The Taming of Tango Harris

by Graham Ison

  ‘So where are we at?’ asked Kobreski.

  ‘We got a stake-out right now on the Pearson mob, Lieutenant. And we collared two of them for the homicide just off Madison—’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I know,’ said Kobreski. ‘They took out one of Aventura’s boys. Right?’ He glanced up at Luce. ‘So where’s this guy Harris fit in? Any connection with the homicide?’

  ‘Nope. Harris was looking to buy a piece of the racket, but Pearson’s gang wouldn’t let him play. Gave him the bum’s rush. Seems they got enough problems with the Aventura mob without some Limey hustling them. The guys on surveillance checked Harris out after they saw him making a mark with these characters.’

  ‘So what was he doing? Apart from trying to buy a stable of hookers.’

  Luce shrugged. ‘One of Dementi’s snitches says he was trying to buy a gun. Seems Harris knew Pearson from way back in London. So when Harris got in shtuck with Scotland Yard he decided to come over here to try and cash in on a favour … and make a fresh start.’

  ‘Have I got news for him,’ said Kobreski. ‘Who’s Dementi anyway?’

  ‘He’s a second-grade on Robbery, Safes, and Lofts.’

  ‘Reckons,’ said Kobreski and took a bite of his sandwich. ‘And did he? Buy a gun?’

  ‘That much we don’t know, Lieutenant,’ said Luce. ‘But he seems the sort of guy we can do without. Got enough of our own hoods without importing them. And that’s what Pearson said.’

  ‘How patriotic. I reckon we’ll go talk with this son-of-a-bitch. Where’s he at? Did Dementi’s snitch tell us that?’

  ‘No, sir. The guys on stake-out put a tail on him but lost him.’

  ‘Some stake-out. Just as well this Fox told me Harris was in a hotel on Madison.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Luce. ‘Sol Whiteman told me where he was.’

  ‘Thanks for letting me know,’ said Kobreski acidly.

  ‘Are the Brits going for extradition? Deportation, maybe?’

  ‘Nope. Either will take for ever and a day. I reckon we’ll talk real nice to this guy. Tell him to take a health trip. For certain he’ll get more time in the slammer back home in England than he will here, except we won’t tell him that. I mean, what have we got? Soliciting the purchase of an illegal weapon? That’s nothing.’ Kobreski

  stood up. ‘Jeez!’ he added. ‘As if we ain’t got enough to do.’

  ‘Does this guy know the Brits are going to collar him when he touches base?’ asked Luce.

  ‘If he doesn’t, he’s one dumb guy.’ Kobreski took his revolver from his desk drawer and slid it into his holster.

  *

  It was a good hotel just off Madison Avenue. Lieutenant Kobreski enquired at the desk for Harris only to be told that he was out.

  ‘Mr Harris said he was going to visit the Empire State,’ said the desk clerk, smiling the ready smile that she had learned in training.

  ‘That’s nice,’ said Kobreski. ‘We’ll wait, ma’am. But don’t tell him when he comes in. It’s kinda like a surprise.’ Briefly, he exhibited his badge. ‘And you don’t want any trouble in this nice hotel of yours, do you?’

  The desk clerk giggled nervously. ‘I never even saw you, Officer,’ she said.

  Kobreski and Luce made their way to the bank of elevators and rode to the seventh floor. Once in the corridor leading to Harris’s room Kobreski went in search of the floor waiter.

  Eventually tracking him down to a small office, Kobreski produced his shield. ‘Open up room seven-oh-five for us, feller,’ he said.

  The floor waiter looked apprehensively at the detective’s badge. ‘Say, what’s this all about?’ he asked, fumbling for his master key.

  ‘Best you don’t know,’ said Kobreski. ‘And if I was in your shoes, I’d stay outta the way. Could get caught in the cross-fire.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the floor waiter and hurried to open the door of Room 705.

  Kobreski looked round the suite appreciatively. ‘This guy sure knows how to look after himself,’ he said. ‘Guess we’ll make ourselves comfortable.’ And with that, he lit a small cigar and took off his overcoat. Then he sat down in an armchair that could not be seen from the door and placed his revolver on his lap. A moment or two later, he withdrew a headband with a single long feather in it and put it on his head.

  The expression on Detective Luce’s face did not change. ‘What’s with the feather, Lieutenant?’ he asked.

  ‘Helps to screw up complaints,’ said Kobreski. ‘If we don’t convince this guy Harris to go home and he complains to Internal Affairs, they ain’t going to listen too much when he tells them he was interviewed by a cop wearing Red Indian headdress. For which same reason, we don’t use names.’

  Ten minutes later he and Luce heard the door open and then slam.

  Harris walked into the suite wearing a hat and coat and was met by the sight of Kobreski, still reclining in the armchair, pointing a gun at him. ‘Hi!’ said Kobreski.

  ‘What the hell — ?’ Harris stood stock-still, staring first at the Red Indian feather and then at the gun in Kobreski’s hand. Very quickly, he decided that the gun had priority. This was not the time for smart remarks. He raised his hands rapidly.

  ‘I’m Lieutenant Moroni, New York Police Department. Just take your weapon out, real slow, and put it on the floor.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ Harris had lost none of his truculence in crossing the Atlantic. ‘You don’t look like no cop to me. Pull the other one.’

  With his free hand, Kobreski produced his shield. ‘Like I said, make with the artillery.’

  Harris looked pained. ‘I don’t have a gun, Officer,’ he said. ‘I’d be crazy to carry a shooter over here.’ A strong hint of deference crept into his voice. ‘What’s this all about, anyway?’ he asked.

  ‘I sure hope you’re right, feller,’ said Kobreski, waving his pistol in Harris’s direction, ‘because carrying a concealed weapon in this city can get you in a lotta trouble. Like dead.’ He stood up, walked across the room with his revolver in the ready position, and ran his free hand expertly over Harris to make sure that he was unarmed. Then he sat down again.

  ‘I want a solicitor,’ said Harris promptly.

  ‘What in hell’s that?’ asked the American. ‘A hooker?’

  ‘I think he means he wants an attorney, Lieutenant,’ said Luce.

  ‘Damn right he does,’ said Kobreski.

  ‘What’s coming off here?’ asked Harris, still wearing his hat and coat and standing in the centre of the room. He understood English law and English detectives, but the brash New Yorker facing him, whose gun was still wavering back and forth, terrified him.

  Kobreski reholstered his revolver and carefully studied the pathetic figure of Tango Harris. ‘Seems like you been getting in bad company since you got here, Mr Harris,’ he began.

  ‘I’m on holiday, Officer. A tourist, like. Been seeing all the sights. I’ve just been up the Empire State Building. Very impressive, that is. And tomorrow, I plan to see the Statue of Liberty.’

  ‘That a fact?’ said Kobreski. ‘I shouldn’t go making too many plans, if I was you.’

  ‘What seems to be the problem?’ asked Harris hopefully. But he was fairly certain he knew.

  ‘Detective officers from my precinct have had a number of undesirable persons under surveillance for some time now. These guys are members of Charlie “The Rat” Pearson’s little gang, and you were seen approaching them several times. My snitch,’ continued Kobreski, borrowing Detective Dementi’s informant for the purpose of the narrative, ‘tells me that you made several attempts to buy a shooter.’

  Harris was sweating profusely now. ‘I never—’

  Kobreski held up his hand. ‘Some of Charlie “The Rat” Pearson’s guys have been collared in connection with a homicide.’ He gave Harris a disconcerting grin. ‘This is the State of New York, my friend. And the penalty for murder in the first degree is the electric chair.’ In fact, the death penalty in New York was by lethal injection,
but Kobreski felt that it just didn’t compare with the threat of the chair for effect.

  ‘I don’t know nothing about no murder.’ Harris’s strangled voice rose in desperation and he collapsed into a chair. ‘Where did you say it was?’ He took off his hat and wiped his brow with his sleeve.

  ‘I didn’t say,’ said Kobreski. He glanced at Luce. ‘This guy’s some actor, Detective,’ he said and turned back to Harris. ‘Mind you, you’re lucky, Mr Harris.’

  ‘I am?’ Harris looked enquiringly at the American. He thought for a moment that he must have missed something.

  ‘Oh, sure. The State Governor ain’t that keen on the death penalty. So you’ll probably only do ninety years.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake!’ Harris tried to control any outward signs of fear, but he was panicking like hell inside. ‘I’m fifty-four,’ he said in a whisper. His fingers started gripping nervously at the arms of his chair.

  ‘That’s OK,’ said Kobreski. ‘You’ll just have to do as much as you can.’

  Suddenly it came to Harris. ‘It’s Fox, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘He’s put you up to this, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Pardon me?’ Kobreski looked convincingly mystified.

  ‘Fox of Scotland Yard put you up to this, didn’t he?’ said Harris again, as though he’d just solved a particularly difficult problem.

  ‘Never heard of him,’ said Kobreski dismissively. ‘But I heard of the guy your friend Charlie “The Rat” blew away. He was connected with the mob.’

  ‘What mob?’ Harris now had a hunted look about him.

  ‘What mob?’ Kobreski let out a hoot of laughter. ‘D’you hear that, Detective? What mob?’ He stopped laughing as suddenly as he had started, and stared at Harris in theatrical disbelief. ‘In this city, mister, there’s only one mob. They call it the Mafia.’

  ‘Leave it out,’ said Harris and shot a quick sideways glance at the expressionless Luce. ‘I don’t go about shooting people. I keep telling you, I don’t know nothing about no murder.’

  ‘This guy sure has a great repertoire of one-liners,’ said Kobreski, addressing Luce. He switched his gaze back to Harris. ‘That’s real funny, you know that? You could

  have made a killing in vaudeville … a few years back.’

  ‘No way would I wanna be in your shoes, Mr Harris,’ said Luce suddenly, still maintaining his dead-pan expression. And having said his piece, lapsed into silence once more.

  ‘I’ll explain, Mr Harris,’ continued Kobreski, adopting a conversational tone. ‘If we can convince the District Attorney that you were involved in this homicide … ’ Kobreski paused to stub out his cigar. ‘Then you’ll find yourself on Death Row quicker than that. But like I said,’ he added as an afterthought, ‘you’d probably appeal your way out of it.’

  ‘Say, Lieutenant … ’ Luce leaned forward earnestly and pointed a finger in Harris’s direction. ‘D’you reckon if this guy decided to go back to London we might just leave him outta the indictment for this homicide? After all, the two guys we got in didn’t name Mr Harris. They just gave a description and I don’t reckon they’d pick him outta the line-up. Know what I mean, Lieutenant?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about that, Detective.’ Kobreski appeared to consider the matter carefully as he stared at Harris. ‘We don’t like people — particularly Limeys — coming across here and getting mixed up in homicides. Especially when the victim’s a Mafiosi, because one thing usually leads to another. Like the next thing we’re doing is investigating the homicide of Mr Harris here.’

  ‘Yeah!’ said Luce thoughtfully. ‘Once these guys know who he is, they’ll blow him away for sure. And we only got to take him down the precinct and then let him out and they’ll know.’

  ‘That’s true, Detective,’ said Kobreski. ‘The officer has a point, Mr Harris. You see you’ve gotten between two very nasty groups of mobsters. Like I said, a week last Monday one of Aventura’s mob got blown away by some friends of your friend Charlie “The Rat”. So Guido Aventura’ll be looking for anyone who’s with Pearson. Including you. But I suppose,’ he continued slowly, ‘that we could save ourselves a whole lotta trouble if you went on home.’ He picked up his coat and started to put it on.

  ‘You see, Mr Harris, we’re very concerned about your health and if these guys think that you were involved in rubbing out this godfather and they find out you’re still here … ’ Kobreski left the sentence hanging in the air and shrugged. He had given a ham performance of a TV detective, but he knew that the real Kobreski would not have impressed Harris half as much.

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Harris with indecent haste. ‘I just don’t want no trouble, Officer.’ He seized what he saw as the only way out of a desperate situation. He had seen television programmes about the American police, American prisons, and the Mafia, and he wanted to have as little as possible to do with any of them.

  ‘There’s just one condition,’ said Kobreski.

  ‘What?’ Harris, unable to take his eyes off Kobreski’s wavering feather, looked as though he was willing to do just about anything to escape the clutches of this hard-nosed detective. ‘I suppose it’s going to cost me?’ Harris had been brought up in an environment where everything had to be paid for.

  ‘It will if you talk,’ said Kobreski. ‘You got to promise not to say anything about this to anyone. If word gets around that I let a homicide suspect go flying off to England, I could lose my badge. And my reputation with the mob would hit the deck. Get my drift, buster?’ He swept off his Red Indian headband and stuffed it in his coat pocket.

  ‘OK,’ said Harris with resignation. ‘I’ll stay shtum.’ He knew that he’d been set up, but he could see no alternative to going along with what he knew in his heart was Fox’s plan. If this detective arrested him, he could be locked up for a long time. Maybe not for anything to do with a murder, but certainly while Fox arranged for his extradition. And the choice between years in an American remand prison and a few months in Brixton while his lawyers sorted it all out was no real contest.

  ‘Great.’ Kobreski lit another cigar. ‘Just to show you what nice guys we are, we’ll run you out to JFK right now. Make sure you catch a flight to London. How’s that grab you?’

  It took two hours to get Harris to Kennedy Airport and on a flight to Heathrow. Kobreski fixed it with airport security for himself and Luce to escort Harris right to the aircraft … to make sure he went.

  Just as Harris got one foot on the steps, Kobreski took his arm. ‘Be sure and have a nice day now,’ he said.

  *

  Back in his office, Kobreski telephoned the head of the Flying Squad at New Scotland Yard. ‘Fox,’ he said when he was connected, ‘you owe me one.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Denzil Evans had been disconcerted to receive a telephone call from Fox at two o’clock in the morning directing him to assemble a team and meet a flight at Heathrow Airport four and a half hours later. And as if that was not enough, Evans knew instinctively that despite Fox’s instructions being quite specific, he was almost certain to find fault. Or worse still, to have changed his mind altogether about the course of action he required of Evans.

  Not prepared to leave anything to chance, Evans had spent much of the rest of the night on the telephone, ordering his whole team to be at Terminal Three by six o’clock. After a miserable drive through pouring rain, he had managed to grab a quick cup of coffee before stationing himself with his men in the arrivals lounge.

  Now he watched closely as the huge aircraft taxied up to the finger and the doors opened. Outside, on the tarmac, several police cars were drawn up surrounding the jumbo jet. Evans knew that if somehow Tango Harris managed to escape, Fox would be extremely angry. And Evans didn’t fancy a blue suit with little silver stars on the shoulders.

  Harris, still wearing the now-crumpled suit in which he had been interviewed in New York by Lieutenant Kobreski and Detective First Grade Luce, was the seventh passenger to alight. He had been on the aircraft for six hours,
but it had seemed longer because he had hardly slept on the flight.

  ‘Thomas Walter Harris,’ said Evans, ‘I am arresting you for conspiring with Alfred Penrose, Randolph Steel,

  and others, to murder William Crombie. Anything you say will be put in evidence.’

  Although fully expecting to be met by the police, Harris was momentarily stunned at the reason for his arrest, but he quickly recovered. ‘I’m not going to say anything, so you needn’t worry about that,’ he said. ‘Except that you won’t be able to make it stick.’

  Evans treated that remark with lofty disdain and instructed DS Buckley and the other officers to escort Harris straight to the waiting police cars and not, under any circumstances, to ask him any questions. Evans was fully conversant with the law.

  Fortunately for Evans’s peace of mind, their journey into central London was slightly ahead of the morning rush-hour, although they encountered one or two problems in Kensington. Evans would have instructed his driver to use the siren, but he didn’t want to make Harris feel that important. Even so, they reached Rochester Row police station by seven-thirty.

  Harris’s solicitor arrived at half-past eight, just as Fox got out of his car.

  ‘This is preposterous,’ began the solicitor.

  ‘You took the words right out of my mouth,’ said Fox, ushering the solicitor through the door. They walked in silence through the station and across the yard to the security wing.

  ‘My client has a complete answer to the charge, you know … and he will refuse to answer any questions,’ said the solicitor as they reached the door to the interview suite where Harris had been put only ten minutes previously.

  ‘Which charge is that?’ asked Fox mildly, settling himself and lighting a cigarette. ‘There are so many that even I’m confused.’ He glanced at Evans. ‘What exactly did you arrest him for, Denzil?’

  Evans, somewhat taken aback by Fox’s question — Fox had carefully detailed the charge on the telephone — took a deep breath and wondered if he should come up with a different answer. ‘Er, conspiring with others to murder Billie Crombie, sir,’ he said at length.