Last Call td-35

by Warren Murphy

  "I said, stop that," Remo said. "I've been sent here to negotiate. Now behave yourself."

  "I'll negotiate," Freddy snarled. He raised the

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  club over his head to smash it down across Remo's skull.

  "That's it," Remo said. "That's what I get for trying to be a nice guy."

  The nightstick swung down toward his head. Then Freddy felt it being removed from his hand. He felt himself being swung around, then felt the blunted edge of the club at his left ear. He saw the thin man's fist wad up into a club and swing at the other end of the nightstick. The first blow jammed the nightstick into Freddy's ear. His other ear worked well enough to hear two more thuds of Remo's fist. Then he heard nothing more as the club passed through his brain and the large end exited out of the ear on the other side of his head.

  "Guggg, gugggg, gugggg," Freddy said as he sank to his knees, the club protruding from both sides of his head, like scooter handles.

  "What'd you say?" Remo asked.

  "Guggg, gugggg, gugggg," Freddy repeated.

  "L'chaim," said Remo.

  He knocked on the door and heard feet shuffling about inside.

  "Who's there ?" asked a voice from behind the locked door.

  "Herr Oberlieutenantstiirmbannfuhrergauleiterreichsfieldmarshall O'Brien," Remo said.

  "Who?"

  "Come on, it's too long to repeat. Open the door."

  "Where's Freddy?"

  "Freddy's the guard?"

  "Yeah. Where is he?"

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  Remo looked at Freddy, down on his knees, the long thick nightstick protruding from both ears.

  "He's busy right now," Remo said. "But he identified me."

  "I want to see your identification," the voice said.

  "Freddy's my identification," Remo said.

  "I don't want to hear that. Just slide your identification under the door."

  "It won't fit," Remo said.

  "It'll fit. Just slide it under."

  "All right," Remo said.

  Inside the room, the five Nazis looked at the door. They heard a scratching sound at the bottom of it. Something began to slip under it into the room. The something was pink. And then there were four other things just like it. They were fingers. Then a hand. Then a brown shirt.

  "Oh, my god, that's Freddy," said Ernest Sche-isskopf. The men jumped to their feet to run to the door. Freddy's arm, flattened as if it had been run over by a steamroller, was through the crack at the bottom of the door. It kept moving into the room. It was as if Freddy had been photographed and the picture had been mounted on cardboard. Now strings of blond hair came through the crack, and there was a splintering sound as Freddy's skull began to break to fit under the door, but the door shuddered, the wood creaked, and the door flew back off its hinges, into the room, landing on the floor like a thick wooden rug.

  Remo stood in the doorway. At his feet was the

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  rest of Freddy. The five Nazis stared at the nightstick imbedded in his skull.

  "Hi," Remo said. "I told you it wouldn't fit."

  "Guggg, guggg, guggg," said Scheisskopf.

  "That's what Freddy said," Remo explained.

  "Who are you?" one Nazi sputtered.

  "What do you want?" another called out.

  "What did you do with Freddy?" came another voice.

  "Just a minute," Remo said. "We're not going to get anywhere with everybody talking at once. Me first. You." Remo nodded to Scheisskopf. "Stop throwing up and listen to me."

  "Guggg, guggg, guggg," Scheisskopf said as he continued to spray the room with Arthur Treacher's Fish & Chips.

  "Stop it, I said," Remo said.

  Scheisskopf swallowed a deep breath and tried to stop retching. He wiped the specks of food off his face with his uniform shirt sleeve.

  "Is there any way I can convince you not to march tomorrow?" Remo asked. "I was sent here to negotiate."

  "No chance," said Scheisskopf. "Never."

  "Don't be hasty," Remo said. "I convinced Freddy."

  "Never," Scheisskopf snarled again. "We march for freedom and for the rights of white men everywhere. We march against the race-mixing ..."

  "Goodbye," said Remo.

  He grabbed Freddy by the nightstick and dragged him into the room. The two biggest Na-

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  zis came at Remo, waving billy clubs. He hit them with Freddy and they went down in a lump.

  The next two came at Remo with lead-filled blackjacks. He moved between the two of them, spinning between them, moving forward and back, closer and farther away and, when they both knew he was in range, they swung at him with wild roundhouses. Remo moved low, beneath the plane of their swings and, like a shot and its immediate echo above him, he heard the twin splats as each of them slammed the blackjack into the other's skull, with the old reassuring sound of temple bones being crushed and splintered.

  Remo nodded and moved out from between them, as they fell forward, locked on each other for a moment, then slid loose as their two bodies thumped onto the floor.

  Obersturmbannfiihrer Ernest Scheisskopf was backing into a corner. In front of him, he held for protection a Muhammad All vs. Superman comic book. A large black "X" had been drawn through Ali's face on the cover.

  "You get away, you," he squeaked. "I'll call the police. I'll tell."

  "Look, Ernest," Remo said. "Don't get upset. Don't just look at it like you're dying."

  "How should I look at it?" Scheisskopf said.

  "As one giant leap for mankind," Remo said.

  When he was done, Remo tidied up, then left, pulling the broken door back into the door opening behind him. It was three miles to his house at Compo Beach and he decided to run back. He hadn't had any exercise in a long time.

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  Chiun was as Remo had left him an hour earlier, sitting in the center of the floor, a large piece of parchment on the floor in front of him, a quill pen poised over an ink bottle as if ready to strike. There was not a word on the paper.

  "What was it tonight, Chiun?" Remo asked, pointing toward the blank parchment. "People playing their radio too loud in Venezuela?"

  "I worried so much about you, it was not possible to work," Chiun said.

  "Worried about me? You called them creatures in brown shirts before. You didn't sound impressed."

  "Don't bicker," Chiun said. "It is taken care of?"

  "Of course."

  "Good," Chiun said. "These Nazis are vile things."

  "Not these tonight. Not anymore. And since when are you down on Nazis? If the House of Sinanju could work for Ivan the Terrible and the Pharaoh Ramses and Henry the Eighth, why not Nazis? Or wouldn't they pay your price?"

  "The House of Sinanju refused to work for them. Just the opposite. We volunteered our services to get rid of their leader. The one with the funny mustache."

  "A freebie? Sinanju?"

  Chiun nodded. "There are some kinds of evil that cannot be tolerated. It is not a frequent thing we do to volunteer our services, because if I do not get paid, the village does not eat. But this one time we did and the lunatic heard that the House of Sinanju was coming so he took poison.

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  Untidy to the last, he managed to kill his female companion first." Chiun spat his disgust.

  "I will never get any work done," he said, "since you seem determined to chatter at me. I'm going to sleep."

  "Sweet dreams," Remo said.

  It was a glorious day for a parade. The sun rose, bright and busy, burning off the morning residue of Connecticut's long winter chill.

  The Boston Post Eoad in Westport was lined with thousands of people carrying baseball bats, empty bottles, tomatoes, and tire chains. The American Civil Liberties Union had called for volunteers from all over the country and there were four hundred lawyers running up and down the projected line of march reading from court orders that there must be no violence. No one paid any attention to them.

  There were three hun
dred police in full riot gear. Parked along the parade route were four ambulances and two morgue wagons.

  Hawking their way up and down the parade route were peddlers selling American flags. Some of the more adventurous had stocked a small supply of Nazi armbands for sale, but so far they had received no requests for them.

  The planned Nazi parade had everything.

  Except Nazis.

  Remo noticed this when he drove to the luncheonette to pick up Ghiun's copy of the Daily Variety. At the house, he gave Chiun the Variety and turned on the television. It was an hour past the scheduled time to start the parade and some

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  of the press had finally gone over to the Nazis' house on Greens Farms Road.

  The television air was filled with bulletins. The Nazi cadre had been murdered during the night. The bodies of the six brownshirts, including one who was partially flattened, had been found imbedded in an inside wall of the house. They looked like fish trophies, one reporter said. Their bodies had been arranged in two interlocking triangles, the traditional Star of David.

  "This is terrible," Chiun said.

  "I thought it was kind of neat," Remo said. He smiled as he heard that the Zionist Defense League had claimed credit for the killings.

  "A disaster," Chiun said.

  "I thought it had touches," Remo said. "I liked the idea of the Star of David."

  "Silence. I am not talking about your stupid games. Did you see what Variety said today?"

  "What did they say?"

  "They said that Robert Redford is out in Colorado making speeches about Sun Day."

  "Good for him. Everything needs a little encouragement once in a while."

  "And Paul Newman is practicing to race an automobile in Florida."

  "Ummmmmm," said Remo, watching the television pictures of the Nazi house on Greens Farms Road.

  "Why are they not here?" Chiun demanded.

  "I don't know, Chiun," Remo said.

  "Why have I been here for months eating seafood soup that I hate, waiting to see them?" Chiun asked.

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  "Don't know," Remo said.

  "I have been deceived."

  "It's a deceitful world."

  "Only this part of it," Chiun said. "Only the white part of it. This would never happen in Sinanju."

  "Nothing happens in Sinanju," Remo said.

  "If I ever see Newman and Redford, I will peel them like grapes," Chiun said.

  "Serve them right."

  "Even worse," Chiun said. "I will not let them star in my epic."

  "That'll teach them."

  "I'll get someone else," Chiun said.

  "Good," said Remo.

  "I'll get Brando and Pacino," Chiun said.

  "Good for you. Don't take this lying down."

  "I won't. Oh, the perfidy of it all," Chiun said.

  "That's show biz," Remo said.

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  CHAPTER THREE

  Dr. Rocco Giovanni walked into the attached garage of his small house in Rome and opened the trunk of his Fiat. He noticed the car's dark blue paint starting to purple, and he hoped he could get another year out of it before it turned so bizarre a color he would have to get the auto repainted.

  Inside the trunk was a leather doctor's bag. It was old and beaten. The black leather, despite careful and frequent oiling by Dr. Giovanni, had begun to crack and there were thin tan lines on the bag where the leather's innards had begun to show. The bag had been a gift to him when he graduated medical school almost twenty years earlier and he had carried it with pride ever since.

  It was the bag he carried on those three days a week when he worked in the clinic for the poor he had built in one of Rome's worst slums. He slammed the trunk lid shut.

  Inside the car, he started the motor, listened to it cough hesitantly, then with obvious reluctance come to life.

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  He breathed the small sigh of relief he always breathed when the car started.

  He pressed the button that activated the garage door and as he put the car in reverse, he glanced up casually at the wall in front of the car. Then he put the gear shift back in neutral.

  A red light was blinking on the wall. Doctor Giovanni's first thought, after twenty years, was: So that's what it looks like when it comes on. He had never see it lit before.

  He watched. The red light flashed once, long, then two shorter flashes, then three even shorter flashes. There was a pause, then it repeated the one-two-three sequence.

  He watched the light for a full minute until he was sure in his own mind that it was flashing in a clear, unmistakable pattern. He realized his hands were clenched tight on the steering wheel and he forced himself to relax his grip.

  Finally he sighed and turned off the car's motor.

  He removed the key, got out, and put his old leather bag back into the trunk.

  Then he walked over to a shiny new Ferrari, which sat in the other half of the garage. From its trunk, he took another doctor's bag, this one rich brown cordovan, highly polished and glistening in the dim overhead light of the garage. It was a bag he replaced every six months, even though in such a brief period of time, it had not even begun to show signs of wear. It was just that his wealthy patients expected that everything about him should be new and rich. Only the

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  poor trusted a doctor with holes in the soles of his shoes, and only because they had to.

  Dr. Giovanni started the car's engine, which roared powerfully to instant life. He let the car idle as he went back into the house.

  His wife, Rosanna, looked up surprised as he came back into the kitchen.

  "What'd you forget now, Rocco?" she asked. She smiled at him from the kitchen sink where she was rinsing dishes before putting them in the automatic dishwasher.

  "This," he said. He came close behind her and kissed her lightly on the neck. His arms went around her trim body and squeezed her lovingly.

  "You already kissed me goodbye," she protested mildly. "You horny thing."

  "Do you know how much I love you ?" he asked.

  "Sometimes I get the hint," she said. She turned and he took her in his arms and kissed her hard on the mouth.

  "I love you forever," he said.

  "And I love you, too," she said. "And if your patients weren't waiting, I'd show you how much."

  He looked in her eyes and she thought she saw a glint there of something she had never seen before, then he buried his lips against her throat, said a muffled "goodbye" and left.

  When she heard the car pull out of the garage, she walked to the front window. She was surprised to see the Ferrari pulling away. He hated that car and had only bought it to impress his wealthy patients, whose riches helped finance the real love in his life, the free clinic he ran for the poor.

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  His nurse and receptionist were surprised to see Doctor Giovanni show up at his private offices only a few blocks from the Vatican, but he sloughed off their unspoken demands for an explanation about his presence.

  Inside his office, he called a young doctor who owed him a favor and arranged for the other doctor to handle the patients at Giovanni's free clinic.

  Next he dialed the number of the Russian embassy. When he mentioned his name, the call was transferred directly into the Russian ambassador's office.

  "Doctor Giovanni, how are you?" the ambassador said in guttural Italian. He managed to make the musical language sound like German.

  "I'm fine," Giovanni said. "But I have to talk to you."

  "Oh? What's wrong?"

  "Your blood tests just came back," the doctor said, "and we must discuss them."

  "Is something wrong?"

  "Not on the telephone, Ambassador. Please."

  "I will be right there."

  While he waited, Doctor Giovanni took something from his office safe and put it into the bottom of the leather medical bag. Then he folded his hands on his desk and rested his head on them.

  The ambassador was ther
e in less than ten minutes, accompanied by his ever-present bodyguard, a hawk-faced man who viewed everyone and everything with suspicion. Parking meters, restaurant checks, street peddlers, he watched

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  them all as if each were capable of overturning the glorious Communist revolution. He followed the ambassador into Doctor Giovanni's office.

  "Can he wait outside, please?" the doctor said.

  The ambassador nodded. With obvious reluctance, the bodyguard went into the waiting room where he leaned against the wall next to the door to the doctor's private consulting room.

  The receptionist glared at him. He stared back blankly, until he forced her to turn her eyes away.

  "I know what it is," the ambassador said. "The saintly doctor has decided to defect to Mother Russia." He was smiling but there was a faint film of nervous perspiration on his forehead.

  Giovanni smiled back. "Not just yet," he said.

  "Ah, but someday," the ambassador said. "You and your free clinic. Your modest life. You are the most communistic of all."

  "And that is why I could not live in Mother Russia," Doctor Giovanni said. "Please sit here."

  He pulled out a chair and sat the ambassador on it, facing an X-ray display board. Onto the glass screen, he put two large chest X-rays.

  He flicked on the switch for the display panel and turned off the office light.

  "These are your most recent X-rays," he said. "They were taken when you had that slight chest cough during the winter." As he spoke, Doctor Giovanni walked behind the ambassador toward his desk.

  "You'll notice the slight darkish spots at the bottom of each lung," he said. He opened the brown leather bag and reached into the bottom.

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  "Yes. I see them. What does that mean?" the ambassador asked nervously.

  Doctor Giovanni's hand closed on the butt of a pistol.

  He walked up behind the ambassador.

  "Nothing," he said. "Absolutely nothing." Then he put a bullet into the Russian's skull from behind the left ear.

  Doctor Rocco Giovanni was glad the gun had worked after all these years.

  The report of the pistol resounded through the small consultation room. Outside, the nurse and receptionist looked up at the unusual loud sound.

  The Russian bodyguard reached under his jacket for his gun and pushed through the unlocked door into the inner office.