Kill as Directed

One

Shoulders, back, chest and thighs, arms and hands and feet — Dr. Brown was big in all departments. Even his nose was big. Once it had been big and straight. Now it was big and crooked, his football trophy.

Dr. Brown had dark eyes and dark hair. His look was dark, too, a chronic darkness; sullen, quite boyishly sullen. It went with his hair, darkly rumpled from running his big fingers through it in chronic desperation.

Dr. Brown’s friends called him Harry. Dr. Harry (for Harrison) Brown was thirty years old, and he considered himself a failure. Had he been able, like many fellow-healers of his acquaintance, to sock it away in a safe-deposit box, he would have considered himself a success. Yet Dr. Harry (for Harrison) Brown was not a shallow man. He was simply in the grip of a disease that strikes men, shallow or deep, impartially.

Dr. Harry Brown’s passion for money came from a lifetime of not having enough of it. “Not enough” is a relative term; Harry Brown’s not-enough had been relative to a background of exposure to too many too-much people. The friends of his father had been rich, and Harry’s friends had been their sons. Harry had gone to a rich man’s prep school on a scholarship; scholarships did not provide convertibles, charge accounts and fat allowances. At his Ivy League college he had roomed with the sons of the rich and dated the daughters of the rich; on holidays he had been seduced into their homes. He had been fed by their French chefs and served by their English butlers. He had slept on their silk sheets, and under them. He had sat on their antiques, buried his shoes in their rugs, gaped at their art investments, driven their foreign cars, ridden their thoroughbreds, taken the helm of their yachts. He had grown up swallowing daily doses of envy as others swallowed vitamin pills. Envy had sustained him and given him the strength to envy more. Envy had sent him through medical school. Envy had chosen and furnished his office.

But there its efficacy had stopped. Envy seemed powerless to provide him with a practice.

Dr. Harry Brown was intelligent. He knew that a practice, a lucrative New York practice, was merely a matter of time. He was only two years out of his residency. But time meant patience, and patience could not be cultivated in the acid soil of envy. Intelligence did not help; it was an empty watering can.

Dr. Harry Brown sat alone in his office, his spacious office with the private street entrance, in the impressive apartment building on Central Park West; sat alone in the office gleaming with the latest and most expensive medical equipment; sat alone waiting for the telephone call.

It was seven o’clock of a pleasant evening in May. Outside, the city was beginning to wrap itself in the warm dusk. He sat in a dusk of his own; only his desk lamp was on, and he had swiveled its business end toward the wall. He was slumped in his genuine leather swivel-chair, long legs sprawled under the desk, morose, glowering, in a tension sweat.

Who would have believed it? Two years of getting nowhere.

Patients today: two. A kid from the next apartment house with an infected finger; a pregnant teenager who wanted an abortion — this one he had sent packing without even charging a fee. One patient yesterday, a passer-by off the street with something in his eye. None at all the day before. And the day before that, the repeater. Hallelujah. The guy hadn’t yet paid for his first visit two months ago. The dead beats smelled out the new doctors. Even assuming that this character paid, that made the grand total of $30 gross for four days. $7.50 a day. Big deal. The rawest office boy these days would turn that down with a sneer.

Who would have believed it? Two years not merely of getting nowhere, but of sliding downhill. Two years of watching the thirty thousand dollars from his father’s life insurance shrink like ice on a hot tin roof. It was all gone, and a lot besides. He was over his head in debt.

Who would have believed it? Unmarried. No family hanging around his neck. No one to look out for but himself. And he couldn’t do even that.

It wasn’t as if he were an incompetent. He was a good doctor. He had proved that in his residency. But how did you spread the gospel? Maybe I should have set up in Los Angeles, he thought wryly, where some doctors use neon signs and advertise in the newspapers.

It was evident now that he had made a bad mistake in opening an office in New York. The yawpers about the “shortage of doctors” had never tried to make a go of it in Manhattan. Why, there were two other doctors in this very building, established men. Seven, excluding himself, in two short blocks. And this kind of office, in this kind of neighborhood, produced a chain reaction. The address dictated expensive clothes, perfect grooming. The clothes and the address made a glittering new car mandatory. And all for what? To impress whom? The kid with the finger? The transient with the eye? The terrified girl with the illegal belly? The dead beat? And to maintain this empty show he had to live in a hole in Greenwich Village, with hardly enough furnishings for a monk’s cell...

The phone rang.

“Harry?” It was Tony Mitchell, all right.

“Yes,” Dr. Brown said.

“Oh, in one of those moods.”

“What’s the score, Tony?” he asked abruptly.

“Dinner at eight. At the Big Dipper. Reservation in the name of Gresham — they lay out the purple carpet instead of the red when you mention it, and purple’s my favorite color. So put on your best bib and tucker, Harry.”

“How many of us?”

“Three. You, me, delicious Mrs. Gresham.”

“What about Gresham?”

“Did I leave the old boy out? Maybe he’ll come, maybe he won’t. You know Kurt — business before pleasure. Pleased?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Dr. Harry Brown said.

“Sure you don’t,” Tony Mitchell chuckled. “Look, son, don’t horse around with little ol’ me. I’m chaperoning tonight, and I know it, and I know you know I know it.”

“Stop it, Tony.”

“Shall I prescribe, Doctor? Four or five vodka martinis and our radiant Karen of Gresh as a chaser. Whoops! That slipped out. Who is the hunter, O Physician, and who the hunted?”

In spite of himself, Harry Brown felt better. “Sounds to me as if you’ve had your four or five already.”

“And so I have, and so I have. Listen, pal, I’ve got to go get pretty. See you at eight.”

The Big Dipper, he thought as he hung up. No less! Leave it to Tony Mitchell. Nothing but the best. Well, Tony could certainly afford it. Many a lawyer in town would have exchanged his entire clientele for Mr. and Mrs. Kurt Gresham.

The Big Dipper... Harry Brown rose. For the past month he had been his own chef, opening cans at home in the Village and heating their contents. It was the only way he could take Karen Gresham out; Karen was used to the best — well, to the most expensive, anyway. Tonight Tony Mitchell would pay, or Kurt Gresham if he showed up. Not that they’d let him, but he couldn’t even go through the motions of reaching for the check. A dinner for four at the Big Dipper, with cocktails and wine and adequate tips to the maître d’ and waiters, would come to almost a hundred and fifty dollars — two weeks’ salary for Dr. Harrison Brown’s yawning day-shift receptionist.

Dr. Harrison Brown shuffled about, flicking on lights. In his gleaming examining-room he opened a cabinet drawer, took out a fifth of whisky, poured himself a shot, gulped it down and, replacing bottle and glass, went into one of the two dressing rooms, the one with the full bathroom. As he stripped, as he stepped under the shower and soaped himself and turned on the needle spray and felt his body come alive, Dr. Harrison Brown thought about Anthony Mitchell, Esquire, Attorney-at-Law... thought about luck, and its quirks. For it had been chance, pure and complex, that had thrown him back into the orbit of that incandescent, hurtling personality.

Law had been Harry Brown’s father’s profession, too — slow, meticulous, painfully honest Simon Brown; old Sime Brown, never in court, a lawbook man, a brilliant brief man, everybody’s counsel on appeal; student, scholar, sickly, toward the last doddering; a man of great learning and greater wisdom and greatest principle. Attorney Simon Brown, widower, without personal ambition, deeply devoted to his only child, his son, deeply committed to encouraging that son to study medicine, to become a successful physician and so to be able to enjoy those things in life which meant so little to him. Or perhaps, as Harry Brown suspected, his father had cultivated a personal indifference toward material satisfactions because he had long ago recognized his incapability of achieving them. But for his son... It explained why he had kept himself impoverished in order to expose his son to the environment of wealth.

Daddy-o, Harry Brown thought bitterly, you played me a dirty trick. Who had said, “Wisdom is folly?” It was the stupidest thing the wise man had ever done.

It was in his father’s office — during a short vacation, while he was still in medical school — that Harry Brown had first met Tony Mitchell. Tony, seven years Harry’s senior, was already a criminal lawyer with a future; he brought his brief work to Simon Brown. He was handsome, zestful, sophisticated, quick-witted, sardonic, gay, an electric personality — all the things that Harry was not.

“Your old man’s a genius, did you know that?” Tony Mitchell had said to Harry Brown in his baritone chuckle. He was reputed to have an extraordinary courtroom voice. “And I take advantage of him, pick his brains.” For one moment young Mitchell had turned serious. “It’s unfair as hell. But... You know what’s wrong with your father, Harry? He’s too damned shy.”

It was an indictment, Simon Brown had remarked dryly later, that would never be drawn against Anthony Mitchell, Esquire.

But Harry had liked him. And, of course, envied him.

They had become friends quickly, gone out together. They made an interesting pair. Where Harry was serious, Tony was ebullient. Where Harry was inarticulate, Tony was glib. Where Harry was quiet, Tony was suave. Where Harry was awkward with women, Tony collected them like moths. They complemented each other, even physically. Harry’s big, bulky, rugged body was the perfect foil for Tony Mitchell’s quicksilver slenderness.

But then Harry had had to go back to school, and Simon Brown died, and the friendship died too, as quickly as it had been born. They drifted apart and soon lost track of each other.

Harry Brown stepped out of the shower and toweled himself viciously. Then he shaved and got into the change of clothing he kept in the bathroom closet. Against tonight’s eventuality he had stored fresh linen, black shoes and socks, a custom-tailored midnight blue suit and a solidly dark blue French silk tie. Knotting the tie before the mirror he asked himself, How do I stand? And how much longer can I keep up the front?

Not long, he knew. He was over his head in the two classic troubles: money trouble and woman trouble.

He had planned everything so conscientiously. The thirty thousand dollars had looked as impregnable a reserve as the gold in Fort Knox. He was interested in two fields, internal medicine and surgery; he had figured that two years of private practice would determine which way he would go. And choosing the “right” neighborhood for his office, the most modern equipment, the slick car, the posh clothes — these had seemed the logical means to his goal, and the devil take the cost.

The devil had taken the cost without providing the anticipated quid pro quo. After two years, nothing had come to a head. The surplus of patients implicit in a shortage of doctors had shunned Dr. Harrison Brown in droves. Patients had materialized, but in insufficient numbers. This week was not typical; he had had far better ones; but, on the average, income and outgo were ludicrously out of balance. He saw, too late, that establishing a lucrative practice was going to take far longer than he had calculated. Time meant money. And his money was running out.

And then, four months ago, a chance encounter in a bar with Anthony Mitchell had breathed life back into his hopes just as they were heaving their last gasp.

One stare, and Tony Mitchell was all over him like Old Grad at the class reunion. “Harry boy! My God, it’s Harry! How are you? Where’ve you been hiding out?”

They had double-dated for weeks, got high together, done the town — having more fun than Harry Brown could remember. Then one night, alone in Mitchell’s apartment, the lawyer had said suddenly, “All right, Harry, it’s time you took your hair down. What gives? Where’s it pressing? You put on a pretty good act, but seeing through acts is standard procedure in the courtroom, and I can spot one a mile away. You in trouble? Do something foolish? Let’s have it.”

So Harrison Brown, M.D., had told Anthony Mitchell, LL.B., all about it. From the beginning to date. His ambitions, his plans, his training, his decisions, his frustrations, his grim prospects. And he told of terror by night and by day; of the first doubts, then the growing fear, then the panic...

“Okay, enough,” Tony Mitchell said crisply. “I want to sleep on this, Harry.”

“You?” Harry had exclaimed. “What can you do?”

“Plenty. Just give me — oh, a couple of days. Can you be at my office Thursday, at noon?”

“Yes—”

“Here’s my card.”

“But, Tony—”

“Look, let me do the worrying. It’s my business to worry about peoples’ troubles. That’s what I get paid for. Only for you it’s on the house. See you Thursday.”

At noon on Thursday, Dr. Brown had presented himself at Attorney Mitchell’s surprisingly businesslike offices on Fifth Avenue. No playboy here. The office girls had clearly been picked for efficiency, not looks; the law clerks were intent on their work. “Sit down, Harry,” Tony Mitchell said in a tone Harry Brown had never heard from him before.

Harry sat down and fumbled for a cigarette, wondering what was coming.

“I’ve considered your problem,” the lawyer said, leaning back in his chair, “and I approve your plan. It’s perfectly sound for its long-range objective. It wouldn’t be for a cluck, but you’re no cluck.”

“How would you know that?” Dr. Harry Brown said. “For all you know, I might be a medical misfit.”

“I’ve looked you up,” said Mitchell quietly, “and you’re not. I’m satisfied that, professionally, you can make it big. The one weakness of your plan was insufficient capitalization. You didn’t realize how long a pull it was going to be.”

“I sure as hell didn’t.”

“The problem gets down to this: To get where you’re going, you need more fuel than you figured. Once you build up enough speed, the fuel question drops out as a factor. Harry, you’re going to have to go to the bank.”

“For what?”

“For a big fat loan.”

Harry Brown laughed. “And what’ll they give it to me on, Tony, my good looks?”

Tony Mitchell grinned back. “If that was your collateral, you couldn’t borrow the down payment on Jack Benny’s Maxwell.” But then he became all business again. “I think another thirty thousand would do it, Harry. If you were careful, it ought to get you over the hump.”

Dr. Harrison Brown suddenly realized that he was still trying to light the cigarette. He lit it, looking at his friend through the smoke. “You know a bank that will lend me thirty thousand dollars without collateral?”

“Sure. Mine.”

“Don’t tell me you own a bank!”

“Not quite,” said Tony, smiling. “What I have in mind is to sign as co-maker. You’ll get it.”

“Now wait a minute, Tony,” Harry protested. “I couldn’t let you do that.”

“Why not?”

“If I fell flat on my face—”

“You’re not going to fall flat on your face. I consider you a lead-pipe cinch, given enough time. Thirty G’s should do it. Also, I’m going to protect my investment by seeing what I can do to throw some well-heeled patients your way.”

“Let me think about it, Tony.” He tried to control his voice.

“There’s nothing to think about.” Tony Mitchell jumped out of his chair. “Let’s go, Harry.”

“Go? Where?”

“To my bank. They’re waiting for us.”

“Tony—”

“Oh, shut up. What are friends for? On your feet, kid.”

So he had let himself be rushed into it, confused with reborn hope and unutterable gratitude. There had been no trouble about the loan; four months had gone by and nothing had changed, really, except that the condemned man had been granted a reprieve. Oh, there had been some changes, but they had scarcely improved his position. In fact, Harry Brown mused, they had worsened it.

Tony Mitchell had been as good as his word about the “well-heeled” patients. Dr. Brown, on Mitchell’s generous recommendation, found himself the personal physician of the first rich patients of his career, Mr. and Mrs. Kurt Gresham.

Kurt Gresham was a multimillionaire. He owned an import-export company with world-wide outlets and a huge annual income. Gresham’s offices were in the Empire State Building.

The millionaire was a cardiac, chronically overweight from compulsive eating; his medical needs called for frequent examination and adjustment of medication. His doctor was an old man on the verge of retirement; he was transferring his patients gradually to other physicians, and Kurt Gresham’s time had come.

“Tony Mitchell’s told me a lot about you, Dr. Brown,” Gresham had said during their first interview. “And I’ve done some poking around of my own. After all, it’s my heart that’s involved; I don’t want to make a mistake.”

“Why don’t you transfer to a heart specialist?” Harry Brown had asked him abruptly.

The stout millionaire had smiled. “I like that, Doctor. But old Doc Welliver has always said it wasn’t necessary. Now maybe he told me that to hang on to a good thing, but I don’t think so. Anyway, what I’ve learned about you I’m satisfied with. Do you take me on?”

“I’ll answer that question, Mr. Gresham, after I’ve learned about your heart. I’ll want to see Dr. Welliver’s records on you, and I’ll want a day of your time.”

“You name it.” The millionaire had seemed pleased.

He had gone into Gresham’s case with great care. In the end he had decided that there was nothing involved which he could not handle. And, again, the millionaire had seemed pleased.

So their professional relationship had begun well. If only, Harry Brown thought glumly, it had stayed that way!

For there was Mrs. Gresham — the fourth Mrs. Gresham, according to Tony Mitchell. Karen of Gresh, as Tony called her. Delicious Karen...

Delicious Karen was the woman trouble.

Dr. Harrison Brown got to the Big Dipper at ten minutes past eight. Tony and Karen were already there, lapping up martinis, at a table against the banquette. Karen was seated on the banquette, with Tony opposite her.

“Notice that I’ve reserved the place of honor for you,” Tony said, his beautiful teeth laughing-white against his sunlamp-burned skin. “With Cupid sitting across the table beaming.” To the waiter who had moved the table aside to allow Harry to slip in beside Karen, Tony said, “Two vodka martinis for the doctor here, and another round for Mrs. Gresham and me.”

“Where’s Kurt?” Harry said. On the banquette seat, protected by the cloth, Karen’s hand was searching for his.

“Oh, these beetle-brows,” Tony said softly. “You always make the lovelies. Why wasn’t I born with the gene of beetle-brows?”

“Oh, shut up, Tony,” Karen Gresham said. “Kurt’s not coming, Harry. He just called. Tied up at home working on whatever he works on. Disappointed?” She turned her enormous green eyes his way. Below the cloth her hand was brushing his lightly, hungrily.

“Not disappointed, and not not,” Harry said. There it was again, the havoc to his nervous system. On the excuse of reaching for his cigarettes, he withdrew his hand.

“Forgive him the syntax, honey,” Tony Mitchell said. “Doctors get that way from writing prescriptions.”

“I think Harry’s disappointed,” said Karen, smiling. There was the slightest pucker between her brows. “Kurt fascinates him. Doesn’t he, Harry?”

Harry said nothing except, “Your health.” He picked up one of the two cocktail glasses the waiter was setting before him and gulped down half of it.

“That’s a hell of a toast for a would-be successful doctor,” Tony said. “And say what you want about that husband of yours, Karen, he’s a fascinating monster. The most fascinating in my experience, which has dealt with monsters almost exclusively.”

“To Kurt Gresham, Monster De Luxe,” murmured Karen, and she sipped her fresh martini.

“Might’s well order,” said the lawyer; the waiter had his pencil patiently poised. “Duck, that’s it. Duck Aldebaranis — truly out of this world. How about you two?”

“I don’t care,” Karen said.

Harry shrugged.

“Shrimp first? With that crazy sauce? Lovers? I’m speaking!”

“Oh, you order, Tony,” Karen said.

“Yes.” Harry observed her over the rim of his glass. That fascinating old monster certainly had an eye for women. She was exquisite, and when she sat beside her husband he became grotesque; Karen was almost half Kurt Gresham’s age. What hath God bought, he thought bitterly.

Yes, exquisite. The facial bones so delicate, with the fragility of fine china, and something of its translucence. The thoroughbred way in which she held her head, with its swirl of incredible copper hair. The great green wide-apart, innocent, worldly, inscrutable, enchanting eyes. The flesh under that tight green gown with its daring décolleté cut... The gown must have cost his income for months. The emerald necklace making love to her throat was probably worth more than his father’s insurance policy had brought. Yes, old Gresham knew how to pick his women — and how to keep them... For one lightning moment Dr. Harrison Brown thought: Was she what had got into his blood? Or was it what she represented — the symbol of everything he had fiercely yearned for all his life?

They were well served and they ate while Tony Mitchell joked and ragged them. Through it all Harry was conscious only of the heat of her pressing thigh, the caresses of her secretive fingers. They lingered over dessert and coffee and Drambuie, and then, after the table was cleared, they drank more coffee and more Drambuie; and he got a little drunk, and his tongue loosened, and he even laughed several times. And then, at about eleven o’clock, Tony said, “Did you come in your car, Harry?”

“Yes.”

“Then suppose you take the lady home. I’ve got to get a good night’s sleep tonight — I’m due in court in the morning on a tricky case. You don’t mind, do you, Karen? And don’t bother to lie. Waiter?”

They left Tony Mitchell paying the check.

He drove her home and double-parked in the gloom of Park Avenue near the Greshams’ duplex. She threw herself into his arms, kissing, straining, clinging. “I love you, I love you, I love you...”

Harry Brown said nothing. He clutched her and said nothing. What was there to say?

“What are we going to do, darling? What are we going to do?”

He made no answer. He had no answer.

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.