1972 - You're Dead Without Money

by James Hadley Chase

  A middle aged, fat, blonde woman, followed by a man who could have been her husband came into the bar. They climbed up on stools and ordered whisky on the rocks. The man, weedy, balding, wearing a bush jacket and crumpled khaki slacks divested himself of two expensive looking cameras which were festooned around his neck. He stared around and his eyes finally came to rest on Barney who was putting away the third tier of his second hamburger.

  The weedy man nudged the fat blonde who swivelled her head and eyed Barney, her pale blue eyes popping. This woman had managed to wedge her enormous hips into a pair of flame coloured shorts. I felt that any extra movement from her would make the shorts give at the seams. Over her vast frontage, she had on a lightweight sweater with a pattern of orange rings against a white background.

  ‘One of the local characters, Tim,’ she said in a loud whisper. ‘I love this City. You can’t move a yard without finding something exciting to look at.’

  Barney looked a little smug.

  ‘You know, Mr. Campbell, people notice me,’ he said. ‘Mr. Dulac is right. I am a tourist attraction.’ He pointed his big finger at my chest. ‘I’ll bet you a nickel before those two leave, the punk will want to take my photograph.’

  I said it was a bet, but how about getting on with this story of his?

  Barney nodded.

  ‘Yeah . . . well, you know about Joey, Cindy and Vin. We’ll leave them for the moment with the outlook for Vin bleak. He could, of course, have moved on to Jacksonville and tried his luck there, but he now had this rooted idea that he had to pull off the big one so he could settle with Cindy and Joey for at least a couple of years before looking for another job, and he knew Paradise City was about the only city apart from Miami where you could find loot worth fifty thousand bucks in one quick, safe steal.’

  Seeing the fat woman was still gaping at him, Barney wigwagged with his bushy eyebrows and gave her a leering grin. The woman looked hastily away and leaning close to her husband, she began to whisper.

  ‘She’s a little shy,’ Barney said. ‘You wait. They’ll be over here wanting my photo.’ As I said nothing, he went on, ‘Now I’ll tell you about Don Elliot. You’ve seen plenty of pictures of him: a tall, well-built guy, handsome, dark and with that sexy look most women can’t resist.

  ‘When Errol Flynn kicked off, there was an opening for a movie actor to take his place. Pacific Pictures had Elliot under contract and they realized, with careful grooming, they could move him into Flynn’s market. They groomed him and he delivered. His first three movies went well and did big box office. He was a mixture of Flynn and Fairbanks senior. As you said, no actor, but a good cut and thrust merchant. His agent, Sol Lewishon, was smart enough to get Elliot on a percentage deal after the third movie and Elliot really moved into the dough. Like most movie stars, he was a heavy spender.’

  Barney paused to eat the last of the hamburger. ‘It’s an odd thing with these movie people. They have this inferiority complex. You know what I mean?’ He stared at me with his small, calculating eyes. ‘They think if they don’t live it up the rest of the world will think they’re cheapies. They have to have big cars, flash women, big houses, swimming pools. They have to throw their money around. Elliot was like that. He came to Paradise City and built a villa up on the hill and this villa, Mr. Campbell, sure as death, had everything. I heard it cost around half a million bucks. Maybe that’s an exaggeration, maybe not. It wasn’t all that big, but it had everything. One of my newspaper friends wrote an article about the villa and he showed me some of the photos.’ Barney drew in a long slow breath. ‘It had every gimmick you can imagine. Four bedrooms, four bathrooms and a living room that could hold two hundred people without them breathing down each other’s necks, a dining hall, swimming pool, a playroom, sauna baths, barbecue - you name it, Elliot had it. He even had his own movie theatre.

  ‘He had three cars: a Rolls, an Alfa and a Porsche racer. He was a sociable guy and he was liked. The rich creeps living here entertained him and were entertained by him. His movies were great box office. Things looked set for him, but as so often happens, his luck ran out.’

  At this moment the fat woman and her weedy husband finished their drinks and got off their stools. Barney looked at me and winked, then sat back, preening himself, stroking out the wrinkles in his sweatshirt. The fat woman and her husband went out of the bar without looking at him and they disappeared into the crowd moving along the waterfront. There was a long pause, then I said gently that he owed me a nickel.

  Barney shook his head in disbelief.

  ‘That’s never happened before. If I told you the number of times I’ve been photographed by these tourist jerks you wouldn’t believe it.’

  ‘A nickel,’ I said.

  He dismissed this with a wave of his hand.

  ‘Let’s get back to Don Elliot,’ he said firmly and rapped his empty glass on the table. He waited until Sam had brought him a refill, then went on, ‘As I was saying, Elliot’s luck ran out. He had completed six movies and Pacific Pictures were drafting a new contract that would give him 20% of the producer’s profits, and that, from what I have been told, would have netted him a million bucks, plus all expenses and so on and so on. The contract was finally ready to sign, and Lewishon, his agent, called him from Hollywood and asked him to come on up and sign it. At this time, Elliot had found another doll he imagined he was in love with. I saw her: a good-looking chick if you like them skinny: blonde, of course, with flashing green eyes and tits that should have been muzzled. The two of them left here in the racing Porsche for Hollywood. Halfway to Hollywood, the girl wanted to drive. As Eliot was nuts about her, he let her. She had no more idea of handling a racing car than I have. At around a hundred and five miles an hour, she hit a truck. His safety belt saved him, but she took the steering wheel messily in her chest. When Elliot came to in a private, top class clinic, he found Sol Lewishon and the President of Pacific Pictures at his bedside.’ Barney drank a little beer and persuaded his fat face to look sad. ‘Maybe you read about it in the newspapers?’ he asked.

  I said I must have missed it. I didn’t have much time to read newspapers and news from Hollywood seldom interested me.

  Barney nodded.

  ‘The chick was killed of course and they had a lot of trouble digging Elliot out of what was left of his car. To get him out, they had to cut off his left foot that had got caught in the wreckage.

  ‘The President of Pacific Pictures, a guy called Meyer, told him not to worry, to get well and then come and see him. Then he left. He had only come because he wanted to be sure Elliot had really lost his foot. He couldn’t believe it when the news had been relayed to him. One moment he had a big money spinner who jumped, ran, rode, swam, climbed, fought and did all the things Flynn had done and now he had a hunk of good looking flesh minus a foot.’

  Barney sat back and regarded me.

  ‘You get the photo, mister? A guy with a potential earning power of a million bucks suddenly without a foot. Quite a thing, huh?’

  I agreed.

  ‘Elliot was under sedation and had no idea he had lost his foot. Lewishon knew the goose that had been laying golden eggs for him was now washed up. He would have to hunt up another handsome hunk of flesh from somewhere and persuade Meyer to start grooming all over again and he knew he couldn’t afford to waste time on Elliot. He broke the news to Elliot that he had lost a foot, said they must get together when Elliot left the clinic, said he would talk to Meyer and scrammed.

  ‘A month later, Elliot was back in Paradise City. He came back a changed man: hard, sour and bitter. He didn’t see any of his so-called friends. He kept to himself. A couple of months later he was fixed up with a tin foot. He had a lot of guts and he really persevered with the tin foot. He got so he could walk normally without a shade of a limp, but running, jumping, fighting and so on were now strictly for the birds. Also the tin foot gave him a complex. Before losing his foot he spent a lot of time with the dollies in his swimming pool, bu
t you don’t go swimming with a tin foot.

  ‘Elliot used to lay some girl three or four times a week, but it is sort of embarrassing to get into bed with a doll when what should have been a foot is a red looking stump. But that was only a small piece of his troubles. As soon as he was satisfied he could walk normally, he took a plane to Hollywood and called on Lewishon. When he walked into his agent’s office, Lewishon gaped at him. He had written Elliot off but seeing this big, sun bronzed handsome guy come in the way he used to come in revived Lewishon’s hopes for more golden eggs.

  ‘He immediately contacted Meyer, but Meyer knew Elliot was a non-starter. He knew Elliot had no acting talent. To him, a cut and thrust merchant with a tin foot was as saleable as a contraceptive to a eunuch. He said he was sorry, but no dice. To give him his due, Lewishon tried, but when Meyer said ‘no’, he meant no.

  * * *

  When Lewishon broke the news, Elliot stared at him, white faced. ‘So what the hell am I going to live on?’ he demanded.

  Lewishon was puzzled that Elliot was taking this so badly.

  ‘What are you worrying about?’ he asked impatiently.

  ‘You have royalties coming in on three movies. You can count on at least $30,000 a year for the next five years and a little less for another five years. You won’t starve and who knows what’ll happen after ten years - we could all be dead.’

  Elliot’s hands turned into fists.

  ‘I owe money everywhere,’ he said. ‘Thirty thousand is chick feed. I was relying on this new contract to get me out of my hole.’

  Lewishon shrugged.

  ‘Sell the villa. You could raise half a million on that.’

  ‘It’s not mine, goddamn it! It’s mortgaged to the roof!’

  ‘Okay, Don, let’s get down to it. How much do you owe?’

  Elliot lifted his hands in despair.

  ‘I don’t know, but it’s plenty . . . something like two hundred thousand . . . probably more.’

  Lewishon thought for a moment. He was a sharpie and he saw a chance of making a good investment. Elliot’s six movies could bring in an income of around $30,000 for the next five years and after five years they could still bring in something. He said he might find someone (meaning himself) to buy the rights and pay Elliot $100,000 cash down.

  Elliot tried to get him to make it $150,000 and Lewishon said he would see what he could do. Elliot went back to Paradise City and waited.

  Finally, Lewishon persuaded him to accept the $100,000 and with his back to the wall, Elliot agreed. He got the cash, but from that moment he was out on a limb.

  The money went to settling some of his debts. There was something fatal about Elliot. He just couldn’t stop spending. He should have cleared out of the villa and taken a small apartment. He should have got rid of his staff who he paid well and who ate their heads off. He shouldn’t have ordered the new Rolls that cost around $30,000, promising to pay later.

  He knew he was heading for a godawful crash, but there was nothing he seemed able to do to avoid it.

  At the back of his mind there was the thought of suicide.

  When the crash finally came, he told himself, he would empty a bottle of sleeping tablets down his throat and that would be that.

  If this was to be his end, he decided, then he would make hay while the sun shone. He began to entertain again. His parties weren’t the success they used to be because he wasn’t the same man he used to be. His hard, cynical jeering attitude bothered people. Nobody had an idea that he was without money. By now, everyone knew about his tin foot and that he was washed up in movies, but they believed he had stashed away enough when he was in the money to be still a very rich man.

  Then one day he got a call from his bank manager, asking him to drop in and have a talk. Elliot knew what this meant He dropped in and had a talk. His account was in the red for twenty thousand dollars and the bank manager who often played golf with him said regretfully he couldn’t give him any more credit. ‘Head Office is pressing me to get this overdraft reduced,’ he said. ‘What can you do about it, Don?’

  ‘Leave it to me,’ Elliot said. ‘I’ll fix it,’ knowing he hadn’t a hope in hell of fixing anything. ‘What’s with your people, Jack? Twenty thousand is peanuts.’

  The bank manager agreed but said his people were pressing him. ‘So let’s reduce it by half, Don.’

  Elliot said he would fix it and left.

  The Rolls coupe had been delivered the previous week: it was the only car of its kind in the City. Elliot had been offered it ahead of anyone else and he just couldn’t resist taking it, knowing the car agent wouldn’t press him too hard for payment.

  He found this magnificent car did a great deal to bolster up his sagging credit. He had only to drive up in the car to one of the stores or to his tailor for credit to be immediately granted.

  Then one day, his Japanese majordomo informed him his stock of whisky and gin was running low and reminded him that he was throwing a big cocktail party the following evening.

  Elliot got a shock when Fred Bailey who ran the liquor store asked him to settle his last account.

  ‘This has been running now for six months, Mr. Elliot,’ Bailey explained apologetically. ‘It’s six thousand dollars. Could I ask you . . . ?’

  Elliot gaped at him. He had no idea the parasites who he entertained had soaked up six thousand dollars’ worth of drink over a period of six months.

  ‘I’ll send you a cheque,’ he said airily. ‘Right now, Fred, I want four cases of Scotch and five of gin . . . the usual. Get them over to my place by this afternoon, will you?’

  Bailey hesitated. Then looking out of the window at the Rolls, he reluctantly nodded. No one owning a car like that, he reasoned to himself, could be short of money.

  ‘Okay, Mr. Elliot, but let me have that cheque. My people are pressing me.’

  Elliot now realized time was running out for him. Back at the villa, he got out all the bills waiting payment and spent a bleak afternoon totalling them up. He found, give or take, he owed around $70,000 and this didn’t include the Rolls.

  He sat back, worried, looking around the luxuriously furnished living room. During his moneymaking days, he had bought modern paintings, expensive pieces of sculpture and among other things a collection of jade that had set him back in the region of $25,000. He had bought all this stuff from Claude Kendrick.

  * * *

  Barney paused to finish his beer, then squinted at me. ‘You remember I mentioned Claude Kendrick?’

  I said I remembered and that Joey Luck had said Kendrick was one of the top fences in the City.

  Barney nodded approvingly.

  ‘That’s correct. I’m glad you’re keeping close to me, Mr. Campbell. You know something? There’s nothing more discouraging to a guy with his ear to the ground than to talk to a deaf audience.’

  That, I said, I could understand.

  There was a pause while Sam brought another beer, then Barney began talking again.

  ‘This is the moment to bring Claude Kendrick on the scene because he played a role in the Larrimore stamp steal.’ Barney hitched himself forward. ‘Let me give you a picture of Kendrick. He was a tall, massively built queer of around sixty years of age and he wore an ill-fitting orange wig and pale pink lipstick. He was as bald as an egg and wore this wig just for the hell of it. When he met one of his lady clients he would raise the wig lite you would raise your hat - strictly a character, you understand, Mr. Campbell? He was fat’ Barney slapped his enormous belly. ‘Not the way I’m fat, you understand. My fat is good hard fat, but his was soft fat and that’s no good to anyone. He had a long thick nose and little eyes and what with all this fat covering his face and this long snout he looked like a dolphin but without a dolphin’s nice expression. Although he looked comic and acted comic, he was a top expert in antiques, jewellery and modern art. His gallery was crammed with outstanding objets d’art and collectors came from all over the world after a bargain.’ Barney grinn
ed. ‘They got what they wanted, but never a bargain.

  ‘Apart from this flourishing business, Kendrick was also a fence. He became a fence by force of circumstances you might say. Important clients came to him wanting some special art treasure that wasn’t for sale. Their offer was so big, Kendrick couldn’t resist He found a couple of smooth operators who stole what was wanted and the collectors paid and kept whatever it was in their private museums for their eyes only. Some of the steals Kendrick organized would make your hair stand on end. He once organized the steal of a priceless Ming vase from the British Museum and that nearly got him into real trouble, but that’s another story and I won’t go into that now. I just want you to get the photo of how Kendrick operated.

  ‘Apart from being a successful fence, he supplied most of the rich creeps living here with top class works of art. He had a way with him that inspired confidence. People sniggered about his orange wig and his make-up, but they came to him and were glad to have his advice. He had a team of beautiful boys who were experts in decor and he was always fixing and refixing people’s homes.

  ‘When Elliot built his villa, he had gone to Kendrick who had arranged the decor and had unloaded a mass of art - if you can call it that - on him as well as this jade collection, plus a lot of other stuff at very fancy prices.

  ‘Elliot decided he could well do without the jade and come to that, all the freakish paintings that covered the walls of his living room. He was now in desperate need for ready cash - not to pay his bills: these would have to wait - but to pay his staff and keep himself and this seemed to him to be the way of getting it.

  ‘After some hesitation, because he knew once you offered something for sale the word could get around you were in financial trouble, he drove down to Kendrick’s gallery.’

  * * *

  Louis de Marney, Kendrick’s head salesman, came forward as Elliot entered the gallery.

  Louis was thin and willowy and could be any age from twenty-five to forty. His long thick hair was the colour of sable and his lean face, narrow eyes and almost lipless mouth made him look like a suspicious rat.