Bottom Line td-37

by Warren Murphy

  The clerk shook his head. "All I know is my boss wouldn't like it, I give more than four quarters change for a dollar."

  "Invincible ignorance," Chiun said.

  Remo took a dollar out of his pocket and gave it to the clerk. The clerk returned the silver certificate. Chiun had it it out of Remo's hands and back among the folds of his robe before Remo's eyes had a chance to focus on the bill.

  "I owe you a dollar," Chiun said.

  "I'll remind you," Remo said. He asked the clerk which was the toughest machine.

  "South Sea Dreams in the back," the young man said. "Never given up a game yet."

  Remo walked with Chiun to the back and showed him how to insert the money and explained the purpose of the game. Chiun seemed offended that one did not win cash prizes.

  Two young men in black leather jackets smirked at each other when they heard Chiun talk. They were playing the machine next to his.

  Remo told them: "This gentleman's going to play this machine. Save yourself a lot of trouble and leave him alone."

  "Yeah? Who says so?"

  "Pal, I'm just trying to save you grief. Leave him alone."

  "Yeah. Who says so?"

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  Remo sighed. "Have it your own way."

  There was a telephone booth outside the arcade which vandals had not yet turned into a public urinal, and Remo called Smith's nighttime number. Smith answered the telephone on the first ring.

  "What's the latest on Lippincott?" asked Remo.

  "Holding steady. But no one can find out what's wrong," Smith said.

  "Chiun says it's some kind of poison," said Remo.

  "They can't find any foreign substances in his blood," Smith said.

  "If Chiun says it's poison, it's poison."

  "Have you found out anything?" Smith asked.

  "Nothing really," Remo said. "Oh, two guys tried to kill us on the street."

  "Who are they?"

  "Were," said Remo. "I don't know. They didn't have IDs. But, Smitty, . . ."

  "Yes?"

  "They were wearing hospital clothes. I'm thinking there's some kind of medical tie-in with this thing. Can you run that through the computers?"

  "I'll check it out," Smith said.

  Remo looked through the window of the arcade. The two young men with leather jackets and greasy fifties' hair were standing on either side of Chiun, talking to each other across the machine. Chiun seemed not to pay attention. Remo shook his head and turned away. He didn't want to watch.

  "Any word from Ruby?" asked Remo.

  "None yet."

  "Good," said Remo. "When she calls in, tell her we'll have this whole thing cleaned up before she even figures out what it's about. Tell her I said so."

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  "You sure you want me to say that?" asked Smith.

  "Yeah," said Remo. "Well . . . maybe not. I'll call you tomorrow."

  When he went back inside, the two youths in leather jackets were standing on tiptoe on either side of Chiun, straining upward. Remo saw why. Chiun had them by the index fingers and was using their fingers to operate the flippers of the pinball machines.

  "I warned you," he said to the two as he approached.

  "Make him let us go," one squealed.

  "Let them go, Chiun," said Remo.

  "Not until this game is done," said Chiun. "They graciously volunteered to show me how it is played."

  "I'll bet they did. What ball are you on?" Remo asked.

  "I am playing my first ball," Chiun said.

  "Still?" asked Remo.

  "It is perfectly good," said Chiun. "I see no reason to use another ball."

  And because Remo knew that it might be days before Chiun used all five balls of the game, he pressed his hip against the pinball machine and then hit it sideways.

  The machine's scoring lights went out. The "Tilt"

  sign lit up.

  "What happened?" said Chiun.

  "The machine tilted," Remo said.

  Chiun pressed the two young men's fingers against the flipper buttons. The flippers did not work.

  "What is this tilt?" he asked.

  "That means the game's over," said Remo.

  "How did that happen?" asked Chiun.

  "Sometimes it just happens," Remo said.

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  "Yeah," said one of the young men. "So let us go, will you, please, sir?"

  Chiun nodded and released the two youths. They began trying to rub the pain from their fingers.

  "The next time some gentle soul comes in seeking a moment's diversion from the cares of his Ufe, I advise you to leave him alone," Chiun said.

  "Yes, sir."

  "We will, sir."

  Chiun walked away. Remo followed him. At the door, Chiun said "I saw you tilt that machine by hitting it with your hip."

  "Sorry about that, Chiun," Remo said.

  "It is all right. I might have been there for days finishing that game, and it is a singularly stupid way to spend one's time, if you cannot win money."

  When he returned from the Upper East Side Clinic where his son Randall still lay unconscious, Elmer Lippincott walked heavily up the steps to his bedroom. He didn't relish what he was about to do, but he had lived his entire life doing what he had to do. It was his code of conduct.

  He wondered. How do you tell a woman you love something that might destroy her love for you?

  "You just tell her," he mumbled half-aloud to himself as he walked leadenly down the upstairs hallway. It was a hall undistinguished by paintings. Others as rich as Lippincott might have had a hallway lined with oil portraits of their ancestors but Elmer Lippincott's ancestors had been dirt farmers and cowpunchers and once in jest he had said that while they weren't exactly the scum of the earth, they weren't exactly the salt either.

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  He heard laughter from inside his bedroom as he reached the door so he knocked lightly once, before walking inside.

  His wife, Gloria, was sitting up in her bed wearing a satin gown, a sheet tucked demurely around her body. On the little stool at the dressing table sat Dr. Jesse Beers. They had obviously been sharing a joke because they looked a little startled and if Lippincott's mind had been working more clearly, he might have thought they even looked a little guilty as he walked in.

  Dr. Beers blew his nose in a handkerchief and seemed to take the occasion to wipe his face thoroughly. Gloria was not as immaculate as she usually was. One strap of her nightgown was off her shoulder and the rising swell of her left breast was visible. Her lipstick seemed slightly smeared. Lippincott noticed none of these things.

  Beers finished wiping his face and stood as Lippincott came in. The doctor was a tall broad-shouldered, young man.

  "How's the patient, Doctor?" asked Lippincott.

  "Fine, sir. Top notch."

  "Good." Lippincott smiled at his wife and without looking back said, "Doctor, would you excuse us?"

  "Of course. Goodnight, Mrs. Lippincott. Sir."

  After he closed the door behind him, Lippincott said to his wife: "Nice fella."

  "If you like the type," Gloria said. She opened her arms wide and extended them toward her husband in an invitation to join her on the bed.

  Lippincott tossed his jacket over a chair as he walked toward her. God, he loved her. And soon she'd be the mother of his child. Hopefully, a son. A

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  real son. As he sat on the bed, her arms and eyes were so inviting, her look so loving, that he again felt a shudder at what he had to do. He closed his big rawboned hand around one of hers.

  "What's the matter, Ebner?" she asked.

  "You see right through me, don't you?"

  "I don't know about that," Gloria said. "But I can see when something's on your mind. You come in here all sour and Walter Brennan looking and I know something's wrong."

  He smiled despite himself, but the smile was just a flash across his face and then there was nothing there except hurt and pain.

  "You'd better t
ell me about it," Gloria said. "It can't be as bad as your face makes it look."

  "It is," Lippincott said. "It is."

  He waited for her to say something. When she didn't answer, the silence seemed tö fill the room like a pressure. He turned away and faced the hall door as he spoke.

  "I want you to know, first of all, that I love you and our baby," he said.

  "I know that," Gloria said. She touched her fingers to the back of his head, swirling them through his thick white hair.

  "I used to love my . . . my boys that same way," Lippincott said. "Until I found out, thanks to Dr. Gladstone, that they weren't mine. Three sons my wife gave me. Sons of some other man. Or men." His voice broke.

  "Ebner, this is all old ground we've covered before," Gloria said. "Why do we have to do it again? You can't do anything about the past, about some

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  woman who treated you badly and is dead now anyway. Forgive and forget."

  He turned back to her. There was a tear in the corner of his right eye. "I wish I had done that," he said. "But I couldn't. My pride was hurt too much. And then I was angry and vengeful. You know those experiments Dr. Gladstone does up at the laboratory?"

  "Not really," Gloria said. "Science doesn't interest me."

  "Well, she works with animals to produce substances that can be used in people to affect their behavior. It's how she cured my impotence. Well, I asked her to ... to use some of those formulas on Lem and Randall and Douglas."

  Gloria's eyes opened wide. Lippincott shook his head sadly.

  "I didn't really want to hurt them," he said. "I just wanted to ... to pay them back ... to show them how much they owed to the Lippincott name."

  "It wasn't their fault, Ebner. They didn't have anything to do with how their mother acted."

  "I know that now. But too late. I wanted to embarrass them. But the medicine was too much for Lem and now he's dead. And tonight . . . well, Randall's in a hospital, almost dead. My fault. I just came from there."

  Gloria moved forward on the bed and put her arms around Lippincott, cradling him to her shoulder.

  "Oh, honey," she said. "I'm so sorry. But you mustn't feel guilty. That won't solve anything."

  "But Lem is dead," he said.

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  "That's right. He's dead and there's nothing anybody can do about it. Except grieve."

  "And feel guilty," Lippincott said. Tears were rolling fully down his face now, coursing through the crags and folds of his dry weathered skin.

  "No," Gloria said firmly. "Guilt does nothing for anyone. What you can do is try your best to see that Randall gets well. And, even though it sounds cruel, you can just forget Lem. You will, you know, in time. Try to do it now. Spare yourself the anguish. Forget him. Do it for me. For our new son. Your son."

  "You think I can?"

  "I know you can," Gloria said. Lippincott took her in his arms for a moment, then settled her back onto her pillow. He reached for the telephone.

  "I've told Dr. Gladstone to stop," he said. "Enough is enough."

  "I'm glad," she said.

  He spoke into the telephone. "Dr. Beers, would you come in here please?"

  Beers arrived a few seconds later. He was still wearing his tweed slacks and quiana shirt.

  "Yes, sir," he said.

  "Dr. Beers, my son Randall is in the Upper East Side Clinic in Manhattan. I want you to go down there, and to consult with your associate Dr. Gladstone, and do what is necessary to make sure that Randall recovers."

  "What's wrong with him, sir?" Beers asked. He looked, as if in confusion, from Lippincott to the young and beautiful Gloria.

  "Dr. Gladstone will know," Lippincott said. "So please go now."

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  "And Mrs. Lippincott?" Beers asked. "I'll be here. She'll be all right. If there's anything wrong, I'll call you immediately."

  'Til leave right away," Beers said. He left the room.

  "And now everything will be all right," Gloria told her husband. "So you just take those clothes off and come to bed. I'm going to the bathroom."

  She locked the bathroom door behind her, turned the water on fast, then picked up the telephone on the wall next to the sink.

  She dialed three digits.

  When the telephone was picked up, she spoke two words: "Kill him."

  She hung up the telephone, washed her hands and went back to her husband.

  After Randall, she thought, there were only two Lippincotts to go. The third son, Douglas.

  And, of course, the old man.

  Elmer Lippincott took the news from Dr. Beers very hard. His son, Randall, had expired in the night. Neither he nor Dr. Gladstone had been able to do anything about it.

  "One moment he was fine. And the next moment, he stopped breathing. I'm sorry, Mr. Lippincott."

  "You're not to blame," Lippincott said. "I am." His heart was heavy until breaking. Fortunately, his young wife Gloria comforted him, and then she went to sleep.

  Very soundly.

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  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Ruby couldn't sleep. Even at 2 A.M., the traffic noises in the street below her hotel window annoyed her. The whirring of the heater in the'room annoyed her. And the thought that Remo might be ahead of her in this case annoyed her most of all.

  She turned on the bed lamp and dialed Smith's home number. The special telephone was installed in Smith's bedroom. It had no bell and when a call came in, a small red light flashed at the base of the receiver. Smith, who had spent his maturing years with the O.S.S. and then with the CIA, before being selected to head CURE, slept so lightly the red flash woke him instantly.

  He lifted the phone off the base, listened for a moment to his wife's heavy regular snoring, and whispered: "Hold on, please."

  He put the call on hold, then picked it up on another telephone in the bathroom.

  "Smith," he said.

  "This is Ruby. I'm sorry for calling you so late but I couldn't sleep."

  "Neither could I," Smith lied. He did not like to make people feel uncomfortable. Uncomfortable

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  people took longer to get to the point. "Have you learned anything?" he asked.

  "Well, I'm glad I didn't wake you," Ruby said. "Remember that detective, Meadows? He's definitely the one who wrote the letter to The Man. And he's been missing for about two weeks. The plot against the Lippincotts has something to do with someplace on the East Side. Called Lifeline Laboratory. And there was another guy with Meadows."

  "How'd you find this out?" Smith asked.

  "I got my hands on Meadows's throwaway sheets when he was writing that letter. They had more information than the letter did."

  "What do you think happened to Meadows?"

  "My guess is that he bought the farm," Ruby said.

  "It would seem likely," Smith said.

  "What about the dodo? He find anything?"

  "Remo? A little, but it ties in with what you told me." Quickly, Smith filled her in on the attempt to murder Remo and Chiun, and the poisoning of Randall Lippincott, and the fact that the two men who attacked Remo and Chiun were wearing hospital type clothing. Remo suggested a medical tie-in among the Lippincotts.

  "Shoot, he getting close," Ruby said.

  "I put it in the computers before I left Folcroft," Smith said. "Hold on."

  He pressed the hold button and dialed a number that connected directly into the massive computer banks at Folcroft Sanitarium, CURE's headquarters. A mechanical computer voice answered. Smith pushed the buttons on the telephone receiver in a numerical pattern that triggered the computer's readout mechanism. The computer voice recited some infor-

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  mation mechanically to Smith, who hung up after first saying his habitual Thank You before picking up Ruby's call again.

  "You're right," he told her. "Lifeline Laboratory is funded by Lippincott money. It's headed by two doctors, Elena Gladstone and Loren Beers. They are also private physicians who treat the Lippincott f a
m-ily."

  "What they do at the laboratory?" Ruby asked.

  "Some kind of esoteric research. Behavioral studies."

  "Esoteric?" asked Ruby.

  "Far out," explained Smith.

  "Got it. Where's the dodo staying?"

  Smith gave Ruby Remo's hotel.

  "What are you going to do now?" he asked.

  "I was going to visit the laboratory."

  "I wouldn't recommend your going there alone. Contact Remo," Smith said.

  "He dumb," Ruby said. "He can't find anything out. He'll go barging in and messing up everything, breaking furniture and playing the fool. Then we never find out anything."

  "Now you know the cross I've had to bear," Smith said patiently. "But I don't want anything to happen to you."

  He was silent. There was a pause at the other end of the line.

  "All right," Ruby said. "I'll get together with Remo."

  "Good," said Smith. "Keep in touch."

  He hung up. Ruby hung up and said softly to herself: "Booshit." She sat on the edge of the bed. It wasn't that she didn't like Remo. She did. In fact,

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  sometimes she tingled when she thought of him and if it hadn't been for the fact that Chiun was always trying to push them into bed together so they could produce a tan baby for him, she and Remo probably would have gotten it on by now.

  Now, that would be a baby, Ruby thought. Homo superior. If it got Remo's physical ability and her brains. But what if the baby had Remo's brains? What a burden to lay on a child.

  She'd worry about that when the time came.

  Ruby dressed quickly and checked the wallet inside her large pocketbook to make sure she was carrying the right kind of identification. Downstairs, she called a cab.

  "City morgue," she told the driver.

  "Gee, lady," he said. "You don't have to commit suicide. I'll marry you."

  "I already got one loser," Ruby said. "Drive."

  Her Justice Department identification got her through the string of clerks that manned the morgue, even at 2:45 A.M. New York might be bankrupt, but they never seemed to run out of money to hire more clerks, she realized. At the morgue, she passed through seven layers of personnel before she finally got to what was called "the storage room."

  A bored policeman checked her identification carefully, moving his lips as he read it, then asked her who she was looking for. The cop smelled of cheap whiskey. His belt pressed into his huge belly like a knife into an unbaked biscuit. Ruby wondered whose brother-in-law he was to get a job indoors in winter.