Kill as Directed

Three

Dr. Harry Brown looked him over. Really for the first time.

He was a big man, globular. He had a round ruddy face, soft, white, womanish hair and eyes clear and colorless as sun on ice. The tip of his big nose was round and the little red-lipped mouth was round. He looked guileless, good-natured, almost cherubic. He was about as harmless as a big fat round H-bomb, Dr. Harry Brown thought.

“Harry,” Kurt Gresham began, “I’m going to make a confession to you. Try to win you over. If I fail, no hard feelings. But I warn you now. If you breach my confidence by so much as a word...” The millionaire shook his head; everything shook with it. “I wouldn’t like that at all. Harry. I’m not a man of violence. Quite the contrary. I consider violence the first resort of the stupid. The only times I have indulged in violence were those times when nothing less would serve — the last resort. Do I make myself clear, Harry?”

“Perfectly. You’re threatening to have me murdered if I don’t keep my mouth shut.”

The girlish lips opened out into a little round smile. “Crude, Harry. But I see we understand each other.”

“The hell we do, Gresham. I don’t give a damn about your ‘confession,’ as you put it. I want to know just one thing: why did you have the dead body of that Maxwell girl planted in my apartment?”

Gresham blinked. “You’re really a very clever young man, Harry. However, I’d like, if I may, to develop this in my own time and way—”

“The hell with your time and way! Answer my question!”

The silky white brows drew together sulkily, the colorless round eyes flattened and slitted. For an absurd moment Harry Brown thought of pediatrics and the baskets of fat little baby-faces just before feedings, preparing to cry. But there was nothing infantile in Gresham’s tone; it was hard, greedy, paranoiac. “You have the gall to talk to me that way? Nobody talks to me that way, Doctor. Nobody. Nobody!” The last word was almost a shout. And then the brows drew apart and the eyes and face became round again. “I’m sorry, Harry. You mustn’t make me angry. A bad heart and a bad temper don’t mix, do they?”

“I’m not here as your doctor. What about Lynne Maxwell?”

“Harry, I admire you. You’re rough and tough. I want you on my side.”

“What about Lynne Maxwell?”

“I’ll come to that, Harry. But first I want to talk to you about myself. About you. About our future together.”

“We have no future together, Gresham.”

“How do you know, my boy?”

“What about Lynne Maxwell?”

“Please, Harry. I beg your attention.”

Dr. Harrison Brown sat back in the enveloping armchair and looked past Gresham’s globular head and out through the wide windows at the blank blue sky. They were high up, on the fifty-fifth floor. He wondered dully what was coming.

“Do you know what business I’m in, Harry?”

“Import-export.” He shook a cigarette from a package, dug in a pocket for matches.

“Do you know the chief product I import?”

“Now how would I know that?” He found the matches, tore one from the packet and struck it.

“Heroin.”

Harry’s hand remained in air, the match flickering.

“Light your cigarette, Harry,” said Kurt Gresham, smiling. “You’ll burn your fingers.”

He lit the cigarette, carefully deposited the charred match in a shiny jade ash tray. “Heroin?” he said. My God, he thought, my God.

“You sound shocked,” said the fat man, still smiling.

“How should I sound, Gresham? Amused?” He jumped up.

The millionaire folded his hands comfortably. “You’re so young, Harry. You have so much to learn. No, sit down, please. I want you to hear me out.”

“I’ve heard all I want to hear!”

“Will it hurt you to listen for a few minutes? Please. Sit down.”

“All right.” Harry flung himself down. “But if you think I’m going to tie myself up to a dope racketeer—! I know what narcotics addiction does to the human body. And I have some idea of how you slugs work. Giving out free samples to high school kids through your pushers, getting them hooked, then pushing them into a life of crime to get the money for their daily fixes—”

“Oh, my, Dr. Brown, you do know a lot, don’t you?” said Kurt Gresham, the whole globe shaking silently. “You know it all. Shall I tell you something, Dr. Brown? You don’t know anything. Not about me, anyway. Not about my kind of narcotics operation.”

“And what kind would that be?” Harry sneered. “Philanthropic?”

“No,” said the millionaire, “but I perform a social service just the same.”

“Social service!” Harry choked.

“Social service,” said Gresham, nodding. “Have you any idea how many hundreds of thousands of habitual users of narcotics in this country are not high school children who were hooked by unscrupulous pushers and dealers? are not degenerates? are not beatniks out for kicks? are not the dirt of society? My clients are all upright, respectable, useful and, in many cases, distinguished people who, in one way or another — a lot of them through illness — became addicted to drugs, just as you’re addicted to that nicotine you’re inhaling right now. I don’t sell to criminals, Harry. I have no connection with the dope rackets or racketeers. I’m a maverick operation. A specialist, you might say, with a specialized trade.”

“Of all the rationalizations—!”

“Realism, Harry. I’m preventing the proliferation of criminals.”

“By engaging in the criminal dope traffic!”

“No; by providing narcotics rations to those respectable people who need them in order to continue to lead useful, respectable lives. If not for me, they’d have to traffic with the criminal element — buy inferior drugs, drastically cut to produce a bigger volume and profit — become prey to underworld blackmail. If not for me, Harry.”

“Oh, so now the supplying of junk is to be considered an act of benevolence? Is that how you’d like me to think of you? As a humanitarian?”

“In a way. Basically, I am a businessman in a large and profitable business. But I’m no less a humanitarian than the successful publisher who makes a profit selling Bibles.”

“That’s one hell of a comparison!”

“As good as any. Psychiatrists think so, the higher echelon of welfare workers think so, the government of England thinks so.”

“Nothing you can say—”

“In Britain an addict is treated not as a criminal, but as a sick man, which is what he is. He needn’t deal with criminals there, or become a criminal himself in order to satisfy the craving induced by the habit. In Britain the addict may go to a doctor and receive his ration of the drug by prescription, all quite legally. Once our federal authorities and Congress realize that that’s the only way to cope with the problem, my services won’t be needed and the underworld will lose a major source of its income.”

“There are moral kudos even in the peddling of junk. That’s what you’d like me to believe?”

“I insist you believe it, my boy. You’re intelligent enough to understand, if you’ll open your mind.”

“I’m listening, Gresham, but I’m afraid my mind is closed. Junk peddling is junk peddling.”

“Of course your mind is closed. You’ve been raised in an atmosphere of legalistic bias. During Prohibition, for example, you were told that the manufacture, transportation and sale of liquor was a horrid crime. Then the Eighteenth Amendment was repealed, and suddenly liquor became respectable again. I’ll bet you still can’t take a drink without having guilt feelings about it.”

“Liquor and narcotics are hardly the same thing,” Harry snorted. “There’s no danger of alcoholism unless there are underlying psychological causes. But anyone can become a narcotics addict simply through excessive dosage.”

“All the more reason for recognizing that it’s a medical, not a criminal, problem. And it’s bound to be recognized, Harry. Sooner or later we’ll have the British system here and I’ll be out of business. Meanwhile I’m serving a socially desirable purpose that ought to be served by the government.”

“Man, if ever I heard sophistry...!”

“Not true. There is nothing unsound in my argument; it’s not a rationalization. Admittedly, I’ve made a great deal of money in the commission of acts now considered unlawful, but they’re not unethical acts. It’s our antiquated laws that are wrong, not I.”

Harry Brown looked at his watch. “Would you kindly come to the point, Gresham? I have to get back to my office.”

Kurt Gresham pinched at the pink jowls beneath his small round chin. “Harry, I want you to stop thinking of me in terms of gangsters, pushers, despoilers of teenagers and all that. I’m not a conscienceless corrupter of human beings, believe me. For thirty-five years I’ve been serving the needs of statesmen, writers, artists, actors, architects, judges, businessmen, financiers, society people—”

“God Almighty.”

“I supply only the best, the worthiest; my potential clients are screened by experts; I accept only people of means and discretion; and there are so many, so many...”

Dr. Harrison Brown sat silent.

In the silence, Kurt Gresham selected a long thin cigar from a humidor, lit it carefully, blew aromatic smoke.

In spite of himself, Harry said curiously, “You say you’ve been in this racket — pardon me, humanitarian service — for thirty-five years. How did you get started? What gave you the idea? Mind telling me?”

“Not at all. My father was in the import-export business in a modest way — getting along, not rich, not poor. He died at the age of seventy-nine, and all his adult life he was a heroin addict. Through his international contacts he was able to buy supplies of the drug for his private use: they were brought in for him by a trusted European representative during legitimate business trips. It was because of my father that the idea struck me — what an ideal solution this method would be to the problem of supplying respectable addicts with their necessary drugs — and, of course, how profitable. When my father died and I took over the business, I began to work on my idea — very slowly and carefully. Today I have a small but airtight organization of hand-picked people.”

“Hand-picked, am I?”

“Over a period of thirty-five years I have had to make replacements, of course: employees had died, grown old, retired. You’re old Dr. Welliver’s replacement, I hope — I sincerely hope, Harry. For both our sakes.”

Something in the fat man’s tone made Harry’s scalp prickle. “Does Mrs. Gresham know about all of this?”

“Of course not. Karen is my wife, not a business associate. But to get back to you, Harry. I’ve studied you; I’ve had you most carefully investigated. I know all about you: about your father’s struggle to make you what he couldn’t be; about your compulsive drive for success and wealth — all about you, Harry.”

“My God, how...?”

“My staff is made up of experts — each of whom knows only an essential few of his colleagues, by the way, as you will be my expert in your field, knowing virtually none of the others. I even know of your recent loan...” The fat man opened a drawer of his desk, extracted a rectangle of blue paper and tossed it across to Harry. “Your loan has been paid. That’s the cancelled note. I cannot afford to have any member of my little official family in debt. You see, Harry, just by agreeing to this little conference, you’re ahead thirty thousand dollars.”

Harry stared at the blue rectangle.

“Put it away, Harry,” Gresham said. “Or tear it up.”

Dr. Harrison Brown looked up from the blue paper so tightly held in his hand. “What do you want of me?” he croaked.

“Don’t look at me that way, Harry. I’m not the Devil, and I’m not asking you to sell your soul.”

“What do you want of me?”

“Put that note away, will you?”

Harry stuffed it into a pocket. “What do you want of me, Gresham?”

“Absurdly little, in fact. You’ll continue to build up your practice independently, but to give you freedom from financial worries I’m going to put you on an annual retainer — ostensibly for being my family physician. You’ll be called on no more than five or six times a year for the confidential jobs — they don’t happen often; sometimes a full year’s gone by without the need for a job like the one you did on that woman.”

“So much for so little? That can’t be the whole thing, Gresham—”

“But it is. I’m willing to pay handsomely just to know that I have a doctor I can depend on in an emergency.”

“I’ve got to get to my office,” Harry said, rising. “I have office hours—”

“I’ve already had your office girl called, Harry. You’re delayed. Important case. And it is, isn’t it?”

Harry sank back, staring at him. Gresham puffed on his cigar.

“Now, Harry,” he said briskly, “I want you to understand how this thing works because, even though you’re a minor cog in the machine, even the minor cogs are important to keep the machine running smoothly.

“Gresham and Company, Import and Export, has been in business for seventy years. We’re a firm of excellent reputation, doing a good business in a lawful manner. However, certain key people secretly pick up the narcotics I need in Europe and the Orient; and the other key people deliver it to me together with the legitimate goods we import. We never take chances. We never smuggle in big shipments, for instance, because we don’t have to. We’re in business day in and day out, and so small quantities can be brought in day in and day out; no splurges, no large purchases, nothing that attracts attention; never any trouble in thirty-five years. Is that much clear?”

“Yes.”

Gresham deposited a long ash delicately in a tray. “Distribution and sales naturally pose more dangerous problems. I’ve already indicated that the selection of the client is done by experts. The client must be of the highest moral character and of sound financial background — people who are willing to pay as much for our discretion as for the drugs. As for the actual transactions—”

“Your night-club chain,” Harry exclaimed.

“Exactly.” The millionaire crushed out his cigar and leaned back in his huge baronial chair. “I don’t go west of the Mississippi. My distribution points — drops, if you will — are here in New York, in Philadelphia, in Washington, Miami and in Chicago. In each of these cities, under dummy ownership, I own several small, exclusive clubs. In each club the manager is one of my key people, and it’s the manager who makes the delivery and accepts payment — in cash, naturally. And there you have it, my boy. Oh, I should add what must be obvious — I have a doctor on my payroll in each of the five cities. Is there anything else you would like to know, Harry?”

Harry Brown was silent again. Then he mumbled, “That woman with the bullet wound I treated. Who was she, a client?”

“Good heavens, no!” Gresham said; he actually sounded shocked. “We don’t have that kind of client, Harry. She’s an employee. Sometimes there’s violence in our ranks, no matter how careful we are. As I said, it doesn’t happen often. When it does, we take extraordinary measures to keep it within the family, so to speak.”

“And,” asked Harry dryly, “if the little family misunderstanding happens to wind up in a murder, Gresham? What’s your family doctor expected to do with the corpse — grind it up for hamburger?”

“Harry,” said the millionaire in a pained voice. “In the unfortunate event that an individual dies in one of these episodes, we take him off your hands. You have nothing to do with — ah — disposal. Actually, it’s happened only half a dozen times in the last twenty, twenty-five years — and in three different cities, at that. Don’t worry about things of that sort. We have resources and connections that would astonish you. Anything else?”

“Yes,” Harry Brown said grimly. “The matter of—”

“Oh, excuse me,” Gresham said. “I almost forgot your retainer.” He took a check from his desk drawer and reached over to lay it softly before Harry. “For a year in advance, Harry. Twenty-five thousand dollars.”

Dr. Harrison Brown stared down at it. He grew very pale. He did not touch the check.

“And you’ll earn more, Doctor. I paid you five hundred dollars when you treated the lady with the bullet nick. That was chicken feed — I didn’t want to startle you. Hereafter, on the rare occasion when you’ll have to treat one of our special patients, you’ll receive a fee of five thousand dollars per patient. Such fees will be in addition to your yearly retainer. And now, what were you going to ask me?”

Harry thought bitterly, You clever bastard. He looked up from the check and said, “Lynne Maxwell. I want an explanation.”

“Oh! Yes, of course, Harry,” said Kurt Gresham, and his round mouth flattened sadly. “Most, most unfortunate thing. I won’t conceal it from you. She was a client. The first case of its kind we’ve ever had. She tried to commit suicide by taking a deliberate overdose. And then, as often happens, regretted it. She phoned the manager of the club where she always made the pickup — and, of course, under the unusual circumstances, he quickly got word to me. I got a couple of my security people to drive over to her apartment. They found her-dead.”

“So you had them plant her body in my place, Gresham,” Harry said wearily.

“I’m so sorry, Harry.” The colorless eyes remained round and without guile. “But I did feel I had to impress you with our — ah — resources. I wanted you to realize that we can go through locked doors and perform miracles with dead bodies — depositing them, for example, where they don’t belong.”

“In other words, I’d better accept your proposal, or you’ll frame me for something nice and ripe.”

“Harry, did I say anything like that? Or imply it? It was simply a demonstration, preliminary to this talk.”

Dr. Harrison Brown rose, picked up the check for twenty-five thousand dollars, stored it in his wallet and put his wallet away. He left Gresham smiling.

Outside, in the warm Fifth Avenue sunshine, Dr. Brown shivered. It was not from fear. It was from self-disgust. He had simply been unable to resist the money.