Kill as Directed

Ten

Later, side by side in the darkness, they talked.

“He’d have killed me, would he?” Harry muttered.

“You’re sweet. Violent yourself, capable of violence, but sweet, darling. Harry, get this through your head. Move wrong, talk wrong, smell wrong, and Kurt’s specialists dispose of you. What’s more, you can’t get out. You’re in for the rest of your life.”

“What about Dr. Welliver? He’s getting out, isn’t he?”

“No. He just thinks he is. He’s still under all the old restraints. If he doesn’t know that, he won’t live long enough to realize it. Incidentally, I don’t think he’s half as feeble as he makes out. I think old Doc Welliver has put on an act for some time, maneuvering for retirement.”

“Sick of the whole thing after all these years?”

“You are an innocent, aren’t you? No, because I think he thinks a crack has developed in the operation and he wants to get out from under before the whole thing comes crashing down. And you know what, Harry dearest? I think doc’s got something. And you know another thing, my hairy baby? I think so does Kurt.”

“What do you mean?”

Karen was silent. Then he felt her shoulder, snugged against his, twitch in a shrug. “I’ve gone this far, I may as well go the whole route. Harry, do you have any idea where Kurt goes every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday evening?”

“How the hell should I know? He hasn’t told me much inside stuff. I don’t even know how much of it is true. I’ve caught him in one lie already.”

“What’s that?”

“He told me you’re his wife, period. That you know nothing about the dope operation.”

She laughed. “Four nights a week he goes to the Starhurst.”

“Starhurst? What’s that?”

“A rundown but respectable old hotel at 83rd Street and Columbus. Kurt’s maintained a suite there for many years. On the first floor — he walks up — Suite 101.”

“Suite for what?”

“Business. He never spends more time there than is absolutely necessary. Kurt’s one of those on-the-minute men. He demands absolute punctuality from his visitors.”

“What visitors?”

“Don’t get ahead of me. He gets to his suite at the Starhurst precisely at five minutes to seven, and precisely at seven his visitor arrives.”

“What visitor?”

“The manager of one of Kurt’s clubs — from New York, or Chicago, or Philly, or Washington or Miami. They rotate, never more than one manager an evening. Kurt comes with a brief case, the manager comes with a brief case. Kurt walks up, the manager walks up five minutes later. The stairway is to the right of the hotel entrance, through a short corridor. The desk and elevators are at the rear of the lobby, so the chances are nobody sees either of them go in and up. But even if somebody did — two well-dressed men, carrying respectable brief cases, five minutes apart—”

“What’s the point, Karen?”

She twisted in the dark; she was perspiring again, and her naked shoulder slid against his as if it were greased. “Give me a cigarette, please, darling.”

Harry groped on the night table. He gave her a cigarette, lit a match. She was frowning. She took only a few puffs and handed the cigarette back to him. He extinguished it in the ash tray on the table.

“In Kurt’s brief case is a fresh supply of junk for the manager, put up in retail packets,” Karen said in a mechanical undertone. “In the manager’s brief case is the dope take from his club since his last visit, all cash. The contents of the brief cases are exchanged, facts and figures are gone over, and the manager leaves. Five minutes later Kurt locks up and leaves, too. And that’s it.”

Harry stirred restlessly in the humid darkness. She laid a gentle hand on him, as if to soothe and reassure him.

“Six months ago, for the first time in the history of the operation, one of the Washington managers — a quiet middle-aged little man named Carona, who looks like a filing clerk — failed to show up at the Starhurst for his appointment.”

“Skipped with the take?”

“Nobody Kurt clears for a managerial job ever skips, Harry. No, Carona failed to show because, when his plane touched down in New York, he was arrested by two city detectives.”

“With a brief case full of money?”

“No. The manager never carries the money on him. I don’t know just what the system is — I think it comes on ahead some way and the manager picks it up after he gets off the plane. It wasn’t the money. What bothered Kurt was the fact that Carona was picked up on a twenty-year-old charge.”

“What kind of charge?”

“Felony murder. A policeman was killed during a liquor store heist twenty years ago. Two men were in the holdup. The cop killed one of them; the other killed the cop and got away. The one who got away was Carona.”

“And Kurt took him into the organization with that hanging over his head?” Harry asked incredulously.

“Carona was never linked to the killing — or the heist, for that matter. He was never identified — wasn’t even hauled in for questioning. They simply didn’t know who the killer was. There were no witnesses; the cop and the confederate died instantly. He made a clean getaway.”

“Then how come the New York police pick him up for the crime twenty years later?”

“That’s the bugging question. Carona claims he’s never told anyone about it except Kurt. He told that to his lawyer. All the lawyer’s been able to find out is that the police were suddenly tipped. The only theory that makes sense is that Carona’s wife tipped them. He says he never told her, but he could be lying. Carona’s been playing around with a blonde recently and his wife found out. Anyway, what’s been sticking in Kurt’s craw is that the district attorney was able to ram an indictment through the grand jury. And Carona’s been refused bail. It doesn’t wash. There’s something behind this — and it could create the crack I mentioned.”

“Who’s Carona’s lawyer?” asked Harry. “Tony?”

“My God, no. One of Kurt’s undercover puppets. A real talent. Bobby Trenton.”

He stiffened. “You don’t mean Robert Cope Trenton, the ex-judge?”

“That’s the baby, baby.”

“I don’t believe it,” Harry exclaimed. “Why, Judge Trenton writes books on constitutional law. He has an international reputation.”

“I told you Kurt picks only the best. Don’t ask me how he got Trenton on his payroll — probably framed him for something. Anyway, Bobby says there’s no real case against Carona; he guarantees an acquittal. So — why did they pick Carona up? Why did they phony through an indictment?”

“The crack in the monolith, eh?”

“That’s what Kurt thinks. Somewhere something leaked — maybe in Europe, maybe in the Middle East or in Asia — and Carona’s picked up. Bobby Trenton’s told him it’s a phony, that he has nothing to worry about, that the only reason for the whole thing is to squeeze some information out of him about the operation. It’s been made clear to him that all he has to do is keep his mouth shut, that he’ll be cleared, and there will be a hefty bonus for him when he is. But he’s a dead man. And that’s what Doc Welliver was really worried about — that Carona knows he’s a dead man and might talk.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Kurt’s had his best men out in the field, inspecting, feeling for the crack. He’s going abroad himself in September to mend whatever needs mending. But it’s obvious that Carona is now a real liability. While Judge Trenton holds his hand, Kurt’s arranging for his liquidation. A jail killing takes time — I mean, a killing that looks like an accident, that can’t be traced back to the organization. It’s being arranged, but it takes time.”

“Christ,” said Harry without impiety, sweating in the darkness.

“That’s why I’m telling you, darling. You got in at just the wrong time. If trouble came, I doubt if you could stand up to it. I know you, Harry. You aren’t geared for this kind of thing. If Carona talks before he can be eliminated, the whole operation goes sky-high and they’d have you singing like a canary in no time. Kurt made a bad mistake in picking you. He doesn’t know it yet. We’ve got to pray he never does.”

“Maybe I’m not as weak a sister as you seem to think—”

“Darling,” she said softly, “don’t be angry. You’ve got all the strength a woman could ask for. But not the kind an involvement in a racket calls for. You’re too basically decent and honest. Darling, tell me. How come you allowed yourself to get sucked in?”

“I suffer from the same disease you do,” said Harry in a dull bitterness.

“Money?”

“I’m sick with it.”

She flung her arms around him. “Why the hell did I have to meet you? I was going great. All I could think of was the money — the money I’ve got, the money I’m going to get. Now all I can think of is you, damn you. I love you. I met you too late—”

“Let’s not kid ourselves, Karen. You wouldn’t have let me get to first base as a penniless doctor over his head in debt. And if you were a stripper living on her paychecks, I’d have passed you over. And both of us for the same reason. We’re sick. We’re infected.”

“Let’s not talk any more,” Karen whispered.

They clung in the darkness. It was hot. But not that hot. This was tension sweat. The sweat of fear.

He said savagely, “What happens when he’s dead?”

“Carona? The crack is found and mended, and business goes on as usual.”

“I’m not talking about Carona.”

She pressed against him, hands slipping on the wetness of this body, fingernails biting into his skin. “I wish he were. Dead. Dead. For your release as well as for mine. I’d marry you in a minute. We could be money-sick together, and we’d have three million dollars to cure us. Maybe a whole lot more. Harry, we’d be free, quit and clear and cured... He’s old, used-up, nearing the end, and we’re young and at the beginning. Harry,” she whispered. Her hands slid fiercely along his body. “Harry, we’d have it all — and each other — and no more hiding in lousy motels...”

But then she took her hands away and sighed and turned from him.

She turned from him and he turned from her and they lay on their sides, backs damply touching; they did not talk again until morning, when the motel room was bright with sun. But in the night before sleep — hot, wet, touching, mouth dry, blood thumping — Harry Brown became committed.