Chained Reaction td-34

by Warren Murphy

  Chiun nodded. There was a stairway leading down to the ground from the back of the office.

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  Remo whispered to Ruby. "You stay here and talk to him. We're going after him."

  "What should I say?"

  "You've never had any shortage of words before," Remo said. "Yell at him. Pretend he's me."

  Chiun and Remo went back out through the front office door. Ruby realized if they went down the rear stairs, DePauw would see them and power off in the boat before they could reach him.

  "We came to sign up," Ruby said aloud in the office. She was surprised how her voice echoed off the wood walls.

  "Sign up for what?" DePauw answered. On the boat below, she saw DePauw looking up at the office windows and she moved toward the corner of the window so she would not be recognizable.

  "The movement," she said. "It's just what we need. What gave you the idea?" Keep him talking, she thought.

  "We appreciate all the support we can get. But exactly who are you ?"

  Ruby saw two flashes pass along the side of the house and out onto the bright sunlit lawn leading to the dock. Remo and Chiun were on the pier, and then they were leaping onto the boat.

  "We're the people who gonna bury you, you crazy honkey shit," Ruby shouted in savage triumph, then flung open the window and started down the back staircase.

  When she got to the dock, DePauw was sitting in a folding chair on the teakwood back deck of the boat. Chiun was casting off lines and Remo was trying to figure out how to make the boat go forward.

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  DePauw looked at Ruby with undisguised loathing as she lightly hopped aboard the boat.

  She smiled and chucked him under the chin with a finger.

  "This the way it happens," she said. "First we moves into your boat, then your neighborhood, and before you know it the whole country be shot to hell."

  With a lurch, Remo finally got the boat moving forward and it spun out into the warm blue waters of the Atlantic. After five minutes of running at top speed, he cut the engines back to idle and let the boat drift gently on the small hillocks of wave water.

  When he came back to the deck, DePauw had his arms folded across the chest of his natty blue pin-striped suit.

  "I want to see badges," he said to Remo. "Let's start with you." He started to rise from his chair, but Remo put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back into place.

  "We don't have badges," Remo said.

  "Then just who the hell do you think you are, marching onto my boat like this, taking over, holding me prisoner?"

  "Is there somehow some difference between what we're doing," asked Ruby, "and what you did to those men in your cellar?"

  DePauw started to respond, then closed his mouth tightly and set his jaw.

  "I'll tell you then," Ruby said. "There's one difference. You deserve it."

  "You'd better take me back before you get into real trouble."

  "Sorry," said Remo. "Since you people landed

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  the first slaves, your family's been sucking up off America, fattening up on other people's work. Today the bill conies due."

  Chiun had been staring back at the southern Florida coastline. He turned and said, "You are stupid, stupid. Sinanju, which deserves them, does not keep slaves. What therefore gives you the right?"

  "Some people are fit only to be slaves," De-Pauw said. "Now that's enough talk. I want my lawyer."

  "You won't need him," Remo said. "The verdict's in. For every crime that your family has ever committed against people, for two-hundred years, you're guilty. And there's no appeal of the sentence."

  "That's against the law," DePauw sputtered.

  "Only American law," Remo said.

  DePauw looked to Chiun. The old Oriental shook his head.

  "Not against Korean law," he said.

  In desperation, DePauw looked to Ruby.

  "Ain't against mine neither," she said. "Everybody know we lawless beasts."

  In the corner of the boat, Remo ripped the anchor chain loose from its cleat, and dragged the anchor back toward DePauw who watched him in horror.

  "I want a trial," DePauw said.

  "You don't need one," Remo said. "You're getting justice."

  He pulled DePauw to his feet. DePauw was bigger than Remo and he struggled to free himself, but Remo ignored the struggling and began wrapping the inch-thick anchor chain around his

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  body as easily as if it had been an inert lump of mud.

  "You can't do this," DePauw shouted. "This is America."

  "Right," Remo agreed. "Best country ever. And it'll be even better after you leave."

  "I want my lawyer," DePauw screamed as Remo twisted the ends of chain together in front, of DePauw's waist.

  Remo stood up and met DePauw's eyes with a wink.

  "Why?" he asked. "He swim better than you?"

  With no more effort than it would take to dribble a basketball, Remo hauled DePauw to the edge of the boat and threw him over. There was one last scream but it turned into a gurgle as the water rushed over his plummeting body and DePauw vanished from sight.

  "Satisfied, Ruby?" Remo asked.

  She nodded. She looked down at the water where DePauw had vanished. There were a few bubbles breaking the surface, as if the life was boiling out of Baisley DePauw. And then nothing.

  Remo put the boat in forward gear and spun it around, heading back toward the DePauw mansion.

  As the boat roared toward land, Ruby stood alongside Chiun on the rear deck, looking out past the wake at the spot where DePauw had submerged.

  "'S funny," Ruby said. "We come to this country in chains and we gets out of them and still there's always somebody trying to put those chains back on."

  She looked toward Chiun, who slowly turned

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  his face toward her, then reached out his hand and touched her cheek.

  "You need never fear," he said, before turning away. "Chains find only willing wrists."

  Remo neatly solved the docking problem by letting the boat run aground on the beach behind the house. The three of them walked around the back of the main house to the front door of the building that served as the slaves' sleeping quarters.

  As they went in, they heard the sound of motors.

  Three Rolls Royces were coming up the driveway, parking in front of the main house.

  "You two go down and let everybody go," Remo said. "I'll see what this is all about."

  Remo reached the front steps of the main house just as the limousines disgorged their passengers. Six men, in neat dark suits, with highly polished shoes, carrying small expensive leather briefcases.

  The backbone of America. Its forward-looking, creative-thinking businessmen.

  "Hi," Remo said. "Mr. DePauw sent me to meet you. You're here for the demonstration?"

  The men looked at each other with smiles. One of them, with hair that was styled to look un-styled, and fingernails that had been manicured to look as if he was not wearing nail polish, nodded to Remo. "Ready to be part of the new great American experiment," he said.

  "I know Mr. DePauw wants you to be part of it," Remo said. "We all do. Won't you come this way?" He turned toward the steps, then stopped.

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  "Oh, you can let your drivers go. You'll be a couple of hours."

  The businessmen began to give instructions to their chauffeurs when Remo broke in.

  "No," he said. "Leave the cars. In case he wants to take you somewhere. Mr. DePauw will have drivers for them. There's a good sandwich shop down the block. Your men can kill time there until we send for them."

  The businessmen gave instructions and followed Remo inside the house. He hustled them down the corridor to the left, toward the secret panel in the wall.

  "Wait'll you see this," he said with a chuckle in his voice. "I know you're going to get a hoot out of it."

  Ruby and Chiun had released the leg chains on the thirteen men and led them
up the steps into the small slave shack. The men were looking for their clothing when Ruby heard Remo's voice coming through the open trap door from down in the work area.

  "That's it," she heard him say. "You three wrap those things around and you three unwrap them. Got it?"

  There was a pause and Remo's voice was louder.

  "I don't hear you. You got it?"

  Six voices answered in unison. "Yes sir."

  "That's better," Remo said. "Now remember, Mr. DePauw wants you to be happy. And so do I. So you sing, just to show how happy you are. You know any songs?"

  Again there was a silence.

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  "Any kind of song," Remo's voice said, and it was harsh and demanding.

  Instantly, one frail nasal voice began to sing tentatively.

  "Good," Remo said. "Now louder. And all of you join in.

  The voices came now, recognizable.

  Disco Lady.

  Won't you be my baby?

  Ruby laughed aloud. Remo's voice again: "Thattaway. Now just keep working there and don't worry about a thing. Somebody'll be along and get you out of those leg irons. Probably no more than a couple of days."

  A minute later, Remo came up through the trap door into the shack.

  The black men were dressing. They looked at Remo as he came in. He met their eyes, then jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the trap door.

  "You've all been replaced."

  One of the black men cocked an ear to listen to the weak strings of "Disco Lady."

  "Gotta admit it," he said. "Them white folks sure's got rhythm. Makes you want to tap yo' feet and dance."

  Remo told them they were driving home to Norfolk in style. "Take the Rolls Royces in front. Nobody's going to miss them for awhile."

  The black men ran toward the front of the shack, Lucius Jackson among them.

  "Hey, Lucius," Ruby called. "You gonna go back with us?"

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  "Hell, no," Lucius called over his shoulder. "I wanna ride in that Rolls Royce."

  Ruby turned to Remo as her brother went outside into the sunlight. "I think I liked him better when he was wrapping that metal around those poles."

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  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Their car was the first back to Norfolk and Ruby led Remo and Chiun upstairs to give her mother the good news.

  "Mama, Lucius is coming home," Ruby said.

  Her mother inhaled a deep lungful of pipe and exhaled a smoke that looked greenish. She looked down at her feet.

  "What he been doin' the last week?" she asked.

  "Working," Ruby said.

  Her mother looked up at her sharply.

  "You sure it be Lucius?"

  For the first time, she seemed to notice Remo and Chiun. "That fella you be leavin' here, I fix up his arm best I could. But then he wen' over the hotel to stay. Say?"

  "Say what?" said Remo.

  "Iffen he be a doctor, how come he cain't fix his own arm ?"

  "Not that kind of a doctor."

  Mrs. Gonzalez nodded, her dark face deepened with chasms of crease wrinkles. "Guess not. Otherwise he be able to fix hisself up."

  "Where is he ?" said Remo.

  "De hotel."

  "Which one?"

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  "One of dem."

  Remo looked around to Ruby for help. She was talking agitatedly with Chiun in a corner of the room.

  "Ruby," Remo squawked.

  "He's at the Holiday Inn," she said. "You two can go ahead. I'll meet you there. I want to make sure Mama's all right."

  Smith was sitting in his hotel room in a straight backed chair, reading newspapers. The room looked as if it had emerged from the hermetically sealed pages of a Sears Roebuck catalogue, as if no one alive had ever been in it, and looking at Smith's pinched acid face, Remo saw no reason to dispute that judgment.

  "How's the shoulder?" Remo said.

  "I think by tomorrow I will have been able to wash off all that green slime that woman insisted on putting on it. Then I won't be too embarrassed to go to a doctor."

  Chiun opened Smith's shirt and pulled it down off his right shoulder to investigate the wound. He pressed with his fingers and nodded.

  "That green slime has done very nicely," he said. "I must learn what it was. You are healing well."

  "What happened in Florida?" Smith said, re-buttoning his shirt.

  Remo found it hard to remember the last time he had seen Smith without a jacket and vest.

  "Florida?" Smith repeated.

  "Oh, yeah," Remo said. "DePauw is dead. The prisoners are free. God's in his heaven, all's right with the world, and I'm back in retirement."

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  "Well, perhaps," said Smith. "But there's one thing left."

  Remo's face was grim as he leaned toward Smith.

  "As long as I've known you, Smitty, there's always been just one more thing."

  "Listen to the emperor, Remo," said Chiun, "who knows but that this one more thing may yet bring glory to your dull life. Tell him, Emperor, tell him. What is this one more wondrous thing?"

  Smith cleared his throat. "Yes, well. You know that we can operate only in secrecy. Without secrecy, CURE goes under."

  "I've heard that and heard it and heard it," Remo said.

  "Our secrecy has been breached. Shattered, I guess, is more accurate."

  "Good. Then go out of business. Open a dry goods store someplace up in New Hampshire. Cheat the locals before they cheat you. I know a good real estate agent. If you like houses without roofs."

  Chiun looked stern. "Remo, since you have been on television, you have lost all your manners. Is that what being a star has done to you? Show respect for the little people."

  "Who are the little people, Chiun?"

  "Everybody but me."

  "All right, Smitty, I'll hear you out before I laugh in your face. Who breached security this time? And so what?"

  "Ruby Gonzalez," Smith said. "And you've got to dispose of her."

  Smith watched closely. Remo's face showed no emotion. He simply stood back from Smith's

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  chair and looked out a window. "Why don't we talk English, Smitty? You don't mean dispose of her, you mean kill her, don't you ?"

  "All right, kill her."

  "Stuff it. You forgot that I quit."

  "Just this one more thing."

  "Never again. I'm retired. You want her hit, talk to Chiun. He's still in the business. But I won't."

  Smith looked at Chiun who shook his head sadly. "Any enemy of yours, Emperor, is an enemy of mine. Point them out and they will feel the wrath of Sinanju. But not that girl with the Brussels-sprout ears. Not her."

  "Why is she different?"

  "She is going to give me a son. It is all arranged."

  "You? A son?"

  "It will technically be Remo's, of course/' Chiun said.

  "I have something to say about this," Remo said without turning.

  Behind his back, Chiun shook his head, indicating to Smith that Remo would have nothing to say about it at all.

  "So this I cannot do," Chiun said. "Not by my hand can I lose the only good recruit my House will ever have, my chance, like all the other Masters for centuries, to pass on my secrets to someone deserving."

  Remo sniffed his disgust.

  "Guess you'll have to do it yourself," he said. "Get a taste of what it's like."

  "I guess I will," Smith said.

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  "You do that." He winked at Chiun who turned his back so Smith would not see him smile.

  "I will," said Smith.

  There was a knock at the door.

  "It's open," Remo called.

  Ruby stepped in. She had changed to a sleeveless white dress. Her skin looked as smooth and pure as melted maple ice cream. Her face shone with the young look of a woman who found all the cosmetic help she needed in a bar of soap.

  "Hello," she said to Smith. She nodded to Remo and Chiun. "They told you what happe
ned?"

  Before Smith could answer, Remo said "No. We never tell him. We just tell him it's taken care of. He doesn't like to hear details because then he might, just might, realize once, just once, that somebody dies every time we make a new corpse for him. He doesn't want to hear about that. He just wants us to send him monthly lists of victims for his statistical charts."

  "Gotta have charts," Ruby said mildly.

  "Then you talk to him," Remo said. "He's got some business with you anyway. Chiun and I are going next door. You talk with him."

  In the next room, as the door closed behind him, Remo asked Chiun, "How long?"

  "What is this how long?" said Chiun.

  "How long will it take for her to con him out of his socks?"

  "How long do you say?" asked Chiun.

  "Five minutes," said Remo.

  "Three," said Chiun.

  "You're on. Nobody can con Smith in three minutes. My own personal record is five minutes fifteen."

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  "What are we wagering?" asked Chiun.

  "Anything you want, Little Father."

  "Anything?"

  "Anything except that," Remo said.

  In the next room, Ruby sat in a chair facing Smith, who drummed his fingertips on the small blond formica desk.

  Finally Ruby broke the silence. "How you gonna do it?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "You. How you gonna do it? A gun or what?"

  Smith sat back in his chair. "How do you know that?"

  "It's not hard. You're the brains of this here operation. It's what I'd do if it came to it."

  "Oh, I see," said Smith. He had never had anyone offer himself up for killing before.

  "Course it might not be in your best interests," said Ruby.

  "Perhaps you'd tell me why."

  "Sure. Since't I came here and I knew what you were fixin' to do, I'd be kind of a dope to just walk in and let it go like that. So I took precautions."

  "What kind of precautions?"

  "I wrote down everything I know and I spread it around a bit."

  "I've heard that many times before," Smith said.

  "Yeah, I know. Somebody's always giving something to their lawyer for when they die and like that. And then you get to the lawyer first so nothing happens. Well, I didn't do that. I left everything where the CIA gets it if I die."