"Gentlemen?" he said. It was a question.
"You finished watching that soap opera?" Johnny the Duck asked.
"Yes. For the time being. There will be commercials now and five minutes of news before the next program appears. We may talk." He waved them graciously to seats. They remained standing.
"We didn't come to talk, dink," O'Boyle said. "We came to hear talk."
"The speech therapist is on the next floor," Chiun said.
"Listen, Mr. Moto, you just go along with what we say and you ain't going to get hurt," Johnny the Duck said.
"This frail old spectre will remember you with nothing but gratitude," Chiun said.
The Duck nodded to O'Boyle. "Keep an eye on him. Make sure he don't run." Then he walked toward the telephone to call a number in Hudson, a number he had never called before.
From his position on the floor under the fourteen-foot long mahogany table in Mayor Craig Hansen's office, Remo could not reach the telephone. From her position under Remo, neither could Cynthia Hansen, the mayor's daughter.
"Let it ring," Remo said.
"I can't let it ring," she said, placing the words in his ear along with the tip of her tongue. "I'm a public servant." She accented her words by plunging her naked pelvis against Remo's naked body.
"Forget about servicing the public. Service the private," Remo said and returned the stroke with interest.
"When I was told that working in city hall was just screwing the public, I never thought I'd be doing it one at a time," she said, and reached down between them and grabbed Remo. "Now unplug, will you?" she said squeezing slightly to make her point.
"Government is no career for weaklings," Remo sighed. He slowly, lovingly withdrew and rolled off her. Cynthia Hansen rolled out from under the table and padded naked across the seventy-two dollar a yard carpet, bought without public bidding, to the telephone. She picked it up as she sat back in the tan leather chair, $627 without bidding, put her long legs up on the desk and looked down at her left nipple which was still rigid with excitement.
"Mayor Hansen's office," she said, "May I help you?" squeezing her nipple between the index and middle fingers of her right hand.
She listened for a moment, then held out the phone with a shrug. "It's for you," she said in surprise, then shrugged again.
Remo groaned to himself, then still erect, got to his feet and walked around the desk, until he was between the desk and Cynthia Hansen. She dropped her legs to let him reach the telephone, but then put her legs back up onto the desk trapping Remo in the middle.
Remo picked up the telephone and propped it on his shoulder. "It's your dime," he said, and using both hands, he lifted Cynthia's knees slightly, then tilted the tan leather chair back so that her pelvis was tipped up toward him. He slowly leaned forward toward her.
"Listen, Barry," the voice came over the phone. "We know what you're doing."
Remo was in and he started to stroke gently, forward and back. "Five bucks says you don't," he told the voice.
"Yeah?" said Johnny the Duck.
"Yeah," said Remo.
"Yeah? Well, anyway we know everything about you, except who made you come."
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," Remo said, pumping harder now. "And after a couple of years, too." He leaned forward and with his hands began to manipulate Cynthia's breasts.
"Yeah? Well, we got the dink. What d'ya think about that?"
"Tell him to make you some chop suey. He's really good at it, but watch the soy sauce. He's got a tendency to use too much. . .too. . .much!," Remo said and then it was over.
"Hey, Barry. You all right?" Johnny the Duck wondered over the phone.
"Yeah. I'm fine now," Remo said, lying there heavily against Cynthia Hansen, waiting for the pulsating throb to cease.
"Well, if you ever want to see the dink again, you better talk."
"What do you want me to say?"
"Somebody's going to give you the password. Butterflies. When that someone does, you tell him everything you know. What you're doing here and who sent you and all. Otherwise, you'll never see the dink again."
Remo pulled out and sat his bare butt on the glass panel that topped the desk.
"Listen, fella. How do I know you've got him?"
"We got him. We don't kid around."
"I want to talk to him," Remo said. "How do I know you haven't killed him already?"
Silence for a moment, then Johnny the Duck said, "Okay. Here he is. But no funny business." Then off the phone, he called, "Hey, dink. Your boss wants to talk to you."
The accented voice that came next onto the line was Chiun's and Remo, looking down at Cynthia Hansen, still hot, still wanting, in front of him had a difficult decision to make.
"Listen, Chiun. Will they all fit in the freezer?
"Ah? balls. Okay, stick them in the bathtub. Pack them in ice or something."
Then Johnny the Duck was back on the line. "That's enough. See, wise guy, we got him. Now it's up to you if he lives or not. Remember. It'll be a person what says butterflies."
"Yeah, sure, pal. Anything you say. Do me just one favour, will you? Tell the old guy to use plenty of ice and to turn up the air conditioner."
"What?" asked Johnny the Duck.
"Look," Remo said. "I'll do anything you want. But just do this one thing for me, huh? Tell him I said to use plenty of ice and to turn up the air conditioner. Okay? Okay. Thanks, pal. You'll never regret it."
He hung up the phone. Cynthia Hansen lay with her eyes closed, her nipples at attention, her legs still framing him against the desk.
"Now, where was I?" he said.
"You can start anywhere," she said.
Johnny the Duck hung up the telephone, a look of puzzlement on his face. The commercials were over, along with the news; the organ interlude was over; and Lawrence Walters, psychiatrist, was on, preparing to unravel the tortured mind of Beverly Ransom, who was racked with guilt because she felt herself the cause of the death of her own daughter in a train accident, since she had insisted upon sending the girl to summer camp, and until she was cured, she could never again be a real wife to Royal Ransom, millionaire banker and chief financial backer of Dr. Lawrence Walters' street-level, store-front psychiatric clinic. Chiun was again seated in front of the television set, staring fixedly at the washed-out grayed picture, picking the images out of a grayness which was accented by the sunshine which fell across the dusty screen.
The Duck looked at Chiun. "Listen, dink."
Chiun held up a hand to forestall more talk.
"I'm talking to you," Johnny the Duck said. Chiun ignored him. Pops Smith found he did not like that. It was all right to be Oriental and old, but they were here on no laughing matter and they deserved respect.
Johnny the Duck nodded to Pops Smith who got up off a soft overstaffed chair and walked around in front of Chiun. "Sorry, old man, but we're not fooling around," he said and hit the button that turned the television off. That cost him the favour he had earned earlier.
Chiun's concentration was broken and he rose slowly, pathetically small and frail, and he looked around more in sorrow than in anger.
The Duck said, "I don't know what the hell he's talking about, but your boss said use plenty of ice and turn up the air conditioner."
"Why did you turn off my television show?" Chiun asked.
"Cause we got to wait here for a phone call and we ain't gonna wait and listen to all that stupidness," Johnny the Duck said.
If Pops Smith had not turned off the television set, he would have had something to think about, something to make him wonder if just one poor, black man could have done more with his numbers business than fold before the power and might of the Mafia. Pops Smith might have had a chance to think that one man, one poor, insignificant man, could be pretty powerful after all and might be able to win, even against long odds.
But Pops Smith had been the instrument that interrupted the saga of Dr. Lawrence Walters and his never-ending battle against m
ankind's age-old problems of superstition, ignorance and mental illness. And so Pops' skull was shattered first and he never had the chance to see Johnny the Duck somehow lifted off his feet and propelled across the room into the bewildered face of Vinnie O'Boyle, and Pops never got the opportunity to hear their temple bones give under the pressure of just two index fingers, never had the chance to think to himself that he didn't really have to surrender his business to the Mafia because perhaps it wasn't that powerful after all.
In death, he could see or hear or think of none of those things. He just lay on the floor, his eyes open but unseeing, as the television slowly brightened back on as Dr. Lawrence Walters said that guilt and repressed hostility were most destructive to the human psyche.
Forty-five minutes later, the man-known as Remo Barry-and Cynthia Hansen decided they were done for the day.
"What was the phone call about?" she asked as she picked up her see-through blouse.
"Put on your skirt first," Remo- said, sitting back naked in the mayor's tan leather chair, looking out over a street filled with happy Puerto Ricans, happy luncheonettes and happy record stores. "I've always been a tit man."
"Don't be indelicate," she said. "The phone call?"
"Oh. Some of your town's drug business hoodlums were holding my servant prisoner. They said they were going to kill him if I didn't spill my guts to whoever told me the password."
"Butterflies," said Cynthia Hansen.
"Yeah, that's right," Remo said. "Eavesdropper."
"Well, what about your servant? Aren't you worried?"
"Only about the air conditioning. I know he won't forget the ice, but he doesn't like the apartment too cool, so he might forget the air conditioning."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Cynthia Hansen said as she finished buttoning her skirt up the front, her fine young breasts trembling with the motion. "He might be dead or being tortured."
Remo looked at the clock on the mirrored mantel. "It's two o'clock. 'Edge of Life' just went off. Maybe I'd better call him." He picked up the phone and dialled.
He waited a few moments, then smiled. "Chiun? Yeah, how's it going? Did Vance Masterman finally work that thing out today?
"Oh, that's too bad. I'm really sorry for you. Listen, I was thinking that lobster might be good tonight. Yeah. You know how you make it, with the wine sauce. Okay. Okay. And Chiun," he added importantly, "don't forget the air conditioning."
Remo hung up. "Boy, I'm glad you made me call. He forgot the air conditioner."
Cynthia Hansen just stared as she buttoned up her see-through blouse.
CHAPTER TWELVE
But Remo did not eat dinner at home.
Cynthia Hansen offered to drive him to the subway, but as they drove along in her black city-issued Chevrolet, he stared at her long bare legs expertly working the brake and accelerator, and then looked up and realized she had turned the rear-view mirror so she could watch him. By the time they had reached the subway station in Hudson Square, they were hungry for each other again and they decided to have dinner together at her apartment.
Cynthia Hansen lived alone in a six-room apartment on the top floor of an eight-story apartment building that was one of the city's best. It still had a doorman and it had an elevator that worked, which was rare in Hudson, and the garbage had been allowed to lay uncollected in the cellar only once-until Cynthia Hansen had unleashed a flood of city inspectors on the property, papering everyone with summonses, until the owner who lived in Great Neck decided to do something about the garbage.
But the rooms were maze-like, seemingly unconnected, as if they were designed by a drunken architect, and in his first five minutes in the apartment, Remo made three wrong turns looking for the bathroom.
Cynthia's refrigerator was well-stocked, but they decided to dine on salami and cheese. Remo would not let her slice either with a knife, but instead tore off hunks for both of them.
And Remo had her in the kitchen while she was putting food onto a tray; he had her on the parquet floor of the living room which was cold against her back and his knees among the salami skins and cheese rinds; then he had her in the shower where they lovingly lathered each other's bodies and used each other as washclothes. From kitchen to living room to shower, it was one of the great displays of coitus interruptus and then Remo made it non-interrupts as he finished shagging her on the hard, unyielding mattress of the four poster bed in her enormous bedroom, with the blue velvet-striped wallpaper on one wall.
Afterwards, they lay naked, side by side, on top of the blue velvet spread and Remo decided that since he seemed intent on screwing his brains out, he might as well bust training all the way, so he joined Cynthia Hansen in a cigarette and made a mental note to buy spearmint gum on the way back to New York so Chiun would not smell the smoke on his breath.
"Ever think about going into government?" Cynthia Hansen said to him, and blew smoke rings toward the ceiling, then handed the cigarette across her body to Remo.
"Ever since I've met you, I've done nothing but go into government," Remo said
"I think I could find something good for you," she said. "What do you make at that stupid magazine anyway?"
"Good year, I might do eight, nine thousand."
"I can get you eighteen and you don't even have to show up."
"To be the royal stud?"
"To work for me. On whatever I ask you to do."
"Sorry. I don't believe in working for women. It's degrading."
"You're a male chauvinist pig," Cynthia Hansen said. "I really wish you'd think about it. There's not much future in what you're doing now."
"Which is?"
"Which appears to be walking around, insulting people, causing trouble and getting people very upset."
"It's my nature," Remo said, and tried to blow a smoke ring but failed abysmally. Annoyed, he stubbed out the cigarette in an ashtray on an end table next to the bed, then, absently, picked up a small photo in a golden gilt frame.
"Your mother" Remo asked, holding the picture of a smiling couple up in front of Cynthia.
"Yes. And my father."
"She's a good looking woman. You've got her face," he said, and he really meant it because Mayor Craig Hansen, the other person in the picture, was handsome, insipid and characterless. His face had all the distinction of a phonograph record.
"I know," Cynthia said. "People always tell me I look like my mother."
Remo put the picture back. She lit another cigarette, they smoked it and she again offered him a job at City Hall. "Do you think you can buy me off, you insidious heroin peddler, you?" he asked, and then he was getting dressed, because it was dark outside and it was time to go back to see Chiun. Cynthia stayed him, offering him a job for a third time which he refused for a third time. Then he held her bare butt in his hands, and told her he would see her tomorrow, and Cynthia Hansen allowed herself to fear that he would never see her or anyone else again. But she was wrong.
Gaetano Gasso's silver crochet needle flashed back and forth. He stared intently at the doily he was working on. He was trying a new stitch and it was difficult to pick up the correct thread each time. He had done it wrong three times now and he was beginning to lose his temper. And when Gaetano Gasso lost his temper, people had reason to worry.
He sat alone at a bare desk in the corner of a mammoth warehouse, a warehouse that was stark empty except for one automobile. It was Gasso's automobile, a 1968 Chevrolet sedan that once was a police car. He had purchased it at an auction for city cars and got it for $5 when the junk dealers who normally bought such cars for $25 all developed serious cases of lockjaw. For another $10 he had had it tuned up at a good garage he knew on Paterson Plankroad in Secaucus; for $10 he had two kids paint it yellow; and for 25 bucks he had himself good dependable wheels. It was good to have a friend in city hall.
It was no use. He could not concentrate on the doily. It was that writer. That smart-ass writer. Well, tonight he would take care of that smart-ass writer,
and he allowed himself a smile at the prospect. First he would work him over, find out what he was really doing in town and what had happened to The Duck and O'Boyle and Pops, then he would kill him. He looked forward to the prospect and he rubbed his big hands together. Then he could get that stitch right. Crocheting took concentration. That Remo Barry would pay the price for disturbing Gaetano Gasso's concentration.
A steel door at the front of the warehouse opened and Willie the Plumber Palumbo stuck his head in reluctantly and called, "Mister Gasso? Mister Gasso?"
Gasso stood up behind the desk in the corner. The Plumber saw him and said loudly, "We got him for you, Mr. Gasso. We got him." Then Willie the Plumber walked into the warehouse, followed by a medium-tall, medium-husky stranger, who was followed by Steve Lillisio who had a gun poked into the stranger's back.
Willie the Plumber let the two men walk in front of him, locked the door behind them, then hurried to get back in front of the procession. He smiled as he neared Gasso, who had moved alongside the desk, and hoped to coax a smile in return. Nothing.
"We got him, Mr. Gasso. We got him. Real easy. Just picked him right up off the street. We got him for you."
Gasso ignored him. Willie coughed. Something came up into his mouth, but he wasn't sure of Mr. Gasso's position on spitting so he swallowed it.
Gasso was looking at the man in the middle. Remo Barry. He didn't look like enough to cause all this trouble. Remo Barry, meanwhile, was looking around him at the warehouse, all around-at the ceilings, at the floors, at the walls. Finally he turned his head to Gasso.
"How you want to die?" Gasso asked.
"What do I want to die for? But I'll tell you, you keep sneaking up on me like that and I'll die of shock. You're enough to scare somebody to death. How do you get that hair to grow all over you? Some kind of plant food, right? Huh?"
Willie the Plumber Palumbo and Steve Lillisio stood there silently. It was not nice to talk that way to Mr. Gasso. They hoped he would tell them to go. They did not want to be there to see what was going to happen to this writer.
The writer was still talking. "Does the Museum of Natural History know you're here? I mean, it's just not right to keep Margaret Mead out of this. The last time anybody found something like you, it was in a cave. How come you don't have hair on your teeth? I saw something in a display case once that looked like you and I would have sworn it had hair on its teeth."
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