Believed Violent

by James Hadley Chase

  The Belle of the twenty girls at the Club was Drena French.

  According to the information Lindsey had received from his Detective Agency, this girl had arrived in Paradise City some eighteen months ago. She was twenty-two years of age, with raven black hair, sensually beautiful, with the morals of an alley cat and a lump of quartz where her heart should have been.

  It was this girl that Keegan, on Lindsey’s instructions, wished to see. He entered the Club, nodded to the doorman who gave him an oily smile, handed his hat to the hat check girl who gushed over him, then, pushing aside the red velvet curtain that screened the entrance, walked into the noisy, smoke ladened room that made up the Club. There were some thirty odd sailors already having themselves a ball, and a few well dressed men, probably Advertising Account Executives, trying to find relaxation, and, of course, the girls.

  Keegan spotted Shane O’Brien who ran the Club. He worked his way around the tightly packed tables, shook his head at the three girls who were advancing hopefully towards him and came to rest at O’Brien’s side.

  O’Brien was a tall, rangy Irishman with a broken nose, red hair and steel blue eyes.

  As Keegan came out of the smoke ladened atmosphere, O’Brien looked warily at him. He didn’t like Keegan. He knew he was dangerous and a professional killer.

  “Hi, Shane,” Keegan said. Looks like you have a big house.”

  “It’s early yet,” O’Brien returned. “It’ll be quite a night by two o’clock. There’s a Flat-top parked in the bay. The boys keep coming.”

  “Yeah.” Keegan lit a cigarette. “Where’s Drena?”

  O’Brien looked away.

  “She’s busy. What’s she to you?”

  Keegan smiled at him. His small green eyes glittered viciously.

  “Look, Mick, relax. I want her. I’ve business with her. So suppose you go get her?”

  O’Brien eyed him. Big as he was, plus his six bouncers, he was still scared of Keegan.

  “Now look, friend, she is valuable to me. She does a good job here. I don’t want her doing business with you.”

  “No?” Keegan continued to smile. “Well, that’s too bad. Run along, Mick, and get her. I could come in some other night with Lu. He and I could have a ball here. Lift the feet, Irish. I want her.”

  O’Brien recognized a threat when he heard it. He hesitated, then decided Drena wasn’t worth his Club being smashed up. He moved away. Keegan sat at one of the empty tables. A waiter came swiftly to his side. Keegan shook his head at him and the waiter went away.

  Drena French pushed her way through a group of sailors, protecting her behind with her hands. She was wearing the Club uniform. The slogan printed across her neat hips read: Fanny Is My Name ― Frantic Is My Nature.

  She paused beside Keegan, regarding him. She thought he was quite a doll, but she was alert and suspicious. O’Brien had warned her this man was dangerous.

  “What is it, honey?” she asked, leaning over him.

  “Get changed,” Keegan said, “and meet me outside in ten minutes. I’ve a proposition for you.”

  Drena laughed.

  “Come on sweetheart, be your age. I work here. I can’t quit at this hour. Besides, I’m not interested in propositions. That’s terribly old hat.”

  Keegan managed to control the urge to slap her pretty face. Even he didn’t want to tangle with O’Brien’s six bouncers. Containing his vicious temper, he said, “But you will be interested, baby. It’s big money. I have a little job lined up for you. The pay-off is in four beautiful, fat figures.”

  Drena stiffened, staring at him.

  “You kidding?”

  “No.” Keegan took out his wallet and produced three one hundred dollar bills. He let her see them, then folded them, and getting to his feet, he tucked them into her bra. “Hurry it up, baby. In ten minutes,” and he walked out of the Club.

  O’Brien came through the cigarette smoke and dim lights.

  “What gives?” he demanded.

  “I don’t know.” Drena took the three folded bills from her bra and showed them to him. “He says he wants me to do a job.” She was about to tell O’Brien that Keegan had talked of four figures, but decided that she could be talking too much. “Can I run along, Shane?”

  “I can’t stop you,” O’Brien said. “But watch it. This guy is as cute as a cobra and as loving as a dose of poison.”

  “Well, it can’t kill me to hear what he wants,” Drena said. “I can take care of myself,” then turning, she walked away, swishing her hips, the lettering on her panties jerking.

  Fifteen minutes later, wearing a shabby nylon dress and down-at-the-heel shoes, she walked out of the Club.

  Keegan was sitting in the Thunderbird. He swung open the car door and she slid in beside him.

  That big Mick doesn’t like you,” she said, leaning back, adoring the luxury of the car. “He says you are poison.”

  “Yeah?” Keegan started the car and drove into the steady flow of traffic. “Maybe I am.”

  He drove to a deserted part of the beach, stopped the car and turned off the lights.

  “Okay, baby, let’s talk business,” he said. “First, the pay-off. Play the cards I deal you right and you will pick up ten thousand dollars. Just in case you have wax in your ears and think I’m kidding, the pay-off is ten thousand dollars ― repeat ten thousand dollars.”

  Drena gaped at him. She looked into the small, cold, green eyes and a wave of excitement crawled up her long, beautifully formed spine. This man meant what he said. Years of experience, dealing with men, told her this.

  “Keep talking,” she said, her voice shaking, her hands clenching into fists. This makes beautiful music.”

  “Doesn’t it?” Keegan said. “Ten thousand dollars could buy you a ball.” He lit a cigarette without offering her one. Keegan had no polish. To him, women were to be used and abused and certainly not to be considered. “Your little pal, Fred Lewis. I’m interested in him.”

  Drena started and stared at him in surprise.

  “Freddy? But why?”

  “Look, baby, I do the talking. You answer the questions. Lewis . . . how are you two getting along together?”

  She shrugged, grimacing.

  “Well, he’s a drip. Maybe later . . . I don’t know. He wants to marry me. One day, perhaps, when I’ve had enough of the Club I’ll decide, but not now.”

  “How does he feel about it?”

  Drena shrugged impatiently.

  “He’s crazy about me.” She shook her head. “Okay I admit it’s nice for a girl who works the way I work to have some poor sap just mad about her. But he hasn’t any money. A girl can’t get along without money. . .”

  “Has he ever laid you?”Keegan asked.

  Drena sat bolt upright. “What the hell is that to do with you?” she demanded. “I’ll have you know . . .”

  “Brake the yak,” Keegan said, not bothering to look at her, but staring through the windshield at the gently moving sea. “I asked you . . . have you given him anything?”

  Drena hesitated, then shrugged.

  If you have to know . . . when a sap wants to marry a girl that bad, she keeps her legs crossed. Do you imagine I am soft in the head?”

  Keegan leaned over the back of his seat and brought up a brief-case lying on the rear seat. He laid it across his knees. Zipping it open, he turned on the dashboard light, then said, “Feed your eyes on this, baby.”

  Drena caught her breath. In the case, neatly arranged were packets of $50 bills . . . more money than she had ever seen in her life.

  “That’s what ten thousand dollars look like,” Keegan said. “All yours if you can handle this deal.”

  He let Drena stare at the bills for several seconds, then he zipped the case shut.

  “Tell me,” she said, her breathing fast. “Short of murder, I’m right with you, you gorgeous, beautiful man.”

  Keegan told her.

  The Harrison Wentworth Sanatorium is situated on the f
ar left arm of Paradise Bay with views over the sea and the distant yacht harbour: a massive building standing in some three acres of immaculately kept lawns. It is surrounded by high walls and there is a lodge at the entrance gates where an elderly guard checks in visitors with old-world charm.

  The security regulations are strict. Each patient is double locked in his room and each corridor is watched over by a qualified male nurse. The rooms are air conditioned, the windows of armoured glass and they don’t open. There is no hint that this mansion is a prison, and it is on record that no patient has ever escaped once consigned to a room.

  The Sanatorium is the most expensive and most exclusive criminal asylum for the insane in the world. It provides accommodation for two hundred patients, and at this period there were one hundred and twenty-two patients: all people of importance, some young, most of them old, at least fifty of them highly dangerous but all with wealth.

  Apart from Dr. Max Hertz who owned the asylum, two resident doctors and a Matron, the staff consisted of ten male nurses. Each one of these male nurses had been secretly investigated by Lindsey’s Detective Agency. From their reports, Lindsey had finally decided that Fred Lewis was the most likely of them all to work on.

  Lindsey discovered from the report that Lewis was young, besotted by a dance hostess, urgently in need of money and dissatisfied with his work.

  Lindsey knew the approach would have to be made through this dance hostess. He was sure she could handle Lewis and persuade him to co-operate so long as she was satisfied her reward would be impressive. That was why he had given Keegan $10,000 in cash with which to dazzle her. With that incentive, a woman of her record could achieve a miracle.

  Fred Lewis, a small, slimly built young man in his late twenties with a crewcut of black hair, a sun-tanned, rather chubby face, signed off duty at eight p.m.

  Dr. Max Hertz, a big, balding man with a genial fleshy face, leaned back in his desk chair to ask, “All under control up there, Fred? No trouble?”

  “No, sir. Mr. Massingham is a little restless. I told Jack. He is giving him a sedative. The rest of them are behaving beautifully.” He signed off, replacing the pen in Hertz’s pen rack.

  “Then see you tomorrow,” Hertz said.

  “Yes, sir. Good night, sir.”

  Lewis left the mansion and walked around to the car park. He got into his shabby, second-hand Buick. He drove down to the gates. The guard, Harry Edwards, came out of the lodge to open up. Edwards was a rotund man in his late sixties. He had been gate-man now for the past thirty years.

  “Hi, Fred,” he said, unlocking the gates. “How’s that little doll you’re chasing?”

  Fred forced a grin.

  “I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

  “Don’t do anything I shouldn’t hear about,” Edwards said. He envied Lewis his youth. “But if you do, confide in me.”

  Again Fred forced a grin, then drove out on to the beach road that curved around the Bay and led to the centre of the City.

  His grin quickly faded once he was out of sight of Edwards. He now regretted boasting to Edwards about his association with Drena French. But he had had to confide in someone. At least, Edwards didn’t kid him as Lewis knew the rest of the staff would have kidded him. He had known Drena French now for three months. One night, suddenly sick of his tiny airless apartment, he had wandered into the Go-Go Club. It had been an off-night. No warships were in the bay and Drena was glad to have a dancing partner. She found this rather serious, decent young man an enormous change from her usual brash, pawing nautical clients. He held her as if she was a precious piece of china. She could see the look of bewildered worship growing in his eyes as the evening moved along. This was something that hadn’t ever happened to her. Slightly intrigued, she had impulsively invited him back to her room when the Club shut down. She imagined it would be an experience to have such a man in her bed. But Fred Lewis didn’t attempt to make love to her. He sat on the edge of a chair and talked and adored her with his eyes. He drank one small whisky, then around three o’clock in the morning, he got to his feet and said it was time for him to go home. Drena very nearly spoilt the atmosphere he had created by inviting him to share her bed. Something warned her not to do so, and she saw him to the door. He kissed her hand and this completely threw her. No man had ever done that before. Usually they slapped her behind and tried to get their hands down the front of her bra.

  From then on, Lewis was continually at the Club during his nights off: dancing with her, spending more money than he could afford, and dreaming about her.

  Later, some two months after they had first met, he proposed.

  “Look, Drena, we could get married,” he said, his hands squeezing his knees, his face anxious and tense. “I don’t earn a lot, but we could manage. I love you. I want to get you out of this Club. What do you say?”

  Drena had never had a proposal of marriage before. She was a little emotional about it, but not for long. Lewis had become a habit. She liked his adoration, but the idea of living with him in a poky, airless apartment, doing the shopping, preparing his meals was just one hell of a joke.

  “I’m not ready yet to get married, Fred,” she had returned. “Maybe later, but not yet.”

  Lewis accepted this. At least she hadn’t turned him down. But as the weeks passed, his longing for her increased. He would have to leave his job, he kept telling himself. He would have to find something that paid better. But what? This depressed him. He knew his nursing training fitted him for nothing else. Maybe, if he studied at night, he might become a doctor. He discussed this with Drena who was slightly intrigued. She said she wouldn’t mind being married to a doctor, but she pointed out he couldn’t expect to do his work at the Sanatorium and work nights. When would she ever see him?

  Lewis was thinking about this as he parked his car before the dreary brown-stone building where he lived. He walked up the three flights of stairs and let himself into his small, drab apartment. He turned on the light and then went into the kitchenette and looked into the refrigerator. There was some cold spaghetti and a slice of rather dry ham he had put aside for his supper. It was while he was eating this that the telephone bell rang. Surprised, he answered.

  “Freddy? Drena.” He felt a rush of blood up his spine at the sound of her voice. “I want to talk to you. I’m on my way.”

  “Now?” Lewis was startled. “It’s after nine! Don’t you have to be at the Club?”

  “In a pig’s ear!” Drena said. “I’m on my way,” and she hung up.

  Bewildered and excited, Lewis wolfed down the remains of his supper, then wondering if Drena had eaten, he checked his savings and found a $20 bill tucked away in one of his drawers. He sighed with relief. If she wanted to be taken out, he had the money.

  But Drena didn’t want to be taken out. She arrived looking overwhelming in a tight fitting blue shirt and a mini-skirt. She brought with her a bottle of Scotch and a big packet of Club sandwiches.

  As soon as they were settled on the divan, eating the sandwiches, she said, “We could get married, Freddy, or have you changed your mind?”

  Lewis gaped at her, his eyes unbelieving, his half eaten sandwich hovering before his mouth. Then he put down the sandwich and turned to face her.

  “Changed my mind? Drena! How could you even suggest such a thing! I don’t understand.”

  “We could be married as soon as you can get the licence,” Drena said calmly. “Next week . . . something’s come up.”

  Lewis timidly touched her hand.

  “You’re not kidding? You really mean we ― we could get married next week?”

  “That’s what the girl said.”

  “Oh, God! Yes! But I don’t understand. What do you mean . . . something’s come up?”

  “There’s a crummy seafood restaurant right opposite Watson’s jetty. In case you don’t know, the jetty is always used by the sailors coming off their ships, anchored in the bay. The restaurant is owned by Jeff Hawkins ― an old buddy of min
e. The trouble with him is he has a sour-puss wife so his waitresses are old, fat and gruesome. He doesn’t get the sailor trade.” Drena paused to take a bite at her sandwich, then went on, her mouth full. “He wants out. If you and I bought this restaurant we could turn it into a gold mine. The cook would stay on and he knows his stuff. We could get three of the girls from the Club as waitresses and with me behind the cash desk and you running the place, we would be a riot. Moe Linsky who is the best and toughest bouncer at the Go-Go would join us to keep order. Freddy! We really are on to something!” She put her hand on his, her eyes sparkling. “We can’t go wrong. There’s accommodation above the restaurant . . . a bedroom, a decent sitting-room. The whole place would have to be given a lick of paint, but that wouldn’t cost much. I would want a juke-box. How do you like the idea?”

  Lewis regarded her blankly.

  “But where’s the money coming from? How much does this friend of yours want for the restaurant?”

  “I’ve already talked to him. He’ll take seven thousand dollars spot cash,” Drena said. “It’s a knock down price. Don’t think I didn’t have to haggle . . . God! How I haggled! We can get it for seven thousand! Think of it! You and me married! Owning a restaurant that can’t go wrong! In a few years we could open another restaurant. In another few years we will have a Cadillac and me a mink coat!”

  Lewis said quietly, “Look, Drena, what’s the matter with you tonight? Or are we playing a game of let’s pretend?”

  “Pretend? Nothing! We can swing this, Freddy!”

  “Can we? Where’s the seven thousand coming from?”

  She laughed.

  “Ah . . . that’s the big question. It’s coming from you.”

  Lewis moved uneasily.

  “But you know, Drena, I haven’t that kind of money.”

  “You will have. I met a guy last night who is ready to pay you ten thousand dollars,” Drena said, smiling at him. “Ten thousand gorgeous, beautiful dollars in cash! We buy the restaurant for seven and we have three to spend on the place. After that, we are in business. What do you say?”