Windfall

He had been so careful in New York. After Hendrix had been delivered by Hardin no one had seen him because Gunnarsson had personally smuggled him out of the building and to a hideaway in Connecticut. The only person to have laid eyes on Hendrix, apart from Hardin, had been his secretary in the outer office and she did not know who he was because the name had not been mentioned. And he had successfully got rid of Hardin; the damn fool needled so easily and had blown his top, which made his dismissal a perfectly natural reaction.

Gunnarsson tapped his fingers on the wheel of the car. Still, it was strange that when he wanted to find Hardin again he had vanished. Probably he had crawled into some hole to lick his wounds. Gunnarsson shrugged and dismissed Hardin from his mind. The guy was a has-been and of no consequence in the immediate problem he faced.

But Hardin's report had been interesting and valuable. Here was Henry Hendrix, a hippy drop-out with no folks, and no one in the world would give a damn whether he lived or died because no one knew the guy existed. No one except that freaky commune in Los Angeles and, at first, he had discounted Biggie and his crowd.

And so, with Hendrix held isolated, he had the material for the perfect scam, and the hit was going to be big – no less than six million bucks. Hendrix had gone along with everything, talking freely under the impression that his interrogation was for the benefit of a British lawyer and quite unaware of the quietly revolving spools of the tape recorder memorizing every word.

And then there was Corliss. Corliss had been easy because he was weak and bent under pressure. He had been uncovered in a routine check by Gunnarsson Associates and when Gunnarsson had faced him and shown him the options he had folded fast. No one in the organization wondered when he quit his job without being prosecuted because everyone knew computer frauds were hushed up. No bank liked to broadcast that it had been ripped off by a computer artist because it was bad for business. And so Corliss had also been isolated but Gunnarsson made sure that Corliss and Hendrix never met.

Then Corliss was groomed to take the part of Hendrix. It was lucky that Corliss was not unlike Hendrix physically -they were both blond and of about the same age – and the passport was easy to fix. After that something had to be done about Hendrix and Gunnarsson saw to it personally. It was a pity but it was necessary and Hendrix now resided encased in a block of concrete at the bottom of Long Island Sound.

Gunnarsson had second thoughts about Biggie and the commune. The sudden emergence of an overnight multimillionaire called Hendrix could attract the attention of the media. It might make the papers on the West Coast – it could even be on TV with pictures – something which Biggie might see. So something had to be done about that and, again, Gunnarsson saw to it personally.

He smiled grimly as he reflected that Hardin had told him how to do it in his report. If a pottery kiln had blown up once it could blow up again, this time with more serious consequences. Exit Biggie and the commune. It was then that he began looking for Hardin seriously and found that he was living in a fleabag in the Bronx, and another rooming house fire in the Bronx passed unnoticed. It did not even rate a paragraph on the bottom of page zilch. That worried Gunnarsson because he was not certain he had taken out Hardin. Discreet enquiries revealed that the bodies in the rooming house were unidentifiable and a further search for Hardin produced nothing so he relaxed.

After that everything had gone perfectly. Corliss had been accepted in London and that old fool, Farrar, had even anted up two hundred thousand bucks as an earnest of what was to come. That was only a sweetener of course; a morsel before the main meal. Then they came to Kenya and the whole goddamn scheme had fallen apart when Corliss was snatched in Tanzania. What griped Gunnarsson was that he did not know whether Corliss was alive or dead.

'Jesus!' he said aloud in the privacy of the car. 'If he's alive I could be cooked.'

He sorted out the possibilities. If Corliss was dead then goodbye to six million dollars; he would cut his losses and return to the States. If Corliss was alive there were two alternatives – either he stayed as Hendrix or he spilled his guts. If he had the nerve to stay as Hendrix then nothing would change and everything was fine. But if he talked and revealed that he was Corliss then that meant instant trouble. Everybody and his uncle would be asking what had happened to the real Hendrix. Maybe he could get out of it by fast talking – he could blame the whole schmeer on the absent Hardin. He could swear he had accepted Corliss as the real McCoy on the word of Hardin. Maybe. That would depend on exactly how wide Corliss opened his fat mouth.