You Find Him – I'll Fix Him

by James Hadley Chase

  YOU FIND HIM, I'LL FIX HIM

  JAMES HADLEY

  CHASE

  PART ONE

  I

  On a hot July afternoon I was dozing in my office, being offensive to no one and with nothing important to do, when the telephone bell brought me awake with a start.

  I picked up the receiver.

  "Yes, Gina?"

  "It's Mr. Sherwin Chalmers on the line," Gina said breathlessly.

  I became breathless too.

  "Chalmers? For Pete's sake! He's not here in Rome?"

  "He's calling from New York."

  I got back some of my breath, but not all of it.

  "Okay, put him through," I said, and sat forward, no calmer than a spinster who has found a man under her bed.

  For four years I had been in charge of the Rome office of the New York Western Telegram, and this was my first contact with Chalmers who owned the paper.

  He was a multi-millionaire, a dictator in his own particular field and a brilliant newspaper man. To have Sherwin Chalmers call you on the telephone was like having the President ask you to tea at the White House.

  I put the receiver to my ear and waited. There were the usual clicks and pops, then a cool female voice said, "Is that Mr. Dawson?"

  I said it was.

  "Will you hold on for Mr. Chalmers, please?"

  I said I would, and wondered how she would have reacted if I had told her I wouldn't.

  There were more clicks and pops, then a voice that sounded like a hammer beating on an anvil barked, "Dawson?"

  "Yes, Mr. Chalmers."

  There was a pause and I wondered what the kick was going to be. It had to be a kick. I couldn't imagine that the great man would be calling unless something had displeased him.

  What came next surprised me.

  "Look, Dawson," he said, "my daughter will be arriving in Rome to-morrow on the elevenfifty plane. I want you to meet her and take her to the Excelsior Hotel. My secretary has fixed a reservation for her. Will you do that?"

  This was the first time I had heard he had a daughter. I knew he had been married four times, but a daughter was news to me, "She'll be studying at the university," he went on, words tumbling out of his mouth as if he were bored with the subject and wanted to get done with it as quickly as possible. "If she wants anything, I've told her to call on you. I don't want you to give her any money. That is important- She's getting sixty dollars a week from me, and that is quite enough for a young girt. She has a job of work to do, and if she does it the way I want her to do it, she won't need much money. But I'd like to know someone is at hand in case she needs anything or gets ill or something."

  "She hasn't anyone here then?" I asked, not liking the sound of this. As a nurse-maid, I don't rate myself very high.

  "I've given her some introductions, and she'll be at the university, so she'll get to know people," Chalmers said. I could hear the impatience in his voice.

  "Okay, Mr. Chalmers. I'll meet her, and if she wants anything, I'll fix it."

  "That's what I want." There was a pause, then he said, "Things all right at your end?" He didn't sound particularly interested.

  I said they were a little slow.

  There was another long pause, and I could hear him breathing heavily. I had a vision of a short, fat man with a chin like Mussolini's, eyes like the points of an ice-pick and a mouth like a bear-trap.

  "Hammerstock was talking to me about you last week," he said abruptly. "He seems to think he should get you back here."

  I drew in a long, slow breath. I had been aching to hear this news for the past ten months.

  "Well, I'd certainly like that if it could be arranged."

  'I'll think about it."

  The click in my ear told me he had hung up. I replaced the receiver, pushed back my chair to give me a little breathing, space and stared at the opposite wall while I thought how nice it would be to get home after four years in Italy. Not that I disliked Rome, but I knew, so long as I was holding down this job, I wouldn't get an increase in pay nor a chance of promotion. If I were going to get somewhere I would only get there in New York.

  After a few minutes of intensive brooding that got me nowhere, I went into Gina's office.

  Gina Valetti, dark, pretty, gay and twenty-three, had been my secretary and general factotum since I had taken over the Rome office. It had always baffled me that a girl with her looks and shape could have been so smart.

  She paused in her typing and looked inquiringly at me.

  I told her about Chalmers's daughter.

  "Sounds terrific, doesn't it?" I said, sitting on the edge of her desk. "Some bouncing, fat undergrad needing my advice and attention: the things I do for Western Telegram."

  "She could be beautiful," Gina said, her voice cool. "Many American girls are beautiful and attractive. You could fail in love with her. If you married her you would be in a very happy position."

  "You've got marriage on the brain," I said. "All you Italian girls are the same. You haven't seen Chalmers - I have. She couldn't possibly be beautiful coming from his stable. Besides, he wouldn't want me for a son-in-law. He would have a lot bigger ideas for his daughter than me."

  She gave me a long, slow stare from under curled, black eyelashes, then lifted her pretty shoulders.

  "Wait 'til you see her," she said.

  For once Gina was wrong, but then so was I. Helen Chalmers didn't appear to be beautiful, but neither was she fat and bouncing. She seemed to me to be completely negative. She was blonde, and she wore horn-rimmed spectacles, sloppy clothes and flat-heeled shoes. Her hair was screwed back off her face. She seemed as dull as only a very serious-minded college girl can be dull.

  I met her at the airport and took her to the Excelsior Hotel. I said the usual polite things one says to a stranger, and she answered as politely. By the time I had got her to the hotel I was so bored with her that I couldn't get away last enough. I told her to call me at the office if she wanted anything, gave her my telephone number and bowed myself out. I was pretty sure she wouldn't call me. There was a touch of efficiency about her that convinced me that she could handle any situation that might crop up without my help or advice.

  Gina sent flowers to the hotel in my name. She also had composed a cable to Chalmer's to say the girl had arrived safely. I felt there wasn't much else for me to do, and, as a couple of good stories broke around this time, I put Miss Chalmers out of my mind and forgot about her.

  About ten days later, Gina suggested that I should call the girl and find out how she was, getting on. This I did, but the hotel told me she had left six days ago, and they had no forwarding address.

  Gina said I should find out where she was in case Chalmers wanted to know.

  "Okay, you find out," I said. "I'm busy."

  Gina, got her information from police headquarters. It seemed Miss Chalmers had taken a three-room furnished apartment off Via Cavour. Gina got the telephone number and I called her.

  She sounded surprised when she came on the line, and I had to repeat my name twice before the nickle dropped. It seemed she had forgotten me as completely as I had forgotten her, and, oddly enough, this irritated me. She said everything was under control, and she was getting along fine, thank you. There was a hint of impatience in her voice that suggested she resented me inquiring about her, and also, she used that polite tone of voice that daughters of very rich men use when talking to their father's employees, and that infuriated me.

  I cut the conversation short, reminded her again that if there was anything I could do I would do it, and hung up.

  Gina who had got the set-up from my expression said tactfully, "After all, she is the daughter of a millionaire."


  "Yeah, I know," I said. "From now on she can look after herself. She practically gave me the brush-oft." We left it at that

  I heard no more of her for the next four weeks. I had a lot to do in the office as I was going on vacation in a couple of months time, and I wanted everything ship-shape for Jack Maxwell who was coming out from New York to relieve me.

  I had planned to spend a week in Venice, and then go south for three weeks to Ischia. This was my first long vacation in four years, and I was looking forward to it. I planned to travel alone. I like a little solitude when I can get it, and I also like to be able to change my mind where to stay and how long I would stay, and if I had a companion, I wouldn't have this freedom of movement. Four weeks and two days after I had spoken to Helen Chalmers on the telephone, I had a call from Giuseppe Frenzi, a good friend of mine who worked on L' Italia del Popolo. He asked me to go with him to a party the film producer, Guido Luccino, was throwing in honour of some film star who bad made a big hit at the Venice festival.

  I like Italian parties. They are gracious and amusing, and the food is always exciting. I said I would pick him up around eight o'clock.

  Luccino had a big apartment near Porta Pinciana. When we got there, the carriage-way was packed with Cadillacs, Rolls-Royces and Bugattis that made my 1954 Buick flinch as I edged it into the last of the parking spaces.

  It was a good parry. I knew most of the people there. Fifty per cent of them were Americans, and Luccino, who cultivated Americans, had plenty of hard liquor circulating. Around ten o'clock, and after a flock of straight whiskies, I went out on to the patio to admire the moon and to cool off.

  On the patio, alone, was a girl in a white evening gown. Her naked back and shoulders looked like porcelain in the moonlight. She was resting her hands on the balustrade, her head tilted back while she stared up at the moon. The moonlight made her blonde hair look like spun glass. I wandered over to her and paused by her side. I stared up at the moon too.

  "Pretty nice after the jungle inside," I said

  "Yes."

  She didn't turn to look, at me. I sneaked a look at her.

  She was beautiful. Her features were small, her lips were a glistening red; the moonlight sparkled in her eyes.

  "I thought I knew everyone in Rome," I said. "How is it I don't know you?"

  She turned her head and looked at me. Then she smiled.

  "You should know me, Mr. Dawson," she said. "Have I changed so much that you don't recognize me?"

  I stared at her, and I felt a sudden thumping of my pulse and a tight feeling across my chest.

  "I don't recognize you," I said, thinking she was the loveliest woman I had seen in Rome, and how young and desirable she was.

  She laughed.

  "Are you so sure? I am Helen Chalmers."

  II

  My first reaction when I heard who she was was to tell her how she had changed, how surprised I was to find her so beautiful, and stuff like that, but after looking into her moonlit eyes I had other ideas. I knew it would be a mistake to say the obvious.

  I spent half an hour with her out on the patio. This unexpected meeting threw me off balance. I was sharply aware that she was my boss's daughter. She was cagey, too, but she wasn't dull. We kept the conversation on an impersonal plane. We talked about the party, who was who, and wasn't the band good and what a lovely night it was.

  I was attracted to her the way a pin is attracted to a magnet. I couldn't keep my eyes off her. I couldn't believe this lovely creature was the same girl I had met at the airport: it just didn't seem possible.

  Suddenly, from out of the stilted conversation we were making, she said, "Have you a car here?"

  "Why, yes. It's in the carriage-way."

  "Will you take me back to my apartment?"

  "What - now?" I was disappointed. "The party will warm up in a little while. Wouldn't you like to dance?"

  She stared at me. Her blue eyes were disconcertingly searching.

  "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to drag you away. Don't bother; I can get a taxi."

  "You're not dragging me away. If you really want to go, I'll be happy to drive you home. I thought you were enjoying yourself here."

  She lifted her shoulders and smiled.

  "Where is your car?"

  "At the end of the line – a black Buick."

  "I'll meet you at the car then."

  She moved away, and as I made to accompany her, she lifted her hand in an unmistakable gesture. She was telling me we shouldn't be seen together.

  I let her go on ahead while I lit a cigarette. This had suddenly become a conspiracy. I noticed my hands were unsteady. I gave her a couple of minutes, then I went back into the vast lounge that was packed with people, looked for Luccino, but couldn't see him and decided I'd let my thanks drift until to-morrow morning.

  I walked out of the apartment, down the flight of stairs and down the long drive.

  I found her sitting in the Buick. I got in beside her.

  "It is just off Via Cavour."

  I drove away down Via Vittorio Veneto. At this hour the usual heavy traffic had thinned a little, and it only took me ten minutes to reach the street in which she lived. During the drive, neither of us said anything.

  "Please stop here," she said.

  I pulled up and got out of the car. I went around and opened the off-side door for her. She got out and looked up and down the deserted street

  "You'll come up? I'm sure we have a lot to talk about," she said.

  I remembered again that she was my boss's daughter. "I'd like to, but perhaps I'd better not," I said. "It's getting late. I don't want to disturb anyone."

  "You won't do that."

  She started off down the street, so I turned off the car's lights and went after her.

  I am explaining this in detail because I don't want to give the wrong impression about my first relations with Helen. It may be difficult to believe, but if I had known there was no one in her apartment – no girl friend, no servant, no nobody – wild horses wouldn't have dragged me inside. I didn't know. I thought there would at least be a servant.

  All the same I was uneasy about going into her apartment at that time of night I kept wondering what Sherwin Chalmers would think if someone told him I had been seen entering his daughter's apartment at ten forty-five at night

  My future and all that it meant to me was in Chalmers's hands. A word from him and I would be out of the newspaper racket for good. Fooling around with his daughter could be as dangerous as fooling around with a rattlesnake.

  Thinking about it later, I realized that Helen also wasn't taking any chances. She had prevented me from accompanying her from Luccino's apartment, and she had fixed it that I had parked my car two hundred yards from the entrance to her apartment block so if one of my bright friends happened to see the car he wouldn't put two and two together.

  We rode up in the automatic elevator, meeting no one in the lobby. We got inside her apartment without anyone seeing us. When she had shut the front door and had taken me into a large pleasant lounge, lit by shaded lamps and decorated with bowls of flowers, I suddenly got the impression that we were the only two in the apartment.

  She dropped her wrap on a chair and went over to an elaborate cocktail cabinet.

  "Will you have rye or gin?"

  "You aren't alone here, are you?" I asked.

  She turned and stared at me. In the shaded lights, she looked stunning.

  "Why, yes – is that a crime?"

  I felt my palms turn moist.

  "I can't stay. You should know that."

  She continued to stare at me, her eyebrows lifting.

  "Are you so frightened of my father then?"

  "It's not a matter of being frightened of your father," I said, angry that she had so shrewdly put her finger right on the point. "I can't stay here alone with you, and you must know it."

  "Oh, don't be stupid," she said impatiently. "Can't you act like an adult? Just because a ma
n and a woman are alone together in an apartment, do they have to misbehave themselves?"

  "That's not the point. It's what other people will think."

  "What other people?"

  She had me there. I knew no one had seen us enter the apartment.

  "I could be seen leaving. Besides, it's the principle of the thing ..."

  She suddenly burst out laughing.

  "Oh, for heaven's sake! Stop acting like a Victorian and sit down."

  I should have grabbed my hat and walked out. If I had done that I would have saved myself a lot of trouble, and that's an understatement. But I have a reckless, irresponsible streak in me that occasionally swamps my usual cautions judgment, and that's what it did at this moment.