Created, the Destroyer

by Warren Murphy

  “No,” was the answer, “definitely not.”

  Perhaps then, asked the writer, she would have breakfast with him.

  No, was the answer again, she had a full schedule.

  Then, perhaps, asked the writer, she would give him a picture of her blue, blue eyes.

  Why, was the question, did he want a picture of her blue, blue eyes?

  Because, was the answer, they were the bluest, blue eyes the writer had ever seen.

  “Nonsense,” was the retort.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Cynthia was to have been at the restaurant at 9:15. With any other woman tardiness wouldn’t have been unusual. But with these social purpose types, they lived almost like men. Punctual, efficient.

  If MacCleary couldn’t penetrate, the penthouse must have traps. What the hell would he be getting into?

  Remo fingered the glass of water before him. Somehow Vietnam was different. You could always return to your own outfit. At night, you knew someone else was on guard if you weren’t. There was protection.

  Remo sipped the water that tasted too much of chemicals. There was no protection in this racket. No retreat. No group. For the rest of his life he would always be attacking or retreating. He put down the glass and stared at the door. He could walk out now, just leave the restaurant, and get lost forever.

  Remo forced his eyes away from the door. I will read the paper, he told himself. I will read the paper from the first page to the last and when I am done I will leave this restaurant, drive to New Jersey, find Mr. Felton and see what Maxwell’s man can do.

  Remo read words that meant nothing. He kept losing his place, forgetting which paragraph he had read. Before he finished the lead story, someone snatched the paper from his hands.

  “How long does it take you to read a paper?” It was Cynthia, in a blouse, a skirt and a big clean smile, wrinkling the paper as she stood by the table. She dropped the bundled paper on a passing tray, startling the waiter who never got a chance to give her a dirty look because she didn’t bother to glance at him for a reaction.

  She sat down and plopped two thick volumes on the table.

  “I’m famished,” she announced.

  “Eat,” Remo said.

  Cynthia tilted her head in mock wonder. “I’ve never seen anyone so glad to see me. You’ve got a grin on your face as if I’d just promised you a hundred years of healthy living.”

  Remo nodded and leaned back in the seat. He flipped her a menu.

  The dainty little Briarcliff junior, whose mind was created only for aesthetic pleasures, downed an orange juice, steak and waffles, chocolate sundae, two glasses of milk, and a cup of coffee with two cinnamon buns.

  Remo ordered fried rice.

  “How quaint,” Cynthia exclaimed. “Are you into Zen?”

  “No. Just a light eater.”

  “How fascinating.” At the last cinnamon bun, she began to talk. “I think your story should be about sex,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Because sex is vital. Sex is real. It’s honest.”

  “Oh,” Remo said.

  “It’s what life’s about.” She leaned forward waving the cinnamon bun like a bomb. “That’s why they destroy sex. Give it meanings it was never supposed to have.”

  “Who are ‘they’?”

  “The structure. The power structure. All this nonsense about love and sex. Love has nothing to do with sex. Sex has nothing to do with love. Marriage is farce perpetrated on the masses by the power structure.”

  “Them?”

  “Right. They.”

  She bit viciously into the bun. “They’ve even gone so far as to say that sex is for reproduction. That, thank God, is dying out now. Sex is sex,” she said, spraying crumbs. “It’s nothing else.” She wiped her mouth. “It’s the most fundamental experience a human can participate in, right?”

  Remo nodded. This was going to be too easy. “And in marriage, it gets most fundamental of all,” he said.

  “Crap.”

  “What?”

  “Crap,” Cynthia said casually. “Marriage is crap.”

  “Don’t you want to get married?”

  “What for?”

  “For fundamental experience.”

  “It only clouds the issue.”

  “But your father. Don’t you want to make your father happy?”

  “Why didn’t you mention my mother?” Cynthia asked, her voice suddenly becoming cold.

  Whatever you say, say it fast. Throw her off. Make it wild. Remo shot the words out: “Because I don’t believe she exists. If she did, she’d have to be a woman. And there’s only one woman in the world. You. I love you.” Remo grabbed her hands before she could release nervous energy with them.

  It was a risky ploy, but it worked. A flush seized her face, she stared down at the table. “It’s rather sudden, isn’t it?” She looked around the room as though the world had agents monitoring her love life. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Say ‘Let’s go for a walk’!”

  Her voice was barely audible. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  Remo released her hands. The walk proved profitable. Cynthia talked. She couldn’t stop talking and always the conversation returned to her father, his occupation and his apartment.

  “I don’t know what he does with the stocks but he certainly makes a lot of money,” she said as they passed a jewelry shop on Walnut Street. “You don’t care about money, Remo. That’s what I like about you.”

  “But your father’s the one who deserves praise. It must be an awful temptation when you’ve got a lot of money to play playboy.”

  “Not Daddy. He sits in that apartment. It’s as if he’s afraid to go out in a cruel and vicious world.”

  Remo nodded. The air had a faint smell of burned coffee grounds. The chill of late autumn cut through his jacket. The noon sun gave out light but no heat.

  Down the block a man stared in another window. He was tall and heavily built. He had passed Remo and Cynthia twice since they had left the hotel.

  “Come,” Remo said, tugging at Cynthia’s hand. “Let’s walk this way.” Four blocks later, Remo knew Cynthia rarely lived at home, that the walls of the apartment were very smooth, that she never knew her mother, and that dear daddy was just too tender and kind to the servants. Remo also knew they were being tailed.

  They walked and talked. They lingered beside trees, they sat on rocks and talked about life and love. When it was dark and unbearably cold, they returned to Remo’s room in the hotel.

  “What would you like for supper?” Remo asked.

  Cynthia toyed with the dials of the television set, then made herself comfortable on a lounge chair. “Steak. Rare. And beer.”

  “Right,” Remo said, picking up the white phone. As he called room service, Cynthia looked about the room which was furnished in Twentieth Century Characterless. Just enough loud colors to break the hospital atmosphere, but not enough to be striking. It was a room designed by a committee for the average man to live in.

  Remo mumbled the order to room service and watched Cynthia draw her knees up to her chin. She would have to do something about her scraggly hair.

  As soon as Remo put down the phone, it rang almost as if returning the receiver triggered the bell. Remo shrugged and smiled at Cynthia. She smiled back.

  “They’re probably out of steak,” he said. He picked up the receiver. A low voice at the other end said: “Mr. Cabell?”

  “Yes,” Remo said. He tried to visualize the face that belonged to the telephone voice. It was probably the character who was tailing them. Did Felton keep a guard on his daughter?

  “Mr. Cabell. This is very important. Could you come down to the lobby immediately?”

  “No,” Remo said. He’d see how far this caller would go.

  “It’s about your money.”

  “What money?”

  “When you paid your bill at the bar yesterday, you apparently dropped $200. This is the manager
. I have it in the office.”

  “I’ll settle in the morning.”

  “I’d rather we settle it now. We don’t like to take responsibility.”

  “The manager, you say?”

  Remo knew he was tactically pinned. He was in a room with enemies outside. They knew where to get him. Maybe MacCleary was right about no place to lay your head. In any case, he was no longer attacking with surprise. Two days on the job and he had blown his major advantage.

  He noticed his hand was wet on the receiver. He was perspiring. He breathed deeply, drawing oxygen down deep into his abdomen. Well, here he was. Now or never. Number one for CURE. He rubbed the flat of his palm against his trouser leg. An exhilaration came over his body.

  “Okay. I’ll be right down.”

  He hung up and went to the closet and took out a suitcase. Folded inside it was the coat he had worn the day before. He moved his hand down the lining of the left sleeve until he felt a long thin metallic object. Carefully blocking Cynthia’s view, he removed it and slipped it into a small slit in his belt. Sodium pentathol. If pressure points failed to unlimber speech, this would succeed.

  “I’ll have to go out for a few minutes,” he said. “It’s a contact for a story.”

  “Oh,” Cynthia said showing annoyance. “It must be a wonderful contact. It must be the greatest story of your life to go running out of here like this.”

  “It is, my dear, it is.” Remo kissed her but she backed away angrily. “I’ll be right back,” he said.

  “I may not be here when you come back.”

  Remo shrugged and opened the door. “That’s life.”

  “Go to hell,” she said. “If you’re not back when I finish dinner, I’m leaving.”

  Remo blew her a kiss and shut the door. As it clicked, a blinding flash of light spun through his brain and the green carpeting of the foyer came up to meet him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  He came to in the back seat of a darkened car. The man who had been tailing him that afternoon sat on his left cradling a revolver in his right hand. He wore a sharp hat well suited for a salesman. It almost shielded a face well suited for a German butcher.

  A thin man in front with a homburg was smiling. Then there was the thick neck of the driver. They were obviously parked in the suburbs. Remo noticed trees but no lights from nearby houses.

  Remo shook his head, not so much to clear it but to notify his captors he was awake.

  “Aha,” said the man in the homburg. “Our guest is awake. Mr. Cabell, you don’t know how terribly sorry we are that you suffered that accident back in the hotel. But you know how slippery hotel floors are. Feeling better?”

  Remo pretended almost total disability.

  The man in the homburg went on. “We will not tell you why we brought you here. We will just explain a few facts.” He brought a cigarette to his lips. He had no weapon in his right hand.

  “We have kidnapped you, Mr. Cabell. We could all go to the electric chair for this, correct?”

  Remo blinked.

  “And if we were to kill you, we could get no worse punishment. But do we want to kill you?”

  Remo was motionless.

  “No,” the man answered his own question. “We do not wish to kill you. Not necessarily. What we want is to give you $2,000.”

  The light from the man’s cigarette illuminated his smiling face. “Will you take it?”

  Remo spoke. “Since you insist and since you’ve gone to so much trouble, what could I do but accept?”

  “Good,” said the man under the homburg. “We want you to spend it back in Los Angeles where you came from.”

  He lifted his left hand — no weapon there, either — and put out the cigarette. “We want you to go back to Los Angeles immediately,” he said. His voice was suddenly harsh.

  “If you do not, we will kill you. If you mention this to a soul, we will kill you. If you come back, we will kill you. We will watch you a long, long time to see that you keep your bargain. And if you do not, we will kill you. Understand?”

  Remo shrugged. He felt the gun jammed into his ribs. He lifted his elbow casually, slightly above it. “That’s perfectly clear and fair,” he said, “except for one thing.”

  “What’s that?” said the homburg.

  “I’m going to kill all of you.” His left elbow came down on the German butcher’s wrist and his left palm snatched the pistol. His right hand lashed out at a mark underneath the homburg, between the ear and the eye. His left hand jammed the pistol butt under the butcher’s nose and the driver turned to meet a flat chop right at the base of his skull. Some bones snapped. Remo could feel it. Like blocks of wood at Folcroft.

  He could hear Chiun chiding. Swift — accurate, accurate, accurate. The mark. Remo carefully knocked out the butcher, then slid into the front seat. He checked the driver slumped to the corner of the wheel. Blood was coming from his mouth. He’d never come to.

  He looked to homburg. Maybe his stroke had been off. He felt the man’s head, running his finger tips over the temple. He could feel the separated bones, the oozing warm fluid running from the eyes. No luck, dammit, homburg was dead too.

  He returned to the back seat where butcher was reaching for space. He grabbed an arm and waited a few moments. Then he twisted the arm behind butcher’s back and lifted until the first sound of pain.

  “Felton,” Remo whispered into the cauliflower ear with the tuft of hair growing from it. “Felton. Ever hear of him?”

  “O-oh,” butcher yelped.

  Remo lifted the arm higher. “Yes, yes. Yes.”

  “Who is he?”

  “I never seen him. He’s Scotty’s boss.”

  “Who’s Scotty?”

  “The guy you was talking with. Scottichio.”

  “With the homburg?”

  “Yeah. Yeah. The hat.”

  “Did Felton tell him to come here?” Remo asked, jerking higher on the arm.

  “Jeez. Please. Oooh. Yeah. That’s what Scotty said. That Felton told him he was afraid somebody might be trying to bother his daughter. That’s the girl you was with. We was supposed to watch out for her.”

  Up went the arm. “Now for your life. Maxwell.”

  “What?”

  The arm went higher, the shoulder muscles and tendons began to rip. “Maxwell.”

  “Don’t know him. Don’t know him. Don’t know him. Jeez.”

  Snap. The arm rose over the butcher’s head and he slumped forward. Remo reached into his belt. The needle was bent. The hell with it, Remo thought. He wasn’t lying.

  Remo looked at his watch. Forty minutes since he’d left the hotel room. He couldn’t be far.

  He climbed to the front seat, put his arms under homburg’s shoulders and with a grunt lifted him over the seat to the rear. Then he did the same with the driver. Moving them was rougher than killing them. He lifted the keys from the ignition, then hopped out of the car. In the trunk of the car, which he noticed for the first time was a dark Cadillac, he found a tarpaulin. He removed it, shut the trunk and returned to the car. He threw it over the two corpses, then folded it back halfway for one more occupant. He pulled the butcher down onto the pile with his fat face sticking up. Then he killed him, covered all three with the tarpaulin and started the car.

  He found he was on a side road and quickly discovered the road that led him back to town. He parked the car on a main thoroughfare. The police were lucky that night. None of them stopped him. Remo locked the car and pocketed the keys. Who knew what they would unlock?

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  “You bastard,” Cynthia shouted as Remo opened the door. “You rotten, filthy, bastard.”

  Her girlish face was red with anger. Her normally scraggly hair showered around her head like a splintered wicker basket.

  She stood, her hands jammed on her hips, beside the bed on which was strewn his steak, salad, and potatoes. Her lipstick blotched the mirror over the bureau. She had obviously written several messages, cro
ssed them out as she thought of better ones, then decided to tell him off in person.

  “You swine. You left me here and went out drinking.”

  Remo couldn’t control himself. He suppressed a laugh which erupted in a broad grin.

  The Briarcliff junior swung her right hand around, palm flat, aiming at Remo’s smiling face. Before Remo could stop, his own left hand was up to meet the blow and his right was headed toward her solar plexus straight, flat, his deadly fingertips closing on target.

  “No,” he yelled desperately, but even yanking back and lowering his thrust, he couldn’t stop it. “No,” he yelled again, as Cynthia lurched forward into his arms, her eyes rolling back, her mouth open.

  She moved her lips as if trying to say something, then slumped to her knees. Remo grabbed under her arms and held on. He started to haul her to the bed, saw the mess there, and lowered her gently to the gray rug floor.

  He had missed the ribs and the solar plexus. The blow had only knocked her wind out. Remo knelt down on the carpet and lowered his head to hers. He widened her lips with his thumbs, then slowly breathed into her mouth, while he pressed and released on her stomach. Cynthia began to squirm. Remo lifted his head and stopped the artificial respiration. Damn his hands. Damn his reflexes.

  “Darling, are you all right?” he asked softly.

  She opened her eyes, beautiful, blue, searching. She moved her lips again, then breathed deeply. She lifted her arms and enveloped Remo’s shoulders. She tilted her head upwards and drew him toward her.

  Remo kissed her hard, forcing her head back down to the rug. She found his right hand and rubbed it on her belly, moving it upward to her breasts. As Remo blew gently in her ear, she groaned. Then she whispered, “Darling, I want you to be the first.”

  Remo was the first. In a tangle of arms, tears and groans, Remo made his entry and exit on the rug.

  “I never thought it would be like this,” Cynthia said. Her blouse lay behind her head, her bra dangled from the bed and Remo lay on her skirt, cradling her young body in his arms.

  “Yes, dear,” Remo said. He kissed the running tears on her pink cheeks, first one side, then the other.