Strictly for Cash

by James Hadley Chase

  could be four hundred miles away before they even began to look for me.

  All right, I was plastered, and I was scared. The roar of the lion, reminding me what I had

  to do at midnight, stampeded me. I turned and walked to the car, got in, trod on the starter and

  slipped the gear stick into second. I took a quick look over my shoulder. No one shouted at

  me. No one tried to stop me. The car moved away smoothly, gathering speed as I changed in

  top. I drove along the wide carriageway, thinking in another minute or so I’d be out on the

  highway where I could tread on the gas and go.

  Ahead of me I could see the massive gates. They were closed, and the two uniformed

  guards were standing in front of them, their hands on their hips. I touched the horn button,

  slowed down, waiting for them to open up, but they didn’t. They just stood, watching me,

  their faces expressionless under the hard peaks of their black caps.

  I pulled up.

  “What do you expect me to do - drive through those goddamn things ?”

  I didn’t recognize my voice. It sounded as harsh as a file on rusty iron.

  One of the guards sauntered up to me: a tough-looking bird with close-set eyes and a nose

  that spread over his face, as if someone had given him the heel some time in his life.

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  “Sorry, Mr. Ricca,” he said. “But I gotta message for you.”

  I looked at him, my hands gripping the steering-wheel until the muscles in my arms ached.

  “What is it?”

  “Mrs. Wertham said if you come this way we were to turn you back. She and Mr. Reisner

  want to see you.”

  I knew I could take him. He was leaning forward, wide open for a hook to the jaw. My eyes

  shifted to his companion. He was standing away to my left, his hand on the butt of a gun he

  carried in a holster at his hip. He looked ready to go into action.

  “That’s okay,” I said, trying to smile. “I’ve seen them. Get those gates open. I’m in a

  hurry.”

  The guard’s cold, green eyes sneered at me.

  “Then I guess they want to see you again. The call’s just come through. Sorry, but orders is

  orders.”

  “Okay,” I said, knowing I was licked. “I’ll see what they want.” I slid the gear stick into

  reverse.

  They stood watching me as I made a U-turn. They were still watching me as I drove back to

  the casino.

  I parked the Buick below the terrace and got out. I was trembling, and blood hammered

  against my temples. I might have guessed I wasn’t going to outsmart her quite so easily. She

  thought of everything: even with Reisner bleeding on her rug, she still had time to take care

  of me.

  I walked down towards the beach. A car sneaked up beside me, and a girl’s voice said, “I’m

  going your way. Let’s go together.”

  I stopped and looked at her: a cute blonde with bed in her eyes and a pert little face that

  knew all the answers, and the questions, too. She was in a yellow, strapless swimsuit that

  gripped her curves and set off a figure that’d make a mountain goat lose its foothold. On her

  fair, flurry head was a big picture hat of plain straw, with a rose pinned to the under-brim.

  She was the kind of girl I wouldn’t have tangled with sober, but the kind I wanted the way I

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  was feeling now.

  I opened the offside door of the car and got in beside her. She drove on towards the beach,

  her small hands patting the steering-wheel in time to the swing that was coming over the car

  radio, and she kept looking at me out of the corners of her eyes.

  “As soon as I saw you I knew I had to know you,” she said. “I like big men, arid you’re the

  strongest, biggest man I’ve ever seen.”

  I couldn’t think of anything adequate to say to that one, so I let it ride.

  “What are you going to do - swim?” she asked, giving me a cute little smile that was

  supposed to have me on my hands and knees begging for favours.

  “That’s the idea. Do you swim in that outfit?”

  “Don’t you like it?”

  “It likes you - I can see that.”

  She giggled.

  “We can always go somewhere where I needn’t wear it. Shall we?”

  “It’s your car,” I said.

  She spun the wheel at the next intersection and increased the speed.

  “I know a place. We’ll go there.”

  I sat staring through the windshield, asking myself if this was what I wanted. I didn’t know.

  I didn’t think so, but it had dropped out of the sky into my lap, and it might blunt the edges of

  what lay ahead of me.

  “You’re Johnny Ricca, aren’t you?” she said as she drove the car along a narrow road lined

  on either side by royal palms.

  “How did you know that?”

  “Everyone is talking about you. You’re the big-time gambler from Los Angeles. Someone

  said you were a gangster. I love gangsters.”

  “Well, that’s good news. And who are you ?”

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  “I’m Georgia Harris Brown. Everyone knows me. My father is Gallway Harris Brown, the

  steel millionaire.”

  “Does he love gangsters too?”

  She laughed.

  “I never thought to ask him.”

  She swung the car off the road and bumped over grass, over sand and pulled up on a lonely

  stretch of beach, screened by blue palmettos and palm trees.

  “Nice, isn’t it?” she said, taking off her hat and tossing it on the back seat. She slid out of

  the car on to the sand. “Well, I’m going to have a swim. Coming?”

  As I got out of the car I suddenly decided I wasn’t going ahead with this. I shouldn’t be

  here. I should be where I could be seen; where anyone looking for Reisner could ask me if I

  had seen him. I must have been crazy to have come with this blonde in the first place. If I

  couldn’t get away from the casino, the least I could do was to try to safeguard my own neck,

  and I wasn’t doing that by remaining in this out-of-the-way spot with this blonde who was

  one jump lower than an animal.

  “I guess not,” I said. “I’ve just remembered I’ve work to do. You wouldn’t like to drive me

  back?”

  The cute little smile went away as if wiped off by a sponge.

  “I don’t get it,” she said, and her voice went shrill.

  “Never mind: I’ll walk,” I said. “You go ahead and have your swim.”

  I knew she’d take a swing at me, and she did. I gave her the satisfaction of landing on me.

  It would have been easy enough to have slipped inside her flying hand, but I didn’t want her

  to feel all that frustrated. For her size she carried a good slap. It made my cheek burn.

  “So long,” I said, and walked away. I didn’t look back, and she didn’t yell after me.

  Instead of keeping to the road I moved through the palmetto thicket, heading back the way I

  had come, but not paying much attention to where I was going. After a while I realized I had

  been walking for some time and I was still not within sight of the casino.

  I paused to look around me. Over to my right I could see the blue, almost motionless ocean

  through the trees. To my left was a forest of mangroves. I had no idea now if I were walking

  away from the casino or towards it, and knowing I should get back there, I got worried.

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  This stretch of beach was as lonely and as deserted as
a pauper’s funeral, and I was in two

  minds to turn back and make a fresh start when I heard a girl singing. She was singing

  Temptation a song that had always given me a creepy sensation whenever I’d heard it.

  She wasn’t tearing into it as most singers do, but singing it in an absent-minded kind of

  way, as if her mind were only half concentrating on the song.

  I moved forward cautiously, wanting to catch a glimpse of her before she saw me. From the

  sound of her voice she’d be around the next clump of mangroves.

  My shoes made no sound in the soft sand. I got behind a shrub and peered over it.

  She was sitting on a camp-stool, an artist’s easel in front of her, and she was painting in

  water-colours. I couldn’t see the painting, for she was facing me, and I wouldn’t have

  bothered much if I could have seen it. I looked at her: she was the only picture I wanted to

  look at.

  She wore a blue, and white bolero jacket that left her midriff bare, a pair of white shorts,

  and blue plastic and cork sandals. She was bare-headed, and her thick, short hair looked like

  burnished copper in the strong sunlight. She was as different from the blonde curie as a Ming

  vase is from a vase you win at a shooting-gallery, and lovely without being sensational. Her

  eyes were big and blue and serious; her mouth, with just the right amount of lipstick, wide

  and generous, and her figure neat, compact and curved where it should be curved.

  I stood looking at her. The Scotch was still giving me a false sense of security. I seemed to

  have stepped out of the darkness into the sunlight, and to have turned my back on something

  that was as unreal as a bad dream. Just to look at this girl, singing to herself, unaware of me,

  made Della and Reisner, and the immediate horrible future, go out of my mind the way dirty

  water leaves a sink when you pull out the plug.

  III

  I stood for maybe a minute, listening to her song, and watching her sun-browned hand and

  the paint-brush at work, wondering who she was and how she came to be in such an out-of-the-way place. Then suddenly she must have felt me watching her, for she looked up and saw

  me. She gave a little start and dropped her brush.

  I came out from behind the shrub.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. I heard you singing and wondered who it was.”

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  Not a very brilliant approach, but it was, at the moment, the best I could do. For the first

  time since I had left the cabin my voice didn’t sound like the croak of a frog.

  She bent to pick up the brush.

  “I’ve missed my way, and I think I’m lost,” I went on. “I’m trying to find the casino.”

  “Oh.” The explanation seemed to reassure her. “It’s easy to do that. I suppose you came

  through the mangroves.”

  “That’s right.” I moved to one side so I could see her painting. The sea, sand and palms and

  the blue of the sky made a vivid and attractive picture. “That’s good,” I said. “It’s absolutely

  lifelike.”

  That seemed to amuse her, for she laughed.

  “It’s supposed to be.”

  “Maybe, but a lot of people couldn’t do it.”

  I fumbled in my hip pocket for a packet of cigarettes, flicked out two and offered them.

  “No, thank you. I don’t smoke.”

  I lit up.

  “Just how far away am I from the casino?”

  “About three miles. You’re walking away from it.”

  She began to clean the brush that had dropped into the sand.

  “You mean I’m off the casino’s beach?”

  “Yes; you’re on my beach.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to trespass.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way,” she said, smiling. “It’s all right. Are you staying at the casino?”

  It flashed into my mind that I didn’t want her to know me as Johnny Ricca, gambler and

  gangster. It didn’t matter to me that the blonde, Georgia Harris Brown, should think so, but

  this girl was different.

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  “I’m only staying a few days. Some place, isn’t it?” Then I asked her, “Do you live around

  here?”

  “I have a beach cabin close by. I’m collecting background material for display work.”

  “What was that again?”

  I dropped on the sand, away from her, watching to see if she disapproved, but her

  expression didn’t change.

  “I work for Keston’s in Miami. It’s a big store. You may have heard of it,” she explained.

  “I provide sketches and colour schemes for window dressing and special displays.”

  “Sounds interesting.”

  “Oh, it is.” Her face lit up. “Last year I went to the West Indies and did a series of

  paintings. We turned one of the departments into a West Indian village. It was a terrific

  success.”

  “Must be a nice job,” I said. “I hope you don’t mind me holding up your work. I’ll get

  along if you do.”

  She shook her head.

  “It’s all right. I’ve just finished.” She began putting away her brushes. “I’ve been working

  since ten. I guess I’ve earned some lunch.”

  “A little late for lunch, isn’t it?”

  “Not when you live alone.”

  She studied the painting, and I watched her. I decided she was the prettiest and nicest girl

  I’d ever met.

  “I think that’ll do,” she said, and stood up. “The easiest way back to the casino is for you to

  walk along the beach.”

  “I’m Johnny Farrar,” I said, not moving. “I suppose I couldn’t carry your stuff back for

  you? There seems a lot of it.”

  “Sounds as if you’re inviting yourself to lunch,” she said, smiling. “I’m Virginia Laverick.

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  If you haven’t anything better to do …”

  I jumped to my feet.

  “I haven’t a thing. I guess I’m sick of my own company, and meeting you …”

  I picked up the easel and her other stuff when she had packed it, and went with her across

  the hot sand.

  “I can’t ask you in,” she said suddenly, “I live alone.”

  “That’s okay,” I said, only too glad to be walking at her side. “But I’m harmless, or maybe

  you don’t think so.”

  She laughed.

  “Big men usually are,” she said.

  After a short walk we came to a bungalow, screened by flowering shrubs, with a green-painted roof and gay flowers in the window-boxes and a wide verandah on which were

  lounging chairs, a radio set and a refectory table.

  “Sit down,” she said, waving to one of the chairs. “Make yourself at home. I’ll get you a

  drink - Scotch?”

  “Fine,” I said.

  “I won’t be a minute.”

  But she was a lot longer than that, and I was pacing up and down the verandah, my nerves

  on the jump again, by the time she reappeared. I saw why she had been so long. She had

  changed out of the sun-suit which she had probably decided wasn’t suitable to be wearing

  when entertaining a strange man in an empty bungalow, and she was now in a white linen

  dress, shoes and stockings. I gave her full marks for good sense.

  She carried a tray on which were bottles, glasses and plates of sandwiches. She set down

  the tray on the table, smiling at me.

  “Go ahead and fix yourself a drink,” she said. “If you feel like eating, there’s plenty.”

  I pour
ed myself a big slug of Scotch, splashed ice water in it, while she flopped into an

  armchair and started on the sandwiches.

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  “You look as if you’ve been in a fight,” she said.

  “Yeah, I know.” I felt my nose, embarrassed. It was still a little sore and swollen. “I got

  into an argument with a guy. It looks worse than it feels.” I took a mouthful of Scotch. It hit

  the spot all right.

  She was drinking orange juice, and I was aware she watched me just a little uneasily.

  “It’s nice of you to take pity on me,” I said. “I was feeling pretty low. You know how it is.

  I’ve been around on my own, and got sick of my own company.”

  “I thought there were lots of attractive girls staying at the casino.”

  “Maybe there are, but they don’t happen to be my style.”

  She smiled.

  “What is your style?”

  I never believe in pulling punches, in or out of the ring. I let her have it.

  “Well, you are, I guess,” I said, and added hastily, “and don’t think that’s your cue to yell

  for help. You asked me, and I’ve told you, and another thing while we’re on the subject, I’m

  not the type who makes a girl yell for help.”

  She looked steadily at me.

  “I didn’t think you were or I wouldn’t have asked you here.”

  That took care of that. Anyway, it cleared the air. She started talking about her work. From

  what she told me it seemed to be well paid, and she seemed to do more or less what she liked,

  and go where she liked.

  I was happy enough to sit there in the sunshine and listen. The Scotch was taking care of

  my nerves, and she was taking care of my thoughts. For the first time since that car crash I

  relaxed.

  After a while she said, “But I’m talking too much about myself. What do you do?”

  I was expecting that one, and had the answer ready.

  “Insurance,” I said. “I’m a leg man for the Pittsburgh General Insurance,”

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  “Do you like it?”

  “It’s all right. Like you, I get around.”

  “It must pay well if you can stay at the casino.”

  I had to get that straightened out at once.

  “I promised myself I’d live like a millionaire for a couple of days, and I’ve saved for years

  to pull it off. Well, this is it, but I’ll be moving into the town on Tuesday.”

  “Do you like being a millionaire?”