The Final Death td-29

by Warren Murphy

  "Yes," said Remo to Viki, not wanting to hear any more fairy tales about his inner being sneaking out to lunch when he had his right hand cut.

  "I knew I'd finally get to you," Viki said with a smile.

  "Whatever you say," said Remo.

  Viki left the doorway of the room and moved over to the single bed. She plopped down on the bed, lifted her uniform hem and smoothed her right nylon from the top of her boot all the way up to her crotch. Then she repeated the procedure on her left leg. Then she took off her black boots, slowly, caressing the leather, filling the room with long, cracking creaks. She repeated the smoothing of her panty hose, from the bottom tippy toe to the very tippy top of her thigh.

  Remo leaned against the desk in the room and watched her as if she were a mechanic changing a tire.

  "Aaah, that's better," said Viki, stretching her arms above her head, lifting her hem even higher. "Come on. Sit by me and tell me all about yourself."

  "Aah, shucks," said Remo. "Not much to tell." He moved toward the bed and Viki grabbed his wrist and pulled him down onto her lap.

  "Are we going to meet your friend here?" she asked.

  "What friend?"

  "The one Chiun calls emperor."

  "No. He doesn't get around much," said Remo.

  "That's too bad. He seemed nice."

  "Sure, he's nice," said Remo. "So are paper clips and pencil sharpeners." Remo slid off her thighs and bounced to a sitting position on the edge of the bed.

  "Who do you think killed your father?" asked Remo.

  Viki's face closed like an off off Broadway show. But only for a moment. Then her eyes narrowed and she licked her lips.

  "Aaah," she breathed more than said, and pulled herself up onto her knees.

  "That's no answer," Remo said.

  "An interesting question," said Viki, putting both hands against his chest and pushing. "How should I know?"

  Remo's body did not move but his hand snaked its way between her knees. "There must have been a reason," he said.

  "I don't know wha…" said Viki, arching her back, her head snapping toward the ceiling as Remo's hand moved.

  "Didn't your mother or father ever tell you anything that might have given you a clue?" Remo slid off her panty hose and pressed her down onto the pillow.

  "No… No. no… nothing," said Viki.

  "Anything. Any clue," Remo pressed, moving atop her.

  Viki shook her head.

  Remo brought her to a galactic interstellar climax with a soft graceful movement of his body. And then to another one and another one, then moved away from her.

  "Whoooosh," said Viki. "Way, way, way, way out." She wiped tears from her cheeks and sweat from her brow, then straightened her dress. She stood up and made a sign toward Remo with her left hand, opening a gap between her third and fourth fingers.

  "That's a Vulcan salute," she said. "Live long and prosper."

  Remo held up the three middle fingers of his right hand. "Boy Scout salute. Be prepared," he said.

  He turned toward the door.

  "Remo?"

  "Yeah?" He turned back.

  "How well do you know Chiun?"

  Remo watched as Viki pulled a soft, floor-length green bathrobe out of her bag and wrapped it around her.

  "Well enough. Why?"

  "Well, he told me a little about what he does."

  Remo laughed. "You mean write soap operas, belittle white people and moon over hook-nosed singers?"

  "No. He talked about killing. You ought to be careful, Remo." Remo blinked. "I'm afraid of him, Remo. I think he might be planning something behind your back."

  Remo shook his head and left.

  Viki smiled. So the man called "the emperor" wouldn't be here in Houston. It didn't matter. She would kill Remo and Chiun first. And then get the third man.

  Charlie Ko waited until the undead settled into his hotel room. Charlie drank a vodka and orange juice from a plastic glass while waiting, careful to keep his right forefingernail away from his face.

  Charlie Ko was a born leader of men. He had known it when he was a kid, leading the children of P.S. 189 in New York in unattendance. He knew it as a teenager, when he led the Devil Dragons through seven rumbles in three years to be the number one street gang in Chinatown. And he knew it as a young man, when he moved up to mobilizing student troops at the Chicago Democratic convention.

  Charlie had become a master of his craft. All over the east coast, men knew that if you wanted a head busted you came to Charlie Ko.

  But it was a long time since those carefree college days when he did it for free. A man with the most skulls on the inside of his locker, signifying acknowledged kills during riots and street fights, just couldn't continue in his magnanimous murderous ways. He had to industrialize, internalize, and incorporate.

  So Charlie partnered up with his three best friends from the Chinatown days and went out for hire. Their strike-busting led to body-guarding. Their bodyguarding led to clandestine operations. Their clandestine operations led to mercenary mobilization.

  And mercenary mobilization led to inquiries by appointment and inquiries by appointment led to his office on Lexington Avenue in New York and his office led to his reputation as the best and that led him to the Houston Sheraton and a final meeting with the undead.

  For Charlie's three partners had met their untimely ends in a meat factory in Westport, Connecticut. Up until that time, they had been his arms and legs. They were the ones who had to go flying all over the country to locate and report on possible victims. They were the ones who had to do in those victims. And they were the ones who had to make it look like swine-flu vaccine reactions.

  But no more. Charlie was left to complete the leader's instructions with a bunch of raw recruits. Raw, inexperienced, but blood-thirsty recruits.

  "Alright," said Charlie, putting the cold plastic glass down and wiping a bit of liquid from his thick, soft, lower lip. "Let's get started."

  Yat-Sen, Sheng Wa, Eddie Cantlie, Gluck, and Steinberg leaned back in their seats, on the sofa, and on the bed.

  Charlie walked to the writing desk and picked up some Sheraton stationery. He handed out the sheets, then moved back to his drink.

  "This is our next plan of attack," he said.

  A low groan rose from the group. "Another one?" said Eddie Cantlie, who had been in it from the beginning. "That's the fourth one this month."

  Charlie shrugged. "Either you control the situation or it controls you."

  While the group was checking over the material, Charlie checked over his fingernail. He and his three partners had been outfitted with one of these things when they took the job.

  The crazy things I have to do for my art, Charlie thought. Spend every morning varnishing and sharpening the permanently affixed, artificial fingernail blade until it shone like steel and could cut paper.

  Three times a day drinking a mixture of vitamins and gelatin to fortify his own nails. Every afternoon spent checking his speed and accuracy until he could pinion olives hurled into the air.

  But it was worth it. What he was getting paid for this job would keep his wife, his mistress, his lawyer, his agent, his office, his staff, and his car for two years. If everything went smoothly, and why shouldn't it? He was in charge. If everything went smoothly he had an "option" for continued service at a very pretty price indeed-a share of the combined wealth of the United States of America.

  Charlie ran his wet tongue across his full lips. It was his childhood dream come true. He had sat in that mesh enclosed detention room at P.S. 189 waiting for that faggot sadist who passed for an assistant principal to come in, coo appreciatively at him, then slam his fingers in a desk drawer or slam his rear end with a heavy plastic ruler, and Charlie thought about someday being as big as King Kong, as mighty as Godzilla, and laying the whole country to waste.

  The vice-principal had gotten what he deserved when his throat had been cut on the way to dinner at a Chinatown restaurant one ni
ght, but the country had yet to pay.

  It would. And soon.

  "What's this? What's this?"

  Sheng Wa was looking up at Charlie, stabbing the sheet of paper near the bottom.

  Charlie moved over to the bar and jabbed an orange slice and a cherry with his fingernail. He lifted the fruit shishkebob and dunked it in his glass.

  "What's what?"

  "This, at the bottom. We have to kill two more guys?"

  "Sure. Separate and destroy. Like it says, Like we did to that guy and his wife."

  Yat-Sen spoke up in his thick, careful, Oriental accent. "Must we kill them in the same way?"

  "That's the way the leader "wants it," said Charlie.

  "Can't we shoot them?"

  "Nope."

  "Blow them up?"

  "Uh-uh."

  "Run them over?"

  "No. What's the big deal? It's just two more guys."

  "But it's so disgusting," said Yat-Sen, who had been the one holding onto Mrs. Angus' chin, and doing all the giggling.

  Now several people in the room laughed.

  Charlie looked around. "Shit," he said. "I do all the work. What the hell are you complaining about? I'm the one who sticks the finger in. Look, you get your pay, right?"

  Yat-Sen nodded.

  "It's enough to keep you and your teenage whores happy, right?"

  The group giggled. Yat-Sen turned to them, then smiled.

  "I let you wear rubber gloves to strip the carcasses, right?" said Charlie.

  "Sure," said Yat-Sen. "But next time, do you have to go through all that Christianity, meat-eating mumbo jumbo?"

  Charlie moved directly in front of Yat-Sen and put his fingernail on the bridge of the man's nose.

  "If I hear any more of your garbage, Jap, I'm going to pluck out your eyes and make you eat them."

  The group howled. Yat-Sen only swallowed and nodded.

  Steinberg spoke up. "Same as before?" He was one of the new boys contacted on a rush basis. He had only heard about the butchering of the bodies, but he looked forward to trying it.

  "Yeah," said Charlie. "We wait until we get them alone. Then we stick it to them." He stabbed the air with his fingernail.

  "You do that," said a voice at the door, "and there won't be enough left of any of you to find."

  The group turned toward the sound of the voice. It was the same voice that had told them to finish off a drunken widow in a cellar of Woodbridge. It was the same voice that instructed Charlie's partners to wait at a factory office in Westport for a tall, thin, dark-haired man. And it was the same voice that told them what the old man had to say.

  The voice belonged to the leader's top agent in the field, the translator.

  The translator walked into the room.

  "You know what that man did at Meatamation," said the translator. "By the time you got your fingernail up, your head would be in your hand."

  "My partners ain't me, baby," said Charlie Ko.

  "You'll wind up like them if you try messing with these characters," said the translator, moving over to the couch and sitting down next to Gluck.

  Charlie licked his lips again. "What do you want from me? You heard what the leader said."

  "The leader is old. He's senile. He says that this other chink will just stand there and let us slit his throat. Then he thinks that the white guy will be so broken up about it that we'll be able to do anything we want. He's crazy. I've seen these guys. They ain't that bad or that stupid."

  "So?" said Charlie Ko.

  "So I'll tell the old man that we did as he asked. Then we make sure these guys get it."

  "If they're so good, how are we going to do that?"

  "I've checked with their room service in Connecticut and here. All they ever order is duck or fish with rice."

  Charlie Ko leaned against the bathroom door and smiled.

  Eddie Cantlie nodded and pulled out a small, rubber stamp with a purple USDA on the bottom. He lightly popped it against his hand a couple of times.

  The rest of the group looked at the translator like cancer cells waiting to be formed.

  "Yeah," said Marion Beriberi Greenscab, the translator. "The fucker lied to me. He ain't no vegetarian."

  CHAPTER NINE

  Texas Solly nearly lost his lunch of gefilte fish and ribs when Remo brought in Jacob and Irving. One over each arm.

  Remo dropped them on either side of Texas Solly's big oak desk with the metal legs as Texas Solly started choking and hiccuping at the same time while trying to get on his knees.

  Texas Solly's office was half a city away from his slaughterhouse but the smell of death still seemed to hang in the air. Solly's office was a modern, artificially paneled wood affair with aluminum chairs that were guaranteed impossible to get comfortable in.

  Irving Pennsylvania Fuller was living up to that guarantee when Remo had padded in. Irving rose quickly, partly from his professional training and partly because it was such a pleasure to get up, and placed his chest on Remo's nose.

  "You got an appointment?" asked Irving, flexing his shoulder muscles and pressing the outline of the Smith and Wesson in his shoulder holster against his jacket.

  "Have," said Remo.

  "What?" Irving said threateningly, since he always said "what" threateningly whenever he was answered by anything but "yes" or "no."

  "Have. The question should be 'Do you have an appointment?' " said the thick-wristed man in Irving's chest.

  "I don't need an appointment," said Irving. "I work here."

  Remo had smiled benignly, raised his shoulders, as if to shrug, and Irving felt his middle freezing. He felt a soft pressure on both his hips and then the cold had risen to his head directly along his back and he felt nothing else until he woke up across Texas Solly's desk set.

  Remo had taken Irving by the back of the collar and walked through the door marked "Weinstein's Meat and Poultry Sales," until Jacob had run up and thrust his gun out.

  "Hey," said Jacob Schonberger. "You can't come in here."

  "I just did," said Remo, not wanting to get into the philosophy of being. If Jacob had been as intelligent as Irving was, they could have been in the hall all day discussing the viability of Remo's existence within it.

  Jacob had suddenly seen Irving sitting against the back of Remo's leg. He moved back.

  "What is this?" he said.

  "This is a hallway," said Remo. "I thought we had already established that."

  "Did you drop Irving? Jesus, you dropped Irving!" was Jacob's incisive reply. Jacob was a few inches shorter than Irving, but wider. He moved back even farther and thrust his gun out in a straight line toward Remo's chest.

  Remo decided against informing him that the uniformly accepted way of pointing a gun at someone was from the hip so that you could not be disarmed if someone just reached out and took off your hand.

  But the man looked too agitated to be interested in Justice Department training at that moment.

  "What's your name, buddy?" Jacob had asked since his habit was to intimidate his victims by asking them for their names, then telling them, 'Alright, so and so, move!' And if he got some wise crack from some mealy mouthed punk, he'd crack the barrel of his .38 between the kid's teeth. It had worked since his days at the correctional facility and had been a comfort to him ever since.

  "I'm the man from Hebrew National," said Remo.

  Jacob moved by instinct to slash his gun barrel across Remo's face but Remo's face was not where it had been a moment before and somehow Jacob felt his arm swing farther than it had ever swung before.

  Then there was a crack and Jacob felt the cold steel of his own gun bouncing off his own face and then he didn't feel anything and wouldn't until he woke, in excruciating pain, in a Houston emergency room three hours later.

  There he would wait 45 minutes, rocking to and fro on a wooden bench watching small drops of blood gather in his lap, until a nurse came over to inform him that he would need at least a thousand dollars w
orth of surgery and did he know his Blue Cross/Blue Shield number?

  Texas Solly was trying not to upchuck while kissing Remo's hush puppies. He hacked once more to loosen an acid tasting piece of fried rib stuck in the back of his throat, swallowed, then begged: "Please, don't kill me yet, let me explain."

  Remo looked down critically and slowly pointed at Solly's face.

  "You… have some sauce on your cheek," he said. He reached over and pulled a soiled tissue from Weinstein's desk between Irving, who was snoring, and Jacob, whose blood was bubbling between his mashed teeth.

  "Thank you," said Texas Solly, wiping his mouth. "You'll let me explain?"

  "Go ahead," said Remo.

  "These guys weren't for you," Texas Solly began hurriedly, picking himself off his knees and waving at the hulks on his desk. "I was being bugged by an antimeat group recently and…"

  "Wait a minute," said Remo. "Was this a bunch of twits waving signs and screaming about swine flu? A redhead in charge?"

  "Yeah, that's them," said Solly. "Were they your spies?"

  "Never mind," said Remo. "Go ahead with your story."

  "Yeah, well," said Solly. "I swore I'd have your shipment or your money today and I'm as good as my word. You can tell Jaccalini that he'll get his steaks and his money back too. You tell Jaccalini that's the stuff Texas Solly Weinstein is made of."

  "That's terrific," said Remo, wondering if there could be two Texas Solly Weinsteins in Houston and if he had met the second one. "Where can I find him?"

  "Who?" said Solly.

  "Jaccalini," said Remo.

  Texas Solly stared at Remo for a second. Then he laughed.

  "Very funny, Rico. Very funny. You are Rico Shapiro, aren't you?"

  Remo shook his head. "Never heard of him," he said.

  Texas Solly's laugh took on a brittle quality and his smile grew lopsided. He slowly, moved behind his desk, putting his hand under the top drawer, as if for, support.

  Remo moved over and pushed the alarm mechanism into the floor by pressing his palm through the top of the desk. Texas Solly felt the alarm system brush by his crooked finger.

  He swallowed very slowly, looking from the palm-shaped hole in his desk to Remo's face.

  "I'm the man from Hebrew National," said Remo. "Talk to me. And no baloney."