Mob Psychology td-87

by Warren Murphy

  "What do you call this thing?" Remo asked after almost being sideswiped by a patrol car.

  "'The Sumner Tunnel' seems to be everyone's favorite. Although 'this fucking bottleneck' comes a close second."

  "I'll go with option two. What are the odds of us surviving it?" Remo asked, feeling his brain go dead from carbon monoxide fumes.

  "Poor."

  "I tip better for honest. Your tip just doubled. Consider that an incentive to drive safely."

  Eventually the cab emerged into sunlight and fresh air. It whipped out of the traffic flow like a pinball caroming off the side of a pinball machine. The force of it should have thrown Remo into the right-hand door, but he centered his balance, righting himself like a compass needle pointing toward the north pole.

  "That felt like three G's," Remo said.

  "If you don't grab that turn like a brass ring," the cabby explained, "it's hell backtracking. The artery is much worse. Not that the streets are any prize."

  "How is that possible?"

  "They were laid out by cows."

  "I see what you mean," Remo said once they were cruising down the streets of the North End. It looked like a slice of old Italy, with high brick tenements festooned with wrought-iron fire escapes and wet wash waving on clotheslines between the narrow streets. Despite the cool weather, high windows were open and fat housewives and cigar smoking old men leaned out to watch the parade of humanity below. Outside clocks told time in Roman numerals. Green-white-and-red Italian flags waved proudly.

  The side streets were narrow and crooked, and impossible to navigate by car. Double-parking seemed to be the law of the land.

  "Any spot in particular?" asked the driver.

  Remo noticed a Chinese restaurant on a corner and said, "Right there."

  After paying the driver off, Remo pretended to start into the Chinese restaurant, then slipped around the corner.

  He walked the narrow streets, trying to orient himself. He couldn't recall the name of the street the building had been on. He knew better than to ask pedestrians, knew better than to attract attention in a close-knit neighborhood such as this one.

  Salem Street, off the main drag, Hanover, looked vaguely promising. It was a dark alley of dirty brick bindings that suggested they had been there forever. The soot looked eternal. The streetlamps were an ornate black iron. It was very Old World.

  Remo started down it.

  Even when he realized he had found the building, Remo kept on going. It was a storefont with its lower windows curtained off; the dingy glass above said "SALEM STREET SOCIAL CLUB."

  Across the street a burly man sat on a wooden straightback chair, his shirtsleeves rolled up and a package of Marlboros tucked into the left roll. A lookout.

  Remo continued on as if he were a lost tourist and rounded the next corner. Here he might have been negotiating a forgotten section of town. There was a barber shop whose fixtures were so ancient they reminded him of his first haircut, a million years ago in Newark. The nuns of Saint Theresa's orphanage had taken his entire class there one Saturday. Remo could still smell the spicy odor of the hair tonic the barber had used to plaster down his wet hair, as if it were yesterday.

  A lifetime ago.

  Remo doubled back to Hanover Street and the Chinese restaurant, where he ordered a bowl of fluffy white rice and a glass of water. The rice was tasty, even if it was a domestic Rexoro. The water tasted like it had been hauled out of Boston harbor in a rusty pail.

  He ignored the water and nursed the rice, chewing every mouthful to a starchy liquid mass before swallowing, as he waited for darkness to come.

  When Remo stepped back out into the street, Hanover Street was ablaze with neon and the narrow sidwalks were choked with every type of person from priests to hookers.

  It was still early, so Remo sauntered up and down twisting sidestreets and alleyways that might have been built by a coven of nineteenth-century witches. The ornate streetlamps simulated gaslights and shed a feeble light that suited Remo's nocturnal prowlings perfectly.

  After the sun had set, Remo found a high black brick wall one street over from Salem and, looking both ways to be certain there were no lookouts, went up it with spidery silence.

  The bricks were irregular enough to make his ascent as easy as climbing a stepladder. Remo quickly gained the roof and crossed the gravel to the opposite end.

  Inland, beyond an elevated green artery, the lights of Boston blazed. The North End lay all around him, a shadowy clot of land along the waterfront that had been cut off from the city proper by the artery.

  Not far behind him was the spire of Old North Church. To the north, along the coast, the angular spider's web of Old Ironsides wavered in the ocean breezes. The Bunker Hill monument stabbed at the stars.

  Remo found himself looking down Salem Street. The social club was diagonally across the street, three buildings south. Below, the lookout still rocked back in his creaking wooden chair.

  He showed signs of nodding off, which meant that he was probably just taking the air. There were no lights coming from the storefront itself.

  Leaning over, Remo released a droplet of saliva onto the lookout's thick black hair.

  The man was more alert than he looked. He reacted instantly, putting his hand up and cursing in Italian when it came away wet.

  "Fuckin' pigeons," he snarled as he dragged the chair indoors. A door slammed.

  Above, Remo grinned. He worked his way up the street by the roofs. They were so closely packed he didn't have to jump.

  When he was directly across from the storefront, he stepped back several paces and sprinted for the parapet's edge.

  The street flashed under him like a dark canyon. Remo's Italian loafers made almost no sound as they made contact with the opposite building. He checked his own momentum with a twist of his upper body.

  Looking around the roof, Remo discovered a trapdoor. He laid both hands on it and closed his eyes.

  The weak electrical current of an ordinary burgler alarm made his sensitive fingertips tingle ever so slightly. Wired. Remo left it alone.

  He walked the parapet, looking for the inevitable fire escape. He had not yet seen a building that lacked one. These were firetraps, probably built at the turn of the century-if not before-and never upgraded.

  This one clung to the back of the building like exposed iron ribs. Remo's eyes, trained to pick up ambient light and magnify it, detected the faint gleam of moonlight on wires wrapped in shiny black electrical tape. Probably an electric eye or some other alarm system.

  Remo decided not to fool with it. He worked his way around to one side and just went over the parapet, finding finger-and toeholds that brought him to a closed window.

  It was far enough above the alley below and beneath the roof not to be wired. Just in case, Remo straddled it and examined the casement molding for any signs of wire or aluminum stripping.

  Finding none, he attacked the dirt-streaked glass over the simple latch closure with one fingernail. He scored a semicircle of glass, withdrew his finger, and tapped the glass under the curve.

  The semicircle cracked free, except along the base, where dried wood putty held it in place. Remo reached two fingers into the gap and extracted the glass like pulling a stubborn tooth.

  He pocketed the glass and then pushed the lever open.

  That was actually the easy part, he discovered.

  The window had been painted shut. It was better than any lock or alarm.

  To anyone else, that is.

  Remo set himself, and applied controlled pressure to the edges of the lower sash. The tiny cracking and groaning told him when to move on. It took some time, but he got the sash loose enough to move.

  The sash had to be eased up slowly or the dry wood would squeal and snarl. He applied upward pressure.

  When Remo had an opening he could use, he lowered himself until his head was level with the sill. He slid in like a silent python coiling through a hole on a tree.

&nb
sp; Inside, it smelled of dust and must. Remo moved through the gloom on cat feet, found a door, and eased it open.

  His ears detected sounds. A steam radiator hissing. The dull roar of an electric furnace far below, probably in the basement. A mouse or rat scuttled among some papers on this floor.

  There were no indications of human life. No sleeping heartbeats, no wheezing of lungs, gurgle of bowels, and other human-habitation noises.

  Remo padded down two flights of stairs until he reached the first floor. The food smells were heavy here. Garlic predominated. They made Remo slightly nauseous. He no longer ate meat his digestive tract could no longer tolerate meat, thanks to the refining of his metabolism by Sinanju-and the scent repelled him.

  When Remo oriented himself with the alley, he knew which door was the one he wanted. He stepped off the bottom stair and floated toward it.

  He had no warning. None of his senses picked up anything. But suddenly an alarm buzzer snarled at him.

  Remo moved fast. He hit the door with the flat of his hand, pushing it off its hinges and lock. He caught it before it crashed to the floor and set it against a wall.

  In the darkness, his eyes raked the gloom.

  "Where the hell is it?" he muttered.

  Remo found the wastebasket in a corner. He grabbed it up. Empty.

  He whirled. The buzzer continued buzzing. Another had joined it. That meant a second alarm in this room. He didn't know what had tripped it, but there was no time to worry about it.

  Remo swept the room. The card table was empty. He decided to check the trash barrels outside. He went to the exit door and kicked it open. A hasp and padlock sprang apart with a bluish spark. Moonlight slanted in like an ethereal curtain.

  Remo heard them coming up the alley before he stepped out into it. He slid off to one side and let them come.

  There were two. Their fast-pumping hearts told him that.

  "See anything?" one hissed.

  "No. Just the door."

  "You go first."

  "Screw you. You go first."

  "Okay, we'll both go. Get on the other side of the door."

  A shadow crossed the spray of moonbeams at the door. Remo spotted the other one setting himself at the side of the open door. He had a revolver up in one hand. The other came up, making one finger, then two. Remo figured three was the signal.

  He was right.

  Shouting, they plunged in. One turned on a flash.

  And while they were blinking into the backglow of the flashlight, Remo slipped out the door behind them and went up the brick wall like a teardrop in retreat.

  He got down on the gravel of the roof and lay flat, figuring to wait them out.

  It was a good plan. But he got no cooperation. Other men arrived. A black Cadillac turned into the alley and all four doors opened at once.

  Remo waited for the excitement to settle down. When someone started to push on the roof trap, Remo rolled to his feet and glided to the parapet.

  He made the leap to the opposite side of Salem Street from a standing start, rolled when he hit, and lay flat as he listened to the humming sounds of the Boston night.

  The trap banged open. Remo caught a glimpse of the pale fan of a flashlight poking about the other roof. A voice called down, "It's clean."

  Another voice called up hollowly, "Okay, come down."

  After a few minutes, Remo felt it safe to slip along the rooftops. He climbed down at the dark end of the street, and moving with eerie stealth, worked his way unseen from the North End.

  Chapter 9

  Harold Smith was saying, "At a guess, you encountered a motion-sensitive alarm. They are quite common, capable of detecting minute changes in the air pressure of the secure environment being monitored. If disturbed by so much as a housefly, the alarm is triggered."

  "The Mafia is getting more sophisticated in everything except choice of real estate." Remo frowned. He had found a pay phone in the shadow of Faneuil Hall, which smelled like a fish-processing plant. Traffic hummed on the nearby central artery. "Why don't I stick around and try again tonight?" ,

  "No. They will be prepared for you."

  "No one is prepared for me," Remo said. "This time I'll just-"

  "Return for debriefing, Remo. This is a serious problem. As yet, we have only the skeletal outline of its nature. Before we blunder in any further, I would like to know what we're dealing with."

  "The Mafia. What's so complicated about that?"

  "Remo," Harold Smith said steadily, "if the Mafia is attempting to infiltrate IDC, the consequences would be catastrophic. All over this country, organized crime is on the run. More and more, those persons are taking refuge in legitimate or semilegitimate business enterprises. But if they are insinuating themselves into IDC, they will have virtually compromised American business as we know it, from the boardrooms to Wall Street. This cannot be allowed."

  "So? I go in and crack skulls. Warn them off: The Mafia will understand that. It's their language."

  "No. This calls for surgery."

  "Speaking of surgery, this lump on my forehead is starting to worry me. It won't go away. In fact, I'd swear it's growing."

  "Perhaps it is time we take care of that too," said Smith crisply. "While we consider a fresh plan of attack."

  "What about that computer? We can't just leave it."

  "You mentioned earlier that the voice coming from the other room asked for a Japanese technician."

  "Yeah? So?"

  "Perhaps Chiun will be able to accomplish what you could not. "

  Remo laughed once shortly. "Smitty, there is only one problem with that little scheme."

  "And what is that?"

  "Convincing Chiun to pass as Japanese long enough to pull it off. It's a complete impossibility."

  "Return to Folcroft, Remo," said Smith sharply.

  "Can I come in the front door this time?"

  "As long as you do it before daybreak. I will be here."

  "on my way," said Remo, hanging up the pay phone and looking around for a taxi.

  The taxis of Boston seemed to have gone into hibernation, so Remo decided to walk to the airport, which was not far away. He did not look forward to facing Chiun. It was funny how quickly he had fallen back into his old habit of taking the Master of Sinanju for granted. For over three months, Chiun had been believed dead and Remo had been like a lost child without him.

  Remo decided to throw himself on Chiun's mercy. What was the worst he could do?

  At Folcroft Sanitarium, Harold Smith replaced the blue contact telephone and turned his leather chair around to face the Master of Sinanju.

  "He is on his way back," said Smith.

  Chiun regarded Harold Smith with brittle hazel eyes.

  "What must be done must be done," he intoned.

  "Are you certain he will not be harmed by the operation?"

  The Master of Sinanju shrugged his thin shoulders. "He is Remo. He is unpredictable. Who can say how he will react?"

  "Then you agree this is the only way?"

  "You are the emperor. Remo is your tool. It is your privilege to shape your tool as you see fit."

  "I am pleased you see it that way." Smith reached for the intercom. "It is time to alert the surgeon."

  Chiun intercepted Smith's hand with his own.

  "Before this is done, allow me to present you with several sketches I have made, the better to guide the skilled hands of the physician as he goes about his important work."

  From one sleeve of his kimono Chiun withdrew a sheaf of parchments rolled tightly together. With a flourish, he presented them to Harold Smith.

  Smith spread them open on the desk. After a quick examination, he looked up.

  "I hardly think Remo would be happy with any of these faces," Smith said with dry disapproval.

  Chiun shrugged. "Remo is determined to be unhappy, whatever comes. What matter the degree of his unhappiness?"

  "I would prefer a more Caucasian look. For operational reaso
ns, of course," Smith added quickly.

  Chiun snatched up the parchment drawings.

  "Racist!" he spat.

  "I do want you to monitor the operation, Master Chiun," said Harold Smith hastily, adjusting the knot in his tie. "To ensure that all goes smoothly."

  "Perhaps the surgeon of plastic will see the wisdom of my selections."

  "I somehow doubt it," said Smith, clearing his throat.

  "It is possible."

  "He will be under strict instructions to resculpture Remo's features, not change them utterly. But I am concerned with the lump on Remo's forehead."

  Chiun's eyes narrowed. "It is the eye of Shiva. Now closed. Remo does not suspect it for what it is."

  "Does Remo have any idea of his recent personality . . . uh . . . change?"

  "None. His mind is a blank. It is always a blank, of course, but this time the blankness is total. He remembers his days of slavery to the goddess Kali, but prefers not to speak of this."

  Harold Smith regarded the wispy figure of the Master of Sinanju. He hesitated to probe further. When he had taken on the awesome responsibility of CURE, he took on with it the operational obligation to obliterate the organization and all traces of it-including all personnel-should CURE ever be compromised.

  When, years ago, he had framed Remo Williams for a murder he had not committed, it had been to create an untraceable and expendable enforcement arm. Remo had been placed in Chiun's hands to be taught the rudiments of Sinanju, to create the perfect assassin. A man who no longer existed.

  It was a perfect plan. As conceived. Chiun would return to his village after training Remo-a critical link in the CURE chain forever severed. Chiun had been eighty then, twenty years ago. With his eventual death, there would be one fewer brain housing the knowledge of CURE, which was limited to Smith, Remo, and the incumbent President.

  But an unexpected thing had happened. Chiun had grown to care for Remo. The teacher had become a part of CURE. Not because Smith had wanted it that way, but because there was no way to prevent it. Chiun had insisted that training a white man in the fundamentals of Sinanju was a fifteen-year commitment. Minimum.

  Thus Smith had acquired two enforcement arms, paid for by an annual shipment of gold to the desolate village of Sinanju, on the coast of forbidding North Korea.