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

“Do you?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“This girl was a ripe little bitch. You don’t think her boy friend shoved her over the cliff, do you?”

“I hope not. Chalmers would love a set-up like that.”

“There’s bound to be a man in this, Ed. She wouldn’t have taken a villa in Sorrento if she hadn’t a man to share it with. Any idea who he could be?”

“Not the vaguest, but never mind that, Jack. Tell me something: who’s June Chalmers?”

He looked surprised, then grinned.

“She’s a pippin, isn’t she? But if you’ve got ideas about her, I’d forget them. You wouldn’t get to first base.”

“Nothing like that. I want to know who she is. Where does the come from? Do you know anything about her?”

“Not much. She used to be a torch singer at one of Menotti’s night spots.”

I stiffened. Menotti again.

“Is that how she and Helen met?”

“Could be: did they meet?”

“She told me she had known Helen for some years.”

“Did she now? I didn’t know that. I heard Chalmers met her at a party, took one look at her and practically married her on the spot. It was lucky for her that he did. The night club she was working at closed down when Menotti was knocked off. Although the certainly has a shape, she can’t sing for dimes.”

The night porter interrupted us by bringing my sandwich.

Maxwell got to his feet.

“Well, here are your victuals. I’ll be pushing along. When’s the inquest?”

“Monday.”

“You’ll go down, I suppose?”

“I guess so.”

“Rather you than me. Well, so long. Will you look in at the office to-morrow?”

“I might. I’m leaving you to handle that end. Officially, I’m still on vacation.”

“And having a wonderful time,” he said, grinned and went away.

I sat down and munched my sandwich. I did some heavy thinking at the same time. I had hoped to have found a list of telephone numbers or an address book among Helen’s papers that might give me a lead on her friends. If she had kept such a list, then someone had taken it. The only clue I had so far was Carlo’s telephone number. There was a girl I knew who worked on the Rome telephone exchange. She had once won a beauty competition, and I had given her a write-up. One thing had led to another, and for a couple of months we had been more than friendly. Then I lost sight of her. I decided I’d look her up in the morning and persuade her to get me Carlo’s address.

Apart from Carlo, who else was there.

I dug down into my mind to recall anything that Helen had said during our various meetings that would give me a lead on her other friends. It wasn’t until I was about to give up and go to bed that I suddenly remembered she had once mentioned Giuseppe Frenzi, who wrote a

political column for L ’ltalia del Popolo and w ho was a good friend of mine.

When Frenzi wasn’t writing his column, he was going around with women. He claimed that an association with a beautiful woman was the only true meaning of life. Knowing Frenzi, I was pretty sure that he and Helen had been a lot more than just friends. Frenzi had a technique of his own, and if I was to believe Maxwell, Helen wasn’t the kind of girl to say no.

I thought Frenzi might be an important lead.

I looked at my watch. The time was twenty minutes to midnight: the beginning of a day for Frenzi, who never got up before eleven o’clock in the morning and never went to bed before four.

I picked up the telephone receiver and called his apartment. There was just a remote chance that he would still be there.

He answered immediately.

“Ed? Well, this is something,” he said. He prided himself on his American expressions. “I was about to call you. I’ve only just read the news about Helen. Is it true? Is she really dead?”

“She’s dead all right. I want to talk to you, Giuseppe. Can I come around?”

“Of course. I will wait for you.”

“I’ll be right over,” I said, and hung up.

I left the apartment and ran down the staircase to where I had left the Lincoln.

It was raining, as it will do suddenly and unexpectedly in Rome. I ducked into the car, set the windscreen wipers in motion; started the engine and backed out of the parking space.

Frenzi had an apartment on Via Claudia in the shadow of the Colosseum. It wasn’t more than a six-minute drive from my place to his.

There wasn’t much traffic and, as I accelerated, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a car that was parked nearby suddenly turn on its parking lights and, a moment later, it swung out into the road and came after me.

As it passed under the glare of a street light I saw it was the Renault.

It isn’t often that I lose my temper, but when I do, I have a field-day. The sight of the Renault gave me a rush of blood to my head.

I became determined to find out who the driver was, and what he was playing at. So long as the car was behind me, there wasn’t much I could do about it. Somehow I had to get him in front of me, then I could crowd him into the kerb, force him to stop and get a look at him. If he wanted to play it rough, I was in the mood to hang one on his jaw.

I drove around the Colosseum with the Renault fifty yards in the rear. When I reached a dark patch in the road, I slammed on my brakes, swung the car to the kerb and pulled up.

Taken by surprise, the driver of the Renault had no chance to stop. The car shot past me. It was too dark to see whether the driver was a man or a woman. The moment the car had passed me, I let in my clutch and went after it, sending me Lincoln forward with my foot squeezing the gas pedal to the board.

The driver of the Renault must have guessed what I planned to do. His reaction was quicker than I expected. In his torn, he trod on the gas, and the Renault surged forward. It went streaking down Via dei Fori Imperiali like a bullet from a gun.

For a moment I thought I was going to catch him. My front bumper was only a foot off his rear fender, and I was ready to swing the wheel over and hit him, but he began to pull away.

We were travelling now at around eighty miles an hour. I heard a shrill, indignant police whistle blasting somewhere in my rear. I saw beyond the speeding Renault the Piazza Venezia looming up. I saw the slow-moving traffic ahead, and my nerve faltered. I knew I couldn’t roar into the piazza at this speed without hitting a car or killing someone. My foot went down on the brake pedal and I slowed.

The Renault kept away from me. Its horn gave a long, warning blast, and men the car went screeching into the piazza, missing two cars by inches, and forcing another to skid to a standstill. Only slightly slackening it’s mad speed, the Renault; its horn blaring, stormed across the piazza, and disappeared into the darkness and towards the Tiber.

I heard the police whistle shrill again. Anxious not to have an argument with the law, and pretty certain I had been travelling too fast for any policeman in this light to have taken my number, I swung into the Via Cavour, slowed down to a respectable speed and took a long circular run back to the Colosseum.

I was rattled that the Renault had got away, but I would rather he escaped than for me to attempt to compete with his kind of driving. At least, I had the satisfaction of knowing I had given him a scare.

I arrived at Frenzi’s ground-floor apartment, parked the Lincoln outside and went up the steps to the front door.

Frenzi answered my ring immediately.

“Come in,” he said. “It is good to see you again.”

I followed him into his attractively furnished lounge.

“Will you have a drink?” he asked.

“No, I don’t think so, thanks.”