James Chase: Vulture Is a Patient Bird

“Tenth floor, sir. Suite 27.”

Garry was whisked up by the express lift to the tenth floor. He was conducted by the lift-man to the door of Suite 27. He was obviously too important and too fragile to knock on the door. The lift-man did this service, bowed and retired.

The smell of money, as far as Garry was concerned, was now over-powering.

He entered a small distinguished room where a girl sat behind a desk on which stood three telephones, an I.B.M. golf ball typewriter, an intercom and a tape-recorder.

The girl puzzled Garry because although she had a nice figure, was dressed in a stylish black frock, was beautifully groomed, her hair immaculate, she was nothing to him but a sexless photograph of a woman long since dead. Her blank face, her immaculately plucked eyebrows, her pale lipstick merely emphasized her lack of charm: a robot that made him feel slightly uncomfortable.

“Mr. Edwards?”

Even her voice was metallic: a tape-recording badly reproduced.

“That’s me,” Garry said, and because he never liked to be

defeated by any woman, he gave her his charming smile.

It had no effect. The girl touched a button, paused, then said, “Mr. Edwards is here, sir.”

A green light flashed up on the intercom. Obviously, Mr. Shalik didn’t care to waste his breath. He preferred to press buttons than to talk.

The girl got up, walked gracefully to a far door, opened it and stood aside.

Impressed by all this, Garry again tried his smile which again bounced off her the way a golf ball bounces off a brick wall.

He moved past her into a large sunny room, luxuriously furnished with period pieces and impressive looking paintings that could have been by the great masters but probably weren’t.

At a vast desk sat a small, fat man, smoking a cigar, his chubby hands resting on the desk blotter. Garry judged him to be around forty-six years of age. He was dark-complexioned with close cut black hair, beady black eyes and a mouth that he used for food but not for smiles. Garry decided he was either an Armenian or an Egyptian. He had the stillness and the probing stare of power. As Garry walked slowly to the desk, the beady black eyes examined him. They were X-ray eyes, and by the time Garry had reached the desk, he had an uncomfortable feeling this fat little man knew him rather better than he knew himself.

“Sit down, Mr. Edwards.” The accent was a little thick. A chubby hand waved to a chair.

Garry sat down. He now regretted laying Toni an hour ago. He felt a little depleted and he had an idea that this fat little man wouldn’t have much time for depleted applicants for the job he was offering. Garry sat upright and tried to look intelligent.

Shalik sucked in rich smelling smoke and allowed it to drift from his mouth like the smoke from a small, but active volcano. He picked up a sheet of paper which Garry recognized as his letter of application and he studied it for several moments, then he tore it upand dropped it into a hidden wastepaper basket.

“You are a helicopter pilot, Mr. Edwards?” he asked, resting his hands on the blotter and regarding the ash of his cigar with more interest than he regarded Garry.

“That’s correct. I saw your ad and I thought…”

The chubby hand lifted, cutting Garry off.

“This nonsense you have written about yourself… at least, it proves you have imagination.”

Garry stiffened.

“I don’t get that. What do you mean?”

Shalik touched off his cigar ash into a gold bowl at his elbow.

“I found your lies amusing,” he said. “I have had you investigated. You are Garry Edwards, aged twenty-nine, and you were born in Ohio, U.S.A. Your father ran a reasonably successful service station. When you were sufficiently educated, you worked with your father and you came to know about motor cars. You and your father didn’t get along. Probably faults on both sides, but that is of no interest to me. You had the opportunity to learn to fly: you took it. You have talent with machines. You got a job as an air chauffeur to a Texas oilman who paid you well. You saved your money. The job didn’t interest you. You met a wetback smuggler who persuaded you to smuggle Mexicans into the States. The pay was good, and when the operation was over, you decided to go into the smuggling business. You went to Tangiers, bought your own aircraft and flew consignments of various contrabands into France. You prospered as smugglers do for a time. However, you became greedy as smugglers do and you made a mistake. You were arrested. Your co-pilot managed to get your plane in the air while you were struggling with the police. He sold your plane and banked the money for you to have when you came out of the French prison after serving a three year sentence. You were deported from France and you are here.” Shalik stubbed out his cigar and looked at Garry. “Would you say my information is correct?”

Garry laughed.

“Dead on the nail.” He got to his feet. “Well, it was a try. I won’t take up any more of your time.”

Shalik waved him back to his chair.

“Sit down. I think you are the man I am looking for. You can satisfy me that you have a pilot’s licence and that you can handle a helicopter?”

“Of course,” Garry returned and lugged out a plastic folder which he had brought along and laid it on the desk. Then he sat down again.

Shalik examined the papers which the folder contained. He took his time, then he returned the folder.

“Satisfactory.” He took another cigar from his desk drawer, regarded it carefully, then cut the end with a gold cutter. “Mr. Edwards, am I right in thinking you would be prepared to handle a job that is not entirely honest so long as the money is right?”

Garry smiled.

“I’d like that qualified. What do you mean… not entirely honest?”

“Difficult, unethical work that does not involve the police in any way, but pays handsomely.”

“Can you make it clearer than that?”

“I am offering three thousand dollars a week for a Three-week assignment. At the end of the assignment you will be nine thousand dollars better off. There are certain risks, but I can promise you the police won’t come into it.”

Garry sat upright. Nine thousand dollars!

“What are the risks?”

“Opposition.” Shalik regarded his cigar with indifferent, beady eyes. “But life is made up of opposition, isn’t it, Mr. Edwards?”

“Just what do I have to do to earn this money?”

“That will be explained to you tonight. You will not be alone. The risks and responsibilities will be shared. What I want to know now is if you are willing to do three weeks work for nine thousand dollars.”

Garry didn’t hesitate.

“Yes… I am.”

Shalik nodded.

“Good. Then you will come here at 21.00 hrs. tonight when I will introduce you to the other members of the team and I will explain the operation.” The chubby hand made a slight signal of dismissal.

Garry got to his feet.

“Please don’t talk about this assignment to anyone. Mr. Edwards,” Shalik went on. “You must regard it as top secret.”

“Sure… I’ll say nothing.”

Garry left the room.

The girl at the desk got up and opened the door for him. He didn’t bother to smile at her. His mind was too preoccupied. Nine thousand dollars! Wow!

The girl watched him enter the lift and then she returned to her desk. She sat for some moments, listening. Then hearing nothing from the inner room, she softly opened a drawer in her desk and turned off a small tape-recorder whose spools were conveying tape through the recording head.

Precisely at 21.00 hrs. Garry was shown into Shalik’s office by the dark-haired girl who he knew now by the name-plate on her desk to be Natalie Norman.