Read Online Believed Violent by James Hadley Chase - Free Book Online

V.I.P. patient. The fee is ten thousand dollars, and of course, silence. Dr. Hans Schultz is believed dead. He can remain dead, providing you are willing to co-operate.”
    The small, fat man again reached for his gold fountain pen. Again he turned it between his fingers, then he looked up and regarded Lindsey with stone cold, expressionless eyes.
    “Very interesting,” he said quietly. “The third did you say? Yes, then perhaps I could arrange to be free for ― you said three weeks? Yes, I suppose that is possible.” The black, beady eyes moved over Lindsey’s relaxed face. “And who is the patient?”
    “We will go into that on the third.”
    “I understand.” The fat fingers moved to a bell push on the desk and hovered over it. “Then what are the arrangements?”
    “I will be here at ten o’clock on the morning of the third. We will drive together to a certain place and you will stay there, looking after the patient for a period of three or four weeks. You will bring everything you need. Any additional things I can collect for you.”
    Kuntz nodded, then thumbed down the bell push.
    “You did say ten thousand dollars?” he said, peering with greed in his small black eyes.
    “Yes. You will receive your fee when your work has proved satisfactory.”
    The faded, elderly nurse came into the room and Lindsey got to his feet.
    “See you on the third, doctor,” he said, and nodding, he followed the nurse to the front door.
    He walked to the Cadillac, humming softly under his breath. As he got under the driving wheel, he opened the glove compartment and helped himself to a boiled sweet from a number he kept there in a glass jar.
    Acting on instructions and information supplied by Lindsey, Chet Keegan pulled up outside the Go-Go Club, a brash nitery that catered mainly for the nautical trade. Sailors, coming off visiting warships, needed lots of hard liquor, lots of willing girls and lots of strident music. The Go-Go Club provided all this. Since it skimmed off the rowdies, the toughies and the trouble-makers and knew how to handle them, the police were content to live and let live. It was seldom that they were called in to quell a disturbance. The Go-Go Club bouncers were professionals and could stop a fight before it got started. There were six of them. What they didn’t know about dirty fighting, the use of a cosh and the stunning blow from a fist wrapped in brass wasn’t worth knowing. There were times when some foolhardy sailors, lit up with whisky, would start trouble just for the hell of it, but the trouble was invariably cut short and the sailors invariably laid out in the parking lot to recover from a vicious beating from these six professionals, Having recovered, they would return to their ships, nursing their wounds, wiser and more prudent men.
    The girls working at the Club were handpicked. They were all under the age of twenty-four. A number of them were prostitutes, the rest, girls in search of excitement. All of them were capable of handling any man. They wore as a uniform a skimpy bra and silk panties, high-heeled gold shoes and a carnation fixed over their navels with surgical tape. Across the seat of their panties were printed various slogans: Don’t Park Here. This Belongs To Me. No Place For Hands. Cul-de-Sac. No Entry , and so on.
    The Belle of the twenty girls at the Club was Drena French.
    According to the information Lindsey had received from his Detective Agency, this girl had arrived in Paradise City some eighteen months ago. She was twenty-two years of age, with raven black hair, sensually beautiful, with the morals of an alley cat and a lump of quartz where her heart should have been.
    It was this girl that Keegan, on Lindsey’s instructions, wished to see. He entered the Club, nodded to the doorman who gave him an oily smile, handed his hat to the hat check girl who gushed over him, then, pushing aside the red velvet curtain that screened the entrance, walked into the noisy, smoke