James Chase - You Find Him, I'll Fix Him

“Hello, Dawson, did you want to see me?” he asked as he put down his case. “We haven’t much time.”

I had intended to tell him about the missing films and about the Renault that had followed me, but now, having listened to June Chalmers, I decided I needed some time to think over what she had said before I committed myself. I was suddenly stuck to explain what I was doing here.

But June wasn’t.

“Mr. Dawson brought Helen’s camera,” she said. For a moment I wondered how she knew the camera was Helen’s, but glancing at the case, I realized she had spotted Helen’s initials on it. All the same this show of quick-wittedness told me she was a lot smarter than I had imagined. Chalmers scowled at the camera.

“I don’t want it. I don’t want any of her things,” he said curtly. “Get rid of it.”

I said I would do that.

“Did you find anything up at the villa?”

I caught June’s anxious eyes. I shook my head.

“Nothing helpful.”

He grunted.

“Well, I expect results. We’ve got to find this punk fast. Get some men on the job. I expect to hear something by the time I get back to New York… understand?”

I said I understood.

He took from his pocket a Yale key.

“The police gave me this. It’s the key to her apartment in Rome. You’d better arrange to have her things collected and sold. I’ll leave it to you. I don’t want anything sent back.”

I took the key.

“We should be going, Sherwin,” June said suddenly.

He looked at his strap watch.

“Yeah. Okay. I’ll leave this to you, Dawson. Just find this punk and let me know the moment you’ve found him.”

He nodded, and, picking up his despatch case, he began to move out of the bar towards the reception hall.

June gave me a steady stare as she followed him.

I saw them into the Rolls.

“I want to know what you plan to do,” Chalmers said through the open car window. “Don’t be afraid of spending money. Get as many as you need on this. The quicker you clear it up, the quicker you’ll be working at the foreign desk.”

I said I’d do the best I could.

As the Rolls drove away June Chalmers looked back at me through the rear window. Her eyes were still anxious.

I reached Rome around six o’clock.

During the run I had looked out for the Renault, but I hadn’t seen it. Leaving the Lincoln in the parking lot, I walked up the private stairway that led directly to my apartment.

I unlocked the front door, carried my suitcase into my bedroom then, returning to the lounge, I mixed myself a whisky and soda and then sat down by the telephone. I put a call through to Carlotti.

After a little delay he came on the line.

“This is Dawson,” I said. “I’ve just got back.”

“Yes? Il signer Chalmers has returned to New York?”

“That’s right. The coroner seems satisfied it was an accident.”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” Carlotti said. “The inquest isn’t until Monday.”

“Chalmers has talked to him. He has also talked to your boss,” I said, staring at the opposite wall.

“I wouldn’t know about that either,” Carlotti said.

There was a pause but as he seemed determined to act cagey, I went on, “There’s something you can do for me if you will. I want information about the registration number of a car.”

“Certainly. Let me have the number and I will call you back.”

I gave him the number of the Renault.

“I won’t keep you long.”

I hung up and settled myself more comfortably in my chair. I held my whisky and soda in my hand while I stared down at the swirling traffic that made circles around the Forum.

I sat like that for ten minutes, not thinking, letting my mind remain a blank until the telephone bell rang.

“Are you sure you haven’t made a mistake about that car number?” Carlotti asked.

That was one thing I was sure of.

“I don’t think so… why?”

“There’s no such number registered.”

I ran my fingers through my hair.

“I see.” I didn’t want to raise his curiosity. “I’m sorry about that, Lieutenant. Come to think of it, I could have made a mistake.”

“You have a reason for asking? It is something to do, perhaps, with la signorina Chalmers’s death?”

I grinned without any humour.

“It was a guy who ran me pretty close. I thought of reporting him.”

There was a short pause, then Carlotti said, “Never hesitate to ask for my help when you need it. It is what I am here for.”

I thanked him and hung up.

I lit a cigarette and continued to stare out of the window. This business was becoming complicated.

Although June Chalmers’s argument that Chalmers could rum on me if I showed him the kind of daughter he had been doting on made sense, I knew that she wasn’t thinking of me when she had asked me to lay off an investigation: she was scared something that would affect her would come to light.

I knew too, that if I did lie down on the investigation, Chalmers would know. He would get rid of me and put someone else on the job.

I knew also that if Carlotti suspected that Helen had been murdered, no one, let alone Chalmers, would stop him hunting for the killer.

I levered myself out of my chair and went over to the telephone.

I called Maxwell.

The operator told me there was no answer from the office, so I asked her to put me through to Maxwell’s hotel. The clerk told me Maxwell was out. I said I would call again and hung up.

I lit another cigarette and wondered what my next move was to be. It seemed to me that I had to go ahead with the investigation. I decided to go around to Helen’s apartment. There might or might not be something there that would give me a lead on this set-up.

I locked the camera away in a drawer in my desk, and then went down to where I had left the Lincoln. Not bothering to get my car from the garage, I used the Lincoln. It took me twenty minutes to reach Helen’s apartment block. I lugged her suitcases into the automatic elevator and then along with me to her front door.

As I took out the Yale key Chalmers had given me, I glanced at my watch. The time was twenty minutes to eight o’clock. I pushed open the front door and walked into the hall.

A very faint smell of her perfume gave me a spooky feeling as I crossed the hall and walked into the sitting-mom. It seemed only a few hours ago that she and I were talking together about our planned stay in Sorrento: only a few hours since I had kissed her for the first and only time.

I stood in the doorway and looked across the room to the desk where the ten cartons of films had stood, but they weren’t there. There had been a remote possibility that she had forgotten to have taken them to Sorrento. That they were not on the desk underlined the fact that someone had stolen them from the villa.

I moved into the room and looked around. After a moment’s hesitation I went over to the desk and sat down before it I opened one drawer after the other. There were the usual things you expect to find in the drawers of a desk: notepaper, blotting-paper, ink, rubber bands and so on. I found all these, but I didn’t find one personal paper, bill, letter or diary anywhere. It took me several moments to realize that someone must have been here before me, and had made a clean sweep of every used scrap of paper in the desk. Had it been the police or the same person who had stolen the films?

Uneasy in my mind, I went into the bedroom. It wasn’t until I had looked into the various closets and into the drawers of the bureau that I saw what a tremendous stock of expensive clothes Helen had owned. Chalmers had told me to get rid of all her things, but looking at the dozens of dresses, coats, shoes, three drawers full of underwear and a drawer crammed with costume jewellery, I saw the job was too big for me to tackle alone. I decided I’d have to get Gina to help me.