44 W.H.O. is part of this not me
We left the old Citroen down the road and walked the rest of the way. Our feet sank into the dry red earth as we moved around the rear of the low building. A light was on at the far end and the sound of water gulping down a drain was loud in the night. Above us hydrangea flowers walked along the walls, and from the lit window came the atonal, knife-edge sound of a
This was no ice-melting experiment, and this lab. hadn’t cost anything like seven thousand pounds. This was a small morphine-processing factory: pulverizer, vacuum pump, drying-room, everything to turn morphine into heroin before it was sealed into sardine-tins for export. Harry Kondit, I thought; Conduit — a channel or pipe through which supplies travel. I leaned through the open window, raised the pistol and aimed with care. The Smith & Wesson kicked in my hand and the sound thrashed around inside the walls. The gramophone record exploded into a thousand sharp black knives.
‘Switch off the pump and the pulverizer, Harry, or I will,’ I said. For a moment H.K. stared, then he did so and silence descended like a candle-snuffer.
‘Now walk slowly across to that door and open it.’
‘But I …’
‘And don’t say a word,’ I said. ‘I haven’t forgotten that you killed Joe with dynamite.’ H.K. turned to me to explain but decided not to. He went to the door and slipped the bolt. I gave Charly the pistol and she walked around the building to the door. While I was saying, ‘Just stay as you are, Harry, and I won’t blast any of the expensive machinery …’ H.K. was biding his time, waiting until I had to move away from the window, but when Charly put the barrel of the.38 against his belly-button he realized that he had been fooled. Charly moved H.K. back at a professional range. I joined her, closed the door behind me and bolted it again.
The three of us stood there in silence until H.K. said, ‘Welcome to the dream factory, fans.’
We said nothing.
‘So you were a cop after all,’ said H.K.
‘You mean you weren’t sure when you bombed my car and killed Giorgio out on the U-boat.’
‘You got it all wrong, Ace,’ said H.K. He was tanned darker than ever, and the skin where his watch had been was like a white bangle. His shallow forehead wrinkled like a washboard and he wet his lips with a large pink tongue. ‘It’s no use to explain,’ he continued, ‘I thought you were an O.K. guy. No hard feelings. When winter comes you know which trees are the evergreens.’
‘It’s going to be a long, hard winter, Harry,’ I said. He looked at me and gave a rueful smile.
He said, ‘You’re using a thirty-foot voice for an eighteen-inch conversation.’ He was as calm as the Serpentine in June.
‘How did you get into this racket?’ I asked him quietly.
‘Can I sit down?’ he asked.
I nodded, but took my pistol from Charly and kept it handy.
‘We all got problems, Ace,’ said H.K. as he sat down heavily, ‘and problems obey the laws of perspective; they look big close-to.’ I threw him a cigarette and a box of matches. He took his time lighting up.
‘You don’t have to worry about telling me more than I know, Harry. I know a lot,’ I said.
‘F’r instance?’
‘I know that I’ve been given the run-around by the phoniest set-up this side of Disneyland. I traced a red- haired Englishman who fought in the Spanish Civil War (we have files on all of them) and I find he’s a black-haired man who stays out of the sun for fear of getting some English-style freckles.’ I paused before adding, ‘Fernie Tomas was in a good position to know things about sunken U-boats; like that a certain one would be full of heroin.’
‘Yeah, full of horse, you are right,’ said H.K. reflectively, and he nodded and suddenly began to talk.
‘That green canister was just crammed with old heroin that some Nazi was scramming with. Fernie Tomas brought it to me and said did I know anyone who would handle it. I suppose you could say that neither of us was very keen about it, but that canister was worth a lot of dough. I couldn’t afford to pass it up. My pal Harry Williams-Cohen was on a tax rap at the time and it looked like he was going up the river for a telephone number.[29] We got enough on that horse to pay off his tax and penalties. Then Fernie and I decided to plough our money into this factory which was just going to close.’
‘Brooklyn boy saves Portuguese fish factory,’ I said, ‘with U.S. know-how and a couple of kilos of diacetyl- morphine.’
‘Be smart,’ H.K. pleaded, ‘go home and see what someone paid into your bank account.’
‘Thanks, Harry,’ I said, ‘but no.’ H.K. drew on the cigarette I had given him and waved it gently in the air. His initial burst of nervous talking had passed and now his speech was slower and more cautious. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘In another five years the government are going to legalize the import of reefers. I know for sure. Then the big business boys will take over; there’ll be tastefully designed packs, and colour ads in
I said, ‘But this is now, Harry, and people who break the law and make money out of it are often misunderstood.’
‘You’re such a wise guy,’ Harry said. ‘O.K. So I did it for money and as I got it so I spent it. You know how money is.’
‘No, I don’t,’ I said. ‘How is it?’
‘It’s as tricky as uranium but ten times more dangerous. It disappears like youth or multiplies like enemies.’
‘You have a fair share of those,’ I said.
‘Yeah, it took me a lot of time and talent to make those enemies.’
‘And Fernie Tomas is one of them?’
Harry grinned. ‘I know him too well to be a friend,’ he said.
I waited while he fooled with his cigarette. I knew he’d have something to say about Tomas.
‘You think Fernie’s a really subtle character-study, don’t you? Young naval officer hero goes over to the enemy — all that stuff. You can’t figure out anything like that, you government men. Real puzzling it must be.’
He threw the cigarettes back for me to catch. But you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. I kept the.38 aimed at H.K.’s T-shirt, the cigarettes fell against the pistol and splayed across the floor. H.K. made a move towards my feet to pick them up, but seeing the gun-barrel move a fraction of an inch he thought better of it and sank back into his chair. We looked at each other; I shook my head, and H.K. smiled.
‘No hits, no runs, no errors,’ he said.
‘Just tell me how us government men can stop being puzzled about Tomas,’ I said.
‘He’s a malcontent,’ said H.K. ‘“Whatever it is, I’m against it” is Fernie’s motto. The only reason we didn’t come to a knock-down, drag-out fight once a week was because I’m such an easy-going sort of slob. He plants an old twenty-dollar bill into the green canister just so that if anyone steps out of line he can put one from the same batch where it can do the most damage. He’s a nut.’
I nodded. I thought that the twenty in H.K.’s shirt was too convenient to be true. I said, ‘Everyone’s against you, Harry, and yet you are such a nice guy at heart,’ and I smiled. I was thinking of Joe, but I smiled at H.K.
‘Round outside means a soft centre,’ H.K. said with a grin.
He pointed to a cigarette near his foot. I nodded and he picked it up and lit it from his stub. ‘This man isn’t a martyr, idealist or intellectual. He thinks with his muscle. Guys like him work themselves into an early grave organizing wildcat strikes or breaking up political meetings. In wars they get V.C.s or court martials. Sometimes both. Fernie said he had been recommended for a D.S.A. at the time of his capture.’
