Read 1973 - Have a Change of Scene for Free Online

go.’
    ‘You don’t really mean that, do you?’
    ‘For your sake, I do. You must go. I’ll manage. Don’t make things more complicated than they are. Please go.’
    ‘I’m not going. Your uncle advised a change of scene. Sorry to sound selfish, but I’m more concerned with my problem than with yours.’ I smiled at her. ‘Since I’ve arrived in this town I haven’t thought of Judy. That must be good. I’m staying.’
    ‘Larry! You could get hurt!’
    ‘So what?’ Then deliberately changing the subject, I went on, ‘I had three old girls here, but they wouldn’t talk to me: they wanted you.’
    ‘Please go, Larry. I’m telling you Spooky is dangerous.’
    I looked at my strap watch. It was now a quarter after midday.
    ‘I want to eat.’ I got to my feet. ‘I won’t be long. Is there any place in this town where I can get a decent meal? Up to now, I’ve been living on hamburgers.’
    She regarded me, her eyes worried, then she lifted her hands in a gesture of defeat.
    ‘Larry, I do hope you realise what you are doing and what you’re walking into.’
    ‘You said you wanted help, that’s what you’re going to get. Don’t let’s get dramatic about it. How’s about a decent restaurant?’
    ‘All right: if that’s the way you want it.’ She smiled at me. ‘Luigi’s on 3rd Street: two blocks to your left. You can’t call it good, but it isn’t bad,’ then the telephone bell began to ring and I left her going through her ‘yes’ and ‘no’ routine.
    After an indifferent meal - the meat was tough as old leather - I went around to the cop house.
    There was a solitary kid sitting on the bench against the wall. He was around twelve years of age and he had a black eye. Blood dripped from his nose on to the floor. I looked at him and he looked at me. The hate in his eyes was something to see.
    I went over to the Desk Sergeant, who was still rolling his pencil backwards and forwards while he breathed heavily through his nose. He looked up.
    ‘You again?’
    ‘To save you trouble,’ I said, not bothering to keep my voice down because I was sure the kid, sitting on the bench, was a member of Spooky’s gang, ‘I have my cigarette case back.’ I laid the flattened strip of gold on the sergeant’s blotter.
    He regarded what was left of it, picked it up, turned it in his big sweaty hands, then put it down.
    ‘Spooky Jinx returned it to me last night,’ I said.
    He stared down at the battered strip of gold.
    I went on in a deadpan voice, ‘He said they didn’t realise it was gold. You can see what they have done with it.’
    He squinted at the flattened metal, then released a snort down his nose.
    ‘Fifteen hundred bucks, huh?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Spooky Jinx?’
    ‘Yes.’
    He sat back and pushed his cap to the back of his head. After staring at me for a long moment, his pig eyes quizzing, he asked, ‘Are you making a complaint?’
    ‘Should I?’
    We stared at each other. I could almost hear his brain creak as he thought.
    ‘Did Spooky say he had stolen your case?’
    ‘No.’
    He got some cement dust out of his left nostril with his little finger, peered at what he had found and then wiped it on his shirtfront.
    ‘You got a witness when he returned it?’
    ‘No.’
    He folded his hands together, leaned forward and regarded me with contemptuous pity.
    ‘Listen, buster,’ he said in his husky worn-out voice, ‘if you plan to stay around in this goddamn town, don’t make a complaint.’
    ‘Thanks for the advice, then I won’t.’ I picked up what was left of my cigarette case and dropped it into my hip pocket. ‘I thought I should report it no longer stolen.’
    We looked at each other, then he said, his voice now a whisper, ‘Off the record, buster, if I were you, I’d scram out of this town. Suckers who try to help Miss Baxter don’t last long, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Off the record, you understand?’
    ‘Would that be one of the Jinx gang?’ I asked and