Sweet Dreams td-25

by Warren Murphy

  "It's important," Smith said. He sat behind the wheel of his car, his hands clenching and unclenching on the wheel.

  "Sure. Earth shattering," Remo said. "Like most of the other nonsense you get us involved in."

  "I don't pretend to understand everything about it," Smith said. "But just for openers, it would be invaluable in police interrogations. A good questioner can find out any secret. Imagine its application in intelligence work. Those are for a start. And try this. This Dreamocizer could be the ultimate drug. Somebody takes drugs now, he's leaping off into the unknown. But with this machine, he can go right where he's always wanted to go and do whatever he's always wanted to do. I can see two hundred million people sitting in front of these damn things and never moving. Zombies."

  Remo did not answer. He was thinking about what it would be like to live in a big wooden house with big grassy lawns and big brown trees.

  Remo pictured himself lying down on his lawn. He was holding something. It was an acorn. Across from him was a squirrel. It looked at Remo quizzically. Then it looked at the acorn. And it was not afraid. It hopped forward then stopped. It was no more than five inches from Remo's hand. In his mind's eye, Remo could see that he could have snatched it up or broken it in half or smashed its head in, but he didn't. Not his squirrel. Not on his lawn. There was no need for violence. There were no secrets, no national security to worry about, no spies or madmen or scientists or assassins. No junkies, Mafia, government. No Smith.

  Remo saw himself offering an acorn to the squirrel and the squirrel took it.

  He heard a voice call in his imagination.

  "Remo."

  Remo turned, as the animal ran off with its prize, and saw her there, standing in the doorway of his house.

  She was beautiful.

  Remo didn't see what she was wearing. He did not see the color of her hair or her eyes.

  He just saw her and she was beautiful.

  She came down the lawn calling his name.

  "Remo. Remo. Remo."

  Remo rose to meet her.

  "Remo."

  She had Smith's face. The thin graying hair. The face that looked as if it were sucking a lemon. She was wearing a gray suit and a white shirt.

  Remo shook his head, blinked, and was back on the campus of Edgewood University.

  He stared at Smith who was now standing beside him, a worried look on his face.

  "Remind me never to invite you to my house when you buy it for me," Remo said.

  "Are you all right?" Smith asked.

  "Fine. Can anybody use this Dreamocizer?"

  "It is evil," Chiun said.

  "Keep out of this," Remo said.

  "It is evil," Chiun repeated. "Dreams are meant to be only visitors in one's life."

  "You're a great one to say that," Remo said. "You and your soap operas."

  "My daytime dramas are just that. Stories. Lovely poems. I live in the real world."

  "And so do I," Remo said. "Smitty, I want that house. And I'll protect your Professor Wooley and I'll make sure the wrong people don't get his machine and I'll…"

  "Hold," Chiun said. "We are co-equal partners. Yet you prattle on about what you will do. What will I do?"

  Before Remo could tell Chuin that he would no doubt be busy finding new things to kvetch about, they heard the scream.

  They turned toward the sound.

  A wail of many voices rose, then passed like a cloud. Then a young coed stumbled through the pine boughs.

  Remo caught the girl just as she was falling face first onto the asphalt of the parking lot. She sank into his arms. He gently turned her over so her blank eyes stared upward. She whined softly, piteously.

  "What happened?" he asked.

  The girl looked through Remo, unable to focus her eyes.

  "Blood," she said. "Blood everywhere. I heard the noises. I looked up… hit me in the face… wet, couldn't see. I wiped it off… felt ear, eye… blood… Poor Doctor Wooley."

  She started to wail and Remo let her down gently and told Smith: "Wait here until I see what's happening."

  He ran off between the trees. He heard loud shouting ahead of him now.

  Chiun cradled the girl in his arms and touched her on the neck, then rubbed the back of her head. He looked up at Smith.

  "She will forget now," he said.

  On the other side of the stand of trees, Remo ran past stunned, stumbling students until he found the exit doors that led into Fayerweather Hall's main lecture auditorium.

  He stood beside the blackboard staring at the huge pool of blood with the broken-headed corpse in the middle.

  He recognized Wooley at once; the body of Lee (Woody) Woodward meant nothing to him.

  The red sea of blood reached across both exit doors and was building up slightly in the small declivity formed by the blackboard wall and the incline of the first row of seats.

  Remo saw the blood circle around a pair of shoes. The shoes had feet in them, feet that led up to a boy, sitting in a seat, doing an excellent impersonation of advanced catatonia.

  He was staring straight ahead and gently touching dried brown bloodstains on his face.

  Teachers and students from other classes began to gather around the pool of blood. They stood staring at the corpses of Wooley and Woodward. Several threw up. Some moved around to get a better look, then all started talking at once.

  "Did anyone call the police?"

  "Yeah. No. I don't know."

  "Who did it?"

  "Some madman. Woodward tried to shoot old Wooley and this lunatic took off both their heads with that mace."

  "Who was he?"

  "Dunno. Army jacket, steel-rimmed glasses. Looked like us."

  Remo moved outside, walking past huddled moaning shapes. One had thrown up and was trying not to again. Another youth, who couldn't take his eyes off the exit doors, was trying to comfort a girl who was weeping hysterically.

  This wasn't a dream. The students who had seen the murders would never forget it; they wouldn't have to strap their heads to a television set to conjure up a fantasy of blood and death. They had seen it, had it dumped into their laps.

  Remo walked back through the pine trees. Chiun and Smith were still crouching over the girl.

  Before Smith could say anything, Rerno said: "Wooley's dead, Smitty."

  "Who did it?"

  "I don't know, but I'm going to find him. You can forget the house for awhile," Remo said. "This one's a freebie. Will she be all right?"

  Chiun nodded.

  "Then leave her and let's go. We've got work to do. So long, Smitty."

  Leen Forth Wooley felt something pull at her. She took off her stereo headphones and tried to dig on the new vibrations.

  But it was only someone banging on the front door of her house. Usually, she would ignore it because Wooley wasn't home, but the knocking seemed more insistent, faster, than one of her father's usual visitors.

  She drifted slowly toward the door, remembering Wooley's injunction to be cautious.

  "Who is it?" she said.

  "Leen Forth," came a student's young sounding voice. "Your father's been killed."

  "Oh, my god," Leen Forth cried and fell backward into the living room. She took a deep breath, then rose and went to the door.

  "How did it happen?" she coolly asked the student there, an eighteen-year-old boy with a complexion like pizza and the insecurity of an unfed kitten.

  "Murdered. Some maniac at Fayerweather Hall," the student said unfeelingly, then stopped when he saw the effect of his words on Leen Forth.

  "Thank you," she said and slammed the door.

  So they had gotten to him. All those people with their greed and their promises and their threats, and someone had gotten to William Westhead Wooley because the world was afraid of his genius and wanted to silence it.

  Never. Not if she could help it.

  She fished in the pocket of her jeans and found the scrap of paper, and dialed the telephone number.


  "Yes, Mr. Massello, dead. Murdered. Yes, I know where it is. Yes, I'll be right there. Of course, I'll bring the machine."

  Then Leen Forth Wooley hung up the phone and ran from her house toward safety. Toward the houseboat of her father's friend.

  Don Salvatore Massello.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Remo and Chiun seemed hardly to be walking, yet they were covering ground as if on the dead run toward Professor Wooley's cottage.

  "First we'll make sure that the girl is all right," Remo said. "Then we'll see if we can get the dream machine. I'll need your help."

  "Why?" said Chiun.

  "She's… well, Oriental."

  "She is Vietnamese," Chiun said. "You know what I have told you about Vietnamese."

  "Yeah, but she might trust you."

  "Why? Because we look alike?" Chiun said.

  "Well, some Orientals all do look alike," Remo said lamely.

  "All you pigs' ears look alike and I would not trust any of you," Chiun said.

  "Do it for the country then," Remo said.

  "What country?"

  "America."

  "What has this country done for me?" Chiun said.

  "Ask not what this country can do for you," Remo said. "Ask what you can do for this country."

  "Did you just make that up?" Chiun asked.

  "No. President Kennedy did."

  "And where's he now?"

  "I don't want to talk to you anymore," Remo said. "I'll handle it myself. Just like I do everything else."

  "Good," Chiun said. "It is almost time."

  "Almost time for what?" Remo asked.

  "It is almost one o'clock. It is almost time for The Gathering Clouds to begin."

  "Good luck," Remo said, as he dashed into Wooley's house, with Chiun close behind him.

  Remo searched the house for Leen Forth while Chiun inspected the television set, broken by a gangster's head the night before, and determined that it was indeed broken beyond repair.

  "She's not here," Remo said when he came back to the living room.

  "This set is broken," Chiun said. "If it hadn't been for you… If I hadn't had to protect you, this would not have happened… this set would not be broken." He was working himself up from annoyance, through anger, to outrage.

  "Too bad," Remo said.

  "Heartless you are. Heartless."

  "You find your stupid television set. That poor girl may be with that looney that killed her father. I've got to find them."

  "Follow your nose," Chiun said. "Vietnamese smell funny."

  Chiun went out on the porch and sat on the top step sadly, watching Remo race off across the well-watered grass of the campus.

  It had been more than eight hours since Arthur Grassione had heard from the two men he had sent to Doctor Wooley's house to get the Dreamocizer and to dispose of Wooley.

  Finally, he had sent Edward Leung there to see what had happened, and Leung had come back to report that the two men's bodies had been stuffed into garbage pails in the back of Wooley's house.

  Leung's heart-shaped yellow face looked sad as he delivered the news.

  "They were broken up badly," he said, and his tone of voice sent a chill through Grassione.

  "Yeah, what happened to them?" he asked.

  "One shot with his own gun. His skull blown away. The other one, no marks. As if he died of fright."

  "Just like the others," Grassione said.

  "What's others?" said big Vince Marino, standing by the window of the second-floor apartment, looking out into the curved drive below.

  "All those people we been losing. All over the country. Just like that. Shooting themselves. Scared to death. There's somebody doing something to us." He looked up and caught a hint of a smile on Edward Leung's mouth.

  "What are you smirking about, you goddam fisheating fortune-telling freak?"

  "Nothing, sir," Leung said.

  "You'd better talk, coolie."

  Leung took a deep breath before speaking. Slowly he said, "I warned you of this. All of life ends in death and dreams."

  "Aaaah, I don't want to hear your bullshit," Grassione said. "I shoulda left you in that gook carnival where I found you." He rose and walked to the window where he shouldered Marino out of the way. Looking down across the campus, he saw a thin man running. He had dark hair and even at this distance, Grassione could see his thick wrists. Something about him looked familiar. He must have seen him run before. But he had no time to puzzle about it because the telephone rang.

  Don Salvatore Massello wished to speak to him.

  "Were you responsible for what happened today in the lecture hall?" Massello asked.

  "What? What happened?"

  "Professor Wooley was murdered. And he had already agreed to our terms."

  "Murdered?" said Grassione. ''I didn't know anything about it. Who did it?"

  "I don't know. I am told it was a barbarian act," Massello said, "so I assumed it was one of your people."

  The insult flew so high above Grassione's head that he did not even hear its wings flap. "Not my men," he said. "We were staying away from Wooley until we heard from you. What about the machine?"

  "I have been in contact with the professor's daughter. She is bringing me the machine. So all will work out all right," said Massello.

  "Good. That's good," said Grassione with a heartiness he did not feel.

  "Yes, it is," said Massello and without even the usual courtesies he hung up.

  Grassione moved quickly to the door. "Let's go. Vince. You goddam Chink. Let's move it."

  "Where are we going, boss?" Marino asked.

  "We got to get over to Wooley's house. See if the girl's still there and try to get that machine. And then we've got a date with Don Salvatore Massello."

  Twenty-one Edgewood University students who wore Army field jackets and steel-rimmed glasses were in their rooms all over the campus dormitory area when they were visited by a dark-eyed man with thick wrists who put an index finger, like a railroad spike, into their shoulder muscles and growled:

  "Did you kill Wooley?"

  None of them had and they were all glad because the momentary pain was so excruciating that they would have admitted the murder, they would have confessed to the slaying of Archduke Ferdinand at Sarajevo, even to the ultimate sin of having voted Republican, if that's what it took to make the pain stop.

  But the pain stopped as quickly as it had come and before they could react the thick-wristed man was out the door.

  Remo was out of leads and he was about to return to Wooley's cottage where Chiun was waiting, when he ran across a man walking back and forth on the sidewalk, wringing his hands together as if they contained an invisible dishcloth.

  "Oh, my god," he said. "Oh, my god. What will people think of us? Who'll ever enroll again at Edgewood? What are we going to do?"

  Norman Belliveau looked skyward as if demanding an immediate reply from God and shouted: "What are we going to do?"

  "Stop acting silly," Remo said.

  Belliveau postponed his confrontation with God long enough to look down and see Remo.

  "I'm looking for a man in an Army field jacket," Remo said. "A young man. Steel-rimmed glasses. You see anybody like that?"

  "Dozens of them. Hundreds of them. All over the campus. Making us a laughing-stock. Not caring about the sanctity of the educational process."

  "I don't think this one's a student," Remo said.

  "No. Wait. I saw somebody like that this morning. He asked me for directions to my place to see Patti Shea. He couldn't be a student if he didn't know where I lived."

  "Good thinking," said Remo. "Where do you live?"

  "Over there," Norman Belliveau said, pointing. "You're not a student, are you?"

  "No," said Remo and he moved away, leaving Norman Belliveau to worry about why all these non-students were on campus.

  The door was unlocked and open and Remo walked right in. The back bedroom door was locked and as Rem
o pushed against it, he heard a woman's voice from inside.

  "You've come to kill me, haven't you?"

  "What?" Remo said.

  "Come in. Come in. I've been waiting for you." Patti Shea pulled open the door and stood before Remo. She was dressed in a one-piece black leather swimsuit cut down to her belly button and fastened by black leather thongs tied across the V-front, shoelace style. Her long curved legs were fully visible because the sides of the suit were cut up almost to the waist.

  "Who are you?" she said.

  "Where is he?" Remo said.

  "You look like you'd punish me," she said. She moved back into the room and plopped down on the couch which was covered with wide leather belts, handcuffs, and pieces of rope. She hit herself lightly on the wrist with a black whip, waiting.

  "Well? Wouldn't you punish me?" she said.

  Remo stared at the rest of the room. It looked like a museum of sado-masochism. Shackles and manacles of all kinds lined the bed and furniture. Stockings and ripped pieces of cloth hung out of half-opened drawers. Silk ties were draped over the doorknob of the closet. Feathers and red rubber balls were strewn on the top of the dresser.

  Remo imagined there were rose thorns lining the shower stall and metal studs on the inside of the closet.

  "I'm looking for a man," Remo said. "Army jacket, steel-rimmed glasses."

  "I won't tell you," she said. "I won't. You can just try to beat it out of me."

  She closed her eyes and threw herself back across the couch with one arm flung out toward the floor, the other, palm up, on her forehead. Her long legs stretched out full-length on the sofa, exposing her entire body to whatever cruel, painful thing this stranger might plan to inflict on her.

  "Listen, freakie," Remo said. "I don't have time to play in your dirty little sandbox, so where is he? The one who was here this morning for you."

  Patti Shea opened one eye and looked at Remo. There was a look in his eyes that ruled out lying.

  "Oh, crap," she said and sat up. "You're not going to do anything, are you?" She shook her head, agreeing with herself. Her breasts kept time with her head movements. "You're looking for T.B. I set this up for him. It relaxes him after a job."

  "So where is he?"