"You a cop?" she asked.
Remo smiled. "We're concerned with who killed your husband."
Like most people, she had asked a question and not listened to the answer. She assumed that Remo had said he was a cop. She looked at Chiun. "He a cop, too?" she asked Remo.
"Not exactly," Remo said. "Much more than that." He was rewarded by a faint smile from Chiun. "May we come in?"
She thought about it for a moment, then said, "I guess so," and backed up. When Remo passed her, he deliberately brushed against her. Chiun followed and she closed the door behind them.
"Can I get you something?" she asked. "Coffee? A drink?"
"No thanks. We don't want to take up too much of your time. Could you show us where it happened?"
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"I ... I don't want to go down there. I'll show you where it is. You can go down."
As she led them to the cellar steps, Remo noticed that the back storm door was unlocked.
'That always unlocked?" he asked.
She stared at him wide-eyed, then reached past him and flipped on the lock.
"A bad habit," she said. "One I guess I'll have to break."
Barn doors, thought Remo. She stayed in the kitchen as they went downstairs.
The police had made a half-hearted attempt to clean the blood and brains off the floor. There was a rumpled blanket in a corner and it was obvious from the stains on it what it had been used for.
Remo effortlessly moved the barbells aside and examined the stains on the floor. Chiun was hunched over the blanket in the corner.
After a thorough investigation, lasting at least four seconds, Remo stood up and said, "I don't see anything."
Without turning, Chiun said, "Come here, white thing."
Remo went over and crouched next to him.
"Find something?"
"Look." Chiun held out his hand. It was another paint chip.
"Ties it all together," Remo said. "Same killer. And we still don't know anything about him."
"We will learn," Chiun said. "Or at any rate, I will learn and I will tell you all about it."
Remo put the paint chip in his shirt pocket and followed Chiun upstairs. Phyllis had fixed her face and hair while they were in the cellar. She didn't
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look half bad now, Remo thought. Unless she was compared with Princess Sarra, in which case she was a distant also-ran.
"Did you hear anything before you heard your husband call you?"
"No. Nothing."
"Were the lights on in the cellar?" Chiun asked.
"No. The light was out."
"Thank you," Remo said. "You've been very helpful."
"If you need anything else, you just call," she told Remo, smiling and touching her teased hair. Then she seemed to remember she was a very recent widow and she touched her nose with her handkerchief. She walked them to the door and whispered to Remo, "Is he really a cop? You can tell me."
"Actually," Remo said, "He's a CIA agent, but that's very confidential."
"Wow," Phyllis said. As they opened the door to the steps, they saw the little man next door, finishing loading his van.
"Him," she snapped.
"What about him?" Remo asked.
"If these criminals didn't think that all the houses were owned by pissy-faced little wimps like him, this kind of thing wouldn't happen. Curt would still be alive."
Was she actually trying to blame that helpless, innocent little guy next door for her husband's death, Remo wondered.
"I'm sure you're right," he said. "Thank you for your time."
"Least I could do," she said. "Call me if you need me." She put an extra emphasis on the word "need."
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"Sure will," Remo said. As he and Chiun started down the walk, she stepped out and began yelling.
"Little nothing. Why couldn't it have been you instead of Curt, you little nothing?"
Remo looked over at the little man who was just standing there, staring at the screaming woman.
Poor little guy.
After Remo and Chiun had driven off, Elmo Wimpler reached into his jacket pocket and took out a small, pink, flimsy piece.
He shook it out and held it up in plain sight. It was a pair of pink, woman's panties.
After displaying it for a few seconds, he kissed it and threw it into one of the cartons in the back of the van.
Phyllis had caught the whole scene. She held her breath. Her panties had been ripped off her the night before by the phantom rapist-murderer.
But no, it couldn't be. Not Wimpler.
She watched as he locked up his house and went back to the van. Before getting in, he turned her way and threw her a wave and a kiss.
No, she thought, hugging her arms. It couldn't be. It just couldn't be.
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CHAPTER NINE
There were a lot of contracts to fill and a lot of millions to make in his new profession, but first Elmo Wimpler had one more personal piece of business to take care of.
Actually, three pieces of business.
The three owners of the Friends of Inventors were in their office late, studying the books on the week's take, when suddenly the lights in the room went out.
The door to the room opened and closed quickly.
Ernie, sitting in the middle of the table, heard a grunt from the partner on his right and felt something wet strike him on the shoulder. He turned to look at his partner and in the dimness of the office, he saw his partner had only half a head. And the wet stuff, suddenly he knew, was blood.
He turned to his left, in time to hear a phhhhht sound and the snap of bone and his partner's grunt as his half-head slumped forward and hit the large, oaken table.
"What the fuck," he said, jumping up from his seat and looking around him. He saw nothing.
"Sorry I couldn't come up with anything in mauve," a voice said to him from out of the emptiness.
"Who's that?" Ernie stuttered.
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He felt himself pushed from behind. He turned quickly but no one was there.
"I'm going apeshit nuts," he said aloud.
"Ever sell that car of yours?" the disembodied voice asked.
Something slapped Ernie in the face, but again there was no one to see.
"I'm dreaming," he said.
"No, you're not," the voice said.
"What is this?" Ernie demanded in a voice made loud with fear.
"Just think mauve," the voice said. Ernie felt some kind of touch on his head and just before he died, he remembered the meeting they had had with the wimpy looking guy with the funny black paint.
No. It couldn't be him. Could it?"
Phhhhhhht. Crack.
"Three more?" Remo asked Smith from the phone in his New York hotel room, overlooking Central Park.
"That's right," said Smith and gave Remo the address of the Friends of Inventors. "It's a phony operation that takes money from would-be inventors but it doesn't market anything."
"All crushed skulls?" Remo asked.
"Correct," Smith said. "But there was something else too. There was a note written in mauve-colored paint on the table."
"What'd the note say?" Remo asked.
"It said, 'This is the last one I do for free.' "
"And another amateur succumbs to the lure of money and turns pro," Remo said.
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"And for a pro, the only game in town is the Emir of Bislami," Smith said. "Chiun was right about the paint by the way. It's a special metallic compound that absorbs all light hitting it."
"Would it make someone invisible?"
"In the dark," Smith said. "All you could see is a black outline against a lighter background. But you couldn't pick up any details because they wouldn't send any light to your eye."
"But in daylight?"
"In daylight, if our man were wearing some kind of painted costume like this," Smith said, "you would see the black silhouette of a man. Almost like a shadow."
"Then h
e can't function in the light," Remo said.
"No. I don't see how he could," Smith agreed.
"Remember I told you to get dogs for the Emir's island?" Remo said.
"Yes. They're already there."
"Install floodlights, too," Remo said. "All over. Make the place look like Yankee Stadium during a night game."
"That's a good idea," Smith said.
The words were so strange to Remo's ear that he said, "Say that again."
"I said that was a good idea," Smith said.
"Now I can die happy," Remo said.
"Don't die at all. And don't let anyone else die," Smith said as he hung up the telephone.
Remo replaced the receiver and turned to Chiun.
"Three more."
"So I heard. I am not yet so old that my ears fan to function. The Emperor seemed worried."
"He is worried about the Emir," Remo said.
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"We have never opposed an invisible man before," Chiun said.
Remo scowled. "Just a guy in a black suit."
"You can wish that," Chiun said. "But there are six people with only pieces left of their skulls who would not agree with you."
For all the mayhem that had been committed in the conference room of the Friends of Inventors, the room looked as if it had been sent out to the dry cleaners for washing and pressing.
The rug was spotless. Chairs were neatly placed around the table. Blackboards for chart presentations were neatly stacked against a wall.
The only note that seemed out of place in this symphony of order was the note written in paint on the conference table. "This is the last one I do for free."
Mauve, Smith had called it.
"Chiun," Remo said. The Korean did not answer. Remo looked up and saw Chiun standing at the light switch. He flicked it and the overhead chandelier lights went off. He flicked the switch again. The lights came back on.
Again. Off.
Again. On.
"Chiun, when you're finished inventing electricity, will you come here?" Remo said.
The Korean walked smoothly toward the table.
"See this. The purple paint. That's the note the killer left," Remo said.
Chiun shook his head. "No," he said.
"What do you mean 'no'?"
"That's not purple. It's mauve," Chiun said.
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Remo decided it was mauve. But it still looked like purple.
"Why were you fooling around with the light?"
Remo asked. ¦ . ,
"I was trying to learn something," Chiun said.
"What was it?"
"I have not yet learned it," Chiun said.
Remo stepped into the outer office where the blonde receptionist sat preening herself. Stacked in front of her was a comb, fingernail polish, liquid makeup, mascara, and four different kinds of lipstick and lip gloss.
"Ain't it a tragedy?" she said to Remo.
"I can see you're having trouble bearing up."
"They wasn't bad. I mean, for those kind," she said. She breathed her chest at Remo, who wondered if good manners would dictate his fleeing in fright to the other side of the room.
"Who was here last night when this happened?" Remo asked.
"Just Willy, the janitor. He was cleaning one of the other offices. Want me to get him?"
"Please. And then I want you to go through your files," Remo said. "Get me the name and address of everybody who's been here in the past six months. Every client. And what they invented."
"Geez. That could take a half-hour maybe."
"Do it and I'll put you in for overtime," Remo said. "But call Willy first."
Willy the janitor had white hair, bifocals and a scowl that looked genetic.
"Did you hear anything last night, Willy?" Remo asked. "Or see anything?"
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"Well," the old man said. He clamped his lips shut as if that constituted a full answer.
'Willy, it's important that you tell us," Remo
"What's in it for me?" Willy said.
"Let me discuss this with Mister Willy," Chiun whispered. "You don't know how to talk to old people." His green satin kimono flowed around him as he walked to the old man.
His hand darted out of his sleeve and he caught Willy's right ear between two fingers.
"Now answer questions," Chiun said.
"Owwwww. Yes sir."
"Willy will help now," Chiun said.
"I'm really glad you understand the mature mind," Remo said.
"All minds are alike where pain is concerned," Chiun said.
Once started talking, there seemed to be no way to quiet Willy the janitor.
"I didn't want anyone to think I was senile, but I heard it. I heard a voice. And it wasn't one of the voices of the partners 'cause I knew them voices 'cause they all sound like Long Island, but this voice wasn't like that, but when I went inside I didn't see nothing, but I know I heard it. And I ain't senile either. And I heard him say, 'This is the last one I do for free.' But I didn't see anybody. And then I had to call the police, and then I cleaned up that mess. It was awful, somebody left me this bloody, stinking mess and you don't know how long it took me to get that room clean again."
"But you saw nobody."
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"Just them bodies. Awful it was, brains and all, all over."
"The voice you heard. What did it sound like?"
"Just a voice. Soft like. But a man's voice. A soft, man's voice, like he was a whisperer, like you know how some people are."
Willy was still rubbing his ear. "Can I go now?"
"I'm done with you," Remo said.
"I am not," Chiun said. Willy clapped his hands over his ears in self-defense.
"Unhand your ears, you idiot," Chiun said. "When you came into this office last night, were the lights on or off?"
Remo shook his head. Chain's lights again.
"The switch was on," said Willy. "But all the lights was off. Nine of them. Count them. Nine of those bulbs. They was all burned out. And they was new bulbs, 'cause I only changed them like a month ago. I change all the bulbs at once 'cause I read a story once that it's more efficient to do it that way than to let them burn out and change them one at a time."
"So the bulbs were extinguished and you replaced them?" Chiun repeated.
'That's right, sir. Yes, sir. That's right."
"You may go," Chiun said, dismissing Willy with a wave of his long-nailed hands.
"That's handling those old folks, Chiun," said Remo after Willy left. "You call that respect?"
"Respect, unlike water, runs from low place to high place. This means that you should respect everyone you meet. I, on the other hand, am to be treated with respect by everyone. You may not like it, Remo, but it is the way of things."
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"Make your next lecture on modesty," Remo growled. "You do it so well. Why are you so interested in the light bulbs?"
"Because our invisible man," Chiun said, "can only be effective in the darkness. These last killings and the one of that man with the wife who varnished her hair were done in darkness. Darkness created by the killer. He may have a way, Remo, to turn out lights."
Remo nodded. The old Korean made sense.
"Then I guess we better turn out his lights and fast," Remo said.
The secretary in the outer office had overestimated the difficulty of compiling the names, addresses, and inventions of all the clients the firm had seen in the last six months. There were only twenty of them and she finished the job in twenty-eight minutes.
Remo sat at the conference table looking at the sheet of yellow paper on which she had printed in large block letters the client list.
He did not know what, if anything, he was looking for. But without leads, he would settle for anything. A clue. A hint. A hunch. Anything.
And it was there. The third name on the list.
"Chiun. Look at this." The Korean came over and stood behind Remo's shoulder.
"Invisi
ble paint," Remo read. "Elmo Wimpler. And look at the address. Right next door to the guy with the varnished wife."
"The little man who did not like his neighbors," Chiun said.
"You're right," Remo said. Somehow he had failed to associate the name and address with the
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man they had met earlier. "The little nerd with the rented van."
"The little ones are often the most dangerous," Chiun said.
Remo looked at Chiun, who stood less than five feet tall, but suppressed the smile he felt that remark deserved.
"I think we ought to go back to Wimpler's house and see what we see," Remo said. "Or cannot see," Chiun said.
CHAPTER TEN
Elmo Wimpler had left his furniture behind when he left his ramshackle Brooklyn home. Looking around, Remo could understand why. His couch
was a massive, flower-covered lump in which a normal person, if he made the mistake of sitting down, might vanish without a trace. The living room armchairs were ratty and ripped.
His kitchen set was a small, round table with one wobbly leg and a hard-backed chair with a worn-through cushion. His bedroom set was ornate, old wood that looked as if it had been carved during the First Crusade.
Remo went through the house carefully, room by room, looking for something, anything, that would tell him who Elmo Wimpler was, and, more important, where he was.
But every personal trace seemed to have disappeared. There were no boxes of letters in the basement, no high-school yearbooks, no correspondence with relatives. Nothing that would indicate that the house had been lived in any time since the Industrial Revolution.
But when he got back to the living room, Chiun had found something Remo had missed.
The old man was sitting cross-legged on the floor, reading through a magazine. Next to him on the threadbare rug was a small pile of other maga-
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zines. They had apparently been stashed under the couch.
Remo looked through the stack of magazines. Four of them were girlie magazines for the sadomasochistic trade. But the other three were copies of a magazine called Contract.
Remo looked at the one Chiun was looking through. The cover showed a diplomat, in striped trousers and formal coat, standing on a street corner. A man behind him was looping a strangler's wire over the diplomat's head. The cover blazed the legend of what was inside. "New Techniques for Successful Assassination." And "The Most Wanted Man in the World."
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