Mugger Blood td-30

by Warren Murphy

  "I gots something better dan any white man and chink," Wadson said.

  "What is that?"

  "Dey was dis thing that the Missus Mueller had and the government, it was lookin' for."

  "Yes."

  "I got de ting."

  "What is it?" Spesk said.

  "Ah doan know. It some kind of ting that goes tick and tick, but ah doan knows what it's for."

  "Where do you have it?"

  "You takes de ring off, I tell you." Wadson tried a large friendly smile.

  "You don't tell me and I'm going to take part of you off." Spesk reached out and lifted the small black box.

  "Hold it, hold it, hold it raht theah. I got the dee-vice. I got it at my 'partment."

  "Good. I want it. But more than that, I want the white man and the Oriental."

  "I find dem. I get dem for you. What you want dem for?"

  "They're weapons. Never mind. You wouldn't understand."

  "You gonna take de ring off?"

  "When you perform."

  Wadson nodded glumly. Spesk took several steps back to the couch. He was limping heavily.

  "What happen to you leg?"

  "That's what I want to see the white man about," Spesk said.

  "What white man?"

  "What have we been talking about? The white man and the Oriental."

  "Oh, dat white man."

  Spesk looked up as Ingrid returned.

  "I just saw his car. He's on his way up," she said.

  "Fine. You know what to do."

  Though the wood parquet floor was hard under Reverend Wadson's butt he didn't think it would be wise to move. That black box was still too close to Spesk's hand. He sat still as Ingrid went back into the other room and came out with another black box. She gave it to Spesk. She was also carrying a hoop, a round white ring of metal, the size of a hoop from a child's ring-toss game.

  Spesk held the black box in his hands and nodded to Ingrid who walked to the door of the apartment and stood behind the door.

  A few seconds later, the door opened, and a small man with a graying crew cut splashed into the room. He came at top speed as if he had just remembered where he had misplaced his wallet. He looked up and saw Spesk and smiled.

  The man paused a moment, as if psychically recharging himself for another frenzied bolt across the floor toward Spesk, when Ingrid stepped from behind the door and with one quick practiced motion opened the white ring and snapped it around the man's neck.

  The man recoiled and spun toward her, his right hand slipping immediately into the jacket of his plaid sports jacket.

  "Breslau," Spesk said. His voice, uttering one word, was a harsh command demanding obedience. Breslau turned. He put his hands to the ring on his neck and tried to pull it off. When it did not come loose, he looked at Spesk and his smile was gone. His face was all questions.

  "Leave that alone and come here," Spesk said.

  The small man looked at Ingrid once more as if filing her perfidy for a future accounting date, then came toward Spesk. He finally saw Reverend Wadson on the floor and looked at him, unsure whether to smile in welcome or to sneer in victory. Instead he just looked blankly at Wadson, and then again at Spesk.

  "Colonel Speskaya," Breslau said. "I heard you were in the city. I could not wait to talk to you." His hands again went to the ring at his neck. "But what is this? Most strange." He smiled at Spesk as if they alone in the world shared a secret knowledge of the earth's grossest stupidities.

  He glanced at Wadson to see if the black man had a similar ring around his neck. Wadson wanted to shout, "Honkey, I gots one worse than that."

  "Breslau," Spesk said coldly. "You know a house on Walton Avenue?"

  The small smile of secret sharing left Breslau's face but only for an instant before he recovered. "But of course, Colonel. That is why I was most anxious to see you. To discuss this with you."

  "And that is why you and your superiors saw fit not to notify us of what you were doing and what you were looking for?"

  "It might have been a fruitless search," Breslau said. "It was, in fact. I would not want to bother you with trivia."

  Spesk looked down at the small black box in his hands.

  "I will give you some trivia," he said. "You did not notify us because your agency was freelancing again and trying to capture this device for yourself. East Germany has always had such ambitions." He raised a hand to silence Breslau's protest. "You were awkward and inept. There would have been ways to move into that building, to search for something of value. We could simply have bought the building through a front. But, no, that would have been too simple. So you had to blunder around and finally bring in the American CIA and the American FBI and they took the operation away from you."

  Breslau did not know yet if it was the right time to protest. His face seemed frozen.

  "Ineptitude is bad enough," Spesk said. "Ineptitude that results in failure is even worse. It is intolerable. You may speak now."

  "You are right, Comrade. We should have advised you earlier. But as I say, the device was only a rumor among some of those in the German Democratic Republic who were active during the war. It could well have been only a figment of someone's imagination. As in fact it was. There is no such device."

  "Wrong. There is."

  "There is?" Breslau's suprise had overtones of sadness.

  "Yes. This creature has it. He is going to give it to me."

  Breslau looked at Wadson again. "Well, that's wonderful. Marvelous."

  "Isn't it?" Spesk said drily, rejecting the partnership that Breslau had tried to construct with his tone of voice.

  "And this device, is it of value? Will we be able to use it in the future in the battle against the imperialists?"

  "I have not seen it," Spesk said. "But it is a device. There are devices and devices." Finally Wadson saw him smile. "Like the thing around your neck."

  "Is this it?" Breslau said. His hands went to the ring around his throat.

  "No. That is something new we have just invented. I will show you how it works."

  As Wadson watched, Spesk pushed forward the red toggle switch on the small black box. Breslau gagged. His eyes bulged.

  "Aaaaggghhh." His hands clawed at the ring.

  "You are being removed, Comrade," said Spesk, "not because you have been deceitful but because you have been caught at it. Too bad."

  He pushed the switch forward farther, a mere fraction of an inch. Breslau dropped to his knees. His fingertips dug into his neck in an effort to make room for his fingers behind the tightening white ring. Where his fingernails dug, they left trails of blood on his throat as they gouged out skin and flesh. Wadson felt a sympathetic pain in his groin.

  Breslau's mouth opened. His eyes bulged out farther, like a man who spent a year on a diet of thyroid extract.

  "Enjoy, enjoy," Spesk said. He pushed the switch all the way forward. There was a crack that sounded like a wooden pencil being broken. Breslau fell face forward onto the floor with a final hiss of air from his lungs, that turned into a small red bubbly froth leaking out of the corner of his mouth. His eyes stared at Reverend Wadson and already, the black man could see them begin to haze over.

  Wadson grimaced.

  "You," Spesk said. He put down the one black box and picked up the other. "You know now what I want you to do."

  "Yassuh," said Wadson.

  "Repeat it."

  "Yo' wants me to find dis white man and dis yellow man and den brings dem here." He rolled his eyes, and smiled a big pancake. "Dat it, boss?"

  "Yes. There will be no mistakes?"

  "No 'stakes. Nossuh, Missah Tony."

  "Good. You may leave now. Ingrid will go with you to keep an eye on you and to examine this device that came from the Mueller apartment. I warn you. Do not be foolish and try to attack Ingrid. She is a very good agent."

  Wadson got to his feet slowly and quietly, lest a heavily placed heel infuriate Spesk and he begin playing with that red togg
le switch. The reverend turned to look for Ingrid. She was standing behind him, looking down at the dead body of East German agent Breslau.

  And her nipples were hard again, Wadson noticed. And he wished they weren't.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Two bath towels were bunched up at one end of the tub but the newspapers Remo had spread on the floor were still dry and he felt like patting Tyrone's head when he unlocked the bathroom door and let him out.

  Tyrone ran immediately for the front door of the hotel suite. His hand was on the doorknob when he felt himself being jerked backward, up into the air, and plummeting down onto a couch which exhaled air with an asthmatic whoosh when Tyrone's 147 pounds landed on it.

  "What's the big hurry?" Remo said.

  "Ah wants get outta here."

  "You see," Chiun said, standing near the window and looking out toward Central Park. "He wants. Therefore it must be done now. Instant gratification. How typical of the young."

  "Except for the way it's piled, this garbage isn't typical of anything, Little Father."

  "Yo' better lets me go now. Ah gotta go," Tyrone said. "Ah wants to be leavin'."

  "You wants, you wants," Remo said. "What do you deserveses?"

  "Ah gots go school."

  "School? You?"

  "Assright. And ah gots go or ah gets in trouble and yo' be in trouble 'cause it's de law dat ah go school."

  "Little Father," Remo asked, "what could they teach this thing in school? They've had him most of his life already and they still haven't been able to teach him English."

  "Maybe it is an intelligent school system," Chiun said, "and devotes no time to the study of inferior languages."

  "No," said Remo. "I can't believe that."

  "Dey teach me," said Tyrone, "and ah learns. Ah speaks street English. Dat de real English before it be robbed by de white man who ruin it when he steal it from de black man."

  "Where'd you hear that drivel?" Remo asked.

  "Ah hears it in de school. Dey have dis man who write de book and he tell us that we talk real fine and everybody else, dey be wrong. He say we speak de real English."

  "Listen to this, Chiun. You don't have to like English but it's my language. It's a shame to hear this done to it." Remo turned to Tyrone again. "This man who wrote that book about your English. Is he in your school?"

  "Yeah. He de guidance counsellor at Malcolm-King-Lumumba. He one smart muvver."

  "Remember what I told you last night?" Remo asked.

  " 'Bout killing me?"

  Remo nodded. "I haven't made up my mind yet. If I find out you're responsible for you, then you're going to vanish without leaving a spot. But if it's not your fault, then, well maybe, just maybe, you'll live. Come on. We're going to talk to your guidance counselor. On your feet, Tyrone."

  "Those are the things at the ends of your legs," Chiun said.

  The Malcolm-King-Lumumba School had cost nineteen million dollars when it had been built five years earlier. The building covered one square block, and the interior of the building surrounded a central court of walkways, picnic tables, and outdoor basketball backboards.

  When the city had first designed the building, the nationally famous architect had called for a minimum of glasswork along the four exterior sides of the building. This would be compensated by window walls on the inside of the building, bordering the courtyard.

  The community school board had attacked the plans as racist attempts to hide away black children. A public relations firm hired by the school board mounted a campaign whose theme was "What do they have to hide?" and "Bring the schools out into the light" and "Don't send our children back to the cave."

  The New York City central school board surrendered to community pressure in forty-eight hours. The school's plans were redrawn. The inside of the school building still had floor-to-ceiling windows, but the perimeter of Malcolm-King-Lumumba was changed from mostly stone to mostly glass.

  The first year, the cost of replacing broken glass caused by passing rock tossers was $140,000; the second year, new glass cost $231,000. In four years, the cost of windows for Malcolm-King-Lumumba exceeded one million dollars.

  In the fifth year, two important things happened. The city faced a budget crunch in the schools. When the budget cut hit Lumumba High, the president of the community school board knew just where to cut expenses, because of the second important thing: his brother, having been made almost a millionaire by four years of supplying windows to the school, sold his glass business and opened a lumberyard.

  Lumumba High stopped replacing glass. They boarded up all the big window openings around the four outside walls of the school with plywood. The first year's cost was $63,000.

  Lumumba High was now sealed off from the outside world by a wall of stone and exterior-grade Douglas fir plywood through which not light or air or learning could penetrate.

  When a member of the community school board protested about the plywood and the resultant lack of light and asked a meeting "What are they trying to hide?" and to "Let our children out of the dark," he was beaten up on his way home after the meeting. There had been no protests since that time.

  When the architect who had originally designed the school drove up one day to look at it, he sat in his car for an hour weeping.

  Remo deposited Tyrone Walker inside the main corridor of Malcolm-King-Lumumba School.

  "Now you go to your classes," Remo said.

  Tyrone nodded but looked toward the front door where a pale knife-edge of sunlight slipped in alongside one of the plywood panels.

  "No, Tyrone," said Remo. "You go to your classes. If you don't and you try to get away, I'll come and find you. And you won't like that."

  Tyrone nodded again, glumly. He swallowed with a gulp as if trying to devour a swollen gland in his throat.

  "And don't you leave here without me," Remo said.

  "What yo do?"

  "I'm going to talk to some of the people here and see if it's your fault or theirs that you are what you are."

  "All right, all right," said Tyrone. "Anyways, dis nice day to be in school. We gots de reading today."

  "You study reading? I thought you didn't." Remo was impressed.

  "Well, not dat honkey kind of shit. De teacher, she read to us."

  "What's she read?"

  "Outen a big book wifout de pitchers."

  "Get out of here, Tyrone," Remo said.

  After Tyrone left, Remo looked around for the office. Two young men who looked to be ten years older than the minimum age for quitting school walked toward him and Remo asked if they knew where the office was.

  "You got a nickel, man?" said one.

  "Actually, no," Remo said. "But I've got cash. Probably two thousand, three thousand dollars. I don't like to walk around broke."

  "Den you gives us some bread iffen you wants de office."

  "Go surround a ham hock," Remo said.

  The young man backed off a step from Remo, and with a jerking movement of his hand, had a switchblade out of his pocket and aimed at Remo's belly.

  "Now you gives us bread."

  The other young man stood off to the side, applauding quietly, a big smile on his face.

  "You know," Remo said, "school is a great learning experience."

  The man with the knife looked confused. "Ah doan wanna…"

  "For instance," Remo said, "you're going to learn what it feels like to have your wrist bones mashed to jelly."

  The knife wavered in the hand of the young man.

  Remo moved a step closer and as if responding to a dare, the youth pushed the blade forward. The first thing he heard was the click as the knife blade hit the stone floor. The next thing he heard was a series of clicks as the bones were shattering in his right wrist, in the twisting grip of the white man.

  The man opened his mouth to scream, but Remo clamped a hand over his face.

  "Mustn't make loud noises. You'll disrupt the little scholars at their work. Now where's the office?" />
  He looked at the second young man who said, "Down that corridor. First door on the right."

  "Thank you," Remo said. "Nice talking to you boys."

  The door to the office was solid steel without windows and Remo had to lean his weight on it before it pushed open.

  Remo walked up to the long counter inside the office and waited. Finally a woman appeared and asked "Wha' yo' want?" The woman was tall and overweight, her hair a haloed mountain of frizz around her head.

  An office door to Remo's left said, "Doctor Shockley, Guidance Counselor."

  "I want to see him," Remo said, pointing toward the door.

  "Him's busy. What yo' want see him 'bout?"

  "One of your students. A Tyrone Walker."

  "De police precinct be down de street. Tell dem 'bout dis Tyrone."

  "I'm not here with a police problem. I want to talk about Tyrone's schoolwork."

  "Who you?"

  "I'm a friend of the family. Tyrone's parents are both working today and they asked me to stop by and see what I could do."

  "Wha' yo' say?" The woman's eyes narrowed suspiciously.

  "I thought I was speaking English. Tyrone's folks are working and they wanted me…"

  "Ah hear you. Ah hear you. What kind of silly story be dat? What kind of people you tink we is, you come in and try to fool us like dat?"

  "Fool you?" asked Remo.

  "Nobody gots no folks what bofe be working. Why you heah tellin' dem lies?"

  Remo sighed. "I don't know why I bother. All right. I'm Tyrone's parole officer. I think he's violated parole with a triple rape and six murders. I want to talk to Shockley before I send him to the electric chair."

  "Dat better, you be tellin' de troof now. You sit down and you wait and Shockley be wif you when he gets chancet. He busy."

  The woman nodded Remo toward a chair and went back to her desk and a copy of Essential Magazine, the Journal of Black Beauty. She stared at the cover.

  Remo found himself sitting next to a teenage boy who was staring hard at a coloring book on his lap. It was open to a cartoon of Porky Pig sniffing a flower in front of a barn.

  The boy took a crayon from his shirt pocket, colored one of Porky's fat round hams pink, then replaced the crayon. He took out a green one and colored the roof of the barn. He replaced that crayon and took out the pink one again to do Porky's other rear leg.