James Chase: A Can of Worms

“So it’s business.” Bertha smiled at me.

“Could be. Answer the question, honey. Ever heard of the name?”

She shook her head.

“New one on me. Waldo Carmichael? Sexy, huh?”

“Still playing name games. Russ Hamel. Mean anything to you?”

“You kidding? Russ Hamel! I love his books!” Then she gave a double take. “Are you working for him?”

“Never mind the questions. You come up with the answers and eat at my expense. Do you know more about him than that he writes books you love?”

“Well yes. . a little. He’s newly married. He lives on Paradise Largo. Now you tell me. Why the questions?”

“Just feed your beautiful face.” The prawns were out of this world. “Do you know anything about his wife?”

Bertha continued to stare thoughtfully at me and I knew this was a bad sign.

“His wife? I’ve seen her around. She’s too young for a guy like Hamel. Not my type.” She gave me a cunning smile. “If you asked me about his first wife...” She let it hang.

“So okay. I ask you about his first wife.”

“Gloria Cort.” Bertha sniffed. “When Hamel gave her the gate for sleeping around, she reverted to her maiden name. Did I say maiden? Remind me to laugh some time. That floosie hasn’t been a maiden since she was six years old.”

“Never mind past history,” I said. “Give.”

“She lives with a Mexican who calls himself Alphonso Diaz. He owns the Alameda bar on the waterfront: strictly for the non-carriage trade.”

I knew of the Alameda bar. It was the hangout for the waterfront riff-raff. There were more fights on a Saturday night in that bar than any of the other bars on the waterfront.

“Gloria does a topless guitar act there.” Bertha put on her snooty expression. “Can you imagine? When you think she was once the wife of Russ Hamel! That’s the way the cookie crumbles. You have it one day: you lose it the next. And let me tell you I’d rather bed with a goat than with Alphonso Diaz!”

The chicken arrived with a lot of fuss. We ate. It was so good, I ceased to worry about what it was going to cost.

After we had finished and had coffee, my mind turned to the night before us.

Bertha was quick to respond.

“Let’s go, stallion,” she said, patting my hand. “I’m in the mood too.”

I called for the check, flinched when I saw the amount and parted with my two fifty bills. By the time I had paid, tipped the waiter, tipped the Maître d’, tipped the door-man who brought the Maser to the entrance, I had thirty dollars to see me through to the end of the week.

As I was driving back to my apartment, Bertha said, “I’ve been thinking about you, Bart. It’s time you changed your job. If you and I are going to continue, you have to find something that pays better than being a shamus.”

“That is not an original thought,” I said. “I’ve been thinking along those lines for the past year, but there is nothing I can do that would earn me more than being a shamus.”

“Think some more. With your experience in crime, there must be something. I met a fella last week who was rolling in the green. He cons old ladies. They give him sacks of money just to smile at them.”

“You should be more careful who you go around with, honey,” I said. “Gigolos are strictly not my scene.”

“How about smuggling? I know a guy who is stuffed with loot, smuggling cigars from Cuba.”

“Are you trying to talk me into a jail?”

She shrugged.

“Forget it. I know what I would do in your place.”

I steered the car into the basement garage of my high-rise.

“So what would you do in my place?” I asked as I turned off the engine and the lights.

“I’d look around among the rich creeps I worked for, and put a bite on them,” Bertha said as she got out of the car.

“Meaning the creeps I work for?”

“Meaning the rich creeps like Russ Hamel you are working for.”

I joined her and we walked towards the elevator.

“Did I tell you I was working for Hamel?”

“Skip it, Bart. You didn’t tell me, but it’s obvious. Let’s forget it. You are not using your brains. Few get the chance to work for all these rich creeps as you do. Those few who have your chances wouldn’t waste them as you are wasting them. There’s big money to be made out of these rich creeps. It just needs some thought. Come on, let’s get upstairs or my mood will fade on me.”

As I followed her into the elevator, I began to think about what she had said. I was still thinking when we rolled into bed, but once her arms and her legs wrapped around me, I stopped thinking.

There is a time and a place for everything.

South-east of Paradise City, some thirty miles out in the Gulf, there is a chain of small islands extending down to Key West.

Sitting beside Nick Hardy in his helicopter, I looked down on this chain of islands that looked like green blobs in the blue, glittering sea.

Nick had no trouble spotting Hamel’s yacht. We were already circling the harbour when the yacht slipped its moorings and headed out to sea.

There were other helicopters up: taking the rich on sightseeing tours, so I had no worry that Nancy nor Josh Jones would suspect we were shadowing them.

I used Nick’s field glasses. I could see Nancy on the flying bridge. Jones must have been in the wheelhouse. I couldn’t see him from my position.

“They’re heading for the Keys,” I said. “Head back to the harbour and circle. We can’t lose them, and I don’t want them to catch on we are tailing them.”

Nick, bulky with a red, good-natured face, did as I asked.

“That’s Mrs. Hamel down there,” he said. “What’s the idea, Bart?”

“Since when did you start asking questions? Ask the Colonel if you want to know.”

He grinned.

“Okay. So I don’t want to know.”

The yacht was now approaching the Keys. It slowed, turned and began running along the coastline until it reached Matecombe Key, then it headed towards a group of tiny islands about five miles east.

“What are those islands?” I asked.

“Used to be pirate strongholds,” Nick told me. He was well versed in the history of Florida. “The pirates used to hide up there and pounce on any passing vessel. Blackbeard is supposed to have had his headquarters there. The islands are uninhabited now.”

The yacht slowed and began to edge its way into a wide creek, between two of the islands, half concealed by dense vegetation. Then it disappeared under an umbrella of Spanish moss and grapevines.

I decided it would be too risky to circle and wait to see it the yacht reappeared. Nancy or Jones, or both of them, might guess we were showing too much interest, and that was to be avoided.

“Okay, Nick, back to the pad,” I said, “and if you don’t want the Colonel on your neck, say nothing about this.”

He gave me a puzzled stare, then shrugged.

“You’re the client.” He headed back to the mainland.

“All the same, Bart, she’s a nice girl.”

“How do you know? Have you ever met her?”

“Sure, and Mr. Hamel. I took them to Daytona Beach last month and brought them back. I don’t dig Hamel. He’s a stuffed shirt, but she’s a real charmer: too young to have married him.”

“Did they seem to you to be getting along together?”

“I wouldn’t know. He sat at the back and never uttered. She sat where you are sitting and chatted all the time.”

“About what?”

“She was interested in the chopper: her first trip. She asked all kinds of questions: good questions. She’s no fool.”

So Nancy was nice and no fool, but even nice girls screw around. I changed the subject. I talked to him about his business and asked how he was doing. We were still talking when he landed. As he walked with me to my car, I said, “Keep this close to your chest, Nick.”