Murder's Shield

by Warren Murphy

  “How long’ll they be out?”

  “There’s enough there to keep them for twelve hours. Don’t worry about them. They’re out of it.”

  A dry-as-dust Texas voice said, “Ah just hope they ain’t no more dogs.” He pronounced it doags and Remo wondered why Texans couldn’t talk English.

  “No more. Just the two of them,” the Southerner said. “Now come on. We got things to do.”

  As Remo watched, the two men boosted the third up alongside the twelve-foot-high stone wall. He dragged his way up to the top of the wall, then hung down by his fingertips and dropped heavily onto the other side. Remo could hear weeds snapping under his feet.

  He appeared again on the other side of the gate, fumbled for a few moments with the latches, then pulled the gate open and the other two men went in.

  What was good enough for them wasn’t good enough for him, Remo decided. He spurned the unlocked gate, and moved in one smooth motion up to the top of the wall. Without stopping or slowing, he did a gymnastic flip to the ground on the other side, and as he hit, retracted his legs, collapsing them against his hips, so there would be no pressure on the ground in case he should hit a twig or a branch.

  Absolute silence. Nothing.

  Only six feet away, he could see the men moving quietly but quickly through the darkness, along the side of a gravel path roadway leading up to the house. The house was an imitation Swiss chalet, stucco and beams and brick, and looked oddly out of place in the gentle hills of the New Jersey countryside. A light was on behind a large first-floor window that was probably in the living room.

  Remo moved through the black night, a few feet away from the men. They spoke in harsh whispers. The biggest one with the deepest Southern accent said “Tex. You go around the back. And be careful. There may be a broad or two around.”

  “What you all going to do?” the Texan asked.

  “We’ll go in the front some way.”

  They were about thirty yards from the house now. Suddenly the light on the first floor went off. Floodlights along the roof overhang of the house staggered on, bathing the yard in bright greenish-white light. A shot rang out. It kicked up gravel alongside the three men and they scattered, heading for the cover of nearby bushes.

  Remo watched them scrambling around clumsily and, shaking his head in disgust, he dropped back behind a tree. There were no more shots. He listened.

  “Rotten bastard,” the Southerner hissed, “the gate must have tripped an alarm.”

  “We better split,” Texas said. “He’s probably already called for help.”

  “We came here to do a job. And we’re going to do it. This shyster bastard just got off two cop killers. He deserves something for that.”

  “Yeah, but he don’t deserve no piece of my hide.”

  “He won’t get none. Now, here’s what we do,” the Southerner said.

  Remo had heard enough. He moved off to the left, through trees and bushes, silently and swiftly aiming for the back of the house. The rear of the house was dark, but Remo saw a small glint of light near a window, like a flash of metal inside. The woman they had mentioned. She must be waiting inside with a gun.

  Remo backed off toward the side of the house, and then charged the wall. On the run, his fingers and toes bit into the rough-hewn exterior stone, and with his legs, he pushed back, then up, until his body had turned from his own momentum, and his legs were moving through an open second-floor window. He was in a small spare bedroom. Before he moved out into the house, he glanced back through the window. The two men were still pinned down in bushes alongside the roadway. He saw their shadows. The third man was missing. That would be Texas, on his way to the house.

  Remo moved softly across the carpeted floor, out into the hallway. He heard nothing, and blinked rapidly, forcing blood brainward, willing his eyes to open wider, until finally he could see the interior of the house almost as if the lights were on.

  Remo was on a balcony, overlooking the first floor, which was all just one giant room. Down at the front window, sitting on the floor behind a heavy drape, was a short man, wearing a tufted brocade smoking jacket. He held a pistol in his hand.

  Remo leaned over the wooden balcony and looked toward the back of the first floor. Yes, there was a girl there. Standing up, which was a mistake, alongside the drapes, which was another mistake, holding a pistol in front of her so it could glint outside, which was another mistake. She was tall and young and brunette and naked, and her nakedness at least was no mistake.

  Remo thought of the cops outside, who wanted to kill these two people. They shouldn’t do that. But on the other hand, this lawyer had just gotten two cop-killers freed and he shouldn’t have done that. Six of one, half-dozen of the other. It didn’t take Remo long to decide. He had been assigned to jobs like it himself, in the past. If it had been right then, why wasn’t it right now? He compromised with himself. He would halve the difference; they couldn’t have the girl.

  Remo went over the balcony, down the twelve feet to the floor of the room, hitting noiselessly on the flagstone surface. He rolled off to the side, angry because his leather heel had touched with a slight click.

  “Did you hear anything?” the man at the front window hissed. He had an oily whine of a voice. Remo saw him turn toward the girl.

  “No,” she said. “When are your friends going to get here? I don’t like this at all.”

  “Shut up, bitch, and keep an eye on that window and if you see anybody, shoot. Only a few minutes more.”

  The man was first. Remo moved erect through the darkness of the room. Through the slit in the drapes, he could see the outside yard, brightly illuminated. The two cops were probably still pinned down, maybe waiting for the Texan to charge the rear. Remo hoped he’d take his time. One Alamo was enough.

  Then Remo was standing behind the lawyer. He looked down at him, and put out a hand, quietly, and grabbed a splice of nerves in the neck between his thumb and index finger. Without a movement toward Remo, without a sound, the lawyer crumpled forward. Remo held on until the weight of the lawyer’s body was heavy against his two fingers, then softly deposited him on the floor. The hell with it. If the cops wanted him, let the cops do it. Remo wasn’t about to do their work for them.

  And then the girl.

  “Emil,” she called softly. “I still don’t see anybody.”

  “Emil’s not with us any more,” Remo said softly. The girl turned, startled, trying to move the gun around to keep it in front of her body. Remo covered her gun hand with his, stopping the hammer from dropping and took the gun away.

  She opened her mouth to scream, and he covered her face with his other hand.

  “If you want to live, be quiet,” he said.

  He dropped the gun into his jacket pocket, then put her to sleep. He held her tight against him in an upright position, challenged his mind to remember the last time he’d had a woman, could not, and realized that this girl was nothing more to him than a one-hundred-and-ten-pound side of beef. Chiun would have been delighted.

  Remo glanced through the drape and caught a glint of light against a bush at the left rear corner of the house. That would be Texas with his gun drawn. He would be making his move any moment now against the left rear door, leading to a small kitchen area.

  Remo carried the girl, straight up like a store mannequin, to the right corner of the house, where a large window overlooked the grounds behind the house. A hundred yards away was a picket line of trees, then heavy woods. Softly, he opened the window and then waited.

  “Aiiiiyeee,” came the sound. Well, was that stupid or what? The silly-ass shitkicker was coming on with a rebel yell, Remo debated in his mind for a moment whether he should go over and smack Tex around for being silly. He decided not to.

  To hell with it. Stupidity was its own reward. Texas would get his someday, all on his own, not because of any cruel god or quirk of fate, but simply because he would have deeply, fully, and richly deserved it.

  Then
the Texan was trying to pound and shoot his way through the locked side door. He was still yelling like an uprooted banshee. The door resounded with the thumps of his shoulder and fist against it. The pistol shots clicked and whistled off the metal of the door lock.

  Remo sighed. Why did cops always think you could shoot off a door lock? It didn’t work that way. And this silly bastard would probably stand there all night, yelling and shooting and thumping, unless something was done.

  “Balls,” Remo said. He propped the girl up over a small table, and moved back through the darkness toward the door that still had not yielded to the policeman’s assault. Have to hurry. The other two nit-nats would probably be moving for the front door.

  He waited behind the door for another unsuccessful thump as Texas’ shoulder slammed against Georgia pine, then reached down and turned the lock. It would open now when the handle was turned. Eventually, even Jim Bowie would have to give the handle a try.

  Remo returned to the girl, slid open the window and moved up onto the sill. A moment later, he heard the door give. At almost the same time the front door gave way, and the downstairs was flooded with light from the searchlighted front yard.

  In came the police and out went Remo, onto the ground. He hurriedly pulled the girl’s unconscious body after him.

  He carried the girl to the bank of trees and gently placed her down behind a tree, then tapped her alongside the temple to make sure she would stay out. With luck, she’d wake up after the three policemen had gone; she would get her clothes, leave, and that would be that.

  Remo returned to the house. As he got to the back wall, the inside lights clicked on.

  “Whoooeee,” he heard the Texan yelp. “The sonofabitch done fainted on us.”

  “That’s right. He’s just out,” came the authoritative Southern voice. “Let’s finish him off and get out of here. You didn’t see any woman?”

  “No,” Texas answered. “Weren’t no one else in here. If there was, they’d a plunked me coming in the door.”

  Remo headed for the main gate. As he reached the wall, he heard a muffled shot behind him. So much for one dishonest lawyer. Then he was through the gate and running along the roadway back to his parked Cadillac, disgusted with the three policemen behind him.

  They just didn’t make cops like they used to.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  REMO SLIPPED INTO THE BUILDING on Twentieth Street and took the stairs three at a time. He hadn’t really pressed it driving back and if the three policemen were coming back, he had only a few minutes lead time.

  At the top of the second floor landing was a large metal double door, under the sign M.O.T.S. That would be Men of the Shield, the badge Captain Milken had displayed at his home.

  Remo pressed an ear to the door and heard nothing. He tried the handle. It was unlocked. Quickly, he slipped inside and pulled the door shut behind him. He was in a small foyer, still separated from the main room by wired glass fire doors.

  There was still no sound, but now he saw a sliver of light from an almost closed door across the room from him. Remo moved inside and found himself in a big open room that he recognized as a onetime gymnasium. Anchors for ropes were still mounted high up on the walls, and there were cleats in the floor where heavy gymnastic equipment had been bolted. At the far end of the room, he saw the vague outline of what at first appeared to be a man; then he saw it was a firing dummy.

  Remo crossed the room and peered through the slightly open door. A phone rang.

  Two rings and then a girl’s voice said, “Hello, M.O.T.S.” It was Commissioner O’Toole’s daughter. Remo recognized the soft, almost hesitant tones of her voice.

  “No,” she said, “Inspector McGurk isn’t here right at this moment. He’s gone for coffee but should be back any moment. Can I have him call you?”

  “Thank you,” she said after a pause. “I’ll tell him.”

  Remo peered around the door. The girl sat at the side of the room at a desk, a large accordion-folded computer print-out in front of her. She looked down the list, occasionally jotting down a few words on a yellow pad. On the other side of the room, there was another office. The door was open, and enough light from Janet O’Toole’s office seeped into the room to illuminate a nameplate on the desk:

  “William McGurk.”

  Remo’s ears picked up the sound of voices outside the door to the hallway. Someone was coming in. At that moment, Janet O’Toole rose and went to a filing cabinet behind her desk. Her back was to Remo and he slipped into her office, moved noiselessly across the linoleum tile and entered McGurk’s office.

  Behind him, he could hear McGurk’s powerful ho-ho-ho voice booming, echoing through the empty hall. He heard another voice answer, a softer Southern voice. It was the police officer who had led the hunting expedition.

  Remo looked quickly around the office. Nowhere to hide. Just a closet. He opened the closet door and a moment later was up on top of the shelf, his legs bent, his neck resting against the wall. He heard the two men enter McGurk’s office and then the door close.

  “Pretty girl,” the Southerner said.

  “Yes. O’Toole’s daughter. She’s a big help to me. Actually, the brains of the operation. Sit down, Brace, and tell me how it went.”

  It was too warm for coats. They wouldn’t be at the closet so Remo relaxed and let his weight down onto the closet shelf and listened as Inspector Ransom of Savannah, Georgia, explained how he had just assassinated a lawyer in New Jersey.

  “Funny thing,” Ransom said. “He pegged some shots at us and then… hah, he fainted.”

  “Fainted?”

  “Yup. He was out like a light when we finally got into the house. All cuddled over, still holding his gun.”

  “Did you?”

  “We took care of him. But there wasn’t anybody else there. No girl or anything.”

  “Well,” McGurk said, “that’s just too bad for him. Couldn’t even celebrate his own departure with a bang.”

  The two laughed together in the easy way of policemen who know everybody else in the world is crazy.

  “Good job, then,” McGurk said. “You be leaving soon?”

  “Right away. The men are checking us out of the hotel. I’m going to pick them up and get back to the airport. So… what’s next?”

  “Well, next week, we’re going to publicly announce the formation of the Men of the Shield. A new national police organization.”

  “Maybe I’m just stupid, Bill, but I don’t really understand where we’re going.”

  “Where we’re going, Brace, is we’re going to make this a national pressure group for policemen… to fight for law and order. My retirement papers should be back in a couple of days and I’ll be able to give it full time. You, me, the forty men we got on the inside with us, we’re all going to be the nucleus. But before long we’re going to get every policeman in the country in it. Can you imagine the power we’ll have?”

  “Be a helluva lot of votes if you ever decide to run for president,” the Southerner said, chuckling.

  McGurk paused before answering. “Don’t discount it, Brace. I might just do that.”

  “What about our… er, assignments?” the Southerner asked.

  “Well, for the time being we’re going to put all that on a shelf. We’re going to go public; we’re going to start solving crimes in public. Think about it for a minute: we’ve been getting rid of some bad apples, but we’ve also been exposing the public to a wave of violence. You’ve seen the headlines. More killings. Gangs at war. All that crap.

  “Well, soon, now, we’re going to have every cop in the country with us. Every policeman whose hands are tied by grafting politicians, by spineless brass… all of them pumping information into us. And we’re going to start tying up loose ends and we’re not going to be afraid to act. We’ll start filling the jails. We’ll be bigger than the FBI.”

  “And what if we bomb out?” the Southerner said.

  “Then, we’ll just have
more assignments,” McGurk said with a harsh laugh. “But we’re not going to bomb out. We’re going to start in with a big flurry. We’re going to announce a national war on crime, and guess what the first two cases are that we’re going to investigate?”

  There was no answer, and McGurk answered his own question.

  “That smut king out West and that gun-runner from Massachusetts. You asked before, why the clues? That’s why the clues. We’ve got the other half of the set and we’ll use them to solve the case. That’ll get the Men of the Shield off to a ripping start, and then watch our membership zoom. We’re going to be the biggest thing in the country.”

  “You sure you’re not running for president?”

  “If I did, would you vote for me?”

  “As often as they’d let me.”

  McGurk chuckled. “With that kind of backing, how could I refuse? Might be nice to have a cop in the White House anyway…just for four years to straighten this country out.”

  “Amen.”

  “At any rate,” McGurk said, his voice settling back down to business, “next week O’Toole’s going to send telegrams to all our members—you’ll get one—to get you all off duty and here for the kickoff. I’ll be seeing you then.”

  “Bill, it sounds like we gonna have us some fun.”

  “Yeah. And we gonna do our country some good,” McGurk said, imitating the Southerner’s accent.

  “Ah never woulda guessed,” the Southerner said, parodying himself, “that you was a kinsman. Now, Ah gotta buy you all a drink.”

  Remo heard the sound of a chair sliding back. They were getting up now, probably to go out. Then the door opened. He heard the girl’s voice say something softly.

  “What’s in the package, Janet?” McGurk boomed.

  “A birthday present for my dad. I was going to put it in the closet.”

  “Fine, fine. I’m going downstairs with my friend here to see him off. I’ll be back later. You’ll be all right?”

  “Yes, Inspector, thank you.” Her voice was tiny, almost apologetic.

  Remo heard the front door of McGurk’s office squeak. He heard heavy footsteps… the two men… moving across the rug toward the door. He heard the girl’s softer footsteps moving toward him. The closet door swung open and light splashed into his face. Her hand reached up to the shelf, holding a package wrapped in foil. Across the room, Remo could see McGurk and Ransom just going out the door. Janet O’Toole saw Remo. Her mouth opened to scream. Remo reached down and put his hand around her mouth, sealing off her shout, and then with both hands pulled her up onto the wooden shelf of the closet.