Feeding Frenzy td-94

by Warren Murphy

  When they finished and came out of the hatcheck room, they sprinkled Holy Water on the restaurant and blessed it as a Place for God's Work. Then they argued with management about the luncheon bill, refused to pay it, and went outside to their waiting block-long limousines, in each of which three street hookers had been gathered up to make sure the ride back to their churches wasn't too boring.

  Remo rubbed his eyes in stupefaction at what he was seeing. The sound was scratchy. The film looked to be out of focus. The dialogue, what little there was beyond sexual grunting, seemed to have been written by an imbecilic fourth-grader.

  And all around him, students were cheering, laughing, and applauding.

  "Tell them, Hardy. You tell them, man," a black man next to Remo stood up to shout. He punched a clenched fist into the air.

  "Sit down and shut up," Remo said.

  "I . . . beg . . . your . . . fucking . . . pardon," the man said coldly. He was older than most of the others in the auditorium, so his dumbness couldn't be written off as the ignorance of youth. He wore a goatee, tortoise-shell glasses that might have been swiped from Hedda Hopper's cold corpse, and a black baseball cap with the Roman numeral ten on it.

  Remo recognized the man then. He was a famous film director who after running ten million dollars over budget trying to film the life of a burglar-turned-pimp-turned-martyred-civil-rights-leader, cried racism after the film company refused to kick through the shortfall. When other black film personalities ponied up, he publicly demanded that black people all over the country skip work and school and breakfast to see his movie about black responsibility, or risk being branded as Uncle Toms themselves.

  Harvard University immediately hired him to teach a humanities course called "Black Values."

  Remo reached out and touched the back of the man's left knee. The leg collapsed and the man slumped back into his seat.

  "Hey-!" he started.

  "One more word out of you," Remo warned, "and I'll do the same thing to your head that I did to your leg. Shut up."

  The man did. He whipped off his cap and started chewing on the bill.

  Remo could put in only five more minutes of watching Crap before he stood and slipped quietly out of the row and walked around to the back of the theater. Although it was dark, he was able to adjust his eyes so that he saw as clearly as if it were high noon. There was a flight of steps at the side of the small stage and a door behind them.

  Remo walked down quietly and let himself backstage through the door.

  There were a half-dozen students running around, apparently busying themselves with errands of some sort, but Remo saw no sign of Hardy Bricker.

  He walked down a long hall. While he made no effort to eavesdrop, any sound from inside the rooms would register on his sensitive ears. He stopped outside the last door. Inside he could hear sighing and heavy breathing.

  The two guards could hear the breathing too. They were Harvard University campus police and they were paid not to remember things they heard or saw, and, occasionally, smelled.

  "Hey, get away from that door!" the first guard shouted. "You know who's in there?"

  "Another Bolshevik," Remo said.

  "Hardy Bricker, that's who," the second guard said.

  "Well, la-di-da," said Remo.

  They were a Mutt and Jeff pair, one tall and reedy as a flagpole with the blue flag twisted around it, and the other short and squat like a squash ball stuffed into a shapeless blue sack.

  They had been standing in their dark blue uniforms at the far end of the corridor, before the fire door and under the darkened EXIT sign, their hands clasped behind them, at parade rest.

  Except now their hands were swinging at their sides and they were moving in on Remo with all the purpose of high school corridor monitors and, to Remo Williams, the first white Master of Sinanju, about the same threat level. Which was to say, none.

  Remo lifted his hands to show that he had no weapon and wasn't a threat. He didn't look like a threat. He didn't look like much of anything-merely a man of slightly more than average height, very average weight, wearing a white T-shirt and tan chinos that fit tightly enough to suggest he carried no weapons, concealed or otherwise.

  While the police were sizing him up with their eyes, satisfying themselves that this lean-bodied intruder was unarmed, Remo reached out with the deadliest weapons on his person-if not the universe-and got his fingers around the police throats. The thin-necked one was easy. The thick-necked one needed an extra two seconds of squeezing before his nervous system shorted too.

  Still holding them by their necks, Remo carried the pair over to the fire door and dropped them there. Then he reached up to wave one hand over the EXIT sign. It winked on.

  "Take a penny, give a penny," Remo told himself.

  The sounds were still coming from behind the closed door. He took the knob, twisted it with deceptive slowness, and slipped in.

  Hardy Bricker was standing in front of a mirror, making faces at himself. He had a puffy, spoiled face, the face of somebody with too much money and a private school background. So the way he snarled and frowned at the mirror was funny. It was as if he were trying to put on his tough face for the speech he was scheduled to give to the Harvard undergrads.

  Remo stepped into the light so the mirror caught his reflection.

  Hardy Bricker caught the reflection too. His face froze with his upper lip curled a la Elvis Presley and his lower lip pushed out in a hemorrhoidal pout.

  He pulled both lips into line and turned.

  He began, "Who-?"

  "-Me," Remo shot back.

  "Leave!" said Hardy Bricker, testing his tough voice.

  "No," said Remo.

  "Don't make me call the guards."

  "Don't think you have the lungs to wake them," Remo said casually.

  "They dead?"

  "Asleep, and so will you be if you don't listen to me."

  "Listen to what?"

  "I've got this idea for a movie," Remo said.

  Bricker groaned. "Everybody's got an idea for a movie," he moaned. "What's yours? Little green men in a spaceship who captured you one night in Iowa? Or a tender love story about a sixteen-year-old and an eighty-year-old checkout clerk at the local Acme? Or maybe a ghost story about a guy who comes back to save his sweetheart's life from killers? I've heard them all. What's yours?"

  "Naaaah, nothing like that. I've got this story about a big government conspiracy. To wipe out whole races of people. To promote fascism. Racism. The whole military-industrial conspiracy-stuff like that."

  Hardy Bricker's soft features quirked into attentiveness. "Conspiracy?"

  "A conspiracy with fifteen thousand people in on the secret," Remo said.

  The tension went out of Hardy Bricker's overfed body. "That sounds like something more up my alley," he said, sitting down suddenly. He waved Remo to a chair.

  "Alley's the right word," Remo mumbled, adding in an audible voice, "I thought you might like it." He took the other chair. Remo leaned over and whispered conspiratorially, "You know how your movies are always about government conspiracies?"

  Hardy Bricker learned forward too. He looked Remo in the eye. "Yeah?" he said, his tone equally conspiratorial.

  "Well, I've got the biggest one." Remo pretended to look to see that the door was closed and then that there were no strange faces or shotgun microphones at the only window. "There's a secret government agency, see, and it hires contract killers and they go around knocking off everybody who pisses them off."

  "Sounds about right. Who are the killers?"

  "Well, one of them is this misunderstood American guy. He grew up in an orphanage in Newark and used to be a cop until they conned him into working for the Feds."

  "And he's a racist, right?"

  "No, no," Remo said. "He loves everybody. He's really kind of sweet. Thoughtful. Gentle, even."

  "Screw all that sweet and gentle. I want some racists. That's what I make movies about. Racist evil Ameri
cans. Who's the other guy?"

  "You'd like him. He is a racist. He hates everybody."

  "Good. Now we're getting somewhere," Bricker said, his puffy face relaxing like a sponge absorbing water.

  "Okay," said Remo. "He's about a hundred years old, see? Although he'll only own up to eighty. And he's from this small village and his family have been supporting the village by being professional assassins for a couple of thousand years. See, he gets into it because this secret agency hired him to train the young American and make him into a great assassin too."

  "Right. Got it. Where's the village? Upstate New York?"

  "No, actually it's called Sinanju. That's in North Korea."

  Hardy Bricker's interested expression soured. "You mean this eighty-year-old great assassin is some dinky North Korean?"

  "Right," said Remo.

  "That's ridiculous! I don't want a Korean racist. I want an American racist. Somebody put you up to this, didn't they? One of the major studios, right? They're trying to con me with this cock-and-bull story about two secret assassins. All right fella, tell me. Who are you?"

  "I came on my own," Remo said truthfully.

  "Good. Then leave on your own. Interview ended. Good-bye."

  Hardy Bricker started to rise, but a hand he couldn't see coming pushed him back down into his chair. The hand stayed there. It was firm. It wasn't clutching or pinching or squeezing, but a numbness filled Hardy Bricker's soft shoulder like Novocaine invading a healthy tooth.

  Hardy Bricker noticed then that the hand was attached to its forearm by a very thick wrist. He looked at the man's face again, as if seeing it for the first time. It was a strong face, dominated by deepset dark brown eyes and very pronounced cheekbones. The man's hair was as dark as his eyes and his mouth was a thin twist that suggested cruelty.

  "Not until I finish pitching my story," the thickwristed man said casually. "So these two work for this secret government agency called CURE, and their job is to kill America's enemies."

  "And they get away with it?"

  "Of course," the man said, as if it was no big deal.

  "Well, that's the part I like. But as for the rest of it, sorry, pal, it just won't fly."

  The man said, "I haven't told you the best part."

  "What's that?"

  "You know how you always say that there's a secret government that really runs America and goes around killing people?"

  "Yes. "

  "You were right."

  "I knew that."

  "No, you were really right. In fact, it's bigger than you dreamed." The thick-wristed man made his voice conspiratorial again. "The President is in on it."

  "Which President? Give me names."

  "All of them."

  "Since when?"

  "Since CURE started. Back in the 1960's."

  "You don't look old enough to go back that far."

  "Macrosymbiotic diet," said the other. "Keeps me young. Besides, I didn't come in until later."

  Hardy Bricker was trying to process the information coming into his barely wrinkled brain. Every President since the sixties. Mostly they were Republicans. Hardy was pretty sure about this, because in his forty-odd years of life only twice had he ever voted for a winner.

  "Your story has a tinge of truth to it," he allowed.

  "I thought you'd think so."

  "But tell me this-if every President for the last four decades has known, how come none of them have talked-or shut you down?"

  "They haven't talked because they can't."

  "You kill them? Is that it?"

  The thick-wristed man looked insulted. "No, no. We just erase their memories after they leave office, so that they think they remember everything about their term in office, but they don't."

  "That must be an incredible machine that does it," Hardy Bricker said.

  The guy blew on his wriggling fingers and said, "It is."

  Hardy Bricker started to scoff but then remembered how numb his shoulder had gotten after the skinny guy had touched it.

  "That part doesn't sound so plausible," he said.

  "Sure it is. All over the human body are nerve centers. Sensitive nerve centers. It's just a matter of putting negative pressure on those nerve centers while reminding the subject of what he shouldn't remember."

  "Reminding him of what he shouldn't remember? That sounds awfully Zen."

  "The Zen guys overheard something they shouldn't have and that's how they got where they are today-which is to say playing with themselves."

  "You're losing me."

  "It's like this. I just the other day had a nice chat with the last President."

  "Oh, him."

  "Yeah, that one. I reminded him that he was supposed to forget all about us when he left office, and he let me pressure the nerve that sort of blocks the bad thoughts."

  "This nerve-is it in the shoulder?"

  "On some people."

  "What kind?"

  "Ones without a working brain." Hardy Bricker blinked his watery eyes rapidly, and Remo could tell by his expression that last part hadn't quite sunk in.

  "If this is true, why are you telling me?" Bricker wanted to know.

  "Because I got to thinking if we make every President we work for forget that there is a secret government agency that really runs America, even though we know they'll keep their mouths shut, we really shouldn't leave a blabbermouth like you out."

  "Out of what?" said Hardy Bricker as the hand he couldn't see move came back to his shoulder and squeezed so hard he thought he heard his rotator cup pop.

  The pop seemed to pop his eardrums too. And out went his brain.

  Hardy Bricker lost consciousness so he didn't feel himself being thrown over a lean shoulder that was as hard as petrified bone or feel the coolness of the evening as he was carried out into Harvard Yard and across Massachusetts Avenue to a park where he was set down with his back to a bus port.

  Remo scrounged up a discarded paper coffee cup, splashed out the last congealing brown liquid, and placed it in Hardy Bricker's limp fist. Digging some loose change out of his pocket, he shook it in his palm until a thick subway token showed its brassy face. He picked it out along with a shiny quarter and poured the rest into the flimsy cup.

  Then he touched the exact center of the man's forehead, right where the caste mark would be if Hardy Bricker were a Hindu untouchable and not an American unmentionable.

  Hardy Bricker's eyes flew upon. He looked around. He did not see Remo, because Remo had slipped behind him and was doubling around so that he could casually pass Hardy Bricker.

  Hardy Bricker was still seated on the sidewalk when Remo pretended to come up to him. Remo stopped, dug into his pocket for his last quarter and dropped it into the paper cup, where it rattled the rest of Remo's change.

  It rattled Hardy Bricker too. He peered into the cup, and then looked up at Remo's face with big uncomprehending eyes.

  "I-I don't understand . . . ."

  "Understand what?"

  Bricker looked around. He seemed in a daze. "Understand anything. What am I doing here?"

  "Well, that depends on who you are."

  "Who I am?"

  "Yeah, who you are. You know, what your name is, where you live, where you work."

  "I-I don't think I know."

  "I guess that makes you one of the growing legion of homeless, jobless, penniless unfortunates who fill our streets, public parks, and subways, the cruel victims of a heartless military-industrial conspiracy," Remo said. "Any of it coming back now?"

  "Yes, I think I've heard those words before."

  "Well, there you go," said Remo happily.

  Hardy Bricker looked behind him. There was a park, sure enough. "I don't see any others like me."

  "Then you're in luck. First one in has squatter's rights."

  Hardy Bricker looked down. He was squatting, sure enough. It was beginning to make sense to his dull, foggy brain.

  "What do I do?" he asked, watching the ca
rs and buses zip by.

  "You could say thank you."

  "For what?"

  "For the quarter I dropped into your cup. It was my last quarter too."

  "Oh. Thank you." Confusion crept back into his face. "What do I do now?"

  "It helps if you shake the cup every little while," Remo suggested.

  Hardy Bricker gave it a shot. The cup shook, the change jingled and instantly a woman stepped up and dropped a Susan B. Anthony dollar into the cup. She walked on.

  Hardy Bricker looked up. A slow smile crept over his puffy features.

  "Thank you," he told Remo gratefully.

  "Glad to help the dispossessed of the earth."

  And Remo walked off, whistling. He did not walk far-only to the closest subway stop, where he took the Red Line through Boston to the city of Quincy, where he now lived.

  He wasn't a big fan of the subway. But he had driven in Boston traffic enough by now to understand he had a better chance of survival if he went over Niagara Falls in a Dixie cup.

  Chapter 3

  From the North Quincy stop, it was a short walk to the place Remo Williams called home.

  The sight of it made Remo long for the days when he lived out of a suitcase. Remo had always envisioned that one day he would live in a nice house with a white picket fence-not in a baroque monstrosity of sandstone and cement.

  It had once been a church. It still looked like a church. Or more like a church than anything else. Depending on which compass direction you were approaching it from, it resembled, variously, a Swiss chalet, a Tudor castle, or the condominium from hell.

  Right now, it looked like a Gothic warehouse because of all the delivery trucks parked around it. There was a UPS truck, a Federal Express van, another from Purolator Courier, and numerous other package delivery service vehicles.

  "What's Chiun up to now?" Remo muttered, quickening his pace.

  He caught up with the UPS driver as he was dropping off a plain cardboard box.