This, then, was the first problem.
The weapon called for was clearly a gun. But he had no gun. To procure one legally was to invite investigation. The question was therefore how to procure one illegally, without a license. It should be an untraceable gun, if possible, its serial number destroyed beyond resurrection — a professional killer’s weapon. Because, clearly, it had to be found near the body to establish the professional nature of the killer.
Where did a physician practicing medicine out of a Central Park West office get hold of such a gun?
Thirteen
On a sticky Friday evening, Tony Mitchell phoned. “How about the weekend, Harry, just you and me? I’ll take the boat and we’ll sail up to Montauk. The Greshams are away for the weekend.”
“I know,” said Harry Brown. “They flew up to some hundred-dollar-a-day joint in Maine.”
“You know everything, don’t you, Doctor?”
“You bet,” said Dr. Brown.
“Pick you up early tomorrow?”
“How early?”
“Six o’clock.”
“Brother, that’s early. Okay, Tony, I’ll be ready.”
Tony Mitchell’s boat was a cabin cruiser, deep-sea, roomy, racy. They fished and swam off Montauk and ate and drank on board, and then in the evening they moored at the hotel pier and checked in to a two-room suite. They showered and napped and changed into dinner clothes and had dinner in the outdoor restaurant and flirted with two tanned girls in billowing dresses. In a night club afterward, they danced and tippled and Tony told jokes and the tanned girls laughed, and they danced and tippled some more, and then Tony and his girl disappeared, and Harry went back to the hotel with his girl, kissed her good night and went up to the suite and undressed and showered again and went to sleep. In the morning he awoke once and peered in to Tony’s room. When he saw that Tony’s bed was undisturbed, Harry went to the bathroom and rinsed his mouth and then got back into bed.
In the afternoon Tony said, “The hell with the boat. Let’s live it up here at the hotel. Swim in the pool, leer at the girls in the bikinis. In July it’s just too damned hot for fishing. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“You know, I miss the Greshams. That old bastard fascinates me. And Karen is lovely.”
“Yes.”
“Oh, we’re back on the one-syllable kick. Hangover?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s eat by the pool.”
By the pool Tony said, “How come you get nut-brown right away? Me, first I get red.”
“I’m swarthy. Say, Tony, how do people kill people?”
“What?”
“How do people kill people?”
“You’re not hung over, Harry, you’re still drunk. Whittle those vittles. You’ll feel better.”
Tony took inventory while they ate at the umbrella table. “Now that’s more like it! Look at that over there — the tall one in the white bathing suit, near the diving board. I think I’ll make it.”
“How do people kill people?” Harry said.
Tony stared at him. “Say, what’s with you today?”
“I was thinking about it last night,” Harry said, smiting. “In the restaurant, in the night club. Looking around at all those people. Wondering how many of them wanted to kill somebody — a wife, a husband, anybody. Did you ever feel like killing somebody, Tony?”
“Sure. You. Right now!”
“No, I mean suppose you did.”
“Did what?”
“Want to kill me. How would you go about it?”
“These are the thoughts you were thinking last night, Dr. Brown?”
“Well, I was a little loaded by the time I got back to the room,” Harry laughed.
“Brother, you must have been! What time did you get back?”
“Early.”
“Aha,” said Tony Mitchell. “Whose room, ours or the little blonde’s?”
“Ours.”
“How was she?”
“I don’t know. I dumped her and hit the hay. Now, come on, Tony, satisfy my curiosity. How would you do it?”
“How would I do what?”
“Kill me. Would you use a gun?”
“Oh, cut it out,” the lawyer groaned. “You’re still carrying a load — up to the gunwales. Better take something for it. My God, that little blonde chick was yours for the asking. Are you sick or something, Harry?”
“Now you sit here like a nice little doctor and wait for your medicine, while I ankle on over to the diving board.” Tony rose and winked. “I shall return with the girl in white. Watch how it’s done, old boy.”
“Where would you get the gun?”
“What gun?”
“The gun to shoot me. I suppose you’d want one that couldn’t be traced. Where would a respectable lawyer get hold of an untraceable gun?”
“Why would I want to shoot you?”
“Any reason. You hate me.”
“Not me, baby. I wouldn’t kill you.”
“Under any circumstances?”
Tony’s dark eyes turned cold. “Under any circumstances, baby. Nothing is worth the risk. Not if you’re sane. Look, Harry, take your alcoholic speculations somewhere else. Maybe this amuses you. It doesn’t me.”
Harry laughed. “The great criminal lawyer refuses to give away a trade secret.”
“What trade secret?”
“Where you’d get a gun.”
“I wouldn’t,” Tony said shortly. Then he laughed, too. “Son, I’m getting you back in shape right now. Waiter?”
A waiter came up. “Yes, sir?”
“Bring my friend here a Bloody Mary. A double. He’s in a bad way.”
“Yes, sir,” said the waiter, and he went away grinning.
Fourteen
He missed Karen. When he phoned on Monday he was told the Greshams were not due back in the city until Wednesday. When he phoned on Wednesday she talked to him almost curtly: she would not be able to see him until Saturday.
On Saturday she called him; and in the hot and dripping evening she came to him at his apartment. She was pale in spite of her long weekend; she was dressed in unrelieved black. She did not kiss him when he opened the door for her.
“Have fun in Maine?” Harry asked.
“We just lounged around and rested. How are you?”
“All right.”
Her great green eyes were in shadow, puckered with tension. “I want a drink, darling.”
“Vodka?”
“Gin and tonic. Lots of gin.”
He went to the kitchen and came back with the drinks in two tall glasses. She was smoking. She rose instantly and came over and took one glass from him. She turned as though to go back to her chair. Then she turned back and said, very quietly, “I’m glad you made up your mind.”
“About what?”
“I saw Tony. He told me about your weekend at Montauk.”
“What about it?”
She licked at the glass, set it down, squeezed her cigarette out in an ash tray.
“You know how Tony runs on. He was telling me about the crazy things people say when they’re drunk. Harry Brown gets stoned and right away starts trying to pump his pal the criminal lawyer about how people kill people — where somebody who wanted to commit a murder would get hold of a gun that couldn’t be traced. Tony said he was glad he was the one you asked — anybody else, he said, might have taken you seriously. Wasn’t that sort of a stupid thing to do, darling — asking so transparently?”