Killing Time td-50

by Warren Murphy

  It was Seymour Burdich, finally divested of his black turtleneck and ankh and draped in the Grecian gown that seemed to be the fashion at Shangri-la.

  "You again," Remo said.

  "You've given me my life. You're a true hero. I'll do anything for you. Anything?"

  Remo thought. "Anything?"

  "Anything."

  "Good. Wait till Jumbo here comes around, and I'll tell you what you can do for me."

  Burdich scuttled toward the windowsill, where the other man Remo had saved, the enormous one, was just coming to. "Mama?" the big red-haired man said weakly.

  "Remo. Get your act together."

  The stairway outside the bedroom was already thundering with the footfalls of the onlookers. They were coming up like an army. The big man cleared his throat and thrust his hand out at Remo.

  "Son," he said, his voice now booming with control, "A young man like you can go far. I'm president of Amalgamated Steel and Iron, Houston, and I want you

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  to know there's a vice-presidency waiting for you."

  "Can it," Remo said. "Do me a favor?"

  "You name it, pard."

  "Anything," Burdich said. "I will walk to the ends of the earth for you. I will scale mountains. I will walk on hot coals-"

  "I want you to tell everybody that you got up there by yourselves."

  "What?" Burdich said, astonished.

  Amalgamated Steel drawled, "Listen, boy, some old Chinaman threw me up there, and I'm going to see to it he gets his little yeller nose caved in."

  Remo tried to reason with him. "How's it going to make you look if you go around telling everybody that a little old guy weighing a hundred pounds just threw you ten stories into the air?"

  "But gawldurn it, they saw it with their own eyes."

  "Appearances can be deceiving," Remo philoso­phised.

  "Re-mo! Re-mo!" the crowd shouted in the hallway behind the door.

  The big man thought. At last he shook his head and said, "Nope. Sorry, son. You're a fine boy, but justice must be done. Truth is truth, and justice is justice."

  Remo picked him up by the ankles and thrust him out the window again. "And accidents are accidents," he said.

  Amalgamated roared as he dangled upside-down, his red hair blowing in the breeze. "Okay! I did it my­self." Remo pulled him back in. "Though I'll be gawldurned if anybody's going to believe that," he added. "How was I supposed to have gotten myself up there? Playing hopscotch?"

  "Tell them it's an old famiiy secret," Remo said. He turned to Burdich, who had positioned himself back at

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  Remo's feet and was kowtowing in a rapid series. "That okay with you?" Remo asked.

  "Anything. I will swallow toads. I will prostrate my­self before the hordes."

  "Fine. Prostrate yourself before the horde outside the door for a while."

  "Anything you say," Burdich said somberly.

  "You too," Remo said, motioning for the big man to leave. "Tell them the story."

  When they had left, Remo dashed back toward the window. Chiun was still standing below, looking up scornfully. "Wait for me, Little Father," he said. He slowly lowered himself out of the window, pressing his hands and feet against the surface of the wall. Then he was scaling down the brick as effortlessly as a spi­der, somersaulting at the last moment to a standing position on the ground.

  Chiun's eyes were burning into his. "They called you a hero," the old man said sullenly.

  Remo led him to a small recessed window along the house's foundation. "I want to check out the base­ment," he said.

  "A hero! For a piece of work any chimpanzee could have performed."

  "What can I do about it?" Remo said, raising the window and snaking inside. Chiun followed. "They didn't know how easy it was to catch those two guys. There's no harm done."

  "No harm? No harm? Harm has been done to me. I was the one who sent those louts to the heavens in two perfect opposing spirals. Did you not see the pat­tern formed when the bodies began their descent?" He was jumping up and down and screeching like a mad bird.

  "Quiet down," Remo whispered, distracted. Posie

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  Ponselle may have been telling the truth, whether what she said computed with Smitty or not. If she was, then some tangible evidence of her weird story might be in the basement. "Uh, that was good work, Chiun. Really super."

  "Do not congratulate me with your cheap acco­lades. It was not super. It was perfect. One of the most exceptional double-spiral air blows ever executed in all the teachings of Sinanju. But do I, the Master himself, receive so much as a 'well done' from those insipid white persons?" He pointed disdainfully toward the upper floors of the mansion. "Is there even one attempt to reward me with some useless trin­ket?"

  "Chiun," Remo whispered. Beneath the rickety stairwell were stacked dozens of sealed cartons. Each contained thirty vials of clear liquid. "Here's the stuff for the guests."

  Chiun paid no attention. "Naturally, not one among them sought to praise the Master of Sinanju in his glory."

  Remo felt along the cobwebbed walls of the cellar. The foundation stones had been laid more than a hun­dred years before. The mortar around them was cracked and mildewed. He tapped the stones rhythmi­cally, one hand following the other, until his hands were flying and the walls vibrated with a low rumble. He followed the stones around three walls. As he ap­proached the last wall, near a dank corner, the sound of his tapping changed almost imperceptibly. He tried the stone again. Unmistakable. There was a hollow place behind it.

  Drumming his fingers along the mortar surrounding the stone, he ground it into flying dust. It was new

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  mortar, recently laid. He removed the stone easily, and felt in the hollow behind it. A few inches from the surface was what felt like a tarpaulin covering a large geometric shape.

  Chiun continued to pace around the basement, ex­pounding on his various psychological injuries. "No," he said. "Instead they look to you. You who have done nothing more than hang gracelessly from a win­dow. . . ."

  "Bingo," Remo said. Beneath the tarp was a huge cube of shimmering gold. He craned to see the dimen­sions of the cube inside the wall. "I wonder how many millions this is worth."

  "Are you listening to me?" Chiun groused.

  "No." He lifted the stone back into place. Upstairs, he heard the insistent chanting coming from the hall­way outside the upstairs bedroom. "Come on. I've seen what I wanted to see. We've got to get back up there."

  "Why?" Chiun said, scaling up the wall after Remo. "Have you not received enough undue praise for one day?"

  "I just want everything to look normal," he ex­plained. "I still haven't talked to Foxx yet. Until I do, I want everybody to think we're just a couple of nice guys."

  "I am nice," Chiun said. "I am the nicest, sweetest, most loving-"

  "You practically killed two men," Remo whispered as he vaulted back into the room. "Do you know how much attention we would have drawn if they'd died?"

  "Ridiculous," Chiun said. "No one would have no­ticed. They al! look the same, dressed in those ob­scene things."

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  "I can't argue all day. The plain fact is, you as­saulted two people who weren't doing anything wrong."

  "Weren't-" Chiun staggered back, speechless. "But did you not see the extreme offense they were perpetrating upon my being?"

  "How could I? I was in here."

  Chiun's face was steely. "With that woman of the yellow hair and deformed chest, no doubt."

  "That's beside the point. What'd they do?"

  "They sought to shame me publicly," Chiun said, his eyes downcast. "Publicly. In the middle of a par­ade."

  "You can do better than that," Remo said. "A pa­rade? Out in the snow? Come on, Chiun."

  "It is true. While you were up here procreating with the bulbous white thing, the rest of these fools disap­peared and came back wearing those nightgowns and holding candles and chanting and march
ing. They marched around the room. Then they formed ranks and marched outside. As it was the first interesting thing these slugs had done all evening, i deigned to join them. For their benefit I sang to them the song of the Marching Cypriots, who were also fools in night­gowns."

  "So?"

  "So then I was assaulted. I. Not they."

  "For singing?"

  Chiun sighed. "No, dim one. No one assaults the Master of Sinanju for his faultless singing. It is as the song of the winged bird-"

  "For what, then?" Remo asked, exasperated.

  "For refusing to wear one of their nightgowns!" Chiun shrieked. "Can you understand nothing? Those two men dared to halt the parade to demand

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  that i remove my splendid robe and replace it with primitive white garb. It was shocking."

  "Look, I don't know why they're wearing those things, either," Remo said. "But it still wasn't any rea­son to deck them."

  "I did not deck them," Chiun said with dignity. "I ex­ercised the double-spiral air blow. Barely a touch. Oh, it was so beautiful. ..."

  "Well, it didn't happen, okay?" Remo said, lis­tening to the rising chant of the crowd calling for him outside the door. "Those two guys you almost killed are willing to say you never touched them."

  Chiun smiled. "That is kind, Remo. But even the Master of Sinanju cannot execute a spiral air blow without any touching whatsoever. Oh, it was slight, just the merest flick, but nevertheless-"

  "I mean they're going to say they got up there by themselves."

  Chiun's eyes flashed open into saucers. "What?"

  "And then nobody'll try to throw us out. We've got to stay here long enough for me to put the screws to that Dr. Foxx."

  "Themselves? Those two flabby hoglets? Surely you're joking."

  "It's the only way, Chiun."

  Chiun glared at him. "Et tu, Remo," he said. "To think how I have trusted you, nourished you with my sweat and my work, only to be stabbed in the back by so ungrateful a pupil as to sully the glorious House of Sinanju itself."

  "Trust me," Remo said, walking toward the door.

  "Trust?" Chiun said with a weak puff of a laugh. "He speaks to me of trust. He who has thrust the dag­ger into my breast."

  "Hi, gang," Remo said to the throng outside.

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  Waves and cheers went up as Burdich and the Texan warded off the searching hands.

  "Re-mo! Re-mo!"

  "Oh, my heart," Chiun groaned.

  "Speech! Speech!"

  "No, really," Remo said, smiling shyly. "It was no big deal. These fellows just got themselves into a little trouble, right?" He elbowed Burdich in the ribs.

  "Right."

  "He has even prepared his accomplices," wailed Chiun from the interior of the bedroom.

  "Hey, who's in there?" someone asked.

  "Nobody," Remo said quickly.

  "Nobody!" wailed Chiun.

  "I've got an idea," Remo said. "Let's all go down­stairs."

  "Marvelous," called out the purring voice of Posie Ponseile. She snaked forward and touched the Tex­an's hand, which was blocking the path to Remo. "Down, boy," she said, clasping Remo's hand. "Dr. Foxx is waiting to meet our hero." She winked at him and whispered, "As promised,"

  "Thanks, Posie."

  "Our hero," a woman nearby gushed.

  A sound like a protracted case of Cheyne-Stokes breathing emanated from the room behind Remo.

  Foxx sat in his study, wearing a silk Sulka dressing gown and holding a spoon of cocaine up to his nose. He greeted Remo with a powerful snort. "The man of the hour," he said, offering the spoon to Remo.

  "No thanks. It gives me zits."

  Foxx smiled. It was the same affable, smooth smile that had charmed the hearts of millions. "We're all

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  grateful to you," he said. "Those two fellows would never have made it without you."

  "Piece of cake," Remo said uneasily. He didn't want Foxx to have much idea of what he could do. It was always better to be underestimated. "Lucky acci­dent."

  "Mmmmm." He snorted another noseful. "Are you here for the treatments, Mr. . ."

  "Remo. Just call me Remo. Yes, sir, Doc. Just one of the boys."

  "I must say, you seem like rather an unlikely candi­date for our clinic," Foxx said. "Most of our guests are afraid of impending middle-age. You appear to be en­joying the pink of youth."

  Remo didn't like Foxx. There was something oozy about him. And the smell. . . . There was a smell at Shangri-la, ft was stronger around Foxx than any­where else.

  "No time like the present, I always say."

  "But you haven't registered."

  "I'm a late arrival, I guess."

  Foxx cleared his throat. "One of our guests, Bobby Jay, recognized you in your heroic stand outside the window. He claims you visited him earlier today at his apartment."

  "Well, yes. . . ."

  "And that you were interested in military matters."

  "Not really," Remo stammered. He was being found out awfully fast. He had wanted to approach Foxx slowly, to watch his movements, to follow him until the doctor led him to something of importance.

  But that was gone now. Foxx knew something was up. "I guess I was mistaken," he said.

  "I want to inform you here and now that neither this

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  clinic nor myself have any connection to the military. Furthermore, outsiders are forbidden at Shangri-la." He scrutinized Remo with distaste. "What is your line of work, anyway?"

  "Just odd jobs," Remo said. "You know, strong back, weak mind. I just heard things about this place, and I wanted to check it out."

  Keep it low, Remo told himself. When the proper moment came, he would force Foxx into a position to move fast. But don't scare him now. Keep it nice and easy.

  "And what have you discovered in your checking?" Foxx asked condescendingly.

  "Oh, nothing much," Remo said. "Just the phones. Did you know all the lines were cut?"

  "Really," Foxx said drily.

  "Yeah. Think I could take a look at them? I'm pretty good with things like that. Maybe I could get them to work again."

  "That won't be necessary," Foxx said. "They were cut on purpose."

  "Why?" Remo asked innocently.

  "Because we don't like strangers here." Foxx's tone became menacing. "They become tempted to communicate with those on the outside."

  "Why'd you let me stay this long, then?"

  "You were-shall we say, detained by one of our guests," Foxx said. "Rest assured, Miss Ponselle has heard about her behavior. And will hear even more."

  Remo smiled. "But now the other guests don't want you to kick me out, either," he said.

  Foxx sniffed haughtily. "Since you were so helpful to our two troubled guests, you and your aged friend will be granted special dispensation to remain for the Exit of Age ceremony tonight. However-"

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  "The Exit of Age?"

  Foxx made a deprecating gesture. "A small ritual we perform on the eve of the dispensation of monthly treatments. The guests like it. You may remain for the Exit of Age, but I'm afraid you must leave before to­morrow morning. This is an expensive clinic, after all. It really wouldn't be fair to allow you to remain along­side paying guests. You understand." He was so fa­therly, so firm yet gentle, so practiced in his manner.

  So phony, Remo thought. But keep it low. !f he wanted them out by tomorrow, the moment when he would take action was coming up soon. All it would take, then, would be a little push from Remo, and Foxx would go running like a scared rabbit. With Remo right behind him.

  "Of course, I understand," Remo said in his best orphan-boy voice. "And I appreciate your letting my friend and me stay for the Exit of Age. We sure wouldn't want to miss that. No, sir." Just a little push.

  "That will be all." Foxx said, dismissing Remo with a wave of his cocaine spoon.

  Now, Remo thought. Push now. "Oh, by the way, Doc."

  "Yes," Foxx said irritably.


  "A girl I know is just crazy about you. She went out with you once."

  "Really," the doctor said, uninterested.

  "Yeah. She told me to tell you hello."

  Foxx smiled tightly and nodded.

  "She said she didn't even think you'd remember her, but I said you looked like a great guy on televi­sion. I told her, 'Irma,' I said, 'I just know he'll remem­ber you. He looks like a great guy.' That's what i said."

  Foxx stiffened noticeably.

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  "Irma was sick for a while, but she's all better now. I knew you'd want to hear that. Irma Schwartz. Remem­ber her?"

  "That's imposs-" Fox began, rising from his seat. He swallowed once, and the flicker of discomfort was gone from his face. "That's too bad," he said smoothly. "Do give Irma my regards."

  "I knew you'd remember," Remo said, smiling. It was time to twist the screws. "I hear you remember lots of things. Like what happened here in this house back in 1938."

  Foxx blanched.

  "Some kind of drug experiments, weren't they, Doctor. . . Vaux?"

  "I don't know what you're talking about," Foxx said quickly. "You must have me confused with someone else."

  "Oh, I don't think so, Dr. Vaux. Because those ex­periments were with procaine, weren't they? And that's what you're shooting up these rich idiots with, isn't it? How many guests are here, anyway? Thirty, something like that?"

  "I-I don't recall. . . ."

  "Thirty people, at one pop a day apiece. That isn't that much procaine. So, no matter how much you charge them for it, it doesn't amount to that much money. And yet you've got about a million dollars in gold stashed away in your basement. Unless the pub­lishers of your books are paying in gold bullion these days, I just don't see how you've come to acquire that."

  "You're going to have to leave," Foxx said, his hands trembling visibly.

  "So I say to myself, 'Remo, maybe something's going on here.' But it's just a thought."

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  He turned to go. At the door, he touched his fingers to his forehead in salute to the white-faced, stricken-looking man who was gripping the arms of his chair as if he were riding a roller coaster gone haywire.

  The push had worked. "Thanks for your hospitality, Doctor. Maybe we'll see each other again."

  The doctor didn't answer. Long after the door closed with a soft click behind Remo he remained glued to his chair, his knuckles white on the armrests.