Harold Robbins Thriller Collection

by Harold Robbins

  “It’s not law that I’m interested in,” I said. “It’s history.”

  He looked puzzled.

  “About a case you worked on for the government,” I explained. “Con Steel. It was an anti-trust matter.” I lit a cigarette, watching him carefully. “I understand you investigated and prepared it.”

  The suspicious look came back into his eyes. “What have you got to do with it?” he asked.

  “Nothing, really,” I said. “It just may be pertinent to a matter I’m working on, so I thought I’d come and see you.”

  “Are you a lawyer?” he asked.

  I shook my head. A hunch told me I’d better go careful with this guy or he’d clam up altogether. “I’m a public relations counselor,” I said, taking out a card and handing it to him.

  He looked at it carefully, then gave it back to me. “Why are you interested in that case, Mr. Rowan?” he asked.

  I played a long shot. “I spent eight years building up the business you see on that card. Eight years of work and all my life before getting ready for it.”

  I dragged on the butt, watching his face. A look of interest began to show there. I kept on going. “One day I’m tipped off to the big deal, representing the whole industry. I made my pitch and I sell. I know I got it in my pocket. Then a guy calls me down to his office and offers me a job. Sixty grand a year. Big money. I can buy everything I want in this world. There’s only one hitch.”

  I stopped again to see if I had him with me. He was with me, all right. “What’s that?” he asked.

  I dragged on the butt and spoke slowly. “All I gotta do is double-cross everybody else in the deal. Dump all the people who work for me and helped make a shot like this possible, and screw my friends.”

  I ground the cigarette under my foot. “I told this guy the only thing I could. To take his job and shove it. That was just a few days ago.

  “Today I’m busted and almost beat. I dropped eighty percent of my business all because he put me on his D.D. list. I came up here on a hunch, grabbing at a straw. While I stood here talking to you, I got a feeling that something like what’s happening to me, once happened to you. The same guy did it. Want to know his name?”

  There was a far-away look in his eyes as he answered. “You don’t have to tell me. I already know his name.” I could see him take a deep breath. His voice was as filled with hatred as any human sound could be. “Matt Brady.”

  “Give the man sixty-four silver dollars,” I said softly. “Now where are you going to spend it?”

  His eyes came back from space and fixed on mine. “It’s hot out here in the sun, Mr. Rowan,” he said. “Why don’t you come on up to the house and we can talk. My wife makes a mean cup of coffee.”

  25

  His wife’s coffee was all that he touted it to be. It was hot and black and heavy, but clear, not muddy like many strong coffees. We sat in the kitchen, with a cool breeze coming from the open windows, and talked.

  His wife was Eurasian. Half German, half Japanese. He had met her in Tokyo while with the occupation forces, and she had a strange combination of beauty. Almond eyes, but blue; golden skin, but with a pale pink Nordic flush in her cheeks; thick black hair that fell in soft waves down past her high cheekbones to her delicate throat.

  They listened attentively while I told them the story of my relationship with Matt Brady. When I had finished they exchanged a curious glance.

  Levi’s face was impassive when he spoke. “Just how do you think we might be able to help you, Mr. Rowan?”

  I held my hands open in front of me in a gesture of helplessness. “I don’t know,” I confessed. “I’m stabbing in hopes that I’ll find something.”

  He stared at me silently for a moment, then his glance lowered to the coffee in front of him. “I hate to disappoint you, Mr. Rowan,” he said softly. “But I can’t think of a thing.”

  I had the feeling he wasn’t telling all the truth. He had been too interested when I mentioned Brady. There had been too much hatred in his voice. He was afraid of something. I didn’t know what it was, but I was sure of it. Then it clicked. Everything began to fall in place. Brady had something on him.

  Somewhere in the course of his investigation into Con Steel he must have come too close for Brady’s comfort. An idea of what Brady might do in a case like that came over me. He would find the man’s weak point, then hammer at it until the guy folded. He was doing it to me; he could have done it to Levi. What other reason would a man like him have to suddenly abandon a promising career and settle down to something as alien to his ability and training as this?

  “There must be something,” I insisted. “You worked on the Con Steel case. I was told you know more about that outfit than any man alive, except Matt Brady.”

  Again that curious glance between his wife and himself. “I’m afraid there’s nothing I know that would be of help to you,” he said, equally stubborn.

  I could feel a weary hopelessness as I got to my feet. Nothing but blanks everywhere. Apparently I was dead and refused to admit it. My mouth twisted in a bitter smile. “He’s got you too,” I said.

  Levi didn’t answer, just looked up at me through inscrutable eyes.

  I stopped in the doorway and looked back. “Need a partner here?” I asked sarcastically. “Or does Matt Brady supply the dogs when he throws you to them?”

  A flash of fire showed in his eyes. “The dogs are my idea,” he flared. “They’re better than people. They don’t know the meaning of betrayal.”

  I went out the door and down the long neat walk to my car and headed back to town. I was about halfway back to the main road when I heard a horn honk at me. I looked up in the mirror. Levi’s wife was driving the station wagon I had seen in the driveway. I pulled in to the right to let her pass.

  She shot past me in a cloud of dust and around a curve in front of me. Slowly I followed around the curve. I jammed on my brakes. The station wagon was parked on the side of the road and she was standing beside it, waving at me. I pulled to a stop beside her.

  “Mr. Rowan,” she said in that curious accent. “I must to talk with you.”

  I pushed open the door on her side. “Yes, Mrs. Levi?”

  She climbed into the car and nervously lighted a cigarette. “My husband wants to help you, but he’s afraid,” she said quickly. “He’s afraid you are another Brady man.”

  I laughed shortly.

  “Do not laugh, Mr. Rowan,” she said. “It’s not fawny.”

  The laughter died in my throat. It certainly wasn’t funny. Only a fool laughed at a funeral. And it was even worse when the funeral was your own. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Levi,” I apologized. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  She glanced at me out of the corners of her eyes. “There are many things my husband would tell you but he dare not.”

  “Why?” I asked. “What could Matt Brady do to him now?”

  “It’s not for himself Bob is concairn,” she answered. “It is for me that he is afraid.”

  I didn’t get it. What could Matt Brady have to do with her? It must have shown in my eyes.

  “Can I talk to you?” she asked, a certain pleading in her voice.

  It was more than just her words I heard. It was many things she said all at once. Are you my friend? Can I trust you? Will you harm us? I thought of all these things before I answered. “You may know a person all your life and never really know what he is like,” I said carefully. “Then something happens and you find that all the people you knew are like nothing and someone you never saw before will reach out a hand to help. That’s the way it is for me right now. No one I know can help me.”

  She dragged on the cigarette, her strange blue eyes looking far down the road through the windshield. After a while she began to speak softly. “When I first met Bob Levi, he was a bright, laughing young man, always with a smile and eye for the future. He had high hopes and ambitions.”

  The cigarette was short in her fingers and she tapped it out in the
ashtray on the dash. There was a note of sorrow in the sound of her voice now. “It has been many seasons since I saw him smile. His ambitions are no more, and it has been as long and troubled for me as it has for him.”

  Her strange eyes looked up at mine. “We have a saying in my country—there is no sorrow that love does not precede. It is so. For our love, because of me, my husband must spend his days in exile.”

  She reached for another cigarette. I took one and held a match for her. I didn’t speak.

  She kept watching me until my cigarette was glowing. “So you see why he dare not speak,” she said. “I would not care for you to think he was a coward.”

  “I didn’t think that,” I said. “But why couldn’t he say something?”

  “Matt Brady is a terrible man,” she said slowly. “He found out that Bob brought me to this country illegally. His detectives could not find anything about Bob so they found out about me. All Bob wanted was for us to be together after he returned, so he bought a Shanghai visa and false papers and I came in that way.

  “We were happy together until Mr. Brady’s detective told Bob that he knew what had happened and that if Bob did not lay off he would inform the authorities. Bob did the only thing he could. He quit. It was better to him that way than for me to go back to Japan.”

  I remembered what Paul had told me about the Con Steel case. It had been settled by a consent decree after Levi had quit the department. Without him the case had fallen apart at the seams. Matt Brady must have been real proud of himself.

  I didn’t know what to say. These poor people had gone through enough. There was no point in my adding to their troubles. I kept quiet, letting the smoke drift idly out of my nostrils.

  Her voice caught at my ear. “My husband is not happy, Mr. Rowan.”

  I looked at her, startled.

  “Every day I watch him die in little pieces,” she said. “He is a man working like a boy.”

  I knew what she meant but didn’t know what she was getting at. “What can I do to help, Mrs. Levi?” I asked helplessly. “I’m practically at the end of my own rope.”

  “Bob knows more about Matt Brady, business and personal, than anybody else in the world,” she said, watching my face. “If you would give him a job, he would be of real help to you.”

  “He could have a job in a minute,” I protested. “But I can’t shove it down his throat. You just told me why.”

  She looked down at her cigarette. “He does not know that I came after you. I told him I was going to town to market. I will return and tell him that I spoke with you and told you the truth. Then he will go to you.”

  “Do you think he will?” I asked, a faint hope stirring inside me once more.

  She got out of the car and stood there in the country road, the wind blowing her hair about her face. “I will make him go, Mr. Rowan,” she said softly. “No matter what it costs. It is not pleasant to be the instrument of your husband’s death.”

  I watched her get into the station wagon and make a U-turn in front of me. I could see the painted letters, Krystal Kennels, as she passed me, going back. She waved her hand but there was no smile on her face. Only a look of tense concentration.

  I looked up in the rearview mirror. The station wagon was almost hidden in the cloud of dust behind it, then it disappeared around the curve and was gone.

  I looked at the clock on the dash. It was almost four. I turned the key and pushed in the starter. With an almost silent hum, the big motor started. I put the car in gear and began to roll. I would have to make time if I were to be at Elaine’s cocktail party at five o’clock.

  26

  Say something nice about somebody and nobody will listen. Make it mean, malicious, scandalous and everybody in town will help you spread the word. Within three days we were an item in every major column in the papers from coast to coast. Our pictures were in every yellow rag that had the space to print them.

  In four days we were the town’s biggest romance, the hottest affair. For all I knew we might even have made the Sightseer’s guide. We were seen at the latest shows, the most fashionable restaurants. Heads would turn to watch us as we walked by, mouths would gape, people would whisper, their knowing chuckles following us.

  But the kid was great. She kept her eyes front and her head up. If she heard the talk, she didn’t show it. If it hurt her, she never let me see it. The more I saw of her, the better I liked her.

  I tried to explain to Marge what I was doing, but after that fight she wouldn’t listen. Even Jeanie looked at me cross-eyed. They both made like they didn’t know I was alive. Even my father didn’t buy my story.

  The papers had done too good a job. They got to everybody except the man they were supposed to reach. Each morning we asked each other the same question. “Did you hear from Matt Brady?” And each morning the answer was the same. “No.”

  But on Wednesday morning when I got her on the phone, I got my first break.

  “Aunt Nora called me,” she said.

  “Who’s she?” I asked.

  Her voice was surprised. “Uncle Matthew’s wife.”

  “I didn’t even know he was married,” I said. “I never hear a word about her.”

  “You wouldn’t,” she explained. “Aunt Nora’s an invalid. She’s been in a wheelchair for almost forty years now. She almost never leaves the house.”

  “How come?” I asked. “What happened to her?”

  “Her legs and hips were smashed in an automobile accident a year after they were married,” she answered. “Uncle Matt was driving a new Stutz and it turned over. He was thrown clear but she was pinned beneath it. He’s never forgiven himself for that.”

  “It’s good to know he has some human feelings,” I said callously. “I was beginning to give up hope that I would ever find any.”

  “Brad, don’t be vicious,” she said reproachfully. “It’s a terrible thing. Aunt Nora was only a young girl then. Nineteen, I think.”

  I passed. “What did she want?” I asked.

  “She thought it might be a good idea for me to come down and visit,” Elaine answered. “She was disturbed by everything she read in the papers.”

  “Did Uncle Matt have anything to say?” I asked.

  “She said he had been very angry about it at breakfast but said that he had warned me once and that was all. That’s why she decided to call me.”

  “Good,” I said. “Don’t go. Let him boil.”

  She hesitated. “Brad, are you sure we’re doing right? I don’t see where it’s helping.”

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “I told you it was only a long shot anyway. All I’m trying to do is loosen him up a little and hope that he’ll slip somewhere.”

  “Okay, Brad,” she answered. “I’ll call Aunt Nora and tell her.”

  “We have a lunch date,” I reminded her.

  “I know,” she said. “Aren’t you getting a little tired of the act?”

  “Who’s acting?” I smiled into the phone.

  Her voice grew soft. “I said no more, Brad. We have an understanding about that, remember?”

  “All I know is that I’m with you,” I said. “When I’m with you, nothing else matters. Business, money, Matt Brady, nothing.”

  “Nothing, Brad?” her voice was softly questioning. “Your family?”

  I closed my eyes. I hesitated a moment.

  “Don’t answer, Brad,” she said quickly. “I wasn’t being fair.”

  The phone went dead in my hand and slowly I put it down. She didn’t want me to answer. I wondered if she was afraid of what I might say. The intercom buzzed. I flipped the switch.

  “Mr. Robert M. Levi to see you,” Mickey’s voice crackled.

  I had almost given up on him. I should have known better than to think a woman like his wife would miss—not after having seen that look on her face as she drove off. “Send him in,” I said and turned to face the door.

  If he hadn’t been announced I would never have taken him fo
r the same guy I had seen up in Wappinger Falls. He was wearing a dark gray suit, white shirt and maroon tie. His face was tan from the sun and there were tiny squint wrinkles in the corners of his brown eyes. I got to my feet.

  There was a warm smile on his lips. “I would have come in on Monday,” he said. “But all my suits were too big on me. I had to get a tailor to take them in.”

  “The investment may never pay off,” I said.

  His gaze wandered slowly around my office, and finally came back to me. He took out a cigarette and held a match to it. “I’ll take a chance on that,” he said. “That is, if your offer’s still good.”

  I liked him. This was a bright smart guy. But he had something else about him that I liked even more. There was a quality of decency in the set of his mouth and chin. You would never have to lose any sleep worrying about this guy when your back was turned. I stuck out my hand.

  “Welcome to the big city, farmer,” I said.

  He grinned as he took my hand. “By cracky,” he said in as good an imitation of an upstate twang as I ever heard. “You got mighty fair diggin’s here.”

  His grip was firm and solid. From the moment our hands touched I knew we would be friends. I think he knew it too. “Where do I hang my hat?” he asked.

  It was my turn to surprise him. I hit the buzzer on my desk. Mickey’s voice came through the box. “Yes, boss?”

  “Everything ready?” I asked.

  “All set, boss.” There was a smile in her voice.

  I beckoned him to follow me and went out into the corridor to the office next to mine. I stopped in front of Chris’s old office and waited for him to catch up to me. I gestured at the door.

  He stared at it for a moment and then turned to me. He gulped and finally spoke. “My name’s on the door already.”

  I nodded. “Been there since I got back that day.”

  “But—but how’d you know I’d come?” he managed to ask.

  “I was getting a bit worried,” I admitted smiling. “The office looked so good I wanted you to see it before we had to close down the place.”