James Hadley Chase
Hit Them Where It Hurts
One
My name is Dirk Wallace: unmarried, pushing 40 years of age, tall, dark, with a face that, so far, doesn’t frighten the kiddies. I am one of the twenty operators working for the Acme Detective Agency which is housed on the top floor of the Trueman Building, Paradise Avenue, Paradise City, Florida.
The Acme Detective Agency is the most expensive and best agency on the east coast of the USA. Founded by Colonel Victor Parnell, a Vietnam war veteran, some six years ago, the agency had prospered. Parnell had been smart enough to realise that sooner or later many of the billionaires living in Paradise City would soon need the services of a top class detective agency. The agency specialised in divorce, parents’ problems, blackmail, extortion, hotel swindles, husband and wife watching, and pretty near everything short of mayhem and murder.
The twenty operators, most of us ex-cops or ex-military police, work in pairs. Each pair has an office, and unless there is an emergency, the operators know nothing about the work done by their colleagues. This system is to prevent leaks to the press. Should there be a leak, and it happened once, both operators working on the case are given the gate.
Having worked for the agency for the past eighteen months I had been promoted and given an office of my own, but my assistant, ex-Deputy Sheriff Bill Anderson, also had a desk in my office.
Bill Anderson was pint-sized, but he had plenty of muscle and beef around his shoulders. He had been a big help to me sorting out a tricky case when I had been sent to Searle to find a missing youngster. Then he had been deputy sheriff and was longing to join the agency. Because of his help I cracked the case and in return I got him into the agency.
In every way Bill Anderson proved invaluable to me. He didn’t care what hours he worked, and in this racket this is important. He was top class at ferreting out information I needed, saving me dreary hours of research. When we weren’t working, he explored the city, and became an expert on restaurants, nightclubs, and the lower strata of the waterfront. The toughs, to their cost, ignored him because of his size. Tiny as he is, his punch would knock over an elephant.
This morning in July we were sitting in my office, waiting for action. It was raining and humid. Only the elderly residents remained in the city: the rich visitors and the tourists waited until September.
Anderson, chewing gum, was writing a letter home. With my feet on my desk, I was thinking of Suzy. She and I had met some six months ago, and we had liked each other on sight.
Suzy Long was a receptionist at the Bellevue Hotel. I had made an enquiry about a creep, staying there, who was a suspected blackmailer. Once I had explained the set-up to Suzy, she was helpful and I got enough evidence to pass to the cops, and the creep got five years in the slammer.
Suzy had long, glossy brown hair with a hint of red in her tresses, grey eyes and a lively, almost mischievous smile. She was built the way I liked girls to be built: full-breasted, tiny waist, voluptuous hips and long legs. We got together, and now had a standing date for dinner at a modest seafood restaurant every Wednesday night when she had a night off from the hotel. After eating, we went back to her tiny apartment and rolled together on her rather too small bed. This went on for three months or so, then we both realised we were really in love with each other. During my life as an operator I had had a score of women, but now Suzy meant more to me than any other woman. I suggested it could be an idea for us to get married. She had given her mischievous smile, shaking her head. ‘Not yet, Dirk,’ she had said. ‘I like the idea, but I have a good, well paid job, and if I married you I would have to give it up. Your hours of work and mine just don’t jell. Not yet, my love, but later.’
I had to be content with that, so, today being Wednesday, I was thinking of the fun she and I would have tonight, when my intercom buzzed.
I turned the switch down and said, ‘Wallace.’
‘Will you come to my office, please?’ I recognised Glenda Kerry’s harsh voice.
Glenda Kerry was the colonel’s secretary and right hand. Tall, good-looking, dark, she was alarmingly efficient. When she said, ‘Come,’ you went.
I walked fast down the long corridor to her office. The colonel was away in Washington. Glenda was in charge. I tapped on her door, entered to find her at her desk, looking immaculate in white blouse and black shirt.
‘An assignment has come in,’ she said as I sat down, facing her. ‘Mrs Henry Thorsen telephoned. She wants an operator to call on her at twelve this morning when she will explain her requirements. She asked for an intelligent, decently dressed man.’
‘So you immediately thought of me,’ I said.
‘I thought of you because all operators except you have cases,’ Glenda said curtly. ‘Does the name Henry Thorsen mean anything to you?’
I shrugged
‘Can’t say it does. Is he important?’
Glenda sighed.
‘He is dead. Mrs Thorsen has been a widow for a year. She is extremely wealthy and has a lot of clout. Handle her with kid gloves. All I can tell you is she’s difficult. Go, find out what she wants.’ She pushed a slip of paper across her desk. ‘That’s her address. Be there at twelve sharp. We can use some of the Thorsen money, so go along with her.’
‘I just call on her, listen, say amen to everything. Right?’
Glenda nodded.
‘That’s it. Then report to me.’
Her telephone began to ring, so I picked up the slip of paper and returned to my office.
‘We have a job, Bill,’ I said. ‘Mrs Henry Thorsen wants an operator. I want you to go to the Herald’s morgue and dig out all you can about the Thorsens. I’m seeing the old trout at twelve. We’ll meet here around four o’clock. Have information for me.’
Bill bounced out of his chair. This was the kind of job he liked.
‘See you,’ he said, and took off.
I arrived at the Thorsens’ residence three minutes before twelve.
The imposing-looking house was set in two acres of woodland and lawns with a drive up to a tarmac for parking. It was one of the few houses that really had seclusion.
The house looked as if it had at least fifteen bedrooms and spacious living rooms with terraces.
I climbed steps to the front entrance with double doors and a hanging chain bell which I tugged.
I had a five-minute wait before one of the doors opened cautiously, and I was confronted by a tall black man wearing a white coat, a black bow tie and black trousers. He was at a guess close on seventy years of age. His woolly white hair was receding.
I saw by his bloodshot eyes and the sagging muscles of his face that he was a bottle-hitter. I haven’t been a private eye for more than twenty years without recognising the signs.
‘Dirk Wallace,’ I said. ‘Mrs Thorsen is expecting me. The Acme Detective Agency.’
He inclined his head in agreement and stood aside.
‘This way, sir,’ he said, and with an attempt at dignity, but with lurching steps, he led me through a big lobby and to a door which he opened. ‘Madam will be here soon,’ he said, and waved me into a vast room furnished with antiques and some massive pictures, and with as much comfort as a waiting room in a railroad station.
I moved to the big window and regarded the vast stretch of closely cut lawn and the trees and in the distance the grey, sullen, rain swollen clouds.
I wondered how long this drunken butler would take to tell Mrs Thorsen I had arrived.
It took twenty-five minutes by my watch. By that time I had sized up the oil paintings, priced the antique furniture and become generally bored. Then the door opened and Mrs Henry Thorsen swept in.
I had expected to see a fat, overdressed, elderly woman, the likes of whom you see everywhere in the city.