Dying Space td-47

by Warren Murphy

  The man with the radio scowled and placed himself stubbornly in Remo's path. "You no go in 'less you press," he said.

  Remo shrugged. "Suits me. I'll press." He lifted the mural-sized radio and wrapped it around the fat boy's midriff until his chubby face was purple and "Shake Your Love Thing" was vibrating through his rib cage.

  The ground floor of the courthouse was lined with courtrooms and chambers. Remo checked each one until he came to a room occupied by a middle-aged man with sweat pouring down his face. He was perspiring so heavily that the sweat rolled in streams down his neck and stained the immaculate white collar of his shirt. When Remo walked in, he saw the sweating man jump and

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  turn a pale shade of green. His hands were green, too, since they were clutching dozens of fifty- and hundred-dollar bills. Similar currency was strewn on a table in front of him.

  "A gift," the sweating man announced in a smooth, authoritative tone common to men with vast experience in graft. "Merely a gift. No services or promises were exchanged in return at any time.

  ¦ "I'm looking for the guy who's been arrested for murdering the garbage collector," Remo said.

  The man stuffed handfuls of bills into his bulging pockets. "Never heard of him," he said. "I haven't told you his name yet." "I still never heard of him." More bills crunched as they entered his clothing.

  Remo looked at the name plate on the desk. It read: the hon. james addlington blakely.

  "You didn't happen to be in night court around two this morning, did you?"

  "Never heard of him." He stuffed the last of the bills into his pockets. "Excuse me. I have to run."

  The Honorable James Addlington Blakely was running to TWA flight 211 to Grand Cayman Island, where his untaxable bank account had grown to hefty proportions through years of scrupulous bribe-taking. As Blakely often disclosed to close confidants, however, he had not grown rich merely by taking bribes. He was a shrewd man, a principled man. The principle he always followed when offered "gifts" was what separated the Honorable James A. Blakely from the common glut of crooked politicians. It allowed him to hold his head high, no matter what outsiders might per-

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  ceive the circumstances to be. It gave him honor and pride, for he never violated his cardinal principle, which was not to accept any gift of less than five dollars. He never dealt with riffraff.

  Flight 211 was scheduled to leave in 45 minutes. The seat beside Blakely's on the plane was already occupied by the silken, expressive rear of Christine Clark, his administrative aide, formerly of Eddie's Massage Heaven.

  The Honorable James A. Blakely was not about to miss his plane on account of some snoopy nobody in a T-shirt. It was for that reason that he pushed, in a gesture of distracted contempt, the snoopy T-s-hirted nobody who was blocking the door.

  Then suddenly a revelation came to Blakely. He would no longer judge a person by his appearance. A man wearing a T-shirt counted as much in this land of democracy as a millionaire in a $700 suit. He would no longer push anyone aside just because the person looked like a nobody. Especially if the person was holding on to him by his eyelashes.

  "Where's the prisoner you're holding with the missing front teeth?" Remo asked.

  "Marco Gonzalez?" Blakely sqtieaked.

  "That's the one."

  "Out on bail." The judge's eyelids were stretched out in front of him like two red, candy-striped awnings.

  "I thought there wasn't any bail for him."

  "Changed my mind."

  "You mean all that loot in your pockets changed your mind. Where'd it come from?"

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  Remo pulled Blakely's eyelids in the direction of his trouser pockets, out of which peeked the crisp edges of several bills. Blakely's head whipped downward with surprising agility.

  "I don't know," he croaked, his voice constricted by his awkward posture. "Some guy with gold balls."

  "I see. Just in case I don't get that close a look, what's his name?"

  The Honorable James Addlington Blakely was drooling onto his fly now. "Didn't tell me his name. Dark hair, regular features, about your height. He carried two gold balls on a necklace. He's got Gonzalez. Will you let go of my eyes now?"

  "Sure," Remo said. He released them with a twang. The judge was weeping wildly as his facial skin slowly slid back into formation. He closed his eyes, hoping to hear the crazy T-shirted nobody leave.

  He didn't. All he heard was a gentle whirr. When he opened his eyes, the fellow was gone. And all the money that had been in his pockets was raining around the room in a million tiny pieces of green confetti.

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  CHAPTER NINE

  Marco Juan San Miguel de Ruiz Gonzalez was in pain. It was the worst pain he had ever known in his life, worse than when he had gone too far with Rosa's tie-bodiced blouse and she had kicked him between his legs with her spike heels, worse than when six black street toughs with lengths of lead pipe put out his lights for two days, even worse than the time Fats Ozepok knocked out his two front teeth.

  Rosa's ringside kick had been all right, because she was so sorry afterward that she'd not only let Marco undo her tie-bodice blouse, but had let him sneak two fingers into her underpants by way of apology. And while Fats and the Watts boys with the pipe had banged him around pretty hard, he was blissfully unconscious on both occasions after the first five minutes of the scuffle.

  The pain now was different. It offered no relief in Rosa's sweet arms, and no retreat into uncon-

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  sciousness. Because the man in front of him fidgeting with the gold balls on his necklace was neither a Mexican virgin nor a thrill-crazed ghetto blood. He was some kind of cold, professional killer, of that Gonzalez was sure. The man with the gold balls knew how to inflict pain and see to it that his victims stayed awake to feel it.

  He was never rushed for time, this cold stranger who had taken Gonzalez from the holding cell and brought him blindfolded to this stinking cellar. He just kept asking the same stupid questions over and over, and after Gonzalez gave him the same answers, the man would break Marco's fingers with a hammer, or hold burning cigarettes to his his chest.

  The questioning and the pain had been going on for hours, and the stranger had not once cursed, raised his voice, or struck Gonzalez in anger. Just the repeated questions about the metal box beside the Dempsey Dumpster outside the UCLA software lab, followed by the careful, emotionless administering of pain.

  They were resting now, the interrogator toying with the dangling gold balls of his necklace, Gonzalez sitting in the chair he had been tied to, tasting the acrid droplets of sweat from his face as they rolled between his cracked lips. He tried to think of Rosa, but his mind kept returning to the same, inevitable questions to be asked: What did he do with the box? Where did he take it? Who was his employer?

  "Where is the LC-111?" the man began softly. "Mister, I told you maybe a hundred times.

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  That LC box by the dumpster just looked like some metal trash to me."

  "Where is the LC-111?"

  Gonzalez sighed. "At the dump. The Hollywood Disposal Service."

  The man lit a cigarette, puffed it to redness, and held it close to Marco's shoulder. "Where is the LC-111?" the man asked for the third time.

  The hairs on Marco's shoulder curled and ¦ singed off, giving off a smell that had come to permeate the cellar since the questioning began. The oily stink of fried flesh and hair was everywhere. Marco's skin, a fraction of an inch from the man's cigarette, was starting to blister.

  "I'm telling you the truth."

  "Perhaps," the man said, and pressed the glowing end of the cigarette into Marco's shoulder.

  The burn sent Gonzalez screaming into spasms of pain. "Stop! I'll tell you. What do you want to hear? I give it to the Russians. I throw it over a cliff. I hock it for twelve-ninety-eight and a wrist-watch. Jesus, just tell me what you want."

  The interrogator exhaled two long streams of smoke, put out the
cigarette with a sigh, and opened a door on the far side of the bare room.

  Two burly men entered the room. One of them had a pair of lips so large and rubbery that they seemed comical. Out of a bald, bullet-shaped head stared two beady, beastlike eyes. The other was small and spindly and was dressed in crisp new LeviSj a pink LaCoste shirt, and a pair of Bass Weejun loafers. The interrogator made a gesture of dismissal toward the figure in the chair as he spoke rapidly to the two men in a language

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  Gonzalez didn't understand. The men answered him in the same language, occasionally glancing at Gonzalez warily.

  After a moment of discussion, the interrogator snapped out what sounded like an order. The ox-faced subordinate with the lips left the room and came back with a briefcase, which he placed reverently atop his open arms. The interrogator opened it and took out a plastic case housing a hypodermic needle and several vials wrapped in chamois cloth. He held a vial up to the light, filled the syringe with its contents, then walked back to Gonzalez, carrying the needle aloft.

  "I hate needles," Gonzalez said softly, feeling the spittle in his mouth turn to rubbery strings.

  The interrogator didn't answer. The hypodermic went into Gonzalez's left bicep and out again. As he counted the seconds on his watch, the interrogator fingered the dangling gold balls. Gonzalez watched his face grow dim and gray like an old photograph, then fade away. The last thing he saw was the necklace, seemingly suspended in midair, its gold balls clicking together in rhythm.

  "Is he dead?" the agent holding the briefcase across his arms asked in Russian.

  "Of course not," Mikhail Andreyev Istoropovich answered. "He is our only link with the LC-111, however weak that link is."

  "What about the professor?" the other subordinate said, straightening the collar of his shirt. "We could take her to Moscow Center with us."

  Istoropovich pursed his lips in disgust. "Idiot. The disappearance of the LC-111 could be con-

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  strued as an accident. There would be no international repercussions. But kidnapping a NASA physicist in charge of a top secret American project would be dangerous for all of us."

  "What about her assistant?"

  "Her assistant knows nothing about the workings of the computer. He is employed only to monitor the professor's personal indulgences."

  The natty-looking subordinate snapped his fingers. "Comrade Colonel," he said to Istoropovich, "I've got it. I read one of the dossiers on the professor. She has many weaknesses—men and alcohol being among the worst. If we captured her and kept her here in this country, perhaps we could exploit those weaknesses to the point where she would cooperate with us on the LC-111."

  Istoropovich gave a dry little laugh. "If ever you think you are a clever man, Yuri Alexovich, remember that I am ten years your junior and by far your superior officer."

  "What does that mean?" Yuri asked defensively, clutching at the alligator on his shirt. "Sir."

  "It means you have the brain of a walnut, and that is why you are and will always be a flunky to those more capable than yourself. You have read one dossier on the professor. One dossier! There are rooms of dossiers on Dr. Payton-Holmes in Moscow Center," he roared. "I, of course, have read them all. But the High Commander has studied these dossiers with the utmost care for nearly ten years. Psychologists and behaviorists have studied the professor's actions closely and written tomes about Dr. Frances Payton-Holmes. And what have they discovered?"

  m

  The bald-headed man looked up with a glimmer of recognition in his eyes. His rubbery lips formed a smile resembling a lifeboat. "She likes little boys?" he asked.

  "Nol" Istoropovich shouted. He straightened his coat jacket and calmed himself down by sheer act of will. "Only you can lower me to such depths, Gorky," he said in a voice of menacing quiet.

  "Sorry, Colonel," Gorky said, the light in his beast eyes diminishing.

  "The professor's behavior profile shows her to be that most rare of human creatures: a person who does not fear death. She has no relatives, no emotional ties to any other soul on the planet. She consistently behaves in a reckless and willful manner, endangering herself and others for no more satisfaction than her whim of the moment." "Perhaps she's insane," Yuri offered. "Perhaps. Her warped patriotism would certainly point to that. She calls everyone she doesn't like a Communist."

  "No," Gorky uttered, disbelieving. "Everybody likes Communists. Wherever the Red Armies go, people love us. They don't love us, we shoot bullets into their heads. Soon everybody loves us. How come she don't love us?" "Because she is insane," Yuri said. "Of course," Istoropovich said. "She drives an Edsel."

  Istoropovich rubbed his chin. "Whatever the

  reason, she does not live as if she fears dying. For

  herself or anyone else. And without that fear,

  comrades, an individual cannot be broken."

  Gorky contemplated his superior's words by

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  sticking his finger in his nose. Yuri asked if they could go to McDonald's for a Big Mac and a free Ronald McDonald glass. He explained that he could sell the glass in Moscow for 50 rubles. He had already made a deal to sell his American blue jeans to a KGB officer for five times their U.S. value.

  "No time," Istoropovich said. "Arrange our passage to Moscow as soon as possible. On the next Aeroflot flight not scheduled for midair explosion. We'll be taking the American with us," he said, indicating Gonzalez.

  Yuri looked over at Gonzalez's inert form and spotted something he had not seen before. Gonzalez was wearing a pair of Keds Red Ball sneakers. The Russian pulled them off and tucked them under his arm. "One hundred fifty rubles," he said with a wink to Istoropovich.

  For good measure, he kicked Gonzalez in the shin. "Greedy capitalist pig," he said on his way out.

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  CHAPTER TEN

  At nine o'clock at night, the lights in the professor's software lab were still blazing.

  "Hi," Remo said. "You free?"

  The professor turned back from an array of liquor bottles and decanters she was arranging on top of an odd-looking metal table against the wall. "Dirt cheap, anyway," she said. "Have we met?"

  "I'm Remo," he said. "The guy who's supposed to check out your missing computer."

  The professor's eyes darted back to the table holding the liquor. "Uh, it's gone," she said distractedly.

  "I know. That's why I'm here. Hey, are you feeling all right?"

  She wished Remo would go away. It would make things so much simpler. The LC-111 was back, in whatever form Mr. Gordons felt like being, and there was no more national

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  emergency. Still, Gordons didn't want to reveal his identity to this Remo person until he remembered who Remo was. The professor didn't think it mattered much who Remo was, but he had some fine pecs on him, and if he didn't leave soon, she was going to jump on his bones.

  "You're awfully cute," she said, trying unsuccessfully to fight off the waves of lust that were overtaking her. Those dreamy brown eyes, the fine, hard body. The thick wrists. Oh, that mouth.

  "Thank you, ma'am," Remo said. "Well, I guess we ought to start."

  "Ready when you are, babe," the professor said, whipping off her lab coat. In the span of 58 seconds, she had shed the rest of her clothing as well, and stood before Remo, stripped to the buff.

  "I meant we ought to start talking. About the computer."

  "Talk, talk, talk. Doesn't anybody screw anymore?"

  Remo shook off one of the professor's arms, which had become entwined, snakelike, around his thigh. "I'd really rather talk," he said. "With your clothes on, if you don't mind."

  "Communication is what matters, young man. Not talking," she panted as she came at him in a flying tackle. "Just see how much better we communicate once your pants are down. Whee." She slid his belt out of his pants and twirled it above her head like a lasso. "How's about a little drink, gorgeous?"

  "No, thanks," Remo said, catching the belt
in mid-swing and replacing it around his waist. The professor slinked over to the table and poured

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  some gin from a decanter directly into her throat, which she had primed with an olive.

  As she gulped, a small voice seemingly from out of nowhere whispered to her, "Get him on this table."

  "What?"

  "On this table. On his back, if possible."

  "What for?"

  "Please, Mom," the table said. "Get his back on the table."

  "Okey doke," she said, giggling lewdly.

  From across the room, Remo shook his head as he watched the Nobel-Prize-winning scientist standing stark naked, guzzling gin and talking to herself. She was even nuttier than Smith had warned him.

  "Come and get it," she called. All the charms of middle-aged spinsterhood were on display as she undulated to Remo in invitation. Remo suppressed a shudder.

  "Hop to it, big boy. I'm hotter than an É-C 135 on target range, as they say at NASA." She licked one finger and made sizzling noises as she held it to a heavily dimpled hip. "Get over here. It's the only way I'm going to talk to you."

  "Oh, hell," Remo said, obeying reluctantly.

  "Now sit up here." She patted the table.

  He sat. Her hand went immediately to his leg.

  "Couldn't we skip this part?" he asked.

  "And deprive you of the ecstasy of making love to me? Are you kidding?"

  With a sigh, Remo began the series of maneu-vers-Chiun had taught him long ago, the meticulous steps designed to bring a woman to shrieking

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  fulfillment. In the case of Dr. Frances Payton-HoJmes, however, it almost wasn't worth the time spent. This dame, Remo said to himself, could find fulfillment sitting on a ping pong ball.

  "Could we please talk now?" Remo said, placing his hand on a spot on the professor's left kneecap that set her teeth chattering with joy.

  "Of course, darling. I was born in Madison, Wisconsin, the only child of a prosperous dairy farmer. ..."

  "I was thinking of more recent events," Remo said. "Like the disappearance of the computer. What's it called again?"

  "The LC-111," she moaned. "The most important technological breakthrough in the past decade. The new defender of the free world." "What's it do?"