Free 1973 - Have a Change of Scene by James Hadley Chase Page B

earnest, completely sexless and a drag.
    Somewhere in those cabinets, I thought I would find Rhea’s background. ‘If I can be of help,’ let it hang.
    ‘Help?’ Hatchet face stiffened. ‘Are you qualified, Mr. Carr?’
    ‘No, but I’ve.’ I stopped. I was wasting my breath. I was sure she knew about me.
    ‘Thank you, Mr. Carr.’ She stared me over. ‘We can manage very well.’
    ‘I just thought I’d look in.’ I backed towards the door. ‘I’m at the Bendix Hotel. If you want help, just call me.’
    ‘We won’t trouble you, Mr. Carr.’ Then with a sour grimace, she added, ‘Miss Baxter was always calling on amateurs. That’s not my method.’
    ‘That I can imagine,’ I said and stepped into the passage and closed the door.
    I would have liked to have done it legally, but if the old cow was this way, then I would have to do it illegally. I still had the key Jenny had given me to the office.
    So I walked down the six flights of stairs and out on to the cement-dusty street. The time was 17.00 and I walked to a bar opposite and sat in a corner where I could survey the entrance to the office block. I ordered beer, lit a cigarette and waited.
    Time moved on. People came and went. A barfly tried to get talking with me, but I brushed him off.
    After a second beer, taken slowly, I saw Hatchetface and the teenager emerge and walk together down the street. Hatchetface held the teenager’s arm in a possessive grip as if she expected some man would leap out and rape the girl.
    I was in no hurry. I had a third beer, smoked yet another cigarette, then getting to my feet, I walked out on to the street. By now it was 18.15. Two giggling girls, in miniskirts, came out of the office block as I entered. In another hour it would be dark. I didn’t want to turn on the lights in the office. That could be a giveaway. I walked up the six flights of stairs. The owners of the one-room offices were going home.
    They brushed by me as I climbed: little men, tall men, fat men, thin men: some with their typists. They didn’t notice me. They were too eager to get back to the discomfort of their homes, to eat, to watch television and then go to bed with their dreary wives.
    As I reached the sixth floor, a woman with a face like a wrinkled prune came out of an office, slammed the door shut and edged by me as if I were the Boston Strangler. I unlocked Jenny’s door, slid into the tiny office, shut the door and turned the key.
    It took me some ten minutes to find Rhea Morgan’s file. I sat at the desk and read her case history the way I would have read my own case history.
    Jenny had done a good job. The report was written in her sprawling handwriting. She must have felt it was too personal for a helper to type.
    Rhea Morgan, I learned, was now twenty-eight years of age. At the age of eight, she had come before the law as uncontrollable. She had been sent to a home. At the age of ten she had been caught stealing lipstick and perfume from a self-service store. She had been sent back to the home. At the age of thirteen, she had had sexual relations with one of the executives of the home. They had been caught in the act and a few hours later, before the police arrived, the executive had cut his throat. She had been moved to a stricter home. After a year, she had run away. A year later, she had been picked up while prostituting herself to truck drivers on a freeway to New York. She had come before the law again and had been sent for psychiatric treatment. No success there for she had slipped away and had gone missing for two years.
    She had then been picked up in Jacksonville with three men who were attempting a bank robbery. There had been a plea for her age and she drew a year. By this time, she would be around seventeen years of age. After serving the sentence, she dropped out of sight, then she reappeared three years later. This time she was involved with two men in a jewel robbery. She was handling the getaway car. The two men,