Murder's Shield

by Warren Murphy

  “Yessir.”

  And Remo was still not at home later that night when Smith called for the second time. He spoke instead to Chiun, probing, trying to find out if Remo might be dragging his feet on this assignment, still reluctant to go after policemen.

  But Chiun was, as always, unfathomable on the telephone, answering only “yes” or “no” and finally, in exasperation, Smith said:

  “Please give our friend a message.”

  “Yes,” Chiun said.

  “Tell him America is worth a life.”

  “Yes,” Chiun said and hung up. He knew that years before, Conn MacCleary, the man who had recruited Remo, had told Remo that before asking Remo to kill him to preserve CURE’s security.

  Foolish white men. Nothing was worth a life.

  There was only the purity of the art. All else was temporal and would too pass away. How foolish to worry about it.

  And when Remo finally returned home, hours later, Chiun had decided not to tell him Smith had called.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “TONIGHT’S THE NIGHT, REMO,” McGurk said.

  Remo lounged in the chair across from McGurk’s desk.

  “Tonight’s what night?”

  “The night we start making this a crime-free country.” McGurk began to peel the paper from a small filter-tipped cigar. “When we start putting the policeman back on top where he belongs.”

  In the outer office, a mimeograph machine kerchugged as Janet O’Toole ran off press releases. Remo tested his ability to hear the cigar cellophane crinkle despite the overwhelming racket of the mimeography. He looked away so his ears would not be aided by his eyes watching the cellophane.

  “Tonight, our forty-man core group is going to meet here at eight o’clock. I’ll introduce you as our new training director. That’ll only take a few minutes, and then we have a news conference slated for 9:30. All the press will be there, and we’ll announce the formation of the Men of the Shield.”

  “You’re not going to introduce me to the press?” Remo said.

  He heard McGurk begin to roll the cellophane between his fingers, turning it into a hard little tube. “No,” he said, “that’s about all we don’t need. No. Your involvement’s going to be our own secret.”

  “Good, that’s the way I like it,” Remo said. He slid his chair back slightly, ready to stand.

  “There’s just one thing,” McGurk said.

  Remo sighed. “All my life, there’s been just one thing.”

  “Yeah. Mine too. This one thing is important.” McGurk stood and walked to the door. He opened it, assured himself that Janet was still working at the mimeograph machine, her ears outgunned by the noise. He closed the door tightly and returned to sit on the edge of the desk near Remo’s feet.

  “It’s O’Toole,” he said.

  “What’s with him?” Remo asked.

  “He’s ready to blow the whistle.”

  “Him? What the hell can he blow the whistle about?”

  “I guess it’s time to level with you, Remo,” McGurk said. “This whole thing… the special teams… the Men of the Shield… the whole thing, it was all O’Toole’s idea. “

  “O’Toole? That psalm-singing liberal twit?”

  “None other,” McGurk said. “And now, like liberals always do, he’s getting cold feet. He’s told me if I don’t cancel tonight, he’ll expose the whole thing himself.”

  Remo nodded. That explained a lot of things, such as why McGurk, even though still a policeman, seemed to have all the time he needed to work on the Men of the Shield.

  But O’Toole? Remo shook his head. “He’ll never blow the whistle,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because it requires him to do something. Liberals are no good at that. They’re good at talking, zero at doing.”

  “You’re probably right, but we can’t afford to take the chance. So… ”

  “So?”

  “So you’ve got your first job.”

  “Quite a job,” Remo said.

  “Nothing you can’t handle.”

  “When and where?”

  McGurk went back behind his desk. He picked up the tube of cigar cellophane and began to fold it neatly into quarters.

  “O’Toole’s a creature of habit. Tonight, he always eats dinner at his home with Janet. Get him there. Dinner time. I’ve got the key to the place for you.”

  “And what about the girl?”

  “I’ll keep her here working late. She won’t be around to bother you.”

  Remo thought a minute. “Okay,” he said. “One last thing.”

  “Yeah?”

  Remo rubbed his fingers together. “Cash.”

  “What’s your going rate for this kind of a job?”

  “For a police commissioner? Fifty big ones.”

  “You got it.”

  “In advance,” Remo said.

  “You got that too. “

  McGurk opened the safe on the other side of the room and took out a metal strongbox of money. He counted out fifty thousand and gave it to Remo who slid it inside his jacket pocket. “Another thing, McGurk. Why me? Why not one of your teams?”

  “I want it done by one man. No teams. No involvements. And besides, it’s a tough assignment to give a police team… to get another cop.”

  Remo nodded. He knew the feeling. It was hard to kill another cop. He stood up to leave. “Anything else?” he asked.

  McGurk shook his head. He gave Remo a key and O’Toole’s address. “Good luck,” he offered.

  “Luck has nothing to do with it.”

  McGurk watched him leave, then struck a match and lit his small cigar. He touched the match to the folded cellophane on the desk and watched it brown, bubble, and then burst into flame.

  Outside, Remo realized that McGurk had not told him what he should do after the O’Toole hit. Well, no matter. He’d be back here for the eight o’clock meeting. It wouldn’t do for the new training director not to show. He smiled appreciatively at Janet’s mini-clad behind as he walked through the office, but she did not see or hear him leave.

  There were three hours left before Remo had to go to O’Toole’s house and he drove slowly back to his own home in the beige Fleetwood, thinking.

  All along, through this case, he had been reluctant to go up against cops. But yet, when McGurk had told him to hit O’Toole, Remo had not even hesitated. But why? O’Toole was a cop too.

  C’mon, Remo, is it because he’s a liberal, and you like your cops to be straight, hard-line lapel-pinners?

  No, it’s not. I’m doing my job. O’Toole’s the man behind this, and my job is to eliminate.

  You don’t really believe that, Remo. Stop trying to snow yourself. You don’t even know for sure that O’Toole has anything to do with it. All you’ve got is McGurk’s word, and that and twenty cents’ll buy you a beer.

  Remo argued with himself all the way to his home. He continued the argument while lying on the couch and Chiun watched him cautiously from the kitchen doorway.

  It was moving on into late afternoon when Remo decided. He would go on the O’Toole job. But before he did anything, he would make sure for himself whether or not O’Toole was really the brains behind the Men of the Shield. If he wasn’t, he lived. If he was, he died. That was the way it would be.

  When Remo got up to leave, he was surprised to see that Chiun had changed from his white robe into a green garment of heavy brocade.

  “Going somewhere?”

  “Yes,” Chiun said. “With you.”

  “There’s no need for that,” Remo said.

  “All day long,” Chiun said, “I stay in this house, cooking, cleaning, with no enjoyment, with no variety, while you are out having fun, teaching fools to be wonderful.” His tone was petulant and whining.

  “What’s the matter with you, Chiun?”

  “There is nothing the matter with the Master that will not be cured by getting out into the fresh air. Oh, to see the sky again, to feel the
grass under my feet.”

  “There isn’t any grass in this city. And no one’s seen the sky for seven years.”

  “Enough of this bickering. I am going.”

  “All right, all right. But you stay in the car,” Remo warned.

  “Shall I bring a rope so you can tie me to the steering wheel?”

  “No nonsense. You stay in the car.”

  And stay in the car Chiun did as Remo let himself into O’Toole’s modest brick house with the key McGurk had given him.

  Remo sat in the living room and watched the darkness settle over New York. Out there in the city were thousands of criminals, thousands who would hurt and rob and maim and kill. Thousands, of whom only a fraction were ever caught and punished by the law. What made it so wrong if the police helped the law along? It was only what Remo himself did. Did he have a special permit because he was sanctioned by a higher agency of government? Was it a question of rank having its privileges, killing being one of them?

  He looked around the room, at the mantel crowded with trophies, under a wall papered with plaques, the remnants of O’Toole’s lifetime in police work.

  No, he told himself. Remo and O’Toole were different. When Remo was assigned a job, it was that—a job. Not a vendetta, not the start of an unbroken string of assaults and killings. Just a job. But with the Men of the Shield, one killing must lead to another, one simple step following another simple step. It started out killing criminals. It graduated to a congressman. And now Remo was here, assigned by one cop to kill another cop.

  Once the killing started, where was it checked? Who was to decide? The man with the most guns? Must it someday come to every man for himself, to the building of arsenals and armies? And he realized something that seemed forever to escape the changers of society: when the law was overturned, the land would be ruled by power. The rich and the strong and the guileful would survive, and the ones who would suffer most would be the poor and the weak, the very ones who screamed most for the system to be overthrown.

  But the system must be preserved. And if it was entrusted to Remo Williams to preserve it, well, that was the biz, sweetheart.

  Darkness was spreading when Remo heard the front door open, and then the soft footsteps padding down the hallway rug, and O’Toole entered the living room.

  Remo stood up and said, “Good evening, O’Toole. I’ve come to kill you.”

  O’Toole looked at him in mild surprise, finally placed his face, and said: “The Mafia?”

  “No. McGurk.”

  “That’s what I would have guessed,” O’Toole said. “It was only a matter of time.”

  “Once the killing starts,” Remo said.

  “Who’s to finish it?”

  “I’m afraid I am,” Remo said. “You know why, don’t you?”

  “I do,” O’Toole said. “Do you?”

  “I think so. Because you’re dangerous. A few more like you and this country won’t survive. “

  “That’s the right reason,” O’Toole said. “But it’s not why you’re here. You’re here because McGurk sent you and McGurk sent you because I’m the only one that stands in the way of his drive to political power. “

  “Come on,” Remo said. “Political power. What’s his platform? Bullets, not bullshit?”

  “When he makes the Men of the Shield a pack of nationwide vigilantes… when he has every cop in America signed up… every police buff, every nit-nat flag waver, every right-wing racist, when he’s got them all under the banner of that clenched fist, then he’s got political power.”

  “He’ll never see that day,” Remo said.

  “Will you stop him?”

  “I’ll stop him.”

  His eyes were locked on O’Toole who still stood just inside the doorway, talking softly with Remo. The police commissioner nodded, then said, “One thing.”

  “Name it.”

  “Can you make it look like the mob did it? If anyone ever learns about killer cops, it could destroy law enforcement in this country.”

  “I’ll try,” Remo said.

  “For some reason, I trust you,” O’Toole said. Remo moved slightly, instinctively, as O’Toole’s hand went to his jacket pocket. He raised his hand. “Just a paper,” he said, pulling out an envelope. “It’s all in there. I’d rather go out as a cop killed by the enemies of the law, but if you need it, use it. It’s in my handwriting. There’ll be no argument about its authenticity.”

  He walked to the bar and poured himself a drink. “It started so simply,” he said, draining the glass of Scotch. “Just getting the men who got my daughter. It was so simple at the start.”

  “It always is,” Remo said. “It always starts simple. All tragedies do.”

  And then, because there was nothing else to say, Remo killed O’Toole in his living room, killed him gently and quickly, and carefully placed his body on the living room rug.

  He sat back down in a chair and in the dying light opened the envelope O’Toole had given him. It was filled with ten sheets of paper, typed single spaced, and it gave names and places and dates. It told how he and McGurk had planned the national assassination squads; how they had recruited men around the country from among their personal friends in police work; it told of Congressman Duffy’s death; of McGurk’s plan to form the Men of the Shield; of McGurk’s growing political lust and how it finally became apparent to O’Toole that McGurk figured himself to be the man on the white horse that America traditionally looked for. And it told how O’Toole had tried to stop it but had lost control.

  Each page was signed and the cover sheet was written by hand. As he read it, Remo realized why O’Toole had faced death so calmly. The note was a suicide note; he had planned to take his own life.

  Remo read the note twice, feeling through the words O’Toole’s anguish and pain. When he finished the second time, his eyes were wet.

  O’Toole had lived like a shit, Remo thought. But he had died like a man. And that was more than most men got. It was something.

  It was a better death than McGurk would have. In another forty-five minutes, McGurk would be meeting with his cadre of killer cops. Well, they would just have to stay out of it. Remo hoped they would.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  REMO MOVED QUICKLY. With luck, he could get to the gym on Twentieth Street before the meeting started. Finish McGurk. End the Men of the Shield before they ever had a chance to start.

  His preoccupation overwhelmed his senses and then he realized he was not alone.

  They had moved in behind Remo as he left O’Toole’s house and one called: “Bednick.” Remo turned. There were three of them. Obviously policemen in plain clothes. They wore their occupation like banners.

  He was in trouble. He knew they would not have moved in behind him unless they had people cutting off his exit at the gate. He glanced over his shoulder. There were three more. Each carried a weapon, professionally, held back close to the hip. Six cops sent to kill him. He had been played for a sucker by McGurk, and had fallen into the trap.

  “Bednick?” one of the men near the house said again.

  “Who wants to know?” Remo said. He moved closer to the house, hoping to draw the three men behind him up closer, close enough to work by hand.

  “We want to know,” the cop said. “The Men of the Shield.”

  “Sorry, pal, I gave at the office,” Remo said.

  He took another step forward and heard the shuffling behind him as the line moved up closer to him.

  “McGurk said you had to die.”

  “McGurk. You know he’s using you?”

  The cop laughed.

  “And we’re wasting you,” he said. Then he was pulling back the hammer on his pistol. He raised his hand to eye level, drew dead aim on Remo, and then he was falling to the ground, as out of the night, with a chilling shriek, came Chiun, dropping down onto the men from above. He landed among the three men and Remo took advantage of the moment of shock to move backwards into the bodies of the three behind h
im. He worked left and right, and behind him he could hear the terrible sound of Chiun’s blows, like whip cracks, and he knew he could save none of those men. But there was one still alive near Remo. He gasped as Remo leaned on his throat. His gun had fallen from his hand and lay out of reach.

  “Quick,” Remo said. “Were you supposed to report back to McGurk?”

  “Yeah.”

  “To tell him you got me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How?”

  “Phone him at his office. Let the phone ring two times and then hang up.”

  “Thanks, pal,” Remo said. “You won’t believe it but together, you and me, we’re going to save the police profession in this country.”

  “You’re right, Bednick, I don’t believe it.”

  “That’s the biz, sweetheart,” Remo said, and then put him to sleep forever.

  He stood up and looked at Chiun who stood silently, porcelain delicate, among the bodies strewn around the walkway.

  “Taking inventory?” Remo asked.

  “Yes. Eight idiots gone. Remaining: the Master of Sinanju and one more idiot. You.”

  “No more, Chiun. Come on, we’ve got an appointment.”

  As they walked down the drive, Remo asked, “You saw them coming and you climbed the roof, right?”

  Chiun snarled at him. “Do you think the Master of Sinanju climbs roofs like a chimney sweep? I sensed their presence. And I entered among them and I swooped to the right and I swooped to the left; like the wind on fire I moved among them, and when the Master was done, he was alone with death. He had brought death out of the night sky onto the evil men.”

  “In other words, you jumped on them from the roof.”

  “From the roof,” Chiun agreed.

  Later, in the car, Remo told Chiun that he had been right. “But I’m over it now. No more good guy, bad guy for me.”

  “I am happy that you have found the remnants of your reason. Doctor Smith sent a message to you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. He said America is worth a life.”

  “When’d he call?”

  “I don’t remember,” Chiun said. “I am not your Kelly girl.”

  Remo chuckled. “Thanks for not telling me until I was ready.”