James Chase: Strictly For Cash

I remained like that for some time. Then slowly, inch by inch, I began to edge into the hollow made by the two ornate projections either side of the corner stone. It took time, and once or twice I thought I wasn’t going to do it. Without the suitcase it would have been easy, but having to work only with one hand and to counter-balance the drag of the suitcase made it terrifyingly difficult. I got into the hollow without quite knowing how I did it. I had quite a bit more room once I was inside, and no one could get at me either from the right or from the left.

I was so exhausted I could no longer stand upright, and still clinging to the suitcase I sat down, my back firm against the hollow in the stonework, my legs dangling into space.

For the first time since I had been out on the ledge I looked down.

Roosevelt Boulevard and what I could see of Ocean Boulevard were packed solid with gaping faces. From this height they looked like a white-checkered carpet spread out below me. I could make out the tiny figures of cops and patrolmen trying futilely to clear the street. In the distance a mile-long traffic block hooted and honked. I could see people leaving their cars and making their way on foot to the hotel.

At a guess I had only a few more minutes before the police started to try to rope me or send some courageous harness bull along the ledge to grab me. My time was running out. But I couldn’t grumble. At my side I had a quarter of a million dollars. Below me I had some five or six thousand people who were concentrating on me, and me alone. The next move was obvious.

I opened the case and took out a packet of hundred dollar bills. I broke the elastic band and tossed the packet high into the air. The notes broke loose and spun to the ground in a fluttering little cloud.

The crowd below me stared up, watching the bills as they floated down to them. The bills took some time to reach them. A man jumped high in the air to be the first to grab one. Then they realized what I was throwing down to them. A yell went up that seemed to split the air and shake the buildings.

A man leaning out of a window opposite yelled, “He’s throwing money away!”

I was working fast now, splitting the packages open and tossing the bills out as fast as I could take them from the suitcase.

The windows opposite began to empty of faces. Those who at one time had the better view were now rushing to the elevators to get them to the street in time to horn in on this rain of money.

Well, I had promised myself if ever I got hold of real money I’d go on the biggest spending bender ever. I was keeping my promise, and I was getting a tremendous bang out of it. Right at this minute I was the most powerful and the most important man on earth.

The scene below defeated imagination. People fought, trampled on each other, screamed, yelled and clawed. Even the cops were flaying with their night-sticks to get their hands on the bills as they floated to the ground. The wind spread them far and wide. I could see people fighting on the beach. I watched a girl cramming crumpled bills down the front of her dress, only to have the dress torn from her by a yelling, greed-crazed old woman, old enough to be the girl’s grandmother.

A man with a handful of bills was being pushed against the side of a car while four women beat him with their handbags. A policeman was trying to turn a woman who lay on the sidewalk while she screamed like a train whistle.

I tossed the last of the bills down to them, and then sat back to watch. My breath was coming in great heaving gasps, and I had sweated right through my clothes. I would have gone through all I had gone through to have had those ten-minutes of power all over again.

But the money was gone — a quarter of a million gone as Della had said it would go: like snow melting in the sun, and now I had nothing to show I had ever owned it. My one supreme moment was over, and it would never be repeated.

No one in the street below was paying any further attention to me. They had forgotten me in their mad, greed-crazed scramble for the money, and they were still fighting and yelling amongst themselves.

My time was running out. Before long the police would organize a means of reaching me. I had two alternatives: I could either give myself up or I could anticipate my destiny and slide off the ledge into space. I was sure there would be no out for me once Hame got his hands on me.

If it hadn’t been for Ginny I wouldn’t have hesitated. I would have ended it there and then, but I remembered how she had looked at me when Hame had said I had stolen the money. I remembered, too, she had said she didn’t believe I had ever loved her. More than anything else in the world now I wanted her to know how much she had meant to me, and still meant to me. I wanted her to know my side of the story, sure that if she knew the facts, and how I had been drawn into this mess as inexorably as a swimmer gets sucked into a whirlpool, she would realize, after I had gone to the chair, that I wasn’t quite so bad as Hame had painted me.

And because it was essential to me that she should know the truth, I decided to give myself up. Before they brought me to trial I would have time to write down my story just as it had happened, and if the verdict went against me, Ginny would at least have my written record.

Having made the decision, I got cautiously to my feet. I looked back along the ledge. A policeman was leaning out of a window about twenty yards away from me. Reluctantly, his eyes popping and his face shiny with sweat, he swung his leg over the windowsill.

“Stay where you are,” I said, waving him back. “I’m coming in.”

As I walked towards him, moving slowly, steadying myself against the side of the building and keeping my eyes fixed on him, I heard the deep-throated roar from the crowd below. It reminded me of the noise the lions had made when I had dropped Reisner into the pit. At least he hadn’t known what was coming to him.

I did.