Hitmen by Wensley Clarkson Read Free Book Online Page A

the area where my family lives? I have done absolutely nothing wrong.’

Chapter Four:
THE MOTHER-IN-LAW FROM HELL
    E lizabeth Duncan proves that a mother’s love for her son can be so strong that it sparks murder and mayhem. But then Hazel Sinclara Nigh – as she was born in Kansas City in 1904 – was building up to a life of crime and notoriety from the moment she adopted the Christian name Elizabeth and married her first husband Dewey Tessier, when she was just 14 years old.
    Elizabeth had three children by him, but they were all soon dispatched to the nearest orphanage because her skills as a mother left a lot to be desired, although the same could not be said of her ability to seduce men. Elizabeth would eventually marry at least a dozen other men. Many of those marriages were bigamous, and most of the bizarre unions were swiftly annulled on the grounds of non-consummation, although Elizabeth was a deft hand at blackmailing her long list of hubbies into making healthy-sized cash support payments.
    Elizabeth’s other big speciality was defrauding gullible businessmen by luring them into so-called honeytraps in hotel rooms with young girls and then embarrassing them into making large one-off payments to avoid the local constabulary. Elizabeth was certainly a one-off.
    In 1928, she married yet another sucker of a man called Frank Low. Just four months later a boy called Frank Jnr was born. Low died in 1932 – a year earlier Elizabeth had moved on to to another, wealthier bedmate called ‘Mr Duncan’ whom she’d married bigamously before Frank Low’s untimely death. Elizabeth was to use the name Duncan for much of the rest of her life although she also occasionally used the surname ‘Craig’ after another of her marriage partners. That name came in particularly handy during fraudulent financial transactions because Mr Craig had a very good credit rating.
    Meanwhile, baby son Frank Jnr became the only consistent presence in Elizabeth’s ever-changing life. She proudly took the infant everywhere with her, even to the brothel she helped run, not to mention numerous bars and clip joints where little Frank often found himself sitting in Elizabeth’s Chevy Rambler automobile sucking on a bottle of soda while his mother went about her business.
    It wasn’t long until another husband – a kindly old fellow called George Satriano – came on the scene. He showered Elizabeth with gifts and the couple moved into a huge mansion on the edge of town. Then George began noticing a few discrepancies in his bank account. He withdrew her credit cards and dropped her monthly allowance to a few dollars.
    Elizabeth was so outraged she picked up the yellow pagesand found herself a private detective, whom she offered $500 to throw acid in her husband’s face for daring to question her honesty. Fortunately for George, that little plot came to nothing, but few could blame him for filing for divorce. He was so grateful to escape the marriage with most of his fortune still intact that he agreed to give Elizabeth his brand new Cadillac as part of a settlement.
    Naturally, Elizabeth had been out looking for a new husband even before her divorce from George Satriano was finalised. She needed funds to put her beloved son Frank through his law studies in San Francisco so she set up a brothel in Santa Barbara, a very civilised beach resort halfway between LA and San Francisco. She called it a massage parlour and persuaded a handsome young stud called Benjamin Cogbill to be her partner in business and in bed.
    But Ben couldn’t keep pace with Elizabeth’s frenetic lifestyle and he was soon shown the bedroom door. A swift stroll down the church aisle with 26-year-old Stephen Gillis followed, after Elizabeth promised Gillis $50,000 if he’d marry her. Her latest toyboy just happened to be one of her beloved son Frank’s classmates at law school. Elizabeth insisted the $50,000 was the proceeds of a non-existent trust fund. But the nearest