James Chase - What's Better Than Money

I hated the sight of him as soon as I saw him. His white puffy face was badly shaven. His eyes were close set and cunning. He looked like a pimp alert for business.

He gave Rima a jeering grin.

‘Hello, sugar, coming to work your stint?’ he said and then he looked at me. ‘Who’s this?’

‘A friend,’ Rima said. ‘Can he be one of the crowd, Larry?’

‘Why not? The more the merrier. What’s his name?’ ‘Jeff Gordon,’ Rima said.

‘Okay. I’ll book him.’ To me, he went on, ‘Get over to Number three studio, pal. Down the alley, second on your right.’

Rima said to me, ‘You go ahead. I want to talk to Larry.’

Lowenstien winked at me.

‘They all want to talk to me.’

I went off down the alley. Half way down, I looked back. Rima was going into the office with Lowenstien. He had his arm around her shoulders and he was leaning close, talking to her.

I stood in the hot sunshine and waited. After a while, Rima came out and joined me.

‘I was taking a look at that lock. There’s nothing to it. The lock on the drawer where the money is kept is tricky, but I could open it, given a little time.’

I didn’t say anything.

‘We could do it tonight. We could get lost here,’ she went on. ‘I know a place where we can hide.

We’d have to stay the night here and get out in the morning. It would be easy.’

I hesitated for perhaps half a second. I knew if I didn’t take this risk I wasn’t going to get anywhere. I realised I would have to go home and admit defeat. Once I got her cured, both of us would be in the money.

Right at that moment, all I could think of was what ten per cent of half a million dollars would mean to me.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘If you’re going to do it, I’ll do it with you.’

We lay side by side in the darkness, under the big stage of Studio Three. We had been lying like that for the past three hours, listening to the tramp of feet overhead, the shouting of the technicians as they prepared the new set for tomorrow’s shooting, the professional cursing of the director as they didn’t do what he told them to do and did what he told them not to do.

All the morning and the afternoon, we had worked in the heat of the arc lights until dusk with three hundred other extras: that regiment of the lost who hang on to Hollywood in the hope, some day, someone will notice them and turn them into stars, and we had sweated with them and hated them.

We had been part of a crowd supposed to be watching a Championship fight. We had stood and yelled when the director had signalled to us. We had sat and booed. We had leaned forward with horror on our faces. We had jeered, and finally we had lifted the roof when the pale, thin looking kid in the ring who didn’t look as if he could punch his way out of a paper bag, had brought the champion down on his knees and forced him to quit.

We had done all that over and over again from eleven o’clock until seven o’clock in the evening, and it was the hardest day’s work I have ever done in my life.

Finally, the director had broken it up.

‘Okay, boys and girls,’ he had bawled over the loudspeaker system. ‘I want you all here tomorrow at nine sharp. Wear what you are wearing now.’

Rima put her hand on my arm.

‘Keep close to me and move fast when I tel you.’

We tagged along just behind the long line of sweating extras. My heart was thumping, but I wouldn’t let myself think what was ahead of me.

Rima said, ‘Through here,’ and gave me a little push.

We slipped down an alley that brought us to the back entrance of Studio Three.

It was easy to get under the stage. For the first three hours we remained like mice, scared that someone might find us, but after a while, around ten o’clock, the technicians knocked off and we had the place to ourselves.

By then I was aching for a cigarette and so was Rima. We lit up. In the feeble light of the match’s flame, I saw her stretched out beside me in the dust, her eyes glittering, and she wrinkled her nose at me.

‘It’s going to be al right. In another half hour, we can do it.’ It was then I began real y to get scared.

I told myself I must be out of my mind to get involved in a thing like this. If we were caught…

To get my mind off it, I said, ‘What’s this guy Lowenstien to you?’

She shifted. I had an idea I had touched a sore point.

‘He’s nothing to me.’

‘Don’t tel me! How did you get to know a rat like him? He takes after your pal Wilbur.’

‘You’re a fine one to talk with your scarred face! Who do you imagine you are?’

I clenched my fist and punched her hard on her thigh.

‘Shut up about my face!’

‘Then shut up about my friends!’

I had a sudden idea.

‘Of course — you get the stuff from him! He’s got peddler writ en al over him.’

‘You hurt me!’

‘There are times when I could strangle you. He’s the rat you get your drugs from, isn’t he?’

‘What if he is? I have to get it from someone, don’t I?’

‘I must be nuts to have anything to do with you!’

‘You hate me, don’t you?’

‘Hate doesn’t come into it.’

‘You’re the first man who hasn’t wanted to sleep with me,’ she said, her tone bit er.

‘I’m not interested in women.’

‘You’re in as much a mess as I am only you don’t seem to know it.’

‘Oh, go to hell!’ I said, furious with her. I knew she was right. I had been in a mess ever since I had come out of hospital, and what was more, I had grown to like being in a mess.

‘I’ll tel you something now,’ she said softly. ‘I hate you. I know you are good for me: I know you could save me, but all the same I hate you. I’ll never forget how you treated me when you blackmailed me about the police. Watch out, Jeff. I’l get my own back for that even if we go into business together.’

‘You try anything funny with me,’ I said, glaring in her direction in the darkness, ‘and I’l give you a hiding. That’s what you want: a damn good hiding.’

She suddenly giggled.

‘Maybe I do. Wilbur used to beat me.’

I moved away from her. She was so corrupt and horrible it made me sick to be close to her.

‘What’s the time?’ she asked.

I looked at the luminous hands of my watch.

‘Half past ten.’

‘Let’s go.’

That set my heart thumping.

‘Do they have guards here?’

‘Guards? What for?’

She was already crawling away from me, and I went after her. A few seconds later we were standing together in the darkness, near the exit of the Studio. We paused to listen.

There wasn’t a sound.

‘I’ll lead the way,’ she said. ‘Keep close to me.’

We moved out of the Studio into the hot, dark night. There were stars, but the moon hadn’t come up yet. I could just see her as she paused to look into the darkness, the way I was looking.

‘Are you scared?’ she asked, moving close to me. I hated the feel of her slight, hot body, but my back was against the wall of the studio and I couldn’t get away from her. ‘I’m not. This sort of job never scares me, but I think you’re scared.’

‘Okay, so I’m scared,’ I said, shoving her away. ‘Does that satisfy you?’

‘You don’t have to be. They can’t do anything to you worse than you have already done to yourself.

That’s something I’m always tel ing myself.’

‘You’re nuts! What kind of talk is that supposed to be?’

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s get the money. It’l be easy.’

She moved away into the darkness and I followed her.

All day, she had been carrying a sling bag over her shoulder. When she paused outside the casting director’s bungalow, I heard her zip the bag open.