There was a scattering of applause from foreign newsmen, some mumbling about whether this would be ten or fifteen seconds on national television, and then from the press shed came a shriek.
"Dead men. There are dead men all over the place. A massacre."
"Wow," said a reporter near Remo and Maria. "A real story now. I'm always lucky. Send me to a nothing story and I always luck out."
Like seepage from a ruptured water tank, the mob flowed toward the press shed trailing television cables. A turbaned man, with a nameplate that said "Agriculture India" tugged at Remo's arm.
"Kind sir, does this mean I do not collect my money for attending?"
"I dunno," said Remo. "I don't work here."
"I took a trip for nothing, then. For nothing. Promised two thousand dollars and will receive nothing. Western lies and hypocrisy," he said in his Indian singsong, the language of a people Chiun had once said had only two consistent traits: hypocrisy and starvation.
Sweat beaded on the patrician face of James Orayo Fielding as he watched the press disappear from the Mojave compound, heading for the twin tents outside the perimeter fence. Suddenly, it appeared as if his entire life descended on him with fatigue and he reached out for a steady arm. He grabbed for support a thin young man with high cheekbones and thick wrists. It was Remo.
"Your friends are gone," said Remo.
"The news mentality," said Maria. "In Cuba we do not allow journalists to cater to such morbid curiosity."
"Sure," said Remo. "That's because murder is an everyday thing."
"You're being unfair," said Maria.
"It is hard to make an American fair," said Chiun. "It is a thing I have been trying to teach him, lo these many years."
"Korean fairness, Little Father?" said Remo, laughing.
Chiun did not think that was funny, nor did Maria. Fielding steadied himself. Weakly he took a pill from his shirt pocket and swallowed it dry.
Remo's eyes signaled ever so briefly for Chiun to get Maria out of hearing range. Chiun suddenly noticed a vision of hibiscus, lo, across the desert, like rising zephyrs above the Katmandu Gardens, Had Maria ever seen the Katmandu gardens when the sun was mellow and the river cool like a gentle breath of a friendly north wind? In an instant, Chiun had her walking out into the desert aimlessly.
"You have very unnice friends," said Remo to Fielding.
"What do you mean?"
"Your friends kill people."
"Those deaths in the shed that everyone's yelling about?"
"Others," said Remo. "Commodities men. Construction men."
"What?" said Fielding. He was feeling weak, he said.
"Feel stronger or you'll go the way of your soybean. Planted." But Fielding collapsed and Remo could tell it was not an act.
Remo carried Fielding to a small shack built inside the fenced compound for security guards and there, Fielding recovered and told Remo how he had discovered a grain process that could end starvation, could literally end hunger and want. All his troubles had started when he discovered this. Yes, he knew about the commodities men. He knew about the depressed grain market.
"I told them, I told Jordan, we didn't need that sort of help. The Oliver method, as I called it-now it's Wondergrain-it didn't need artificial help. It would replace other grains naturally because it's better. But they wouldn't listen to me. I don't even own the company anymore. I'll show you the papers. Greed has ruined us. Millions will starve because of greed. I'm going to have to go to court, won't I?"
"I guess," said Remo.
"All I need is four months. Then I'm willing to go to jail for life or whatever. Just four months and I can make the most significant contribution to mankind, ever."
"Four months?" asked Remo.
"But that won't do any good," said Fielding.
"Why not?"
"Because people have been trying to stop me since I started. Did I say four months? Well, really I don't need that. Just a month. Just thirty days until the miracle grain comes up. Then the whole world will plant it. They will throw out their old crops and put in the new feed for mankind. I know it."
"I'm not in the food business," said Remo. But what the man said haunted him and he sneaked some seeds from the briefcase of James Orayo Fielding and told him he might be able to help.
"How?" asked Fielding.
"We'll see," said Remo who that afternoon checked out two things. One, according to a botanist, was that the seeds were real. The second, according to a city clerk in the Denver municipal building, Feldman, O'Connor and Jordan now owned the controlling shares of the corporation which had rights to Wondergrain, as of a date three months and sixteen days in the future.
As Remo explained to Chiun that night:
"Little Father, I have a chance to do something really good for the world. This man is honest."
"For one to do what he knows, is good," said Chiun. "That is all the good any man can do. All else is ignorance."
"No," said Remo. "I can save the world."
And to this the Master of Sinanju shook his head sadly.
"In our records, my son, we know that those who would make heaven tomorrow make hell today. All the robbers who ever stole and all the conquerers who ever conquered and all the petty evil men who preyed on the helpless have not, in their counted history, caused as much massive grief as one man who attempts to save mankind and gets others to follow him."
"But I don't need others," said Remo.
"So much the worse," said the Master of Sinanju.
CHAPTER SIX
Johnny "Deuce" Deussio saw it on television while waiting for the Johnny Carson show. It was the latenight action news. Johnny Deuce always watched it between his feet. Beth Marie did her nails. She had so many curlers and pins and rods in her starkly blonde hair that Johnny Deuce long ago stopped making advances to her. It was too much like loving an erector set with cream.
Beth Marie did not complain. She thought it was nice, in fact, and that Johnny was becoming more gentlemanly. The bed came around their feet in a circle. To his left was the light panel indicating the electronic security systems were working. It also had an open phone to his cousin, Sally. Because of the dream that night, he now had a small-caliber pistol tucked near the control panel.
Beth Marie lathered cream on her face to his right. He fingered the panel a lot while watching late night action news, starring Gil Braddigan, anchorman. Un-like many other newsmen of St. Louis, Braddigan did not require little gifts to do favors. He didn't know enough to be bought off. Beth Marie thought Braddigan was sexy. Johnny Deuce did not tell her that Braddigan was a flaming fag. You didn't use that kind of language to your wife in bed.
"I think he's sexy," said Beth Marie, as Braddigan rode the television into their bedroom with manicured face, hair, smile, and voice. Johnny Deuce fingered the rising edge of the plastic call buttons on the panel. He hoped Johnny Carson wouldn't unload another rerun or have that squeaky-voiced writer as moderator. Johnny Deuce did not like to fall asleep without the sounds of friendly voices.
"Terrible," said Beth Marie.
"Huh?" said Johnny Deuce.
"Three men were mauled to death in some vegetable laboratory. Out in the desert."
"Too bad," said Deussio. He was thinking about business. His secretary had nice legs. She had nice breasts and a nice duff. She had a sweet face. She wanted Deussio to get a divorce. Even though she worked in only the legitimate fronts of Deussio enterprises, she knew too much already. She had threatened that either she got Deussio in marriage or she would leave. This was not a major business decision. It was a simple one. If she left, her next residence would be the bottom of the Missouri with concrete panty hose over that lovely duff. Such was life. Deussio was startled to feel Beth Marie touch him. In bed no less.
"They found one guy in this press room with a typewriter mashed into his chest," she said.
"Awful," said Deussio. Willie "Pans" Panzini was another matter. He was spending too much money on w
hat Deussio was paying him. This meant that Willie Pans was either stealing from Deussio, which was bad and could be corrected by a firm lecture or some moderate grief, or he was collecting money on his own from other sources, which would be nonnegotiably terminal. Sally would have to find out which. Perhaps stick a blowtorch in Willie Pans's face. Blowtorches brought the truth out of people.
"Another man had his back broken. A whole piece of his spine went right through his stomach. That's what the coroner out there said," Beth Marie said.
"Awful," said Deussio.
"I think we knew him. We knew the man. We saw him last year when we went to the coast. That lovely public relations person."
"What?" said Deussio sitting up in bed.
"All those killings. Your friend James Jordan was killed today at some vegetable experiment."
"Wondergrain?"
"That's right."
"Jeeez," said Deussio, grabbing Beth Marie's shoulders and demanding she repeat everything Gil Braddigan had said about the desert killings. This was much like getting a stock market report told to a social worker and filtered through a retard. All he got was intimations of something horrible happening to their friend Jordan whose wife had set such a nice spread in their Carmel home. As Deussio listened and questioned he began to wonder.
"Thanks," he said, leaving the bed and ringing for Sally.
"John," said Beth Marie.
"What?"
"You want to?"
"Want to what?"
"You know what," said Beth Marie. "That."
"That's some way for a wife of eighteen years to talk," said Deussio and met Sally running up the hallway with a drawn snub-nosed .38.
He slapped Sally in the face.
"Dummy," said Johnny Deuce.
"What I do? What I do?"
And for that Johnny Deuce hit harder. The smack echoed down the hallway.
"Will you shut up out there, I'm trying to watch TV," came Beth Marie's voice.
"Why didn't you tell me about Giordano, out-on-the-coast Giordano?"
"What Giordano?"
"Giordano who was killed today. Dreaming, huh? I was dreaming that last time, huh? Dreaming. Those guys was frigging crushed to death."
"I didn't hear nothing."
"Don't we get word no more? What is this? I could be killed in my sleep. Dreaming, huh? I ain't sleeping in this house. We're going to the mattresses," said Deussio, meaning his crime family was preparing for war.
"Against who?" said Sally.
"Against what, you mean," said Johnny Deuce. "Against what."
"Yeah. What?"
"We don't know what, dummy," said Johnny Deuce and he slapped Sally hard in the face and when Beth Marie complained again about the noise in the hall, he told her to go finger herself. Sally did not protest the slapping assaults against his pride. The closer one got to John Deussio, the less one became affronted by his famous temper and the more one appreciated an artist.
Deussiq had raised the level of mob war in the midwest to exquisite craftsmanship. Neat surgical strikes that took out precise portions of organizations and left profits undisturbed.
A group of bookmakers on Front Street in Marietta, Ohio, who thought profits did not have to be shared totally with St. Louis connections, learned one night the folly of independence. Each one found himself in a warehouse, tied but not gagged. In this way, he was able to hear the shock sounds of friends he knew. In the center of the warehouse was a man stripped nude. When a spotlight flashed on his face, they saw it had been the man who had promised them protection from St. Louis for a far smaller cut than they had been paying St. Louis. The man was swinging from a rope. The searchlight lowered and they saw a reddish wet cavity where his stomach had been. They heard their own groans and sobs and then the lights went off and they were all in darkness.
One by one, each felt a cold edge of a knife press against his solar plexus, felt his shirt buttons be unbuttoned, and waited. And nothing happened. They were escorted out of the warehouses, untied, and taken, shaking, to a hotel suite where food was laid out in abundance. No one was hungry. A fat man with stains on his shirt and great difficulty in speaking English introducted himself as Guglielmo Balunta; he worked for people in St. Louis who provided these gentlemen services and he wished, what was the word for it, to toast their health and prosperity. Excuse his poor English.
He was worried, he said, because animals were about. They did awful things. They were not businessmen like him and his guests. All they knew was kill.
Cut stomachs and things. This did not help business, did it? Everyone in the room assured Balunta it sure as hell didn't. No.
But Balunta had a problem. If he couldn't return to St. Louis and assure his people that they would get their cut, they would not listen to him. These animals always have their ears for violence. He needed to bring something home, he said, some pledge of good faith, that business would continue as usual. Maybe a little better than usual.
Men who just minutes before could not control bowel or bladder assured their host he spoke very good English even if all the words were not in English. The increased cut, well, yes, it seemed reasonable. Fear made many previously unacceptable things reasonable.
The success of this was only a small part of Johnny Deuce's genius. For not only had he arranged it that not one bookmaker was hurt and thus no profits were lost for the day but he saw great possibilities and he shared his reasoning with Guglielmo Balunta. They spoke in a Sicilian dialect, although Johnny's was not good, having only learned it from his parents.
There were times, said Johnny Deuce, that offered incredible opportunities, just because no one else had thought of them. Balunta waved his hands, indicating he did not understand. Johnny, driving their car back to St. Louis-he had asked to take Balunta alone personally-had difficulty talking with both hands on the wheel, but he continued.
Balunta was in for a very nice cut of the increase from the gambling in Marietta. Not much. But enough of a causa bono for contentment.
Balunta assured Johnny Deuce that he too would be rewarded for his brilliant work. Johnny Deuce said this was not the point. Who was the one man in the organization most trusted now by the top man in St. Louis? It was Balunta, of course. He had just done a good job.
But some day, Johnny reasoned, Balunta would be offended by what was given him. Some day he would be cut out of something that belonged to him. Some day he would have grievance against his boss.
Balunta said this would never happen. He was close with the don. And he held up two stubby fingers. Especially now that he had brought this small southern Ohio town into line so neatly. Especially now.
"No," said Johnny Deuce. "I am young and you are old but I know as surely as the sun rises that disagreements occur in business." And he named incidents and he named names and even pointed out that Balunta had gotten his own position because his predecessor had had to be eliminated.
This was true, admitted Balunta. And it was here that Deussio's strategic brilliance began to show. When you have this disagreement or trouble, or even when they are on the horizon, how hard will it be to get to the top people? And when he said "get to" he took one hand off the wheel and pointed it as if it were a gun.
Very hard, agreed Balunta. He conceded that they might even get to him first. In fact, probably. Which was what kept most people in line.
"Now tell me," said Deussio, "what does the horizon look like now. You said it yourself. Clear."
"You're the guy coming home with the bacon," he said, lapsing into English. "You're the guy who's due a bigger cut. You're the fucking hero."
"So what you saying, Johnny Deuce?" asked Balunta.
"We hit the top now."
"Mi Dio," said Balunta. "This is a big thing. Too big."
"It's either you hit them now while you got the advantage or they get you when they have it. I admit, it's a hard choice. But you do the hard thing today when it's easy or you take the hard thing in the face tomorrow. When it's toug
h. Frigging tough. You know I'm right."
Balunta was quiet as the car went through the countryside. And Johnny Deuce further showed his genius, a genius that would give most of the midwest mob quiet for more than a decade.
He began by telling Balunta he knew what Balunta was thinking. If this young man is willing to have me go against my boss now, wouldn't he, at the moment of success, do the same thing to me?
Balunta said he was thinking no such thing.
"But I would be foolish," continued Johnny Deuce. "If I go against you, then my number two would see this and go against me. Now if I do not go against you, my number two will worry what you will do if he succeeds with me. I am the only one who can stop what I have started and I have a vested interest in doing so. You are going to give me a very big piece of the action from the outset. A very big piece. Together we have no worries. We will work things out for both our safeties."
But everyone, Balunta pointed out, wants it all.
"Everyone who doesn't know that all of it is a oneway ticket to the marble orchard," said Johnny Deuce. "You'll see. It'll work if we share. If we share, we're strong."
"Mi Dio," said Balunta and Deussio knew that this was a "yes." For ten days, bodies turned up downstream in the Missouri, shotguns bloomed from the front windows of cars, brains were blown into dinner linguine. Deussio struck so fast and so quickly it was only when the St. Louis wars, as they were later called, were over that those who mattered knew where the killing had come from. And by that time, it was Don Guglielmo Balunta.
Johnny Deuce's talents and his proven loyalty created a new order from St. Louis to Omaha. Such was Don Guglielmo's trust in his young genius that when others would come to him with stories of the crazy things that Johnny Deuce did, Don Guglielmo would say:
"My Johnny does crazy things today that come out smart tomorrow." When he hired the electronics experts, people hinted he was crazy. When he hired the funny Orientals, people whispered he was crazy. When he hired computer programmers, people said he was crazy. And each time, Don Guglielmo Balunta would answer that his Johnny would be proven smart tomorrow. Even when the word got around about his strange dream and how he had young athletes try to climb up to an impossible-to-reach window in his home, even then Don Guglielmo told everyone his Johnny would be proven smart tomorrow.
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