James Chase - You've Got It Coming

You’ve Got It Coming

James Hadley Chase

1955

chapter one

I

The moment he came into the room she knew something was wrong.

He said in a flat, cold voice, “Hello, baby,” and without looking at her, he took off his hat and his topcoat, tossed them on to the settee and walked over to the fire and sat down. His face was hard and pallid and the sullen expression in his eyes made him a stranger.

During the six months they had been going around together, she had never seen him like this, and she could only think of one explanation: he was set to give her the brush off.

For weeks she had been wondering how much longer it would last. Not that he had shown any signs of growing tired of her, but he was now the ninth man in her life and she had come to expect a brush off sooner or later.

She had long ceased to kid herself about her relations with men. She was thirty-two, and the life she had led had taken most of the gloss off her beauty. At one time, and it seemed to her a long way back into the past, she had w o n the second prize for the Miss America competition of 1947, and if she had known what she knew now, she was sure that if she had played her cards right with two of the judges as the winner had done, she wouldn’t have been second, but first. She had been given the inevitable screen test and had played bit parts in B pictures under the direction of Solly Lowenstien. Maybe she had been too free and easy with Solly. She had hoped he would have pushed her ahead in the movie business if she accommodated him, but it hadn't worked out that way. After a few months he had lost interest in her, and as if he had given the signal, the C.C.A. had lost interest in her too. After Hollywood, she had done a little modelling, then she had become a nightclub hostess. It was at the Eldorado club that she had met Ben Delaney.

The following fourteen months were the highspots of her life. She had travelled with Ben around Europe. She had gone to all the big parties with him in New York, swum with him in Miami's blue sea, had gone winter sporting with him in Switzerland. Their association had gone on for so long she had begun to think it was the real thing, but finally he had cooled, and then the brush off had come swiftly.

She hadn't seen Ben for two years, but she often thought of him, following his career in the newspapers, and dreaming of hooking up with him again. There had been other men after Ben, but they were just shadowy figures who had left no impression on her memory. Then just when she was at her lowest ebb, when she had hocked most of the jewellery and furs Ben had given to her, Harry Griffin had come blustering into her life.

Harry, a crew captain, flying Moonbeams for the Californian Air Transport Corporation on the Los Angeles-San Francisco route, was four years younger than she was. He had a reckless, swashbuckling manner that made people look back over their shoulders after him: an infectious ifI-don't-give-a-damn-why-should-you? air that she found exciting and fascinating. He was tall and big and built like a heavyweight champion. His drinking and reckless extravagances, his good looks and his violent, short-lived temper were essential male qualities that appealed to her.

She had gone to a nightclub in the hope of getting a job, and they had met in the lobby after she had had a curt brush off from the nightclub manager. Thinking about it afterwards she had decided the nightclub lighting must have been pretty kind for she was sure she had looked as she had felt: washed up, tired and ready to flop.

Harry had stood squarely in her path, his handsome, dark face lit up with a grin and there was the hunting look in his eyes she hadn't expected to see again in any man's eyes.

“Keep me company,” he had said. “You're just the kind of girl I have been looking for ever since I left college.”

He had given her dinner and somehow she had managed to be gay and sparkling and cute. He had taken her back to her apartment and they had paused at the front door. She expected him to ask her if he could come in and suspected his, “Want to eat with me the night after next? I'll be in town then,” as a polite good-bye. She was so anxious that he wouldn't go out of her life that she had said, “Aren't you coming in for a drink?” And he had grinned, shaking his head. “I wish I could, but I'm on duty tonight. Keep that date open the night after next. I'll take you up on it.”

She hadn't expected to see him again, but he turned up around eight o'clock two nights later, and they had gone out to dinner. They had become lovers that night, and from then on, regularly on alternate nights, he had come to her apartment to take her out or to sit before the fire and talk and make love: every other night for six months until this night when, the moment he walked into the room, she knew something was wrong.

Here it comes, she thought, as she hung up his topcoat. I knew it was too good to last. Well, at least he has the decency to come and tell me. She walked over to the table and took a cigarette from the box and lit it, noticing her hand was shaking.

“You're early, aren't you, Harry?” she asked and looked across at him as he lounged in the armchair, frowning at the fire, his heavy dark eyebrows drawn down and sweat beads making his face glisten.

“Yeah,” he said, not looking at her.

She waited a moment, then she said quietly, “What's wrong?”

“Who said anything was wrong?” he said. “Give me a drink, will you? I'm going to get good and plastered tonight.”

She went over to the cupboard where she kept a bottle of whisky. The bottle was three-quarters empty. After she had made two stiff drinks she found there was only an inch of liquor left in the bottle and she tipped it into her glass. She would need a bracer, she told herself, when he finally got around to breaking the news. She came back to the fire, handing him the glass.

“That's all there is. I'm right out of liquor,” she said, sitting down. “I'm sorry.”

“We'll go out. We'll do a bar crawl.” He drank the whisky at one long swallow and set down the glass. “But you'll have to lend me some money, Glorie. I'm broke. I spent my last buck on a taxi getting here. Have you any?”

She reached for her handbag, opened it and took out her purse. Her hands were shaking so badly she could scarcely open the purse. She took out two dollars and a few cents and held them out to him.

“That's all I have.”

He stared at her.

“You can cash a cheque, can't you? Won’t someone around here cash it for you?”

“I haven't had a bank account for months,” she said, forcing a smile. “You're not the only one who is broke, Harry.”

He grimaced, then took out a pack of cigarettes, tapped out a cigarette and lit it.

“Well, don't look so tragic about it,” he said, suddenly grinning. “So we're both broke. So what?”

She looked quickly at him. If this was the beginning of a brush off it was a new technique in her experience.

“What is it, Harry? Why haven't you any money? Are you in some sort of trouble?”

“That's an understatement,” he said, his smile fading. “Come on. I'll hock my watch. I'm going to get tight tonight if it's the last thing I do.”

“Please tell me. I want to know. What's wrong?”

He hesitated, then shrugged his shoulders.

“I've lost my job. That's what's wrong. I've been slung out.

Okay, I admit I asked for it, but that doesn't make it any better. The trouble is its pay day tomorrow and I'm not getting paid.”

“You've lost your job?” she said, feeling a little chill crawl up her spine. “But, Harry . . .”

“Yeah, I know.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “I know; don't tell me. It's one of those things. How was I to know the old man was travelling on the kite? I've never met him; never even seen him before. No one knew. Imagine taking a sneak ride to check up on us. That shows you the kind of rat he is.”