Death Check

by Warren Murphy

“Perfectly all right,” the American responded. “She’s talking to you.”

  “I am perfectly capable of discerning such auditory phenomena as women speaking. I do not need your assistance.”

  “Then why didn’t you answer her?”

  “That is hardly a topic I wish to discuss with you,” said Geoffrey Hawkins to the American policeman. “Now return my Times if you would.”

  “Who gave him this parachute?” the girl asked. “Did you?”

  “I am not a supply sergeant. I do not dispense parachutes.”

  “Well, he can’t jump out of the plane in that chute.”

  “He certainly can’t jump without one,” said Hawkins, who thought that incredibly funny, worth repeating to an Englishman.

  “It’s no wonder the British army dispensed with your services,” the girl said.

  That was enough. Geoffrey would have to thrash her. He gave her the back of his hand across her face. At least, he attempted to. But it seemed as though some fast air current spun his hand harmlessly in the air.

  “Keep your tongue, Jewess,” he said, watching his hand flail to the side of the plane.

  “Don’t give me that shit, Hawkins. Did you unload the faulty chute on him?”

  “Answer her,” said the American.

  The pilot interrupted. “We’re approaching target and 13,000 feet,” he called out. Good, that would settle everything. To jump from 13,000 feet one had to be in an aircraft that climbed almost straight up, and one jumped at its zenith. It was the only practical way, since if the plane levelled off at 13,000 feet, everyone would need oxygen. This way, the plane was at that altitude so briefly that oxygen was unnecessary.

  “Jump, Dr. Hirshbloom, if you’re going to,” Hawkins said. The door near his feet opened, and the girl half stood up. As she struggled over Hawkins’ outstretched legs, she said: “Don’t let him jump in that chute.” She turned to the American: “Don’t you jump.”

  She thrust a boot out onto the strut, waited a moment, and was gone.

  “Are you jumping, Yank? Or are you going to be typical and wait for a computer to do it for you?”

  “I don’t think I’ll jump,” said the American. The ripping wind from the open door whipped through his brown hair.

  “Well, it’s your choice,” Hawkins said. “Here, why don’t you have a look? You’ll know what it’s like next time. Or are you afraid to look.”

  “I know what the ground looks like, sweetheart,” the American said.

  “The Jewess makes an interesting jump,” Hawkins said, peering out the door. “She does a very special free fall.”

  The American cop shrugged, stepped over Geoffrey’s legs, and peered out. Geoffrey Hawkins put his shoulder to the American’s back, braced his feet against his seat, and pushed hard, devastatingly hard. And nothing happened.

  “You want to jump with me?” said the American, turning.

  Geoffrey Hawkins pushed again and this time he was successful. Too successful. He found his own energy, with an assist from the American, had hurtled him head first toward the wing struts outside, and then he was outside the plane, dropping through the chill cold wind, with the American firmly latched to his throat.

  They accelerated quickly, then hit top speed and they were free falling. The American was smiling and humming Yankee Doodle.

  Geoffrey attempted to kick him away. The $5,000 was as good as his. But the kick went nowhere. As a matter of fact, the right leg went out, and then became numb. The American’s hands seemed to float, then dart, then plunge forward and back. And for all Geoffrey Hawkins’ effort, he could not unlatch the colonial who just smiled and hummed and moved his hands in those extraordinary ways. Geoffrey attempted to use a karate chop against the bridge of the American’s nose.

  But as his hand started to move, it became numb, and then… Ye gads. The left rider to the chute was slipping off the useless left hand. Then the American worked at the main buckle on the chest strap and it was off, and Geoffrey was suddenly spinning around and facing away from the American. Then the other strap to the right rider was eased off a suddenly numb right arm, and only his legs remained strapped into the unopened chute. And then Geoffrey was spinning again, this time face forward and he felt the chute yank up between his legs and he was diving head first towards the ground, without his parachute or the use of his limbs. He attempted to flip over, but there was just the slightest slap on his back and he remained, going face down, floating down.

  Gads! He had no parachute. He was stripped of his chute. Then he felt himself being flipped up and there was the American face-to-face with him as they descended. He was snapping on the buckle over the chest. He was wearing Geoffrey’s parachute. He was smiling and still humming.

  Geoffrey saw a khaki bundle thrust toward him. It was the American’s faulty chute. Then the American shouted: “That’s the biz, sweetheart. Remember me to Henry the Eighth.”

  Red and white material sprung out and up from the American’s back, and then snapped into a ballooning canopy of an open chute. The American seemed to rise and then become farther and farther away as he swung from the riders in gentle descent.

  Geoffrey Hawkins, late of Her Majesty’s Royal Marines, arrived at the lush Virginia countryside at approximately the same moment as the faulty parachute. The chute bounced with a whoomph and was usable again.

  Geoffrey Hawkins didn’t. And wasn’t.

  By the time Remo landed, Doctor Hirshbloom had gone.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  BREWSTER FORUM HAD SUPPLIED REMO with a room in a two-story house, centrally located in the forum’s laboratory complex and just as centrally out of sight of any of the private homes. It was called the workers’ house.

  “If you get lost, just ask for the workers’ house,” said the superintendent of the gymnasium.

  “You mean we live here.”

  “Not we. I’m a superintendent. I have a home. The lower-level work force uses the workers’ house. The cleaning women, drivers, cleanup men, security officer.”

  “Okay,” Remo had said, “this will be fine.” His room allowed him to dress standing up if he stood on the bed, and if he chose, jump right from the shower to his sheets. He could also use the two top drawers of the dresser, the bottom ones being wedged shut by the box springs of the mattress.

  It was not really that the room was so small, but that the bed was so big. It had been a discard from one of the private homes and, like all the furniture in the workers’ house, was not designed for its room. Remo could do a somersault on the mattress, which he judged would cover three ordinary beds.

  “That mattress alone cost $1400,” one of the maids confided to him. “We’re always getting furniture and stuff the people don’t want. It’s real good stuff, only sometimes it looks kind of funny.”

  Naturally Remo could not do his more exotic exercises in the Forum gymnasium, assuming that the continued sustaining of peak had not drained his abilities too much to do them at all.

  But he could always exercise in the bed on his back, which might be enough. He stared at the ceiling and set his mind on a long road that had wound around the inside of the walls at Folcroft Sanitarium where he had received his first training. He mentally stepped out onto the black gravel path and felt the wetness of the air coming in off Long Island Sound and smelled the stale after-odor of the burnings of yesterday’s leaves and he was off. Five quick miles today.

  Looking at Remo in the bed at Brewster Forum, one would see only the leg muscles twitching and the chest moving regularly with the heavy breathing. In fact, it was the breathing that made the run worthwhile, and when he approached the last lap he began to sprint, pressing his deadened legs, gasping for breath and pushing, pushing, pushing. He had always been able to do the last lap with speed. But this morning the legs were just not there and the energy needed for the sprint couldn’t be called up. He did not allow the thought that he might not be able to finish the final lap, although he did not know for sure how he could ma
ke it, and the pain became unendurable. He had not had so much trouble since he first began running.

  He never did find out if he could finish. There was a knock on the door of his room in the workers’ house of Brewster Forum. Remo heard it and not wanting to open the door in an exhausted condition, went into a recover. Fortunately, he was in bed, the process being a complete nothing. Abandon all nerves, senses and muscles, drop all controls. Become a vegetable. The effect on the body was like an electric shock in water. The trick was to do everything simultaneously, because the heart could miss a beat, and if the rest of the system were still coursing through heavy exercise, it might not pick up that beat.

  But it did, and Remo, sweat-drenched, but breathing like he had just awakened from a sleep, answered the door. He knew that the normal breathing, the lack of a heat-flushed appearance, would make the perspiration appear like water.

  The man in the door was late middle-age, but his face was fleshy with hard lines, strangely unbroken by his round metal-framed eyeglasses. He wore a dark summer suit with white shirt and black tie, and offered a truly mechanical smile, the non-joyous likes of which Remo had not seen since the last Presidential campaign.

  “Excuse me,” said the man, with a polishing of gutturals in his voice. “I am Martin Stohrs, your chess instructor. I did not realize you were in the shower. I am sorry.”

  “No,” said Remo. “I was trying to unstop the sink.”

  “And it exploded?”

  “In a way.”

  “I don’t imagine you can invite me in?” He was looking at the bed-filled room. “More like a bed with a room around it, no?”

  “Yes.”

  “Terrible. Terrible. A man of your talent and abilities living in a room like this next to the servants.”

  “It’s okay with me.”

  “Terrible. This should be outlawed. Security work in every place in the world is an honored profession requiring the highest of abilities and courage and discipline. And they put you here. I will speak to Brewster about this.”

  “He put me here.”

  Stohrs changed the subject. “I came to invite you to my house for the honor of a game with you, and if you would also honor me, I would appreciate your company at dinner. I had mentioned the game the other day when you had finished with those motorcycle swine, but you probably did not hear me.”

  “Thanks anyway, I have a date.”

  “So soon?”

  “Well, it’s sort of business. One of the staff. Doctor Hirshbloom.”

  “Ah, Deborah. Surprising. She rarely sees anyone. Unusual when you consider that this is a think tank, and what fills the tank mostly is words and more words.” He seemed charmed by his joke.

  “I’m not sure what this is.”

  “Hah, no one else is either. I like you. We must play.”

  “Thanks again, but some other time. I’m on my way to see someone now.”

  “Ach. Excuse me, most assuredly. The invitation is open.”

  Remo thanked him again and shut the door. He dressed in a pair of white chinos and a blue sports shirt. His two suits hung in the bathroom, the closet door not having room enough to open.

  Stohrs was waiting downstairs. He was apologetic. He had not wished to intrude on Remo Pelham. He was not the pushy type like some people. He was not the pushy type for the mile and a half walk to the circle of cottages. He made that clear several times.

  “You see, I come from a culture that appreciates privacy, just as it appreciates the true role of the policeman. You have violence in this country today because the policeman is not respected. Order is not respected. Now, in my country, no policeman would ever be forced to live in the servants’ quarters when a golf instructor lives in a house. Yes?”

  “Yes, what?” asked Remo, noticing how the night came unexpectedly fast for the summer. Or was it his imagination, or even worse, the losing of touch with time and senses and feeling. He did a toe walk so smoothly that he knew Stohrs did not notice and thus reassured himself that he could still do special things and therefore need not worry about his senses. It was the night.

  “Yes, do you agree with me?”

  “Certainly,” Remo said. He began working his fingers, in a dexterity drill, playing speed. You separated the coordination of the hands, then played fingertip against fingertip, with the nails of the hand just touching, then retreating. Done quickly enough, it looked like nervous praying.

  “These are terrible times we live in. No?”

  “It’s always a terrible time.”

  “Not always. And not everywhere.”

  “You could say that.”

  “You must like this place. And to like this place you must come from a place that is not so nice, yes?”

  “Are you asking me where I’m from?”

  “No, no. Of course not I mean unless you wish to tell me.”

  “I don’t particularly.”

  “Good. You will find that I am not the prying type. I am just one who respects excellence. I respected your chess play. Where did you learn to play?”

  “From Delphurm Bresky, a lawyer in Jersey City,” Remo said, making up a name he knew couldn’t exist.

  “Then you are from Jersey City. A wonderful town.”

  “Jersey City, a wonderful town?”

  “Well, it’s gone down since that wonderful mayor you had.”

  “Who?”

  “Francis Hague.”

  “That bum was a dictator.”

  “Yes. A terrible man. You worked long in Jersey City?”

  “No.”

  “A short time?”

  “No.”

  “Ah. You never worked there. Well, I am not one to seek a person’s resume the first time I meet him. Especially not someone I like and respect, who has been abused by the powers that be. I am here only to offer my help.”

  Remo worked the shoulders and neck, using Stohrs as a foil. If he could do the control exercises just beneath Stohrs’ level of awareness, it would be a good feedback check.

  “You know, there are some civilizations that adore men of violence.”

  “Yeah. Most,” Remo said. “The others become vassal states.”

  “Right. You are a man of the world,” Stohrs said, slapping Remo’s back in joy. It was unfortunate that Remo at the time was doing rapid mental jump pushups during his stroll. Remo’s was the first back Stohrs had ever slapped that slapped back.

  “You look surprised,” Remo said.

  “No. Nothing. I just thought that my hand hurt.”

  “That’ll happen if you go around slapping people on the back.”

  “It was a sign of respect. It is terrible today that we do not have respect where we should have respect. In my country, we always have respect. That is what makes my country great. Always great, no matter what.”

  “What country is that?”

  “Switzerland.”

  “A fine country. The best foreign policy in the world.”

  “Yes. Its mountains are its foreign policy.”

  “Very well put,” Remo said.

  Stohrs shrugged it off as a nothing.

  “Strange,” Remo said, “but mountains act as barriers and water as a conduit. Look at England. A little island that chose not to use its water as a barrier but as a vehicle to carry empire. Now, they’re pretty much back on their island.”

  “The Britishers are overrated.”

  “They did pretty well at one time. For a small island.”

  “Well,” Stohrs said, his voice rising. “Well. Who the hell did they ever beat? Napoleon? He was a sick man. A dying man. They beat him when he was dying. No. The Britishers get others to fight for them.”

  “They did pretty well in World War I and II.”

  “They didn’t win those wars.”

  “They didn’t lose them.”

  “They had almost nothing to do with them. America and Russia won those wars. The British were like the French, little toadies currying your favors. You are being u
sed by the British. They laugh at you behind your back. Don’t you see that?”

  “I was never aware that America was laughed at.”

  “Laughing stock of the world. Of course, nothing personal.”

  “Of course not,” Remo said. “It must be nice to come from a country protected by mountains, a country that neither gives aid nor receives it, a country whose only function is to be the world’s counting house.”

  “It’s a nice little country,” Stohrs said. “Not a great country but a nice one. I am proud to call it home.”

  “What brings you here?”

  “This is a lovely job and place to work. A good environment for me to raise my daughter. Lovely. That is, if you are not a policeman, no?”

  “No,” said Remo who had finished his mental situps and now saw that the light was on in the Hirshbloom cottage. “Good night and thank you for walking with me.”

  “It’s an honor. I respect you. Watch your step. There is evil here. That tragic Hawkins’ accident. I am glad we now have a real man as security officer.

  “Real man?”

  “Yes. I do not like to dishonor the dead, but McCarthy was just… well, a clerk. You need a man for the job. Good night. We must play soon.”

  “We will.”

  And Remo would not see him again until he would defeat him at the chess table with only a king and queen, against a queen, a king, two knights, a rook and a bishop. It would be a brilliant move, one that no chess master could ever perform as well.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE MAN ONCE KNOWN AS Dr. Hans Frichtmann sat in one of the foam-contoured seats of the Brewster Forum auditorium watching the weekly amateur show. They changed the program from week to week. Last week, it was Father Boyle on guitar; the week before that, Professor Ferrante in elegiac poetry. They never called it an amateur show and at first had attempted to sell tickets. The first week they sold eight, the next week six, and then they stopped charging.

  He could see that the new director of security and Dr. Deborah Hirshbloom were among the missing. Well, that was something. It was undoubtedly a better performance than Dr. James Ratchett, his magic, and now his hypnotism.