Prescription: Murder! Volume 1: Authentic Cases From the Files of Alan Hynd Read Free Page B

doin’ that I be lookin’ for more husbands.”
    After Paul Petrillo had set things up in the Petrino home, Little Herman, the actor, hovered in the wings, ready to go on stage and essay one of his finest roles. One day when the real janitor was at work, Little Herman, dressed like a janitor, and smelling like one, sat around the Petrino flat with the faithless wife when a salesman for the Prudential Life Insurance Company called.
    Herman said he would like to take out a $10,000 policy with double indemnity. The salesman, although as fee happy as the average policy peddler, inquired how a janitor could keep up the payments on such a big policy.
    Doctor Bolber, the sly one, had prepared well in advance for that very question. He had fixed up a couple of fake bankbooks that made it appear that the janitor had $12,000 in sav-ings.
    “Me and my wife here turn over houses,” Little Herman explained, meaning that the couple dabbled in real estate. That made everything all right.
    It was two days later, when a doctor for the Prudential called to give the stand-in applicant a physical examination, that Little Herman had a few bad moments. This same doctor had examined Little Herman more than a year before, when Little Herman had posed as the husband of Lorenzo, the doomed roofer.
    “Haven’t I seen you someplace before?” asked the doctor.
    “Never seen you in my life, Doc,” said Little Herman.
    “But I could swear that I’ve examined you for insurance before.”
    “You couldn’t of, Doc. I ain’t never taken no out insurance be-fore.” The doctor ascribed the whole thing to a case of mis-taken identity, examined Little Herman, found him a sound actuarial risk, and the policy was issued.
    A few months passed. Then Doctor Bolber gave the nod for the end of the real janitor. Petrino worked in a tenement house. The faith healer handed Little Herman a monkey wrench, instructed him to pose as an inspector for the gas company, sneak up behind Petrino when the janitor was at the top of a flight of steep stairs, and crown him with the wrench.
    “It’ll look,” Bolber explained, “like that janitor just fell down the stairs and fractured his skull.”
    One night, a couple of weeks later, Doctor Bolber again crossed the city to pay another visit to the Witch. He handed her five hundred dollars for her cut of the Petrino take. “Who else you got for us?” he asked.
    The Witch had a fishmonger named Luigi Primavera. It was the same evil story all over again, with Paul Petrillo romanc-ing the wife and Little Herman Petrillo standing in for the doomed man. But this time there was a new twist. Doctor Bolber, warming up to his work, decided to take a more personal hand in mat-ters. “I’m going to kill this man Primavera personally,” he in-formed the Petrillo cousins
    “How, Doc?” asked Little Herman. “I’m going to run over him with an automobile,” said the faith healer. So one rainy day, while Primavera was hawking fish on a lonely street in South Philly, Doctor Bolber, at the wheel of a car with a souped-up motor and fake license plates, waited until the victim left his wagon to knock on some doors. Then the doctor stepped on the gas, ran up on a sidewalk and sent poor Primavera and his fish flying.
    Late that night, the doctor sat in his office reading the early editions of the morning papers. The papers carried the story of the hit-and-runner who had killed the fishmonger. Some people living on the street where the fatality had occurred had told the cops that the driver of the car, whose description fitted that of Bolber, had apparently been deliberate in run-ning Primavera down.
    The faith healer sat in his office most of that night, drinking and thinking. Just as daylight was peeping through the blinds in his office he reached a momentous decision. Henceforth he would eschew accidental deaths in favor of natural ones. True, a natural death paid only half the insurance money that a double indemnity one did, but