Kill as Directed (15 page)

Galivan rose. “Thanks, Doctor, I appreciate your frankness. You'll buzz me if anything—anything at all—crops up on the Lynne Maxwell thing?”

“I most certainly will.”

“Sorry if I've held you up.”

“It's all right, Lieutenant.”

When Galivan was gone, Dr. Harrison Brown sank back into his swivel-chair and put his hands flat on his desk to stop their trembling.

But he felt a sense of triumph. He had Galivan under control, anyway.

There was no time to open the package from Smith and Smith.

Those damn house calls.

He slipped out of his white coat and into his suit jacket and grabbed his bag and ran.

When he got back to his office he found four patients waiting for him. By the time he finished with the four, there were five more in the waiting room. He felt like smashing something at the irony of it.

It was eight o'clock before the office was empty and his evening receptionist had left and he could unlock the cabinet and take out Uncle Joe's brother's ashes. He cut the cord and tore off the wrapping paper. It revealed a heavy cardboard box, its cover secured with sealing tape. He ripped it off, holding his breath.

The box was full of wadded plain tissue paper. Nested among the wads were several oilskin-wrapped objects. He opened them.

He had not been swindled.

He was now in possession of a revolver, a silencer and a box of twenty-five cartridges.

The revolver was a new-looking .38 caliber Colt Police Positive Special with a blue finish and a checkered plastic stock. The serial number had been ground off and the ground-off place deeply treated with chemicals. The number was gone beyond resurrection. The silencer looked new, too; it had been similarly treated.

The revolver had been freshly oiled. He checked the cylinder chambers to make sure they were all empty and then tested for alignment. He pulled the hammer back to full cock and tried to turn the cylinder in each direction. Then he snapped the trigger and held it far back without releasing it, again twisting the cylinder in both directions. In neither test was there any play. The revolver was in perfect alignment. He adjusted the silencer to the muzzle; it was a good fit.

He opened the box of cartridges and took out six bullets and loaded the chambers. Then he put out the lights, felt his way to the window, pulled up the Venetian blind, opened the window noiselessly and leaned cautiously out into the darkness for a look. The wall of the building across the tradesmen's alley was blank; he could see no one. He sighted up at a bright star and squeezed the trigger. There was a slight hiss as the gun went off; the kickback to the palm of his shooting hand felt good.

Harry shut the window, lowered the blind, made sure the vanes were shut; then he made his way back to the light switch and turned the lights back on.

He removed the silencer, put a fresh cartridge in the empty chamber, clicked on the safety lock; one full load was all he would need. He wrapped the revolver and the silencer in their oilskins, wrapped the oilskins in small hand towels, put them into the cabinet, locked the cabinet. He took a surgical scissors and cut the cord into short lengths, cut up the wrapping paper, cut up the rest of the tissue, cut up the cardboard box, cut up the oilskin in which the box of cartridges had been wrapped, then took all the bits and pieces to the apartment incinerator and fed them into the chute. He went back, counted the cartridges remaining in the ammunition box—there were eighteen—replaced the cover on the box and taped it tightly with surgical tape from his wall-dispenser.

Then he changed into his street clothes, put the box of cartridges in his pocket, switched off the lights, locked his office and got into his car.

He drove aimlessly for a while, keeping an eye on his rear-view mirror. When he was satisfied that he was not being tailed, he headed downtown.

He drove all the way to the tip of Manhattan Island.

He drove onto the ferry.

When the ferry was halfway across the bay, he got out of his oar and sauntered around the deck. There were only a few passengers at the rail, hone at the stern.

He planted his elbows on the rail at the stern. The taped box of cartridges was now in his hand.

He looked around. No one.

With a swift underhand flip he tossed the heavy little box well out into the ferry's wake. He could not even see the splash in the foam.

“Sorry, Benny,” said Harry. “This is as close to the Atlantic as I can come.”

EIGHTEEN

On wednesday morning he went with Tony Mitchell to Immigration; on Friday he went again; on the following Tuesday he had his passport. On Thursday and Friday he shopped for clothes and luggage. One of his purchases was a pair of snug lightweight gloves. He did not have the gloves sent home; he took them back with him to his office and locked them in the cabinet with the gun and the silencer.

On Saturday he played golf with Gresham, Karen and Dr. Stone; on Saturday night Dr. and Mrs. Stone were hosts of a dinner party consisting of the Greshams, Tony Mitchell, and Harry Brown. It was an expensive dinner at a French restaurant of note. Dr. Stone explained: “In return for the many times Bernice and I have been entertained by the Greshams.”

At one point, between courses, the director of the Taugus Institute called across the table to Harry, “How goes it with the decision, Doctor?”

“I'm still sitting on it,” said the doctor, turning to Bernice Stone in the hope that it would discourage her husband from pursuing the subject.

But it was too late. Kurt Gresham asked with a disarming smile, “Decision, Alfred? What kind of decision would that be? This is my personal physician, you know.”

“Ah,” said Dr. Stone mysteriously. “That's a secret.”

Harry expected Gresham to question him later; rather to his surprise, Gresham seemed to have forgotten it.

On Sunday night Dr. Brown and Mrs. Gresham dined à
deux
at Giobbe's in the Village. It was the first time they had been alone since the Saturday night in his apartment. Harry thought Karen looked thinner, her classic cheeks more hollowed out; but it only emphasized the immensity of her green eyes; she seemed to him utterly beautiful. She was poised, attentive, even gay at times; but he sensed an edginess.

Only once did they talk of the matter most important to them, and it was Harry who brought it up.

“Uncle Joe came through.”

She lit a cigarette. Her fingers trembled. “When?”

“On Monday. He gave me certain directions and I followed them. Everything worked out fine.”

“So you have it.” He could hardly hear her.

“Yes.”

“Now what?”

“The Starhurst.”

“When?”

“I don't know yet. But it has to be before the first.”

On Tuesday he made a dry run. He left his office promptly at eleven o'clock in the morning. He walked at a normal pace. The loaded revolver was snugged in the waistband of his trousers. The silencer was in the inner pocket of his roomy sports jacket. His feather-light new gloves were in an outside pocket. He walked west to Columbus and up Columbus to the hotel.

Ten minutes flat, the whole thing.

The Starhurst was a tall, thin, rusty-looking building with a revolving-door entrance. He pushed through and into the empty forepart of a long corridor-like lobby covered with worn red carpeting. Far up the lobby he could see a corner of the desk and a bank of elevators and armchairs and sofas and tables with dimly lit lamps. From the entrance he could not see the clerk behind the desk, which meant that the desk clerk could not see him.

The whole place was silent, damp and had a faintly dusty smell.

Directly to the right of the entrance was a short corridor, red-carpeted like the lobby, that ended at a brass-knobbed door. Harry walked down, turned the knob and pushed, and found himself in a cramped vestibule at the foot of a steep flight of stairs. He climbed the stairs: the first door facing the stairway was 101.

Dr. Harrison Brown retraced his steps down the steep flight of stairs and opened the brass-knobbed door, stepped through and walked down the short corridor and turned left into the forepart of the Starhurst lobby and pushed through the revolving door to the street and walked at a normal pace back to his office on Central Park West.

Time from door to door: Exactly ten minutes.

NINETEEN

On Thursday Kurt Gresham finally Appeared at the office for a checkup. Both his systolic and diastolic blood pressures were up; his respiration was shallow and his pulse rapid and irregular; his EKG was erratic.

“How do you want it, with sugar or straight?” Harry said in the consultation room afterward.

“I'm not in such good shape, eh?” Kurt Gresham lit a cigar.

“You're in lousy shape. Have you been taking the digitalis in the morning? Quinidine after breakfast and dinner? Dicumerol in the afternoon? In the dosage prescribed?”

“When I remember.”

“Which, I take it, is practically never. We'd better do another prothrombin. Roll up your sleeve.”

He drew a blood sample and marked the vial for the lab. “You don't have to tell me you're not following my orders, Kurt. I've seen you eating your head off—all the wrong foods—”

“And drinking too much, too, I suppose.”

“I don't mind the drinking, it's the diet. What are you trying to do, induce another heart attack?”

“It's nerves, Harry. I've been under a lot of pressure.”

“You're a coronary, Kurt. Keep this up and you'll be just another statistic.”

“That would make a lot of people happy.”

“Would it make you happy?”

“How bad is it?”

“It's not bad. But it's not good, either.”

Gresham looked impatient. “What's the prognosis?”

Harry lit a cigarette, shrugging. “You can go on like this for years; the damage from your last attack is repaired. You've got a strong constitution and you seem to thrive on abuse. On the other hand, carrying on as you do, you're asking for it. It's likelier than not that, if you keep abusing yourself, one of these days you'll fall down dead.”

“Is it in the realm of probability?”

“Why tempt fate? I'm involved, too. If you die on me, I lose my best customer.” Harry chuckled, badly.

Kurt Gresham expelled a cloud of cigar smoke. “All right, what do I do?”

“If you take off sixty pounds, and then stick to the diet I gave you—if you stay with the medication—if you don't let your business”—grimly—“run you ragged, there's no reason why you shouldn't live out your natural lifetime.”

“Well,” said the millionaire glumly, “I suppose I'd better start.”

“How about right now?”

Gresham chuckled. “You're a good doctor, Harry. Too damn good. I'll start on the vacation. You can watch me like an FBI agent. By the way, we're going by ship—the ‘United States.'”

“Is it going to be a strenuous trip for you?”

“Strenuous on the nervous system. Now don't say it—I've already decided that, starting next year, I'm going to slow down. Sort of sit back and take the cream off the top. That means delegation of authority, and you're included in my plans, Harry. Maybe you'll be retiring from general practice, eh? Be my personal physician, business executive on the side—how does that sound?”

“Not good.”

“What's wrong?”

“Nothing, except that I like practicing medicine.”

“I may offer a proposition you won't be able to resist.”

“We'll see,” said Dr. Brown.

Gresham studied his cigar. “All right, we'll see. Starting September first I'll be the model patient. I'll last until then, won't I?”

Dr. Brown squeezed out his cigarette, smiling back. “This is one business, Kurt, where we can't guarantee the merchandise.”

“I'll risk it—what choice do I have?” Gresham laughed. “Oh, Harry. I'm planning a little theater party for Dr. and Mrs. Stone tomorrow night. He really couldn't afford that check the other night, and anyway, nobody extends himself for Kurt Gresham without being matched. I wish you'd do me a favor. Can you stand in for me as host?”

“Why can't you do it?” He knew perfectly well where Kurt Gresham would be tomorrow night.

“Business.”

“Always business.”

“From now until we leave I'm going to be on a merry-go-round. As a matter of fact, I'm sorry to have to miss it. I managed to pick up five tickets for
Success Story
.”

Success Story
was the runaway comedy hit of the season. It had opened late in May, and it was sold out for two years in advance.

“How on earth did you get them?” Harry was impressed. Scalpers were charging $50 a ticket for choice seats.

“Money buys anything,” said Kurt Gresham. “Five together, sixth row center, orchestra.”

Not anything, thought Harry. He said, “The Stones and I make three. Who are the other two, Karen and Tony?”

“Yes. I've also ordered dinner before the show at Monique's—a private room. And I'm sending the limousine and my chauffeur up to Taugus for the Stones, by the way, to drive them in and back. Make it seven o'clock at Monique's for cocktails and a leisurely dinner. Stone has to be back in Taugus early, so you and Karen and Tony can come straight to the apartment after the theater—I should be home by then—and we'll sit around and have a few drinks and talk. All right, Harry?”

“Sounds fine to me.”

“Then that's settled.” Gresham rose. “Karen has the tickets. You'll talk to her about the arrangements.”

Harry talked to her thirty seconds after Kurt Gresham was gone.

“He was just here,” Harry said.

“I know,” said Karen's voice. It sounded strained. “He told me he was seeing you for a checkup. How is he?”

“I never discuss my patients over the phone,” said Dr. Brown. “Can you come down here, Mrs. Gresham?”