Oil Slick td-16

by Warren Murphy

Remo was glad she chose not to be coy. "Then I guess we've got to protect each other, especially since we're being tailed," she said.

  "You saw him?" She went up nineteen notches in Remo's eyes.

  "Sure. He's been eating me up with his eyes ever since I started waiting for you at the gate."

  "He's at the bar now."

  "I know," said Jessie. She stopped talking when the waitress pushed aside the beads and placed glasses in front of them. When the waitress left and the beads stopped tinkling together, Jessie leaned across the corner of the table and said, "What are you here for?"

  "Clogg," Remo said. "I'm wondering what he's up to."

  "That's easy," she said. "He's got some kind of plan to smuggle Baraka's oil into the United States. Washington told me before I left."

  "Why didn't they tell me?" complained Remo.

  "Easy," said Jessie, sipping her drink slowly and watching Remo over the top of the glass with shrewd eyes. "Your real assignment's got nothing to do with Clogg so they didn't bother to tell you, just as you haven't bothered yet to tell me what your real assignment is."

  "All right," he said finally, "you got me. I'm here to figure out how to get King Adras back on the throne." Remo did not like the situation he was in; the girl was smart, and he was not used to this kind of give and take lying.

  "Anything else?" she said.

  "Yes. One thing. When are we going to make love?"

  "I thought you'd never ask," she said. Jessie moved next to Remo on the padded bench. Her arms went around his head and her lips came up to meet his.

  Remo responded to her, silently cursing Chiun for the training that had taken all pleasure out of sex and replaced it with discipline and technique.

  Jessie gave a slight moan and then Remo was moving his hand under her thin top, doing things to her upper side under her armpit that she had not felt before.

  She moaned again. Remo felt her hands come away from his neck and she began to work up her white skirt.

  Then in a confluence of bodies and contortions, Remo and Jessie made love on the bench. Her moans and exhortations were buried alive, under the sound of the heavyhooved belly dancer thumping around on the thin wooden floor to the music of the wooden whistle and string band.

  When they were done, Jessie just moved away from Remo and sat stock still, unable to speak for moments. She seemed unaware that her short skirt was still up around her hips, and in fact she did not even move when the waitress barged through the beaded screen to ask if they wanted refills.

  Remo nodded yes. When the waitress left, Jessie came to and pulled down her skirt and straightened her sweater.

  "Hey now, holy mackerel, Andy," she said.

  "I take it that's a compliment," said Remo.

  "No, man," said Jessie, her perfect white teeth shiny and brilliant in the ebony majesty of her happy face. "That's no compliment. That's called homage."

  "If you're good, I'll invite you back," said Remo.

  "I'll be good. I'll be good."

  The waitress interrupted them with their drinks and Remo asked: "There was a redheaded man at the bar. Is he still there?"

  "Yes, sir," she said.

  Remo pressed a bill into her hand. "Don't mention that I asked." The waitress agreed, with an appreciative look toward Jessie, indicating that there might be a payment for the service more preferable than cash.

  Remo squeezed her hand lightly, touching a spot between the thumb and index finger, watching her face brighten.

  "Hey, I'm the jealous type," said Jessie after the girl had left. "Easy now."

  "Just readying the reserves," said Remo. "In case you get uppity."

  "I thought we weren't going to talk ethnic," said Jessie and they both laughed and sipped their drinks until Jessie excused herself to go to the ladies' room.

  Remo leaned back on the bench, put his toes on the bench on the far side of the table, and concentrated on watching the new belly-dancer through the small cracks between the strands of beads.

  She was an improvement over the first. This, Remo determined, because she seemed to sweat less and she smiled occasionally. The first had danced as if her primary interest were in not putting a heavy foot through one of the thin floorboards. This one danced as if there were something more on her mind than mere survival.

  She finished one dance to scattered applause from the half-empty room and began another.

  And then another.

  And then Remo wondered where Jessie was. He waited a few more minutes, then looked out through the beaded drape into the room. She was not to be seen.

  The waitress stood in the back of the large room, keeping a watchful eye on the small tables and Remo motioned to her.

  She came forward with a smile. "Check, sir?"

  "The lady I was with? Did you see her leave?"

  "No, sir?"

  "Would you check in the ladies' room and see if she is there? Her name is Miss Jenkins."

  "Certainly, sir."

  A moment later the girl returned to Remo. "No, sir. She is not in there. The room is quite empty."

  "Is there another door out of there?"

  "Yes sir, there is a door that leads into a back alley."

  Remo grabbed bills from his pocket and pushed them into the girl's hand. "Thanks," he said. As he moved toward the ladies' room, he glanced at the bar. The red-haired man was gone.

  Remo went into the ladies' room, past the single stall and the small mirror table and chair, to a push-bar fire door. He opened it and went outside, finding himself in a narrow dark alley, black at one end where it ended against an old building, bright at the other end where it admitted the light from Revolutionary Avenue.

  And he saw what he had feared, a crumpled pile that looked black against the splash of light from the street, lying against a wall of the alley. He ran forward. It was Jessie.

  She looked up at him, recognized him, and smiled. The blood from her head wound ran slowly down her face.

  He saw the wound was serious.

  "Who was it?"

  "Redhead. From Clogg. Wanted to know about you."

  "It's all right," Remo said. "Don't talk anymore."

  "S'okay," said Jessie. "I didn't talk at all." And she smiled at Remo again, and then slowly, almost lazily, her eyes closed and her head drooped off to the side.

  She was dead.

  Remo stood up and looked down at the body of the girl that had only a few minutes ago been warm and bright and loving, and he took pains to remove from himself any feeling of rage or anger that might be found there. When he was sure there was nothing left except cold determination, he simply walked away from her body and went out onto the street.

  In the mercury lights that illuminated the street, red blood looked black, and a black spot on the sidewalk to the right of the alley pointed Remo in the right direction.

  He caught up to the redheaded man in two blocks.

  The man was strolling casually, unconcerned, back toward the hotel where Clogg and Remo both stayed, probably to report, Remo thought.

  Moving silently through the light-bright streets, Remo came up alongside the man. The man wore a dark sports shirt and dark slacks. Remo reached out his right hand, spanning it wide, and caught hold of the man's back, just above his belt buckle, grasping the two heavy vertical ropes of muscles that ran up and down alongside the spinal column.

  The man gasped in pain.

  "You ain't seen nothin' yet," said Remo coldly.

  They were passing a tailoring and dry cleaning shop which was closed for the night. Still holding the man's back, steering him with the painful pressure of five iron-hard fingers, Remo used his left hand to smash open the door.

  He pushed it open, then propelled the man into the darkened store ahead of him. Remo stopped to close the door behind him.

  The man was leaning against the counter, facing Remo, Ms eyes glinting brightly in the reflected light from the street.

  "What is this, buddy?" he said in an American accent
.

  "Do you have a knife? A gun?" asked Remo. "If you do, get them out. It'll make it easier for me."

  "What are you talking about? I don't have any weapons."

  "Then the sap you used on the girl. Get that," said Remo. His voice was cold and knife-edged, as dark as the store, as empty of feeling as death.

  "All right, jewboy, if you insist," the man said. He reached into his back pocket and brought out a lead-loaded, policeman's leather blackjack.

  "What'd Clogg want you to do?"

  "Pump the girl. Find out who you were. I didn't get a chance. She collapsed too fast." Remo could see the man's teeth shine white as he smiled. "You made it easy. Now I can pump you."

  "Do that," said Remo. "Do that."

  "I'll go easy on you," said the redheaded man.

  He came toward Remo, the lead club raised professionally at shoulder level in his right hand, his left hand bent up in front of his face to ward off any punches.

  But no punches came. Instead Remo stood there, and allowed him to swing his blackjack toward Remo's temple.

  But the blackjack missed, and then the redheaded man felt it plucked from his fingers, as if he were no stronger than a child.

  And then his arm was behind his back and he was being propelled toward the back of the store, and he felt a pain in the back of his neck, and the blackness of the store gave way to a greater blackness of his mind and he felt himself fall into unconsciousness.

  He woke up moments later to a strange clinking sound.

  His back was on something soft, but his mouth felt funny. What was it, he wondered as he moaned into consciousness. And his mouth felt really strange. It was filled with something.

  He felt himself choking. His mouth was filled with his teeth. He looked.

  There was Remo Goldberg, standing over him, cracking the weighted lead blackjack down casually, rhythmically, into the redhaired man's face, breaking off his teeth one at a time.

  The redhead spat, spraying the air with teeth and blood.

  The blackjack came down again. More teeth splintered. The redhead tried to get up, but a finger in his solar plexus locked him in place as if he had been pinned to a board.

  "Stop," he cried.

  Remo stopped.

  "What'd Clogg want?"

  "He wanted me to pump the girl. Find out who you were. She didn't say anything."

  "Why'd Clogg want to know?"

  "He's got an oil deal with Baraka. Your formula might threaten it. He wants to know who else knows about it."

  "You have anything to do with those dead oil scientists in the United States?"

  "No, no," the man protested, and Remo knew he was telling the truth.

  "All right, pal."

  "What are you going to do to me?" the man asked, frightened to the edge of panic.

  "Kill you," said Remo.

  "You can't do that."

  "There's an interesting difference there in schools of thought," said Remo. "You say I can't, but I say I can. Who's right? In the morning when they find your body,

  we'll see I am."

  And then he slapped the blackjack down into the redheaded man's mouth, shoving it into his throat, canceling out any chance the man had to scream, but stopping just short of the point where the sap would have cut off the redheaded man's breathing.

  Now the redhead recognized where he was and why it was soft. He was lying on an ironing table, the professional kind that dry cleaners used to steam creases into clothes.

  Remo smiled at him in the darkness, then lowered the top half of the table down onto him.

  The redhead felt the heat begin to sandwich his body. Remo grabbed a coathanger and twisted it through the handles of the top and bottom parts of the ironing table, fastening it together.

  He went to the bottom of the table and turned the heat up to full burn, and then pressed the button activating the steamer.

  The redhead heard the hiss first, then felt the hot steam begin to blast out of both halves of the board; through his thin summery clothing he felt burning pain as it hit his body.

  "You should be well creased by morning," said Remo.

  The redheaded man started to talk, tried to say something but couldn't with the blackjack in his mouth.

  His frightened eyes searched for Remo.

  "Oh, you want something?" said Remo. "Oh, I see. More starch in the collar. Okay." He took a can of spray starch and sprayed it over the redheaded man's face.

  "And listen, we give a one-cent rebate for every hanger you bring back. Don't forget now."

  The man tried to cried out, but no sound came, and then there was only the sound of the door closing softly.

  The man, terrified now, lay hoping for unconsciousness and praying that he would die quickly. Or be saved.

  His wish was to be granted.

  There was another sound and the door opened. Pressed down, sandwiched in the ironing board, he tried to turn his head toward the door but he could not see.

  And then an oily Oriental voice spoke to him.

  "Silence," the voice said.

  He heard the sound of the wire coat hanger being released, and then blessed relief as the heated top of the ironing table was lifted. And then the blackjack was removed from his mouth.

  And then the Oriental voice was asking him questions, about what he had done and why, and what Clogg and Baraka were up to. He answered them all honestly, and finally the voice said, "That is enough."

  The redhaired man started to straighten up, mumbling through his broken mouth, "What is your name? Mr. Clogg will want to reward you."

  "My name is Nuihc," came the voice. "But no reward is necessary." And then there was pressure that stopped the red-haired man from getting up, and then he felt the blackjack come down again on his face, hard this time, and then everything went black, all black, and he saw, heard, felt nothing anymore because he was dead.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Clayton Clogg had the entire fourth floor of the Lobynian Arms, but he was nowhere on the floor. However, large portions of his retinue who were there were only too glad to tell Remo where Clogg had gone, if he would only stop.

  He stopped long enough for one man to gasp that Clogg had gone with two cars full of Oxonoco "special personnel" to a point on the Lobynian coastline facing one of the small offshore islands. There had been a small Oxonoco camp there, before all the gas supplies had been nationalized.

  Remo then stopped with another man long enough for that man to procure a map and to show Remo where the Oxonoco camp was, two driving hours out of Dapoli. The map was easy to read. Out of Dapoli led three roads. One went to the coast to the Oxonoco camp, another went inland to the main oil depot, and the third went deep through the desert to the Mountains of Hercules. Maps in America showed golf courses; this map showed oases. There was only one near the Oxonoco camp.

  It was after midnight when Remo left. Clogg had a forty-five minute head start. The desert had not yet surrendered its day-baked heat, and the narrow road seemed to steam as Remo drove along it in the Ford which yet another of Clogg's retinue had graciously offered to lend him-if he would only stop.

  Remo had wondered enough whether Clogg or Baraka had been Nuihc's henchman. He would take care of Clogg and Chiun would take care of Baraka. The scientists' killings would end; with Adras back on the throne, the flow of oil to America would resume. And then there would only be Nuihc left. But he was in the future. Clogg was now.

  Remo began to feel a slight breeze blowing up and he realized he was nearing the coastline. He turned off his lights and continued to drive in the darkness. Up ahead he saw the bulky shapes of two limousines. He turned off his motor, pressed in the clutch, and let his car roll to a stop behind the limousines.

  Remo got out of the car and stopped at each of the two black Cadillacs, reaching in under their dashboards and pulling out handfuls of wire. The cars would be of no use unless Clogg had brought electrical engineers with him as well as oil people. And what the hell wer
e "special personnel" for Oxonoco? he wondered.

  Noiselessly, Remo moved toward the breeze and heard the sound of the Mediterranean lapping softly on sand. Ahead he saw shapes. He insinuated himself into the darkness and moved into the group. One moment he was not there, the next moment he was and had always been there.

  Clogg was talking, pointing out to the sea.

  "How far is the island?"

  "Only three hundred yards," came a voice near Remo's right.

  "We could put that pipeline in, under water, in not more than a week," Clogg said. "But we have to wait for that greasy mule-skinner to make up his mind. Be ready to move as soon as you hear from me."

  "Suppose he says no?" asked a voice across from Remo.

  "He won't. Did you ever see one of these animals who could resist cash?" There were chuckles all around. "And if he gets sticky," Clogg added, "well, you men have had some experience in that area. It might just be time for Lobynia to have a new lord high commandant," he said contemptuously.

  Clogg turned and looked back toward the road. "I wonder where Red is. He should have been here by now."

  The man at Remo's right laughed. "He's got this thing about black twiff. He may be taking his time."

  "Killing her with kindness," said another.

  Then they all laughed and began to walk back toward the two limousines, Remo melting along with them, first seeming to be in one small group, then in another. When they reached the cars, a man called: "Hey, there's another car there. Whose is that?"

  Remo backed off a step from the group. "That's mine," he said coldly.

  "And who are you?" The voice was Clogg's.

  "A man with a star," Remo said. "You can trust that car belongs to the man who wears a star."

  The crowd of men moved closer to Remo. One got too close. He oomphed and fell, almost as if for no reason at all. So fast had Remo's hand moved that no one else had seen it.

  "I can be very friendly," said Remo.

  Clogg recognized the voice. "What is it you want, Mr. Goldberg?"

  "Nothing much," said Remo. "Just you."

  "Men, start the cars," said Clogg. He backed off toward one of the limousines. The man Remo had put to the ground did not stir, not even when Remo reached in under his light jacket and withdrew his revolver.