1978 - Consider Yourself Dead

by James Hadley Chase

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  One

  Frost 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.

  He thought of the letter he had written:

  Dear J.S.

  Marcia Goolden told me to look you up. She said if you played the Big Shot with me she would hate you for the rest of your life.

  Do you care?

  Mike Frost.

  He wondered if he should get out his handkerchief to wipe his right eye when she came out. Maybe Marcia had been playing at being important. Maybe Solomon would come out and spit in his left eye, but he needn’t have worried.

  The chick came out, smiling, and jerked her head.

  ‘He’ll see you. It still won’t buy you anything.’

  Frost leered at her.

  ‘Want to bet?’ and he walked past her into a vast room that was more a lounge than an office. Apart from a big desk by the picture window, the rest of the room resembled a millionaire’s nest where he can entertain some fifty people without feeling crowded.

  Behind the desk which was big enough to play billiards on, sat a fat little man in a grey suit that must have set him back seven or eight hundred dollars. His round, sun baked face, with hooded eyes, a nose like a buzzard’s beak and a mouth like a pencil line was framed with long white hair down to his collar.

  He watched Frost cross the big room, then he smiled and waved Frost to a chair.

  ‘Very nice, Mr. Frost. How’s Marcia?’

  ‘Fine and busy,’ Frost said, sitting down.

  Solomon nodded approvingly.

  ‘There’s a worker!’ He leaned back in his executive chair. ‘She’s my favourite hooker. There’s not much I wouldn’t do for Marcia. I take it you’re here for a vacation and employment to defray expenses?’

  ‘Right,’ Frost said.

  ‘You’ve come to the right place. What’s your line? What are you looking for?’

  Frost produced the details of his various qualifications he had typed out, and handed them over.

  ‘This covers my working life, Mr. Solomon. Maybe you can get ideas from this how to fix something for me.’

  Solomon read what Frost had written, whistling softly from time to time.

  ‘You seem to have had a number of jobs in the past twelve years,’ he said, laying down the paper. ‘Let me see, three years as a patrolman with the New York police, promoted to Detective, second grade, resigned after two years to join the F.B.I, as field agent. Resigned after three years to become a rifleman in Vietnam. You then became a bomb instructor for the I.R.A. You later became a mercenary in the Angola upheaval. Finally, this year you worked for a short time as a security guard for Western Security Corp in Boston.’ He cocked his head on one side.

  ‘Quite a life of action and violence.’ He picked up the paper again and read on: ‘Knowledge of most modern weapons and explosives, judo black belt, karate, marksman with military citations, pilot’s licence etc. etc.’ He put down the paper. ‘Very impressive, Mr. Frost, but no one is planning to start a war in Paradise City. I feel your talents would be wasted here.’ He brooded, then went on, ‘There are jobs, of course, I can offer you, but . . .’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘With your looks and build, you could earn five hundred a week. I have an old trout who needs a chauffeur, but you would have to lay her regularly once a week.’

  ‘Not my thing,’ Frost said firmly
.

  ‘I didn’t think it would be. I have a very rich queer who needs a companion, but you . . . no, I can’t see you filling that bill.’

  ‘Nor can I.’

  ‘How would you like to be a lifeguard? It pays around a hundred, but it’s as good as a free vacation. All you have to do is sit on the beach and wait for someone to drown.’

  This suggestion appealed to Frost until he considered the salary.

  ‘It has to be a lot better than that. From what Marcia told me, I’m expecting to pick up big money.’

  Solomon sighed.

  ‘That old trout. . .’

  ‘That’s out. How about a bodyguard?’

  Solomon brightened. He leaned forward and thumbed a buzzer. The Spanish chick looked in.

  ‘Any vacancies for a bodyguard, Carmen?’

  ‘Not right now.’ She gave Frost a jeering smile. ‘Strictly a drug on the market,’ and she removed herself, shutting the door.

  ‘From time to time, we do get requests for a bodyguard,’ Solomon said. ‘It’s your best bet. Suppose you hang around? If I hear of something. . .’

  ‘I can’t afford to hang around,’ he said. ‘Okay, if that’s all you can do, I’ll call Marcia. Maybe she can do something for me while she’s hating you.’

  Solomon winced.

  ‘Don’t do anything hasty. Give me a couple of days . . .okay? I’ll get Carmen to go through our files. Give her your telephone number. We’ll find you something.’

  ‘Two days, then I call Marcia.’

  Frost left him and went into the outer office.

  Carmen smiled jeeringly at him.

  ‘I warned you. Give me your number, but don’t squeal if you don’t hear from us.’

  Frost wrote down the telephone number of the Sea Motel and laid it on her desk.

  ‘Get me a good job, baby, and I’ll buy you a ribbon for your typewriter,’ he said.

  ‘More corny dialogue,’ she said, and reached for the telephone.

  Back in his sweltering cabin, Frost settled down to wait.

  If Solomon didn’t come up with something, Frost knew he was in trouble. He had no idea how to contact Marcia, and even if he did contact her, he didn’t think she could help him. He had just to wait and hope. So that was what he did - hoped and waited. Scared to leave the telephone, he sent over to the quick-snack bar at lunchtime for a sandwich and beer. The beer was flat and scarcely cold, the sandwich could have been made of cotton wool.