Read Online 1968 - An Ear to the Ground by James Hadley Chase - Free Book Online

before long, but I want you to get it into your mind, we are going back three years.’
    I said I understood.
    Al nodded and took some beer.
    ‘Well, now. . . I want to tell you about Harry Lewis. . .
    ‘At the age of thirty-eight, Harry Lewis became the husband of one of the richest women in the world. He didn’t make any effort to marry her — she married him. The moment she set eyes on him, he was a dead duck. She wanted him as her husband, and when Lisa Cohen wanted anything, she always got it. Harry wasn’t anything special in the brain-box line nor was he particularly bright in business. But he had looks. He was one of those tall, husky, handsome guys you see on the movies — a Gregory Peck type. He had loads of personality, sex appeal and a smile that rocked the kind of girls he associated with. Make no mistake about it, Harry had a stable full of girls who dropped flat on their backs when he gave the signal. But apart from his looks, Harry was no great shakes, and he was grateful that more by luck than hard work, he had become the manager of one of Cohen’s Self-Service Stores, right here in Paradise City.’ Al paused to look at me. ‘Maybe you’ve heard of Sol Cohen?’
    I said I had heard of him — who hadn’t?
    ‘Yeah . . . well, here was Harry walking around the store, showing his teeth to the girls who worked there, giving some of them who would stand for it a quick feel when no one was looking and earning around six thousand dollars a year. He had more or less made up his mind he wouldn’t get beyond this income bracket, and this was as far as he would go in his career. This didn’t worry him too much. . . he wasn’t the ambitious type. With six grand coming in steadily, he could amuse himself, have all the girls he wanted and pay the rent of a two-room apartment that faced the sea and that was pretty cosy over the weekends when he would sun himself on the balcony with a girl on his lap or near enough for him to reach for should the idea come into his mind.
    ‘I don’t ever want you to imagine Harry was dumb. No one who ever worked for Sol Cohen could be dumb, but Harry wasn’t anything special. He did his job and got by.
    ‘Well, one hot, sunny afternoon something happened that was to turn his life upside down and inside out. Imagine Harry wandering around the store, keeping his eyes on things, giving his favourites his sexy look, pausing to have a word with the customers, feeling like a captain on his ship when the sea is nice and calm, when a woman comes up to him.
    ‘I’ve seen Lisa Cohen a number of times, so let me describe her to you. She was small, dark and skinny. She had big eyes — her best feature — and her father’s nose that took up most of her face. She had a mouth and chin that showed temper and aggression. One thing you can be certain about, Lisa Cohen would never make the centre spread in Playboy. You could bet your last buck on that and not have a sleepless night. At the time she first met Harry she was twenty-nine years of age. She was wearing a pair of white slacks and a blue sweat shirt that made her look like a half-grown teenager.
    ‘She was in Paradise City on a month’s vacation. The Cohens’ home was in Frisco, and this was her first visit to Paradise City. She had been there two weeks with friends on her father’s yacht and the old man had asked her to take a gander at the store to see how it was being handled and to report back to him. He had a lot of faith in Lisa’s judgment and he got her to do these snap checks when she was in Florida. A couple of times, she had reported unfavourably, and the managers of the stores found themselves out on the cold, hard sidewalk.
    ‘Lisa had been watching Harry without him noticing her for the past ten minutes. She had been wandering around the store, noting how the merchandise was being displayed, how the girls coped, and she had been favourably impressed. She was still more impressed when she realised this tall,