Coin of the Realm td-77

by Warren Murphy

  Dr. Dooley decided not to find out. Better to risk a malpractice suit from the patient. Besides, he was not Horton Droney's personal physician. He was just the doctor on duty when the television host was rushed into the Emergency Room. Suddenly Dr. Dooley felt absolutely no obligation to his patient.

  "Room thirty-seven," he groaned. His hand suddenly fell to the floor, landing beside his nose, as flaccid and lifeless as a dead tarantula.

  "Thank you," a voice told him as he picked his hand off the floor. It was as if it was separate from his body. He couldn't even feel the arm that still linked it to his shoulder. "Don't just stand there, nurse. Get a doctor!"

  "Which ... which one?"

  "A good one, dammit."

  "I hope he's conscious," Remo told Chiun as they approached the hospital room. "At the studio, they said he was stuck pretty deep."

  "If he is not conscious, I will awaken him," Chiun promised.

  "And if he's dead?"

  "Then we will search out the poor unfortunate girl without his aid."

  "I wouldn't call her unfortunate. She handled herself pretty well, especially in front of that bully."

  "She was terrified. And that lummox refused to listen to her."

  "What could he do? She didn't speak English."

  "Yes, all the good languages are forgotten."

  "Don't tell me, Chiun. You understood her gibberish?"

  "I will not."

  "Good."

  "But I did."

  "Sure," Remo said as he looked around.

  The Master of Sinanju paused before the door marked thirty-seven and pushed it open. Remo followed him in. It was a private room. Horton Droney III lay on an immaculate bed. Intravenous tubes led from his arm. A blood bag hung over his head. His eyes were half-closed dreamily.

  "Excuse me," said the attending nurse, rising from a chair.

  "You are excused," snapped Chiun.

  "But-

  "He said you've been excused," Remo said gently, leading the nurse out the door. When she protested, he added, "Here, take my wallet as security. It contains my life savings and my ID. If we do anything bad, you'll know who to report to the police."

  Then he closed the door after her. He held the doorknob in place while she vainly tried to turn it from the other side. Her poundings woke Horton Droney III.

  "Who are you jerks?" he roared when he saw Chiun.

  "I am Chiun and I would keep a civil tongue in my mouth."

  "Hey, I don't take crap from Japanese. I haven't forgotten Pearl Harbor. So get lost, you Toyota-loving riceball."

  "Now you did it," Remo said.

  "Remo," Chiun said evenly, "would you excuse us?"

  "Little Father, why don't you let me handle this?" Remo began, still holding the doorknob against the nurse's frantic struggling.

  "Did he call you a Japanese?" Chiun demanded.

  "No, but I don't think he knows any better."

  "I know that if we don't stand up for our rights," Horton Droney screamed, spittle flying from his yawning mouth, "the Japanese are going to buy America out from under us."

  "Remo," Chiun repeated.

  "Okay, Little Father, I hear Security coming up the hall. Just, please, don't kill him. He's a television personality, for Christ's sake."

  "Kill?" said Horton Droney III, looking at Chiun's wrinkled face. And then he threw his head back in laughter. He howled the word "Kill" in between spasms of hilarity.

  The laughter stopped almost as soon as Remo closed the door behind him. The nurse landed on her white rump when the door she was straining against suddenly came toward her.

  Two security guards came running up the hall. "What is it? What's the trouble?" they demanded.

  "She is," Remo said, pointing at the hapless nurse.

  "I am not!" the nurse said indignantly.

  "Who are you, buddy?"

  "Horton Droney IV." Remo bared his teeth to the gum line, hoping to create the effect of a family resemblance. The guards hesitated.

  "The big guy's son?" one of them asked uncertainly.

  "That's right. And it's a good thing I came along when I did. I found this nurse going through my father's stuff. And when I asked her what she was doing, she gave me a lot of double-talk and lifted my wallet."

  "I did not!" the nurse cried.

  "That's my wallet in her hand right there. Check it out."

  "He gave it to me," the nurse protested.

  "Hah!" retorted Remo. "A likely story." He hoped he sounded as self-important as Horton Droney IV would sound-assuming that there was a Horton Droney IV.

  One of the security guards retrieved the wallet and was about to go through it when the Master of Sinanju glided out of Horton Droney's room.

  "All set, Little Father?" Remo asked.

  "I have what I want," Chiun replied.

  "Good," said Remo, snatching his wallet from the guard's hand.

  "Hey," the guard said. And suddenly he found himself on the other side of a closed door. He experienced a moment of profound disorientation. He remembered the hand snatching the wallet from him and then the guy's other hand hooking his belt buckle. Then he was in here. He didn't remember any intervening action. When he noticed the man with the caved-in mouth on the bed, he realized he was in Horton Droney III's room. Then he wasn't alone anymore. His fellow guard sprawled on the floor beside him. The nurse came running in on her own. She closed the door and leaned up again it, her skinny chest heaving spasmodically.

  "What are you afraid of?" the guard asked her.

  "Everything," she sobbed.

  Out on the street, Remo trailed after the Master of Sinanju. Chiun was storming along First Avenue, oblivious of the crowds surging around him.

  "Did you get what you wanted?" Remo asked.

  "That, and more."

  "Tell me about the 'that.' "

  "The one known as Shane Billiken lives in a place called Malibu. We are going there."

  "I'd better hail a cab," said Remo. He put two fingers into his mouth and whistled. A cab pulled up and Remo opened the door for Chiun.

  The Master of Sinanju settled into the rear seat and the cab was in motion before Remo had the door closed after him.

  "Kennedy international," he told the driver. And turning to Chiun, he asked, "What was the more?"

  "This," said Chiun, pulling a huge set of false teeth from one voluminous sleeve. Chiun held it in a hospital towel to keep his hands clean.

  "I guess his secret is out. What are you going to do with them?"

  "I do not know," Chiun said casually, and balling the dentures inside the towel, he flipped them out the window. They hit the street, where a bus ran over them. The crack brought a satisfied smile to Chiun's face.

  "That's a relief," Remo said. "I thought you were going to kill him."

  "Another time, perhaps." said Chiun.

  As they approached the airport, Remo suddenly remembered something.

  "When do we get to the bare-breasted women?"

  "Have patience. We are at least headed in the right direction."

  "Anything I can do to get there faster? Like moo?"

  "I do not understand this moo you speak of."

  "Well, I don't understand the moo you keep talking about either. "

  "Obviously we are thinking of two entirely different Moos."

  "Obviously," said Remo.

  Chapter 5

  Dr. Harold W. Smith wore a lemony frown as he shut down the computer system in his office at Folcroft Sanitarium. The sun was setting, and darkness was enveloping Long Island Sound, which showed through the big one-way glass picture window directly behind his desk.

  It was the end of a difficult day. He had made an inspection of the psychiatric wing of Folcroft. One of the inmates had been found missing. Not a routine matter in any asylum, for Smith it was fraught with potential serious ramifications. For Folcroft was a cover for CURE, a supersecret government organization, and under the guise of being Folcroft's director, Smit
h actually ran CURE.

  Set up in the early 1960's when the tide of crime threatened to swamp the ship of state called the United States of America, CURE was the brainchild of a young President who had no idea then that an assassin was about to end his term in office prematurely. In those dark days, the handwriting had been on the wall. The nation was breaking down. Two roads lay ahead: anarchy, or a temporary suspension of the Constitution in order to set things right.

  The President had come up with a third alternative. CURE. The Constitution would stand, but to root out the criminal elements that were using it to bury America under a mountain of legalistic red tape, CURE was set up to work outside of constitutional restrictions. If known, that would be a tacit admission that American democracy had ceased to work. And so CURE was sanctioned to operate in secret.

  In those days, Smith recalled wistfully. CURE had been a sociological-research foundation, and its multiple banks of computers had functioned as CURE's information-gathering brain. But a crisis in which CURE had been nearly exposed forced a major change. Folcroft became a sanitarium in fact as well as name. And its many computers, thanks in part to the march of technology, went into a concealed basement where a small bank of them could do the work of a roomful.

  With the change came new headaches. Medical staff. Patients. AMA oversight. Billing problems. And now this. A missing patient.

  Smith's preoccupation with the missing patient forced from his mind two messages that had come in over the office tape machine. Two separate phone lines accessed the machine. One was a dummy line to be used by Remo and Chiun for noncritical contact messages, and the other was known only to his wife. Smith had balanced the additional six dollar-and-twenty-two-cent cost of an extra line against any possible security risk and erred in favor of frugality.

  When he had returned to his office after a fruitless and frustrating search for the missing patient, whose name was Gilbert Grumley, Smith had replayed both messages. The first was from Remo. He had rattled off some breathless nonsense about mooing. Smith, not knowing the current whereabouts of Remo or Chiun, told himself that there was no problem as long as there were no assignments on the CURE agenda. And all was quiet there.

  The second message was from his wife, Maude. It was brief. It ran:

  "Harold, dear, could you please remember to bring home a package of those nice mashed-potato flakes you like so much? And by the way, I saw the oddest thing today. You know the-"

  The tape had not caught the entire message and Smith made a mental note to get a longer tape cassette if he ever saw one on sale.

  As he closed his briefcase and locked the office behind him, Harold Smith wondered what the odd thing Maude wanted to tell him was. Oh, well, he thought, he would know soon enough.

  In the lobby, the guard informed him that the missing patient, Gilbert Grumley, was still nowhere to be found. "It's just a matter of time," Smith said. He said good night to the guard, went to his personal parking space, and tooled his battered sedan out the gate.

  He stopped off at a convenience store and bought an economy-size box of Flako Magic Potato Mix, first examining every box to find the one with the latest freshness date. The package cost exactly $1.37 and Smith paid for it with a dollar bill and exact change, which he took, one careful coin at a time, from a little red rubber change holder. It took longer to give exact change, but Smith had once been short-changed twelve cents by a careless clerk in 1955, and was forced to drive seven miles back to the store and argue for twenty minutes before the proprietor agreed to rectify the error. Smith had only caught it when he got home and went through his wallet to budget his spending money for the next working day. At any time, he knew exactly how much money he had on his person. A penny's difference was usually enough to depress him.

  Maude Smith, frumpy and white-haired, greeted him with a perfunctory kiss at the door.

  "Did you bring it?" she asked.

  "Yes, of course," Smith replied, setting his worn briefcase on the table by the door. He settled onto the big stuffed sofa.

  "Don't get comfortable, Harold. The roast is ready. And these potatoes will take only a moment."

  Five minutes later, Smith had settled into his straightbacked wooden chair at the head of the dining-room table. He tasted the roast first. It was very dry.

  "Good?" asked Mrs. Smith.

  "Yes, very," Smith said, taking a sip of ice water.

  "And the peas?"

  Smith took a knife and herded some peas onto his fork. The peas tasted like peas.

  "Good," said Smith, who was indifferent to peas. Mrs. Smith beamed. She never got tired of cooking for her appreciative husband.

  "And the potatoes, Harold. How are they?"

  Smith tasted them. They tasted artificial. But of course, he wouldn't say that. As a matter of fact, after over thirty years of marriage to a woman who served mashed potatoes three or four times a week without fail, he had grown totally disinterested in mashed potatoes. But, of course, it would be the height of impoliteness to criticize his wife's cooking. When Maude Smith discovered artificial mashed potatoes, it was like going from bland to worse. But Smith consoled himself with the fact that at least these mashed potatoes were not lumpy.

  "The potatoes are very . . . smooth," he told her. And with the tasting ritual done, Mrs. Smith dug into her own food. She thought the potatoes tasted medicinal, the peas tinny, and the roast beef too dry. But if this was the way her Harold preferred his food, she was going to be a good sport about it. But the man did have odd tastes.

  Harold Smith got the potatoes out of the way as fast as possible. He mixed the peas into the white mush in a vain attempt to make them more flavorful. Then he washed them down with ice water.

  Smith was working on the dry roast beef when Mrs. Smith perked up suddenly.

  "Oh, what did you think of that strange thing I mentioned on the phone?"

  "Actually, the tape ran out before you finished speaking. All I got was something odd that you had seen or heard about."

  "We have new neighbors," Mrs. Smith said.

  "Oh, did the Billingtons move?"

  "The Billingtons moved out when Richard Nixon was in office. We've had two families in that house since."

  "That's nice, dear," said Dr. Harold W. Smith, wondering what was so odd about having new neighbors. He knew his wife would get around to telling him. Eventually. "There were the Reynoldses, who had too many children, and the Lippincotts, who had none. Well, Mr. Lippincott received a job offer in Tucson, so they had to move. Mrs. Lippincott was heartbroken."

  "I don't think I ever had the pleasure of meeting them."

  "With the hours you keep, it's no wonder. Really, Harold, does that office need you so much?"

  "We had a patient turn up missing today."

  "Did you find him?"

  "Not yet. But we will. Our security is quite good. I'm certain he never left the grounds."

  "That's nice," Mrs. Smith said vaguely. "But you know, I've been thinking of it all day and I still can't place him."

  "Who?" asked Smith.

  "Our new neighbor, silly. What do you think we've been talking about?"

  "Oh," said Smith, who thought they were discussing Folcroft. "What about our new neighbor?"

  "Well, I only caught a glimpse of him leaving. I waved to him, but I don't think he saw me. But he was someone I've met before. I'm sure of it."

  Smith stopped with a desiccated slice of roast beef poised before his open mouth.

  "Met where?" he asked. He forced his voice to be calm.

  "Well, that's what I can't for the life of me figure."

  "Could you describe this man?" Smith said in a voice he fought to keep steady. He did not know why he was suddenly concerned. Perhaps it was the unsettling matter of the missing patient. Loose ends always affected his nerves.

  "Oh, he was tallish. His hair was dark. I didn't see his eyes very clearly. I would say he was handsome."

  "Young or old?"

  "Young. But
not too, too young. In his late twenties, I would say. Maybe early thirties. It's so hard to tell these days. "

  And you say he looked familiar?"

  "Yes, definitely. I know I've met him before."

  "Hmmm," said Smith. "When did they move in?"

  "Well, that's one of the odd things. No one knows."

  "What do you mean, no one knows?"

  "I got on the phone to Mrs. Gregorian when I couldn't stand it anymore-you know, the nagging feeling that I knew the man-and she didn't even know anyone had moved in. There was no moving van. She told me that she could see their living room from her upstairs bedroom and there was practically no furniture."

  "Maude!" Smith said reprovingly. "Snooping."

  "I didn't snoop. It was Mrs. Gregorian. I just listened."

  "To gossip," Smith said, but his lips thinned. Anything out of the ordinary was something that he, in his sensitive position, had to look into.

  Probably the new neighbor was an ordinary person. But Smith knew that if there was a place he, as director of CURE, was vulnerable, it was not in his well-protected Folcroft office, it was in his modest Rye, New York, home.

  And if there was a threat about to materialize against him, he must be prepared to move ruthlessly to eliminate everyone involved in it.

  "Excuse me, please. There are some phone calls I must make," he said, dabbing his chin with a linen napkin.

  "But you haven't finished your roast beef."

  Smith looked at his plate. Two slices remained. He quickly wolfed them down, and drained the last of his ice water.

  "Good," said Mrs. Smith, happy that her Harold had cleaned his plate. He always cleaned his plate. It was nice that tonight was no exception. She had worried that the roast beef was undercooked. She knew her Harold hated it rare. He so detested blood.

  Chapter 6

  If the truth were to be known, Shane Billiken would have been perfectly content to chuck it all. The filthy-rich dowager clients. The best-seller book contracts. And the radio and TV talk-show appearances.

  He was, as he saw it, an artist. But the world had kept slapping him down, and exploiting its wealthier inhabitants' world was his way of making up for past disappointments.