James Chase: Vulture Is a Patient Bird

“Why don’t you say something? Her voice was shrill. “What’s happening?”

He paused for a brief moment to look at her and he grimaced. Well, she had been convenient, he told himself, but no man in his right mind could call her an oil painting. Still, she had provided him with a hideout on this crummy barge for the past four weeks. Right now, without her plaster of make-up, she looked like hell. She was too fat. Those sagging breasts sickened him. Her anxious terror aged her. What was she… forty? But she had been convenient. It had taken Moroni four weeks to find him, but now it was time to leave. In three hours, Fennel thought, probably less, she would not even be a memory to him.

“A little trouble,” he said. “Nothing. Don’t get excited. Go back to bed.”

She moved into the room. The barge lifted slightly as the wind moved the river.

“Why are you dressing? What were you…”

Just shut up, will you? I’m leaving.”

Her face sagged.

“Leaving? Why? Where are you going?”

He took a cigarette from the box on the table. He was feeling fine now after the hot shower and more assured, but he knew she was going to be a nuisance. She was horribly possessive. She needed his brutal love-making… the reason why she had kept him there. She wasn’t going to be shaken off easily.

“Get into bed,” he said. “You’ll catch cold.” Thinking: as if I give a damn. “I have a phone call to make.”

She knew he was lying and she grabbed hold of his arm.

“You can’t leave me! I’ve done everything for you. You’re not to go!”

“For God’s sake, shut up!” Fennel snarled and shoving her aside, he crossed the room to the telephone. As he dialled the number, he looked at his wrist-watch. The time was 03.50 hrs. He waited, listening to the steady burr-burr-burr of the ringing tone. There was a click and a sleepy voice demanded, “W’o the “ell is this?”

“Jacey? This is Lew.”

“Gawd! I was asleep!”

“This earns you twenty nicker,” Fennel said, speaking slowly and distinctly. “Get your car. Meet me at the Crown pub, King’s Road in twenty minutes, and I mean twenty minutes.”

“You crackers? Look at the time! W’ot’s up? I’m not coming out. It’s raining fit to drown a duck.”

“Twenty nickers… twenty minutes,” Fennel said quietly. There was a long pause. He could hear Jacey breathing heavily and imagined he could hear his greedy brain creaking.

“The Crown?”

“Yes.”

“The things I do! Well, okay. I’m on my way.”

Fennel replaced the receiver.

“You’re not leaving!” Mimi’s face blotched with red and her eyes were glaring. “I won’t let you leave!”

He ignored her and went swiftly to the dressing-table, jerked open a drawer and snatched up the essential articles he always kept there: a safety razor, a tube of brushless cream, a toothbrush, threepacks of Players cigarettes and a haircomb. These he stowed away in his jacket pocket.

She again grabbed hold of his arm.

“I’ve done everything for you!” she wailed. “You blasted jailbird! Without me, you would have starved!”

He shoved her away and crossed the room to the mantelpiece that framed a phony fireplace in which stood an electric stove. He took down a big Chinese teapot. The moment he touched it, she sprang forward and tried to take the teapot from him. Her eyes were wild, her long black hair hung over her face making her look like a demented witch.

“Take your hands off that!” she screamed.

The flickering evil in his washed out grey eyes should have warned her, but she was too frantic to stop him taking her savings to be warned.

“Take it easy, Mimi; he said. “I have to have it. I’ll let you have it back… promise.”

“No!”

She hooked her fingers and slashed at his face as her left hand wrenched at the teapot. Fennel jerked his head back, released the teapot and then savagely struck her on the side of the jaw. The force of the blow flung her backwards. She fell, her eyes rolling up and her head thudding on the floor. The teapot smashed to pieces as her grip was released and money spewed from it.

Fennel poked aside the pile of silver and picked up the small roll of ten pound notes. He didn’t look at the unconscious woman. He put the money in his hip pocket, picked up his flail and went up on deck. As far as he was concerned his thirty days with Mimi were chalk marks on the blackboard now erased.

Rain was falling heavily, and the wind felt bleak against his face. He stood for some seconds looking at the embankment, letting his eyes become accustomed to the darkness. Nothing moved. Hewould have to take a chance, he thought, and ran the landing plank, from the barge, down to the wet tarmac. He slid down the plank, gained the dark shadows and again paused to listen. Again he heard nothing to alarm him. His fingers tightened on the flail and keeping close to the embankment wall, he walked silently to the distant steps that led to the upper embankment.

If Jacey was late, he could be sunk, he thought. They would have to stop the bleeding: the one who had been hit on the neck would bleed like a stuck pig. Then they would telephone Moroni and report failure. Moroni would get four or five men down there fast. Fennel decided he had a possible half-hour of freedom: certainly not more.

But he had no need to worry. As he reached the darkened

Crown public house, he saw Jacey’s battered Morris pull up. He sprinted across the road, opened the car door and slid in.

“Back to your place, Jacey.”

“Wait a mo’,” Jacey said. The street light lit up his aged, rat face. “W’ot’s on the move?”

Fennel gripped Jacey’s thin wrist.

“Back to your place!” he snarled.

Jacey caught a glimpse of the vicious twist of the mouth and the half mad expression of contained rage. He grunted, engaged gear and set the Morris in motion.

Ten minutes later, the two men were in a small, shabbily furnished room, lit by a dusty, shadeless lamp that hung precariously from the dirty ceiling.

Jacey put a bottle of Black & White on the table and two glasses. He poured two stiff drinks and cradled his glass in his dirty hands while he regarded Fennel uneasily.

Jacey was a bookie’s clerk and did any odd job for the lesser tearaways to earn extra money. He knew Fennel to be a major tearaway. He had met him in Parkhurst jail when they were serving sentences: Fennel for robbery with violence: Jacey for trying to pass badly forged ten shilling notes. When they had been released, they had kept in touch and Jacey had been flattered to have a big man like Fennel interested in him. But now he was sorry he had had anything to do with Fennel. He had heard through the underworld grapevine that Fennel had talked and five of Moroni’s men had walked into a police trap. He knew Moroni had put the death sign on Fennel, but he was too greedy to pass up the chance of earning twenty pounds.

Fennel took out Mimi’s roll of ten pound notes. He pulled off two and tossed them on the table.

“Freeze on to those, Jacey,” he said. “I’m staying here for a couple of days.”

Jacey’s ferret-like eyes widened. He didn’t touch the money on the table.

“Can’t ’ave you ’ere for two days, Lew. Ain’t safe. They’ll carve me if they find out you’ve been “ere.”

“I can carve you too,” Fennel said softly. “And I’m here.”

Jacey scratched his unshaven chin. His eyes darted about the room while he considered the situation and the risks. Moroni was probably in bed, asleep, but Fennel was here. Fennel could be as dangerous as Moroni.

“Okay, then… two days… not an ’our more,” he said finally.

“In two days, I’ll be out of the country,” Fennel said. “I’ve got a job. Maybe, I won’t be coming back.” He finished his whisky and then walked into the inner room and over to the battered couch that served Jacey as a bed. He kicked off his shoes and lay down.