Murder's Shield

by Warren Murphy

  The office door closed.

  Remo said, “I’ll do anything if you don’t tell on me,” and then began to sob softly.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  NO ONE FEARS A WEEPING MAN. So Remo made real tears come and as he did he was able to slowly release his hand from Janet O’Toole’s mouth, and she didn’t even realize it. Nor, for that matter, did she seem to realize that she was lying next to him on the top shelf of an office closet.

  “I’m so ashamed,” he said tearfully.

  “What are you doing here? You’re that Mr. Bednick, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” he said. Remo Bednick. I came to look at you. But they almost caught me while I was peeking and I hid up here so they wouldn’t see me and then you caught me and I’m so embarrassed and ashamed.”

  “But that’s so silly, Remo. Why did you want to see me?”

  Careful now, Remo, not too fast. “I don’t know,” he said. I just wanted to.”

  “Well, why didn’t you just come in the front door and say hello?”

  “I was afraid you’d laugh at me,” Remo sniffled.

  You are the rotten bastard to end all rotten bastards, Remo told himself. Chiun was right, you lack character. He ignored the tiny voice of self-rebuke. He noticed Janet was wearing another low-cut blouse and lying down, her head on his arm, the fullness of her breasts blossomed against the elastic of the blouse.

  “Why should I laugh at you?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Girls always do. Because I’m shy I guess, and I’m afraid of women.”

  “When you were in my office that day, Inspector McGurk came out, and he sort of hinted that you weren’t afraid of anything.”

  “But that’s men. I’m not afraid of men. Only women. Ever since I was a little boy.” Her body touched his along its full length. The shelf of the closet was damned uncomfortable, but he did not want to move, did not want to remind her they were in the top of a closet. If he had to cure her, he’d do it here. Anything for mental health.

  He sobbed again. He wished the closet door was closed, shutting out the light; so if he grinned, she would not see his face.

  “Oh, you poor thing,” she said. “Now, don’t cry.” She put her left hand up to the side of his face to pat it tenderly.

  His left arm was under her neck. He held it there, waiting for her weight to eventually bring her neck down against it. There. She was touching his hand with her neck. His fingers found just the right place. Softly he kneaded the nerves in her neck, under and behind the jawbone, delicately, almost so that she would not feel the touch.

  “You mustn’t be afraid of women,” she said softly. “They won’t hurt you.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t hurt me,” Remo said. “That’s why I sneaked up here to see you.” His fingers were moving swiftly now on her neck, as if typing tapping typewriter keys.

  “No, I would never hurt you, Remo,” she said. “Not me. Not you.”

  She put her face closer to his. He slowed the sobbing. No point in getting ridiculous about it. She continued to pat his face and now she let her fingertips glide down the side of his face from temple to jaw, then back to temple, and did it all over again. The nerves in her neck were working.

  “Do you feel better now, Remo?” she asked.

  “I’m glad you’re so understanding,” he said,

  “I do understand,” she said. “I understand you and your problem too. Oooohhh. I just think you’ve met the wrong kind of women before. Women who expected you to be something you’re not…who wanted you to push them around and demanded more from you than you were able to give.” He had reached his right hand over her hip now and was touching the flesh of her back through the thin blouse.

  He let her keep talking. “But I’m not that kind of girl,” she said. “No man is going to push me around. Not any more.”

  She paused. Remo said,”I knew you’d understand.”

  “Understand? Of course, I understand. All you’ve needed all your life is a little control. Someone to guide you. Ooooohhhh.” He was working both her neck and her back now. She moved her body closer to his on the shelf.

  “I knew there was something wrong with you when I first saw you,” she said. “You blushed and looked away when you spoke to me. I knew then that you needed a little discipline. Ooooooh. Open your belt.”

  He hoped McGurk would be kept busy downstairs. He removed his right hand from her back and opened his belt buckle.

  “I’m tired of men who try to be bossy,” she said, her voice no longer soft and pleading. “Women should rule the world.”

  “I’ve always known it,” he said.

  She opened his zipper. He kneaded her neck. “Ooooohhhh,” she said. “Woman is the more important of the sexes. We are the ones who call the shots.” He returned his hand to the small of her back. “Uuuummmmmm,” she said. “Yes, women should be masters, not mistresses. Do you agree? Say you agree.”

  “I agree,” Remo said,“I agree.”

  Then she was pulling up her long shirt and rolling over on top of Remo. “Even the position,” she said. “Even in the position, the woman should be topmost.”

  “Oh, please don’t talk like that,” Remo said. “You frighten me.”

  She was on top of him now and both his hands were free and he worked both sides of her neck.

  “I’ll talk any way I wish and the sooner you realize it the better,” she said sharply. “Do you understand?”

  “Yes, I understand.” Enough. He gave the nerves in her neck short, brutal final twists, and suddenly, uncontrollably, she was on him, around him, smothering him, her mouth on his, her body swallowing him, her head softly thumping against the ceiling of the closet as she rocked up and down, her feet kicking hats onto the floor. Oooooohhh. Uuuummmmm. Do as I say, not as I do. Up. Up and in. Over and out. No, not over and out. Up and in. More and More. Down with rape and up with humping. Up, up and away. Fly with me. Fly with meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.”

  Then she stopped and lay still, her head on Remo’s chest. He heaved his chest a little as if he were still sobbing.

  “No tears now,” she lectured. “What we’ve just experienced is normal and healthy. Right? Right. Say it. It’s normal and healthy.”

  “It’s normal and healthy,” Remo said.

  “You’d better believe it,” she said. “And it’s fucking great too.”

  “Should I say that too?” Remo asked.

  “No, that’s all right,” she said.

  “Good,” Remo said. “It’s never been like this before,” he added truthfully, after trying to remember if he’d ever gotten laid before in a closet.

  Oh, yeah, there had been once in a closet, but not on a shelf. A shelf would be a separate category, wouldn’t it? I mean, you couldn’t just say a closet, and mean any kind of closet or anywhere in a closet. He remembered the other time was a walk-in closet with a couch. Now, that’s not even like a closet. More like a room. But a shelf, man, was a shelf. It really belonged in the shelf category, not in the closet category. So this, therefore, was a new experience. Right? Say right, Remo. Right. He was still unconvinced. He would ask Chiun when he went home.

  “It may never have been like that before,” Janet O’Toole said to Remo, “but it will be like that again if you just do as I say.”

  “I will. I will.”

  “All right. Don’t forget it. And Remo, I’m really glad that I was able to help you get over your problem.”

  “So am I.”

  “But now we have to get out of here before anyone returns.”

  Remo had been thinking that very thing. They dismounted from the closet, and moments later when McGurk returned from downstairs, Janet was at her desk again and Remo was perched on the edge of it, looking at her lovingly, shyly.

  “Bednick,” McGurk said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was just passing by,” Remo said, standing up and turning to face him. “Thought I’d drop in.” He winked at Janet.

  “You’ve g
ot no business here?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then clear out. I have to put up with your kind at headquarters. But I don’t have to do it here.”

  Remo shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He leaned over to Janet and McGurk, for the first time, noticed the wrinkled front of her blouse, the slightly tousled look of her ash-blonde hair. “See you?” Remo asked her.

  “Don’t call me. I’ll call you,” she said softly, but sternly. “Maybe.”

  Remo blushed, only for her, then turned and walked quickly past McGurk, out into the hall through the large gym room, and into the hall leading downstairs. McGurk watched him go.

  “I don’t trust that one,” he said to Janet. “There’s something animal about him. The way he moves. It’s like watching a tiger in a zoo who’s just waiting for the zookeeper to open the door and throw in food.”

  Janet O’Toole giggled. “A tiger?” she said. She giggled again. “More like a pussycat, I’d say.” McGurk turned and his eyes met hers. For the first time he could remember, she did not look away.

  · · ·

  Smith must have him wired, Remo thought. It seemed every time he walked in the door, two minutes later Smith was on the telephone.

  “Well?” came the acerbic voice.

  “Well, what?”

  “Have you anything to report? There were a number of incidents yesterday, in case you hadn’t noticed, and our friend in Washington is worried.”

  “He’s always worried,” Remo said. “Don’t you be like him.”

  “Things are very grave,” Smith said.

  “Even graver now,” Remo said. “There was another one tonight.”

  “And you couldn’t stop it?”

  “Stop it? I helped. I think it was a great idea. Just imagine. Forty cops, running around this country, putting out the garbage for all of us. Like wow, man. That’s New York talk, Smitty.”

  “Did you say forty policemen?”

  “Forty.”

  “That’s impossible,” Smith said.

  “Not impossible. That’s what there are.”

  “It can’t be. There are too many missions, too many different places across the country. How could they do all that with only forty men?” He paused. “Perhaps if they had a computer… working out schedules and travel arrangements et cetera? Maybe. Logistically, it’s brilliant.” Smith was now very much the bureaucrat, impressed by another bureaucrat who had found a new and better way.

  “Like that, huh?” Remo said.

  “Give credit where it’s due. Even to the enemy,” Smith said. “Is McGurk the leader?”

  “I’m not sure yet. And don’t call him the enemy. I think he’s doing a necessary job.”

  “And I wonder, Remo, if perhaps you’re not too close to these men? Maybe you’re laying down on the job?”

  “Only in closets,” Remo said and hung up, angry because Smith had said what Remo had been trying not to think. That he was moving slowly because the cops and he belonged to the same fraternities of heartbreak and frustration.

  He looked at the telephone.

  “You worry, my son?” Chiun said from his position on the floor in front of the couch.

  “It is nothing,” Remo said.

  “No, it is something,” Chiun said. “It is more of your good guys and bad guys. You must cleanse your brain of such nonsense.”

  “I’ll work on it.”

  “Good.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE RUFFLED BLOUSE OF JANET O’Toole was on McGurk’s mind all night. He tossed in bed thinking about it. He had no doubt that Remo Bednick had somehow bedded Janet, right under his nose. She had the happy look of the well-laid, and the blouse was just another link in the chain of evidence.

  More than crooked lawyers, more than soft judges, more than Mafia thugs, this outraged McGurk. He had always felt sorry for the girl, ever since he’d learned her sad story. And then, somehow, he knew he had fallen in love with her. Every time he had looked at her he winced inwardly, thinking of that fresh young beauty with so much capacity for love going to waste. But now, wasting that love on Remo Bednick, a mob creep, well, that was outrageous.

  But that she had, he had no doubt.

  After Remo had left the office, McGurk had demanded of her, “What were you two doing up here?”

  The old Janet would have rainbowed through pink and purple and vermilion; she would have stuttered, stammered, looked away and finally run from the room in tears. But this Janet looked at McGurk coolly, met his eyes straight on, and said, “I’d break your heart if I told you.”

  “Try me,” McGurk said.

  “Too late. I already tried him.”

  And then she wouldn’t talk any more. She dismissed him as if he were a tardy schoolboy and she an angry teacher, and that infuriated him more.

  The fury was now full upon him as he lay in bed. The first time he had met Remo Bednick, he had picked out a role for him. Bednick would be one of the men framed for the two killings that the Men of the Shield would solve first—the two murders for which the evidence reposed in McGurk’s safe.

  But now he put that idea behind him. He made up his mind on what he would do and once he had made up his mind, he put the problem aside and fell immediately asleep. No need to stay awake, to toss or turn. The decision was made: Remo Bednick would die. And McGurk would permit no errors. He would lead this mission himself.

  If he had had any second thoughts, they were dispelled the next morning when he arrived at his daytime office in city police headquarters.

  With her long skirts and peasant blouses, Janet had become like a piece of furniture. But who was this leaning over the desk, near the computer console? This girl wore a micro-mini of shocking pink, and as she leaned over away from him, the skirt rode up over her hips so that her panties were visible, displaying not only long legs and creamy white thighs, but buttocks clad in pink nylon. When she turned around he saw that she wore a thin pink jersey blouse under which she wore no bra. Her firm young jugs bounced, from no more impetus than her smile, as Janet O’Toole looked at him, and said “Good morning, Bill. Why is your mouth hanging open?”

  Remo Bednick would pay for it.

  Without a word, McGurk walked past her and into his office and called three men in different city precincts, and told them to meet him after their day tours, at his Men of the Shield office.

  Before going to M.O.T.S. in the afternoon, he drove to the house in Queens where Remo Bednick lived. The whole thing would be simple and straightforward, and he looked forward to leading the mission. He told the men he would lead it when they arrived at his office shortly after five.

  “When?” one of them asked. He was a tall police sergeant named Kowalchyk. His face was stolid.

  “Right now,” McGurk said.

  “I don’t like it,” Kowalchyk said.”The whole idea was never do a job in your own city. And here four of us are going out on this one. Why?”

  “Because we don’t have enough time to wait to get a team in. This guy has found out about us. He can blow the whistle unless we move fast,” McGurk lied. He stared blandly at Kowalchyk, eyeballing him until the sergeant looked down at his feet.

  “Okay,” McGurk said, “any more questions?”

  No one answered.

  “All right. We’ll do it the way we learned at the firing range. Cross fire, on the click. No mistakes. Take a look at this layout I’ve drawn up,” he said, and reached behind him for a piece of paper on which he had sketched the outlines of Remo Bednick’s house in Queens.

  · · ·

  Chiun had insisted upon cooking duck. Remo hated duck so he sulked. He sat in the living room watching television, trying to drown out Chiun who was singing in the kitchen.

  “Duck contains all the nutrients necessary for life. White American fool does not like duck. Is any further proof necessary of its health-giving qualities? White American fool will be dead at sixty-five. Master of Sinanju will live forever. Why? Because he eats duck. White Amer
ican fool prefers hamburgers. Here I am, world. White American fool. Quick. Stuff me with hamburgers. Give me mono-mono gluto-gluto. Chemicals. Poisons. With mustard and ketchup on a seeded roll. Plastic seeds. I like plastic seeds. I like chemicals. I like poisons. But I hate duck. Oh, how smart is white American. How clever. Master of Sinanju should feel honored to know him.”

  And so he rattled on, and Remo tuned him out and tuned in Harry Reasoner who was just as funny and not nearly so arrogant.

  The news had just gone off and Remo had turned off the television when Chiun appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, his white robe swirling about him.

  “Dinner is served, Master,” he said.

  “Thank you,” Remo said. “I believe I’ll have some brandy with my duck. A full quart. Something cheap and unobtrusive.”

  “Oh, yes,” Chiun said. “Brandy would be very good. It has many additional poisons that one does not get in hamburgers. May I suggest also that you try motor oil after you finish eating?”

  “We won’t have any motor oil left,” Remo said. “Didn’t you use it to cook the duck?”

  “You are insolent,” Chiun said. “The recipe has been in my family for hundreds of years.”

  “No wonder all of you have become assassins. The heartburn theory of criminal behavior. That’s why the Italians have the Mafia. It’s all those peppers they eat.”

  Chiun jumped up and down like an angry child.

  “Your insolence is beyond measure.”

  “Your duck is beyond description,” Remo said, and then, unable to keep a straight face any longer, he laughed out loud.

  Chiun’s anger faded with the laughter. “Oh, you make sport of the Master of Sinanju. It is wonderful to be so clever.”