Sweet Dreams
( The Destroyer - 25 )
Warren Murphy
Richard Sapir
When a brilliant professor invents the world's first fantasy realization device, allowing anyone to watch their own secret fantasies on television, the Mafia are out to steal it, TV executives want to control it, and Remo and Chiun might be the only ones able to prevent it from killing everyone. As the death toll mounts, Remo, the Destroyer, and his teacher Chiun race to decipher the device's dangerous and deadly effects. But will the secret agents be able to resist the lethal temptation to watch their own secret fantasies?
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* Title : #025 : SWEET DREAMS *
* Series : The Destroyer *
* Author(s) : Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir *
* Location : Gillian Archives *
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CHAPTER ONE
"Many men build dream castles. Only a fool tries to live in one." -HOUSE OF SINANJU
Anyone could die, but to die well, my dear, that was what he wanted.
Dr. William Westhead Wooley watched himself say these words on his 19-inch television screen. A drop of blood formed on the lips of his television image, first fuzzily, then in red clarity. The body lay across the floor of a well-lit laboratory. The president of the university was there on television, tears in his eyes. Other faculty members were there too, heads bowed.
"We never appreciated Dr. Wooley," said Lee (Woody) Woodward, director of college affairs. He choked back a sob. "We never really comprehended his genius. We treated him like just another physicist in a market glutted with physics doctorates."
Janet Hawley was there on the screen too, as blonde as ever, as pretty as ever, as buxom as ever. In her anguish, she ripped a corner of her pale green blouse and just for a moment, William Westhead Wooley, dying, saw the rounded edge of a pink nipple above the sloping cloth of the nylon half-bra.
The Edgewood University faculty lost its sharp outlines, the television image faded, and bedroom walls began to replace suits and faces. The red blood on the lips melted away and the television image now showed Dr. Wooley on clean white sheets in a smoking jacket with a pad of paper, hearing a knock on the door.
The bedroom had several similarities to the one in which Dr. Wooley sat, with electrodes taped to his temples, their wires leading to the back of the 19-inch screen, set like a giant square eye atop plastic enclosed circuitry.
On the screen there was no frozen turkey dinner crusting in its cheap brown gravy, or yesterday's blue socks already filmed with dust. The windows were washed, mother's ferocious picture faced the wall, the floors were clean and the bed in the one-room apartment overlooking the vast muddy girth of the Mississippi from Richmond Heights, had, on the television screen, grown to double its size. But the greatest difference between the television image and Dr. William Westhead Wooley's room was Dr. Wooley himself.
Gone were the rutted remains of the pocked battlefield of juvenile acne. The skin was smooth, clear, and tanned. The nose was strong, as though crafted by a sculptor's chisel. Muscles appeared in the arms and the dimply pale puffed skin of the belly became flat with hidden muscle. Dark hair came upon the chest and the legs had a runner's spring. On television, Dr. Wooley was thirty-two and was writing his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize when he heard the knock on the door.
On the TV screen, Janet Hawley came in, crying. What could she do? She had been threatened.
"Threatened?" asked the improved image of Dr. Wooley. He put a hand on her blouse. He unbuttoned the top button. The hand found the bra. It moved down toward the nipple. The bra came flying off and Dr. William Westhead Wooley proceeded to make passionate and glorious love to the wanting Janet Hawley.
There was a knock on the door. Dr. Wooley shook his head; he hadn't imagined that. The knock became louder.
"If you don't answer, I'm going to leave." It was a woman's voice. It was Janet Hawley.
Dr. Wooley carefully snapped off the electrodes and rolled the wires back to the set. He started to put on a pair of gray chinos rumpled on the bed. No, not the chinos, he thought. He threw the chinos into the closet, calling out:
"Coming. Coming. Just a minute."
He snapped a pair of light blue flare bottoms from a hanger. He snuggled into them. He pulled a yellow turtleneck over his head and began combing his hair even before his eyes were free of the yellow cloth.
"Willy, if you don't open this door, I'm leaving."
"Coming," he said. He bathed Canoe shave lotion across the splotchy face and dried the perfumey smell on his hair. Then with a big smile he opened the door.
"Zip up your fly," said Janet Hawley. "Why aren't you dressed? The room is filthy. Do you expect me to wait here? I thought we were going out. It's bad enough I have to pick you up."
"Only because you never let me go to your apartment, dearest," said Dr. Wooley.
"The trouble with you, Willy, is that you always turn everything I say against me. We're talking about you."
Janet Hawley was exactly like her television image, blonde, fleshy, with a healthy lust about her body. Unlike the television picture, she was clothed up to her neck with a glaring yellow blouse, and almost to her ankles in a thick scratchy wool skirt.
"Take that yellow thing off," she said. "They'll think we're twins."
"Yes, dear," said Dr. Wooley. He hurled the yellow turtleneck off his body and into the closet with one smooth swing of his right arm.
"What is that?" yelled Janet Hawley. She pointed to the screen. She poked her head close to it. She looked at the nude blonde figure.
"That's me," she screamed. "And I'm undressed and I'm six pounds overweight. You've got dirty pictures of me and you're showing them on a television screen. Fatter than I am." - "No, dear, I'm not showing them. That's not a television picture. It is, but it isn't a television picture."
Janet squinted at the screen. It was her bad side, too. But the breasts seemed a little firmer than usual. Nicer in fact. But the strangest thing was that she was undressed with Willy.
"You made videotapes and did one of those mechanical things to get you in the picture," she said.
"No, dear," said Dr. Wooley. He nervously rapped his knuckles together like palsied applause.
"Well, what is it? One of those secret devices for listening in on other people's affairs that are none of your business?"
William Westhead Wooley grinned, shaking his head.
"I'll give you a hint," he said.
"You'll tell me outright," she said.
"That's sort of hard. It's complicated."
"If you're calling me stupid, you'll never get your hands on one of these again," she said, poking a finger into the yellow bulge of her blouse, a purple lacquered fingernail that glistened.
"You're going to let me tonight then?" he asked.
"Not bare," said Janet.
"I wouldn't think of bare. But then again I did," he said and he explained.
The mind worked on signals, electric impulses. But they were different from the impulses of the television screen. The mind created images which a person saw in his imagination. Television created images taken from light waves or what was called reality. What his invention was able to do was to translate mental images into the electronic beams that ran television. Thus the tube was an ordinary television tube but instead of a station somewhere sending out signals, it was the mind that sent out signals, so you could watch what you were thinking.
He took her hand to the plastic enclosed circuitry. He put her hand on the clear plastic case. It felt warm to Janet.
"This is what makes it work. This is the
translator."
He took her hand and put it on the electrodes.
"These attach to your head. They pick up the signals. Thus we have the signals from the mind into these, running along this, into this, which makes them into television signals and into the picture itself On the set. Dum de dum dum dum."
"You're not allowed to show dirty pictures on television," said Janet Hawley.
"You don't understand. We're not beaming these things through airwaves. It only goes on the wires in this room."
"They're dirty pictures," said Janet and that night she did not allow him more than a kiss on the cheek. She was thinking. This was a somewhat difficult exercise for Janet because it was a relatively new experience, and it so preoccupied her that William Westhead Wooley did not get to touch her bosom, bare or covered.
Not that her bosom remained untouched for the rest of that night. When she returned home to her apartment, her bosom was pinched, tweaked, slapped, and bitten by one Donald (Hooks) Basumo as her punishment for "wasting the night with that faggy teacher when I been here waiting for you. Whatta you two doing anyway?"
"I told you, dearest," Janet said, bending to pick up the five empty beer cans that littered the living-room floor. "I stay close to him because I think someday he may have some money."
"Yeah? How close are you staying is what I want to know?"
"Darling." Janet Hawley smiled. "Nothing. He never even touches me. He never even tries."
"He better not and you better not let 'im. I don't like my broads being handled by other people," explained Donald (Hooks) Basumo, displaying a morality based upon the fact that of twenty-seven arrests upon his record, a full one-third of them had failed to result in convictions.
Hooks emphasized this with a stinging right hand slap across Janet's bare breasts, then he sat back in a living-room chair and watched her clean the mess he had made in her apartment. When she finished sponging up the last of the spilled onion dip, Hooks pulled her into the bedroom and threw her onto the unmade bed where he raped her, Basumo's sexual technique bearing the same relationship to making love that the Blitzkrieg did to backgammon.
Then, still fully clothed, Hooks rolled off Janet onto his side and began to snore, the peaceful purr of the pure at heart. Janet Hawley undressed herself and lay in bed thinking.
An hour later, she kissed Hooks on the neck. He growled but snored on. A half-hour later, she tried again and this time, the snoring stopped.
"Honey," she said. "I've been thinking."
Hooks blinked himself into the waking world.
"Whadja say?"
"I've been thinking, honey," said Janet.
"Get outta here," said Hooks and belted her in the ear.
She screamed. She yelled that it was her apartment. That she paid the rent. She bought the beer. He had no right to hit her.
So he hit her again and now he was fully awake. The screaming had done it. He told her he would listen to her if she brought him a beer.
She answered that she wouldn't bring him a beer if his face was on fire. He hit her in the other ear.
She brought him the beer and told him that all night she had been thinking about a marvelous device she had just seen. You could get thoughts on a television screen, see whatever you imagined. All you had to do was think something and you would see it acted out for you on TV.
"For this you woke me?" he said.
He didn't like the idea. Anything that required thought would not sell to the American public, he said. Things that sold to the American public were things you didn't have to think to use.
She said she had seen dirty pictures on the screen.
Hooks Basumo cocked his head.
"You say dirty?" he asked.
"Yeah. You can imagine yourself humping anybody."
"Yeah? Raquel Welch? Sophia Loren?"
"Yeah. Burt Reynolds. Robert Redford," she said.
"Yeah? Charo? Maude's daughter?"
"Yeah," she said. "Clint Eastwood. Paul Newman. Charles Bronson. Anybody."
He belted her again because she seemed able to think of more names than he could, but then he stayed awake the whole night, making Janet tell him all the details, making sure she didn't forget anything. What he heard was money, lots of money.
And when he described it to a local fence the next day, he said he knew where he could get his hands on a new kind of porno machine. Anything you imagined would appear on the screen.
"I don't know. It would be tough to sell," said the fence. "Does it come with directions?"
Hooks allowed as how he didn't know and the fence turned him down because that special television would be too easy to trace since apparently it was the only one of its kind.
This outraged Hooks Basumo. If it was only one of a kind it had to be worth more. He looked menacingly at the little man. He hinted about how little men could get hurt late at night. He noticed what a fire hazard the fence's home was.
"Hooks," said the fence, "I can get your bones broken for eighteen dollars. Get out of here."
Hooks raised a finger in obscene contempt and left muttering about the fence's lack of masculinity because if anyone ever gave Hooks the finger like that, they'd frigging get their frigging head handed to them.
At a newsstand, he waited for someone to drop a dollar for change, then snatched it and ran. You could get away with that if the owner really was blind. It was those sneaks who were only partially blind who could cross you up. They could see the outlines of hands moving.
But Hooks knew his newsstands. A man of respect was always careful. It was the punks who were careless. At a Dunkin Donut, he got a jelly filled and a cup of coffee light. He also picked up twenty-three cents in tips someone had carelessly left under a soggy napkin.
A black Cadillac Seville waited outside with two men staring at Hooks. They had faces like pavements but with less warmth.
They had bulges in their silk suits. They did not smile.
When Hooks left the doughnut shop, the black car pulled up next to him on the curb.
"Hooks, get in," said the man next to the driver.
"I don't know you," said Hooks. The man in the front seat didn't say anything at all. He just stared at Hooks. Hooks got into the back seat.
They drove out of St. Louis proper on a route paralleling the Mississippi, fat with spring waters, wide as a lake. The car entered a fenced-off marina and Hooks saw a large white boat moored solid to a pier. The man in the front seat opened the rear door for Hooks.
"I didn't do it, I swear," said Hooks. And the man nodded him toward a gangplank.
At the top of the ramp, a round-faced man, sweating from the effort of keeping his fat supplied with blood and oxygen, nodded Hooks into a passageway.
"I didn't do it," said Hooks.
Hooks went down steps, his legs weak.
"I didn't do it," said Hooks to a man in a black tuxedo.
"I'm the butler," said the man.
When Hooks entered the room, and when he saw who sat on a large couch, he found himself unable to deny guilt. This was because the room spun around him and his legs were not beneath him and he was looking up. If he were looking up, he reasoned, his back must be on the floor. And who was giving him water?
Don Salvatore Massello himself. That's who was pressing a glass of water to his lips and asking if he were all right.
"Oh, Jesus," said Hooks. For now he was sure this was Massello. He had seen pictures in the newspapers and on television when Mr. Massello, surrounded by lawyers, had declined to talk to reporter?.
There was the silver hair, the thin haughty nose, the immaculate dark eyebrows and the black eyes. And they were looking down at him and the lips were asking him if he were all right.
"Yes. Yes. Yes sir," said Hooks.
"Thank you for coming," said Mr. Massello.
"My pleasure and anytime, Mr. Massello, sir. An honor."
"And it is an honor to see you also, Mr. Basumo. May I call you Donald?" said Mr. Massello, helpin
g Hooks to his feet and sitting him in a stuffed velvet chair and personally pouring him a glass of thick, sweet yellow Strega.
"Donald," said Mr. Massello, "we live in dangerous times."
"I didn't do it, sir. On my mother's sacred heart, I didn't do it."
"Do what, Donald?"
"Whatever, sir. I swear it."
Mr. Massello nodded with a tiredness that suggested the wisdom of the world.
"There are things men of respect must do to survive and I respect you for whatever you have done. I am proud to call you a friend, a brother."
Hooks offered to knock off any newsstand in the city for Mr. Massello, owned by a sighted person or not.
Don Salvatore Massello expressed gratitude for the most gracious offer but there was more important business at hand.
And he asked questions about the television set Donald had tried to sell to a fence. Had Donald seen it? Where was it? How did Donald hear of it? And getting an answer, Don Salvatore Massello asked about the girl, Janet Hawley, where she lived, where she worked and all manner of things concerning the girl.
"She don't mean shit to me, sir," said Hooks.
Mr. Massello understood that Donald was too serious a person to let his life be ruined by a skirt. Mr. Massello said this with a knowing smile. Mr. Massello led him to the door, assuring young Donald Basumo his future was secure. He would be a rich man.
And to show his good faith, he provided Donald with a room aboard the yacht that night. And two servants. They followed every instruction Hooks gave them, from bringing in booze and food and a young girl, except one request. Hooks wanted to take a walk in the fresh air. That they could not allow.
"You got everything you want right here. You're not leaving."
During the night, they awakened him and told him he could have his fresh air now. He didn't want it now. They told him he was taking it now.
It was 4:15 a.m. and quite dark. Hooks sat in the back seat of a car again and when they were well down the road headed toward St. Louis, he saw the marina lights come back on. He had left in darkness.
The car left the asphalt road and drove to the yard of a small construction firm. Hooks was surprised to see Janet Hawley waiting for him. She wore a bright yellow print dress covered from the waist up with mud. She was resting. At the bottom of a ditch, with a very big dent in her head.
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