1972 - Just a Matter of Time (16 page)

Sheila and Gerald would be sitting pretty. They would have a million between the two of them. He would be glad to get rid of them.

But now the operation had become complicated. Marks was threatening him. Fifty percent interest after the next three months. This operation could go on for years. It depended on how long the old lady lived. Would Marks wait years? I have a collecting service. Bromhead now realized the weakness of his planning. If Gerald had cooperated he wouldn’t be in this financial hole and under pressure with Marks. This had to be thought about. Ahead of him was a cafe and he went in and sat at a corner table. He asked for a cup of coffee. When the coffee was served, he gave his mind to the problem.

After some five minutes of thought, he came to the reluctant conclusion that with this complication that Gerald had created he could no longer consider this operation as long term. The forged will was back in the bank. If Mrs. Morley-Johnson happened to die within the next few weeks, his problems would be solved. Thinking about this, he realized that all the time, at the back of his mind, there had been the possibility of accelerating her death. In fact, the more he thought about it, now the thought was admitted, he saw that to have hoped that this plan could have succeeded by just waiting for her to die was a fantasy.

Bromhead sipped his coffee.

But it was one thing to want the old lady dead and quite something else to arrange her death. He realized she was in an impregnable position; in a penthouse with Sheila always in attendance, guarded by the hall porter and when she went down to the restaurant, she was guarded by bowing waiters. When she went out in the Rolls she was guarded by himself. The one thing he had to be very sure of was not to get himself involved. If the police had any reason to look into his past, he would be a dead duck. He thought of Sheila. She was a trained nurse. Perhaps too many sleeping pills? He toyed with the idea, then shook his head. Sheila was an odd woman, but he had an instinctive feeling she wouldn’t touch murder. She wanted money. She was prepared to go along with forgery, but he was certain he couldn’t hint at murder to her . . . not even hint.

Yet there must be a solution. Success now depended on the old lady dying within a few weeks. He must have nothing to do with her death. Sheila, anyway, would have nothing to do with her death . . . then who could he call on to murder the old lady and murder her in such a way that he (Bromhead) and Sheila were without suspicion?

He finished his coffee and lit a cigarette.

Suppose he succeeded in finding someone? To hire someone to kill the old lady was dangerous. There was always the element of blackmail to be considered. But suppose he did find someone he could trust. How would this man get into the penthouse? How would he get by the hall porter and Fred Lawson? What reason could this hired killer give the hall porter to get up to the penthouse? How about Sheila? She would be with the old lady. Bromhead crossed and recrossed his legs as he thought. Suppose he found the solution and got his man up to the penthouse. The killer couldn’t just walk in, kill the old lady and walk out again. There had to be an acceptable motive . . . but what motive? If the police didn’t have a motive to work on, they would dig and this Bromhead knew had to be avoided. He must have a watertight alibi. He would also have to arrange for Sheila to be beyond suspicion.

He relaxed while he thought. Where to find a professional killer? It would be too dangerous to consult Solly Marks. Marks would certainly blackmail him for the rest of his days. He continued to think. Was there someone out of his past he could call on and trust? His mind moved back into the past years . . . then he remembered Harry Miller.

Harry Miller!

He thumped his fist into the palm of his hand.

Here was the solution!

He sat thinking, then he got to his feet, paid his check and walked out into the hot night.

If you thought hard enough, he told himself as he walked towards the Plaza Beach Hotel, problems could always be solved, but you had to think and think and think and then remember.

He was whistling softly under his breath, now completely relaxed, as he walked up the steps to the hotel lobby. Making his way to the telephone booths, he found a New York telephone book. He flicked through the pages and finally came to the name: Harry Miller with the address and the telephone number.

He slammed the book shut. It was as if he was slamming the life of Mrs. Morely-Johnson’s life shut and opening a new life for himself.

* * *

On a hot humid morning in New York, a man known as Harry Miller received a bulky envelope: the first letter he had had for many months.

His landlady was so impressed that she climbed the four flights of stairs, panting, to deliver the letter in person. She waited hopefully to see if Harry would give her any information, but Harry took the letter without even a word of thanks and shut his room door in her face.

Harry hated receiving letters. To him, letters always meant trouble, but when this letter had arrived, he opened it. From it spilled an airline ticket, a one-hundred dollar bill and a note

which read:
I need you. I’ll be at the airport on 20th. Jack
.

Harry frowned as he stared into space.

Jack?

He nodded to himself. Jack . . . yes . . . Jack Bromhead, the master forger. Harry reread the note, now interested. It was over five years since he and Bromhead had seen each other. If it hadn’t been for Bromhead . . .

Although it was five years ago, he remembered exactly what he had said to Bromhead after the event. He had said: I don’t forget. If ever you want me for anything, say so, and I’ll pay my debt.

Oddly enough, considering his character and his viciousness, Harry Miller was a man of his word. So now Bromhead wanted him. Again Harry nodded to himself. That was fine with him.

He had had Bromhead on his conscience for five years, wanting to repay him. The only thing that really irked him in this modern world was to be in someone’s debt.

His mind moved back into the past. Even now, thinking about it, he flinched. Three of them had ganged up on him. He could have taken two of them, but not the third. It had happened in the prison yard. He had had a suspicion that the word had come into the prison to fix him. He had been serving a five-year stretch for robbery with violence and that had been a mistake.

At that time money ran through his fingers like water. He wasn’t a stick-up man: he was by profession a killer. He worked for various organizations and he made good money, but at that time, he had a weakness for playing the horses. He had had a good tip that looked certain, but his own trade was slack and he was suddenly without money, so stupidly, he had walked into a gas station, knocked the attendant cold, and as he was rifling the safe, a tough-looking cop had appeared, a .38 police special in his hairy hand.

The gas attendant had sustained a split skull and the Judge was told that he wouldn’t be of much use even though the surgeon had riveted his skull together so Harry was given five years.

Unluckily for him, some months previously he had done a job on a squealer, Toni Bianco. It had been a neat, quick job and Toni had died without knowing he was leaving this life forever.

It so happened that Toni’s brother, Luigi, was serving twenty years, for killing a cop, in the prison to which Harry was sent. The word got over the prison walls that Harry was the man who had knocked off Toni Bianco. Luigi felt he had to do something about this but he knew Harry was a button man and he wasn’t taking any chances. He found two Italians who agreed to help out. The three of them isolated Harry in a distant corner of the prison yard. They had knives made from roof slates, lovingly filed into needle-like points. As they came at him, Harry realized he could take two of them, but the third one would get him and he began to kiss life goodbye. Then Bromhead appeared. While Harry took care of Luigi and the second man, Bromhead took care of the third man. It was all over in seconds.

Thinking about this, Harry again told himself that if it hadn’t been for Bromhead he wouldn’t now be breathing nor would his heart be beating. This was a debt that had to be repaid.

I need you
.

Harry was pleased. This day was the sixteenth. He had plenty of time. Bromhead was acting big: the air ticket and the one hundred dollar bill. This also pleased Harry. He regarded Bromhead with respect. Bromhead was a craftsman: he could forge any goddamn signature and in a fight he was as good and as tough as Harry himself. So with the air ticket and the money, it looked as if Bromhead was doing well. The hundred dollar bill meant nothing to Harry. Ever since he was released from prison, he had given up playing the horses. During the following five years as a professional killer, he had salted away enough to bring him an invested income, tax free, of around three thousand dollars. Now retired, Harry preferred to live a simple life.

His only extravagance was to release a pent-up viciousness every six months by hiring a special whore and thrashing her until the viciousness had drained out of him. Apart from this extravagance, Harry led a quiet life. He liked to watch television, go to the new movies and read books by authors like Harold Robbins.

He had no friends . . . friends to him were dangerous and tricky. Friends always wanted something, always vomited out their troubles, always on the scrounge, but never gave anything in return. Long ago, he had learned he could do without friends.

At the age of forty-eight, Harry was undersized and thin with hollow cheeks, quick steady green eyes, a pinched nose and an almost lipless mouth. He kept himself always in peak condition by morning workouts with a pair of heavy Indian clubs.

He had no more respect for a human life than he had for the life of a fly. He was a man who killed with his hands. He considered a gun noisy and therefore dangerous, a knife messy and a length of lead piping unprofessional. He had studied the art of karate and he was now an expert. He could smash a brick with the side of either hand with one chopping, terrible blow. The sides of his hands were his weapons: safe and sure. Should some nosy cop stop and frisk him, the cop would never find on him any kind of weapon. The cop wouldn’t have the imagination to realize that the sides of Harry’s hands were far more lethal than any gun, knife or length of piping.

In his youth, Harry had been bitten by the theatre bug. He had shown a small talent and had acted in various corny plays, playing various corny roles out in the sticks. He had acquired a talent for make-up and this talent he carried into his life of crime. He became known to the F.B.I, and the police as ‘the thug with many faces.’

On the twentieth of the month, he arrived at the airport, carrying a small black handbag. He had decided to surprise Bromhead who had said he would be waiting to meet him. Harry had taken considerable trouble to disguise himself. Rubber pads against his gums and up his pinched nose had fattened his face. The thick black moustache, each hair carefully and lovingly gummed into place, the black hair which was naturally blond, the horn—rimmed glasses made him someone that Bromhead couldn’t possibly recognize.

Bromhead waited at the exit of the arrival centre, his eyes scanning the passengers as they came out. He saw no one remotely resembling Harry Miller. It was only when steel-like fingers closed around his wrist, and a familiar voice said, ‘Hi, Jack! Long time no see,’ that he realized Harry had arrived.

Twenty minutes later the two men were in the privacy of a motel cabin some two miles from the airport. They talked; or rather Bromhead talked and Harry listened. For some moments, Harry couldn’t believe what Bromhead was telling him.

‘Hey, Jack! An old bag of seventy-eight?’ He stared at Bromhead. ‘You’re asking me to knock her off?’

‘That’s the job, Harry,’ Bromhead said. ‘It is important to me.’

Harry laughed.

‘Well, for Pete’s sake! I thought I had something tough. Okay, Jack, boy, I’ll take care of it . . . just tell me how you want me to handle it.’

Bromhead had been sure this would be the answer, but he was relieved that his thinking had been right.

‘I’m not asking you to do this for nothing, Harry,’ he said. ‘The old lady always wears a mass of jewellery. It’s worth something like two hundred grand. There are days when she plasters herself with the stuff worth three hundred . . . you could be lucky. You can help yourself.’

Harry shook his head.

‘No thanks . . . I’ve got all I want. At my age, Jack, I’ve got beyond bothering about money. I’ll do the job with pleasure but I don’t want anything out of it.’

Bromhead stared at him.

‘You’ve got all you want?’ He leaned forward. ‘Look, Harry, you could pick up at least a hundred grand out of this.’

He was thinking: at my age I’ve got beyond bothering about money. What the hell was happening to this goddamn world? How could anyone have too much?

Again Harry shook his head.

‘I don’t want it, Jack. I’ve got all I want. I like a simple life . . . forget it. How do you want it done?’

Bromhead now became suspicious. He couldn’t imagine anyone doing anything as big as this for nothing unless he had a nut loose.

‘There has to be a motive, Harry,’ he said, trying to make his voice sound patient. ‘If there’s no motive, the cops will start digging and that’s something I don’t want . . . they could dig me up.’

Being a professional, Harry understood what Bromhead was saying.

‘Okay . . . so we have a motive . . . keep talking. . .’

‘When you hit the old lady, you take her rings, her bracelets and her pearls. Keep them . . . it’s your payoff, Harry.’

Harry moved restlessly.

‘Not for me. I’ve got beyond that caper. What would I do with them? I’ve kissed the creeps who handle stuff like that goodbye. I won’t want to be bothered. I have all the money I want. I’m doing this for you, Jack. I owe you and I pay my debts.’

This was something Bromhead couldn’t believe.

‘But, Harry . . . for God’s sake! You can’t refuse more than a hundred big ones! You can’t!’