He opened his empty attache case and began carefully, neatly taking the contents of the safe out and putting them in the attache case. There were papers and money. The papers were more important because they told whom Verillio took his orders from, and that person must be protected at any cost. At all costs. Even if it came to running up against this Shiva.
The money. Well, handy money was handy money, even though he could get his hands on millions. It was always a good idea to have some walking-around money, Verillio thought, as he pulled out the $10,000 stacks and dropped them into his attache case.
Then he closed the safe and began to look through his top desk drawer when his secretary opened the door, smiling.
“Mister Verillio. It’s the Shiva fellow again. Destroyer of Worlds. Heh, heh. He says it’s important.”
Verillio sank back into his leather seat. “Ask him to wait a minute, please. I’ll be right with him.”
She closed the door and Verillio pulled the papers from his attache case and dropped them into a shredder basket under the desk. He would not find out from Verillio. Don Dominic would protect the brains. The papers he had taken from the safe were all shredded now, whirred up under the desk. Verillio felt relief.
From his top right hand desk drawer, he took a .38 caliber pistol and spun the cylinder, checking. It was loaded. He felt its cold weight in his hand and smiled to himself. How long had it been since he had handled a gun? How long that he had been on top of the heap and others used the guns? Somehow, it felt like an old friend, sitting there in his hand, heavy and lethal.
It had done his work many times before. It would do it now. He tried to remember how many he had killed before, but the number escaped him since it was no longer part of his past. He was like the hooker movie star who forgot the whorehouse. Just forget it. He forgot the violence. But it had always been there. He cocked the pistol now, his old friend, and he waited.
Before long, there was another knock on the door. Verillio sat up straight, then the door opened and there was Remo Barry standing there, saying, “Verillio, I don’t have an eternity.”
Verillio was very careful and very precise as he always had been, and he carefully raised the pistol, made sure it was on line, then he squeezed the trigger. He felt only a fractional instant of discomfort as the top of his head blew off and splattered a far wall with flesh and bone and gristle. In the split second before everything stopped, he tried to smile at Remo and he said to himself, “In the name of the Father and… ”
The secretary shrieked and fainted. Remo let her drop and walked to the desk. The attache case was open but it held only money. He felt under the desk and the blades on the shredder basket were still warm. Verillio had left him nothing.
He looked at the money. Stack after stack and $10,000 in each stack. He tried to imagine how many fixes it represented; how many lives destroyed and twisted by the needle that made this money for Verillio; he saw a parade of people passing him by—junkies, children, dying, dead—and he felt no more sympathy for Verillio’s dead, skull-shattered body lying there. He stuffed his pockets full of the money. Next, he walked over, gentled the secretary back to consciousness at her desk, and told her she had best call the police. Then he left.
Downstairs, Remo wondered if it were all finished now. Was it all over with Verillio’s death? He thought not. There was still a mountain of heroin somewhere and as long as it was out there somewhere, it meant that men would try to sell it. They would fight over it; they would kill for it; and there would be need of Remo Williams, the Destroyer.
Remo walked down the street, thinking, and behind him he heard the wail of sirens headed, no doubt, for Verillio’s office. He kept walking and then he was standing in front of a church, a beautiful church. On impulse he went in.
The church was ornate and as beautiful inside. The seats seemed to be hand carved, the altar was magnificent—celebrating the life of Jesus and God. Remo could feel love and worship in the air and he thought it was good for men to have gods to love. He felt in his pocket for the money and it was there, then he saw a young, balding priest standing in the rear of the church and he walked over to him, pulled the money out of his pocket, dropped it onto a small table and said, “For you, Father. To continue God’s work.”
Remo turned and walked away, and Father F. H. Maguire smiled. He had expected a sign from God.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
BUT THE STUFF WAS ROLLING. Into Kansas City came ten pounds and Greasy Russo cut the price to start driving out the competition. There would be plenty more where this came from.
And into Vegas came a few pounds—in the casinos downtown and the whorehouses outside the strip—the word came down: the price is going lower. The independent dealers got the word and began angling to try to get themselves lined up with the man who controlled the sales.
And there were the same stories coming out of St. Louis, Philly, Atlanta and Chicago. The dope was rolling. It was just a trickle now… just a few pounds… probably brought out in private cars… but it was coming.
The trickle would turn into a pour, then into a wave, and when it got split up and scattered around America’s major cities, the big fix would be on, America’s chance to break the back of the narcotics trade would be lost.
America’s allies were angry now, too. France had wanted to handle this and was now pointedly expressing regret that America had blundered. Great Britain and Japan too. What happened in America happened in their countries as well. They wanted the narcotics movers wiped out. If America couldn’t do it, well, then, they just might have to fall back on their own resources.
It was noon. Remo had gone back to his New York apartment and called Smith on the scrambler phone.
“Verillio’s dead,” Remo said.
Smith could not have cared less. “Have you found the heroin?”
“Not yet.”
“Not yet? What are you waiting for?”
“I’m waiting for you and all your stupid Dick Tracy snooperscopes to find it”
“Don’t be smart. The supplies are getting out. We don’t know how and it’s just a little bit. But we’ve got to find the main source of supply.”
“Won’t Verillio being dead stop it?” Remo asked.
“Use your head. That’ll stop it for about five minutes and then somebody else is going to be moving it. What you have to do is find it. And fast. You must act quickly.”
“Thanks a lot for the great advice.”
“Try following it for a change.”
It was a race but Smith hung up first. Score one for him.
Remo looked around the room. On the couch was the pile of equipment he had bought at the sporting goods store on the way over. Chiun had studiously ignored it ever since Remo came in the door. Chiun was still mad because Remo had missed dinner last night after Chiun had made special lobster.
Chiun now sat on the floor watching Myron Brisbane, psychiatrist at large. “Chiun,” Remo said, “You’ve got to give me a hand with those bodies. The bathroom’s getting disgusting, even with the ice.”
Chiun stared at the television and mumbled something to Remo. It sounded like “my arteries… the strain.”
“Come on, Chiun, dammit,” Remo said.
“I am too old for that kind of thing.”
“You weren’t too old to kill them,” Remo said.
“Shhhh,” Chiun said, holding up a finger for silence and staring at the television.
Remo muttered something about the deceit of Orientals, especially Koreans, and picked up the heavy package and carried it into the bathroom. He did not see Chiun stick out his tongue at Remo’s back.
Inside the bathroom, Remo looked at the three bodies crowded into the bathtub, crushed ice packed tightly around them.
Remo dropped his package with a snarl and snapped the heavy twine that wrapped it. From the heavy brown paper, he extracted three duffle bags and three diver’s wet suits.
He yanked the top body in the grouping out of the tub
onto the tile floor, and began to yank the black foam rubber pants over the dead man’s suit clothes. Then he pulled on the long-sleeved black rubber jacket, snapped and zipped both of them shut. He pulled a rubber helmet onto the corpse, then outside rubber booties, and forced the body into one of the duffle bags. He stuffed a towel in on top of the body so no one could look in at the bag’s contents and locked it with a padlock.
He repeated the process with the other two bodies in the tub. When he was done the light blue tile floor was sloshy with water and melting ice, but the bodies were packed safely away in the canvas military duffle bags.
Remo stood them up against the sink and walked out again into the living room.
“You going to help me with these? he asked Chiun.
Chiun feigned sleep.
Remo knew when he had lost. “The next time you kill somebody, you get rid of them. I don’t even want to know you.”
Chiun’s eyes were still closed and Remo said out loud, “A sleeping man can’t watch television. No point in wasting electricity,” and then he walked over and turned off the television.
Remo went back into the bathroom. He hoisted one duffle bag up to his shoulder, catching the body inside at the waist with his shoulder and balancing it there neatly. He grabbed the other duffles by their center handles, one in each hand, straightened up and walked back out into the living room where the television set again was on.
The secret was in motion, and Remo imperceptibly kept the two bags he was holding in his hands swinging gently and the one on his shoulder rocking. He kept them moving all the time, so they never got a chance to become dead weight and he never had a chance to feel their six hundred pounds of weight.
Downstairs the doorman gave him a quizzical look, but hailed a cab. The cabbie stopped and made no offer to help his passenger with his odd luggage, so the passenger tossed it into the back seat himself.
“Kennedy Airport,” he said. The cab driver groused a little because he did not generally make out so well tip-wise on those long hauls, preferring short trips instead. Then on the trip he let his passenger in on his philosophy for the good life, which was that the world would be an all right place if it weren’t for the jews, spicks, wops, niggers and polacks, you ain’t jewish or italian, are you, mister? It was inferior people that made an inferior world, laziness was built into some of those types.
He stopped at Eastern Airlines as he was told and made no effort to help his passenger, who took only one of the bags and told him to wait. He watched through the window. Inside his fare bought a ticket at the counter and checked in the duffle bag of luggage, then the fare came back out and got into the cab. They drove down to the National Airlines ticket office which wasn’t far, and did not really give the cabdriver much time to explain about the laziness of most races except his own. There they were already, again his fare lugged out the duffle bag himself and went in, checked the bag after buying a ticket with cash, then he was out in the cab again.
The next stop in line was TWA. The passenger took the third bag, bought a ticket there and checked his duffle bag. The cabbie turned his head for a moment and when he looked around again, his fare was gone. He waited and when the fare didn’t return, he got out of the cab. He did not see him on the sidewalk and inside he did not see him anywhere in the TWA lounge, and—cursing all Jews, guineas and spiks—he went inside and asked the clerk what had happened to the man who checked the duffle bag.
“Oh, you mean, Mister Gonzales,” the clerk said, looking at the slip before him. “Well, he had to rush to catch his plane for Puerto Rico. He said that if you came in, I should tell you he’d get you the next time.”
But the man known momentarily as Mister Gonzales was not on his way to Puerto Rico. He was sitting in one of the small jump seats on a helicopter headed for Newark Airport.
The duffle bag that belonged to Mr. Gonzales was now being loaded into the rear of the San Juan plane. And another duffle bag just like it, but belonging to Mr. Aronovitz was being loaded into the back of the Anchorage plane. And a third duffle bag, owned by Mr. Botticelli, was already aboard the Chicago plane.
But in Chicago and San Juan and Anchorage, no Mr. Gonzales or Mr. Aronovitz or Mr. Botticelli would call for the bags. They would sit in the terminals for a few days or maybe even a week, then the smell would begin to come through the rubber suits and the police of three cities would have an airport mystery.
That would really stir the pot but he hoped everything would be over before then, thought Remo Williams, now known as Remo Barry—sometimes Mr. Gonzales, Mr. Aronovitz and Mr. Botticelli—as he sat in the helicopter looking down at the meadows, as the chopper lowered for a landing at Newark Airport.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE CONWELL FUNERAL HOME SAT ON a tired little side street in Hudson. It was located behind a supermarket, in an old frame building that dated back to the revolutionary war, and in the backyard was a giant oak tree under which George Washington once held a council of war.
The Conwell Funeral Home was very WASP, very proper, and they simply did not like to bury just any Italian. But Dominic Verillio of course was another story. Why, Mr. Verillio wasn’t even really like an Italian or even a Catholic, for that matter.
Why, he was a friend of the mayor’s; he belonged to the Museum Society, gave to charities and was active in civic and social work. It was only an accident of birth that gave him an Italian name. The poor man must have suffered so to take his own life because of the pressure of overwork—work for the good of the people, you could count on that—and so funeral services would be held at Conwell’s. A call from City Hall had stressed that they must be held immediately, that very day, with the funeral to be held tomorrow.
So there had been a private visitation that afternoon and men in cars, big, black cars and hard-faced men, had come to the funeral home all afternoon. They had bent a knee at the sealed coffin containing Dominic Verillio’s body. They had blessed themselves and left. Not a few of them wondered what had happened to their down payment money for the heroin.
The same men had sent flowers and the flowers had filled not only the small chapel for Dominic Verillio, but the entire first floor of the funeral home. Additional floral pieces were stacked outside on the front porch and still they came from all over the country.
Pietro Scubisci left his bag of peppers inside his car when he came in to bid farewell to Don Dominic. It was not like the old days at all. In the old days, they would have stayed at the funeral home. They would have taken it over. They would have rented entire hotels, so that there would be accommodations for all those who wanted to help send off the spirit of Don Dominic.
But today, Pietro sighed. It was impossible. The feds with their cameras, their microphones and their agents were all over and one could stop only for a moment before having to move on. The world changes. It was probably a good idea to rush the services before the feds could annoy everybody who showed up.
But still it would have been nice to send Don Dominic into the hands of God with a proper ceremony. There was no doubt that he was going to God. Had not Pietro’s own daughter said that Don Dominic was going against a god? She must have meant going to God.
Pietro Scubisci bent his knee at the coffin and wiped a tear from his face. Don Dominic Verillio was a widower and no matter what Angela said there had been no children and so no one for Pietro to say goodbye to. Because of her obvious grief, however, he said goodbye to the beautiful young woman standing at the back of the chapel. She had the kind of face that Etruscans dreamed of and the bones looked familiar.
She wept and when Pietro Scubisci patted her on the shoulder, she said, “Grazie, Don Pietro.” He looked hard at her but could not remember where he had seen that face. And then he went out into his car, told his driver to get moving to Atlantic City where there would be a conference about leadership and Pietro might have the votes. But who had the heroin?
Scubisci and the other Mafia men had arrived in the afternoon and there we
re more or less public ceremonies that night. Mayor Hansen was there looking dignified and vacuous, with his daughter, Cynthia, who looked truly grieved, and her mother, a dark woman who only a few persons knew had a drinking problem. She wept uncontrollably. There was Police Chief Brian Dugan because, after all, Verillio was the biggest contributor to the PAL and there was Horgan, the editor, and the Rt. Rev. Msgr. Joseph Antoni. In the back there was Remo Williams, who sat and watched the crowd.
Monsignor Antoni had revised his Columbus Day speech for the occasion. He spoke of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, of Christopher Columbus and Enrico Fermi. He spoke of Verdi, Caruso, Pope John XXIII and of Frank Sinatra. He said that against this panoply of greatness, of service to mankind, of progress and beauty, Dominic Verillio surely stood, joined with them in strong array against the more sensational exploitations of a handful of overrated gangsters, belief in whose existence blasphemed against the Italian people. When he said that, he glared angrily at Horgan, who had personally written a long, involved obituary of Verillio, hinting at the mystery in his life and making his opinions clear without ever stating them.
From his seat in the rear of the sweaty little room, Remo watched them all. Mayor Hansen, sitting erect, mixing his small repertoire of facial expressions carefully; one from column a for the eyes; another from column b for the mouth, alternately looking respectful, thoughtful, grieved, contemplative, and then respectful again.
Remo watched him carefully. It was the first time he had seen him, since Cynthia seemed intent on keeping the two of them apart, and Remo felt the frustration one often feels in dealing with a public man. It takes a lot of digging to get beneath the public face to find out what’s really going on and often one finds nothing’s going on. The private face is as stupid as the public face.
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