James Chase: Just Another Sucker

When they released me at eight o’clock on a July morning, it was raining fit to drown a duck.

It was a pretty odd sensation to walk out into the world that, for me, had stood still for three and a half long years. I approached it warily, walking a few yards from the iron studded doors, then pausing to get the feel of freedom.

There would be a Greyhound bus at the corner to take me home, but for the moment, I didn’t feel like going home. I just wanted to stand on the edge of the sidewalk, to feel the rain against my face and to let the fact sink in that I was now free, that I wouldn’t have to spend another night in a cell and I wouldn’t any longer have to share my life with thugs, criminals and sex perverts as I had been doing for all these months.

The rain made puddles in the road. It beat down on my four year old hat and my five year old raincoat: warm rain, coming from a cloud-swollen sky as dark and as bitter as myself.

A glittering Buick Century slid up beside me and the electrically driven off-side window rolled down.

‘Harry!’

The car door swung open as I bent to stare in at the driver.

John Renick grinned at me.

‘Come on in — you’re getting wet,’ he said.

I hesitated, then I got into the car and slammed the door shut. Renick grabbed my hand and squeezed it. His dark lean face showed as nothing else could how pleased he was to see me.

‘How are you, you old sonofagun?’ he asked. ‘How does it feel to be out?’

‘I’m all right,’ I said, disentangling my hand from his. ‘Don’t tell me I’m getting a police escort back home.’

His smile slipped a little at my tone: his grey shrewd eyes searched my face.

‘You didn’t imagine I wasn’t coming, did you? I’ve been counting the days.’

‘I didn’t imagine anything.’ I looked at the ornate dashboard of the car. ‘Is this yours?’

‘You bet. I bought it a couple of months ago. She’s a honey, isn’t she?’

‘So the Palm City cops are still keeping themselves well heeled. Congratulations.’

His mouth tightened and there was a sudden flash of anger in his eyes.

‘Look, Harry, if any other guy but you had made that crack, I would have taken a poke at him.’

I shrugged.

‘Go ahead if you feel that way. I’m used to cops taking pokes at me.’

He drew in a deep breath, then he said: ‘Just for the record, I’m the D.A.’s Special officer now, and I have had a pretty substantial rise. I’ve been off the regular Force for more than two years.’

I was irritated to feel the blood rise to my face.

‘I see… I’m sorry… I didn’t know.’

‘How could you?’ He grinned and shifted into gear. The Buick drifted away from the kerb. ‘A lot of things have changed, Harry, since you’ve been inside. The old gang has gone. We have a new D.A. — he’s a good man.’

I didn’t say anything.

‘What are your plans?’ he asked abruptly.

‘I haven’t any. I want to look around. You know the Herald’s washed me up?’

‘I heard.’ There was a pause, then he went on: ‘It’s going to be a little rough for you at first. You know that, don’t you?’

‘Oh sure. When a guy kills a cop even accidentally, he’s not allowed to forget it. I know how rough it is going to be.’

‘You won’t have any trouble with the police. I didn’t mean that, but you may have to look around for a new career. Cubitt carries a lot of weight. He has his knife in you. If he can stop you, you’re not getting back into the newspaper world.’

‘You let me worry about that.’

‘I might be able to help.’

‘I don’t want any help.’

‘Oh sure, but there’s Nina…’

‘And I can take care of Nina.’

There was a long pause while he stared through the rain-soaked windshield, then he said: ‘Look, Harry, you and I are friends. We’ve known each other a heck of a long time. I know how you are feeling, but don’t treat me as if I were one of your enemies. I’ve talked to Meadows about you. He’s the new D.A. There’s nothing fixed yet, but there’s a chance we can use you in the office.’

I looked at him.

‘I wouldn’t work for the Palm City Administration if it was the last job left on earth.’

‘Nina’s had a pretty rough time,’ Renick said awkwardly. ‘She…’

‘I’ve also had a pretty rough time, so that makes the two of us. I don’t want anyone’s help. That’s final!’

‘Well, okay,’ Renick said. He made a helpless gesture with his hands. ‘Don’t imagine I don’t understand, Harry. I guess I’d be bitter too if I had been framed the way you were, but what’s done’s done. You have your future to think of now — Nina’s future too.’

‘What else do you imagine I have been thinking about all the time I have been in a cell?’ I stared out of the car window at the sea, grey in the rain, pounding against the sea wall. ‘Yes, I’m bitter all right. I have had time to realise just what a goddam sucker I’ve been. I should have taken the ten thousand dollars the Police Commissioner offered me to keep my mouth shut. Well, one thing I have learned since I have been in jail: I’m not ever going to be a sucker again.’

‘You’re just sounding off,’ Renick said sharply. ‘You know you did the right thing. The cards were stacked against you. If you had taken that rat’s bribe, you would never have been able to live with yourself, and you know it.’

‘Think so? Don’t kid yourself it’s going to be all that pleasant to live with myself now. Three and a half years sharing a cell with a child rapist and two thugs with habits that would sicken a pig does something to you. At least if I had taken that bribe I wouldn’t be now an ex-jailbird without a job. I’d probably be owning a car like yours.’

Renick shifted uneasily.

‘That’s no way to talk, Harry. You’re getting me worried. For Pete’s sake, get hold of yourself before you see Nina.’

‘Suppose you mind your own business?’ I snarled at him. ‘Nina happens to be my wife. She’s taken me for better or worse. Well, okay. You let me worry about her.’

‘I think you were wrong, Harry, when you wouldn’t let her attend the trial or even visit you in jail or write to you. You know as well as I do, she wanted to share this thing with you, but you turned her into an outsider.’

My hands closed into fists as I continued to stare at the rain-soaked beach.

‘I knew what I was doing,’ I said. ‘Do you imagine I wanted her to be photographed by those vultures in the court room? Do you imagine I wanted her to see me in that prison rig behind wire and glass? Do you imagine I wanted that jerk of a Warden reading her letters before I got them? Just because I acted like a sucker, there was no need for her to be dragged into it.’

‘You were wrong, Harry. Didn’t it occur to you she wanted to be with you,’ Renick said impatiently.

‘It was as much as I could do to persuade her not to come with me this morning.’

We were approaching Palm Bay, the swank residential district of Palm City. The long line of de luxe bathing cabins looked forlorn in the driving rain. The beach was deserted. The Cadillacs, the Rolls and the Bentleys stood in their parking squares outside the luxury hotels.

At one time Palm Bay had been my hunting ground. It seemed a long time now since I had been the gossip columnist of the Herald, the newspaper with the biggest circulation in California. Then, my column had been syndicated to over a hundred minor newspapers. I had been earning good money. I had lived well and had enjoyed my work. After a while, I had married Nina and bought a bungalow just outside Palm Bay where we set up home. I was doing all right, and looked set for life; then one night, when I was in the bar of the Beach Hotel, I happened to overhear a snatch of conversation between two strangers who had been hitting the bottle and had become indiscreetly loud.