Willie hung up and when he heard the disconnect, spoke loudly into the mouthpiece, “nigger.”
Then he dialed again. “Johnny? How are you? This is Willie the Plumber. Got something good for you. I’m at the Monarch. Yeah, Mr. Gasso would like you to come. Okay, but hurry if you can.”
Then Willie hung up and strode to the bar, looked around menacingly at the workingmen and city hall officials, ignoring the eyes of the two plainclothesmen at the far end of the bar.
He was going to have real respect soon. Didn’t he arrange for the drivers of the Ocean Wheels trucks? Didn’t he direct them to the warehouse where Mr. Gasso took over? Hadn’t he kept his mouth shut when they never came back, even though one of them was his brother, and his sister-in-law had thrown a pot of hot pasta at his head when the brother never reappeared?
So he didn’t know where the big shipment was. You couldn’t tell everyone. But he knew a lot of things. Like he knew Verillio had a boss and that it wasn’t Verillio who planned the big drug import.
Willie the Plumber knew, because on certain key moves, Verillio would close the door, make a telephone call, and then come out with his decision.
Willie the Plumber knew, but he was telling no one, until the time was just right. Then, he’d have some respect.
He pulled a roll of bills out of his pocket to let the bartender and customers ogle, then peeled off two tens.
“Get the bar a drink,” said Willie the Plumber, who one day soon would do to the perfect human weapon what Gaetano Gasso and squads of men could never do.
CHAPTER EIGHT
REMO LEFT THE TAXICAB AT city hall and noticed the two cars of hoods sizing him up. Dugan or Verillio. He would bet on Verillio. Dugan could have used his cops. Whoops. On the far side of the street, plainclothesmen in an unmarked squad car. Well, Dugan and Verillio.
“All’s well that begins well,” he thought. Up the well-worn city hall steps he bounced, stopped to give one and all a profile, then went into the building. A candy and soft drink stand was to his right. Clerk’s office to his far right. Tax office on his left. Mayor’s office, according to the black and gold sign in the middle of the double staircase, up one flight.
Up one flight he went, glancing into the city council chambers where democracy and various other kinds of public stealing occurred. The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship, he thought, is that thieves tend to rotate more in a democracy. But the thieves in a democracy had to be organized.
If he believed this way, what the hell was he doing in his job? he asked himself.
He already knew the answer. The same thing ninety percent of the rest of the world was doing in its jobs. He did his job because that was what he did and no exploration of his inner psyche ever provided a better explanation.
He read the sign, Mayor’s Office, knocked, and walked in. A very attractive, gray-haired woman sat at a typewriter in the outer office.
“Can I help you?” she said.
“Yes. My name’s Remo Barry. I’m the magazine writer. I’ve come for my appointment with Mayor Hansen.”
“Oh, yes, we’ve been expecting you,” said the secretary who, Remo thought, should give lessons on aging. She was a stunning woman with white hair, fine features and an olive face that was young despite lines.
She pressed a button and a door opened. It was not the mayor who appeared, unless the mayor had suddenly become five-feet-eight and was built like the Venus de Milo with a face of fine-cut living marble. The young woman had blondish hair with streaks, deep-brown eyes and a smile that would collapse a monk.
She wore a black leather skirt and a form-fitting gray sweater without bra, beads dangling over breasts. And for the first time since he had taken sex instructions, those dragging daily muscle and mental controls that Chiun had foisted on him, Remo felt an urge rising within him.
He dropped the pad over his fly.
“You’re Remo Barry,” said the woman. “I’m Cynthia Hansen, the mayor’s daughter and secretary. I’m glad you came.”
“Yeah,” said Remo, surprised to find himself thinking that he could take the woman now, in the ante room to the mayor’s office, then flee and probably never get caught.
This was not a healthy thing to think, although it was the most pleasant idea he had entertained in months. But it would be a very nice way to be very dead. He refocused his thoughts and breathed deeply of the oxygen in the air, resting his consciousness on the eternal forces of the universe. It didn’t do much, however, for his erection and he entered her office with his pad still genitally oriented. Then he got mad at himself, forced blood control, and it was gone.
Good. He felt strong and in charge. He obviously had had a similar effect upon the woman, because it became evident through the gray sweater that she was aroused too.
He would play that. He would use her arousal against her, pushing the line of conversation into areas she did not want to go, but would have to go because he was in command.
The office was relatively bare but for a desk, three chairs, a couch and political photographs on the wall. The blind was drawn.
She sat down on the couch and crossed her legs.
“Well,” she said, fondling her beads, “where shall we begin?”
So much for blood control and the salvation of America and its constitution.
“Here,” cried Remo and he was on her, his hands into the sweater, his body between her legs, forcing his mouth on hers, abandoning everything he had been taught. Just taking. And before he knew it, he was in her, she had put him in. And then, bang, it was over for both of them. Seven-second sex. A textbook disaster.
He smelled her perfume and felt close to the smooth skin of her cheek. She had not even removed her clothes. Neither had Remo.
He kissed her cheek.
“Don’t do that,” she said. “It was good. But don’t do that.”
“Yeah,” said Remo and removed himself and zipped up, as Cynthia Hansen smoothed out her skirt.
“Well, now,” she said as if nothing had happened, “where shall we begin?”
“At the beginning,” said Remo. “Tell me about Hudson.”
He settled down in a chair and began to take notes. Cynthia Hansen began her peroration as though the last minute had not existed.
She told how corruption had been endemic to Hudson, how the city had begun to die in the 1930s under one boss and how he was replaced by another boss who was worse because he was inept. She told of two decades of corruption, shuffling of governments, but nothing changing.
Then, just eighteen months ago, the city government had been decimated by indictments and convictions. There was an election, probably the last time Hudson would have a chance to redeem itself.
Her father, Craig Hansen, had faced another organization hack and an out-and-out Mafia thug, but please don’t quote her on that.
Well, her father had won, barely won and now with the new election for a four-year term, the city might have turned the corner.
“You see, Mr. Barry, he may not have wrought miracles in eighteen months, but he has brought hope. He is a dreamer, Mr. Barry, in a city shorn of dreams. He is a doer in a city governed, til now by the fix. In short, Mr. Barry, Craig Hansen is the last hope of this city. I think that tells it about as it is.”
“How does he feel about being mayor of the heroin capital of the country?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, the rakeoff from the big heroin imports. How does he stand on that?”
Cynthia Hansen laughed.
“Mr. Barry, you’re a very attractive man. But please, that’s just absurd. Yes, we, like other cities, have a heroin problem. But we’re finding new and more relevant ways to deal with that problem. Storefront therapy centers. My father is finding more relevant ways to deal with minority communities. Granted, with the means at his disposal and the apparent reluctance of the government to produce massive aid, progress is limited, but we feel it is meaningful and relevant.”
“What about your father’s personal involvement with the heroin trade?”
Cynthia Hansen shook her head and looked quizzically at Remo. “I beg your pardon?”
“You know, the big heroin deal. Stuff may be worth a billion dollars for all we know. Your father’s involvement in it?”
“Just who the hell are you?”
“You ought to know. You checked me out.”
“What are you after?”
“Story on heroin.”
“Your editor told me it was to be a story on Hudson.”
“It is. Heroin capital of the United States.”
“Well, I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can tell you about heroin that you couldn’t read in any newspaper. Now would you care to discuss some of our basic urban problems?”
“Yeah. How are you going to get the heroin out?”
“Good day, Mr. Barry,” said Cynthia Hansen dropping her fist to the couch on which they had made love and pushing herself up from it.
As she stepped toward the door, quick strong paces, vibrant strutting hips, firm young breasts, a face so classic it looked as if it fell off a Roman wall, Remo reached out for a wrist and flipped her back on the couch. This time he was going to do it better.
This time he took off his clothes and hers. He arranged her carefully on the couch. He was tender and gentle and he remembered all Chiun’s tricks. He did not neglect the backs of her knees or the insides of her ears or the hair at the base of the neck.
He brought her along with him, slowly but fully, and when she was at a peak, he brought her to a higher peak, and then another higher peak until she could control herself no longer and exploded in a violent paroxysm of passion, shuddering convulsively down the length of her body.
And Remo put his face close to her ear and whispered gently, “What about the heroin?”
“HEROIN,” she groaned in exultant relief. Remo felt her body tremble again. He had misjudged the timing again. Still time to salvage something. Maybe tenderness. So he nibbled her right ear, and whispered into it, “You know, hon. Who’s dealing?”
“I just wanted you for your body, handsome,” said Cynthia Hansen with a triumphant chuckle. “Women’s lib frees a lot of us.”
“Cynthia, did you ever realize how stupid you look when you come?”
“No. I’m enjoying it too much to entertain those self-defeating thoughts.”
Remo kissed her once more, this time for real, then left her and got dressed in the office as he watched her dress. She took forty seconds to put on her braless sweater, panties and black leather skirt. Then she put on makeup for seven minutes.
“Why don’t you come around tomorrow about the same time, Remo. I like your body.”
“I don’t do this all the time for nothing.”
“There’s money in the upper right hand drawer.”
Remo laughed. “Somehow I get the feeling I might get pregnant from this.”
He opened her office door and stepped out.
“See you tomorrow,” she called after him.
“How about the interview with the mayor?”
“His schedule is filled. Sorry.”
“I’ll see him. Don’t worry.”
“Will you come back tomorrow?”
“No,” Remo said.
“Okay,” she said. “You come back tomorrow and you can see him for five minutes. Get here at 10 a.m. and you can see him at noon. We’ll find some way to while away the hours. Now shut the door. I’ve got work to do.”
Another seed planted. Remo smiled to himself as he thought of the double meaning. On to the editor.
Editor James Horgan sat with his feet on his desk, his polka-dot bow tie open over his checked shirt, cleaning his fingernails with a makeup rule, a thin strip of steel used to separate type in the composing room.
“Sure I know about the massive heroin import. I imported it. I want to start my kids early on the habit and since the stuff is so hard to get nowadays, I thought I’d buy a lifetime supply. Anything else you want to know?”
“I’m serious, Mr. Horgan.”
“You don’t sound it.” The voice was a gravelly whine, a pervasive discontent in search of something to be discontented about. Horgan got the pinky with a right-angle tip of the makeup rule.
“Hudson has become the heroin capital of the country. I believe you’re the mastermind,” Remo said.
Horgan looked up. His eyes twinkled.
“You’re on a fishing expedition, son. What do you really want?”
“I want the facts.”
“All right. There’s a market for heroin. As long as there’s a market, you’re going to have people selling it. As long as it is illegal it will be expensive and the people who sell it will be criminals. Now if you could buy the stuff with a prescription from your doctor, good-bye heroin traffic.”
“But wouldn’t that create addicts?”
“You talk as if we don’t have them now. What that would do would be to make it unprofitable for the pushers and they’d stop trying to get other people hooked,” Horgan said.
“Wouldn’t that turn America into a nation of drug-users?”
“As opposed to?”
“Is that why you imported so much heroin?”
“I’ve gone fishing myself, son. You’re not bad at it. Then again, you’re not very good at it. Ever been in the newspaper business?”
“No,” said Remo. “There are some things I wouldn’t stoop to, even for money.”
Horgan guffawed. “What makes you think we get paid?”
Remo rose to leave. “Thank you for the interview,” he said. “I’ll keep you in mind.”
“Uh, look, son. Good luck on whatever you’re looking for and on the way out, try to wake up my city desk. See if any of my editors are alive and send one of them in. You can tell they’re alive if the dust hasn’t settled on their faces. And if you should bump into anyone who can write, tell him he’s hired. You wouldn’t want a job, would you?”
“No thanks. I’ve got one.”
Remo walked out into the dull, green city room, lathered by ink dust. Around a collection of desks pushed together sat a group of men, moving their hands zombie-like over pieces of paper.
Physically, they were alive.
Outside, in front of the Hudson Tribune in Hudson Square, Remo picked up his tails. He took a taxi to New York City instead of a bus or the subway, so that his tails would have an easier time staying with him.
He brought them to a modern apartment building in the fashionable upper East Side of New York City.
He knew that his tails would be all over the doorman with five, ten, maybe twenty dollar bills. Of course, in such an exclusive neighborhood, no doorman would give away information for five dollars. They might even want as much as fifty. Remo hoped the doorman held out for top dollar.
On the tenth floor, he got out of the elevator and walked down the carpeted foyer to his apartment.
When he entered, he saw Chiun sitting before the television set, the flickering making his yellow face pale in the darkness of the apartment.
CURE had bought Chiun a taping device, which he brought with him when he accompanied Remo. This way, he could tape the daytime soap operas instead of missing two while he watched one.
“It is wrong,” he had complained, “that all the good shows should come at one time so that they be missed. Why do they not have one after another so people can have true enjoyment?”
With his taping device hooked up to another television in the apartment, Chiun could watch his soap operas from noon until 7 p.m. He would make little clucking sounds as Mrs. Claire Wentworth disclosed that her daughter had been living with Dr. Bruce Barton, even though Dr. Barton could not leave his wife, Jennifer, because she was dying of leukemia, and even though Loretta, the daughter, was really in love with Vance Masterman who, she did not realize, was her father but who she thought was in league with Professor Singbar Ramkwat of the Pakistani Embassy who had stolen the pla
ns for the lymph-node cure which Bart Henderson had devoted his life to developing before he met Loretta, with whom he was in love.
As Remo remembered it, this was pretty much where Mrs. Wentworth and Vance Masterman were a year and a half ago. He mentioned it to Chiun, as he went to the phone on the living room table.
“Quiet,” said Chiun.
Remo dialed a number, let it ring three times, then put the receiver down on the cradle and reached into a drawer for a plastic box punctured for speaker holes. The white plastic box had four dials on the left side, each with numbers one through nine.
What was that combination again? He knew it as well as his birthday, mainly because it was his birthday, minus two digits from the year. He dialed the number, setting the box on function. When the phone rang, he lifted the receiver and snapped the box onto it, transforming the meaningless squawks into a human voice.
Unfortunately, the voice was always Harold W. Smith’s, and Remo liked the squawks better. Outside telephone booths had become almost open circuits because of the little known but extensive tapping of them by security agencies. And those that weren’t tapped didn’t work, a fact which drove the Mafia to write threatening letters to the telephone supervisors. So now, Remo used a scrambler.
“Yeah,” Remo said.
“Still no shipments have moved out, and the buyers around the country are getting edgy. We’ve heard this around. How are you doing?”
“Okay for the first day. I’ve created some interest.”
“Good.”
“Are you running those heroin detectors through Hudson?” Remo asked.
“Yeah, but we’ve gotten nothing. The stuff may be underground and if so we wouldn’t pick it up. What’s wrong? You sound down.”
“I saw an old friend today.”
“Oh, that thing. Yes, we got a report on it. Well, we expected you might run into something like that.”
“I’m glad we did, you sonofabitch,” said Remo and hung up the phone. Then he dialed the number again, but took off the scrambler and listened to the receiver squawk incoherently.
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