by Jack Treby
‘So what did you do?’ I asked him bluntly, knocking back the brandy in one. Harry must have been in pretty deep waters, to go to these lengths. ‘It must have been something really bad.’
Harry drained his glass. ‘You could say that.’
‘You were in trouble with someone?’
‘Yeah. Let’s just say I trod on a few toes, back in New York.’
That did not surprise me. ‘Who was it? The mafia?’ An obvious guess.
Harry confirmed that with a nod. ‘They don’t like people muscling in on their territory.’
‘Lord.’ I returned my glass to the table top and Harry poured out a second shot. ‘And those gorillas who turned up at your funeral?’
‘They were the hired muscle.’
‘They followed you here? Onboard the Galitia?’
Harry nodded sourly. ‘They wanted to fit me up with a concrete overcoat. I thought I’d save them the trouble.’
‘But what did you do to upset them? It can’t have been bootlegging, surely?’ Almost everyone in New York was involved in the liquor trade.
‘It was a little more serious than that. Hey, I don’t suppose you’ve got a cigarette?’
‘Er...yes.’ I reached into my jacket and pulled out my case. ‘So what was it then?’ Harry took a Piccadilly and I offered him my lighter. ‘Not gunrunning? Again?’ That had been the caper Harry had been involved in the last time we had met. I pulled out a cigarette for myself and pocketed the case. ‘Selling guns to communists. I’d have thought you’d have learnt your lesson last time.’ I lit the cigarette and took a lungful of tobacco.
‘Not guns,’ Harry said quietly. ‘Something a little more...explosive.’
I frowned, exhaling a cloud of smoke. Harry could be maddeningly oblique at times. I took another puff of the cigarette. ‘Explosives?’ My jaw fell open, as I suddenly caught the inference. ‘Oh God, Harry. You didn’t?’ The dynamite, for the bombing campaign in New York. ‘Those anti-Mussolini fanatics. Don’t tell me you supplied them with explosives?’
Harry shrugged; a small boy caught scrumping apples. ‘I may have given them a little help. Don’t look at me like that, old man.’ He took a drag of his cigarette and then spread out his hands. ‘You know me, I’m not political. I’m just a salesman. An ordinary guy looking to make an honest buck. Or a not so honest buck. If someone needs a piece of merchandise and I can supply it, why wouldn’t I help them? Anything they want. Moonshine, medicine. Fluffy toys for the kids.’
‘But dynamite?’ I regarded the man in horror. ‘Good God, Harry. You sold sticks of dynamite to the anti-fascist brigade?’
Harry rose up from his seat and moved across to one of the shelves, to find an ashtray. ‘I guess so.’ He returned to his chair with a small metal dish and placed it on the bed between us. He could see the disapproval on my face. ‘Look, I happen to know one or two guys in the construction industry. It’s no big deal. Easy enough for a few sticks to go missing. It happens all the time.’
‘But this is the dynamite that was used in the parcel bombs? The ones that have been terrorising New York since Christmas?’ I made no attempt to disguise my disgust. Harry had been involved in some pretty dubious activities over the years, but this took the proverbial biscuit.
‘Don’t get upset, old man.’ Harry’s face was the picture of wounded innocence, as he tapped out the end of his cigarette. ‘I was just providing a service. I had no idea what they wanted it for. They might have been planning to rob a bank, for all I knew.’
I scoffed at that. ‘Why would the anti-Mussolini league want to rob a bank?’
‘Every organisation needs capital.’
That was too much. ‘But people died Harry. Innocent people. Those poor postal workers. People who have nothing to do with Mussolini.’
‘Yeah, that was too bad,’ he admitted, scratching his left cheek. ‘But it was hardly my fault. Like I say, I’m just the guy in the middle. If I sell you a gun and you kill someone, does that make me a murderer?’
‘It makes you an accessory, if you had some idea of what I might be planning. Good God, Harry. You’ve done some pretty despicable things in your time, but this...’
Harry put down his cigarette. ‘Okay, look, in hindsight, it probably wasn’t the greatest idea I’ve ever had. Sure, it was lucrative, but there were too many complications.’
‘You mean the whole thing blew up in your face?’ It was my turn to smile. By the sounds of it, it served him right. ‘Harry, how could you be so stupid?’
‘Oh, I took precautions, old man. It was all done at arm’s length. No names, no come back. None of these people had any idea who I was, even what I looked like.’
‘All done under cover of darkness, down by the docks?’ I had seen enough American films to understand the modus operandi.
Harry smiled quietly, and took another drag of his cigarette. ‘Something like that.’
‘And thanks to you, innocent people have died.’
‘But hey, the good news is, the people responsible are under lock and key. They’ll pay for their crimes, old man. Justice and the American way will prevail.’ His eyes twinkled mischievously. ‘I don’t know what you’re complaining about.’
‘You’re not worried they might tell the police where they got their dynamite? Skipping the country won’t save you if your name is read out in court.’
‘That’s not going to happen. Those schmucks don’t know the first thing about me.’ Harry was dismissive. ‘Oh, sure, the cops will put the thumbscrews on them, but they can’t tell them what they don’t know. And I was real careful not to let them see anything.’
‘So the police are clueless, but the mob realised that you were behind it?’
‘Yeah. They have better lines of communication than the NYPD.’
‘You mean, they recognised your handiwork when they saw it.’
‘Uh-huh.’ Harry stubbed out the end of his cigarette. ‘They’re all over the construction sites. I should have taken that into account. They’d already given me a friendly warning, about the bootlegging. And when I say friendly, I mean unfriendly, But this was something a little more serious. So far as they were concerned, this was a direct attack on them. You know, some people can be so sensitive.’
‘You can hardly blame them, Harry. Italian Americans. Lord, what were you thinking?’
‘I was hoping I could get out of town before any of them were any the wiser. I figured I had a week or two before they followed the chain back to me.’
‘And so you booked a ticket on the Galitia?’
‘It was the quickest ride out of here. It always pays to quit while you’re ahead. I’ve made a fair bit of dough, these past few months. But I thought I had a little time in hand.’
‘They caught up with you sooner than you expected?’
‘Yeah, that was a real blow. I heard a few whispers, the last day or two in New York. And when the bomb hit the restaurant that evening – or didn’t hit it – I was sure it had to be meant for me.’
‘Except it wasn’t,’ I pointed out. ‘It was all a hoax.’
‘Yeah, I should have realised that straight out. It’s not the way these guys operate.’
‘Blowing up a restaurant full of people, to kill one man? No, I suppose not.’ An Italian restaurant, to boot. Harry had some nerve.
‘But even so, I was pretty spooked, I can tell you.’
I took a last puff of my cigarette and stubbed out the end. ‘And yet while all this was going on, you still found the time to serenade Mrs O’Neill?’ That was the part I couldn’t quite understand. Harry had spent most of his last day in New York courting a rich widow, engineering a meeting with her in the morning and conspiring to steal her pearl necklace. ‘Why would you bother doing that, if you were about to skip the country?’
Harry shrugged, sitting back in his chair. ‘I had a day in hand, before the Galitia set sail. It was just a little side project. I needed something to take my mind off things. You know me, old
man. I’m not the kind of guy to sit in a hotel room, waiting for something bad to happen. And I figured once I was onboard the Galitia, everything would be plain sailing. Plenty of time for a little fun. I took a quick look at the passenger list a day or two before and I recognised the name. Susan O’Neill, widow of the late, great Ulysses O’Neill, one of the richest men in the county. You’ll think me sentimental, but I always like to keep a fatherly eye out for vulnerable widows travelling on their own. There are so many sharks about. Beside, I needed something to occupy myself with on the long trip across the Atlantic.’ He chuckled again. ‘And when I heard about those pearls....’
‘You thought that might be a nice little bonus on the way out?’
‘That’s about the size of it, old man. Doesn’t do to let the grass grow. But to be honest, my heart wasn’t really in it. Oh sure, I set the whole thing up, engineered the meeting, took her out for dinner – the usual routine – but when it came to it...’
‘You couldn’t concentrate. You were too concerned about your own damned neck.’
‘Well, I have always been rather attached to it. And a con like that, you need to be properly focused. This time, there were too many distractions...’
‘What, like Miss Wellesley?’ I laughed.
‘Not that kind of distraction. The morning we were due to leave, I got word that they were coming for me. Pierre, the guy who did the pearls, he warned me ahead of time. Happily, I’d already taken a few precautions. For one thing, I’d doctored my passport, and booked the passage under a different name, so it didn’t flag up with any of the usual suspects.’
‘G Harrington Latimer. Yes, I remember. Not exactly a world class alias.’
‘It was never intended to be. If they looked hard enough they were always going to find me.’
‘And put someone onboard to finish you off?’
‘That’s it. Of course, if it had just been the one guy, I could probably have dealt with him, but if it was more than one...well, let’s just say, I needed a contingency plan.’
‘A contingency. You mean, faking your own death, just to put them off the scent?’ I boggled. ‘Isn’t that a bit over the top, even for you?
‘You don’t know these guys, Hilary. Jeez, do they bear a grudge. And I had one or two friends onboard who were happy to help out.’
‘Like Doctor Armstrong?’ That was an obvious assumption, given that we were sitting in his surgery. ‘He agreed to help you?’
‘Him and one other guy, Al. He was the one who smuggled the pearls onboard. He owes me a couple of favours. And the doc is a good friend. I met him on a trip over to Europe a few years back. We would go for a drink from time to time, whenever he was in town.’
‘But why would he help you on something like this? It’s one thing to socialise, it’s quite another to help a man fake his own death.’
‘Oh, he had his reasons. The guy has this one big weakness. He likes to gamble.’
‘Yes, so I’ve heard.’
‘And he’s even worse at cards than you are.’
My eyes narrowed. ‘So what did you do? Set up a game and bleed him dry? Or were you blackmailing him?’
Harry pretended to be offended. ‘It was nothing like that, old man. What do you take me for? He’s a friend. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt him. But the last time we met up, he was in a bad way. I was back in town after a run down from Canada. A few crates of whiskey in tow. Anyway, he’d lost a lot of money at the card table, between trips, and taken out a loan to cover some of the debts. And not from a bank, if you follow my meaning. The people he owed the money to, well, they wanted paying back real soon. Or else. So I helped him out.’
‘Helped him? I regarded Harry dubiously. ‘You mean, you paid off his debts?’
‘Of course, old man. You know me. I’m a sucker for a sob story.’
‘Right.’
‘I was pretty flush after that last run, so I lent him the money, but on better terms. Sure, he’d have to pay it back, but in his own time. And meanwhile, if there was any little job I needed him for, he’d be on hand to help me out.’ Harry grinned. ‘A doctor on the payroll is always useful. Getting hold of medicines. Procuring a few chemicals without arousing suspicion.’
I shook my head. ‘Oh, Harry...’
‘It’s handy to have a guy like that in your pocket.’
‘And you knew in advance that he’d be aboard the Galitia on this trip?’
‘Sure I did. Why do you think I booked it? He stopped by to say hi, when the ship arrived from Southampton just after Christmas. We had a couple of drinks, but it was only in the last few days that I began to think it might be a good idea for me to disappear. As I said, it was a contingency plan.’
‘But then you realised someone had been planted onboard?’
‘At first, I thought I’d got away with it. It wasn’t until that evening that I heard the truth. Two of their goons were onboard and looking for trouble.’
‘That was the note you received in the ballroom, during the dance?’
‘You noticed that, huh? Yeah, that was the doc. I’d asked him to check the passenger lists, to see if there were any last minute additions. If it had just been the one guy, I could have dealt with him. Arranged a little accident.’
‘You’d happily have killed the fellow?’
‘It would have been him or me, old man. What else was I going to do?’ In a straight fight between a mafia hit man and Harry Latimer, my money would be on Harry. ‘Someone falling overboard, it happens all the time. No-one would be suspicious. But two of them.’ He sucked in his cheeks. ‘That’s never good odds. You saw what they were like. Gorilla doesn’t cover it. There was a pretty good chance they’d be able to get the drop on me. And I couldn’t allow that. You’ll think me sentimental, old man, but I’m not in any hurry to meet my maker.’
‘So you decided discretion was the better part of valour?’
‘I decided to remove myself from the board. It wasn’t a last minute decision. Like I said, I’d been mulling over the idea for a few days. If I could convince these schmucks that I was dead, then all my problems would be over. And then, what do you know, I bumped into you, and found out you’d done exactly the same thing, back in England, in 1929.’ He laughed. ‘I don’t believe in fate, but that was a hell of a coincidence. You know, I always figured there was something funny about that death of yours. It was all too neat. All too stage managed. I had a suspicion it might be a put up job. But it was still a shock, to see you like that, out of the blue, the night before we departed.’
‘You didn’t look surprised.’
‘Poker face, old man. Poker face. Never let on what you’re thinking.’ He chuckled. ‘To tell you the truth, I’d been having second thoughts about the whole thing. It wasn’t without an element of risk. But seeing you there, in perfect health, it made me think, what the hell, maybe it’s not such a crazy idea.’
‘But how exactly did you do it?’ He had still not explained the mechanics of the affair. ‘This scheme of yours, the death. How did you pull it off? When I saw you lying there...’
‘It was all down to the doc. He’s not just a pretty face, you know.’
‘Hardly that. What was it, though? Some kind of drug?’
‘More of a toxin than a drug. A little concoction of his that put me to sleep.’
I scoffed. ‘What sort of toxin could put you into that state? It wasn’t even a coma. You were stone cold dead, Harry. There was no temperature, no pulse, no respiration.’
‘That’s not strictly true. There was a pulse, old man, but you’d have had a hard job finding it. The doc explained it all to me. You know he studied toxicology at some college in London?’
‘Yes, I remember him saying.’
‘He knows all about that stuff. Different types of poison. The dosages. What they do to the body. There’s this one particular one he told me about. It’s scraped off the back of a toad.’
‘A toad?’
‘Yeah, a little f
ellow. It’s used in religious ceremonies in the Caribbean.’ There was a picture of a toad, I recalled suddenly, on a poster out in the waiting room. ‘It slows down your heartbeat and gives the impression that you’re dead. It’s fatal in large doses and it’s a bit of an hallucinogenic. But if you get the dosage right, the heartbeat slows and you hardly need to breathe at all. At least for a while.’
‘And that’s what Doctor Armstrong provided. A toxin?’ I blinked. ‘From a toad?’
‘That’s it. Oh, don’t get me wrong, it wouldn’t fool a doctor. But your average passer by wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.’
‘Like me, you mean?’
‘Don’t beat yourself up, old man. It would have fooled most people. They use the drug in some places to bring people back from the dead. It’s a trick, of course, but a good one. I thought I could adapt it for myself, as a last resort.’
I sat back in my chair. This affair was becoming ever more bizarre. ‘Well, rather you than me. It sounds lethal.’ I wasn’t sure I would be willing to risk taking a drug like that, even if half the hounds of hell were after me.
‘It was a calculated risk, old man. And the doc said it was safe enough. Well, reasonably safe. Like I say, he knows his stuff. He’d tried it himself, back at medical school. A student prank. He was researching poisons at the time and figured he might as well have a go at it.’
‘Lord.’ I shook my head. The things that students get up to.
‘Anyway, he reckoned it would be safe enough. The natives use it all the time. And it was either that or going over the side. This way, when the goons came calling, they’d find mother nature had beaten them to it.’
I leaned forward and grabbed the brandy from the table. ‘I think I need another,’ I said. Harry waved away the offer of a refill. ‘And Doctor Armstrong just happened to have a supply of this drug onboard ship?’