Power Play td-36

by Warren Murphy

  "Yes, some privacy," Remo said. "Can't you see we're talking? Get out of here."

  The waiter sniffed and walked away.

  The pressure softened on the throat.

  "Let me live," Winstler said.

  "No. Absolutely not," Remo said.

  "Let me live and I'll give you the Red Regiment. And I'll give you those saloon bombers in New York and the Pan-Palestinian skyjackers."

  "I don't want them," Remo said.

  "Why not?"

  "Because I've got enough to do. I'm not volunteering for anything. The Red Regiment."

  There was the pain again in the knee, this time even sharper than before and Winstler quickly blurted out an address in the east seventies. Lights from the disco Strobe-n-Globe flashed across his face and Remo saw panic in his eyes.

  "And the guy they kidnaped is there too?" Remo asked. He had to speak up to be heard over the screech of the music.

  "Right, right."

  "Good," Remo said.

  "You're still going to kill me?"

  "Of course."

  "But why? Who are you anyway? To come in here and talk about killing?"

  "Just another overworked wage slave," Remo said.

  "But who?" Winstler asked again.

  "It's a long story," Remo said.

  "I've got time," Winstler said. If he could get his knee free, he could bolt from the table. In the crush of bodies on the dance floor he'd be safe.

  "No, you haven't," Remo said. "All right, three minutes. See, there was this cop in Newark, New Jersey. His name was Remo Williams. That was me. He got framed for a murder he didn't do and got sent to an electric chair that didn't work and then he woke up after everybody thought he was dead and they put him to work for a secret government organization. It's called CURE."

  "What do they do?" Winstler asked. The grip was still a vise on his right knee.

  "What do they do? They give a guy more work than he can possibly handle. Next thing they'll be handing me a broom for my butt so I can sweep the streets on my way."

  "Besides overworking you," Winstler said.

  "Yeah. Well, this organization works outside the Constitution to take care of people that hide behind the Constitution. Criminals. Troublemakers. Like that. People like you. We preserve the Constitution by violating it, in a way."

  "And what do you do?" Winstler asked. "Remo Williams?"

  "Right. Remo Williams. I'm the assassin. The only one. Of course, there's Chiun and he's an assassin too.

  "That's fascistic," Winstler said.

  "Sounds about right," Remo said agreeably. "Anyway, it shouldn't surprise you. You've been saying that for years. Even when I was a cop, I read about you. You were always calling America a fascist state."

  "That didn't mean I believed it," the lawyer said. He was hoping. If he could keep this Remo talking, he might just stay alive. He remembered an old story about a court magician who fell out of favor with his king and was sentenced to death.

  "Too bad," the magician told the king. "I was just going to teach your horse to fly."

  Upon hearing that, the king lifted the death penalty and gave the magician a year to teach the horse to fly.

  That night, a friend asked the magician why he had said that to the king. "A horse can't fly," he said. "Why'd you do it?"

  "A lot of things can happen in a year," the magician said. "I might die. The king might die. Or, who knows. I might just teach that goddamn horse how to fly."

  If he could only keep this Remo talking, he might yet be able to escape with his life.

  "Time's up," Remo said. "I've got to go now."

  "You can't just come in here and kill me," Winstler said. "It's not... it's not right."

  "I don't want to hear about that," Remo said. "Everybody's always telling me what I can and can't do. I'm tired of that."

  "But you can't. You can't just kill me."

  Remo leaned closer and smiled at Kenroth Winstler. "You know what?" he asked.

  "What?"

  "I just did," Remo said.

  The fingertips pressing into the kidney were so fast that Winstler never really felt pain. Remo wiped his right hand on the table cloth and stood up. He let Winstler's head slump forward softly on the table cloth and walked away.

  Fascist, Winstler had called him. That annoyed him and Remo didn't believe it for a minute. Fascist. If it weren't for lawyers like Winstler who spent so much time and effort and other people's money getting criminals off, there would be no need for Remo and people like him. He wished he had not killed Winstler so fast, so he could tell him that.

  Fascist? Remo? It was laughable.

  He still wished he could remember something else he was supposed to do that night. It nagged at him.

  On his way out, he tapped the waiter on the shoulder.

  "Yes sir," the waiter said as he turned. He recognized Remo and his eyes frosted over. "What is it?" he said.

  "That man at my table?" Remo said.

  "Yes. Mr. Winstler."

  "Well, he's dead."

  "What?" the waiter said. His eyes peered toward the table where Winstler slumped forward, his hands under his face.

  "I said dead," Remo said again. "I killed him. And if you don't do something about this noise in here, I'm coming back for you."

  The waiter looked away from the table to Remo. But the thin man in the black T-shirt was gone. The waiter looked around, into the crowd, but saw no sign of him. It was as if the earth had opened and swallowed him up.

  Downstairs at the party, they had only marijuana, and speed and LSD and snow and horse and fairy princess and HTC and amyl nitrate and aspirins in Coke and opium lettuce and Acapulco Gold and Tijuana Small and Kent Golden Lights so it was really a drag and Marcia went up on the roof with Jeffrey because he had some good shit and he didn't have enough to share with everybody else.

  On the roof of the small apartment building in the east seventies, they unwrapped the package of Lightning Dust, following the careful directions Jeffrey had been given along with the drug by a guru with an eighth-grade education that qualified him to be a spokesman for the eternal power of the universe, which meant drug dealing.

  They had to inhale a puff of the powder through the left nostril and exhale their breath through the right nostril. Then they had to inhale through the right nostril and exhale through the left nostril. Then, while humming their mantra, just hard enough for their vocal cords to vibrate, they had to touch their tongue to the powder on the small square of paper, wet it with saliva, swallow it down, and then lie back to wait for ecstasy.

  The exact sequence was very important, Jeffrey had been told. They followed it precisely, then lay on the sharp-pebbled roof, waiting for bliss. It was longer in coming than they expected, which was not surprising because Jeffrey had spent sixty dollars for a quarter ounce of powdered milk, mixed one-to-one with powdered vitamin C. Its total cost to the dealer had been three-tenths of a cent. Its caloric content was higher than that.

  Jeffrey interlocked his fingers with Marcia who lay alongside him, then closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the stars were still shining brightly in the dark night sky. He glanced from side to side. Nothing. He had been promised light shows and sonic booms and celestial pyrotechnics, but nothing.

  "You getting it yet?" he asked Marcia.

  "I don't know," she said. "I don't think so. Everything's the same."

  They raised themselves into a sitting position, propped against the brick wall around the roof, and tried another dose. Left nostril, right nostril, tongue, saliva, swallow.

  And then they saw it.

  A man came over the wall of the roof, as if he had climbed up the side of the building. He was a thin man, dressed in black T-shirt and chinos and his eyes were dark and his hair was dark and his wrists were thick. As he moved across the roof, he nodded to them.

  "Just keep doing whatever it is you're doing," he said. "I won't be but a few minutes."

  Then he vanished over the
far wall of the roof, and Jeffrey and Marcia looked at each other with surprise on their faces.

  "There's no fire escape there," Jeffrey said.

  "I know," Marcia said. "Wow."

  They went to the edge of the roof where the man had disappeared. When they looked down, he was going down the smooth side of the brick building, as easily as if he were walking down a ladder. But there was no ladder and no fire escape.

  "How you doing that, fella?" Marcia called. "Going down like that and all?"

  "Shhhh," Remo called up. "It's an optical illusion. Actually, I'm staying still and you're going up."

  "Hey, wow," Marcia said. "Jeff, you got any more of that?"

  They sniffed and salivaed and swallowed and kept watching but they were quiet.

  Remo would have preferred it if they had gone away because he didn't like performing in front of witnesses, but he didn't have much choice. And besides he had a problem.

  There was a window about ten feet away that led into the apartment where the Red Regiment was holed up. If he went through the window, they might be able to kill the businessman before he could rescue him. That was why he had not gone through the apartment's front door. He not only had to get into the apartment quickly, but shockingly enough to stun the Red Regiment so it had no chance to react.

  As Jeffrey and Marcia finished their new sniff of powdered milk and vitamin C, Jeffrey looked up to the sky, but the stars were still dully immobile.

  "Nothing with the stars," he said. "Maybe this stuff only works with your perception of people."

  Marcia nodded. She had not been able to take her eyes off the thin man since he had crossed the rooftop. There was something about his eyes and the way he moved, something that made her know that he could make her forget every other man in the world. She watched the apparition hang to the side of the building. He was holding onto the smooth brick with his left hand, with no more effort than if he had been leaning against the wall of an elevator. His right fingertips were being driven into the building.

  "Look," she hissed. "He's pulling bricks out of the building."

  Jeffrey looked down. One by one, Remo was removing bricks from the wall and dropping them down into the small dirty yard behind the old apartment building.

  "How's he doing that?" she said.

  Jeffrey's voice was thick. "Gotta remember," he said. "He's not doing nothing. Our heads are doing it. He ain't really there. We're here. We make him there in our heads. If we close our eyes and want him to go away, when we open our eyes, he'll go away."

  Marcia tried it. She closed her eyes, squinted them together real hard, then opened them. Remo was still tossing bricks into the yard, making a hole in the building wall.

  "Whooops," she said. She was happy he was still there.

  Jeffrey had tried also. "Gotta practice some more," he said. "This stuffs not easy to use."

  "How you doin' that?" Marcia yelled at Remo.

  "I'm not doing it," he called back. "Actually I'm staying still and you and the building are moving backwards. Have some more grass."

  "This isn't grass. It's Lightning Dust. Wanna come up and make it with me?"

  "Later," Remo said. "Soon as I'm done."

  "All right," Marcia said. "I'll wait."

  Remo had the hole big enough now. The two-by-fours of the interior walls and the lathing strips and the rough inside surface of the wall plaster were clearly visible.

  Jeffrey was looking at the sky, hoping for an aurora borealis.

  "Hey, Jeffy, look," Marcia said.

  Jeffrey leaned over and looked but all he saw was a pile of bricks in the yard.

  "What?" he said.

  "He jus' go through that wall. Like it isn't there," Marcia said. She giggled. Jeffrey leaned over to try to see better. As they both watched, a body soared through the hole in the rear wall and out into the yard where it hit the bricks with a wet, doughy thump and lay still. They heard a thwacking sound, and another body came flying through the hole into the yard. Then more sounds and another body and another. They all hit hard. Two of them bounced on contact. None of them moved afterward.

  "Wow," Marcia said.

  "You can say that again."

  "Wow," said Marcia who thought it was stupid to say it again.

  "I'm gonna see the guru tomorrow and get us some more of this," Jeffrey said.

  Marcia didn't answer. She was waiting for the man in black to come back out of the hole in the brick wall and climb up to the roof and make love to her. And if he had to fight off Jeffrey, so much the better. And if he couldn't fight off Jeffrey, then she would fight off Jeffrey.

  But Remo didn't come.

  He found the kidnaped businessman in a closet, blindfolded, gagged and tied. Remo removed the gag and the ropes, but left the man's blindfold on.

  "You're all right now," he said.

  "Who are you?"

  "Just another guy trying to do two men's work," Remo said.

  The hostage reached for his blindfold but Remo stayed his hand.

  "You can take that off when you hear the front door close," he said.

  "Where are they?" the businessman asked.

  "They left," Remo said.

  "I heard noises. Like a fight."

  "No, there wasn't any fight," Remo said truthfully. "Some scurrying, maybe, but no fight. Look, I'm going now. You take that off when I leave."

  On the roof, three minutes had passed and Marcia had decided that that was long enough to wait for the one great love in her life. She would live with the tragedy forever, the sense of loss that the man in black had not come back. She would suffer. She would even give her body to Jeffrey out of her sense of remorse. She would try to find happiness in the arms of many lovers.

  "Jeffrey," she said. "I'm yours. Take me."

  She turned to look for Jeffrey. He was sleeping in a corner of the roof, snoring heavily. Marcia thought about it for a moment, then lay down beside him. She would give her body away tomorrow, to try to drown her sorrows in the arms of many men. But for now she would sleep.

  Remo got a cab on the corner and told the driver he was in a hurry to get to Brooklyn.

  "How much of a hurry?"

  "A hundred dollar hurry," Remo said, flashing the bill at the driver.

  "How much of a tip?"

  "That includes the tip," Remo said.

  "Okay. You're as good as there. Did you hear about..."

  Remo touched the driver on the right shoulder.

  "I also want it quiet. I'm trying to think of something. So every time you say anything from here on in, I'm taking ten dollars off the hundred."

  "All right. I won't say a word," the driver said.

  "That's ninety," Remo said.

  The driver wouldn't make that mistake again. Ninety dollars to Brooklyn was all right and every body knew that New York cab drivers were the smartest in the world, so he decided he would say nothing, not a word, he would just let that hundred dollar looney sit in silence, but there was that shine who looked like he might be going to cut him off and put a dent in the last unscarred spot on his left front fender and that was worth a yell, and hell, everybody wanted to hear some kind of comment on New York's weather, and the passenger must have an opinion about the New York Yankees, and maybe the passenger would like to see his polished rock collection because sometimes people bought rocks from him and a man who would pay a hundred dollars to get to Brooklyn might pay God knows how much for rocks that the driver got himself at this little place called Snake Hill, across the river in Secaucus, New Jersey, and by and by they reached Brooklyn and Remo hadn't had any chance at all to think and at ten dollars deduction per outburst, the driver owed Remo forty dollars.

  He did not want to pay.

  Remo extracted it from the man's pocket.

  "If you want to wait," he said, "I'll give you the same deal going back."

  "Hell, no," the driver said. "You think I'm made of forty dollarses?" He jammed the car into gear and drove off angrily, scratchi
ng the last virgin piece of fender on a heavy wire trash basket used by the neighborhood as a Dempster dumpster.

  The building on Halsey Street was a tired, chalky old tenement. Outlined against the black midnight sky, with no lights on, it looked like dirt rampant on a field of dirt. Remo double-checked the address. This was it. The basement.

  He went down the stairs in the back of the first floor hall. The cellar was dark but he moved easily between the ash cans and the stacks of newspaper to the locked door in the rear of the cellar. The old wooden door fit in its frame so tightly that no leak of light showed around its edges. He touched his fingertips to the wood and could feel the heat from inside that signified a light on.

  Good. It was getting late and Remo wanted to be finished with this day.

  Remo reached his hands up above his head, then drove the fingertips of his arched hands into the wood. They slammed in like nail punches. Remo yanked the door toward him, the lock snapped and the door came off the hinges easily. Remo tossed it to the side.

  A big man was working at a bench. He was wearing boxer shorts and an undershirt. A heavy mat of hair covered his shoulders. He whirled toward Remo.

  "What the..."

  "Not a lot of time," Remo said. "You Ernie Bombarelli?"

  "Yeah," the man growled. "Who the hell..."

  Remo silenced him with a wave of his hand.

  "Nice factory you've got here," he said. He looked around at the neat cans of powder and the long waxed cardboard tubes. "You could win a war with all these explosives."

  "I could punch your face out, creep. Who are you?"

  "You've been pushing these firecrackers in schoolyards. Last week, two kids lost their hands playing with your toys."

  "I don't know nothin' about that," Bombarelli said.

  "One of the kids was a concert piano player," Remo said.

  Bombarelli shrugged. "Maybe he can learn to play with his feet."

  "I'm glad you said that," Remo said.

  Bombarelli's right hand was easing behind his back, toward a small drawer in the end of the workbench.

  "Don't waste my time with guns," Remo said. 'It won't do any good."

  It didn't. Bombarelli had the gun out and in his hand and pointed at the skinny intruder. He squeezed the trigger but the gun never went off and then it was in the skinny guy's hands and then with two hands he snapped the gun apart and dropped the pieces onto the concrete cellar floor.