Power Play td-36

by Warren Murphy

  Muckley was in his office in the basement of a massage parlor on Ventura Boulevard in West Hollywood when his secretary came into his office. She was not able to read or write very well either, but had achieved professional success in life pretty much by being able to jot down 38-22-36 on application forms. "Wesley Pruiss has been stabbed," she said. "Almost killed."

  "Yes," Muckley said noncommitally.

  "I thought you should know," she said. "Maybe it would be something for you to do something with."

  "Yes," he said again.

  His secretary realized he must be thinking of money when he did not try to grab her in his office. After she left, Muckley continued thinking. New memberships were down because he had not been featured on any network news in almost three months. And he smiled, because God always showed the way. He had delivered Wesley Pruiss into Higbe Muckley's hands. He called a "must" prayer meeting for the following day of all his West Coast disciples, or as many could borrow the bus fare to Hollywood.

  At Muckley's invitation, all the networks showed up. Reporters liked to cover Higbe Muckley. He was an easy story, and in contrast with his backwoods drawl, they always managed to look smart.

  Muckley led his disciples in a prayer that thanked God for goodness, right, money, biodegradable soap and instant mashed potatoes, as long as they were made without any of them godless chemicals. Then he had special thanks for God. "In his charity and mercy and wisdom, God has seen fit to strike down a purveyor of dirt and filth who is trying to carry his disgusting New York City message to the heartland of America," Muckley said. He looked around at the audience.

  "Can we let this man do that?"

  "No," came back two hundred voices, sounding like five thousand and looking like five hundred in the too-small meeting room Muckley had rented.

  "That's right," Muckley said. "Get this down, you gentlemen of the press. Tonight I'm going to Furlong County, Indiana, and I'm going to lead a prayer vigil there for all the faithful to make sure that this Westburg Purse..." he paused as his secretary whispered in his ear, "... to make sure that this Westerly Prunes abandons his sinful life."

  Later Muckley was asked what if Wesley Pruiss did not abandon his sinful life.

  Muckley was thoughtful for a moment. He had learned through experience that pregnant pauses always looked good during television interviews. "Well," he said finally, "in that case we have to remember what God said."

  "What did God say?"

  "He said that here on earth, God's work has to be done by men."

  The sign on the door read "For Useful Effective Leadership." Under it a larger sign warned: "Keep out."

  Inside the large room, twelve men sat on straight-backed chairs. They wore metal caps with sensor devices built into them, and attached by wires to panels at the right side of their chairs.

  The twelve men were looking at a motion picture screen, still blank at the front of the brightly-lit room.

  Behind the men, Will Bobbin, assistant director of community relations for the National Fossil Fuel Institute, nervously twisted a strand of his thinning gray hair, then flicked off the room lights and turned on the movie projector. Its fan began to whir and then the lamp lit and a picture appeared on the movie screen.

  It was a picture of a small room, bare of furniture except for two wooden chairs. A door at the side of the room opened and a tall, elderly man wearing just a white shirt and trousers came in. Behind him came a gray-haired woman. She was blind and carried a white cane and wore heavy smoked glasses. Her bluish gray hair was immaculately marcelled and as the man took her arm to help her into her chair, she smiled a smile of pure warmth and love. She looked like everyone's storybook grandmother.

  Bobbin glanced around the room. The twelve men were staring frontwards at the old couple on the movie screen. The men did not know it, but they were about to take part in a test that would determine forever their future in the coal and oil industry. Will Bobbin had designed the test.

  The old couple sat on the chairs on screen, smiling straight ahead at the camera. The camera must have been hidden because the smiles were unselfconscious.

  Bobbin waved to a team of three men he knew were hidden behind a large glass mirror on the right of the room. The signal was to make sure all the sensor-recording devices were on, to measure the emotional reactions of the twelve men to what they were about to see.

  After a few seconds, the old couple stopped smiling. The man put his arms around the woman's shoulders and pulled her toward him, as if to share their body warmth. The woman said something to him and, as she spoke, breath steamed in front of her face.

  The temperature in the room pictured on the screen was clearly going lower. With his free hand, the man turned up his shirt collar and buttoned it up at the neck. He hunched his shoulders, as people do in the cold, to try to pocket their bodily heat.

  The couple talked to each other again but the film was silent and the men in the room could not hear voices. The woman wept. Tears rolled down her pink round cheeks. The camera zoomed in for a closeup and the tears turned to ice drops halfway down the woman's face.

  The tall old man got up and walked to the door through which they had entered. He tried the knob. It would not turn. He yanked at the door. The blind woman still sat on the chair, but turned her head from side to side in confusion. The old man pounded on the door, but there was obviously no reply, because his face grew sad, and he came back and sat down again next to the old woman and tried to comfort her.

  The film went on. The steam from their breaths frosted into ice in their hair and eyebrows. They hugged each other tightly, but when that failed to keep them warm, the man took off his shirt and put it around the woman. Then he kissed her on the mouth, and they clung to each other, tightly locked in each others arms.

  The film seemed to skip for a moment, and then the couple was on screen again. They were in the same position, smiles on their faces, but they were coated with ice and obviously frozen to death. Bobbin heard someone gag in the front of the room. The film skipped again and showed the two people frozen in place, each coated with an inch-thick slick of ice.

  It skipped again. Bobbin heard someone start to throw up. The final frames of the film showed the people now covered in a mound of ice, the ice so thick that one had to look hard to discern under the block the forms of two real people.

  Bobbin froze the final frame of the movie and flicked on the lights. He walked to the front of the room and looked around. One man had thrown up onto the floor. Another had his handkerchief to his mouth and was gagging into it. They were out of it. They would never move up in the fuel industry. Some of the men seemed shocked. They were losers too.

  Three men looked up at Bobbin with questioning eyes that showed no emotional reaction at all. They would probably reach the second level of management.

  But two men looked at Bobbin very differently. Their eyes glistened with a vision of positive enjoyment. There were smiles on their faces. These two were comers, Bobbin knew. Some day they would head oil companies or coal companies.

  Bobbin spoke. "You just saw a film. That's all, a film."

  The man who had thrown up kept retching on the floor. The others watched Bobbin.

  "That's all," he repeated. "A film. It's not like we go around freezing people all the time. We didn't even freeze these people at all."

  Some of the men looked relieved at hearing it was a bloodless experiment. Bobbin paused to make sure that the sensors recorded their reaction to his remark. The two men who had seemed to enjoy the film looked disappointed at what Bobbin said. But they smiled again when he added:

  "No, we didn't freeze them at all. Somebody else froze them." The sick man threw up some more.

  "We just photographed them," Bobbin said. "That's all. The freezing wasn't our responsibility. As a matter of fact, and your news networks never mention a thing like this, you never hear that they owed money for fuel bills, the blind lady never paid a fuel bill in her whole fucking life. But
the news never mentions that. No. Old people dying is always dramatic so it gets on the news. But it's not the whole story, not by a long shot."

  Bobbin stopped. That was certainly enough for the people operating the sensor recorders to give him full reports on the leadership potential of the twelve men, all mid-level executives in the fossil fuel industry.

  Bobbin felt good. He would bet that this screening system was going to work and if it did, his reputation was made. It was costly and dangerous for the fuel industry to go grooming top-level executives and then, when they got into the top slots, to find out that they had social consciences and a sense of the responsibility of the fuel companies to the public, and all those other things that were good for political speeches, but played hob with the oil and coal companies' profit and loss statements. Not to mention annual dividends.

  "We want to thank all you gentlemen for coming to New York," Bobbin said. "Of course, you realize that this experimental program is being kept absolutely quiet so you will not talk about it. Now lunch is being served in the presidential dining room." He smiled. His fingers strayed toward the wisp of gray hair in front of his right ear.

  "Good lunch, too," he said. "Salad with Roquefort dressing, vichyssoise, broiled lobster-fresh lobster, too, none of that frozen stuff. I guess you've had enough frozen meat for one day. Enjoy, enjoy."

  The sick man heaved up some more. A loser, Bobbin thought. Just a loser.

  After the room had been cleared, Bobbin waved toward the one-way window and a technician in a white smock entered the room.

  "Got everything?" Bobbin asked.

  "Got it all."

  "On my desk when?"

  "Tomorrow."

  "Fine," Bobbin said.

  The man in the white jacket left. Bobbin's assistant ran into the room.

  "Bad news, Will," he said.

  "What's that?" Bobbin asked, annoyed that he should have to listen to somebody's idea of bad news on a day that had thus far gone so well.

  "Wesley Pruiss is still alive."

  "Shit," said Bobbin.

  "What'll we do? If he goes ahead with that solar energy project..." The assistant did not finish the sentence but his tone of impending doom finished it for him.

  "Leave it to me," Bobbin said with a grim smile. "Leave it to me." And he started twisting the hair at his right temple again.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Theodosia had taken over the entire east wing of the Furlong General Hospital and turned it into a fortress for Wesley Pruiss.

  Contractors had been hurriedly hired to seal off all the connections between the main hospital and the new east wing. Meanwhile other contractors were bolting solid steel plates over the doors and windows.

  When the job was done, there was only one way to enter the east wing. From the downstairs ground level entrance door, which was locked and guarded twentyfour hours a day by one of the Furlong County police, there was no way to get out of the stairwell before the top floor where Wesley Pruiss lay in a bed in the only room in the wing that was occupied.

  Inside the stairwell, outside the top floor, stood a mercenary colonel who had grown famous for his exploits leading men in African wars. He carried a small submachine gun and an auto-Mag pistol.

  He had been the first of three bodyguards hired by Theodosia.

  Behind the door the colonel guarded and patrolling the ten feet of distance from the hall door to Pruiss's room was a man who had been the world's middleweight karate champion. He could drive his foot through a plaster wall. His hands were gnarled and hard enough to drive nails. He was the second bodyguard.

  The third was a former Olympic champion in small arms fire, a consultant in weaponry to the Los Angeles and New York police departments.

  All the windows of Wesley Pruiss's room had been blocked off with steel plates, except for one that caught the morning sun. The window opened onto a fire escape and through it Pruiss was able to see the country club building that had been his home and the Furlong County golf course. On the fire escape of Pruiss's room, the small arms expert watched the roof above, the ground below and the metal steps leading up the fire escape. He carried a .357 Magnum and a .22 caliber semi-automatic pistol.

  As an extra precaution, the window behind him had been wired to administer a killing shock to anyone who tried to open it without the power being turned off from inside the room.

  Each man was being paid two thousand dollars a week. Theodosia felt secure. No one was just going to walk into Wesley Pruiss's room and harm him. Not with these security precautions.

  She stopped outside the clubhouse that was now the Pruiss mansion and picked some pink and red flowers. Her chauffeur let her off at the one working door to the hospital's east wing.

  The policeman at the door recognized her, but according to instructions, he stayed behind the locked door until she repeated the password: "Gross is beautiful."

  Only then did he let her into the downstairs hallway, quickly closing the door behind her. He checked her purse for weapons and then inspected the bunch of flowers. Only when he was satisfied that everything was in order, did he say, "Morning, Miss Theodosia."

  "Morning. Everything quiet?"

  "Yes, Ma'am."

  She walked up the three double flights of stairs to the fourth floor. As she turned the corner of the steps near the top, she saw the mercenary colonel, wearing khaki battle gear, pointing a submachine gun at her.

  "Morning, mum," he said in a crisp British accent.

  He too checked her purse and flowers, then turned and knocked four times on the door leading to the corridor.

  Theodosia smiled as she watched her professionals go through their professional extra-safe procedures.

  She heard the door unlock from the inside. The colonel counted to six before opening it.

  "If it opens right away," he explained to her, "the man inside will attack."

  He pulled the door open and Theodosia went inside. The karate expert, wearing a loose-fitting gi and barefooted, was in an attack stance that relaxed only when he recognized Theodosia.

  He too checked purse and flowers.

  She smiled again. She pushed through the swinging door into Wesley Pruiss's room. The small arms expert was on the fire escape, looking down and up and around in a never-ending cycle of vigilance.

  Wesley Pruiss was still asleep when she entered the room and Theodosia smiled when she saw the gentle, almost boyish look on his placid face. And then her eyes widened in shock.

  There was a yellow tag on the front of Pruiss's pajamas. It had writing on it. She moved quickly to the side of his bed and looked down at the tag. It was the inside of a matchbook from which the striker had been torn. The note had been written with a black felt-tipped marker that lay alongside Pruiss's bed with his notepad.

  The note read: "Your bodyguards stink." And there was a telephone number after it.

  The note had been clipped to the lapel of Pruiss's pajamas with a safety pin and when she removed it, Pruiss woke up and saw her.

  She pushed the yellow cardboard into her purse.

  "Morning, love," Pruiss said.

  She bent over to kiss him, then handed him the flowers. Without even a glance, he dropped them on the table next to his bed.

  "I'm sorry I woke you up," she said.

  "All right," he said. His voice was deep with despondency. "What else have I got to do but sleep?"

  "Don't say that, Wesley. You're going to be as good as new."

  "Yeah. As good as a new cripple can be," he said bitterly.

  He turned away. When he looked back, he saw her still smiling at him, very bravely. As a reward, he smiled himself.

  "Did you sleep well?" she asked.

  "Why not? With all those guards you've got around here, who could wake me up?"

  "No one came in to bother you?"

  "No," Pruiss said. "I just wish somebody had. I wish that guy with the knife had come back and finished the job."

  "I won't hear that, Wesley
," said Theodosia, her face flushed with anger. "You're an important man. You're going to be even more important. The world can't afford the loss of a man like you."

  "It's lost half of me already. The leg half. Don't kid me, Theodosia. I know hopeless when I see hopeless. So do the doctors. Spinal injury. Cripple."

  "What do those doctors know?" she asked. "We'll get more doctors. Better doctors."

  He thought about that for a moment, looking out the window at the bright sky.

  "Maybe, you're right," he said. "You know, there are times when I feel that there's some life in my legs... like I could almost move them. Not much and not often. But once in a while."

  He looked at Theodosia for some expression. He caught a brief flash of sorrow on her face that she turned into a smile as she said, "See. You never can tell." But her face told him a different story. It was hopeless and she knew it. He was a cripple, doomed to be a cripple for the rest of his life.

  He closed his eyes and said nothing more. He opened his mouth to take the pain pills she gave him and he had nothing to say when she began arranging for an ambulance to take him from the hospital back to the country club where his master bedroom had been converted into a hospital room. But it felt good, even if he wouldn't admit it to her, to be out of the hospital and back to his home, even if it was a new home and one he had not yet had a chance to get used to.

  When she went out in the early afternoon, Theodosia left the three bodyguards in his bedroom with orders to leave under no circumstances.

  Before leaving the building, she fished the piece of yellow cardboard from her purse and telephoned the number on it.

  Remo was lying on the bed in Room 15 of the Furlong Budget Value Dollar Motel when Theodosia rapped firmly on the door.

  When he opened it he looked her up and down and asked, "Who are you? Not that it really matters all that much."

  "You're the one who left the note?" Theodosia asked.

  "Right. That's right," Remo said. "I saw you on television. Ambrosia or something."

  "Theodosia."

  "Come on in."

  He went back to the bed while Theodosia sat on the couch.