Kill as Directed (3 page)

Then she said, “He's going out of town for the weekend. I'll see you Friday night and Saturday night and Sunday night. Alone. No one else. Yes? Yes, Harry?”

“Yes.”

“Good night.”

“I'll take you in.”

“Not tonight, darling. See you Friday. I'll call you the moment he's gone.”

He drove downtown, guilt rumbling within him. Was he in love? Was he? He was certainly infatuated. But love … marriage…? She had been honest with him: She had married a rich old man quite simply for his riches—God knew he could understand that!—and she could not face the thought of losing it. Gresham would give her no grounds for divorce; he was mad about her. And if she should provide the grounds, she would get nothing. And yet …
I love you, Harry. What are we going to do
?

He slid into the parking space before his house on Barrow Street and locked the car.

The dingy lobby was empty. He rode the creaky self-service elevator to the third floor, unlocked his apartment door, locked it behind him, snapped the light switch in the vestibule, threw his hat into the hall closet and went into the living room, fumbling for the switch. He found it and flicked it on and saw the girl.

She was slight and blonde, staring up at him with wide-open eyes from the armchair. She wore a plain black suit, a white blouse, and black patent-leather shoes that glittered in the light. He had never seen her before.

“Hello?” Dr. Harry Brown said with a frown. “Who are you? How did you get into my apartment?”

She did not answer. Just stared up at him.

Then he knew.

He went to her swiftly.

She was dead.

TWO

The man in charge reminded him comfortably of his father—an elderly, very tall, grizzled, and slightly stooped man, in clothes that hung as though they were a size too large for him. His gray eyes were clear, compassionate and weary, his voice slow, deep-toned, without urgency. He had introduced himself as Detective Lieutenant Galivan. While the technicians were busy with their apparatus, Galivan talked quietly with him.

“You're sure you've never seen her before, Doctor?”

“Never in my life.”

“Do you have any idea who she might be?”

“Not the slightest.”

“A patient, maybe?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Someone who might have come to your office
with
a patient?”

“It's possible, I suppose. All I can tell you is that, to the best of my recollection, I've never laid eyes on her before.”

“And you have no idea—no idea at all—what she's doing in your apartment?”

“It ought to be obvious,” Harry Brown said angrily. “Even to a cop. She's dead in my apartment.”

“Whoa, Doctor. Take it easy. If you're telling the truth—”

“Are you doubting me, for God's sake?”

“—then I can understand your state of mind.” The detective showed his small tobacco-yellowed teeth in a smile. “But please try to understand mine. If you're telling the truth, as I started to say, this doesn't make much sense, does it? A woman you never laid eyes on turning up dead in your apartment?”

“No, it doesn't. But here she is.”

Galivan looked at him. Harry Brown felt as if he were being gone over by a vacuum cleaner. “Your door was locked?”

“Yes! Locked when I left this morning, locked when I got back tonight.”

“And you've never given anyone a duplicate key to the lock?”

“I've already answered that! Not even the janitor has a key. I installed that lock myself when I took the apartment.”

“Sure is a funny one,” the detective murmured. He took out a pipe and a tobacco pouch and deliberately filled the pipe. Harry Brown waited, seething. Only when he had his pipe going smoothly did Galivan go on. “By the way, the Assistant Medical Examiner says she's been dead for a number of hours.”

“I know that,” said Harry sarcastically. “I'm a physician, remember?”

“And you say you haven't been back here all day?”

“That's right. I left at eleven this morning.”

“She hasn't been dead nearly that long, so that's one in your favor, Doc. If you're telling the truth, that is. You sure you didn't come back here during the day?”

He fought for control. “I'm sure, yes.”

“I had dinner out with friends.”

“How about this evening?”

“Well, wouldn't you have had to come back to change your clothes?”

“I did that at my office. Showered, shaved, got into fresh clothing at about seven o'clock.”

“We can check that, Dr. Brown.”

“You do that!”

Galivan smiled again. “Murphy?” A bulky crew-cut young plainclothesman strolled over. “Dr. Brown says he showered, shaved and changed his clothes in his office at seven o'clock this evening. He's going to give you the key to his office—right, Doctor?”

In silence Harry unhooked the key from his key ring and handed it to Murphy.

“What's the address?” the plainclothesman asked mildly.

Harry told him.

Murphy nodded and strolled out.

“Young Murphy's pretty good at that sort of thing, Doc,” Galivan murmured. “I hope you're telling the truth.” Harry compressed his lips. He was suddenly very tired. “And then,” the detective continued, “you went out to dinner. Where?”

“The Big Dipper. Met my friends there at a little after eight—Anthony Mitchell, he's a lawyer, and a Mrs. Gresham, a patient of mine whom I know socially through Mr. Mitchell.” He tried to keep his voice at the same level of mere annoyance. They mustn't suspect about Karen and him; they mustn't find out. “I dropped Mrs. Gresham off at' her apartment house on Park Avenue around eleven
P.M.,
then drove on home to find this.”

“You put in the call to us, Doc, how long after you found her?”

“Seconds, my friend, seconds.”

“I see. This Mr. Mitchell and Mrs. Gresham—can I have their addresses?”

“I don't see why you have to drag my friends into this!”

“Nobody's dragging anybody into anything, Dr. Brown. It's just a routine checkout of your story. Their addresses?”

Harry gave him Tony's address and Karen's address.

The detective jotted them down, puffing on his pipe. “Oh, by the way, Doctor,” he mumbled as he wrote. “Do much of a business in abortions?”

Harry looked at the man, speechless. Then he burst into laughter.

“There's something funny in what I said?” Lieutenant Galivan asked slowly, taking the pipe out of his mouth.

“Hilarious! You don't know how hilarious, Lieutenant. The answer is no. I don't handle abortions, and I don't recommend pregnant girls or women to any doctor who does. In fact, I wouldn't know where to send such a patient if I wanted to.”

Galivan continued to look at him. “Do you know a doctor who would send such a patient to
you
if
he
wanted to?”

“Oh, I see what you're driving at. You think the dead girl …” Harry shrugged. “No, I don't.”

One of the technicians came up to them and said, “We're through here, Lieutenant.”

“Any luck, Closkey?”

The man glanced at Harry. “No,” he said, and went away.

“There are no signs of violence on the body, incidentally,” Lieutenant Galivan said to Harry. “Have you any idea, as a doctor, what she died of?”

“I'm going to leave the medical opinions to your Medical Examiner's office, Lieutenant.”

“Oh, they'll do an autopsy. I just wondered if you knew. Willing to come downtown with us, by the way?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Sure,” said Galivan, puffing hard. “You can come voluntarily, or I can get legal about it.”

Harry Brown looked at him in absolute incredulity. “Do I understand that you're detaining me? As a suspect?”

“Suspect? Suspect for what, Doc?”

“How should I know? For murder, I suppose!”

“Oh, you think she was murdered?” Galivan asked.

“Well, wasn't she?”

“Was she?”

“Oh, hell,” said Harry.

“Look, Dr. Brown,” the detective said. “This could be a rough deal for you all around. Whether you're telling the truth or lying.” He actually sounded sympathetic. “I'm not going to bull you. I know a doctor can't afford to get personally mixed up in a police investigation. But I can't help myself any more than you can. As bad as it might be for you professionally, it'll be a whole lot worse if you're withholding information.”

“I'm
not
withholding information!” exploded Dr. Harrison Brown. “How many times do I have to repeat that? What do you want me to do, tell you I know the girl when I don't? This is as much a mystery to me as it is to you!”

Surprisingly, Lieutenant Galivan said, “I'm inclined to believe you. Only a nut would dream up a story like this under these circumstances. Of course, it may be that's what you are, Doc—a nut. We'll check that out, too. In fact, you're going to have to be checked from every angle we can think up. Nothing personal, you understand. Let's go.”

At the precinct station Galivan took him upstairs to a square, bare, shabby room. “Before we go through the formalities, I'm going to leave you alone here to think.”

“Think?” cried Harry. “About what, for heaven's sake?”

The lieutenant looked thoughtful. “Well, if you're telling the truth, Doc, some son of a bitch played a real socker of a joke on you. For your own good you'd better start rummaging through your head for some patient, or so-called friend, or anyone else you may know who'd be cockeyed enough, or mean enough, to put you in the middle of a mess like this.”

Galivan went out and closed the door. Dr. Harrison Brown sat down on a hard chair scarred with cigarette burns and scratchwork art.

And he began to think.

He had not thought sixty seconds when he knew it must have been the work of Kurt Gresham.

Two weeks ago his phone had rung at midnight. He had sat up in bed and fumbled for the receiver and Kurt Gresham's voice had come through, contained, precise, almost prissy: “Harry? Harry, can you get up to your office right away?”

“What is it? What's wrong?”

“An emergency. How soon, Harry?”

“Give me thirty minutes.”

Twenty-four minutes later he was in his office and five minutes after that the bell rang and Dr. Brown opened the street door to admit Kurt Gresham and a steel-faced man supporting a woman with a face the color of well-aged cheese.

The woman was fat and tight-lipped; she wore an expensive evening gown, and in her naked shoulder, just under the skin, there was a bullet. It had required hardly more than first aid: a simple probe to extricate the bullet, a clamp, a shot to prevent infection. The steel-faced man had taken the woman away, neither of them having uttered a sound; and then Kurt Gresham had said, “Neat and quick, Harry. I like the way you work.”

“Mr. Gresham—”

“Kurt, Harry,” Gresham had said gently. “We're friends, aren't we?”

“All right—Kurt.” He had had the most curious feeling of entrapment. “You're going to have to tell me what this is all about.”

“I am?” Gresham had said, just as gently.

“Of course! The woman suffered a gunshot wound. The law says all such wounds have to be reported to the police department by the attending physician.”

“I know what the law says, Harry. You'll do me a great personal favor if you don't report it.”

Harry Brown had stared at him. “You can't be serious. I could have my license revoked.”

“Yes,” the millionaire had smiled, “but that won't happen. I absolutely guarantee the discretion of everyone involved. Naturally, I don't expect you to run even the slightest risk without adequate compensation. Will this be of help?”

He laid a check down on Harry's desk. It was for five hundred dollars.

“No,” Dr. Harry Brown said.

“The woman is not implicated in anything criminal, Harry. She was an innocent bystander—”

“Then she has nothing to worry about,” Harry said abruptly, “and neither have you.”

“Harry, listen, will you? Will you please listen? Let me have my say.”

“Go ahead and have it. But I'm not going to jeopardize my medical license—”

“For a measly five hundred dollars?” The fat man looked hurt. “Harry, have you misjudged me to that extent? This is just a token fee. Listen, I own a large number of night clubs. Does that surprise you? Here in New York. A couple in Washington. Several in Philadelphia, Chicago, Miami. Nobody knows I own these clubs; my ownership is hidden behind a complicated corporate setup. I want it that way, I need it that way. See, I'm not holding anything back.”

Listening to the smooth, precise voice, watching the bland and fleshy face, Harry felt a knotty hardness form in the pit of his stomach. “I don't like it, Mr. Gresham—”

“Kurt.”

“Kurt. The answer is still no.”

“But why, Harry? Lots of businessmen put surplus funds to work in other enterprises—”

“And hide them?”

“Why not? Why should I complicate my business life by letting it be known that I also own a string of night clubs? Anyway, that's the way I prefer it.”

“You mean,” said Harry tightly, “because your anonymous sideline produces an occasional gunshot wound?”

“That's part of it,” Gresham said without hesitation. “Every once in a while somebody gets out of line in a club, in spite of my people's precautions, has too much to drink, starts a brawl. Not often, Harry. And sometimes that somebody turns out to be packing a gun. So, occasionally, somebody gets hurt and needs medical attention. Night clubs operate under license, the way doctors do; and a shooting or other violence jeopardizes the license. At the least, it makes us subject to investigation. I don't want my clubs investigated—it might reveal my ownership. And that's something, as I said, that I want to remain under cover. I've gone to a lot of trouble to keep it that way. One of my precautions has been to retain a physician to take care of just such incidents on a strictly confidential basis. Dr. Welliver did it for me for years. Now that he's retired, I'd like you—”