Wolf's Bane td-132

by Warren Murphy

  The hoodlum thought about it. To be fair, thinking was probably not something he did often. He certainly didn't do it well, and at this moment he made one of his least successful thinking attempts ever.

  He decided to cut.

  Remo saw the slight whitening of his knife hand and the smallest change in the indentation of the hostess's skin at the moment the pressure of the blade increased.

  Remo moved. Fast. Faster than the kid would have thought possible, even though he'd seen the round-eyes do some pretty amazing stuff in the past minute or so.

  But that was all nothing compared to what happened now. Remo moved in and took the razor out of the punk's hand-before the pressure was sufficient to slice into the flesh of the poor hostess.

  Then Remo took the hostess away, as well.

  She was surprised to find herself suddenly safe-for a heartbeat she had thought the guy was starting to cut her, and now where she was standing was-several paces away from the action.

  Such as it was.

  The punk who until recently had been in possession of hostage and victim now was trying figure out where both had gone.

  Well, there was his victim. What was she doing way over there?

  Oh. There was a razor. The Caucasian with the quick moves had it. He was bending it.

  That was a pretty damn good blade. Stainless steel. Strong. Bending it should be difficult. Twisting and squeezing it into a small metal ball should be impossible.

  That's exactly what round-eyes was doing. But his eyes weren't round anymore. They were the shape of death.

  Enlightenment came to the punk. He didn't know what the guy was, but he was way beyond normal. And he had made the punk a promise. Something about a lifetime of pain and paralysis.

  The punk turned and tried to run out the door, but the frantic movement of his feet wasn't matched by the rapid transition of the scenery from the interior of the restaurant to the exterior of Larchmont, New York. This had a lot to do, he decided, with the fact that his feet were not in contact with the ground.

  The Caucasian had him by the collar and was holding him high without apparent strain.

  "Just kill me," the punk begged.

  Remo Williams smiled a smile that would haunt the nightmares of the punk for years and years. "Sorry. A promise is a promise."

  Remo quickly did what he had promised.

  THE HOSTESS SAW IT ALL. Described it all to the police. She couldn't describe the perpetrator. She never got a good look at his face. Nobody did.

  "You wouldn't be covering up for the guy?" the Larchmont detective demanded.

  "Covering up for him?" she asked. "What is there to cover up for? He is a hero. If I knew who he was, I would go to the press and proclaim to the world that he is a courageous man who stood up for the unprotected ethnic citizens when the Larchmont police were conspicuously absent. I know people in the media."

  The detective lost his bluster. "Okay, miss, we're all on the same side here. No need to get Barbara Walters."

  The hostess's dark eyes glinted with determination as she corrected him. "Connie Chung," she said distinctly.

  The detective stammered for a minute. "Now, let's be reasonable-you can't go publicizing things like that," he whined. "People get in trouble. People get fired. It's not fair and it's just not true."

  "Then why were our complaints ignored?"

  "Complaints?"

  "Six complaints called in to the Larchmont Police Department in three weeks. We recorded the calls. Would you like to hear our tapes?"

  "That won't be necessary...."

  "Aunt Connie would like to hear them, I bet." Remo was already long-gone by then. When he noted the wail of approaching sirens, he left the restaurant, pausing briefly to choose a fortune cookie from a bowl beside the register.

  He liked fortune cookies. Not that he ever ate them. It was the fortunes themselves, delivering their tidbits of erudition silently, unlike some other fonts of wisdom Remo could name. If you didn't like your fortune, you could just toss it out and forget it. A fortune cookie didn't follow you around nagging you for days. Or weeks. Or years.

  Outside, he cracked the cookie open and removed the slip of folded paper from its ruptured heart. The fortune told him "You will meet a fascinating stranger when the moon is full." And underneath that prophecy, in smaller print: "Your luck number is seven."

  Remo threw the cookie in the sidewalk trash can, but he put the crumpled fortune in his pocket as he walked on to his car.

  Chapter 3

  Dr. Harold W. Smith reminded Remo of a lemon. His complexion called to mind a dimpled lemon rind. His expression typically suggested he'd bitten into something sour but was too dull to complain about it.

  Before his long-running role as director of CURE, the supersecret crime-fighting and security organization, Dr. Smith had done a long tour of duty with the CIA, where he confounded Langley's staff psychiatrists.

  They put him through a standard Rorschach test, but all that Smith could see was ink blots. Other testing was performed-crude by the standards of the twenty-first century but the state of the psychoanalytical art in the 1950s. The results were perplexing.

  The CIA doctors were convinced that Smith was playing games or, worse, being deliberately misleading. Finally, they were convinced of the unbelievable truth.

  In the words of one examiner, "The man has absolutely no imagination. None." The men in charge at Langley were delighted. Men with no imagination were exactly what the covert Cold War intelligence apparatus needed in those days. In the CIA, where he was sometimes called the Gray Ghost, his career had been highly successful.

  He was often described as extremely competent, but his direct superior was known to add, "Competent is the right word for Smith, but it's not a big enough word."

  The shrinks were wrong about Harold Smith, of course. They failed to understand that Smith was one who dealt in hard and fast reality. He could imagine Armageddon well enough, projecting what would happen if a raving lunatic in Moscow pushed the button, but he had no time for parlor games, no knack for spotting bats or butterflies in what were honestly and truly smears of ink. Case closed.

  Aside from Harold Smith's steadfast fidelity to reality, he was possessed of an integrity that ran bone-deep and would put most public servants in the shade, where they belonged. Smith's honesty was such that he had never swiped a pencil, paper clip or piece of stationery from the office and never would.

  Along with his honesty, Smith was distinguished by a patriotism that ran to the very fiber of his being. Even without tests to prove them, these traits were known to his superiors. And to their superiors. And eventually Smith was mentioned in the presence of the most superior official in the federal government. It was back in the early 1960s, and the President of the United States was looking for a man just like Harold W. Smith-a loyal, pragmatic man, one utterly devoted to the precepts of liberty as described in the Constitution of the United States of America. His task would be to successfully control a great violation of that Constitution.

  That violation had a name. CURE. Not an acronym. CURE was a cure for a sick world. CURE was an attempt to stabilize the magnificent constitutional democracy by violating its constitution. Organized crime didn't follow the rules. Espionage cells and other threats to the U.S. didn't follow the rules. CURE wouldn't follow them, either.

  Smith had his doubts about the success of such an organization, but he would not, could not turn down an appointment by the President of the United States. He was retiring from the CIA and had already accepted an academic position, but instead he became head of CURE. He also became the director of the Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York, where CURE was based.

  In the early days, successes came slowly. When the young, idealistic President who had formed the organization was gunned down, murdered in front of thousands of spectators while riding in a motorcade next to his lovely young wife, Smith had been demoralized.

  For all of twenty minutes. Then he was back on
the job. Forty years later, he was still on the job.

  In the intervening years he had ordered the commission of grave violations of most of the freedoms granted by the Constitution of the United States, but always with the goal of preserving it. And preserve it he had. CURE worked. No one-not even the Presidents under whom Smith served-knew the scope of activities it had been involved in and the disasters CURE had prevented.

  Harold W. Smith was prepared to die by his own hand rather than share the secrets now locked inside his brain. If a threat ever materialized to undermine the federal government by exposing CURE, Smith would initiate a full-scale self-destruction of the organization, its computers, its records and even himself. He had the will and he had the pill.

  Maybe, Remo thought, it was all that keeping-it-inside that made Smith sour. This afternoon, the director of CURE looked even more dyspeptic than was usual. He stared at Remo from behind his tidy desk, and while it wouldn't have been strictly accurate to call his look a scowl, it was the next best thing.

  "The Happy what?" Smith asked.

  "The Happy Noodle," Remo told him. "Just down the road, in Larchmont."

  "Ah." The lesson in geography didn't appear to calm Smith's nerves or roiling stomach. "How many were there?"

  "Just seven," Remo said.

  "Just seven."

  "Well, now there's six and a half."

  Dr. Smith steepled his fingers and braced them under his chin, as if the whirlwind of thought inside his head had grown too much for his ancient neck muscles to support.

  "You couldn't let it pass?"

  "Not really," Remo said. "The situation was escalating, getting out of hand. Besides, they're alive. No problem, Smitty."

  "No problem? What about the publicity?" Smith said. "My God, I hate to think of it."

  "No sweat," Remo said. "It's a restaurant, okay? It's not like they take names or check ID unless you walk in looking twelve years old and order booze. Which I don't and I didn't, and if they did card me I'd tell them I'm Remo Toohugandkiss or whatever the hell name I'm going by today."

  "But you were seen," the director of CURE reminded him stiffly. "Keep in mind you're not exactly a stranger at Folcroft. Someone on the staff would know you if they saw you, and it isn't inconceivable that some of our staff were there or on the street. Larchmont's practically in our own backyard."

  "I had my mean face on," Remo griped. "Nobody'll be able to pick me out of a lineup, I swear." Smith spread his hands and turned his lemon face toward the ceiling, as if seeking guidance from the stained tiles. He shook his head at last, fingers coming to rest on the onyx surface of the desk and eyes focusing on the computer screen that came to life, hidden under the desktop.

  "All right," he said, "let's all forget about this noodle business for the moment, shall we?"

  Remo glanced behind him, wondering if Mark Howard, Smith's associate, had joined the party, but they were still alone.

  Smith was focusing his attention on the glowing screen that was quite literally his window to the world.

  "There's been some kind of cock-up in the federal witness program," Smith said. "We-"

  "Some kind of what?"

  The lemon face was raised. "Excuse me?" Smith appeared confused.

  "Some kind of what?" Remo repeated.

  "What?" Smith's frown showed irritation now.

  "Nothing. Forget it."

  "Right." Smith stared at Remo for a moment longer than was absolutely necessary, then his eyes dropped back to the hidden display. His fingers had never stopped moving, as if they had their own guiding will.

  "The Witsec program has begun to leak," he explained. "Or, more precisely, it's begun to hemorrhage. We have three witnesses eliminated in the past two months, along with relocated members of their families. Nine victims altogether, plus a bystander who may have stumbled on the second hit in progress."

  It was Remo's turn to frown. "This is something new? They go through witnesses like I go through shoes."

  Smith looked at him sharply. "You don't go through shoes so much as waste them."

  "They wear out fast," Remo said with a shrug. The sour face Smith made was potent with doubt.

  "Perhaps you would like to see an accounting of CURE expenses arising from your shoe habit."

  "Hey, what's wrong with having a shoe habit? Most of us have shoe habits. I hardly ever see you strolling around here in your socks."

  "Your shoes are handmade in Italy."

  "Forgive me for appreciating quality."

  "And they are exorbitantly expensive," Smith persisted.

  "So are yours, I'm sure," Remo protested. Smith pursed his lips.

  "Remo, I have three pairs of shoes. Today I am wearing my newest pair. Black wingtips. I purchased them in 1989."

  "They must be really stinky."

  "A good pair of shoes lasts a long time, that's my point," Smith said in exasperation.

  Remo made a resigned face. "Okay, Smitty, so when do you throw your shoes away?"

  "When they're worn-out, of course."

  "Me, too. Case closed. Now tell me why we should care about the Feds losing witnesses." Smith knew Remo was right. Shoes was not the subject at hand-but he made a mental note to have Mark Howard generate the expense report he had mentioned.

  "The federal witness program has had its glitches over the years, and a protected subject is inevitably lost from time to time," Smith admitted. "The typical scenario involves a homesick witness who can't resist a phone call or a visit home. He is spotted or traced, and then it's not long before he's neutralized. It is an effective reminder to other witnesses in hiding that the act of reaching out to touch someone is often tantamount to suicide."

  "I guess it oughta," Remo said.

  "Three witnesses in two months' time is different," Smith continued. "It defies the odds of mere coincidence. It should be impossible."

  "Never underestimate the screw-up potential of a federal bureaucracy," Remo said. "Were the killings connected?"

  "Indeed they were," Smith said. "Are you familiar with the Cajun Mafia?"

  "They put hot sauce on everything," said Remo. "Cross them, and you wind up sleeping with the blackened fish."

  Smith was used to Remo's quips and ignored them whenever possible. "In fact, they're ruthless. Deadly. Thugs and outlaws from the bayou country of Louisiana who have learned by watching other, larger syndicates, adapting the procedures to their own requirements. Since Marcello died, they've given the Sicilians lots of competition in New Orleans and throughout the state, with feelers out to Arkansas and Texas, drug connections of their own in Mexico, Colombia and Southeast Asia. They're involved in everything from vice to crooked politics and real estate. You name it, and the Cajuns have a slice of the potato pie."

  "That's sweet-potato pie," said Remo.

  "Whichever." Smith had already allowed Remo to distract him too many times and the conversation was only ten minutes old. "Until a few months ago, the leader of the so-called Cajun Mafia was Armand Fortier, known to his cohorts as the Big Crawdaddy. Please don't ask me why."

  "Why?"

  "Recently," Smith continued sternly, "after several failed attempts, he was convicted on a RICO charge including several homicides, extortion, drugs-the works. Unlike the previous attempts, which ended in acquittal or hung juries, this time there were witnesses prepared to talk, insiders who believed that Fortier was planning to eliminate them, just in case."

  "And was he?" Remo asked.

  "Probably. What difference does it make? My point is that they testified, resulting in conviction, and all four were relocated, with their wives and minor children."

  "As opposed to major children?" Remo said. Smith wished Chiun were there. The presence of the old Korean seemed to have the effect of humbling Remo or at least reducing the number of pointless comments. But Chiun was spending a lot of his time "meditating" these days. Smith had been assured the old Korean wasn't ready for retirement, but he wasn't sure what else the old Master's de
creased involvement could signify.

  The chief of CURE forged on. "As you may imagine, whether Fortier was after them before the trial or not, he wants them now. Or, rather, he wanted them, since three are dead. Mark will be here in just a moment with some shots from the crime scenes."

  There was a knock at that very moment and the door opened. Mark Howard entered with a manila envelope. "Remo," Howard said with a nod.

  "Did he train you to do that, Junior?"

  "Do what?"

  Howard slid over the envelope and took the chair next to Remo. Smith opened the manila folder and removed a stack of photographs. He began to pass them across the desk, inverted, as if he were dealing outsized playing cards. The crime-scene photos were in living, bloody color, several of them close-ups. While they weren't the worst things he had ever seen, Remo decided they were bad enough. No slick, professional hits in evidence here. It was amateur night at the butcher shop.

  "Okay, these are really nice and all, but do I care what the crime scene looked like?" Remo asked.

  "The first one, on your left there," Smith directed his attention, "is what's left of Justin Marchant and his wife. They lived in Medford, Oregon, under the cover name of Wilson. Marchant was Fortier's accountant. One of them, at least. He juggled books to hide the income from a string of brothels, drug transactions, this and that. He testified. And now he's dead."

  "Dead hardly covers it," said Remo. Peering at the photograph, he had some difficulty sorting out where Justin Marchant ended and his wife began. The bedroom-if it was a bedroom-was awash in blood.

  "Next up," Smith said, "you have Adrian Pascoe and friend. The woman was identified as Louise Lascar, no connection to the case. Pascoe apparently hooked up with her after his relocation to Scranton, Pennsylvania, as William Decker. They were sharing quarters."

  The way Smith sounded when he spoke of "sharing quarters," Remo half expected him to add that Pascoe and his lady had been living in sin. It hardly mattered, though, since neither one of them was living any longer.

  "Yech. Bet it was a closed casket. What was the link to Fortier?" he asked.

  "Pascoe was muscle, but ambitious muscle," Smith replied. "Apparently, he started out on the New Orleans docks as an enforcer for the union. Cajun stock, of course. His father and a couple of his uncles have done time for poaching, liquor violations, felony assault, grand theft. His testimony helped sink Fortier on contract killings dating back to 1987.