Джеймс Чейз - Have a Change of Scene

Opposite No. 245, Spooky’s pad, was a dilapidated four-storey tenement house. Two snot-nosed, dirty, white kids sat on the steps. With their grimy little fists clenched between their knees, their tiny shoulders hunched, they stared, for something better to do, at the collection of filth lying in the gutter: it included a dead cat.

On the transom above the battered front door was written:

This seemed to me to be too good to be true. I paused to look across the street at No. 245, then started up the steps, moving around the kids who squinted up at me, their tragic little eyes suspicious. I entered a lobby that smelt of urine, stale body sweat and cats.

An old biddy stood in an open doorway, digging with a splinter of wood at what she had left of her teeth. What hair she had was greasy rats’ tails. Her coverall was stiff with dirt. She couldn’t have been less than eighty, probably more.

I paused before her. She took me in from the candy floss wig down to my scuffed sneakers. I could see by her sneering expression she didn’t like what she saw.

‘You got a room, Ma?’ I said, putting down the hold-all.

‘Don’t call me Ma, you young bastard,’ she said in a voice thick with phlegm. ‘Mrs. Reynolds to you and don’t you forget it.’

‘Okay, Mrs. Reynolds. You got a room?’

‘Twelve bucks a week, paid in advance.’

‘Let’s take a gander.’

I knew the dialogue was strictly from a B movie and from her sneer she knew it too.

‘Second floor. Number five. The key’s in the lock.’

I walked up the creaky uncovered stairs, not touching the filthy banister rail to the second floor. Number five was at the end of a smelly corridor.

The room was about ten-feet square. It contained a bed, a table, two hard backed chairs, a closet and a threadbare carpet. The wallpaper was peeling by the window. There was a grease covered bench on which stood a gas ring.

Leaving my hold-all, I went down the stairs, paid the old biddy twelve dollars, then walked to an Italian store where I bought enough groceries to last me a few days. To the various cans of food, I added a bottle of whisky. Then I went to a hardware store and bought a small saucepan and a frying pan.

Mrs. Reynolds was still propping up her doorway when I returned.

‘Where do I wash?’ I asked.

She eyed me, scratched under her left armpit, then said, ‘Public baths at the end of the street. There’s a crapper on every floor. What more do you want?’

I carried my purchases up to the room, shut and locked the door, set everything down on the table, then examined the bed. The sheets were clean enough, but the two thin blankets carried suspicious looking stains. I wondered when the bugs would appear.

A change of scene?

I thought of Sydney’s luxurious penthouse which I had inherited. This ghastly little room was something I had to endure if I were to keep the penthouse and Sydney’s millions.

Turning off the light, I pulled a chair to the window and began my watch. There were eighteen dirty windows facing me across the street: five of them showing lights. One of these windows belonged to Spooky. I had no idea which of the eighteen was his, but sooner or later, if I watched long enough, I would spot him.

I sat there, smoking and watching. People moved in the lighted squares of their windows: most of them young, wearing way-out gear. On the fifth floor, third window to the left, a handsome young Negress wearing only stretch pants was jiggling to a soundless radio, cupping her naked breasts in her hands. Watching her, I felt lust stir and forced my eyes away from her.

Around 20.00 I got hungry. I left the window, pulled down the blind and turned on the light. While I was heating a can of beans I heard the roar of an approaching motor bike. Turning off the gas and the light, I moved fast to the window and pulled aside the blind. There was Spooky astride a glittering new Honda, pulling up outside No. 245.

I watched him as he climbed off the machine and strutted up the steps leading to his pad.

This was the moment. I watched him disappear into the darkness of the block, then I waited for a light to come on in one of the darkened windows. While I waited, I watched the Negress who had put on a flowered shirt and was stirring something in a saucepan.

After a fifteen minute wait, I realised that in whichever room Spooky lived the light was already on when he entered for no light came up in any of the darkened windows. Did that mean that Rhea was in Spooky’s pad? Why not? Why should she sit in the darkness? I began to examine each lighted window. Three of them were without curtains and I could see who were in the rooms. The two remaining windows had flimsy curtains, but not flimsy enough to see through. One was on the third floor. The other on the top floor immediately above the room occupied by the Negress. It seemed to me that one of these rooms must be Spooky’s.

I dropped the blind, put on the light and reheated the beans. For a start this first day hadn’t been bad. I was making progress. At least I now knew Spooky either lived on the third or top floor of this block.

I ate the beans, then turning off the light and raising the blind, I sat again before the window.

Around 21.00 the light in the window on the third floor went out. I now concentrated my attention on the lighted window on the top floor. I watched for almost an hour, then suddenly a shadow moved across the curtains. I recognised Spooky’s silhouette. It was unmistakable. If I hadn’t been watching continuously I would have missed this fleeting shadow. So he was on the top floor, but was Rhea up there with him?

I sat there, watching. The lights in the various windows began to go out. The Negress picked up a large handbag, went to her door and flicked up the light switch. Finally, the only light in the building came through the windows of Spooky’s pad.

Then I saw him come running down the steps and get astride his Honda. The machine burst into an ear-splitting roar. Clapping his helmet on his greasy head, he took off, but the light in his window remained on.

This could mean either of two things: either Spooky didn’t give a damn about his electricity bill or else Rhea was up there in hiding.

But how to find out?

I was a stranger in the district. It would be too dangerous to wander into Spooky’s block even though it looked now that everyone had left the building.

I lit a cigarette and surveyed the street below. Like rats appearing when darkness falls, the street was becoming active. Elderly ragged men and women came shuffling down the steps of the various tenement blocks in search of a bar.

Then I saw the Negress. She was leaning against the rusty railings, swinging her large handbag and I then knew what she was — a prostitute.

I knew her room was immediately below Spooky’s pad. Here was my chance. Maybe I could get confirmation that Rhea was up there.

I thought of the Negress as I had seen her dancing, half naked, in her room. She was pretty and beautifully made. I hadn’t had sex since I had met Judy: that seemed a long, long time ago.

Pushing back the chair, I stood up, groped my way across the dark room to the door and moved out into the smelly corridor.

On my way down the stairs I met no one. Mrs. Reynold’s door was shut. Through the thin panels came the sound of a TV set. I lounged down the steps into the cement-dusty night. The street’s flotsam — youths, girls, drunks and old people — swirled around me. I looked across the street at the Negress who had spotted me. She was looking towards me. I waited until two beat-up cars had roared past me, then crossed the street.

She was moving towards me as I reached the opposite side walk.