James Chase: Vulture Is a Patient Bird

“It is a pity we didn’t meet in Paris, Miss Desmond,” Shalik said as he began to examine the menu. “The food here is indifferent. In Paris I could have offered you a meal worthy of your beauty.”

She was wearing a simple blue dress with a mink stole. Diamonds glittered at her ears as she tossed her tawny coloured hair back from her shoulders.

“I believe in eating what a country offers,” she said. “Why yearn for better food in Paris when you are in Copenhagen?”

Shalik liked that. He nodded.

“So what will you have?”

She had no hesitation, and this also pleased Shalik. Women who stare vacantly at a menu and can’t make up their minds bored him.

She chose Danish shrimps and the breast of duck in wine sauce.

Having taken a little longer to examine the menu, Shalik decided her choice was not only safe, but sound. He ordered the same.

“Miss Desmond,” Shalik said when the waiter had gone. “I am looking for a woman to help me in my work. I am a rather special agent who looks after extremely wealthy, spoilt people, clever business men and even princes. I boast that nothing is impossible. Nothing is impossible if you have money and brains.” He paused, regarding her. “However, I believe my work would be made easier if I had a woman like yourself working for me permanently. I must warn you it would be exacting work: sometimes dangerous, but always within the law of the country in which I operate.” This statement was untrue. Recently, Shalik had pulled off a number of illegal currency deals in London that could have landed him in jail had they been discovered, but Shalik’s philosophy was that so long as he wasn’t found out, any deal was within the law. “The pay will be good. You will have your own apartment at the Royal Towers Hotel in London, paid by me. You will have many opportunities to travel.” He regarded her with his black, beady eyes. “And I assure you, Miss Desmond, this will be a strictly business association.”

The tiny, pink, delicious shrimps now arrived with slices of toast, and there was a pause.

While Gaye buttered her toast, she asked, “What makes you imagine I am suitable for such a post, Mr. Shalik?”

Shalik nibbled at his shrimps. He regretfully avoided the toast. He was four kilos overweight and was determined to make a sacrifice.

“Instinct, I suppose. I think you are just the woman I am looking for.”

“You say the pay will be good… just what does that mean?” He ate another three shrimps before saying, “Suppose you tell me about yourself. I can then make a valuation.”

She sipped the chilled Hock and regarded him with her green eyes: thoughtful, shrewd, calculating eyes that pleased him.

“Well…” She suddenly smiled and her smile lit up her face, making it gay and charming. “As you can see, I am beautiful. I am intelligent. You will discover this. I speak French, Italian and Spanish fluently. I can get along in German. I was practically born on a horse. My father bred horses in Kentucky. I ski well. I can handle a sailing boat and, of course, any kind of motorboat. I have been a racing driver and there is nothing I don’t know about cars. I understand men and what they what. Sex doesn’t frighten me. I know how to please men if… and only if… I have to. I earn a comfortable living modelling specialized clothes, but I like money and want to make more.”

Shalik finished his shrimps and then stroked his thick nose.

“Is that all?”

She laughed.

“Isn’t it enough?”

“Yes, I think so. Can you handle firearms?”

She lifted her eyebrows.

“Why should I need to?”

“Since you are otherwise so well equipped, I think you should have weapon training and also training in self-defence. This I can arrange. When a woman is as beautiful as you and when she may have to mix with dubious types of men, it is sound for her to understand the art of self-defence.”

They paused while the waiter served the duck and poured a Margaux ’59 which Shalik had ordered in a moment of recklessness. The price was outrageous, but the wine excellent.

“Now it is your turn,” she said. She cut into the duck and grimaced. “It’s tough.”

“Of course. What did you expect? This is Copenhagen, not Paris.” He looked at her across the candle-lit table. “My turn… . for what?”

“Your turn to make a valuation. I’ve told you about myself. Value me.”

Shalik liked her direct approach.

“If you are prepared to do exactly what I tell you, Miss Desmond,” he said as he began to cut the duck into small pieces. “If you are prepared to be at my beck and call for eleven months in each year… the remaining month will be yours to do as you wish. If you are prepared to take a course in self-defence, then I will pay you $10,000 a year with a one per cent cut on whatever I make on assignments you help me with. At a rough guess this should net you $25,000 a year.”

She drank a little of the Margaux.

“At least the wine is good, isn’t it?”

“It should be, at the price they charge for it,” Shalik said sourly. He hated wasting his money. “What do you say?”

She toyed with her glass as she considered his proposal, then she shook her head.

“No… I am not interested. I could become an old man’s mistress for twice that sum. You are asking me to hand myself over to you as a slave for eleven months, leading no life of my own during those months, to be entirely at your beck and call.” She laughed. “No, Mr. Shalik, that is no kind of a price for what you are offering.”

Shalik would have been disappointed if she had said otherwise.

“So… suppose you tell me under what conditions you will work for me?”

He was pleased she told him without hesitation.

“$30,000 a year whether I work or not, and five per cent of whatever you make in the deals in which I am concerned.”

Shalik shook his head slowly and sadly.

“Then I’m sorry, Miss Desmond. I must look elsewhere.” They looked at each other and she gave him a charming smile, but he saw there was a jeering light in her eyes.

“Then I’m sorry too. So I must also look elsewhere.”

Shalik now knew she was the woman he was looking for and he settled down to bargain, but here he found his master and this pleased him. He hated to be defeated, but he realized if she could defeat him, the men she would have to mix with at his bidding would be as pawns in her hands.

At the end of the meal, and after Shalik had paid the outrageous bill, they had come to an agreement. A basic salary of $30,000 a year, plus four per cent of Shalik’s earnings which involved her cooperation, to be paid into a Swiss bank, tax free, which Shalik decided ruefully would net her at least seven per cent of his take.

Once this was agreed, she came to London and went through a self-defence course that Shalik arranged for her. Her instructors were delighted with her.

“This woman is now highly proficient in defending herself,” they told Shalik. “She can cope with any emergency.”

Completely satisfied with his find, Shalik installed her in a small suite on the floor below his at the Royal Towers Hotel, and within two months she had quickly proved her worth.

She handled two assignments not only successfully, but with a polish that delighted Shalik. The first assignment was to obtain a chemical formula required by a rival company. The second assignment was to obtain advance information about a big shipping merger which netted the client a considerable profit on the Stock Market: part of which he handed to Shalik. In both cases, Gaye had had to sleep with the two men who supplied the information required. Shalik asked for no details. He was only too pleased to turn the information she gave him into cash.