Midnight Man td-43

by Warren Murphy

  "This person will be dead tomorrow night," Wimpler said. "Tell me who he is and where he is."

  They told him. He was a big-time gangster, now a federal witness, testifying to save his own skin. He was being hidden out on a large, private estate in Westchester County, surrounded by cops, FBI agents, and who knew what else.

  "Be here tomorrow night. Two a.m.," Wimpler said. "And bring the money."

  "All right," said Jack.

  "I need an advance," said Wimpler.

  "How much?" Jack asked, reaching into his

  pocket.

  All Wimpler could think of was a steak dinner. He decided to think big. "Twenty dollars," he said.

  Jack leafed through the hundred dollar bills in his he found a lone twenty and handed it

  pier said.

  "Sure, pal," Jack said. Elmo turned and walked away. He stopped at the first cheap steak place he saw, ordered two steak dinners and devoured them both. With his change, he took a cab home.

  He hurried to his garage. He had his first con-

  25

  tract but how would he carry it out? What would he use to kill his victim?

  He searched through his garage, overturning useless inventions until he found the item he wanted.

  Wimpler had worked it out as a revolutionary new nutcracker, but it hadn't sold. It was a small hand-held compressor. After fitting it with a long slide arm that would allow it to hold something bigger than walnuts, Elmo tried it out on an old bowling ball in the garage. The compressor's arms reached around the ball, and when he pressed the trigger, the two arms closed together with a hiss. The bowling ball broke up into hundreds of pieces that fell to the floor.

  Done. All he would have to do would be to spray paint it, and the invisible man would have his invisible weapon.

  And then he went to sleep. The first good night's sleep he had had in months.

  The next morning, he cleaned the black paint from the windshield and windows of his old car parked in the garage. Then he quickly painted over the invisible, black paint with a light-blue, spray enamel, letting the paint run in drippy, gooey masses, not caring how the paint job looked, but just wanting to make the car visible again, presentable for riding around the street.

  Then he drove up to White Plains and rode past the large estate where the federal witness was being held. In the gathering dusk, he could see guards stationed near the door of the house and lounging about on the lawn.

  But for some reason, he was no longer afraid.

  Wimpler drove around for a while and when it

  26

  was fully dark, he parked about a half-mile from the estate. Inside the auto, he changed into his invisible clothing, treated with what he now didn't mind calling WIMP—Wimpler's Invisible Metallic Paint.

  The edge of the road was lined with trees and Elmo walked behind the trees in the dark, toward the estate.

  He moved through the shadows toward the house. Once he passed within two feet of a guard who was looking right at him but didn't see him. Wimpler was tempted to play games, to tap one on the shoulder or to whisper in one's ear, but he decided to stick to business.

  It was all business. There was no panic, no fear. Just a cold sense that this was what he had been put on earth to do. To kill.

  He entered the house through a side French door. Two men were in the darkness of the room, but they did not see him.

  "The door's open," one said.

  "Must have been the wind," the other said, and got up to close the door.

  Wimpler scouted through the house, hiding in shadows, listening to conversations. The police, it seemed, liked the federal witness no better than the mob did. Everybody seemed to wish someone would just blow him away and save everybody a lot of trouble.

  Elmo Wimpler was going to save them a lot of trouble.

  He found his victim in an upstairs bedroom, sitting in a chair, watching television in the darkened room. Anybody who watched reruns of "Güligan's Island" deserved to die, Elmo thought.

  27

  He quietly walked up behind the man, opened up the arms of his compressor device; quickly clapped it to both sides of the man's head, and before the man could move, depressed the trigger.

  There was a sharp hiss, the crack of bones, and a man with a head in pieces.

  Wimpler went out through a window and climbed carefully down a trellis to the dark side of the house. Without looking back, he cut across the field, passing near guards, heading for his car parked down the street. He had to resist the urge to shout exultantly. He had done it. He had done it.

  He did not change from his WIMP invisible outfit, but merely took off the hood for his drive back to Brooklyn.

  He reached the docks early, but so had Jack and Tony, and standing in the shadows, Wimpler heard their conversation.

  "The guy did it, Tony. He did it. I heard it on the radio."

  "It's too bad we have to ice him, Jack. He's got style."

  "I know. But if the man found out we farmed this out to an amateur . . . forget it, baby."

  Elmo watched as each checked his gun, then slid it back into its shoulder holster.

  "You gentlemen are not very honest," he said.

  Jack's head snapped around. He looked question-ingly into the dark, seeing nothing.

  "Who said that?" Tony demanded.

  "I did," Wimpler said. As Tony reached for his gun, Wimpler slid the invisible compressor over the man's head. A moment later, Tony was dead.

  Jack threw up on what was left of his body.

  28

  "You can't see me, Jack, but I can see you," Wimpler said.

  "What do you want?" Jack gasped.

  "My money, Jack. That's what I want."

  "Ten grand."

  "Make it twenty for my extra trouble. Go and get it. And bring it here. And if you try anything funny, you'll join your friend."

  Pale and shaking, Jack nodded. Wimpler watched him walk to his car, talking to himself. He knew the man would be back.

  He was, in less than half an hour, holding twenty thousand dollars in cash in his hand. He saw it plucked from his hand, hanging in the air, seemingly of its own power. But before he had a chance to marvel too long, he joined his friend Tony in death.

  As he left the dock on Atlantic Avenue, Wimpler thought that not only were Jack and Tony dead. There was another body back on that dock too.

  The wimp was dead.

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  stairs, where he found a gang of federal officers and local police milling around the front bedroom.

  On the floor were pieces of the federal witness's head. His body was two feet away from the pieces.

  CHAPTER FOUR "You guys couldn't guard a parked car," Remo

  growled, wheeled around, and walked toward the door of the room. It was all he needed, to listen to

  Upstairs was getting less and less reasonable, Remo thought, as he drove up toward White Plains.

  Getting rid of three hospital orderlies all at once was no big deal, but what was the hurry about then having to race over and check the security on some federal witness? It couldn't wait until tomorrow?

  Remo found the address in White Plains and turned his rented Ford into the driveway, expecting to be stopped by guards.

  There were no guards.

  He drove up the long driveway to the house and was not challenged once. Several men milled about on the front steps. They looked up as Remo walked toward them.

  "Anybody want to see my ID?" Remo asked.

  "What for?" one man asked. He was seated on the top step, smoking a cigarette.

  "Security," Remo said.

  "What security? There's nothing to secure, nothing to guard." Then, as if suddenly curious, the man asked, "Who are you anyway, pal?"

  "I was sent to check on your security," Remo said. "I have to tell you, so far you're a double D-minus."

  "Our client won't mind anymore," the man said. The other men on the steps chuckled.

  Upstairs bitching abo
ut the dead witness.

  There had been ten years of listening to Upstairs bitch. Ever since Remo Williams, a young Newark policeman, was framed for a murder he didn't commit, sent to an electric chair that didn't work, and signed up to work for CURE, a secret agency that didn't exist. CURE was meant to fight criminals without having to worry about the constitutional restrictions against unfair tactics that seemed to tie the hands of every police department in the country. Remo was to be CURE'S enforcement arm.

  His boss was Dr. Harold W. Smith, the only director CURE had ever had, a man so rigid and rockhard, that even now, after ten years, Remo still had np idea what was on the man's mind at any time.

  It had been ten years of work and ten years of training. Training at the hands of an eighty-year-old Korean, Chiun, the latest Master of the House of Sinanju, an ages-old house of assassins from Korea. Remo had taken the training, and he had learned it was more than training. It had not so much changed what he could do. It had changed what he was. And in that changing, it had given him the power to be more than man. And still, sometimes, he would have traded it all for a woman and children and a

  Remo went inside and followed the noise up- I place to live that wasn't a hotel room. 30 I 31

  Chiun's hands were bridged in front of his eyes, fingertip to fingertip and, as Remo entered the hotel room the ancient Korean did not look up. His golden kimono, draped around his slight body, looked like an elegant pile of laundry on the floor.

  "Have you made it possible for old people to die in peace?" he asked.

  "Yes," Remo said. "There was a surprise."

  "What was that?" Chiun said, still studying his fingertips.

  "The leader was a woman."

  "And she was young and pretty," Chiun said. ¦ "Yes."

  "And this surprises you?"

  "Well, I figured some fat guy with a beer belly and a bookie bill he couldn't pay."

  Chiun lowered his hands, shook his head, and looked toward Remo. "You never learn," he said. "All women are killers, and the young, pretty ones are the worst because they think their beauty is their license to kill. You taught her respect for her elders?"

  "All right, you're on the snot. Who got you there? Smitty called, right?"

  Chiun nodded slowly. "Yes. The Emperor called. He seemed very upset with you. And well he should be. He is your Emperor, Remo, and yet you do nothing he tells you."

  "I did everything tonight he told me to do."

  "Yes? And at the Plains of White?"

  "Plains of White?" Remo said aloud. "Plains . . . White Plains, right. He wanted me to look at the security for a federal witness."

  "And?"

  "And there was a problem," Remo said. "The witness was dead when I got there."

  "The Emperor seems to think you have gone mad. He lectured me on telling you to keep your instructions straight. Are you sure you didn't... ?"

  "Dead when I got there, Chiun," insisted Remo. "Some security. Somebody goofed good."

  "Probably somebody young," Chiun said.

  When Remo and Chiun arrived at the Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York, only fifteen minutes

  «tu a *u i, * •* 1-v +~ uQ,„ *uo;^ from their hotel room, Dr. Harold W. Smith was

  I showed them what it was like to have their . '.

  , „ , „ _ ., standmg m his office, his hands clasped behmd his

  plugs pulled, Remo said. sf ^ ^ on£ ^ ^

  "Isn't it ironic,' Chiun said, that someone like rf Mand Sound Evei/freom behind> without

  you, the most disrespectful of men, should be dispatched to teach someone else respect for their elders?"

  "I respect you, Chiun. Honest."

  "How easily the lies spring to your lips," Chiun said. "Like the dew suddenly appearing on the morning lily."

  32

  sedngSmi±,s face> Remo CQuld ^ ^ ^ CTJRE

  director was upset.

  "What's the matter, Smitty? Somebody in the kitchen take an extra helping of strawberries?"

  Remo saw Smith's hands clench. He stood in front of Smith's desk. Chiun sat in a hardbacked chair alongside the desk.

  33

  Smith finally wheeled around. "I can't believe you," Smith snapped.

  "What the hell'd I do this time?" Remo asked.

  "How could you be so ... so ... ?" Smith struggled.

  "Idiotic," Chiun offered.

  Smith shook his head. "So . . ."

  "Dopey," suggested Chiun.

  "So careless," Smith finally sputtered out.

  "I liked dopey better," Chiun said.

  "How could you get two assignments fouled up? I suppose you spent the night bodyguarding some homicidal hospital orderlies?"

  Remo shook his head.

  "An explanation," Smith said. "Is that too much to ask for? One that makes some sense? Two important assignments and you mix them up." Smith leaned on the back of his desk chair. "We've lost a very important federal witness now, because you couldn't keep assignments straight in your mind. Why in God's name did you kill Romeo?"

  "Are you finished?" Remo asked.

  "Show respect," Chiun scolded him. "This is your Emperor." He turned to Smith with a nod. "Continue, Emperor."

  "I'm finished," Smith said. Both he and Chiun looked at Remo.

  "I didn't kill Romeo," Remo said.

  "No? Then who did? Chiun?" said Smith.

  "Not me," Chiun said. "I have learned in many years that you only want me to remove those you want me to remove. I no longer try to guess who they are. Anyway, this was probably sloppy and you

  34

  know that an execution by a Master of Sinanju is a work of art. A thing of beauty. A ..."

  "Excuse me, Little Father," Remo interrupted, "but I don't think Smitty really suspects you, so please let me defend myseLE."

  Chiun glared at Remo for the interruption but remained silent.

  "Why do you think it was me?" Remo said.

  "Who else? Who else could get to that house through two dozen guards and enough guard dogs for a breeding kennel. Who else could have crushed his skull into pieces? Pieces all over the room?"

  "Well, first of all, it wasn't me. Second of all, those hospital people are dead. If they haven't reported it yet to the police, have them check the clothes closet in the orderlies' room on the third floor."

  Smith paused, as if considering Remo's statements. He sat back down, made a phone call, spoke a few moments, and then hung up.

  He stared at the receiver in his hand.

  "They found the bodies in the hospital," he said.

  "Am I off the hook?" Remo said.

  "The telephone is off the hook," Chiun said. He pointed a long fingernail at the receiver and Smith hung it back up.

  "If not you, who? Who else could have that kind of power?" Smith asked.

  "We know it wasn't me. That's a start," Remo said.

  "I never suspected you for a moment," Chiun

  said.

  "I appreciate your faith, Little Father.' 35

  anju," Chiun said.

  So does greed, thought Remo, remembering the shipload of gold that went to Chiun's village of Sin-anju every year, as payment for training Remo. But he kept the observation to himself.

  Inside Smith's desk, Remo could hear machinery whirring. Smith touched a button and a computer console lifted up from the desk. It flickered on and as Remo watched, Smith's face was bathed in a green glow as he read the information that the CURE computer was sending him.

  Finally, he sighed, pressed another button and the console receded into the desk.

  He looked at Remo. "Police in Brooklyn have found the bodies of two men on a pier there. They were killed the same way as the federal witness, Romeo."

  "And now there are three," said Remo. "And now there is trouble," Smith said. "There is some sort of strange power at work here. Capable of moving around without being seen. Capable of crushing a man's skull. And we better find out who it is."

  "The two guys in Brooklyn?" Remo as
ked. "Anything there for a lead?"

  "Just some drunk on the pier. He said he was sleeping behind boxes and he peeked out when he heard voices and he saw two men talking to a man who wasn't there. And the man he couldn't see was answering them."

  "Two people. Three voices," Remo said. "One of them probably belonged to the drunk's pink ele-

  Í

  "Faith comes naturally to a great Master of Sin- I "Then we'd better find that pink elephant," Smith

  said caustically, "because he's got a way to crush people's skulls."

  "Who were the victims in Brooklyn?" Remo asked.

  "Two small-time hoods. But members of the Mafia family that had put out the contract on Romeo."

  "You think they're connected?" Remo asked.

  "It certainly seems that way," Smith said. "Three people with skulls shattered like walnut shells. It's no coincidence."

  "Good," Remo said. "Let all the gang guys get killed off. It saves us work."

  "We can't assume that that's what is going on," Smith said.

  "Of course, we cannot assume that," Chiun chided Remo. "What a dopey assumption." He looked pleased that he had finally been able to slip "dopey" into the conversation.

  Smith nodded. "Considering our present situation—the nation's situation—we can't afford to make any assumptions at all."

  "What situation?" Remo asked suspiciously.

  "The presence of the former Emir of Bislami."

  "Oh, him," Remo said.

  "He comes from a good family," Chiun said. "Bislami was always one of the favorites of our house. Did I ever tell you about the time during the year of the great wind when ... ?"

  Smith interrupted and was rewarded with a glare. "The new rulers of Bislami have placed a ten-million-dollar price tag on his head."

  phant." I "Where is he now?" Remo said.

  36 1 37

  "He's on an island off the coast of New Jersey were he's hoping to stay until he dies a natural death. Privately, his doctors say that shouldn't be too long. But that isn't all. There are left-wing groups in America who want to kill him. The Russians want to prove to the world that the United States can't protect its own friends. The total price on his head might be twenty million dollars."

  "What has this got to do with our skull-crusher?" Remo said.

  "Well, suppose this. Suppose the man who killed Romeo was a contract killer, hired by those thugs in Brooklyn. And suppose he killed them afterwards to guard his identity."