A Spanish-looking chick sat behind a desk in Solomon’s outer office. Her long black hair lay on her shoulders and made a frame for a face that had everything until you reached her eyes. They were black, and they had seen everything, and what they had seen, they hated. Her age would be around thirty, but she had already lived eighty years of experience, and each year had increased her hate.

Frost thought she was a very tough cookie.

She looked him over. He was wearing his best suit: light cream with a faint, narrow blue stripe, a dark blue shirt and a white tie. He had checked himself on the fly blown mirror at the cabin before leaving. He thought he looked pretty impressive, but he saw at once his size, his looks and his clothes made as much impact on her as a lump of dough thrown against a brick wall He decided to play this one brisk.

‘Mr. Solomon,’ he said.

Black eyebrows lifted.

‘You have an appointment? Your name?’

‘The name’s Frost. I have something better than an appointment,’ and Frost dropped the letter he had written, sealed in an envelope, on her desk.

She regarded the envelope as she might regard something nasty the cat had brought in.

‘If you will give me your telephone number, Mr. Frost, you will be contacted.’

He placed his big hands on her desk and leaned towards her. She gave off a faint body smell that if bottled would have been a rave as an after-shave lotion.

‘I know J.S. likes to play hard to get,’ he said, smiling at her. ‘I know you are paid to sit where you are sitting, making it easy for him to feel important. It’s all part of the racket, but I don’t buy it. J.S. is here to make money. I can make money for him. Suppose you get off your fanny, give him this letter, and if he doesn’t want to talk to me, I’ll let you spit in my right eye.’

Her eyes widened, then she laughed, and when she laughed, she really looked a beauty.

‘I thought I’d seen them all,’ she said, ‘but although the dialogue is corny, at least, it’s a new approach.’ She picked up the envelope and stood up. She had a sensational body. ‘It won’t buy you anything, but you deserve a try.’

She went through a doorway behind her desk, swinging her hips. At least that was a step forward, Frost thought as he looked around. For an outer office it was very lush.

The nigger brown carpet, the apricot-coloured walls, the picture window with a view of the sea, the battery of telephones, the built-in filing cabinets and the three lounging chairs along the far wall produced an air of considerable prosperity.