She turned a dial and the machine slowed down even more. "We're testing it now for endurance," she said.
"And this is the only one?" Remo asked.
She paused. "Yes. The only one. Why?"
"Because I think someone may have stolen your plans. Do you know that someone is able to cause earthquakes and is trying to shake down people in San Aquino?"
"Well, they couldn't do it with this machine. It's too small. Still experimental," Jill said. "And as for stealing our plans, there are no plans. We built the water-laser from scratch, improvising as we went. And who'd be crazy enough to make an earthquake?"
"Who indeed?" Jacki snorted, behind Remo.
"If enough money's involved," Remo said, "you can find somebody crazy enough to do anything. That's why your Mafia friends were here today. They're trying to move in."
"Are you a detective, Remo?" Jill asked. "You seem very concerned."
"A detective? No thanks. I'm just a store owner trying to make a living and I'm not going to be able to if I have to pay shakedown money."
Dr. Quake walked away and sat himself down behind a desk, looking through a sheaf of papers.
"Listen," Remo said softly to the girls. "I think you ought to get a guard here or something. Until this whole thing is cleared up. The Mafia might be back."
"Oh, I think that's silly," Jill said. "By the way, what happened to those two men who were here? What did you tell them? We saw them driving away in a real hurry."
"Only one drove away. The other one's dead in your kitchen."
"Dead?"
"Dead."
She started to say something, then stopped. She turned to walk away. "If you haven't any more questions, Remo, we've got work to do."
"Sure thing," Remo said. "We'll talk again. Why don't you stop sometime and have a swim in my pool?"
"Maybe we will," Jill said.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Wade Wyatt was standing alongside the road, throwing up Gertie's lunch into a ditch.
Remo saw the black and white sheriff's car on the side of the road as he drove back from the institute. Speed-trap, he thought. But as he drew abreast of the star-studded patrol car, he saw Wyatt at the side, his burly back heaving spastically as he upchucked. Next to Wyatt was a cadaverously thin man, dressed in the same tan uniform as Wyatt. The deputy, Remo remembered.
Remo pulled off onto the shoulder of the road, left the motor running, and got out. He walked back to Wyatt, who was still heaving.
"Must be something you ate, sheriff," he said pleasantly.
Wyatt turned. "Oh, it's you." He pointed down into the ditch and resumed vomiting.
Remo looked down. Two men were at the bottom of the ditch. They wore blue suits and had elaborate hair styles that would delight a hair spray manufacturer. It looked as if the two of them had choked on their intestines. Gobs of guts were stringing from their mouths as if their stomachs had been crushed and their intestines had taken the only way out, through their mouths.
"Man," Remo said, "they must eat in the same place you do."
Wyatt had his stomach under control now. His deputy said to Remo, "Don't be talking to the sheriff that way."
"I'm a taxpayer, sonny," Remo said.
"Even a taxpayer got no right to go mouthing off to Sheriff Wyatt that way."
"Sorry," Remo said. "No offense."
"All right," the deputy said. "Just so's you know."
Wyatt hitched up his pants and slid down into the ditch.
"Who are they, sheriff?" Remo asked.
"Don't know yet. Ginzos. Eye-talians," he explained. "Wouldn't surprise me none if these were the wops that killed Curpwell."
"Good thinking," said Remo who knew better. "Who found the bodies?"
Wyatt was now reaching a hand delicately into the first man's pocket, looking for a wallet.
"Phone call from a motorist," he said.
Satisfied the first man's pockets were empty, Wyatt began to look through the second man's clothes. Nothing there, either. As he stood up, Remo noticed that the men's trouser flies were open. He noticed something else too. Around their waists, their shirts and trousers were slightly discoloured. As if they had been wet, and then baked dry quickly by the sun.
Wyatt clambered to the roadway again. Almost to himself, he said, "Two unidentified white males. Hit and run victims."
"Hit and run?" Remo said. "I never saw anybody hit by a car who looked like that."
"Yeah? What do you know about it? You seem to know a lot about a lot of things." Wyatt said.
"Yeah. You're big on interfering. First at Curpwells office. Now here. We're going to have to talk about that," Wyatt said menacingly.
"Well, I'll get out of your way then and let you do your job," Remo said. "By the way, sheriff, one thing?"
"What's that?"
"You know anyplace in town where I can get raw oysters? You know, all slippery and slimy on the half shell?"
Wyatt spun and began upchucking again.
"Guess not," Remo said to the deputy and walked away.
"Fagola," Wyatt hissed after Remo's car departed and then heaved some more. It was not the idea of raw oysters that had made him chuck and not even the sight of the two mutilated bodies. He had seen men die like that before. Weinstein and McAndrew.
What upset Sheriff Wade Wyatt's stomach was the phone call he had received. The young female voice had told him where to find the bodies and had done something else too. She had summoned him to a meeting that night. And that could mean only trouble.
CHAPTER NINETEN
"Remo. Remo. Remo."
Don Fiavorante Pubescio slammed the telephone receiver back onto its stand.
"Always Remo. Is my life to be destroyed by some department store owner?"
He looked down at Manny the Pick Musso, who sat sweating unhappily in a canvas sling chair next to Don Fiavorante's swimming pool.
"I am unhappy with you, Emanuel," Pubescio said. "Very unhappy."
Musso extended his hands to his sides, palms up, and shrugged. He tried a smile that was meant to be ingratiating but turned out to be sickly.
"That was Gromucci on the telephone. Gummo is dead. Albanese is dead. Palermo is dead. Killed by this Remo, whoever he is. And you!"
"I send you to find out something about earthquakes. You wind up killing a man. Then instead of doing the job right, you come back and let your men go talk to that professor. And now two of your men are missing. One of your men is dead. Another one has a broken arm. Why? Because of this Remo."
He leaned over, tall and tanned in a pale flowered bathing suit, shook a finger into Musso's sweating face.
"First I tell you what is wrong. I like people too much. I put my trust and my faith in fools. I trust Gummo to straighten out a little labour problem at a grape farm. It is too much for him. He is dead.
"I trust you to find out a little piece of information for me. Do you do it? No. It is too much for you, so you come back here with your tail between your legs.
"Why? Because of somebody named Remo."
Pubescio turned and walked toward the edge of the pool, then turned back to speak again.
"What should I do with you, Emanuel?"
Musso opened his mouth to speak, then closed it as Pubescio went on.
"Should I do what they did in the old days, to punish failure? I would have cause. No one could point a finger at me and say there is Don Fiavorante Pubescio, who treats his men unfairly and in anger. No one could say that, should I do what I have a right to do. But, no, I am too kind. I like you too much. So I will tell you something.
"This Remo is not just a department store owner. What he is, I do not know. But what he is not, I know. And what he is not is just a shopkeeper. Somehow, he is involved with the earthquake people. He knows about it and he can tell us what we want to know.
"But will he tell us if we walk up to him and say, 'Hey, Mister Remo, tell us about the earthquake people?' No, he will not tell us that way. He will t
ell us if he is forced to tell us. He will tell us only to stop the pain.
"Now, do I have a man who can inflict this kind of pain? Yesterday, I would have answered: 'Yes. I have Emanuel Musso. He is just the man for the job.' But today, I am no longer sure. Perhaps Emanuel Musso has grown soft. Perhaps he has become too old for his job. Perhaps I should seek a younger, stronger man."
Musso stood up from the sling chair. "Don Fiavorante, I am not too old or too soft and so I ask a favour. Send me after this Remo. We will make him talk, my friend and I," he said, patting his jacket pocket where his ice-pick was jammed into a cork.
"You ask to go? You ask to go after a man who has told you never to reappear or you will be carried out feet first?"
"I ask to go."
"Perhaps you are still the Emanuel Musso of the old days. Perhaps you are ready to gamble all on your skills. Because this is a second chance and there is no third chance." He looked searchingly into Musso's eyes to make sure that Musso had understood. Succeed this time or chips out of the game.
Musso understood. "I will not fail, Don Fiavorante. I will get the information you seek. And then I will repay this Remo for his insolence to you. I will teach him a very painful and enduring lesson. After all, he is only a man, isn't he?"
Don Fiavorante Pubescio did not answer. He flexed his legs, dove into his pool and began to swim its length underwater.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Sheriff Wade Wyatt was going to have to deliver a message to Washington. An important message.
"Shoot," he said. "I don't know nobody in Washington."
"Then ask John Wayne for an introduction, pig. We don't care how you do it."
The girl who spoke to Wyatt across the living room of the small trailer wore blue jeans that stretched taut over the muscles of her buttocks and legs as she walked. She was naked from the waist up and the nipples of her enormous breasts played peekaboo through her long, swirling black hair.
Wyatt licked his lips.
"Sheriff, I do believe you're thinking impure thoughts," she said. She stepped closer to Wyatt who sat in a straight-backed wooden chair with no cushion. It was uncomfortable on his butt and he felt like a schoolboy at a desk, being scolded by his teacher.
She stopped in front of him and flung her hair back behind her with a toss of her head. The rising mounds of her breasts stared back at Wyatt's staring eyes.
"Like them, sheriff?" she taunted. "Like them?" she demanded.
"Yes," he sputtered.
"Well, don't touch, pig. Not if you want to stay healthy. Feinstein. McAndrew. The two Mafia goons. They liked them too. You want to wind up like that?"
"Nope," said Wyatt promptly and honestly.
"Okay. Then keep your fly zippered and your lip buttoned. I don't know what you're so upset about anyway. We're going to make you a rich man."
"I don't want to be a rich man. I just want to be a good sheriff."
"You were precluded from being a good sheriff the instant the sperm hit the egg. And if you worried so much about being a good sheriff, you should have thought of that before you took that girl to the motel. Before you posed for all those nice dirty pictures that we've got of you. You know, pig, you do what we want you to, just so we don't send those pictures around. We're just cutting you in on the money because we like you. We really do. You're a sweet guy. For a pig."
She turned and walked back to the sofa and lay down on it. Her giant globes flattened against her chest and she began idly to inspect her nipples as she spoke.
"First, Washington got involved by sending McAndrew. And we warned them, no more. And then they send this Remo Blomberg."
"That fairy? A government man?"
"Yes, with your usual perception, you would think he was a fairy, wouldn't you? Well, now you're going to get a message to Washington. You're going to tell them that because they keep sending people in here, it's going to cost them. Exactly one million dollars. Small, used bills. Not in sequence. And they're going to give the money to you. And you're going to bring it here and put it in that refrigerator.
"And this is going to be the last money delivery for you. And to celebrate we've got a big bonus for you.
You could use $25,000, couldn't you? You could buy a matched set of pearl-handled revolvers. A genuine gold statuette of the raising of the flag at Mount Suribachi. Lapel flag pins for all your friends. Season tickets for the gas chamber."
She rolled onto her side, her breasts preceding her by a split second and looked at Wyatt. "Unless you don't want that," she said. "Unless you want those nice photographs of you in the motel being sent to every home in San Aquino. You want that instead?"
Wyatt swallowed. His seat was really uncomfortable now. "No, I don't want that. You know that. But how'm I going to convince anybody in Washington to listen to me?"
"If you had even the brain that's normal for a pig, you'd figure that out. I've told you that Remo Blomberg is a government man. So call him. Tell him. He'll get the message to the government for you and he'll get the money for you. Oh, and another thing you can tell them is that we're going to give them a little taste tomorrow. An earthquake. Not a big one. Just a little number eight on the scale. But if we don't get the million, we're going to give them the works. We'll rip California right off the continent."
"Should I tell that to this Jewboy, Blomberg?"
"Yes. And make sure that's all you tell him. You mention us and you'll wind up in a ditch sucking your own guts."
"Should I kill him after I get the money?"
"That order's cancelled, pig, because frankly we don't think you're man enough to. We're going to take care of him ourselves."
"The usual way?"
"The usual way. We'll give him some pleasant memories to carry to the grave."
"If you screw up, it'll happen to you. But without the pleasant memories. Now I think you better get out of here. Jacki'll be back any minute and the sight of you makes her sick. Just don't forget. We want that money here tomorrow night. The quake'll be in the afternoon. Don't stand under any bridges."
Wyatt shuffled to his feet. "All right, Jill. But I don't like it."
"And I don't like your calling me Jill, as if we were friends. To you, I'm ma'am."
"Yes, ma'am. No offense intended."
"All right, pig. Beat it."
On his way back to town, Sheriff Wade Wyatt had other thoughts on his mind. It wasn't fair for a man's life to be ruined, just because he had made one mistake. How was he to know that girl in the motel had been a pro and that he was being framed with pictures? They had given him a set of the pictures. He'd be a laughing stock if anybody ever saw them. He didn't know what had gotten into him, acting the pervert like that. All that French stuff. No wonder the Frenchies didn't amount to anything. They were all sick. Sex sick.
And he hadn't even liked it. That's what made it worse.
Now the twins had the pictures and so they had Sheriff Wade Wyatt. Imagine him, working not only against his own country, but against the sovereign state of California.
He wished he knew what to do.
But she had said this was the last one. Maybe it'd be over then.
Back at his office, Wyatt put his feet up on the desk and looked at the phone a long time, before lifting it up and getting a number from information.
Blomberg got on, the sheriff told him he had to see him right away. "Be glad to come," the fag said. "How's your stomach feeling?" he asked before hanging up.
Wyatt thought back to the afternoon. The two men in a ditch. He reached for the wastepaper basket and heaved into it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
On his way to Wyatt's office, Remo wondered what the sheriff wanted to talk about. Probably Curpwell's death. Well, Remo would tell him nothing about that, Musso belonged to Remo. Personally.
Of course, it might not be Curpwell. Maybe it was something important. A Red plot to fluoridate the water. Schools brainwashing children.
Maybe something about the earthquake
people. Somehow Quake's machine was under all this. Remo would bet on that. He couldn't wait for the chance to try extracting some information from Jacki and Jill.
He parked the red car in front of the low two-story frame building which housed a men's shop on the first floor with Wyatt's office upstairs.
Remo took the stairs two at a time. The door was open. Remo walked in without knocking.
Wyatt was sitting at his desk. He still looked puke-white, Remo thought. Maybe he'd found out someone was poisoning his food.
"Close the door, Blomberg," Wyatt said, standing up.
Remo shoved the door shut with his foot and sat in a fabric-covered chair that Wyatt waved him to. The sheriff deposited his bulk back down in his own swivel chair.
"Well, sheriff," Remo said. "What's on your mind?"
Wyatt swallowed, getting his words accurately in his mind, then hooked his thumbs under his belt loops and leaned back.
"Blomberg," he said, finally, "I don't think you're a department store owner."
"Sure, I am," Remo said. "It's the big red building down the block. I'm having the signs changed tomorrow."
"I don't mean that," Wyatt said. "I know you own the store. What I mean is, well, I think you do other work too."
"Other work?" Remo said.
"Yeah. Like I think you work for the government." He held up a hand to silence Remo. "Now I don't expect you to tell me anything, so don't say anything. But just listen, because this is important."
"All ears, sheriff," Remo said, crossing his legs at the knee.
"I got a call tonight from the quake people. They told me on the phone there's going to be a quake tomorrow. A big one. But they want me to get a message to Washington. They want a million dollars or else they'll pull a quake that'll split California in half."
"What are you telling me for? I don't have a million dollars," Remo said.
"Well, it's like I said. I kinda think you work for the government. Now there's no way I can get that million dollar message to Washington. They're just going to think I'm some kind of California nougat. But I thought maybe you could get the message through. These people are dangerous and they're serious. They'll rip the whole state apart. Blornberg. Damn it, what I'm telling you is I need your help."
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