Midnight Man td-43

by Warren Murphy

  "I have never heard of this magazine," said Chiun.

  "Me neither. Is it what I think it is?"

  "It is for your American excuses-for-assassins. It tells them who somebody wants to have killed and what the fees are."

  "Did the 'New Techniques for Successful Assassination' teach you anything?" Remo asked.

  "Only that you and I never need fear being out of work," Chiun said. "Here." He handed the magazine forward. "You will find this interesting."

  The magazine was opened to the article: "The Most Wanted Man in the World." Accompanying the article was a photograph of the Emir of Bislami in full military regalia.

  The article said there was a twenty-million-dollar price on the deposed Emir's head, and the article's title had been circled in red ink.

  Remo looked through the rest of the magazine. The classified section in the front was circled in red

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  pen. He turned to the classified section and glanced at the help wanted columns:

  WANTED: FEMALE WITH ABILITY TO

  KILL WITH PLEASURE. RESUME AND

  REFERENCES NECESSARY.

  The ad gave a box number.

  There were ads advertising different killing specialties: throwing knives, ripping knives, crossbows, undetectable poisons, guns with special night sights.

  Another item circled in red caught Remo's eyes:

  EVER KILL AN EMIR? CHECK OUT THE

  PRICE. (Another box number.)

  Another read:

  ICE AN EMIR. (A box number.)

  A third read:

  SEND A MONARCH TO THE MORTUARY.

  "Chiun," Remo started.

  "I have seen them," Chiun said. He was reading another issue of Contract magazine. He seemed engrossed. Remo put the copy of the magazine into his back pocket and stood up to check the garage.

  He went out the back door of the house and walked to the small detached garage. He saw the widow, Phyllis, in the next yard. When she saw him, her hand went naturally to her teased, blond hair.

  "You couldn't stay away, could you?" she said with a smile.

  "Just checking a few more things," he told her.

  "Come in for coffee or something when you're through. Maybe I can help you with a few things."

  "Sorry. I'm on duty right now," Remo said.

  "When you get off duty," she said.

  "Maybe. We'll see."

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  She chose to take his answer as agreement, smiled, and turned back to her gardening.

  Remo entered the dark garage, made black even in the daytime by the heavy plastic sheets that covered the windows.

  He found an overhead light and flipped it on.

  Against the far wall, he saw a large workbench. The shelves that lined the walls were filled with gadgets and devices, apparently the lifework of a committed inventor. Each item was labeled, with the date of its creation.

  There were mousetraps that looked like lobster traps. There was a disco light radio. Another item was labelled "Electric Shoe Softener." It was a big metal foot, and from its hinging, Remo guessed that when it was plugged in, the foot bent and stretched, wearing out the stiffness of any new shoe placed on the device.

  Two spots were empty. The sign at one spot said "Pneumatic Nut Cracker." The other sign read: "Electric Light Oscillator."

  The poured concrete floor of the garage was stained different colors. Some places showed the evidence of burning. In other spots, there were holes chipped into the floor. Probably all by-products of one invention or another, Remo thought.

  The center of the garage was taken up with an old wreck of a car, dented, rusted, and obviously painted over quickly with a light-blue spray enamel.

  Why would anyone have bothered to paint such a wreck of a car, Remo wondered. And why paint it so badly?

  He leaned on the car and thought for a moment. The only reason to paint a car that quickly and

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  carelessly was to disguise it. But what had it been before that it needed a disguise? There wasn't much difference between an ugly, old blue car and an ugly, old red or green or black car.

  Black car.

  Remo turned back to the car and began to examine it carefully. In the corners around the windshield, he could see traces of a deep black paint. There were the same marks around the headlights and taillights.

  He found a reasonably smooth section of fender and chipped away at it with his fingertips. He was right. Underneath the blue paint was black, and as he chipped away at more and more, he could see that the black paint was the deep, invisibility black that Chiun had found a chip of earlier.

  He left the garage and went straight back to Wimpler's house, pointedly ignoring the posturing and posing of Phyllis in her garden.

  Chiun was still reading Contract.

  "You were right, Chiun," Remo said.

  "Of course. What this time?"

  "He must have tested his invisible paint on the old car in his garage."

  "We knew he had invented that paint."

  "But he also invented a nutcracker and something to do with electric lights," Remo said.

  "The skull-crusher and the device for burning out electric lamps," Chiun said.

  Remo nodded.

  "Now that I have done all your work for you," said Chiun, "don't you think you owe me some small favor?"

  "Such as."

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  "Find out who the editor is of this magazine," Chiun said.

  "Why?"

  "Because if they pay their writers for these awful tales and essays, think how proud and happy they would be to have me writing for them."

  "I don't think they're into Ung poetry," Remo said.

  "I am not talking about poetry, but about a different kind of beauty. They write about assassins and removals, and who could write about these subjects better than I?"

  "No one, I guess," said Remo. He had a sinking feeling in his stomach. He had thought that Chiun had given up on trying to write for a living. But that was a mistake. Chiun had just been waiting for his chance. Writers never quit.

  "Good," said Chiun. "You find out about this publication. I will write for them and you will be my agent. Three percent of all I earn shall be yours."

  "Oh, joy," said Remo. "I'm going to be wealthy."

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  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The New York Telephone Company had built its reputation on taking sixty days to install a telephone and begin service, and only sixty seconds to disconnect a phone. But in his hurried move from his Brooklyn house, Elmo Wimpler obviously had not notified the company, because the telephone in the bedroom was still turned on.

  When he reached Smith, there was agitation in the CURE director's voice.

  "Where have you been?" Smith said. "I've been trying to reach you."

  "Easy. You'll live longer," Remo said. "Besides, we've been out here solving this case. Your killer is a little twerp named Elmo Wimpler. He invented the invisible paint. He also invented some kind of skull-crusher machine and a gadget that blows out lights. He lived next door to that Curt who got it last night, and those three guys at the Friends of Inventors had turned down his paint invention."

  "Where is he now?" Smith said.

  "I don't know. He split from his house in Brooklyn," Remo said. "Anyway," he continued. "That's the good news. Now the bad news."

  "Go ahead. I'm used to it from you," Smith said.

  "There's a magazine called Contract" Remo said.

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  I've heard of it." I cult for him to order Remo to kill someone, but

  UT',

  "We found some copies of it in Wimpler's house. A lot of stuff in there involved killing the Emir, and he had them circled. Stories, ads and things." Remo still had the copy of the magazine in his pocket. He took it out and read some of the ads to Smith.

  "Here's one called 'Ice an Emir,' " Remo said.

  "That one is mine," Smith said.

  "What?"

  "I placed that
one," Smith said. "That's what I was calling about."

  "You're responsible for 'Ice an Emir'? I didn't think you had it in you," Remo said.

  "I was second in my class at Dartmouth in creative writing," Smith said.

  "Well, don't think I'm going to be your agent, too," Remo said. "I've already got a client."

  "I placed that advertisement to try to flush out anybody who might be thinking about a contract killing on the Emir," Smith said.

  "I got my first group of answers today. Most of them are obvious cranks, but one in particular seemed real. I think it might be our friend, Wim-pler. I'm supposed to meet him tonight," Smith said.

  "Where?" asked Remo.

  "In the Sheep Meadow at Central Park. At midnight."

  "We'll take it for you, Smitty," Remo said.

  "I don't have to tell you how important this is," Smith said.

  "Then don't," Remo said. It was the same old thing, a sidewise slide by Smith into telling Remo that he was not to bring Wimpler back alive. Smith's rock-bound, New England morality made it diffi-

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  over the years he had found enough ways to say it without saying it. What Smith wanted was Elmo Wimpler's body left lying in Central Park. It wasn't a question of trying to evade responsibility. Remo had seen the pills that Smith always carried and was prepared to use, pills that would kill Smith in seconds. Remo had seen the coffin in the basement of Folcroft, in which Smith's body would go, and be sent to a funeral home in Parsippany, New Jersey, for a fast prepaid funeral. If Remo knew one thing in the world, it was that Smith would not try to run away from his responsibilities.

  It was something else. It was simply the conflict between Smith's heart-deep belief in obeying the law, and his equally strong belief that CURE, while working outside the law, was absolutely necessary if America was to survive. He was unable to reconcile the two. He managed to deal with it by talking around it. Instead of directing Remo to kill Wimpler, he just reminded him how important it was. And Remo was well-trained. He knew what the assignment was. Elmo Wimpler had to die, and Smith would be happy about the result, and able to cling to some small piece of his pre-CURE self by knowing that he had not ordered the death. Not in so many words anyway.

  Out in the living room, Remo told Chiun, "Come on. We're taking a walk in Central Park tonight."

  Chiun rose, like a puff of smoke, still reading the copy of Contract he held in his hands.

  He followed Remo toward the front door. Remo politely held the door open for him and Chiun stepped out first.

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  Then Remo heard it. It was a sound above them. Chiun's eyes were burrowed into the magazine. Remo could hear the feet on the edge of the roof above them. He heard the scraping as the feet pushed from the edge of the roof.

  Someone was coming at Chiun. From off the roof. And the old man, oblivious, his nose stuck in that magazine, was an easy victim. Remo jumped out through the open front door, pivoted around and met the attacker as he came from the low roof in a flying leap. Remo caught him around the waist. The sound of the man's spine filled the dark quiet street with a loud snap.

  Remo let the man drop to the sidewalk. Chiun continued walking away without looking up.

  "There is another one up there, too," he said over his shoulder to Remo.

  Remo glanced upward in time to see a second man, a knife in his hand, leap off the roof toward Remo. Remo ducked, grabbed the man who lay in a clump on the walk, and tossed him up.

  The quick and the dead collided in midair. And then both were dead as the knife in the live man's hand twisted around from the force of the collision and buried itself in the man's throat. They were both dead when the two bodies hit again.

  Remo glanced up. Chiun was leaning against their rented car, still reading.

  Remo looked through the dead men's clothing. There was no identification. Their faces told him nothing. They could have been any of a half-dozen nationalities. There were no wallets, no clothing tags, no driver's licenses. Nothing.

  Remo left the bodies where they lay. When he ap-

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  proached the car, Chiun said, "What took you so long?"

  "You could have warned me they were up there," Remo groused.

  "I was busy reading. Why is it that people in this country always think that if you're reading, you are not doing anything important?" He pointed over Remo's shoulder. "And my magazines. You dropped them. Go pick them up. First, you keep me waiting, and then you drop my magazines, too. Really, Remo."

  Back at their hotel room, high overlooking Central Park, Remo called Smith again and told him of the attack at Wimpler's house.

  "No identification at all?" Smith asked.

  "None," Remo said.

  "Could you tell if they were foreign?"

  "You mean, maybe from the Emir Bislami? I don't know. They could have been from Italy for all I know."

  "Dark skinned?" Smith asked.

  "Yes, but that means Spanish, Italian, Bislamic, or a dozen other things including sun tanned. Besides, why would anyone from Bislami send a hit team after Chiun and me?"

  "Maybe you didn't make any friends when you visited the Emir?" Smith said. "Be careful tonight."

  "Sure, Daddy. Tell Mommy we love her. Bye."

  Chiun was still reading Contract in the living room of the hotel apartment.

  "Did you see any ads that might fit us?" Remo asked him.

  "No. Not one. Not once did I see any advertisement calling for someone to attempt fruitlessly, to

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  dispatch the Master of Sinanju and his ungrateful pupil who drops magazines. Not a word," Chiun said. "Wait until I start writing for this magazine. Then you'll see its quality improve," he said.

  Remo looked out the window at the park.

  Could the assassins have been hired by Wimpler? That made no sense. He sounded as if he liked to do his own killing.

  The night was moonless. The park would be perfect for an invisible assassin.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Elmo Wimpler entered Central Park near the East 72nd Street entrance a few minutes after 11

  P.M.

  Dressed in a white shirt and slacks and carrying a paper bag, Wimpler had as much chance of survival walking through the park as a piece of sirloin thrown into a cage of starving Dobermans.

  But only seventy-five feet in the park, Wimpler darted from the pathway and into a cluster of bushes. He congratulated himself on being unseen.

  But Wimpler was wrong.

  He had been seen by Bats Agron. Bats was lounging against a pipefence, fingering the switchblade knife in his pocket and when he saw Wimpler enter the park, he wrapped around himself the dark cape which had given him his nickname and slid back in the shadows to watch. The little man in the white shirt had victim written all over him, and Agron had smiled as the man walked ever closer to him.

  Then the little man had run into a clump of bushes. Probably some kind of fagola, Agron thought. Well, he might have been waiting to meet his boyfriend, but he was in for a surprise. He was going to meet Bats Agron.

  The slim, smooth-faced, Latin youth took his knife from his pocket and held it in his right hand, his finger on the switch that flipped it open. He

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  walked through the splash of sparse bushes into a small clearing, then looked around. It was a dark night, but that white-shirted man should have stood out like a lighthouse. Agron looked all around him, but saw no one.

  "Shit," he cursed softly to himself.

  "Looking for someone?" came a soft voice. It seemed to come from behind Agron's right shoulder. He turned, but saw nothing, just another silhouette of just another bush. He turned in the other direction, straining his eyes to see into the darkness.

  He never had a chance to press the switch on his knife. He felt something metallic pressing against both sides of his head, then he heard a voice say, "So long, sucker," and then there was a flash of pain.

  And then nothing.


  Elmo Wimpler was pleased. He wiped off the skull-crusher and replaced it into the waistband he had designed to carry his equipment. Since leaving his house, he had been giving a lot of thought to the problem of his invisibility. He was invisible in total darkness, but in anything less than that, he was visible as a silhouette, without features, almost a

  shadow, but still the silhouette of a man. He had He realized now how fooMl he had been on

  realized that his protection would be much greater if

  he had fashioned a folding screen, shaped roughly into the outline of a bush. He had painted it with his invisible, black paint also. In a dark park setting, he could just open the screen and anyone glancing in that direction would see nothing but the dark sil-

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  houette of just another bush, instead of the outline of a man.

  He had wondered if it would work. The body of Bats Agron, lying at his feet, his skull in pieces, had just given him his successful road test. It worked.

  Whistling lightly under his breath, Wimpler folded the screen under an arm and began strolling off toward the Sheep Meadow to meet the people who wanted him to kill the Emir of Bislami.

  He knew little about the Emir, except what he had seen on the television newscasts. But politics didn't matter to him. What had mattered was that the people he had called were willing to pay a million dollars each for the Emir's death.

  Wimpler still hadn't made up his mind. Should he kill the Emir and admit it to the world, challenging them to catch him? Or should he do it silently, as a professional, an anonymous hit man?

  Why not? He could do both. He could take the credit for the Emir's death. People would be lining up to hire him. Contract magazine was filled with ads from people looking for killers. He could pick and choose.

  But first, his two-million-dollar job.

  Brooklyn dock to have asked for so little to kill that

  . ij u u- -lu a * c t federal witness. But that was then. The person who

  he could change his silhouette, and out of a few , ƒ* 7T Vv**i t • a *u +

  « a¿ a a i *u ¦ i j asked for that little amount was a wimp, and that pieces of cardboard, hinged along their long edges,

  wimp was dead. Alive now, in his place, was Elmo Wimpler, Elmo the Invisible Killer, Elmo the Scourge of the World.