Chinese Puzzle td-3

by Warren Murphy

  "What happened honey?" said the gaunt woman. "Exactly what happened?"

  "I was wrapping this funny coat for her and then she told me to tie my tongue or something. She was real aristocratic and she crapped on me. Just plain crapped on me."

  The gaunt woman stared hatefully at Mr. Pelfred. "We don't have to put up with this, Mr. Pelfred. She does not have to wait on this customer and if you order her to, this whole store is gonna shut down. Tight."

  Mr. Pelfred's hands fluttered. "All right. All right. I'll do the wrapping myself."

  "You can't," said the gaunt woman. "You're not in the union."

  "Fascist pig," said Mei Soong coolly. "The masses have seen their exploitation and are breaking their chains of oppression."

  "And you, lotus blossom," said the gaunt woman, "button your lip and get your friggin' coat out the friggin' door or you're going out the friggin' window, along with your sexy looking boyfriend. And if he doesn't like it, he's going out with you."

  Remo raised his hands. "I'm a lover, not a fighter."

  "You look like it, gigolo," the gaunt woman said.

  Mei Soong slowly looked to Remo. "Are you going to allow these insults to be heaped upon me?"

  "Yes," said Remo. Her golden face flushed pink and with great chill, she said: "All right. Let's go. Pick up the coat and dresses."

  "You take half of them," said Remo.

  "You take the coat."

  "All right," said Remo. He looked mournfully at Miss P. Walsh. "I wonder if you could do me a big favor. We have a long way to go and if you'd put the coat in a box of some sort, I'd really appreciate it. Anything would do."

  "Oh, sure," said Miss P. Walsh. "Hey, look, it might rain. I'll double wrap it. We got a special kind of paper in the back room that's impregnated with chemicals. It'll keep it dry."

  When the sales girl had left for the special paper wrapping and Pelfred had, as prissily as possible, marched back toward the elevator, and the gaunt woman had swaggered back to the stock room, Mei Soong said to Remo: "You need not have grovelled before her."

  And on their way back to the hotel, she added: "You are a nation without virtue." But she warmed in the lobby and by the time they had returned to their rooms where Chiun sat atop his luggage, she was bubbling over with enthusiasm about her upcoming visit to the karate school she had heard of and what great fun it would be.

  Over her shoulder, Remo winked at Chiun, and told him, "Come on, we're going back to Chinatown. To see a karate demonstration."

  Then Remo asked the girl, "Do you want to eat now?"

  "No," she said quickly. "After the karate school, then I'll eat."

  She did not say "we", Remo noticed. Perhaps she expected that he would not be around for dinner.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  "Sir, I must advise you that soon you may not place faith in our efforts concerning the matter."

  Smith's voice had passed the stage of tension and chill and was now as calm as the Long Island Sound outside his window, a flat, placid sheet of glass, strangely undisturbed by its usual winds and waves.

  It was over. Smith had made the decision which his character demanded, that character for which a dead president had chosen him for an assignment he did not want, that character begun in his youth, before memory, and which told Harold W. Smith that there are things you must do, regardless of your personal welfare.

  So it was ending now with his own death. Remo would phone. Dr. Smith would order Remo to tell Chiun to return to Folcroft. Chiun would kill Remo and return to his village of Sinanju by the Central Intelligence Agency.

  "You've got to stay with this longer," the President said.

  "I cannot do that, sir. The three of them have collected a crowd around them. A line of ours was tapped, fortunately by the FBI. But if they knew for sure who we were, think of how they would be compromised. We are going through our prepared program before it will be too late. That is my decision."

  "Would it be possible to leave that person still working?" The President's voice was wavering now.

  "No."

  "Is it possible that something will go wrong with your plans for destruct?"

  "Yes."

  "How possible?"

  "Slight."

  "Then if you fail, I still might be able to count on you. Would that be possible?"

  "Yes sir, but I doubt it."

  "As President of the United States, I order you, Dr. Smith, not to destruct."

  "Goodbye, sir, and good luck."

  Smith hung up the special phone with the white dot. Oh, to hold his wife again, to say goodbye to his daughters, to play one more round of golf at the Westchester Country Club. He was so close to breaking 90. Why was golf so important now? Funny. But then why should golf be important in the first place?

  Maybe it was good to leave now. No man knew the hour of his death, the Bible said. But Smith would know the exact second. He looked at his watch again. One minute to go. He took the container with the pill from his gray vest pocket. It would do the job.

  The pill was white and oblong with bevelled edges like a coffin. That was to let people know it was poison and not to be consumed. Smith had learned that when he was six. It was the sort of information that remained with a person. He had not, in his lifetime, ever had use for it.

  With his mind now floating in the nether world of faces and words and feelings he had thought he had forgotten, Smith spun the coffin-like pill on the memo that would take the aluminium box to Parsippany, New Jersey.

  The central phone rang. Smith picked it up and noticed his hand was trembling and the phone slippery from the perspiration.

  "I've got good news for you," came Remo's voice.

  "Yes?" said Smith.

  "I think I can latch on to our man. And I'm going to where he is."

  "Very good," said Dr. Smith. "Nice going. By the way, you can tell Chiun to return to Folcroft."

  "Nah," said Remo. "He's gonna work out fine. I know just how to use him."

  "Well," said Smith. "He doesn't really fit into the picture now. You send him back."

  "No way," said Remo. "I need him now. Don't worry. Everything is going to work out fine."

  "Well, then," Smith's voice was calm in appearance, "just tell him that I asked for him to return, okay?"

  "No good. I know what you're doing. I tell him that and he'll return, no matter what else I tell him. He's a pro like that."

  "You be a pro like that. I want him back now."

  "You'll get him tomorrow."

  "Tell him today."

  "No deal, sweetheart."

  "Remo, this is an order. This is an important order."

  There was silence at the other end of the phone, an open line to somewhere. Dr. Smith could not afford to give away what he had just given away and yet he had had to try strength.

  It didn't work. "Hell, you're always worrying about something. I'll check with you tomorrow. Another day won't cripple you."

  "Are you refusing an order?"

  "Sue me," came the voice and Smith heard the click of a dead line.

  Dr. Smith returned the receiver to the cradle, returned the pill to the little bottle, returned the bottle to his vest, and buzzed his secretary.

  "Phone my wife. Tell her I'll be home late for dinner, then phone the club and get me a tee time."

  "Yes, sir. About the memo on the shipment of the goods downstairs? Should I send it?"

  "Not today," said Dr. Smith.

  There was nothing he would be needed for until tomorrow at noon. The only function he had left was to die and take an organization with him. He could not do that until the first step-the death of Remo-was settled. And since he had no other decisions to make, he would go golfing. Of course, under all this pressure, he wouldn't break 80. If he could break 90, that would be an accomplishment under the circumstances of today. Breaking 90 today would be the equivalent of breaking 80 under other circumstances. Because of the seriousness of the day, Smith would allow himself a mulligan.
No, two mulligans.

  It was a peculiarity of Dr. Harold W. Smith that his honesty and integrity, steel bound unto death, would, when he put a white ball on a wooden tee, dissolve into marshmallow.

  By the time he waggled himself into a solid stance at the first tee, Dr. Smith had given himself four strokes for his impending demise, winter rules because of his lower body temperature, and any putt within six feet of the pin. The last advantage still awaited a rationale, but Dr. Smith was sure he would have it by the first green.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Bernoy Jackson packed a .357 Magnum revolver into his attaché case, a pistol known as a cannon with a handle. He would have taken a real cannon, but it would not have fit, either into his attaché case, or into the main floor of Bong Rhee's Karate Dojo.

  He would have liked to have brought with him five button men from his own organization and perhaps, an enforcer or two from organizations in Brooklyn and the Bronx.

  What he really wanted, and he knew this very well when he pulled his customized Fleetwood from the garage around the corner and clipped a hydrant on his way out, was to not be going to the school at all.

  As the $14,000 gray vehicle with sun roof, stereo, bar, phone and colour TV, moved down 125th Street toward the East River Drive, he thought for a moment that if he turned north on the drive he could keep going. Of course, he would have to go back to his pad first, and remove cash from the hidden safe behind the third plant. What was that? $120,000. It was just a fraction of his worth, but he would be alive to spend it. Then he could start again, take his time, set up slowly. He had the bankroll for a good numbers operation and he knew how to run it.

  The wheel was sweat-slippery in his hands as he passed under the Penn Central Railroad tracks. He was nine when he realized those tracks did not lead to all the faraway wonderful places in the world but just to upstate New York with Ossining on its way and an awful lot of towns that didn't want Nigger boys like Bernoy Jackson.

  His grandmother had been so wise: "The man ain't ever gonna do you right, boy."

  And he believed it. And when he should have believed it most, eight years before, he didn't. And now, as befitting life in Harlem, having made the wrong decision, he was going to die for it.

  Jackson turned the air conditioner to high, but found little comfort. He was simultaneously chilled and perspiring. He wiped his right hand against the soft dry material of the seat. His first Cadillac was lined with white fur, an incredibly silly venture, but one he had dreamed of. The fur wore too quickly and the car was vandalized five times in the first month, even in the garage.

  Now his Fleetwood was gray with all the good things neatly hidden. He would be at the East Rivet Drive soon. And when he turned right to go south, to go downtown, to go to his death, there would be no turning back. That was the big difference between Harlem and white America.

  In white America, people could make a major mistake and recoup. In Harlem, your first big one was your last big one. It had seemed so easy eight years before when he should have remembered his grandmother's advice and taken counsel of his own beliefs. But the money was so good.

  He was sipping a Big Apple special, three shots of scotch for the price of two, when another runner, they were all small time then, laid the word on him that a man wanted to see him.

  He had purposely continued to sip his scotch slowly, showing no great concern. When he was finished, with great effort at being casual he left the Big Apple bar, out onto chilly Lenox Avenue, where a black man in a gray suit sat in a gray car and nodded to him.

  "Sweet Shiv?" said the man, opening the door.

  "Yeah," said Jackson, not moving closer, but keeping his hand in the right pocket of his jacket over the neat .25 calibre Beretta.

  "I want to give you two numbers and $100," the man said. "The first number you play tomorrow. The second number you phone tomorrow night. Play only $10 and don't play with your boss, Derellio."

  He should have asked why he was the lucky recipient. He should have been more suspicious at the man knowing his nature so well, knowing that having been told to play a number with all the money, he would have played none of it. Having been just given a number he would have ignored it. But having been given $100 to play $10, he would risk the $10, just to make the phone call more interesting.

  Jackson's first thought was that he was being set up to break a banker. But not on $10. Did the man in the car really want him to play the $100 and another $500 on top of that?

  If so, why pick Sweet Shiv? Sweet Shiv wasn't going to put his own money into something he couldn't control. That was for little old ladies with their quarters and their dreams. That was what the numbers were in Harlem. The dream. If people really wanted to make money they would go to the Man's numbers, the stock market, where the odds were in your favour. But the Man's numbers were too real, it reminded you you didn't have nothing worth betting and you'd never make it out of the mud.

  The numbers, however, they were pure sweet fantasy. You bought a day of dreaming of what you'd do with $5,400 for $10. And for a quarter, you got $135 worth of groceries, or rent, or a new suit, or a good taste if that was your pleasure. Or whatever your pleasure.

  Nothing would ever replace the numbers in Harlem. Nothing would ever stop them, not unless someone came along with a new instant dream, payable the next day at the corner candy store.

  Jackson bet the number and won. Then he phoned the other number.

  "Now," came the voice, "bet 851 and 857, small. Play it with your boss, Derellio, and tell your players to play those numbers too. And phone back tomorrow night."

  Eight fifty one paid off but the hit was not that big because Jackson's players did not trust him. Not that they thought he was un-trustful, Jackson knew, but that they did not really have a handle on him.

  When he phoned the number again, the voice said: "The number tomorrow is 962. Tell your people you have the strongest hunch ever. And tell them you can only take so much, they'll have to go to Derellio personally. And play the number straight."

  The play the next day was heavy. Big. And when 962 appeared in the day's parimutuel handle on the next to the last page of the Daily News, Derellio was broken. He had been hit for $480,000 and had not laid off any of the bets.

  The next night, the voice said: "Meet me on the ferry going towards Staten Island that leaves in an hour."

  It was bitter cold on the ferry, but the man who had been in the car, seemed not to mind the cold. He was well trussed in fur lined coat and boots and fur-lined field cap. He gave Jackson an attaché case.

  "There's half a million in there. Pay off all Derellio's winners. And phone me again tomorrow night."

  "What's your game?" asked Jackson.

  "Would you believe," the man said, "that the more I learn of what I do, the less I know why I'm doing it."

  "You don't talk like a brother."

  "Ah, that's the problem of the black bourgeoisie, my friend. Goodbye."

  "Wait a minute," said Jackson, hopping up and down on the deck of the ferry, beating his arms for warmth while trying to balance the attaché case between his legs, "what if I take a walk with this bread, man?"

  "Well," said the man wearily, "I sort of figure you're pretty smart. And you're not going to walk until you know who you're walking from. And the more you know, the less you're going to want to walk."

  "You don't make sense, dude."

  "I haven't made sense since I took this job. Just accuracy." The black man said goodbye again and walked away. So Jackson had paid off the players and taken over the bank. If they could give him a half million to throw away, they could give him a million for himself. Besides, then he would walk.

  But he did not walk. He did not walk when he received his bankroll. He did not walk, even when he was told to stand on a street corner one night, only to be told by a white man an hour later, "You can go now." Derellio and two of his henchmen were discovered with their necks broken in a nearby store a half hour later, and Sweet Shiv J
ackson suddenly had a reputation for having killed three men with his bare hands which vastly increased the honesty of his numbers runners. And all it cost was just a little favour every now and then for the weary-voiced black dude.

  Just little favours. Usually information, and sometimes it was putting this device here or that there, or providing an absolutely unshakeable witness for a trial or making sure another witness had money to leave town. And within a year, his main job was running an information network that stretched from the Polo Grounds to Central Park.

  Even his vacation in the Bahamas was not his own. He found himself in a classroom with an old white man with a Hungarian accent discussing in terms he had not used, things Jackson thought only the street knew. There were names for things like seals, links, cells, variables of accuracy. He had liked variables of accuracy. In street terms, it was "where he coming from?" It was cool.

  And then his network one fine autumn day was suddenly very interested in Orientals. Nothing specific. Just anything about Orientals that might come up.

  And then the dude reappeared and informed Sweet Shiv that now he would pay back in full for his good fortune. He would kill a man whose picture was in this envelope and he would kill him at the Bong Rhee karate dojo. The man had insisted that Sweet Shiv not open the envelope until he left.

  And so for the second time, Sweet Shiv saw the face, the high cheekbones, the deep brown eyes, the thin lips. The first time had been when he stood on a corner he had been told to stand on at a certain time, and the man had come out of the shop where Derellios' body was found later and had said simply: "You can go now."

  He was now going to see that face again, and this tune Sweet Shiv was supposed to put a bullet in it. And Sweet Shiv knew as he turned south into Manhattan on the East River Drive that he was going to be wasted.

  Somewhere a machine he had been part of was coming apart. And that machine belonged to the man. And the man had decided that one of its little black wheels was now going to be a piston. And if you lose a little black wheel trying to be a piston, well, what the hell, what's one Nigger more or less?