Death Check

by Warren Murphy

  “It still doesn’t sound like it’s in my line.”

  Smith looked up into Remo’s placid brown eyes. “Don’t misunderstand. Brewster Forum is very, very important.”

  He leaned forward conspiratorially. “A plan to conquer the world. You’ll see on a transcript that’s with the photos. My superior doesn’t want that work stopped. But if it’s going to be stopped, we’ll do the stopping. That’s you. If you can find out who’s responsible for the sex photos, well and good. If you can straighten out that mess without harm to the Forum’s work, even better. But your mission is to set up the deaths of every one of the top staff at Brewster Forum, either as a group or individually, on a one-hour call if necessary. No misses. Death as an absolute certainty.”

  Remo interrupted. “I read something like this once. We’re going to destroy them in order to save them?”

  “Don’t get cute,” Smith said. “Whatever it is they’re working on there, my superior is worried about an enemy getting his hands on it. Someone might be planning to blackmail our government. That could explain those photos. It would make them worth a bundle. But other agencies are planning to deal with the photos. We just want to be ready to move in case they come up empty, and the Forum is endangered.”

  “How much time do I have?”

  “We don’t know. We think we bought some time because McCarthy, he was the security director, came up with the negatives. If those photos are really tied in with this, it might mean they have to all be done over. That would have to take a while. By the way… ”

  “I know what ‘by the way’ means.”

  “By the way. When you get your package from the man on the ferry, he will probably want to talk to you. Ask you about your job. You might even be attacked. If you are, you know what to do.”

  “Yes, I know what to do. I also know that you have a nasty little habit of cleaning house every time you give me a go-ahead. Who is the guy?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Maybe I’ll just take the package.”

  “Maybe you will. When you see him, mention that you intend to take up photography because you know you could take great pictures of New York’s skyline.”

  “Right. Now let me give you a ‘by the way.’ I’m just taking the package.”

  “You could do us a lot of good.”

  Remo leaned back and smiled, letting his brown eyes roam from the voluptuous figure, glistening and writhing in rhythm on the floor, to the very stiff, unusually tense for a non-budget month Harold W. Smith, operational head of CURE.

  “Put a dollar in her bra.”

  “What?” said Smith.

  “Put a dollar in her bra.”

  “I will not.”

  “You will.”

  “You mean to tell me that other things depend upon your gratification from embarrassing me?”

  “By the way, I don’t know.” Remo grinned.

  “All right. A dollar, you said.”

  Remo watched Smith take a dollar from his wallet and, holding it like a live bug, extend it out over the dance floor. The woman, whose milky skin glistened from perspiration, shimmy shouldered over beneath the dollar and Smith dropped it, then turned quickly back to the table pretending he had never been involved in anything so sordid. The bill lay on the throbbing pink-white mountains.

  “Stuff it in.”

  “I will not.”

  “All right. Goodbye.”

  “All right.”

  “Five dollars.”

  “Five. Now see here… ”

  “Five.”

  “All right. Five. You just love to spend money.”

  Smith crinkled a five-dollar bill in his hands, and with a get-it-over-fast speed leaned down to the woman who came up to meet his money with her bosom. He did not see his companion also reach forward with money, and under the cover of this motion slip a hand behind the jeweled breast cups and snap the metal holding band, flipping the bra, cups and all around Smith’s hand.

  The breasts ballooned out. Smith gasped. The crowd cheered. The woman swung at Smith’s head, reaching for her bra.

  “We could lose our license, you dumb fuck,” she screamed, scoring again on the forehead of one of the most powerful men in the country, who desperately tried to hold on his glasses while trying to leave the table.

  And the man known as Remo Pelham floated to the door, telling everyone he passed, “You never know by the looks. You never know. Shocking what these degenerates will do.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE PACKAGE BEARER MIGHT VERY WELL have lived out the afternoon. He might even have saved his colleague’s lives. Certainly there was no danger from the man who mentioned his love for photography and New York City skylines.

  But the man with the gray package said something. With a sneer, he said, “We know what’s in the water package. And we know we can’t open it. So you’re going to open it for us. Do you know why you’re going to open it for us?”

  “No,” said Remo, lying. He had seen the two big men, one black and the other white, pretending to lounge on the seats behind them. “Beautiful skyline, don’t you think?” He breathed deeply of the almost breathable air between Staten Island and New York City.

  “You are going to open the package because you want to save your life. Look behind you.”

  “And leave the beauty of the gulls and the twin towers of the trade center, the Empire State Building? My little island in the sun?”

  Remo did a little semi-pushup against the second deck railing of the ferry and watched the white churning swirls bubble out back toward Manhattan. Then he felt two strong arms on each of his arms. He looked again at the man with the gray package and the sneer and said:

  “You’re not going to believe this. But I’ll give you all a chance to live.”

  The man did not believe this. The man believed he was talking to a prankster.

  So the man who cared about photography went with the large men and the man with the package to a paint store on Staten Island. The store was closed that day, but it was opened for them by a fat man. With a gun.

  The man who loved photography tried. He said: “Look. You’re just a messenger. You give the package to me. I’m just a messenger. I give it to someone else. Why should we fight over it?”

  The man with the package sneered again. “You’re wrong all around. I’m not just your messenger. He met with an accident. You are not just a messenger. I was informed otherwise. It seems you lose.”

  “Last chance to reconsider,” Remo said.

  “Sorry,” said the other. “We’ll have to risk it.”

  Remo registered the moves of his four adversaries. The two big men were obviously in condition; he had felt how light they were on their feet when they walked him off the ferry. The man with the package had been in condition once. The short man who had opened the door was very fat and had never been in condition. But he made up for it. He carried a snub-nosed revolver. A snub-nosed revolver is good for one thing. Close work. What it loses in accuracy, it gains in compactness. It’s not easy to reach out, grab the barrel and the cylinder, and smother the falling hammer, all in one motion.

  The two big men stayed behind Remo as the man put the gray package down on the counter. The fat man stayed near the shuttered door.

  “Well,” said the man who had held the package.

  “This is the package and not an imitation?”

  “This is the package.”

  “If it’s an imitation, I can get hurt.”

  “It is the package.”

  “These things tend to explode.”

  “Open it.”

  Remo carefully removed the clear tape from the tips of the gray package. Through the holes in the corners protruded four knots of thin red string. The knots were symmetrical. As Remo looked at them, deeply, with his mind free, he could almost feel the inner harmony of the man who had tied them. It was the real package. Chiun had tied the knots.

  “Something wrong, Pelham?”
>
  “How did you know my name was Pelham?”

  “Untie the package.”

  “How did you know my name was Pelham?”

  “Untie the package and I’ll tell you.”

  “I think you intend to kill me.”

  The man sneered again. “That’s right. But we can kill you quickly. Decently. Or we can kill you slowly and painfully. Like your messenger. Like this.”

  He nodded and the two big men grabbed Remo’s head in their hands and began to squeeze. The fat man with the snub-nosed gun giggled. The man with the package watched, waiting to see pain and surrender in the victim’s eyes.

  But there was no surrender. Only a flash of contempt and anger. The man dropped to his hands, fast before he could be held up. Into the close kneecap of the black man went an elbow, driving the kneecap through the joint, spinning the body upside down so the Afro went crashing into the counter with a crack. Up into the white man’s groin went a single hard finger, crushing a testicle and driving the man into the air and then back against a pyramid of red paint cans which caught the shocked body and surrendered, splaying cans across the floor.

  The fat man tried to squeeze the trigger. He was still trying when his muscles stopped receiving signals. They stopped receiving signals because there was something wrong with the remnants of his spinal column. A whole vertebra was in his throat.

  The two big men were retching on the floor. The man who had held the package just gasped. When he saw the now-hard brown eyes stare into his mind and feed upon his fear, when he suddenly smelled his own death upon him, he urinated.

  “How did you know my name was Pelham?”

  “I was told.”

  “By someone at Folcroft?”

  “I never heard of Folcroft.”

  “Who told you?”

  The man had edged away from the package along behind the paint store counter. Now he said calmly, “There’s a man behind you with a gun.”

  The man was a pro. He could suffer a setback, regain his composure, then try a very old trick that almost always worked. The trick assumed that the person it was used on was so engrossed in the tension of the conversation that he had shut off his perception of other things.

  This was true of most people. But most people had not stood for hours in empty gymnasiums, dodging three swinging knives, suspended by ropes from the ceiling, while being expected to yell out how many doors behind them opened and closed when they opened and closed. When practiced enough, this indelibly trained the perception so that it took a conscious act of will to turn it off. It did not turn off during tension. But how was the man behind the counter to know it?

  He was so terribly involved with the gun he was bringing up from behind the counter that he just assumed the trick would work. He knew it would not when his wrist ceased to function and he lost consciousness.

  Remo permanently ended the convulsions of the two athletes. Then he placed the fat man behind the counter where he belonged. He lifted all three of their wallets. He was taking the wallet from the pocket of the man with the package when the man stirred. Remo had another question: “What happened to the messenger?”

  The man was no longer afraid of death since it had, he knew, become inevitable. “I killed him. I shot his eyes out. I enjoyed it.” He sneered.

  Remo reached down and squeezed his broken wrist, hard enough to feel one broken bone skid against another. With a shriek, the man passed out again.

  When the man came to a few minutes later, his head hurt more than his wrist. His eyes bulged in horror as he realized that his head was squeezed top and bottom between the two metal plates of an electric paint-mixing machine. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Remo toss the “on” switch. Then he felt his head separate from his neck and he never saw anything again.

  Remo looked back over the scene. A paint store owner was robbed and brutally attacked. A passerby who tried to stop the robbery had his head locked in the paint mixer. Okay. Then who killed the two robbers? Who stole their wallets? To hell with it. Let the Daily News figure it out. They were good at that sort of thing.

  Remo picked up the gray box, stuffed the four dead men’s wallets into his raincoat pocket and locked the door behind him.

  He stopped at a stationery store, bought a strip of brown wrapping paper, and made a package of the four wallets. He addressed it to Dr. Harold W. Smith, Folcroft Sanitarium, Rye, New York, and mailed it at a small branch post office.

  Smith read the papers. He would know what corpses had surrendered the wallets. Remo would find out later who they were.

  On the ferry back to New York City, two nine-year-old twin boys going bang-bang with their fingers were given a snub-nosed .38 and a .32 caliber Smith and Wesson—both cartridge free—to play with.

  When their shocked mother inquired where the two boys had gotten the guns, they couldn’t really describe the man.

  “He was nice and — I don’t know — he was just a grownup.”

  “Yeah. He was a real grownup, Mommy.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  WHEN REMO SAW THE FIRST PICTURE, he began to chuckle. Then laugh. Then guffaw, then shake so hard he almost dropped the whole package into the wet motel sink where he had unravelled the strings according to instructions taught him years before.

  Under a half-page biography of Dr. Abram Schulter, M.D., Ph.D., fellow of the American College of Surgeons, Diplomate of the American Neurological Society, Nobel Laureate, pioneer in brain surgery, was a photograph of Doctor Schulter in action.

  He was nude, a frail man with a big, happy grin, fornicating with a dark-haired girl. Strapped to his back, and just as obviously mounting him, was a toy giraffe, the large furry type children like to pretend they are riding.

  Doctor Schulter was smiling as if he had realized something very funny. Perhaps, thought Remo, that he loved the giraffe more.

  The two other pictures showed Doctor Schulter: A) mounting the toy with the girl mounting him; B) mounted by the toy which was mounted by the girl.

  The biography continued: “Doctor Schulter. Foremost authority on brain waves. Married 20 years, two children, active in Professional Societies, American Art Association, National Disturbed Children Foundation. No serious political connections. Top security clearance.”

  Then Remo went though the other pictures and biographies.

  Dr. Anthony J. Ferrante, an expert in bio-feedback, whatever the hell that was, stood in a karate shirt minus the karate pants. He did not need the pants to protect his modesty because there was a girl in the camera’s way. On her knees. Apparently the same girl who had been teaching the neurosurgeon the secrets of the giraffe was now demonstrating a different kind of secret to Dr. Ferrante. Doctor Ferrante was demonstrating to the camera a karate blow. His face was dark and intent. Karate, thought Remo, can be serious business.

  Dr. Robert Boyle, a bio-cycle analyst, liked the plain old missionary position. This was not surprising since Doctor Boyle was a Jesuit priest.

  Dr. Nils Brewster, distinguished head of Brewster Forum and author of the famous “Dynamics of Peace, the study of aggression and containment,” discovered a new level of containment. He was dressed in chains.

  Dr. James Ratchett, biochemist, was dressed formally. In a top hat, black cape and bare front. He was being whipped by the black-haired girl who appeared in all the pictures. Two other photos showed Ratchett making it with the girl. He had dropped the cape and still visible across his back were the angry pouting welts of the whip.

  But on Doctor Ratchett’s biography was a hand-written note. It was Smith’s handwriting.

  “Dr. Ratchett is a notorious homosexual.”

  Remo went through the photographs three times. The chuckles had dwindled to boredom by the end of the first round. The girl was the same in each picture. Remo regretted his only cursory knowledge of photography, but the pictures looked extremely well lighted and posed, as though a fine fashion photographer had played the scene for drama — highlights, explosive beams, shad
ows.

  These were the great minds America would rather see dead than… Than what? Smith had said he did not know than what?

  Remo set the photos out in rows on the brown tile motel sink. He opened his eyes wide, then splashed his eyes along the rows of photographs, blinking rapidly, turning his eyes and brain into a giant stroboscopic system, registering every detail, every shadow indelibly on his brain. He performed the exercise twice, to be sure he had missed nothing. Done. He had been peaked too long. Ordinarily, once would have been enough.

  Smith’s words repeated themselves to Remo as he dropped the pictures into the motel washbasin, holding a last typewritten sheet which was a transcription of a conversation. Smith had told him:

  “All we know is something is wrong. We can’t, under any circumstances, allow these people’s efforts to be used by any other power. We don’t even know yet if whoever is producing these pictures is international or criminal. We just don’t know. We do know that we want these scientists’ abilities to be denied at a moment’s notice to whoever is doing whatever the hell is going on there. That means they must be eliminated on command. And that means you must set them up.”

  And other words came back to Remo: “Stupidity is a function of mankind, ignorance the beginning of wisdom, wisdom the knowledge of ignorance.” That was Chiun, his instructor.

  Chiun always had a bit of wisdom that didn’t seem to mean anything, until one day you needed it. Now it meant something.

  He had been kept at peak alert for three months while CURE attempted to figure out what it was protecting, and with the first sign that it was in danger, they sent in their weapon to be able to destroy it on command.

  “Brilliant,” Remo said to himself, running water into the sink. He watched the photographs become white, then separate, then dissolve and turn the water in the sink to milk. “Brilliant.”

  And he played with an idea he played with almost every month. Running. He could never be a cop again, he had no past. But he might be able to get into the Teamsters or even into a job where no one cared about the past. Maybe a salesman. Maybe open a store somewhere after clipping CURE for a bundle. A store. A wife. A family. A home.