The Ultimate Death td-88

by Warren Murphy

  "Shut the fuck up, Johnny," Favio Briassoli had replied. He was busy expelling his lunch of linguini and clam sauce into the gutter in front of the Neighborhood Improvement Association building.

  There were other occasions that prompted street talk-such as a recent interest in the ways of the encroaching Chinese-but he was Don Pietro, so these lapses in decorum were ignored.

  As a reward for their loyalty, Don Pietro had entrusted Favio and Gaetano with the job of protecting his frail old life. And that's where they had been for the past few weeks. Inside the Neighborhood Improvement Association, perched on hard straight-backed chairs on either side of the front door, steeled for the trouble that was now unavoidable because too many mouths were whispering that Don Pietro was a weak old man with no more of a mind than a squash.

  This night it was warm enough that they could have sat outside, but on the sidewalk they would have been targets for drive-by shooters and Feds with cameras. And besides, no one came to the Neighborhood Improvement Association who didn't have business there, and no one came to the plain wood-facade, steel-reinforced door without quaking in terror at what the tiny old shell of a man and his army of thugs could do if he were displeased.

  On this night, Johnny Chisels was on edge. As he leaned back in the wooden chair, he kept bouncing it back and forth off the wall behind him.

  He stopped bouncing long enough to ask, "You think there's somethin' really wrong with him this time?"

  "Hey, I ain't seen nothing wrong, so shut up," Favio had responded. "You wanna get us killed?"

  Johnny Chisels fingered the butt of the 9-mm Glock pistol in his shoulder holster. He had lifted the weapon off a Colombian hit the year before, and he had treasured it ever since. Owning a piece none of his friends could spell made him feel worldly.

  "And quit playin' with that foreign piece of shit," Favio added. "It's gonna go off one of these days, and take your fuckin' nose with it."

  "Aw, lay off, Favio," Johnny Chisels complained.

  Favio Briassoli had gone back to staring glumly at the floor, and Gaetano Chisli had just gotten up to stretch his cramped legs, when the front door exploded inward in a million shards of wood and metal, carrying Johnny Chisels with it. The two became a red abstract painting on the painted plaster wall behind.

  "Come out, come out, wherever you are!" a voice called from out on Mott Street.

  Favio Briassoli was up in a heartbeat. His chair clattered to the floor as he slammed his back firmly against the wall to the left of the door, his heavy Wildey Survivor .45 clutched in his meaty palm. About a dozen other burly thugs in ill-fitting suits came cramming into the small foyer from back rooms, Uzis in hand and backs dragging sweat marks across the thirty-year-old wallpaper.

  "What is it, Favio?" one asked, eyeing the remains of Johnny Chisels.

  "Shut up!" Favio hissed.

  They waited in silence, but nothing else happened.

  Tentatively, Favio Briassoli pushed his arm out the door, weapon first. He'd come out firing, and maybe peg off a couple of rounds into whoever had done in Johnny Chisels. But before he had a chance to depress the trigger, his gun was plucked from his hand like a spring dandelion. It disappeared in a blur out the front door.

  "What the fuck . . . ?" Favio demanded. His fingertips were tingling. He hadn't even seen who or what had taken the gun from him.

  A moment later the large handgun rolled back into the foyer. Its long barrel had been tied into a neat overhand knot.

  "This is wrong," a sing-songy voice complained from outside. "We are not to harm any who dwell within this place without instructions from Smith." "Since when did you become a pacifist?" the first voice complained.

  Wondering if the Irish Westies were making a move-since very few Sicilians were named Smith-Favio motioned to two of his burliest men. They took the signal and rushed to the door brandishing their Uzis. They leapt out into the street, while the others listened anxiously. The weapons managed a few feeble burps, and then were strangled into silence. Somehow . . .

  Weapon in hand, Favio eased to the gaping front door, keeping off to one side. He was about to order the next wave into the fray. He got as far as jerking his thumb toward the door, when something that felt exactly like a steel vise grips reached in and dragged him, thumb-first, out onto the pavement.

  He rolled back into the hallway a moment later, his spine knotted in the same manner as his handgun.

  Next a face appeared at the door. It was youngish, about thirty or so. The man the face belonged to waved once to the cowering pack of mobsters, with an ordinary hand that was attached to his forearm by an extraordinarily thick wrist.

  "Borrow a cup of ammo?" he asked cheerfully.

  One of the gangsters opened fire, saying, "All I got are fuckin' clips."

  The first volley of bullets ripped into the walls around the door, chewing up wood and spitting fragments of plaster onto the well-worn carpetand incidentally, adding a few kinks to Favio Briassoli's already knotty spine.

  The man with wrists like baseball bats easily dodged the leaden storm.

  He was in the hallway now, advancing on the startled group.

  "Gee, all I wanted was a cup. That had to have been more like twenty," he said.

  He was too close now for their machine pistols. They ran the risk of shooting one another in such a confined space. A few pulled handguns. The closest pair reached for him with their bare hands.

  Those with outstretched hands lost the hands. The thick-wristed man simply collected them like so many toadstools. The newly maimed members of the Scubisci family dropped to the floor, howling and cradling bloody stumps. There were only four left standing. They stuck their guns in the face of the intruder and squeezed their triggers in unison.

  Before the rounds left their chambers, their bodies had hit the floor. Bullet strikes peppered the surrounding walls.

  But nothing else. For the intended target had vanished from the convergence of bullets, to reappear off to one side.

  When all was quiet, Chiun entered through what remained of the front door. He picked his way through the carnage, delicately raising the hem of his silvery kimono.

  "Thanks a heap for all the help," Remo complained.

  "I disposed of the one who gave orders," Chiun sniffed. With his toe, he indicated the pretzel-like form of the late Favio Briassoli.

  "And left me with a dozen more."

  "You are in need of practice," Chiun said, glancing around the foyer with narrow almond eyes.

  Remo eyed the Master of Sinanju quizzically. "Since when?"

  "Since your elbow was bent."

  Remo blinked. He hadn't heard that particular gripe-one of Chiun's favorites back in the old days-for many years.

  "What's so terrible about a bent elbow, anyway?" he asked.

  "Pray that you never find out," Chiun said darkly.

  "Let's go find the big cheese," Remo said, shrugging.

  "I warn you, Remo," Chiun said coldly. "This is wrong. Emperor Smith will be most displeased."

  "Then why'd you follow me?"

  Chiun's dry, papery lips thinned. He said nothing. His gaze darted into the building interior warily.

  The room was shrouded in semidarkness. Remo trained his senses on the far end, and a black-walnut alcove. Only one person was there. The breathing was coming shallow and labored, laced with a loose-larynxed rattle. Whoever was in there had to be extremely old, sick, or both.

  Remo creaked the door open carefully.

  "What family you from?" someone in the back of the darkened alcove called.

  Remo glanced at Chiun, who shrugged. "Sinanju!" he called out.

  "The Jews ain't got no business in Scubisci territory," the voice answered. It was a pained, phlegmy rasp.

  A light snapped on in the black-walnut alcove at the rear of the room. The light was the banker's variety, with a green shade and old-fashioned pull chain, and it illuminated walls plastered with sepia saints. A withered hand drew back from the
ivory cone of light, to settle in the lap of the figure seated behind the bullet-scarred walnut table. The other hand was rooting around inside a grease-spotted paper bag. The thick smell of fried peppers wafted up from the greasy sack.

  "What do you want from me?" Don Pietro Scubisci croaked.

  "Answers," Remo said, advancing toward the alcove.

  Don Pietro waved his free hand in a casual gesture. The other hand remained firmly inside the pepper bag. "A man my age, he has more questions than answers, I am afraid," he said. His eyes remained downcast, and he seemed to be absorbed in the spectacle of a cockroach that was crawling across his scarred tabletop.

  "That's too bad," Remo said. "Because questions I got, answers you're going to give. Starting with Sal Mondello and Poulette Farms."

  Chiun had drawn near to Remo, protectively.

  "Remo, do not harm him," Chiun hissed.

  "What?" Remo asked, surprised.

  "Your friend, he is a wise man," Don Pietro Scubisci said. He reached his other hand inside the bag and pulled out a wedge of fried pepper. As if it had plans of its own, the first hand continued to search the bottom of the bag. Don Pietro placed the pepper delicately on his slug-white tongue and chewed it with deliberate calm. "You should be like him-maybe you'll live longer."

  "My friend doesn't speak for me," Remo said. He rounded the table.

  "A shame," Don Pietro said, shaking his head. "He sounds to me a very reasonable man." He still had not looked up at Remo.

  "You and your dead-end kids have been behind the duck poisonings upstate at Poulette Farms, right?" Remo demanded.

  "Remo!" Chiun called, sternly. "Have a care."

  "Ducks?" a smile spread across the old man's features.

  Don Pietro Scubisci looked up. Under the soft spread of light cast by the banker's lamp, his watery yellow eyes seemed to be swimming in a sea of mucus. But there was something else about those eyes.

  Remo had seen that look before. He was wondering just where, when the hand slashed out of the greasy bag. It slit the paper in a perfect vertical line and went for Remo's throat like a switchblade snapping out.

  The highly polished nail caught a glimmer of light from the banker's lamp. It was guillotine shaped. Remo saw that much. And it came back to him.

  Remo William's body went on automatic. He dodged the don's hand in a quick sidestep, forcing it downward with a stabbing forefinger so that it struck the top of the table.

  Brittle bones snapped under the force of the blow, but it made little difference to Don Pietro Scubisci. Remo's other hand shot out like a pile driver, crushing the old don's face to a pinkish pulp. All residual brain activity ceased, as if disconnected from its power source.

  The old man collapsed to the floor, the side of his face mashing against his bag. It disgorged slimy peppers across the tabletop, like scurrying green mice.

  Remo wheeled on Chiun, whose hands retreated into kimono sleeves.

  "Now you know. . . ." Chiun intoned, his eyes bleak.

  "Mondello too?" Remo guessed. "Am I right?"

  Chiun averted his eyes.

  "Dammit, Chiun, why didn't you tell me?"

  "I was awaiting the appropriate time," Chiun responded.

  "When would that have been?" Remo shouted. "When one of them had carved me up and used me to trim a tree?"

  At that, the Master of Sinanju's stern face became angry. Wordlessly, he crossed to where the body of Don Pietro Scubisci lay on the floor and knelt beside it. With one of his own sharpened fingernails he opened a gash in the dead man's throat. Amid the feeble gurgle of blood, a tiny puff of orange rose from the orifice to be swallowed by the banker's lamp.

  Remo watched the vanishing smoke in wonder. "What was that?" he asked.

  "The only way known to release a spirit from its walking death. By liberating the bad air that makes them so." Chiun rose to his feet. "Learned at great cost," he added quietly.

  Remo stared down in disbelief at the corpse on the floor. The Master of Sinanju turned to face his pupil.

  "Is there anything you would like to say to me?" Chiun inquired.

  "Yeah," Remo muttered, shaking his head. "I wish I'd bought fish."

  "Idiot!" Chiun hissed, flouncing about and floating off. "Round-eyed idiot! Dense as all your kind!"

  "Hey, it was just a freaking joke!" Remo said, trailing after.

  The body of Don Pietro Scubisci stared dully after them. It gave a final gurgle, from its throat rather than its mouth, and its limbs began to loosen and stretch in death.

  Chapter 14

  "Chiun, wait up!"

  Remo caught sight of the Master of Sinanju a few buildings down from the Neighborhood Improvement Association. There were no sounds of approaching police cruisers, which should have been dispatched to investigate the gunfire. As for the neighbors, they seemed strangely disinterested. As if they had their own notions as to what constitutes neighborhood improvement.

  There were signs all around that Little Italy would be only a hazy memory in a few short years. If Chinatown was allowed to grow unchecked, it would continue to devour the Italian section of Manhattan like a hungry beast, building by building.

  Mott Street was a strange collection of commingling ethnic smells. The odor of steamed milk and tomato sauce vied with pungent soy sauce for supremacy.

  "Little Father. Time out. Okay?"

  The Master of Sinanju froze on the sidewalk in front of a small food store. Inside the large glass display window, heavy tubes of prosciutto spun lazy spirals beside cured pork strips. A Chinese shopkeeper was whisking the sidewalk with an old-fashioned straw broom. His eyes squinted in haughty disdain at the sight of the unfamiliar Korean, and he began to sweep the sidewalk with increased vigor.

  "Why didn't you tell me who was behind this?" Remo demanded angrily, storming up behind Chiun. "We could have stopped this before it got this far."

  "Are you blind?" Chiun shouted, wheeling. "The gyonshi are a threat to us now only because of your ineptitude."

  "Gyonshi ?"

  "It is the name the blood-drinkers use for their own kind."

  "Oh, so these Chinese vampires are all my fault, are they?" Remo demanded. "What, did I forget to close the tomb after me?"

  "I would not put such perversity beyond the realm of the possible," Chiun said. "Especially from someone of such obviously deficient parentage. But it is clear to me that had your stroke been pure fifteen years ago, we would not be facing this menace today. You have always had a problem keeping your elbow straight."

  "Ah-hah!" Remo shouted. "Now I know where the bent elbow came from!"

  "Yes. It came from you."

  "I tell you, my elbow was straight!" Remo demonstrated a rapid stroke in the air before him. "Zip, zip. In and out. I shaved enough of his brain to keep the Leader in a coma forever."

  Chiun's eyes narrowed. "Demonstrate again," he commanded.

  Remo thrust his hand out before him at the same imaginary target. He stepped back, his face pleased. "There!" he said triumphantly.

  "And this is identical to the technique you used on the Leader?" Chiun prompted. "A perfect recreation," Remo said, folding his arms across his chest. "I haven't changed that lunge in fifteen years."

  "Thank the gods we did not rely on that particular stroke against all of Emperor Smith's enemies," Chiun said curtly, "or there would be a veritable army of dispatched enemies pounding down our door."

  Remo dropped his arms to his sides. "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "The forward thrust," Chiun commanded. "Execute it."

  Dutifully, Remo shot his arm out, forefinger extended stiffly.

  "Hold!" Chiun ordered. Remo froze in position. "Now, return." Remo's hand snapped back to his side. "You bend on the return," Chiun said, his voice sour and flat. He seemed more disappointed than angry.

  Taken aback, Remo snapped, "My arm is straight on the initial line. That's the power thrust. The return is only mopup. There's no need to finesse it." The Master of Sinanju
narrowed his eyes in disapproval. "It's all right to bend your elbow on the return," Remo insisted. He paused. Chiun stared stonily. "Isn't it?" he asked, deflated.

  "You were supposed to immobilize the Leader to prevent him from taking his own life, for it is written that only in death is a vampire truly alive. Your sloppiness only wounded him. The brain has healed itself."

  "You can't fob all this off on me!" Remo said hotly.

  "Was it I who used the faulty blow on the Leader, back in that dry city of ten-quart hats?" Chiun said aridly. "Was it I who placed him in that hospital of greedy quacks, and entrusted his caretaking to the insane Emperor Smith? Yes, Remo, I am fobbing. But it is I, Chiun the Fobber, who should be blamed for the fact that Sinanju will end with us. And I mean this, Remo. I am most sincere. It is my fault, for it was I who entrusted such an important task to lazy white help." Chiun now began to pad remorsefully down the street. "I should have performed the duty myself, but how can the young learn if they are not given opportunity? You were too callow. I should have known this."

  "I haven't come through this without a few scrapes as well!" Remo called after him. "That old hairbag in there just tried to harpoon me!" he complained.

  Chiun paused. "Yes," he said thoughtfully. "Thank you for that as well. I will have to explain his death to Smith."

  "What's to explain?" Remo demanded. "This guy was capo di tutti frutti of the whole frigging Manhattan Mafia, and I took him out."

  "Have you forgotten? It was Smith who arranged his ascension to power. A cunning move, because it installed a weak, ineffectual bandit chief in place of the more dangerous man who came before."

  "So? He can install another old hairbag. Big deal. They're a dime a dozen."

  "That is the least of our concerns at the moment," Chiun said, heaving a sigh. "This all could have been avoided. Had I not been such a kind and forgiving teacher you would not have lapsed into your slothful, corner-cutting American ways." His parchment face hardened. "That is not to say it is still not all your fault, because it is."

  Remo was shaking his head slowly.

  There came a sharp clatter, as if something had fallen, followed by a low growl behind them.