Death Check

by Warren Murphy

  “Okay,” Remo said. “I was coming to in a hospital bed and he was wheeling in this great dinner with lobster and booze.”

  “For someone in a hospital bed?”

  “This is Conn MacCleary we’re talking about.”

  “Yes,” Deborah agreed with a nod.

  “And he lays out this beautiful spread, abuses the doctor and nurse, tells me to eat up. And he drinks all the booze.”

  “Conn MacCleary,” Deborah said in punctuation.

  “But that’s not the half of it. I never knew the man to be away from a bottle for long. It’s a wonder he lived past twenty-one.”

  “The Egyptians are making a push up through the Negev. We’re near there.”

  “Where?”

  “Never mind. Will you let me finish? Besides, none of that stuff about where’s. Read my official biography if you want to know where’s.”

  “I bet they’re the wrong where’s.”

  “Stop that shit, Remo. Just stop and listen. Because if you want to play question and answer with me, I can go to Dr. Brewster and complain about nasty interference from you agents-kind-of-people, and he’ll beat you within an inch of your life. Hah.”

  “Okay. No more shit.”

  “Okay. We are near the action and Conn is desperately gathering copper tubing. Uncle David says, ‘Hah. You see. Secret weapon. I told you. Technology. American technology.’ And Conn is being very secretive. No one can go near where he is preparing his technology. One day I followed him. And there behind some rocks, sandbagged… let me tell you, sandbagged… we should have that kind of defense on the Suez Canal today… it looks like he has emptied the Sinai into burlap. He had all the children stripping the entire village of sandbags for this. And my Uncle David was leading it. Sandbags for the secret weapon of our village. Well, since it is so top secret no one is allowed to look. But I look. I knew he would not punish me. I was his favorite, but he loved all the children.”

  “Conn love children?”

  “Oh yes. That was his big love, I believe. And I believe because he never had children was why he drank. He would tell us stories at night. We all loved him.”

  “Conn? Children?”

  “Shut up. Let me finish. I crawl over the sandbags and I peek. There he is with a cup underneath this copper tubing which is all twisted and connected to a small boiler. He had made a still and I can’t describe him waiting for the drip, drip, drip with the cup. This grown man, beading over in this incredible heat made hotter by the sandbags, the defense of our village by the way. Just waiting for the drip, drip, drip.”

  Remo shook his head. “Yeah, that’s Conn. But I can’t imagine his stripping a village’s defense for it.”

  “Well, the sandbags were not really that important, and he knew that within a half hour for every bag he got, it would be replaced. We were not short of sand.”

  “Tell me though. What happened there to make him hate the Arabs so?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, once I heard him call the Arabs vicious mean animals. For Conn, ‘bastard’ usually sufficed.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Well, he must have seen some Arab atrocity that really rankled. You know he had been around.”

  Deborah searched the past and her face was a jewel of concentration. “No, no. Not near our village. As you know we were in the South and the only danger was from Egyptian regulars. And they were all right. No. Conn never dealt with anyone but the Arabs in our village. And they are fine people. Some, I am sorry to say, left at the time.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Certainly. We wanted to build a country, not create a refugee problem. As you know we had 2,000 years as refugees. Some left because they thought we would lose and they did not want to be there when we did. Others thought they could return and get back their own homes plus ours. And some were frightened of us. But we never drove them out. Never. Especially our village. And of course some stayed. Like the vice president of the Knesset. He is an Arab. Did you know that?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Remo, that tells me something about you.”

  “What does it tell you?”

  “Some of the things you’re not.”

  Remo accepted the statement and made no comment on it. Deborah switched the subject. “I can’t think of any atrocity he would have seen.”

  “He was vehement, Debby. Can I call you Debby?”

  “No. Deborah. What would make him vehement?” Suddenly she clasped a hand to her mouth. She shook her head, but there was laughter in her eyes. “Oh, that man, he is impossible. Impossible.”

  “What is it?”

  “You know Conn MacCleary?”

  “Yes.”

  “And I told you of the still?”

  “Yes.” Remo looked at Deborah quizzically. He was supposed to be able to figure something out and now he wanted to very much.

  “Come on. You knew Conn. What were his exact words?”

  Remo thought back, and if he had not tried so hard, he knew he would remember. “I can’t remember exactly.”

  “Would degenerate scum animals refresh your memory?”

  “Yes. That’s right. That is what he called them.”

  “Well, then, what is the greatest atrocity on earth for Conn MacCleary?”

  “The murder of children?”

  “That’s a tragedy, Remo. I’m talking about MacCleary. An atrocity.”

  “An atrocity? Degenerate scum animals?” He paused, then asked almost as a question, but it was not a question. He knew.

  “They got his still?”

  Deborah reached her hand to Remo’s shoulder. “The Egyptian Air Force blasted it to smithereens. It was incredible. They saw the sandbags, I mean it was obvious from the air. The still had changed their colors and the damned thing glowed at night. They hit it with everything they had. Spitfires. The whole thing. But as you know, if you’re bombing stills you’re not bombing fortifications or towns. He must have saved the village. But the still was wiped out.”

  And both Deborah and Remo said in unison: “The degenerate scum animals.”

  “Remo, you should have seen him. That was all he talked about for days. Degenerate scum animals. He volunteered for the Negev front but he was not accepted. Then he left and I guess your conflict with the Russians started heating up. Espionage war. And he returned to your service. Where I am sure you met him.”

  “Hush, hush,” Remo said.

  “And I know now why you are here and I am not afraid. Friend.” She extended her hand and Remo took it.

  “Friend,” he said. And he leaned forward and kissed her on the lips. And she kissed him.

  Softly, she said, “Not tonight.” Which can never really be said without hurting someone who wants you.

  “Okay,” Remo said, “not tonight.”

  “You will see me tomorrow?”

  “I think I can make it”

  “You’re full of shit. You’ll make it.”

  “Maybe,” Remo said. And he reached an arm behind her back and pulled her to him standing up. They both stood and kept their lips together and Remo moved a hand to her blouse and then over a breast which he pressed with warmth.

  “You bastard,” she whispered. “I really did not want to tonight.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I do not want it that way. Not you coming in and then… not that way. Tomorrow night.”

  “You do not want me?”

  “I wanted you from the moment you said Conn’s name. Your face then was beautiful. You showed goodness and I am so alone here. And for a moment we were not alone anymore.”

  “I almost got killed out in the circle, looking at you.”

  “You’re a stupid man. Looks. Like every man. I’m just looks to you.”

  “You began as looks.”

  “Remo. I want you tonight. Very much. But please, I do not want you coming in and taking me. I do not want you thinking you can just walk in and take me.
”

  “Was that what you were frightened of?”

  “No. Of course not. I told you. Tomorrow night.”

  “I could take you now.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you would not like it?”

  “I would love it. But please.”

  Suddenly the phone rang. It was a jarring, persistent ring and Remo reached to rip the cord out of the wall, but Deborah got to the phone first and out of his arms. She played shield with the phone while she talked.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes. Yes. Dammit. Are you sure? Does it have to be that way? Yes. I’m sorry. Yes, yes. Of course. Of course.”

  She hung up the phone and cocked her head. “There is nothing like a telephone to protect chastity. Tomorrow, Remo.”

  And Remo acquiesced like a gentleman. Gently he took the phone in the palm of his left hand and with an ungentlemanly right hand brought the palm edge down and through, cracking the receiver and the carriage. Then he split the fucking insides in a screeching gaggle of colored wires.

  “Tomorrow,” he said sweetly and dropped the two halves of the great American technology on the floor.

  Deborah smiled. “Oh, you big frightening man. You’re so terrifying.” And she went to him and kissed him and tugged him like a little boy to the door. “Oh, you’re such a terror. Cracking telephones and beating up motorcycle people. Oh, you’re so terrible.” She gave him a playful punch in the stomach, kissed him with finality on the lips, spun him around out the door, where the insects were still trying to gather a quorum, and shut the door, disposing of the most perfect human weapon in a nation’s arsenal like a little toy top.

  And Remo loved it. He told himself he would not think about the first time he had really met MacCleary, who had posed as a priest in Remo’s death cell and offered the pill of life on the end of a cross, MacCleary, who had engineered his supposed death only to bring him to what the world thought was a sanitarium to begin training that would never end, MacCleary who had made the incredibly stupid mistake of becoming vulnerable, MacCleary, who being vulnerable, had to be killed.

  MacCleary. Remo Williams’ first assignment and the only one he was unable to complete. MacCleary who had wound up doing Remo’s job by using his hooked arm to rip tubings from his own throat in a hospital bed. MacCleary, the stupid bastard who believed that it was right to die for a tomorrow where his type would not be needed. MacCleary, who by his death had sealed Remo Williams into his new life just as surely as if the bandages covering his fatal wounds now bound Remo.

  Remo Williams who had not missed an assignment since. Remo Williams. Who if Dial-a-Prayer in Chicago should have said something from Deuteronomy that noon, would have visited that night with Deborah, taken her on a quiet walk. And killed her.

  But the good Reverend had not read from Deuteronomy and Smith had given him a day off, a day from peak. And it was the good warm August of Virginia. He would spend tomorrow with Deborah, and he would make a beautiful day. It was more than many people had.

  But then Dr. Nils Brewster found the body of Dr. James Ratchett.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  DR. JAMES RATCHETT HAD ALWAYS IMAGINED his death would be a dramatic affair.

  In his youth, he had visions of stark white hospital beds where he forgave people. Dying, he forgave his parents, then his sister. Sometimes he would fantasize dying with a curse, ripping out the tubing from his swollen arm and refusing life.

  His mother would promptly slash her wrists, his sister would carry an indelible wound for life. And his father? Damn his father. Even in fantasies, he could not imagine his father being very interested in anything James did. Even in fantasy, his father would be telephoned at his Wall Street office, the message taken by his trim, attractive secretary. She would tell him at 6:30 that night over cocktails, before retiring to their apartment.

  “Ripped it out of his arm, you say?” his father would ask. “Cursed me on his death bed? Hmmm. Never knew little James had it in him.”

  James was nine when he had these fantasies. When he was fourteen, he had different fantasies. It was his father in a hospital bed, and James was ripping the tubing from his father’s arm, because he had just realized what a filthy, hairy, grotesque pig he was.

  At fourteen, James had made concoctions. He would give them to friends. He once gave a concoction to a neighbor’s boy, five years younger than he. The boy was in a coma for three days and James was sent where people made sure you didn’t brew poisons for younger boys to drink.

  They sent him to the Bilsey School, Dorchester, England, where proper young English gentlemen went through a homosexual phase. For James, it was not a phase. Denied chemical equipment and chemicals, he devoted himself to theorizing about them. He continued this at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate New York where he had all the equipment he needed, but remained addicted to theory, it being so much cleaner and neater.

  He received a science degree from Harvard and a doctorate in theoretical chemistry from M.I.T. His senior thesis won him international fame and his evening activities earned him three suspended sentences for contributing to the delinquency of minors. To get the last two sentences suspended was extremely expensive, exhausting his inheritance. This meant he could not continue toward his doctorate in mathematics. He would have to teach. Teaching meant constantly dealing with people, perhaps as much as five hours a week.

  Then came Brewster Forum. He could design his own cottage. Of course, Dr. Brewster understood how people’s tastes varied and why not be sensible? And Dr. James Ratchett found a home, and sometimes even an audience for his hypnotism which he had learned as a child under the mistaken impression that it would guarantee him endless lovers.

  But the hypnotism of the night before had left a malignant, gnawing remembrance of something just about to be remembered, but reluctant to come forward. It was a cry of ready or not, here I come, and then nothing came.

  So. He would wrestle it away from his memory. To do so, one must be prepared. You do not grab a thought like a little boy’s neck. You tease it, coax it. Ignore it. You make yourself very comfortable without it and then it jumps forward to join the party.

  Dr. James Ratchett undressed and left his clothes outside his very special room. It was a masterpiece of engineering, that room, a white bowl shape, upholstered all around with white vinyl, over a layer of water that cushioned the floors and the rounded walls as high up as a man could reach. Ratchett’s acquaintances called it his womb-room but he thought of it as his den.

  Into the room, he had brought his pipe with a sliver of hashish. The pipe lit when he pressed a button, and Ratchett brought the smoke deep down into his lungs and held his breath. He became aware of his limbs: how distant they were and how he was holding his breath. He was holding his breath forever and his head felt nothing. Nothing was what he felt in his head and he just let the air out because he felt like it. But he didn’t have to. He could have held the air in for hours. Yes. And deep in again. My, so cool it was. He listened to the coolness of the room and felt the vinyl on the ceiling with his eyes and suddenly his white womb was very funny. Here he was in a water mish-mesh.

  “Mish-mesh,” he said and laughed hysterically. “Mish-mesh,” he said again, wishing he had someone in the room who could appreciate the humor of the joke.

  And the vinyl-covered door opened. And that was a woman. Yes. Really a woman. Perhaps she had come for a drag. Perhaps he would offer her some. But he would not talk to her at all. No talking.

  Oh, she was undressed too, and she carried a whip and where he had a thing, she just had a brownish-blond blotch. He would show her. He would not get an erection. He never could. But then she was doing something and he had something. And then he took another drag, and then… Cut. A scream. Rip.

  Dr. James Ratchett grabbed at his stinging numb groin and nothing was there but warm wet blood, gushing wet blood, splattering around him on the white vinyl, making standing slippery, and he fell, and grabbed desperately looking fo
r something to stop the blood.

  “Oooh, oooh,” the cries came out of his lungs, as he slithered around his room, toward the door. Reach it. Out. Help. But it was locked, and Dr. James Ratchett slid back toward the center of the room and found he could not even bite his way out, as he chewed into the vinyl harder and harder, and then his teeth tore a hole in the vinyl, and water spilled in, mixing with his blood, and he sloshed around in the pink puddle, in the agony of red death.

  And then he remembered where he saw her and who had taken the pictures and why she had now killed him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  NILS BREWSTER WAS IN A SWEAT. His tumbleweed hair was matted with moisture. His arms flailed and his mouth moved violently as it shrieked out sounds at Remo. He had stopped Remo on the gravel driveway near Deborah’s cottage just as the sun moved overhead into noon. It was Remo’s day off peak.

  “Oooh. Oooh. Oho,” said the world’s foremost authority on the dynamics of hostility, the man who had written what many considered to be the definitive work on mass murder. “Uh… uh… uh,” he added, and then collapsed at Remo’s feet.

  It was panic all right. Remo knelt down and let Brewster recover. There was no danger of shock.

  Soon Brewster opened his eyes. “Ratchett. Oooh. Ahhh. Oho.”

  It would be no use to tell Brewster to calm down. Only idiots offered that sort of advice to panicky people. To tell someone to calm down when he was panicked was to tell him that you were not aware of the seriousness of the situation. That the situation could not be improved by panic was of little import. The person had something so awesome to convey that he was unable to convey it. To keep your head while he lost his only let him know that he was not getting through to you, and made him try even harder with less success.

  So Remo did what he knew was right, even though he did not wish Deborah to see it from her window if she was standing there.

  He repeated Brewster’s desperate yell. “Ooooh. Ahhhh. Oho,” he shouted, looking directly into Brewster’s eyes.