The Head Men td-31

by Warren Murphy

  "You're pretty smart," said Les Pruel. "You're very smart."

  "Only because you do not know what I know. You seem smart to me because you know things I do not know," said the stewardess.

  Les Pruel closed his eyes but had a disturbing dream. He was watching a Punch and Judy puppet show. Punch grabbed a knife. Punch suddenly lunged out at Les Pruel but went right by him into a fire and was consumed. The horror was that Punch had Pruel's face. He was the puppet and he was going to try to kill but be killed in the process.

  During a previous fit of depression, he had seen an analyst and learned to work out dreams, which meant finding out what you were trying to tell yourself. But what was he telling himself? Was he a puppet? He woke up screaming.

  "Mr. Pruel. Mr. Pruel." It was the stewardess. She was calming him. He said he had had a bad dream. She warned him that when one was high above the earth and traveling, one should take one's dreams very seriously.

  "You believe strange things about dreams but we know they tell the future," she said. "Es-

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  pecially when you dream on a high place. Beware."

  "I'd beware, but there's nothing to beware about," he said, laughing. And then he had a drink and felt good.

  He had enough to retire quite comfortably, not luxuriously perhaps, but enough to feed him and his family and any work was better than watching heads roll and selling useless items to illiterate murderers.

  He didn't wait for the jet lag to clear. His mind was clear enough without recovering from that mental and physical malady that afflicts international travelers.

  It was noon in Washington when the plane landed and it was one o'clock when he walked up the ramp to Sylvester Montrofort's office. The office had hydraulically controlled levels to make the visitor sit at any level Mr. Montrofort wanted. It was not that Mr. Montrofort wanted the visitor to sit beneath him to exert power; it was that Mr. Montrofort wanted the visitor to feel secure and superior when looking down at Montrofort, if the sale proved too easy. Made a tough sell, Mr. Montrofort would sometimes say. Sometimes selling was too easy for the seller, unless he gave the sellee the edge.

  Unshaven, striding hard, jaw set, Les Pruel marched into Montrofort's office.

  "Mr. Montrofort, I quit," he boomed.

  The gnarled ratlike face and dark powerful eyes of Sylvester Montrofort were infused with a sudden joy. He smiled the best smile modern dentistry could sell. He pressed a button on his wheelchair.

  Les Pruel watched the wheelchair and Mr.

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  Montrofort sink below him, as if the floor was built on quicksand. When Mr. Montrofort's hairless head was level with Pruel's knee, the floor stopped dropping.

  "Go to it, boy. I haven't had a tough sell for a damned pine picket's week."

  "I don't want to work here anymore, Mr. Montrofort."

  "I got a ten-year contract out there with my secretary and it's going to have your name on it by the time you leave this office, Pruel. I like the cut of your timbers, boy. Dammit, you think I'm going to give up on someone who can sell four hundred dollars' worth of old television and victrola parts for more than two million dollars? Boy, you're not getting away from me. I love you. That's L-O-V-E. Love."

  "I can spell, Mr. Montrofort. Q-U-I-T. That's quit."

  "Well, something is bothering you and it shouldn't. You've got the greatest job and the greatest company and the greatest future in the world. You'll never be happy anywhere else so let's you and me work this out together. You're more than an employee-stockholder with option benefits. You're the life of this company and when you stop breathing with us, we all die a little bit. So what's the problem?"

  "Ernie Walgreen. We lost him and we shouldn't have. I'm so damned busy selling that I've forgotten I was trained to protect people. I used to be proud of that. I was proud of what I did. I'm not proud anymore, Mr. Montrofort." Les Pruel felt good saying that. He looked at his hands. He felt the relief of tears come upon him. "When I earned what I would hardly even count

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  now, when I worked to protect the President, when I couldn't afford to take my family to a restaurant, I was still proud. I was proud of my job. Even when we lost Kennedy, I felt bad, but I was proud because we had done the best we could. Mr. Montrof ort, I'm not proud anymore."

  The bald head came up above the floor level, the dark fiery eyes next, the nose that looked as if it had been put on in pale cracked pieces, and the mouth with the perfect set of teeth, like a mouth transplanted from a twenty-year-old toothpaste model. The tortured humped shoulders rose above Pruel's kneeline. The wheels of Mr. Montrofort's chair appeared. Then his face was level with Pruel's and Montrofort was not smiling.

  It was then that Les Pruel realized he had never before dealt with Sylvester Montrofort when the man wasn't smiling or harrumphing or old-boying himself into a sale.

  "I've never been proud, Pruel," said Montrofort. A large drop of sweat quivered over his earlobe and then descended like a viscosity convention all voting simultaneously that it was too hard to stay on the side of this man's face anymore. Pruel watched it go.

  This was the first time Sylvester Montrofort wasn't selling him something. With great effort, Montrofort lifted a quart bottle of dark liquor out of his lower desk drawer. He lifted out two glasses in one hand and poured two big drinks.

  It was not an offered drink, it was an ordered drink.

  "Okay, you're through. Drink that. You got some listening to do."

  "I know you've had problems, Mr. Montrofort."

  "Problems, Pruel? No. More like crucifixions.

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  You ever see that extra big smile when someone meets you for the first time and you know it's a be-nice-to-the-gnome kind of grin. He's smiling because he's really repulsed by you. And women? What do you think I have to do to have normal relations with a woman? I am not just your average person like anyone else who happens to have a handicap. That I am gnarled and cannot walk is the most important thing about me. Crippled dwarf. That's what I am. Don't tell me I'm a handicapped person. I am not a person. I am a crippled dwarf and a horror to you people. You're a person. I'm a mutant. If the proper selection process had worked, I would not have been able to reproduce. You see, that's how species survive. Mutants, inferior weaklings like me, do not reproduce."

  "But you're not inferior. Not in your mind or your will," said Pruel. Mr. Montrofort looked hunched over his frail body, as if sheltering a painful stomach. He nodded for Pruel to drink.

  The liquor tasted very sweet, like syrup. Yet it had a sharpness to it, as if someone had infused a tangy citrus in it, an almost overhwelming grape-fruitiness. It overflowed him with good feeling. He wanted more. He finished his glass and then surprisingly he had Montrofort's glass in his hand and was sipping that.

  "Pruel, I am a freak. I have a better mind than yours and a stronger will than yours but I am not you. I am better than you. I am worse than you. And most of all, I am other than you. You've lived a little too well for an ex-cop. That's all you Secret Service men are. Ex-cops."

  "Yes. Ex-cop," said Pruel.

  "I never told you what it was like, Pruel, to be a

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  crippled dwarf and watch all the bosomy ladies go by. I didn't have even one leg, but I had a double dose of lust. And so what does a man do when he is repulsive to women ? How does he slake that great thirst? He becomes the best salesman you've ever seen."

  "Yes, the best," said Pruel. He finished the wonderful glass of liquid and got up and snatched the bottle from Montrofort. It was his bottle. It was good. The world was good.

  "You loved Ernest Walgreen," said Montrofort.

  "Loved," said Pruel. He drank from the bottle. The bottle was good. Good was the bottle.

  "You will kill his killers."

  "Kill his killers," said Pruel. He was going to do that.

  "You are an avenging angel."

  "Angel. Avenging."

  "You will put bullets into two men. O
ne is white and one is Korean. You will be shown where they are. Here are pictures. They are with a blond woman with excruciatingly lovable breasts, with mounds of luscious glory preceding her like trumpets before the Lord."

  "Kill," said Pruel, and the grapefruity taste filled his body. He had just gone through the very good feelings of nice boozy comfort and now he was clear about things. He knew who had killed Ernest Walgreen. Good old Ernie whom he loved. The two guys in the picture Mr. Montrofort had just shown him.

  He had felt bad because he had not killed the two in revenge. If he were to kill them, all would be right again. He was above feeling good. Feeling good was for people who did not know

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  the one good and great thing that would set everything right. The thing that had to be done. The one purpose for which a man lived. He knew what it was. His purpose was to kill. Those two men. Who were with a woman with big boobs.

  Les Pruel hadn't felt right since Walgreen's death. The sticky itch of Umbassa was still with him, the feel of clothes left on your body too many days without air cleansing the pores.

  It didn't matter. When he first tasted the drink, there was the warm goodness of a nice boozy mellow glow that filled him. But as he progressed, he rose above the need for feeling good. Feeling good was a crutch. Not to have to feel good was even better.

  Was that Mr. Montrofort saying goodbye? It had to be. He was outside now and the sun was hot and the streets of Washington were hot and he felt he was going to vomit up all the grapefruit that had ever been grown. He felt lumps grow in his body. He saw the sun. It buzzed around his head and he smelted grapefruit orchards all around and his head hit something very hard. Crack.

  Hands, soft hands pressed soft things to his head and he felt tremendous pain. But the pain did not matter.

  He wished he had felt that way back in training. The laps they had to run while training for the Secret Service. He hadn't thought he was going to make it.

  A very loud shot rang out near his ear. The sun disappearing. Someone was rubbing cold things on his head. He was thirsty. They gave him water. He wanted grapefruit. They didn't have grapefruit, but after he righted the wrongs

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  against Ernie Walgreen, there would be that grapefruit drink.

  "Shoot the kid," said a voice.

  "Right," said Pruel. Where was his gun, he asked. You couldn't shoot without a gun.

  "We will give you a gun that never misses," said the voice.

  A woman screamed. Why did she scream?

  "That man killed a child. He shot a child."

  She pointed at him.

  "Kill the woman," came the voice.

  There. Now she wasn't screaming anymore. And this was right because everyone was right in front of the new J. Edgar Hoover building and there were the two men who killed Ernie Walgreen. The American with the high cheekbones and the dark eyes and the Oriental in the kimono.

  He heard the voice again and now he knew the voice was not outside his head, but inside. He would listen to the voice and he would do what it said and make everything right and have peace and wonder for all time.

  "Kill the Korean," said the voice.

  The Korean fell with a fluff of the kimono.

  "Kill the white," came the voice.

  And the white man fell, spinning helplessly in his black tee shirt.

  "Good," said the voice. "Now kill yourself."

  And then Les Pruel saw that indeed he had a gun. It was a rifle and had a barrel and way down the barrel was his hand squeezing the trigger.

  But what about the grapefruit?

  And what about the big-boobied blonde screaming her head off?

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  What about the nice crippled Mr. Montrofort and his sexual problems ?

  And Ernie Walgreen? Good old Ernie Walgreen? What about him?

  "Pull the trigger," came the voice.

  "Oh, yes. Sorry," said Les Pruel.

  The .30 caliber slug came up into his cheekbone like a truck going through a watermelon. The bone splattered, the ethmoidal sinus ruptured into the olfactory bulb, which meant Les Pruel could no longer smell anything, and the copper-pointed slug did a wing-ding puree of the cerebrum taking the top of his head off like an eggshell surrendering to compressed air. Pow.

  The brain stopped working at the beginning of the thought over whether he was going to see the flash of the powder down there at the other end of the barrel. He found out just before his brain was about to realize it. The answer was yes.

  There were no more questions.

  And no more need for the olfactory bulb.

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  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Remo felt the skull fragment underneath his fin-gerpads. Blood came heavy down the forehead and as he wiped it off, he felt the familiar warm wetness. He had been too slow. And now he had paid for it. Much too slow.

  He let the 30-30 rifle drop to the pavement in disgust. He had reached the man just as he had pulled the trigger and was too late. The man had blown his own head off. He had been the pipe that Remo might have traveled through to get to the source. But now the man was dead and Remo had nothing.

  "That was fast," gasped Miss Viola Poombs.

  "Slow," said Chiun. "He let that man kill himself. You cannot afford that. We needed that man and we lost him."

  "But he was shooting at everybody," said Viola.

  "No," said Chiun. "He was shooting at me. And at Remo."

  "But he hit that poor, poor woman. He killed that child."

  "When one uses a machine for the first time, one tests it."

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  "You mean he killed two people just to see if his gun worked ? Oh, my god," cried Viola.

  "No," said Chiun. "He was the machine. When you write your poem of the assassins, be sure to mention that the Master of Sinanju, foremost among assassins, decried the amateur at work. And he showed how cruel it was to use one. Innocents are killed when fools have weapons. The gun should never have been invented. We have always said that."

  "What do you mean, he was the machine?"

  "It was in his eyes," Chiun said. "Written there for all to see."

  "How could you even see his eyes?" said Viola, still grabbing desperately to regain some form of pre-shock thinking. "I mean, how could you see it? There were shots and people getting killed and it was awful. How could you see his eyes ?"

  "When you, beautiful lady, walk into a room of other women, you can tell who wears what paint upon their face while to me it is a confusion of loveliness. But you know because you have seen before and have been trained to see. In such a manner are Remo and I trained to see. Death is not a confusing thing but a familiar thing. You might want to mention also when you write your story that not only is Sinanju effective but we have the most pleasant assassins that one can ever meet. If you don't count Remo." And Chiun folded his long fingernails and delicate hands back into his kimono on that pleasant spring afternoon in front of the new massive FBI building.

  Inside, federal agents were phoning their personal lawyers to see if they were allowed to make an arrest concerning the killings below since

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  technically the sidewalk might be city property, not federal property, and some local prosecutor might want to make a name for himself by prosecuting another federal servant. Increasingly in America, nobody ever got prosecuted for letting a criminal escape. The people were getting what they had been assured were civil liberties that would usher in a new golden age of love. Shootouts in what used to be their cities, while lawmen fearfully looked over their shoulders.

  When the shots had first rung out, window shades were hastily drawn in the FBI building.

  Viola Poombs looked to the building and no one came out. And then she saw something that made her retch.

  Remo was drinking blood.

  "What is wrong?" asked Chiun.

  "He's drinking that man's blood," she said.

  "No. He is touching his finger to it and smelling it. Blood is the w
indow of health. In it you can smell, and therefore see, whatever is wrong with a person. Although he did not have to do that. Because in its gracious wisdom, Sinanju already knows the actions were those of a drugged man. He probably, before he killed himself, thought he had killed us."

  "You can read minds too?"

  "No," said Chiun. "It is really simple if you have seen it before. If you throw a pebble and hit a gong, and throw another pebble and hit a a gong, and throw another pebble and missed a gong, what would you do?"

  "I'd throw another pebble at the gong I missed."

  "Correct. And when the dead man shot at me " and missed, he did not shoot again at me, but shot

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  at Remo, and when he missed, he did not shoot again at Remo, but at himself, to eliminate the link to those who used him. But he did not fire at us again because he thought he had hit us. When one hires Sinanju, you may write, what may seem expensive is really economy. For how expensive is a failed assassination? We will show you for your book."

  "Aren't assassins supposed to be secret?"

  "Amateurs need secrecy because they are refuse. The world suffers because of amateur murders who pretend to be assassins. Look at your two western wars, the first started by an amateur at Sarajevo, and the first leading to the second which will lead to the third."

  "You mean the world wars?"

  "Korea was not in them," said Chiun and this meant that since the most important country was not involved, he didn't care what Europeans and Japanese and Americans did to themselves. One had to have perspective. What those wars had done was to loose thousands of lunatics with weapons of vast destructiveness upon each other, instead of the neat, healthful, and useful, clean assassination that is done, buried and out of the way, with the body politic all the better off for the cleansing of nuisances.

  Viola Poombs looked back toward Remo and saw the three bodies and the child so helpless and she became dizzy until the long fingernails of Chiun worked the nerves in her spine and she saw sunlight and the people clearly again. The Oriental had cleared away her fear-caused dizziness with a brief massage.