Killer Chromosomes td-32

by Warren Murphy

  And about the cut-up man, Mrs. Tumulty knew. Just the other day, a skinny old Chinaman dragged up a bloody young man. He did it in a strange manner. The old Chinaman looked as if he couldn't lift a large potato, but was carrying this larger man like a baby with head over his shoulder and his right hand under the man's backside. The man was moaning. The old Chinaman wore a funny robe and said he saw an apartment-for-rent sign on the door of Mrs. Tumulty's house.

  Mrs. Tumulty said she wished no trouble, but the old Chinaman with a white beard scarcely made up of a dozen strands pushed his way through easily.

  Of course, there was money and paid in advance too, but then the smelly herbs came. She complained about that.

  Here was the strangest part. The man was near death when the foreigner brought him in. By that evening, he was mumbling. By the next morning, his eyes were open. And his skin was healing a lot faster than normal skin.

  What sort of black arts were being practiced, Mrs. Tumulty wanted to know. But she didn't press the point. Her boarders in the attic apartment paid well.

  However, there had been a powerful stink coming from the rooms. She insisted it would cost more to clean things like the draperies to rid them of the smell. Every time she went to the attic, she tried to see more but the old Chinaman always managed to block her path. There were pots bubbling in there. She knew something really strange occurred because she saw the neck. It was a bloody mess when the Chinaman carried the bigger man, like a sleeping baby, up the steps. When she got a peek at that neck two days later, it was like an old bum. Mrs. Tumulty knew that wounds did not heal like that.

  So she listened. From the beginning she listened because who knew what was going on, what with perversity and other sex practices abounding and all that? For a while, he talked in the funny Chinaman's talk, but then used common, decent, civilized English. She heard him telling the man his heart should do this, his spleen should do that and his liver should do this other thing-as though a person could make his body parts do different things.

  And one thing he kept repeating.

  "Pain never kills. It is a sign of life."

  Which was mighty peculiar. But when the man answered back, the Chinaman talked Chinaman talk.

  Now was the wounded man the one that word in Boston said was valuable to people?

  This question did Beatrice Mary-Ellen Tumulty pose to the foreigner with the little, black, foreign mustache. He was the man she had come into this godforsaken Eyetalian section to see. Kept her purse over her lap all the time too.

  Who knew what sexual insanity would overtake these men, their own women getting fat and mustached over twenty-one and all that. Mrs. Tumulty was fifty-three and a bit let out at the seams, she knew, but she had once been a looker and she still had those basic looks.

  "Mrs. Tumulty," said the man she had come to the North End to see, "you have done yourself a good service today. I think that is the man who has caused so much trouble to the community. We know and trust you will keep these matters to yourself."

  He took a large roll of fresh bills from his pocket. They were twenty-dollar bills. Saints and glory, thought Mrs. Tumulty. The man peeled off one and Mrs. Tumulty's eyes widened as he kept peeling. Two, three, four, five. The bills came fresh and new, down on top of one another, as the hand went back to the roll and came back with another bill. Six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Would the man never stop? It was delicious.

  It drove Mrs. Tumulty to passionate fury. When twenty crisp new bills lay on the table in front of her, she let out a squeal of delight.

  "You'll do a small favor now, please?" said the man.

  "Anything," said Mrs. Tumulty, delightfully spent as the fresh strong bills went into her purse.

  "Please go to this address," he said. "You will meet James Hallahan of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. You will get into no trouble. Just tell him what you have told me."

  "Absolutely," she said and, in a sudden burst of gratitude, jumped from her chair and kissed the man's hand as she had heard Eyetalians did, don't you know? Just like he was a cardinal of the church or something.

  But this man, she realized, was like a cardinal to his people. A leader of his community. A respected person and all she was doing was paying proper tribute.

  Men wrestled Mrs. Tumulty away from her adoration of the man's hand. As she left the room, she swore eternal loyalty.

  Thus did she meet, that afternoon, Salvatore (The Gas) Gasciano, who not only earned his nickname by the sound of his last name but because he liked to correct injustices and settle disputes with gasoline. He poured it and lit it. Sometimes on buildings and sometimes on uncooperative people.

  But that had been in his youth. Rarely now had he set a match to anyone or poured gasoline into a car. He was a man of reason now. A man of respect.

  He phoned the local office of the FBI. He got James Hallahan. He knew the lines were bugged. Every FBI office was bugged, his informants had told him. Besides, a man of caution would assume those people kept voice records.

  "All right," were the first words spoken by Sal Gasciano. "We got your man. Now will you lay off a little?"

  "You sure he's our man?"

  "There's a lady coming up to see you. I don't know how many guys in Boston had their throats and bellies ripped last week, but this guy was torn up bad, Hallahan. So stop getting in the way of our business, okay?"

  "If he's the one, we will. But I want one more thing."

  "Jeezus, Hallahan, what the hell is the matter with you nowadays? We been staying clean on Federal things. Now you're all over us all the time. C'mon, Jim. Enough is enough."

  "One more thing. A small thing."

  "What?" asked Gasi Gasciano.

  "You know Tony Fats?"

  "Of course I know Tony Fats. Who doesn't know Tony Fats?"

  "There's a large backyard behind Alfred Street in Jamaica Plains. Have him there at four o'clock this morning."

  "Four A.M.? Tony Fats?"

  "Right. The well-marbled one," came the voice of Jim Hallahan.

  "All right, but Tony Fats doesn't know nothing. He just does small things. He's not even connected with people."

  "Send him anyway."

  "All right," said Gasciano. He hung up and shrugged. Marbled? Wasn't that what you said about good steak? But what difference did it make? The whole world was going crazy. Just so long as the North End remained the same. The same and sane.

  Everybody else is crazy. One day, the Feds want everything about some Jewish lady doctor they think is eating people. The next day they don't want to know nothing. Why, he had personally phoned to tell Hallahan to stop looking for one person and start looking for at least four or five. These crazy hits where bellies were eaten out had to be made by several people. They were happening too far in distance and too close in time. His estimate was four or five people, at least.

  And what did that crazy Fed say? Jeezus, the guy didn't want to hear another word about it One day, he wanted everything The next day, nothing. Then, look for some guy whose throat was ripped. Then Tony Fats at 4:00 A.M. in Jamaica Plains. You'd think the son of a bitch was ordering dinner.

  "We do so much work for the Federal government, we ought to get paid," said Sal Gasciano but didn't think it was all that funny.

  When Mrs. Tumulty met the man in the car, she felt safe. It was a sedate, decent, black car and who, after all, was driving, but a man named Hallahan. Wouldn't you know? His mother had come from Kerry, the finest county in all Ireland, although his father did have a bit of Cork in him. But, you couldn't expect everything.

  Wouldn't you know? He had worked for the FBI for many years, and risen to a position of prominence, which showed that even the godless Protestants who ran the country couldn't keep a good Kerry man down.

  "We're not going to FBI headquarters."

  "Darlin', wherever you wish to go is all right with me. I feel safe with the son of a Kerry woman. Oh, you don't know what's happening to Boston with all them foreigners and ev
erything. Even have two at my house. One a Chinaman. But I rent to him. Take his money. He'd do the same to me and worse if I was in China, right?"

  "Of course," said Jim Hallahan. He smelled the richness of fat sweat pores in salty gravy. He found out her home address and had her explain everything about the upstairs apartment, where the windows were, where the bed on which the wounded man lay was, and what were the buildings like that surrounded her own. And just how nosy were the neighbors?

  "As nosy as a bunch of Mayo people," she said, referring to a county not quite as decent as County Kerry.

  The good lad did not take her to FBI headquarters. Rather to an old warehouse, which, even on this fine day, was a bit drafty. She shivered a bit and got goose bumps. Was he really licking his lips or did he have a cold sore?

  There were people in the warehouse who didn't look at all Federal. She felt like an early Christian being thrown into some Roman arena, what with everyone watching. These other people must have sores on their lips, too.

  The warehouse had a funny odor. It smelled like barns that Mrs. Tumulty remembered from Kerry. She looked to Hallahan for reassurance. He was talking to a blonde woman with exorbitant breasts, clad in a tight black and yellow dress that was so shameful only a Jewess would wear one. The woman had suffered an accident apparently because the right side of her face was bandaged.

  Mrs. Tumulty listened to the low murmurings of the people circling her. She felt better when she heard the topic. How could people discussing lunch be harmful?

  "What's Hallahan brought for lunch?" said one.

  "Looks like Irish stew," said another.

  "Better than the Kosher food we had last night."

  "I like French. There's a certain delicacy to French."

  "Only after a bath."

  "Which means twice a year you can have French."

  "Give me dark meat any day."

  "It's no richer than white meat."

  "Nothing can beat a fine breast of WASP."

  Mrs. Tumulty smiled. She had never heard of wasp breast but was sure it was something in melted butter without garlic or any of those other foreign spices that made you into a sex maniac if you ate them regularly.

  She saw the agent Hallahan bow to the overly endowed woman in a peculiar manner. The head lowered, just as in a normal bow, but then came up to expose his neck.

  A strange thing, she thought, for a Kerry lad with fine light-blue eyes, a rugged, dark, Irish face and a nose that showed by its crook its owner was not afraid of a manly fist.

  He came toward her and the others closed around. Mrs. Tumulty was sure they were disguised agents because the ones she had seen on television and after a bank had been robbed by Africans, all wore very shiny shoes, neat suits, and tan raincoats. The agents in real life dressed just like on television.

  The Kerry lad put a hand on her shoulder. The Kerry lad smiled. Mrs. Tumulty smiled. The Kerry lad lowered his head. Saints preserve us, what was he doing?

  Mrs. Tumulty felt him put his manly lips to her chestbone. Not a Kerry lad, she thought. Not really. Some foreign molester in disguise But suddenly there was a great ripping pain in her chest. It took her very knees away. It wrenched out her breath.

  She was being dismembered and it was like she was an observer. She felt as if she was going down a great dark hole, deeper and darker than any hole she had ever seen. It was like the darkness from which she had come a long, long time ago. Her mother's voice was saying hello and that she should come along and not be late.

  In the hole was a dream. She dreamed she was leaving her body. There was the Kerry lad over her body, his face bloodied, and all the other people eating away at her old tired body, their faces bloodied like cannibals.

  And there was the yellow-haired woman limping over to join them.

  Mrs. Tumulty was going home to her mother.

  "Will there be only Kerry people?" she asked her mother.

  "No, dear. There will be every kind."

  "Good," said Mrs. Tumulty in her great dream. For now, just as the flesh back there did not matter, neither did the origin of the good people she would meet. They would be good people. Nothing else mattered anymore.

  When the good parts of the body were eaten to bone, and the bones licked, the remainder, ligament and tendon, sponged into a green garbage bag and everyone licking their faces, Sheila Feinberg spoke to her pack.

  "Jim has found the man I want. I will bear that man's child and make our species greater by the inbreeding. That man is the best of their species, stronger even than we are. Jim has found him. But it will not be easy to capture him."

  "Will we get him for eating? You know, like after you've gotten his seed?" This from an accountant with a large insurance firm who was chewing on a fingernail. It was not his own.

  "Possibly," said Sheila. "But he is the best of mankind; just capturing him will be difficult enough."

  Hallahan had a thought. "Maybe he isn't just a man. Maybe, in other experiments like yours, he was created."

  Sheila shook her head.

  "No," she said. "I am aware of what is being done. This has never been done."

  "Perhaps another country," said Hallahan. "Perhaps the Communists did it and that man escaped."

  "No. We are the only ones."

  For a moment in the warehouse there was sadness. It was not a soul-wrenching moment, but was like an echo of things that would never be again. It was very quiet.

  "Hey, everybody," said Hallahan. "Four A.M. in the lot behind Alfred Street, I've got an Italian dinner set up. His name is Tony Fats and he's well-marbled."

  There was laughter and Sheila said that four A.M. might be the right time to try to capture the human.

  "What about the Chinaman?" asked the accountant.

  This prompted another joke about whether he was Cantonese or Szechuan, these being kinds of Chinese cooking. But Sheila, who had been this new species longer than anyone else, felt that twinge of instinct, that touch of an animal's strongest emotion.

  The emotion was fear.

  Instinct told Sheila that man, with tender skin and weak muscles, upright man who was slow, who lived in packs and built things to protect his frailness, had not dominated the world by accident, but by superiority.

  Yes, Sheila and her pack could fall on a single person but hadn't single persons always been vulnerable to most animals? Weren't human females always weaker? Children too until a decade and a half. Then, over forty, the human lost most of what little strength it had.

  Yet humans ruled the world and animals lived in cages for humans' viewing pleasure.

  No, there was danger in the old man. It would not be as easy as Hallahan thought.

  For some reason, which Sheila attributed to inheriting the instinct of the man-eater, she feared the frail, old Oriental more than the younger man. According to Hallahan, the Tumulty woman had said he was very old. Yet he had carried the young one upstairs easily.

  When she thought of this old man, fear came as though there were loud drumbeats in the distance and a great noise far off.

  She had not had dreams since the change. But in the warehouse where everyone waited before their hunt in Mrs. Tumulty's apartment, she had a dream while awake.

  It was like an hallucination. It had smells and sounds. There, at the end of a long, long valley, was a little man who looked like a good meal.

  But he wasn't. He was quieter than men they had taken. He was the very best of men, sent by the species to finish off Sheila and her pack.

  Chinese food? Not at all.

  She hoped that her pack would be able to save one of them-the young one or the old Oriental-for breeding. But maybe they wouldn't have that luxury.

  In the attic apartment of Mrs. Tumulty's house, Chiun slapped at Remo's hand. Night was falling and, for the past three nights, Chiun had prepared the room.

  "Don't pick at your wounds," Chiun said.

  "That means not picking anywhere. I'm cut up bad."

  "A scratch. I
t hurts because you heal. Death has no pain, but living does."

  Chiun slapped the hand again.

  "I'm scratching an itch."

  "Disgusting," said Chiun. "Shameful."

  Remo knew Chiun was not talking about scratching at wounds. Since he could formulate ideas and correctly interpret sounds and words, for seven hours now, Remo had heard Chiun over and over again tell him how disgraceful it was for someone representing Sinanju to get himself cut up this way.

  As Chiun explained it, he didn't know why he was going to so much trouble to nurse Remo back to health.

  "So that you can go out and embarrass me again? Do you know you almost allowed yourself to be killed? Do you know that? We have not lost a Master in 875 years. Do you not care what you do to my reputation?"

  Remo had tried to protest that he had met something new but Chiun would hear none of it.

  "You would get yourself killed? That is what you would do to me. And why? I will tell you why..."

  "But, Little Father," Remo had protested.

  "Quiet," Chiun had said. "You would do this against me because of my easy-going nature. I willingly gave up the centrifuge I was going to bring home to Sinanju as a part of a white man's magic display. Because I gave this up and was willing to do it, you sensed you could be killed against me. Who would care? Let the sweet, generous, loving, decent, fool Chiun go down in history as one who had lost a pupil."

  "But..."

  "I have been too generous. I have been too decent. I have been too giving. This is what I get in return. Carelessness with what I have made. Yes and why? Why? Because I am so generous. I am what you call a pushover. Yes, a pushover. Easy Chiun. Sweet Chiun. Agreeable Chiun. Come, world, take advantage of one who is too nice."

  With that Chiun slapped a scratching hand and was silent. Remo knew Chiun became angry only after Remo could talk and reason. He remembered loving, soothing words in that dreamlike state while he was being treated by herbs and perhaps the most skilled hands available to kill or cure.

  What most Western doctors did not know, and what Sinanju did, was that it was not so much a wound that killed, but the suddenness of it, or the fact there were many wounds. The human body was self-repairing. A single disease or injury to a single organ could be contained or eliminated by the body if the body had enough time to react.