Харлан Эллисон - Murder Plus - True Crime Stories From The Masters Of Detective Fiction

For Allen Lucks died as mysteriously as he lived — an international figure on first-name terms with some of the most influential crooks and influence-peddlers in the world. He died so mysteriously, in fact, that from November 27 to March 2 of this year, not the slightest hint was voiced that he had even died!

Now the big scramble is on. The Lucks fortunes are nowhere in sight. Where are they? That’s what the deceased’s surviving relations would like to know. They suspect the money is scattered across three continents, in numerous banks under phony names, and in safe deposit boxes too numerous to mention. Al Lucks trusted no one. He had a fear of stocks and bonds, and a glowing admiration for the personal sanctuary a safe deposit box offers.

Some of that money is in a Swiss bank — and Swiss banks being notoriously discrete about releasing information — it may mean years of dickering before a penny of that money sees the light of day.

Right now, a European liaison man of prominent Scranton, Pennsylvania, lawyer Jerome Myers, is frantically scurrying through the capitals of Europe, trying to locate a fortune so large, no one feels capable of estimating its size.

This isn’t a strange ending to the career of mystery playboy Al Lucks. It is fitting, somehow. That’s the way he lived — with little notoriety, with much money, and with a caravan of beautiful women any Sheik would shriek for!

What’s that? You say you never heard of multimillionaire Lucks? You ask what the big pitch is with him, and why all the interest? You wanna know who he was and where all this dough came from that no one can find? All right, tell you what I’m gonna do — I’m gonna tell you the whole story of Fast-Bucks Lucks from start to finish, with a punch-line that’ll knock you dead.

It should. It killed Al Lucks!

Lucks made his entrance the same way Abe Lincoln did; of poor but honest parents. However, it didn’t take our boy Al long to find out that what was good for Mr. Lincoln was not necessarily good for Mama Lucks’ little boy Allen.

In 1903, the Lucks family, merchants of Hazelton, Penna., a rugged hard-coal town, rejoiced at the birth of their son. Their joy was compounded in 1923 when Al graduated from Syracuse University. When he obtained his law degree from Georgetown Law School in 1926, with an enviable record as a superlative student, the family knew they had a real mensche (Big Man) in the family. Oh, Al was smart, all right.

He practiced for a while in Washington, with a noticeable lack of success. Finally, Al returned to Scranton and started looking around for business. It seemed almost providential that Al should strike upon the biggest money in law available at that time. During this period — the late twenties — there was a lot of liquor bootlegging in the coal regions, and, logically enough, a good many bootleggers needed a mouthpiece when the long arm of the law beckoned angrily toward court.

In short order Al Lucks became well known in the courtroom of Federal Judge Albert M. Johnson (who was driven from the bench in 1946 under threat of impeachment from the House of Representatives). Al Lucks suddenly came into affluence. In a very short time Lucks became known as the man to see if you needed a fast way out.

Then in 1943 the smell of all the loose money drew Lucks to greener pastures... Washington, where he began a palm-greasing stint unparalleled in the D. of C.’s unpleasant annals.

Lucks tossed girlie parties for deserving bigwigs at the drop of a G-string, and it paid off in big tips about big sales that resulted in big contracts with big profits for Lucks.

Lucks got in on the ground floor of war surplus after World War II, outshrewding some of the shrewdest fast-buck men in the country. That ground floor was so big, covered so much territory, that Lucks hied himself overseas to Paris where he operated out of the George V, while maintaining a full-time suite in Frankfurt, Germany, which is U.S. Army headquarters in Europe.

Employing the same natural cunning that made him a wheel in the bootlegging rackets, Lucks shortly became middleman in dozens of multi-million-dollar transactions, never risking his own money, yet reaping fantastic profits merely by knowing whom to call and when. He began living high, to the tune of $100,000 a year for fun and games. The money he made over that was clear net profit, securely secreted away.

Everything from women to influence he bought and used. The women particularly. Lucks had more than an eye for the dolls. He had a pair of eyes, plus 20–20 binoculars in case something might get past him.

The only pictures available of mystery man Lucks — who correctly judged the best way of staying out of the reach of investigating committees was to stay out of the public limelight — are those he took with his female companions, of whom there were many.

One of the many was Diane (Golden Girl) Harris, a young roundheels with a penchant for soft money and running down hotel corridors sans clothing. Lucks was quoted as saying:

“I’ve never seen a finer lady than Diane. If you can’t say nice things about a lady, don’t say anything. Diane is a full lady. I don’t believe anything else that is said about her.”

Which is a nice bit of philosophy from the guy who was about to be sued in 1954 on charges of paternity. Ex-chorine Harriette Levi wound up with a juicy out-of-court settlement in that case — after Allen admitted the siring — and disappeared from sight with her ten-year-old son.

The women came and went like the autumn breezes, an endless stream of easy-virtue gals, marching in and out of Fast-Bucks Lucks’ fabulous George V suite.

At the height of his fantastic career, Lucks met and dealt with such notorious fortune-hunters as Washington’s top influence-peddler John Maragon, English ex-con George Dawson who made over $100,000,000 in a deal where he sold the U.S. Army 14,000 of their own trucks, and even the late Senator Kenneth McKellar, big boy in the infamous Crump machine of Tennessee.

All these men, and more — from junk dealers to cabinet members — were intimates of Lucks and his lovely entourage. All of them were ready to dance when he pulled their strings. For all of them made fortunes as Lucks’ career progressed.

By 1950 Al Lucks was operating almost full-time out of Paris, and showing a great deal of reluctance to go back to the U.S. Probably because there were half a dozen men back there, waiting to either sue or stab.

At this time, the rumors had it that Lucks had made a fantastic killing in Argentina. The rumors told of a vast supply of automobile parts, assembled in Canada, and sold to the Argentine government, with profits being split by Lucks, dictator Juan Peron, and Peron’s economics minister.

The beauty of the whole transaction was that the parts were never delivered!

Then came 1951, a bad year for Lucks. Newspaper stories began appearing about him. First there was the New York Supreme Court suit by Alvin Reiss of the Lehigh Trading Co. Reiss claimed to have bought $1,109,760 worth of surplus trucks and shipped them to Lucks in Europe for a promised 15 % commission — which he never got paid. The case dragged on and on, never resolving itself, because Lucks was too shy to return to the Land of the Free.

When he did enter the country, his trips were infrequent and secretive. He would stop at New York’s Essex House or the Mayflower in Washington, transact his business hurriedly, drop in on his relatives in Scranton, and be back in Europe before anyone realized he’d even been around.

But from there on out, Lucks’ star began to wane. First the Reiss suit, then charges from other American agencies, then the Jelke trial investigations where the Lucks name figured prominently. Then the suit by Harriette Levi.