Murder's Shield

by Warren Murphy

  Smith smiled wanly to himself. How many of those men had enlisted in the secret police army to shape America into some personal fantasy of purity? Why didn’t they understand that a police state was the most corrupt of all forms of government?

  Smith looked carefully at the map. At a distance, it seemed that the pattern of dots emanated from a central point in New York City. Well, he had committed his reserves there. Remo Williams, the Destroyer, was on the mission. That is, if he was on the mission… if he had gotten over his silly reluctance to go against policemen.

  Smith spun back toward the Sound and looked at his watch. Time for Remo to call. He waited five more minutes, and the phone beeped once, lightly.

  “Smith here.”

  “Remo.”

  “Anything?”

  “I think I lucked out. You ever hear of the Men of the Shield?”

  “No.”

  “It’s some kind of police organization,” Remo said. “I think it might be the framework of what we’re looking for.”

  “Any names?”

  “The head of it is an inspector named McGurk.”

  “Have you contacted him?”

  “Yes,” Remo said. “I’ve got him on my personal pad. I’m supposed to see him next week with another installment.”

  “Remo, we don’t have that kind of time. Is there any way you can step it up?”

  “I can try,” Remo said disgustedly. Smith never had any appreciation of a good job, quickly done.

  “By the way,” Smith said, “you seem to have gotten over your… er, earlier feelings in this matter.”

  “Sorry, Smitty, I haven’t gotten over anything. Right now, I’m out gathering information for you. If the time comes when more than information is necessary, well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  “Call in tomorrow,” Smith said, unnecessarily. Remo’s answer was a click as he hung up.

  Smith replaced the receiver and spun back toward the Sound. It lapped at the shores of the sanitarium. Was it his imagination or was the tide receding? Dr. Smith peered carefully out the window. No, the tide was not coming back from the big rock on the beach. It hadn’t reached it yet; the tide was still rising.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “MAKE HIM AN OFFER HE cannot refuse.”

  Don Mario Panza dismissed his consigliore with that instruction. He had been generous. He had been polite. He had been respectful. In troubled times like these, with some of his closest business associates dying in so many mysterious ways, he had been more than generous with the stranger who had moved into his territory and was suddenly paying policemen.

  Don Mario Panza had been generous to the point of carelessness and he was not a careless man. There was a new person in Queens who paid off an entire precinct. He also purchased cars and furniture with cash. It was an obvious sign that he wished to get rid of money not to be reported to the Internal Revenue Service.

  Remo Bednick was obviously in some business that affected Don Mario. But what? The betting was the same. The numbers were the same. The union business the same. The meat business was even better because no one had to pay the contracts to that Wyoming fellow, Hardesty. And for narcotics, in Queens it was not a business. Not really a business. One even helped to keep it to a minimum. So what was this Remo Bednick doing with an entire precinct on his pad?

  Don Mario had been respectful. He had sent an emissary suggesting a friendly meeting. Businessmen should talk, no?

  And to this Remo Bednick had said, “Not now, fella, I’m busy.”

  So Don Mario, being a patient and reasonable man, sent another emissary. A capo. The capo had explained who he was and who Don Mario was and how Don Mario might possibly help him, how in times like these one needed allies.

  “I need another dark sock,” this Remo Bednick, this .90-caliber pezzonovante had said. He had been putting on his shoes. “That’s what I need. Another dark sock.”

  “I would like an autographed picture of Rad Rex, the wonderful actor who plays Professor Wyatt Winston, noted nuclear physicist in As the Planet Revolves,” the Oriental servant had said.

  The capo had repeated the request. And later, upon questioning the capo, Don Mario explained that these men did not wish socks or pictures but were making light of the capo. The capo’s face burned with anger, but Don Mario said, “Enough, we cannot afford unnecessary trouble. I will take care of it.”

  So Don Mario had sent the consigliore who would explain that the great Don wished to help if possible. That the great Don did not like to make requests many times over. That the great Don could not allow in his territory an unknown operation. That the Don, in return, was willing to offer extra protection, if necessary. Perhaps their two businesses could blend. The Don paid for what he got. The Don expected as a personal sign of respect at least a meeting. There could be no refusal on this.

  The consigliore had returned to the well-guarded fortress home of Don Mario Panza. His face was set. With due respect, he relayed the answer to the offer that could not be refused.

  “No.”

  “Was that all this Remo Bednick said?” asked the Don.

  “He added, ‘Some other time perhaps.’”

  “I see.”

  “And the Oriental servant wanted to know why we hadn’t produced an autographed picture of Rad Rex.”

  “I see. They still make light of us. Well, perhaps it is our fault. We have not shown them we should be respected. This Oriental servant? Is our Mr. Bednick close to him?”

  “I imagine, Don Mario. I never saw the servant serve and he interrupts incessantly without fear of Mr. Bednick.”

  “So he is not a servant.”

  “I would think not, Don Mario.”

  “Is he old?”

  “Very.”

  “How big?”

  “If he weighs ninety pounds, he has filled his pockets with lead.”

  “I see. Well, I have a plan to show Mr. Bednick our force and our power, to show that we could kill him if we wish and that we will stop at nothing to gain our ends. Then he will gladly come—shaking.”

  The consigliore nodded and when he heard the plan, he was once again astounded by the brilliance of his Don, by his uncanny knowledge of human psychology, his wisdom and foresight.

  “Magnificent, Don Mario.”

  “Carefully thought,” said Don Mario.

  “Oh, another thing,” said the consigliore. “They sent this. “ From his briefcase, he removed a white lotus blossom.

  The Don thought about the blossom a moment.

  “Did they say anything when they gave you the blossom?”

  “It was the old man. He wanted to trade for an autographed picture of… ”

  “Yes, yes, yes“ Enough. I have had enough of them,” said the Don in a rare display of anger. So they insisted upon creating greater insult. Don Mario threw the blossom into a wastebasket.

  “Get me Rocco. Rocco. And three others. They can come from any of the regimes. Rocco.”

  The consigliore nodded. He would have to approach Rocco himself and even though they were on the same side, it was a moment of terror. The mountainous man was terror personified and one did not approach him lightly.

  When Don Mario received Rocco, he stood to receive the formal greeting of his greatest enforcer. Rocco towered high above the Don, his face like a great granite crag, his hands the size of shovels. The width of his chest extended beyond a refrigerator, and his eyes were like the darkness beyond the universe.

  “It is with great respect that I receive you, Rocco,” said Don Mario.

  “It is with great respect that I come, Don Mario.”

  And then Don Mario explained the play because one should explain everything very clearly to Rocco. There would be three assisting him. One for lookout, one to hold the old man, and one to use the ropes. If Mr. Bednick awoke during the night, he should see Rocco’s face and then be put to sleep.

  “For just a night, Rocco. Not forever,” said Don Mario, nervousness
in his voice. “Just for the night. We need him. He holds secrets I need. Do you understand? Just for the night he must sleep. As a personal favor to me, Rocco. Just for the night.”

  When Rocco was being dismissed, Don Mario added:

  “Just for the night, Rocco. That is the purpose.”

  Then Don Mario retired to his safe bed, surrounded by bodyguards and houses rented to his men and a high brick wall. Safe above the turmoil of his business. There would be no such sleep for Mr. Bednick. He would awake to find his servant bound hand and foot, hanging over the bed. Hopefully alive, but distinctly showing the great Don’s power to kill this Remo Bednick if he wished. He would also show that he would not stop at doing it. There was only one problem. Rocco. But Rocco had been warned and he had been very good for the last few years. His temper had run away with him only twice.

  So with high prospects for a productive evening, Don Mario had slipped into his bed alone, safe in his fortress. He drifted into the dark, comfortable sleep of a man who has planned well. He slept the night and when he awoke, he felt something strange. His toe was touching something soft and thin, like a flower petal. What was a flower petal doing in his bed? He pushed the toe farther and it felt as if it touched drying mud on the sheets. Further, and there was something cold, like clay. No. Liver. Don Mario pulled off the covers and when he saw what was in the bed with him, he let out a terrified shriek, screaming like an unbridled fearstricken child.

  “Aaaahhhhhhh!” The voice floated to the bodyguards outside the door and into the courtyard he had supposed safe from attack. The men came running but Don Mario would not let them enter his room. He ordered them to stay out. They must not see this, this loss of power. For in the bed with a lotus blossom in its mouth was the head of the giant Rocco.

  That afternoon, when Rad Rex refused to sign his autograph before the taping, a technician’s union struck. Word got back to him that the strike would be settled immediately if he merely autographed a picture.

  So, looking at his beautiful face for the hundredth time that day, Rad Rex resigned himself to the vicissitudes of life.

  “All right. Who should I make it out to?”

  “Chiun,” said one of the burly pair of men. “To the wisest, most wonderful, kind-hearted, sensitive gift of man. Undying respect. Rad Rex.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “That, word for word, will be on your picture or on your face.”

  “Could you give it to me again?” said Rad Rex.

  “Yeah. Chiun. To the wisest, most wonderful… you got that, most wonderful… kind-hearted, sensitive gift of man. Undying respect. Rad Rex.”

  Rad Rex scribbled away and dramatically offered the autographed picture to the barbarian who even smelled bad.

  “Uh, oh,” said the man. “You gotta add humble.”

  “You didn’t say humble.”

  “Well, we want humble.”

  “Humble Rad Rex or humble Chiun?”

  “Chiun. Between kind-hearted and sensitive.”

  The picture and two-hundred dozen pairs of dark socks were promptly delivered to a one-family home in upper middle class Queens.

  When Chiun saw the picture and the words he conveniently forgot he had requested, a small tear came to his old eyes.

  “The bigger they are,” said Chiun,“the nicer they are.”

  He later pointed this out to Remo, but Remo was not interested. He was leaving the house to try to get a line on Inspector William McGurk, too preoccupied even to wonder what 4,800 dark socks were doing in his bedroom.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  BUT INSPECTOR WILLIAM MCGURK was not at police headquarters. He was farther uptown, in an old building at Twentieth Street and Second Avenue, which had once been the pistol range for training city police. The building now had a clothing store on the first floor, and at the top of the second floor landing, a heavy double steel door, under a small sign, M.O.T.S., blocked the way to the old gymnasium and pistol range.

  Inside, the range reeked of gunpowder despite air conditioning designed to suck off the smoke and fumes. That was not the only change from the old days, nor was the heavy soundproofing asbestos sheeting that covered the walls. The major change was that instead of lanes, each with a target, there was only one target at the end of the building. And instead of pistols held at arm’s length in standard police pose, there were machine guns.

  “All right. Let’s try it again. Let’s get some concentrated fire on that. I don’t want to see you spraying. I don’t want to see you holding up. I want short bursts and I want that thing riddled. Riddled,” yelled McGurk. He pointed to the man-sized dark target.

  “Now, you’re not going to fire when I count three. You’re not going to fire when you feel like it. You’re going to fire when you hear this little gadget go click.” McGurk held up a child’s metal clicker shaped like a frog. McGurk shook the frog. He was in gray slacks and blue shirt and perspiration dripped from his forehead, but there was a grin on his face. Here was a machine that could do what it was supposed to do, it seemed to say.

  “All right. On the click,” yelled McGurk. The three officers bunched in a semi-circle, readied to fire down the alley at the single target. Nothing. Three seconds. Ten seconds. Twelve seconds. Nothing.

  McGurk held up the clicker but made no sound. He watched the men. Thirty seconds. Forty-five seconds. One of the men dried his trigger finger. Another licked his lips and looked over at McGurk. One minute. A minute, ten seconds. The third gunner lowered his weapon.

  Two minutes. All the guns lowered. Eyes fixed on McGurk who appeared to notice nothing unusual.

  “Hey, when you going to click that thing?” yelled one of the gunners.

  “What?” said McGurk, leaning forward as if he had not understood the question.

  “I said, when you going… ?”

  “Click,” went the little frog and one man got off a wild burst. The other two machine gunners opened up hesitantly, firing wide of the target.

  “Awright, awright,” shouted McGurk. “Cease firing. Cease firing.”

  The gunfire died with a last single shot that plunked a neat hole in the dark outline of a man at the end of the range.

  McGurk shook his head and trudged to the alley, standing before the guns, between the men and the targets.

  “You three are going to be commanders,” he said, still shaking his head. “As we get more men, you’re going to be the ones who are supposed to be doing the teaching. You’re the leaders and you stink, sewer deep, cesspool wide. Stink. Stupid. Stink.”

  His face reddened.

  “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you. Unfair, right? I didn’t play by the rules you learned, did I?”

  “Sir,” said one of the three men. “You took an awful long time on the click and we relaxed and… ”

  “Oh,” said McGurk, interrupting the man, “I took an awful long time. They didn’t teach you that way in police academy training. And since you weren’t taught that way, you’re not going to learn any other way. Well, how many of you have ever set an ambush? Raise your hands.”

  One hand went up.

  “What ambush?” McGurk said.

  “It was these bootleggers… ”

  “How many’d you kill?”

  The man paused. “We wounded three.”

  “You ever set an ambush where you got ’em all? I mean the way we get them? Well, that’s what we’re talking about now. You’ve got to stop thinking like cops, with a 30,000 man department behind you. You’re not cops now.”

  “But we wanted to be better cops is why we joined,” said another man.

  “Forget it,” McGurk snarled. “You’re being trained for the ambush. And as we go on and things get stickier, I suggest you get it down pat, because if you don’t there may not be enough left of you for a mortician to patch up.” They were still unhappy, but their anger was slowly changing to respect.

  McGurk sensed this. Standing in front of them, he clicked the frog.
The hands went to the triggers and one machine gun almost fired. McGurk laughed loudly, and his laughter helped relax the men. Good.

  He walked out of the line of fire and before he reached his observation post clicked again. This time the firing range exploded, with a continuous roar of lead through the air.

  “Beautiful,” McGurk yelled without turning around. “Beautiful—”

  “How can you tell?” asked one of the men.

  “On an ambush, you listen for the timing. You don’t look,” said McGurk happily. “You sounded beautiful—”

  The sound of the firing and McGurk’s lesson was not beautiful to another man who was listening. The deputy chief had missed McGurk at headquarters and had come here to get him to sign some papers on manpower shifts in Brooklyn. He had been standing outside in the little hallway leading into the range and gym, and had recognized both the voice of McGurk and the machine gun fire. It was definitely a non-standard approach. He knew instantly that in the New York City police force a movement had been started like that in South America. He was a wise man as well as cunning, and he waited quietly, until he had heard enough, and then walked away with his papers still unsigned.

  The deputy chief knew there was only one man in the entire department whom he could trust with this information. He was the only man obsessed enough with civil liberties to anger the entire force—the commissioner. The deputy chief had forcefully disagreed with Commissioner O’Toole many times. Once he had threatened to resign and O’Toole had said:

  “Bear with me. If we survive the turmoil of the times with our constitutional liberties intact, it will be because men like you stood firm. We’re taking the hard road. Please. Trust me—”

  “O’Toole, I think you’re wrong. I think what happened to your daughter should have showed you you were wrong. But I’ll stick, O’Toole. Mainly because in St. Cecilia’s they taught me respect for authority. I’m offering this one up to the Virgin Mary because it isn’t worth anything to anyone else. Mark it. This is an act of faith in God, not in your competence, Commissioner.”

  And the deputy chief had followed, enduring the little everyday revolts of a department harassed by militants, abused by the press, condemned by citizens for lack of protection, and called “pigs” by those who never saw a bar of soap. The deputy chief had stuck even when his relatives condemned him for sticking. And he knew that if he suffered, O’Toole must have suffered ten… a hundred times worse. So if there was one person the deputy chief knew he could trust it was Police Commissioner O’Toole. He went directly from the old police range to O’Toole’s home, a big brick home in an urban-renewed Irish neighborhood.