Dr Quake td-5

by Warren Murphy

  The Cadillac was laying back now, a car between it and Remo, and he slowed to get rid of the blocker. The station wagon behind Remo finally pulled out and passed, but the Cadillac stayed nearby, in sight. Then Remo saw the bulb-embroidered sign up ahead: "U-Du-It Car Wash."

  It was a one-story cinder block building, really a tunnel open at both ends.

  The road was clear both ways. Remo began to sway out into the left lane, cutting his speed and the Cadillac closed the distance between them. Remo kept slowing, watching the approaching Cadillac in the rear-view mirror.

  Then, just as they drew almost abreast of the car wash, Remo spun his wheel to the right. His car skidded. The Cadillac driver swerved to avoid hitting Remo and went bouncing off the roadway, turning into the gravel driveway that led to the carwash. Remo gassed his car and pulled up alongside, but slightly behind the Cadillac which was now angled in against the empty car-wash building.

  "A regular Mario Andretti," Chiun said. "You must be very pleased with yourself."

  "Yes, little father," he said as he opened the door and jumped out.

  The driver of the Cadillac was rolling down his electric window-now he hollered out at Remo: "Hey, stupid! What's the matter? You nuts or something?"

  He was a big man. Big and thick in the neck; the arm that rested on top of the door showed a heavy wrist and forearm under the sleeve of the pearl-gray suit. His face was lined and hard; his nose a slice of obsidian in his hatchet face; the kind of man, Remo thought, who would kill with an icepick.

  "Whyn't you watch where you're going?" Remo called, coming around the front of his car. "You guys in Cadillacs think you own the road."

  "Well, what'd you cut me off for?" the other driver shouted.

  "Cut you off? Why, you punk," Remo shouted. "If you weren't tailgating . . . get out of that car and I'll put you on your ass!"

  The door opened and Musso stepped out. "Mister," he said, "You're asking for trouble." He was big and towered over Remo.

  He began to walk toward Remo, slowly, surely, and Remo began to back off. He put his hands in front of him, palms forward. "Now, just a minute, Mister. I didn't mean anything. ..."

  "Then you should learn to keep your big mouth shut," Musso said.

  He kept coming. Remo was inside the opening to the car wash now, still backing up.

  Musso came closer, his eyes glistening with anticipation at the fright and confusion he saw on Remo's face.

  Now they were both inside the car wash; it was cool and curiously quiet. Musso reached a hand into his inside coat pocket and slowly pulled out an ice pick whose point was jammed into a bottle cork.

  He pulled the cork off, then stuck it in his side pocket. The point of the pick glistened bright and silvery in the stray glints of the late afternoon sun that angled in the front entrance of the car wash.

  "Now, wait a minute, mister," Remo said. "An argument's one thing, but you've got no call to...."

  "Remo Blomberg," Musso said. "I have a call. I've got all the call I need. Didn't you tell one of my men that if I came back I'd go out in a doggy bag?"

  He held the ice-pick in front of him like a street fighter's switchblade, coming on slowly now, his bulk trapping Remo and preventing escape. Remo backed up until he could see from the corners of his eyes that he was standing between the twin chains of the conveyor belt which pulled cars through the car wash.

  "You're Musso?" Remo asked.

  "I'm Musso."

  "I've been waiting for you."

  "Good," Musso said, with a smile. "Before I punch you like a railroad ticket, who's behind the earthquakes?"

  "I am," Remo said. 'It's my own little shakedown racket. You think I'm going to turn it over to a gang of organ-grinders?"

  "That's what I thought," Musso said. Both men were still, now. Remo backed up against the damp strips of cloth hanging from the top of the car wash, marking its entrance, Musso only five feet away from him, the shiny ice-pick weaving back and forth. Over Musso's shoulder, Remo saw Chiun in the front seat of the car, reading a road map.

  "How do you do it?" Musso said.

  "I tried to tell one of your men. We do it with style."

  "Don't give me no smart-ass talk, Blomberg," Musso said.

  "It's the truth. Ask anyone. Ask the governor. He's my partner. I took him on as second choice. I tried to interest the Mafia in it first, but they were too busy eating peppers and beating up candy store owners to give a damn. What about you, Musso? You interested? I'll cut you in for one-half of one percent. That ought to give you a fast $137 a year. It'll keep you in ice-picks."

  "Keep talking, Blomberg. You're digging your own grave."

  Remo glanced at his watch. Time to go.

  "Musso," he said. "I don't have any more time to play. The game's over."

  He took a step forward toward Musso and Musso lunged with the pick. He Jabbed only air, and then he saw Blomberg's hand close around the blade of the pick and it was pulled out from Musso's hand.

  Then Blomberg was behind him, between Musso and his car, and he was waving the pick at Musso, who started to back off. He took one step back and then dove forward at Remo. He saw lights. Then just darkness.

  Musso awakened moments later. He was sore and his back was wet. It was dark where he was and he shook his head, trying to clear his vision. He was looking up at the ceiling, lying on his back on the hood of his Cadillac.

  He started to rise to a sitting position but then a hand slapped at his throat and he was knocked backward. He turned his head. There was this Remo Blomberg, still holding the pick blade, smiling at him.

  "Tell me, something, Musso, did you like your work?"

  "Yeah, punk."

  "And how about Curpwell? You enjoy killing him?"

  "Yeah. As much as anyone."

  "Good. This is one for him." And then the ice-pick flashed up into the air and Musso closed his eyes so he wouldn't see it kill him, but it missed all his vital organs. It came down instead through his wrist, and under his wrist it punctured the steel hood of the car. Remo twisted the pick and bent it so Musso couldn't pull it out, and he was nailed there to the hood of his car like a deer in hunting season.

  "Think of me in that great car wash up yonder," Remo said.

  He walked away. The shock and pain from his wrist paralyzed Musso, but he turned his head and through the windshield of the Cadillac he could see Remo digging into his pocket out at the entrance to the car wash. He brought something out of his pocket-coins-and then he dropped them into a chute.

  Suddenly, Musso was enveloped by a whir and then a roar. Hot water poured into his face. Soap jets shot at him, filling his nose and mouth as he tried to scream from the scalding, and he could feel bubbles forming inside his head. He wrenched and yanked, trying to pull himself free, but he could not.

  He fell back and looked up. The whirring came from the overhead brushes, giant brushes, two feet in diameter; they were lowering now, coming down, only inches away, then touching Musso's face. They began to spin. He felt the first bristle flick away a gouge of skin from his face. The bristles kept turning, brushing his face, it felt like nothing more than an uncomfortable sunburn, but then the pressure came down harder and harder on him, and there was stinging where the soap was jetted into it. Now he could hear his clothes ripping under the pressure of the brushes. There was more steaming hot water. Then Musso remembered nothing.

  Remo waited a full ten minutes at the control panel of the car wash. Then he flipped the lever that activated the conveyor chains and the Cadillac began to lurch forward. Remo fished again into his pocket.

  When his body was found the next morning, Musso would be dry and sparkling. Remo had thrown in an extra quarter to give him the special diamond-hard wax finish.

  Back in the car, Chiun was still looking at the map. "Korea is not on this map," he said as Remo got behind the wheel.

  "No. It's a map of California," Remo said.

  "A map without Korea is no map at all," Chiun said, ro
lled down his window and tossed the map out onto the crushed rock driveway.

  "Tell me," he added, "are you always so melodramatic?"

  "Only when I know you're watching, little father," Remo said, driving away.

  "Watching? Who would watch such a display?"

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  It was growing dark when they got back to town but Wyatt's black-and-white squad car was still parked in front of his office. Remo and Chiun parked across the street in a supermarket parking lot and waited.

  It was almost an hour before Wyatt stepped from his front door. Remo spotted his Stetson rolling from side to side on his head as he walked around to get into his car. He still carried the brown leather valise.

  Wyatt paused at his door a moment, then looked both ways before sliding in behind the wheel.

  He pulled from the parking spot, drove to the end of the block and turned left, heading out of town. Remo eased out of his parking spot and fell in line, a car behind Wyatt, keeping his eyes trained on the oval stoplights on the back of the sheriff's car.

  Then Wyatt turned again and he was moving out, faster now, out onto the highway leading up into the San Bernardino Mountains. It was dark now. Remo turned off his lights and drove in darkness, two hundred and fifty yards behind Wyatt.

  Remo recognized the road. It was the way to the Richter Institute. So it was Dr. Quake.

  Now there could be no mistake about their destination." Wyatt turned off the main highway onto the narrow branch that led only to the shelf of mountain on which the institute was located.

  Rerno kept his two hundred and fifty yards distance. Then up ahead, he saw the stop-lights on Wyatt's car flash on and off as he tapped the brake, then come on to stay as he rolled to a stop. Remo quickly shifted into low, to brake the car, then into neutral and turned off the key so Wyatt could not hear the motor. He let the car roll forward, slowing it with his parking brake, finally rolling it to a stop in the darkness one hundred yards behind Wyatt.

  That was odd, he thought. Wyatt had stopped short of the bridge that led up into the institute's parking area. Then Wyatt was out of the car. Instead of heading up toward the institute, he began walking along the base of the cliff. Remo remembered the trailer there. He had seen the Volkswagen bus parked in front of it the first day. It was the girls' trailer. The twins. Jacki and Jill. They were behind the quakes.

  He had been a damn fool not to realize it before. Of course. They had the device. Probably had made more than one of them. Poor dumb Dr. Quake knew nothing about it. The women's libbers, they were doing it. Probably just for the dough.

  He tapped Chiun on the shoulder. "Follow him," he said softly. "See what he does and where he goes. I'll meet you up there in the parking lot."

  Chiun stepped away from the car, a tiny little man in a black robe. He took two steps away from the car, then vanished in the blackness of the night.

  Chiun was Ninja, of the Oriental magical men who could follow a bird in flight, who could appear and disappear at will; the invisible men of the Orient. Remo knew, intellectually, that there was no magic; that it was all tricks and training. But beyond intellect, he knew too that with Chiun it was more than tricks and training. It had started that way. But it had become a magic of its own.

  Wyatt whistled tunelessly to himself as he stepped heavily along the broken earth that marked the location of the San Andreas fault. Do no good to fall in, he told himself. No good at all.

  And only three feet from him, but unseen, unheard, undreamed of, followed Chiun, his steps timed with Wyatt's, moving softly, sideways, not even breathing. He could have followed at a distance. A matador could have worked three feet from the bull's horns. But if he was a good one, he didn't have to. Chiun was a good one.

  Remo waited and then started the motor again. As quietly as he could, he drove ahead, past Wyatt's parked car, across the wooden bridge and up into the institute's empty parking lot where he backed the car into a corner, out of sight of the roadway.

  It had been the girls. And the dead men? The water-laser had been used to crush them. That was why their bodies were wet around the waist: the force of water had been used to drive their intestines from their bodies. Probably after sex, when they were too weak to resist strongly, he thought, remembering the open flies on the trousers of the men in the ditch.

  Remo sat in the car, silent now, and remembered a lot of things, things he should have noticed at the start if he had been any kind of detective at all. How the girls dodged questions yesterday about the two Mafia men they had gone off with. The giggle when one said something about picking the men up "along the road."

  He remembered something else too. Leaving his own house this afternoon and seeing the bright blue had come to use it on him. After they had drained and exhausted him.

  He smiled to himself. Score one for Remo, As a matter of fact, score two.

  He did not hear the car door open. He knew Chiun was there only when he felt the pressure of someone sitting next to him on the seat.

  "Where did he go?" Remo asked.

  "There is a trailer there. He carried, the suitcase in and put it in the refrigerator. I took it out. Here it is."

  Down below, Remo heard Wyatt's car start up and a moment later, he saw the oval tail-lights speeding down the road.

  Chiun had the money on his lap. What would happen if they didn't put it back in the girls' trailer?

  Let's just see, Remo said to himself.

  He started the motor and drove out of the parking lot. Smith'd be happy to get his money back. And Remo would be happy to get the girls.

  But when he got back to his house, the girls had gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  "He was the bravest man I ever met.

  "He was the smartest, finest, one hundred percent American I ever met.

  "He was the nemesis of all law-breakers, no matter how big or powerful they might be."

  "He" was Sheriff Wade Wyatt and he was dead. He lay naked in the master bedroom of his ranch-style house, under the seven-foot square blow-up of the raising of the flag at Mount Suribachi with the photographer's name blacked out in the corner.

  The bed around his midsection was soaked with water, and his entrails fought their way out of his mouth. His eyes were opened wide in deadly horror.

  Looking down on the sheriffs body, working out the phrases of his eulogy, sucking on a Mary Jane, was his deputy, Brace Cole. It had not occurred to him yet that the sheriff had met a terrible death.

  Cole was ready now, in case he should be asked for a statement by anyone.

  So he looked around the room. He saw no clues. He looked at Sheriff Wade Wyatt's body. Just like the two guineas that they found dead in the ditch. Just like Feinstein and that geology fellow from Washington.

  The men in the ditch. What was it Wyatt had said? "I wouldn't be surprised if he had something to do

  with this." That's what Wyatt had said and he meant that Remo Blomberg, that wise-ass running that store.

  Well, Sheriff Wade Wyatt, befitting his grandeur as a human being, had been the kind of man who would tolerate a great deal before cracking down. But not Brace Cole, who was now the acting sheriff of San Aquino County, pending an election within sixty days for Wade Wyatt's unexpired term. Brace Cole was not about to let that Blomberg get away with it.

  Wade Wyatt's holster hung from the bedpost and Brace Cole went over to it, then removed the .44 calibre revolver. He spun the cylinder to make sure the gun was loaded, then fingered the notches on the gun butt.

  "Sheriff," he said to Wyatt's intestine-packed face, "We're going to put another notch on your gun."

  Then he went out into the midnight of San Aquino County. He had not noticed the printed note on the floor near the bed, which read: "Double-crossing American pigs. Now you pay."

  Across the town, Remo sat on the blue suede sofa in his living room, talking to Smith. Chiun, still wearing his black robe, sat on the dining room floor, staring through the glass windows to
ward the dimly-lit pool area.

  "The Mafia's out of the game," Remo said. "I don't think they'll be back. But now I've got to get the girls. Quake's assistants."

  "Why did they do it, do you think?5

  "Who knows? They talk like radicals. More country-haters? Or maybe they just like money. Oh, speaking of money. We got yours back."

  "Thank God for small favours," Smith said. "You had better get the girls before they do something dangerous."

  "I will," Remo said. "We're going now."

  He hung up and said, "C'mon, Chiun, let's go."

  The old man rose to his feet and followed Remo out the front door. They drove from their circular driveway only four minutes before acting Sheriff Brace Cole arrived.

  When he saw his prey had vanished, he broadcast a bulletin over his police radio:

  "Notice to all departments in the San Aquino area. Watch for a red hardtop, rental plates, being driven by one Remo Blomberg. He may be accompanied by a little Chink. Both are wanted for suspicion of murder. They are dangerous; should be considered armed and approached with caution."

  Remo parked his car up in the parking area of the Richter Institute, in a corner away from casual sight. It had been a quick trip. He had been racing at full speed when a state squad car got behind him and gave him the siren, but Remo lost the trooper by dousing his lights and skidding into the turnoff to the institute. He glanced back down toward the road. There was no one following him.

  He and Chiun walked down a rickety flight of wooden stairs that led to the twins' trailer. The Volkswagen bus was not there. Remo and Chiun went into the trailer, to wait in the dark for the girls.

  If they were going to make a quake, a big one, they'd make it someplace near here, he told himself, hoping he was right, hoping they had not just fled. This was the spot where the fault was locked, where the greatest pressure was and where their water-laser would have to be set to rip off California.

  Rip off California? How many? Thirteen million people? And how many would die? A million? Two million? How many would lose their homes and their roots? Their businesses?