Dr Quake td-5

by Warren Murphy

  "I didn't feel anything," Remo said.

  "Well, it was a low one on the Mercalli intensity scale and only inferior structures were damaged. Your home is not an inferior structure."

  "Just some wetbacks got killed. No one hurt," contributed Sheriff Wyatt. Curpwell looked pained.

  He said, "Sheriff Wyatt got a phone call that the quake was in retribution for Feinstein's contacting Washington. And now the tab has been raised. It's $4,000 a month for each of us. Look at it this way, Mr. Blomberg. It's an investment. A good investment."

  "If it's such a good investment, keep it to yourself."

  "Look, Remo," said Doum Rucker. "It's for all our benefits."

  "Fine. Enjoy it. I don't intend to pay for it."

  Rucker brought a fist down on the heavy table. Remo looked at Rucker disdainfully and dandled a foot.

  "I can't afford to pay a third of $16,000 a month," Rucker growled. "I don't have that much. I have trouble paying $2,000 a month."

  Remo contained a smile. It was working. He might even have the whole thing wrapped up in a day or two. In a voice of angel's clarion innocence, Remo asked:

  "Why bother to pay at all?"

  "Because I want my family in one piece and my business in one piece. These people have us by the balls. By the balls, Feinstein."

  "Blomberg," Remo corrected.

  "By the balls, Blomberg."

  "Then," said Remo, "why not let Curpwell here pay? I mean, he's the wealthiest man here. He practically owns the valley. The welcome wagon brochure says they almost named the town Curpwell, except the monks got here first."

  "That's correct," Curpwell said, and Remo saw his back stiffen.

  "So why don't you pay it?"

  "I don't think it's fair that one man should pay."

  "Then why should four pay? Why don't you collect the whole thing in taxes?"

  "'Cause it has to be secret," interrupted Wyatt.

  "Why? Is it some kind of fraternity? A masonic lodge?," asked Remo.

  " 'Cause the insurance people want it that way, that's why," said Wyatt haughtily. "You ain't even in this town one day and you're telling us how to survive. That's brass. That's real brass. Only one kind of people have that kind of brass."

  "Please," said Curpwell to Sheriff Wyatt, and to Remo: "We've been warned to let no one in authority know. Feinstein talked and last night seven died in an earthquake, Mr. Blomberg."

  "Call me Remo."

  "Mr. Blomberg," repeated Curpwell. "Feinstein, Harris Feinstein did not die of food poisoning. He was murdered. He told authorities in Washington and he was murdered. Along with a man from the Interior Department."

  Remo smiled. "Beautiful," he said. He saw Rucker's eyebrows raise. Boydenhousen leaned forward. Only Sheriff Wyatt seemed oblivious to what was going on. Curpwell's eyes became cold.

  "Beautiful," Remo repeated. Then he turned to Rucker and Boydenhousen. "Are you people really paying or are you with Curpwell?"

  Rucker blinked. Boydenhousen said: "I don't understand."

  "Yes," said Rucker. Boydenhousen nodded.

  "All right," said Remo. "I'm going to save you some money right now. Don't pay. There's your earthquake insurance man. More like a blackmailer, I'd say." He pointed, a limp-wristed upward-curving finger at the mouth of Lester Curpwell IV. The pinky played at the verge of a digression. Remo went on:

  "He's the man who chose you. He's the man who threatened me with death. I mean, if you listened to him as I did, he was telling me just now I'd get killed like Feinstein if I didn't pay up."

  Rucker and Boydenhousen looked at each other.

  "No," they said in unison. "We don't believe you."

  But Remo smiled to himself, because he had won. So much for the next payment. Now it was up to the earthquake people to move. And when they did, Remo would offer their remnants to the seven who had died the night before, but especially to a baby, who, someone had told him, cried all night.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  It was not a hard decision. One did not have to register it on a seismograph or run it through one of the large computers at Richter Institute.

  Remo whatever-his-name-was had to die. It had to be done. Why did Sheriff Wade Wyatt find this so objectionable? The young bubbling female voices waited for an answer.

  Wade Wyatt sat on a hard wooden chair and looked out the trailer window at the late summer moon. He didn't like to look at them.

  He changed the subject. "You were with Feinstein, weren't you?" he said. "He wasn't queer or anything. You killed him, right?"

  "Yes," came the sweet, gentle voice. The other voice added, "and the government man too."

  "I thought that they was both queers."

  "You would, pig."

  "Hey, now," Wyatt protested.

  "Hey, now, shut up, pig, or you'll go the same way. And you'll go the same way if you don't take care of this Remo. We're not going to let anybody stop us."

  "I can't do that," Wyatt said. "I can't kill him."

  "But you will. You will, just like you phoned Washington to report Feinstein. You will, just like you've collected the money for us. You'll do it, because you're afraid not to. We can't have somebody screwing up this whole thing."

  "I don't want to."

  "Dammit. You've got notches on your gun, pig. Live up to them."

  "I can't. I can't"

  "But you will."

  Wade Wyatt closed his eyes. He waited. Then he opened his eyes. He turned his head. They were gone. They weren't going to kill him.

  He got up and left the trailer quickly. He'd call it a standoff. He never agreed to kill that Remo Blomberg. So they couldn't say he backed off.

  But they were tough for broads. When push came to shove, they'd do Remo Blomberg. And he did not let his mind dwell on what fagola queerio Blomberg would look like when they were done with him.

  Man, what tough broads.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  It was two days after the earthquake that killed seven Mexicans that Don Fiavorante Pubescio, sunning his large body by his very blue and very big swimming pool, heard something very interesting from a paisan.

  The man was a grape grower. He lived in San Aquino. The man's father was a friend of Pubescio's father. Yes, Don Fiavorante knew of the man's father very well.

  Don Fiavorante courteously extended a seat to his guest and just as courteously accepted the man's kiss on his hand.

  "We are friends," said Don Fiavorante. "My father was your father's friend. Our friendship precedes the womb, Robert Gromucci. May I offer you a drink?"

  Robert Gromucci, in a very light summer suit, nervously accepted the seat in a red-webbed chair by the pool.

  "Do not believe all the bad things you hear about me, friend," said Don Fiavorante in a soft, gentle manner, almost pleading except that Don Fiavorante never pleaded. "There is no need to be nervous. Do you think I do not know that your workers are planning to leave? Do you think I do not know that this is your most important harvest? That if it fails, you fail? Do you think that every year? Do you think I forget you when I drink the wine? Do not be nervous, my friend."

  Robert Gromucci grinned. Like a little boy, he grinned; like a little boy whose father has told him everything will be all right.

  The noon-baked pool smelled of chlorine but Robert Gromucci did not smell it. Nor did he notice the butler bringing a fresh lemon drink, dripping beads of cold moisture on the frosted glass.

  Robert Gromucci talked and noticed nothing, because at last he was with someone who understood him. He talked about his money needs and his labor problems. He told about the earthquake-how he and his wife did not even notice the tremors. He told about the grape pickers. He told about the sheriff and about Sonny Boydenhousen, who handled insurance as well as real estate and with whom Gromucci had talked that morning. Boydenhousen, an old boyhood chum, had looked shocked and so Robert Gromucci asked. He wanted to know why. But Sonny Boydenhousen didn't want to say. He did not want Robert Gromucci to lose fa
ith in Les Curpwell.

  "Les Curpwell?," Gromucci had asked, stunned.

  "Yes. Les Curpwell." Les Curpwell was behind the earthquakes but Sonny was only telling Robert because it had come as such a shock.

  Robert Gromucci was so relieved, sitting by the swimming pool, knowing he had a protector, that he did not mind answering all the sudden questions from Don Fiavorante Pubescio.

  Who? How much? How often? How? You don't know how? They will pay? They won't pay? Only San Aquino pays? None of the other towns? You don't know how much? Les Curpwell, you say?

  "Yes," said Don Fiavorante Pubescio, the hot California sun baking his browning body. "A fine man, Mr. Curpwell. I have heard of him. One can reason with him, I hear. He knows how to make an earthquake, you say?"

  Don Fiavorante said he wished only small interest on the loan. Twenty per cent a year. To run, you know, what is the word, I am so foolish with words, yes, thank you, compounded monthly.

  And later, Don Fiavorante noted that it sounded impossible about the earthquake business and Robert Gromucci should not worry the more about it.

  "Earthquakes come from Blessed God," said Don Fiavorante, who ordered himself a cup of tea, because his doctor had ordered him to drink only tea, and also ordered a check book. "You don't want to carry $55,000 in cash with you, do you, Robert, my friend?"

  "What good will the money do?" Gromucci asked. "I need workers."

  "Extra money for extra workers. A bonus here, a bonus there."

  "But my workers say the earthquake was only the beginning. They say gods from mountains will meet gods from valleys. They say my ranch is cursed and they will not work there."

  "Yes. Well, we do this little thing two ways. You give your pickers a slight raise. You keep much of this money in reserve. I want you to have leeway. I have men who work for me and they will speak to your workers. They will explain to them that earthquakes are a less definite threat to their lives than other things."

  Robert Gromucci hated to disagree with Don Fiavorante. "They will run. They will run. There are two men in town now, who bring strangeness. New men and my pickers are afraid of them."

  "They threaten your pickers?" asked Don Fiavorante.

  "No. They keep to themselves."

  "They why are they a threat?"

  "My pickers are superstitious. They are still pagans, these Mexicans. They are afraid of these two men, because they fear these two men bring death."

  "Then we handle this three ways. I will send some people to reason with these two men and explain to them how they can help you. We will explain it to them so carefully that they cannot refuse. What are their names?"

  "The younger man just bought Feinstein's Department Store. His name is Blomberg. Remo Blomberg. The other man is Oriental. Very old and feeble. His name is Chiun."

  Don Fiavorante got their address, assured his friend that all would be well, got his tea and his check book from his butler, then wrote out the check to Gromucci, who kissed his hand and was gone.

  Then Don Fiavorante got down to serious business. He called a council of his capos. Not for the morrow, not for the evening, but for now. His requests were politely voiced, but there was nothing polite about them. A stranger might even assume that he was begging. But for a beggar, he was very successful. Men interrupted meals, business conferences, naps, even lovemaking-when Don Fiavorante Pubescio asked politely to see them immediately. Not a few made a quick stop at a church on the way to light a candle. But no one refused to come.

  They met in Don Fiavorante's study. They kissed his hand when they entered and he greeted them all warmly, like a father seeing his sons after long vacations. The Cadillacs stretched the length of his driveway and out into the street, but Don Fiavorante did not mind. It would be a brief meeting, and the Bel Condor police would delay traffic through the block-all traffic that was not expressly invited into Don Fiavorante's block.

  When all seventeen men were seated, Don Fiavorante began. Within three seconds, he displayed more intelligence and insight than the United States State Department.

  "Let us get to business," he said. A terry cloth robe draped his rolling belly. His face was strangely soft. Yet the words he spoke were listened to with respect by the men, some of whose faces would freeze an Olympic flame and the crowd along with it.

  "For a short while," Don Fiavorante began, "I have suspected something. It was just a suspicion, a little thing that one plays in one's mind and takes no heed because it seems unusual. That suspicion was confirmed today. We can be more successful, more powerful than at anytime in our lives. We can win respect for us as we have never truly had respect for us. And in places where we never had respect before."

  He paused, looking at the faces he knew, looking at the minds he knew, the habits he knew, the actions he knew, wondering at this moment standing in his den if these men were ready for the greatness now to be thrust upon them.

  "Heroin," said Don Fiavorante, "is chickenfeed. Numbers, chickenfeed. Horses, chickenfeed. Stolen autos, chickenfeed. Prostitution, chickenfeed. Chickenfeed."

  Don Fiavorante watched the men hide their disbelief. For any other man to have said what he said would have met with scorn. For Don Fiavorante, it was polite concern.

  He would push them one step further, because they must understand.

  "And yet, for all this venture holds in store for us, it also holds terror beyond anything we have ever known."

  "Not the atomic bomb?" said Gummo the Pipe Barussio.

  There was silence again, indicating that if Don Fiavorante told all assembled that he had an atomic bomb, well, why shouldn't he have? Who better to trust with one?

  But Don Fiavorante said: "Not an atomic bomb, my good friend, Gummo. An atomic bomb is chicken-feed." And on that note, with some eyebrows raised, a few mouths open and all reserve gone, Don Fiavorante told the assembly about his plan, a modern version of the shakedown. And he told them about a quirk of nature called the San Andreas Fault. Only this time, it wasn't just a few lives and windows and a small town in a small county that was threatened.

  It was an entire state.

  And it wasn't just a handful of rich businessmen who would be asked to pay. It would be the richest of the rich of the world. The United States Government.

  "Why not? They got the money," pointed out Don Fiavorante reasonably. "If they spend thirty billion dollars a year on Vietnam, what do you think they'll pay for California?"

  "Too big, too big," said Gummo the Pipe Barussio. He pointed out it was too easy to get crushed by something like the United States government.

  Don Fiavorante smiled.

  "We don't really have a choice. We either hold the weapon or have it held at us. It exists. There are people who can make mountains move and valleys jump."

  And then Don Fiavorante began answering questions, explaining about California and what he knew.

  "What is this thing that makes the earth buckle?" asked Manny the Pick Musso.

  Don Fiavorante did not know yet.

  "Can we turn earthquakes on and off like a faucet?"

  Don Fiavorante did not know yet.

  "More powerful than an atomic bomb?" asked Gummo the Pipe Barussio again.

  When the United States bombed Hiroshima, it was rebuilt. When earthquakes claim a city, it disappears. The famous city of Troy for example. Never to come again. Thus spoke Don Fiavorante Pubescio.

  "How much money?" asked Musso, who loved money even more than he loved women and for that reason was trusted by Don Fiavorante.

  How much money could Musso spend in a hundred lifetimes? Don Fiavorante's question ended the questioning.

  It would be simple, Don Fiavorante said. Musso would take several men and go see Lester Curpwell. They would make him talk. From him, they would learn the secret of the earthquake power. They would reason with him. Reason thoroughly with him until he told everything. Lester Curpwell IV needed money. Don Fiavorante knew that. The Curpwell holdings were in trouble. If Lester Curpwell IV
wanted money, Manny the Pick Musso was to give him money. Whatever he wanted. Whatever it took for him to talk.

  Musso's lined tan face was as calm as wax.

  "How much?," he asked.

  "A million dollars, if he wants it. They're amateurs running this shakedown," said Don Fiavorante.

  "Amateurs. Pros are going to move in now. And a million for the secret is chickenfeed."

  "And suppose I can get it without money?" Musso asked.

  "Fine. But get everything he knows. I don't want excuses. I want the way he does it and if you do not get so simple a thing, I might have cause to believe that you are holding out on me."

  The wax face did not move. Only the palms of Manny the Pick Musso became damp. Musso would get the information from Curpwell or spend the rest of his life running from Don Fiavorante's men.

  It was not lost on him that his personal situation was comparable to that which Don Fiavorante said faced the entire organization. Be conquerors or victims. But wasn't that the lesson of life, the lesson of Sicily?

  To Gummo the Pipe Barussio, Don Fiavorante gave the problem of the Gromucci vineyards. Don Fiavorante was sure it could be solved by putting some men on the Gromucci ranch to work on the pickers a little bit.

  Gummo the Pipe Barussio lowered his head. He whispered in an even lower voice than normal. He whispered so that his own consigliore sitting in the back of the room would not hear.

  "Don Fiavorante, I have worked well with you, yes?"

  "Yes, Gummo, my friend. You have."

  "I have never before refused an offer of good work?"

  "You have not."

  "Don Fiavorante, I ask then a favor. I have premonitions. Fears. Dreams. I seek less danger this time. Is there something less that I can do?"

  Don Fiavorante nodded.

  "As you will. Less danger is less rewards, although convincing wetbacks to work is not exactly armed robbery. Still, you have a right to ask. There is another way to do it. In San Aquino, there are two newcomers. The grape pickers are frightened of these men. Superstition. Go to see the men. Tell them to talk to the workers at the Gromucci farm and tell them that there is no superstition that the workers need fear. Let the workers see these two men. Let them see that the two men are afraid of you. Then, when that is done, I think there will be no more trouble at the Gromucci farms."