Total Recall td-58

by Warren Murphy

  "Who are you?" the man demanded. His voice was deep and very authoritative, as if he were used to being obeyed without question.

  "I was about to ask you the same question," Remo replied.

  "You have no right to be here."

  "And you do, I suppose."

  "I have every right," the man said. He turned, retrieved the vials from the sink, replaced them in the medicine cabinet, and slid the door closed.

  "How do you figure that?"

  "The people who lived here were members of my parish while they were alive."

  "Your parish?"

  "Yes. My name is Lorenzo Moorcock. I am the minister of the Church of Modern-day Beliefs."

  "And what are you doing here if you know that the people who lived here are dead?"

  "I came to cleanse the house."

  "Are things so bad that you've got to take in house cleaning on the side?"

  "Levity is for fools."

  "And jail is for burglars, bozo," Remo said, grabbing Moorcock by the collar. "So 'fess up. What are you doing here?"

  "In order for the souls of these dear departed members of my parish to find peace, their home must be cleansed of evil spirits," the minister said hurriedly, gasping for air. "Especially considering the way they died."

  "So you were cleansing the medicine chest and the toilet?" Remo asked, releasing the man. "Seems to me a can of Ajax would do the job just as well, and you could leave God out of it. I'm sure he has a pretty full schedule… but then you'd know more about that than I would."

  Moorcock fixed Remo with a piercing stare— his eyes really were like that all the time— and said, "We do not speak of God in my church." He walked past Remo out of the bathroom into the bedroom.

  "You don't talk about God?"

  "We are too modern for that," the minister said haughtily.

  "That's interesting."

  "If you are truly interested, you may come to my church and listen to me preach," Moorcock said. "If you merely intend to scoff, you are welcome nonetheless."

  "I'll put on my scoffing shoes and take you up on that," Remo said. "I'd like to see a church where they don't talk about God."

  Moorcock turned and headed for the stairs.

  "If you happen to see a little Oriental gentleman downstairs, tell him that we already spoke, and he won't detain you."

  "An Oriental?"

  "Yes."

  "He is not a heathen, is he?"

  "No, he's Korean."

  Moorcock frowned at Remo, then turned and went down the steps to the first floor. Remo went back into the bedroom.

  He searched the entire second floor and found nothing. He was certain that Reverend or Minister Moorcock had not left with anything substantial, unless there was something in one of the pockets of his worn jeans. Apparently, his congregants not only did not talk about God, but they had some new ideas about how men of the cloth should dress.

  Remo went back downstairs to see if Chiun had come up with anything. He found the little Oriental standing virtually as he had left him.

  "Did you search?" he asked.

  "No."

  "You mean I've got to do it myself? Chiun, you better come out of this funk you're in."

  "I merely meant…"

  "Let me look around, and then you can tell me what you've been doing while I've been working."

  Chiun opened his mouth to say something but quickly closed it again and watched as Remo searched the rooms on the first floor of the house. Remo came back empty-handed.

  "You know," Remo said, "I don't know what we've been looking for, but I haven't come up with anything remotely resembling it."

  "Have you finished searching?"

  "Yeah, I'm done. Damned if I can find anything that would help."

  "You will if you go over to that corner of the living room," Chiun said, pointing with one long, tapered, wrinkled finger.

  Remo stared for a moment and then said, "That corner?"

  Chiun nodded. "As I might have expected, you passed by the obvious."

  Remo walked to the indicated corner. "The obvious, huh?"

  "Reach above you."

  Remo put his arms up and found that the ceiling was a few inches beyond his fingertips.

  "Stand on something," Chiun said wearily.

  Remo pulled over a small footstool, stood on it, and said, "Now what?"

  "If you'll look above you, you will see that there are very faint finger marks on the ceiling tile immediately above your head."

  Remo looked up quickly and saw that Chiun was right. There were very faint marks resembling fingerprints.

  "Match your fingers with those marks and lift the tile, and perhaps we will find something helpful."

  Remo reached up, touched the tile, and lifted it easily. Something fell out and fluttered to the floor.

  It was a fifty-dollar bill.

  "Isn't that interesting?" Remo said, looking from the bill to Chiun. The old Oriental jabbed his finger at the ceiling. Remo stuck his hand into the opening and began pulling out banded stacks of bills.

  "This is even more interesting," he said as each stack thudded to the floor.

  When he pulled out the last one, he slipped the tile back into place, got down off the footstool, and began gathering the money up, then piled the bills on a coffee table.

  "How much is there?" Chiun asked, coming over to look.

  "A lot," Remo said. "I don't think the exact amount is all that important. I'm just wondering what a man who works on an auto assembly line is doing with an extra fifty, let alone this much of a stash."

  "Put it back," Chiun said.

  "Back?"

  "Do you want to take it with you in your pockets?"

  Remo paused, remembering a time when the answer might have been yes. "No, I guess there's no need to lug it along with us, unless Smitty wants it."

  "It will go to the dead child's family," Chiun said. "Put it back."

  "Anything to keep you from starting that child stuff again," Remo said.

  He climbed up on the stool, but when Chiun refused to hand him the money, he had to get down, gather up a few stacks, put them back, and then repeat the process until all of the bills were back in the ceiling hideaway.

  "Did you meet the minister when he was leaving?" Remo asked.

  "We introduced ourselves," Chiun said.

  "We're going to have to take a look at his church before this is over."

  "Is there something unusual about it?"

  "Yeah, they don't talk about God there."

  "Most unusual," Chiun said. "What do they talk about?"

  "I don't know," Remo said, looking up at the ceiling tile.

  There was little more they could learn from the house, and the approaching darkness hinted that it was time to leave. Outside, they found a group of kids— fifteen and sixteen-year-old boys, actually— congregated around their car.

  "They either want to mug us or tell us who killed Billy Martin," Remo said to Chiun.

  "They are children," Chiun reminded his student. "They must not be harmed."

  "I'll try and remember that."

  As they approached the group, Remo wondered if these were the friends that the neighbor had told them about, the ones the Martin kid had hanging around all the time.

  "Hey, who's your friend, man?" one of the boys asked.

  "He is my pupil," Chiun said.

  "Naw, I wasn't talking to you, old man," the youth said. "I was talking to you." He pointed to Remo.

  "Too bad I wasn't listening," Remo said. "How about moving away from the car?"

  "Oh, is this your car?" the same youth asked. He seemed to be the spokesman of the group.

  "It belongs to a rental agency, but they don't like nose prints on the window either."

  The kid sidestepped to cut Remo off as he approached. He was as tall as Remo, but thinner and lighter. "You're a funny man, ain't you?"

  "I'm a patient man," Remo said, "but it's not going to last forever, so don't
push your luck."

  The boy looked Remo over and wasn't impressed. The man facing him was dark-haired, not overly tall or muscular, and didn't seem to pose an immediate threat. The only unusual things about him were his wrists, which were about as thick as tomato cans, and his choice of friends.

  "Is this your father?" the boy asked, grinning.

  Remo looked at Chiun, who gave him a warning look back. Remo took a deep breath and turned his attention back to the young man.

  "Look, son, if you've got something particular on your mind, I wish you'd get to it. Otherwise, you can just get out of our way."

  "Oooh," the kid said, widening his eyes and backing up a step. "Tough talk when all you've got to back you up is one old chink."

  Remo looked at Chiun to see what effect this remark had had. Maybe it would make him forget that these were just "children." Chiun's face was as impassive as ever, though, so he wasn't going to get any help there.

  "What's on your mind?"

  "We was just wondering what you were doing in that house, is all. See, our friend used to live there."

  "Is that a fact? What if I told you it was none of your business?"

  "Well then," the boy said, looking at his friends for support, "I guess we'd just have to make it our business, wouldn't we?"

  "Look, I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't get my friend here angry," Remo said, indicating Chiun. "I can't be responsible for his actions if you get him angry."

  "Him?" the boy asked, laughing. He looked at his friends, who also laughed on cue. "What could he do?"

  "Oh," Remo said, as if he was in pain, "I've seen him do some nasty things to men twice your size. Sometimes he doesn't know his own strength."

  "Oh, yeah?" The kid looked at Chiun with keen interest. "What is he, some kind of black belt or something?"

  "Black belts cross the street to avoid passing him," Reno said quietly.

  The entire group studied Chiun now, and then the leader said, "Well, what about you? You a black belt? Or maybe just yellow." The others laughed at the leader's joke.

  "Clever," Remo said. "Maybe when you grow up, you can be a comedian in the state pen."

  The kid stepped forward, blocking the car door with his body. "You ain't getting in this car, man."

  "Oh, no?" Remo snatched the car's hood ornament and pulled it free of its mooring. Without taking his eyes off the boy, he squeezed the ornament until the metal began to bend in his hand.

  When it had folded in half, he buried it in his palm and closed his hand again. Then, applying constant pressure, the way Chiun had taught him, he managed to grind the metal into a powder resembling salt crystals.

  He walked up to the leader of the group and poured the powder over the kid's head. "Time to go, Chiun," he said.

  The group fanned out and away from the car, congregating around their leader, who glinted in the sunlight like a statue made of glitter.

  "Happy I didn't hurt anybody?" Remo asked, starting the car and pulling away.

  "A barely satisfactory performance," Chiun said.

  "Oh? I thought I was pretty good."

  "There was no need to intimate that I am the possessor of an unmanageable temper."

  "Intimate? I didn't intimate. I flat-out lied—"

  "Oh, 'how sharper than a serpent's tooth…' " Chiun began, permitting a pained look to cross his face.

  "Okay, I apologize. Anyway, I'm interested in Moorcock. He was obviously looking for something in the house. What was it?"

  "What were we looking for?" Chiun asked.

  "I don't know."

  "Why could he not have been looking for the same thing?"

  "He might have been," Remo said, but he couldn't help but wonder if the good minister hadn't been looking for that money. And where had Billy Martin's father gotten such a windfall?

  A man entered the office of a car rental agency and began to tell the clerk behind the desk a story about a terrible driver.

  "We very nearly had an accident, and I'd really like to give him a piece of my mind," the man told the clerk.

  "I'm terribly sorry, sir. But are you sure he was driving one of our cars?" the clerk asked.

  "Positive. The car had one of your stickers in the windshield," the man replied. "I'd like to find out who the guy is and where I can find him."

  "Well, it would be highly irregular for me to give out that information, you understand," the clerk said. "And we may not even have a local address for him."

  "I understand," the man assured him, surreptitiously pressing a crisp twenty-dollar bill into the clerk's hand.

  "What was the license number?"

  The man recited the license number of the car. The clerk looked it up and gave him the man's name— Remo Randisi— plus the name of the hotel where he was supposed to be staying.

  "Thank you very much. I appreciate this… more than you know."

  The man left the rental agency and crossed the street to a large black car. He got into the back, where another man was waiting for him, and repeated the information he'd gotten from the clerk.

  "Very good," the other man said. "Now we'll handle this Remo, whoever he is."

  "Do you think he's a cop?" the first man asked.

  "If he is," the second man said, "he's a dead one."

  CHAPTER FIVE

  In the morning, Remo's car exploded.

  He wasn't in it. No one was, and he didn't find out about it until he came down to the hotel parking lot. Chiun was up in their room composing that same damned Ung poem, and he'd decided to leave him to his artistic expression while he checked out some leads. He was in no mood to listen to Chiun harp about "children" again.

  There was a fire truck outside the hotel, and a hose had been run into the parking area beneath the building. Whem Remo got off the elevator at the parking lot level, he saw all the commotion and collared a hotel employee to ask what had happened.

  "Some car just exploded, Mac," the guy said. He was one of the parking valets and had in fact parked Remo's car for him the night before.

  "Which car?" Remo asked.

  The man took a second look at Remo and then said, "Well, I'll be damned if it wasn't yours."

  "Mine, huh?" Remo said. "Do they know how it happened?"

  "I don't think so. I ain't heard nothing yet."

  "But you will, won't you?" Remo asked, slipping the guy a five spot. "Eventually you'll hear all about it?"

  "I sure will, mister."

  "Well, there's ten more in it for you if I hear about it right after you do."

  "You got it."

  "Good. Do you think you could go out front and have a cab meet me there? I forgot something upstairs."

  "Sure, my pleasure."

  Remo took the elevator up one flight and got off at the lobby. He didn't want to be seen walking through the garage with all the ruckus that was going on, and he didn't want to have to take the time to answer questions. As it was, the police were bound to find out that the car had been rented by him, and he'd be answering their questions soon enough. Right now, however, he had a few of his own to get answered.

  The cab was waiting out front. He got in and told the driver to take him to the National Motors plant. He was going there to talk to some of the people who worked with Allan Martin, Billy's father.

  During the ride, he contemplated the possibility that his rented car had blown up for some reason other than that somebody wanted it to— preferably with him in it. After all, if someone had indeed planted a bomb, they'd done a rotten job because the thing had gone off prematurely… luckily for him. Still, that was the likeliest explanation. At least whoever had done it had saved him the trouble of trying to explain to the rental agency what had happened to the hood ornament.

  At the plant Remo presented himself to the girl at the reception area, who was in charge of dispensing security clearance badges to visitors. The girl was young and very pretty, with long blond hair and green eyes. And she was obviously interested in Remo. It took little mor
e than flattery and a few gentle touches, strategically placed where Sinanju had taught him women were vulnerable— for him to appropriate a pass that gave him the right to go anywhere in the plant. He also managed to squeeze out of her the name of Allan Martin's immediate superior. It was Jack Boffa, the assembly line foreman.

  "You make sure you stop back this way before you leave," she said hopefully when he was through with her.

  "Of course," he said in his most charming manner. "I'll have to return the badge, won't I?"

  He wandered through the plant until he was finally able to locate the assembly line, taking the time to observe how the thing was run.

  From what he could see, more than a few of the men working the line were pretty drunk, and the ones who weren't drunk were pretty damned sloppy. Unlike Japan, where auto workers took great pride in their work and everyone on the assembly lines sang the company song and committed seppuku if one car was defective— or so he had heard— this looked like the kind of outfit where they called it a good day's work if no more than half of the cars manufactured were recalled for potentially fatal defects.

  It was enough to make one seriously consider taking up bicycle riding.

  Off to one side he spotted a man who had to be Jack Boffa. He was a tall, solidly built man standing with his arms folded across his chest and a clipboard dangling from one hand. Remo knew that a clipboard always signified authority.

  "Excuse me," he said, approaching the foreman.

  The man looked at Remo, frowned when he didn't recognize him, and asked, "How did you get in here?"

  "I'm authorized," Remo said, touching his badge.

  "I guess you are," the man replied, studying the plastic square on Remo's jacket. "What can I do for you?"

  "Are you Jack Boffa?"

  "That's me."

  "Things are run a little loose around here, aren't they?"

  Boffa's head swiveled, and he looked hard at Remo. "What are you, an inspector or something? We usually get some kind of warning. We pay enough—"

  "Hold it. I'm not an inspector."

  The tension eased from the man's face, and he said, "Well, then, who are you?"

  "Somebody interested in what happened to Allan Martin and his family."

  "Jesus, that's no secret. Him and his old lady were killed by their own son, and then the boy got himself killed."