1973 - Have a Change of Scene (7 page)

A girl in a mini skirt and a boy with beads around his neck came out of the cafe. They stopped to stare at what I was doing.

‘Hi!’ The boy said weakly. ‘Leave those bikes alone!’

I ignored him. Stepping away, I lit a cigarette.

The girl let out a scream like the bleat of a sheep. The boy bolted into the cafe.

I moved back, then flicked the lighted cigarette into the pool of gasoline.

There was a bang, a blinding flash and then flames. The heat forced me to retreat across the road to the far sidewalk.

Seven youths in their dirty yellow shirts and their cat’s fur pants came spilling out of the cafe, but the heat brought them to a standstill. I watched. None of them had the guts to pull even one of the bikes out of the now roaring furnace. They just stood there, watching the Hondas, which were probably their only love, melt in the flames.

I waited, both hands gripping the pickaxe handle, willing them to come at me so I could smash them, but they didn’t. Like the stupid stinking sheep that they were, they stood, watching the destruction of the toys that had made them feel like men, and did nothing about it.

After five minutes I got bored and walked away.

Although Jenny in her bed of pain didn’t know it, I felt I had made the score even.

* * *

I slept dreamlessly until 08.10 when the telephone bell woke me.

I picked up the receiver.

‘Mr. Carr there’s a police officer asking for you,’ the reception clerk said, reproach in his voice.

‘I’ll be down,’ I said. ‘Ask him to wait.’

I didn’t hurry. I shaved and showered and put on one of my expensive sports shirts and a pair of whipcord slacks, then I went down in the creaky elevator.

Sergeant O’Halloran, massive, in shirt sleeves with his cap at the back of his head, filled one of the bamboo chairs. He was smoking a cigar and reading the local newspaper.

I went over and sat by his side.

‘Morning, Sergeant,’ I said. ‘Have a coffee with me?’

He put down his newspaper and, folding it carefully, placed it on the floors ‘I’m on duty in half an hour,’ he said in his husky worn-out voice, ‘but I thought I’d drop by. Never mind the coffee.’ He stared at me with his pig eyes that were ice cold and diamond hard. ‘There was a hell of a fire on 10th Street last night.’

‘Is that right?’ I stared back at him. ‘I haven’t seen the papers yet.’

‘Seven valuable motorbikes were destroyed.’

‘Someone put in a complaint?’

He crossed one thick leg over the other.

‘Not yet, but they could.’

‘Then of course you will have to investigate.’

He leaned forward and there was a touch of red in his pig eyes.

‘I’m getting worried about you, Carr. You are the coldest, most ruthless sonofabitch that has arrived in this town. Off the record, I’m telling you something: you pull one more trick like this and you’re in trouble. You nearly set the whole goddamn street on fire. It’s got to stop.’

I wasn’t intimidated.

‘Produce your witnesses, Sergeant, and I will then accept trouble, but not before. I’m not admitting anything, but it seems to me the police in this town can’t cope with bastards like Spooky Jinx and his kind, so I don’t see why you should set up a bleat when someone does.’ I got to my feet. ‘If you want a cup of coffee, join me. I do.’

He sat there, turning his half-smoked cigar around in his thick fingers as he stared at me.

‘I’m telling you lay off. Just one more trick from you and you’re in the tank. You’re lucky I dig for Miss Baxter. She’s doing a swell job in this town. Maybe you think you’re levelling the score, but enough’s enough. I went along with what you did with Spooky. He had it coming, but this job last night I don’t dig for.’ He heaved himself to his feet and faced me. ‘I’m getting a feeling about you. I’m getting the idea you could be more tricky than this gang of stupid bastard kids. If I’m right, then you could be heading for trouble.’

‘You said that before,’ I said politely. ‘Did you say this was off the record?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Then still off the record, Sergeant, go get screwed.’

I walked across the dreary lobby into the even more dreary breakfast room. I drank a cup of bad coffee, smoked and read the local rag. The picture of the seven moronic looking youths, wet-eyed and mourning their vanished Hondas, gave me a feeling of intense satisfaction.

Around 10.00 I left the hotel and walked to the only florist in the town. I bought a bunch of red roses, then walked to the city hospital. On the way, I met people who smiled at me and I smiled back.

Eventually, after a long wait, I arrived at Jenny’s bedside. She was looking pale and her long hair was done in plaits and lay either side of her shoulders.

A nurse fussed around with a vase for the flowers and then went away. While she was fussing I looked down at Jenny, feeling ten feet tall. She wasn’t to know that I had evened the score. I had not only fixed Spooky but I had now dismounted his seven moronic buddies: dismounting them, destroying their Hondas was, to them, having their genitals cut off.

‘Hi, Jenny, how goes it?’ I asked.

She smiled ruefully.

‘I didn’t expect to see you. After the way I talked to you I thought we were through.’

I pulled up a chair and sat down.

‘You don’t get rid of me that easily. Forget it. How do you feel?’

‘I can’t forget it. I’m sorry I said you didn’t know kindness. I was angry, and I guess some women, when they are angry, say things they don’t always mean. Thank you for the roses they’re lovely.’

I wondered what she would think when she heard about the seven destroyed Hondas.

‘Forget it,’ I said. ‘You haven’t told me how you feel.’

She made a little grimace.

‘Oh, all right. The doctor says I’ll be around again in three or four weeks.’

‘They fixed that trip wire for me. I’m sorry you had to walk into it.’

There was a long pause as we looked at each other.

‘Larry if you feel you can, you could be helpful,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to worry about the office: that’s been taken care of. The City Hall has sent a replacement, but there is a special case would you handle it for me?’

A special case.

I should have told her I was through with this welfare racket. I should have told her the racket was strictly for suckers, but my destiny nudged me.

‘Sure. What is it?’

‘Tomorrow, at eleven o’clock, a woman is being released from prison. I’ve been visiting her. I made her a promise.’ Jenny paused to look at me. ‘I hope you will understand, Larry, that to people in prison, a promise means a lot. I promised her I would meet her when she came out and I would drive her home. She has been in prison for four years. This will be her first experience of liberty, and I just don’t want to let her down. If I’m not there, if nobody is there, it could undo all the work I’ve done on her so would you meet her, tell her what’s happened to me and why I couldn’t keep my promise, be nice to her and take her to her home?’

Jesus! I thought, how can anyone be so simple minded! A woman who has been locked up in a tough prison for four years just had to be tougher than steel. Like all the other women who scrounged on Jenny, this woman was taking her for a ride, but because it was due to me that Jenny had a broken ankle, a broken wrist and a fractured collarbone, I decided I would go along with her.

‘That’s no problem, Jenny. Of course I’ll be there.’

I got her warm, friendly smile.

‘Thank you, Larry you’ll be doing a real kindness.’

‘So how do I know her?’

‘She will be the only one released at eleven o’clock. She has red hair.’

‘That makes it easy. Why is she in prison or shouldn’t I ask?’

‘No, you shouldn’t ask. It doesn’t matter, does it? She’s served her sentence.’

‘Yes. So where do I take her?’

‘She has a place off Highway 3. Her brother lives there. She’ll give you directions.’

The nurse came fussing in and said Jenny must rest. She was probably right. Jenny looked drained out.

‘Don’t worry about anything.’ I got to my feet. ‘I’ll be there at eleven o’clock. You haven’t told me her name.’

‘Rhea Morgan.’

‘Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon and tell you how it went.’

The nurse shooed me out.

As I walked away from the hospital, I realised I had most of the day ahead of me with nothing to do.

Although I didn’t know it then, by tomorrow at eleven o’clock, when I met Rhea Morgan, the scene would change.

* * *

At 11.04 the grille guarding the entrance to the Women’s House of Correction swung open and Rhea Morgan walked into the pale sunshine that struggled with the smog and the cement dust.

I had been sitting in the Buick which I had had fixed, for some twenty minutes and seeing her, I nicked away my cigarette, got out of the car and went over to her.

It is difficult to give a description of this woman except to say she had thick hair, the colour of a ripe chestnut and she was tall, slim and dressed in a shabby black dustcoat, dark blue slacks and her shoes were dusty and scuffed. There are beautiful women, pretty women and attractive women, but Rhea Morgan didn’t fall into any of these categories. She was strictly Rhea Morgan. She had good features: a good figure, long legs and square shoulders. Her extraordinary deep green eyes made an impact on me.

They were big eyes, and they regarded the world with suspicion, cynical amusement blatant sexuality.

This was a woman who had done everything. As we regarded each other, I had a feeling she was years older in experience than I was.

‘I’m Larry Carr,’ I said. ‘Jenny is in hospital. She’s had an accident. She asked me to fill in for her.’

She regarded me. Her eyes took off my clothes and studied my naked body. This was something I had never experienced before. I reacted to her slow examination as any man would react.

‘Okay.’ She looked at the Buick. ‘Let’s get out of here. Give me a cigarette.’

She had a low, husky voice as deadpan as her green eyes.

As I offered my pack of cigarettes, I said, ‘Don’t you want to know how badly hurt Jenny is?’

‘Give me a light.’

Anger surged up in me as I lit her cigarette.

‘Did you hear what I said?’

She dragged smoke down into her lungs and expelled it, letting it drift down her thin nostrils and out of her hard mouth.

‘Is she?’

The indifference in her voice told me as nothing else could tell me what a sucker Jenny was.

‘A broken ankle, a broken wrist and a fractured collarbone,’ I said.

She took another drag at the cigarette.

‘Do we have to stick around here? I want to go home. That’s your job, isn’t it to take me home?’

She moved around me and walked to the Buick, opened the offside door, slid in and slammed the door shut.

Cold rage gripped me. I jerked open the car door.

‘Come on out, you bitch!’ I yelled at her. ‘You can walk! I’m not a sucker like Jenny! Come on out, or I’ll drag you out!’

She took another drag at the cigarette as she eyed me.

‘I didn’t think you were. Don’t get your bowels in an uproar. I pay off. Take me home and I’ll pay the fare.’

We looked at each other. Then this sexual urge I had had the previous evening took hold of me. It was as much as I could do to restrain the urge to drag her out of the car and lay her on the dirty, cement-dusty road.

The emerald eyes were now pools of promise.

I slammed the door shut, walked around the car and got in under the steering wheel.

I drove fast down to Highway 3.

While I waited to edge the car into the fast traffic at the intersection, she said, ‘How come you got mixed up with that little dope? You seem to talk my language.’

‘Just keep your mouth shut. The more I hear from you the less I like you.’

She laughed.

‘Man! You really are my thing!’

She dropped questing fingers on my lap. I threw her hand off.

‘Shut up and stay still or you’ll walk,’ I snarled at her.

‘Okay. Give me another cigarette.’

I flicked my pack at her and started along the highway. Five minutes of fast driving brought us past the Plaza restaurant.

‘So that still exists,’ she said.

I suddenly realised this woman had been locked away for four years. This thought gave me a jolt. I eased up on the gas pedal.

‘Where do I take you?’ I asked, not looking at her.

‘A mile ahead and the first sign post to your left.’

Following her directions, a mile ahead, I swung the car off the highway and on to a dirt road.

I glanced at her from time to time. She sat away from me, smoking, staring through the windshield: in profile, her face looked as if it had been cut out of marble: as cold and as hard.

I thought of what she had said: I’ll pay for my fare. Did she mean what I thought she meant? My desire for sex sent wave after wave of hot blood through me. I couldn’t remember ever having this violent feeling before and it shook me.

‘How much further?’ I asked huskily.

‘Turn left at the end of the road and there we are,’ she said and flicked the butt of her cigarette out of the open window.

It was another mile up the road, then I turned left. A narrow lane faced me and I slowed the Buick.

Ahead of me I could see a clapboard bungalow that looked lost, broken and sordid.

‘Is this your home?’

‘That’s it.’

I pulled up and regarded the building. To me, there could be no worse place in which to live. Tangled weeds, some of them five feet high surrounded the bungalow. The fencing had gone, smothered in weeds; several oil drums, empty food cans and bits of paper lay scattered around the approach to the bungalow.

‘Come on!’ she said impatiently. ‘What are you gaping at?’

‘Is this really your home?’

She lit another cigarette.

‘My stupid punk of a father lived here. This is all he left us,’ she said. ‘Why should you care? If you don’t want to go further, I can walk the rest of the way.’

‘Us? Who is us?’

‘My brother and me.’ She opened the car door and slid out. ‘So long, Mr. Do-gooder. Thanks for the ride,’ and she started over the rough, debris strewn ground with long, quick strides.