James Chase - Well Now, My Pretty…

ONE OF the major attractions of Paradise City was the Aquarium. He had asked her to meet him by the Dolphin pool at fourthirty p.m. and she thought it was a pretty crummy place for a rendezvous. She hated mixing with the tourists who made Paradise City at this time completely unbearable.

During the third week of February when it was hot, but not too hot, it was the fashionable time for the Texans, the New Yorkers, as well as the South Americans, to come in a never-ending stream of overpoweringly rich vulgarity. Between the hours of four and five, after the siesta, and when there was nothing much to do until the casino opened, crowds of tourists visited the cool, dimly lit caves that housed the most spectacular aquarium in the world.

She moved through the crowds, her green eyes restless and uneasy, her small body shrinking a little inside her simple cotton frock, as she made contact with the fat and the old, the raddled and the wrinkled who screamed, yelled, pushed and jostled to gape at the tropical fish that gaped back at them with equal incredulity.

Could she ever hope to find him here? she wondered, suddenly angry that he should have suggested such a meeting place. She felt hot fingers cup one of her buttocks and squeeze. She jerked forward, not looking over her shoulder. This was something she had grown accustomed to. The old and the too rich were prone to bottom pinching. She had long ceased to care. It was a hazard she accepted in return for a neat, well-proportioned body and an attractive face… you can’t have it both ways, she had often told herself. You were either plain and non-sexy or you had bruises. She preferred the bruises.

She made her way towards the Dolphin pool, aware that her heart was thumping, aware too of a sick feeling of fear. As she walked, her eyes anxiously scanned every face that appeared out of the dim light, praying she would meet no one she knew or who knew who she was. But as the milling noisy crowd surrounded her, pushing, laughing and yelling at each other, she began to realise that his choice of a meeting place was clever. None of her friends, no one from the Casino, would dream of coming here to be jostled by this sweating, vulgar crowd of tourists, anxious only to kill an hour or so.

She edged her way into the big cave that housed the dolphins. Here, the crowd was dense. She could hear the big creatures splashing in the water as they dived for fish thrown to them. There was a dank smell in the cave, mixed with the smell of expensive perfume and body sweat; the noise of the crowd as it enjoyed itself, beat against her eardrums, making her cringe.

Then she saw him.

He came out of the crowd with his gentle smile, his white panama hat in his hand, his tropical cream-coloured suit immaculate, a blood-red carnation in his buttonhole. He was small and slightly built: a man in his early sixties, with a lean brown face, grey eyes and a thin mouth that was constantly smiling. His thinning blond hair was white at the temples and his nose was the beak of a hawk: a man she now distrusted, who was learning to fear, but who attracted her with the pull of an electro-magnet to steel.

“Well now, my pretty…” he said, pausing before her. “So we meet again.”

His voice was soft, but clear. She had never had any difficulty in hearing what he said no matter where they had met, even against the noisiest of backgrounds. This was always his greeting, “Well now, my pretty…” She knew it was as insincere as an alcoholic’s promise but, like the bottom pinching, she had ceased to care.

When they had first met, he had told her his name was Franklin Ludovick. He had been born in Prague, and was a freelance journalist. He had come to Paradise City to write an important profile on the Casino. This was not surprising. Many journalists had come to write about the Casino. It was the top glamour spot of Florida. At this period of the high season, a million dollars could, every night, cross thegreen-baized tables, more often the croupiers’ way than the punters… but who cared?

Ludovick had approached her one afternoon while she was sun bathing on the beach. His harmless, kindly manner, his deference to her youth and his smile captivated her. He had explained that he knew she worked at the Casino. He gave her an embossed card, bearing his name with the magic New Yorker magazine a dded as his address and his reference. He explained that he was looking for inside information about the Casino. He sat at her feet on the soft sand, his panama hat resting almost on the bridge of his beaky nose as he talked. He told her he had had an interview with Harry Lewis, the manager of the Casino. His face screwed up in a comical grimace of despair. What a man! How secretive! If he had to rely on Harry Lewis’s information, he would never produce anything to satisfy the New Yorker’s treme ndously high standards. He felt he could approach her. She worked in the Casino’s vault with a number of other girls. This, he had found out. He looked up at her, his grey eyes mischievous. Well then, my pretty… how often had she heard him use this phrase that she had come to fear and to distrust? Suppose you tell me what I want to know and I, in my turn, will pay you for the information? What shall we say? The New York er is a rich magazine. Five hundred dollars? How about five hundred dollars?

She had caught her breath. Five hundred dollars! She was hoping desperately to get married. Terry, her boy-friend, was still a student. They had both agreed that if they could only raise five hundred dollars, they could take a chance and get married, and at least have a one room walk-up… but how to get five hundred dollars? And here, now, was this harmless little man actually offering her just this sum to tell him the secrets of the Casino.

She was about to say an immediate yes when she remembered that warning clause in her contract — a contract that everyone working for the Casino had to sign. No member of the staff should ever talk about the Casino’s affairs. The penalty was instant dismissal and possible prosecution.

Seeing her hesitate, Ludovick had said, “I know what you have signed, but you need not be afraid. Think it over. No one will everknow who gave me the information. After all, five hundred dollars is a useful sum. There could be more…”

He had got to his feet, smiled at her and walked away, swinging his panama hat, stepping around the large, overfed carcasses of the rich, laid out to broil in the sun with their knotted veins, their hammer toes and their glistening fat.

That evening, when she had had time to think over his suggestion, he had called her on the telephone.

“I have spoken to the Editor. He is quite willing to pay a thousand. I am so pleased. I thought he might be difficult. Now, my pretty, can you help me for one thousand dollars?”

So, with a sick feeling of guilt and of fear of being discovered, she had helped him. He had given her five hundred dollars. The other five hundred would come, he explained with his fatherly smile, when she had given him all the necessary information. And as he probed, his questions becoming more and more disturbing, she had come to realise that he might not be after all a journalist. He might be a man planning to rob the Casino. Why so much interest in the number of guards, the amount of money that went into the vault each night and the security system… surely this was the kind of information that a man planning to rob the Casino, would need? Then this final request: the need for the blueprints of the Casino’s electrical system. He had asked her for this three afternoons ago while they sat in his shabby Buick coupe on a lonely beach on the outskirts of Paradise City. At this request, she had rebelled.