Mafia Fix

by Warren Murphy

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE FIRST WORD CAME FROM GREAT BRITAIN. It came unofficially, so that it could be denied if need be, but it came accurately.

  Her Majesty’s Government regarded the lack of effective action on the part of the United States regarding the massive heroin shipment as inexcusable error. And since so much of Great Britain’s narcotics traffic was tied hand-to-hand with the availability of drugs in the United States, Her Majesty’s Government had decided it must protect its own best interests.

  And in Charing Mews, a hard-faced man who looked like Hoagy Carmichael put his exploding briefcase in the back seat of his supercharged Bentley to begin the drive to London Airport for a BOAC plane to New York.

  Elysee Palace shared Her Majesty’s Government’s feelings exactly. After all, had not France offered to close down the heroin operation and had not the White House prevented them from doing so? And did not the American ineptitude now threaten continued friendly relations and cooperation in the field of law enforcement between the two countries?

  Therefore, the government of France would now feel free to take whatever steps were necessary to close down this narcotics operation and in the process protect France’s international reputation as a battler against the drug menace.

  And Japan, too, had heard. It joined in the general panic at the prospect of so many tons of heroin being moved openly into the world’s illegal narcotics market. And from Tokyo also came the same message, unofficially of course: “whatever steps we feel are necessary.”

  In his office at Folcroft Sanatorium, Dr. Harold W. Smith, head of CURE, read the reports.

  They meant manpower. It meant that these governments would send in to the United States their top operatives, gun-happy lunatics to try to track down the heroin gang. What the hell did they think they could do that Remo Williams couldn’t do? Except get in Remo’s way.

  Smith looked at the reports again. He could tell the President that he was pulling Williams off the assignment. He would be justified in doing that.

  Then Smith pursed his lips and thought of the pictures and reports he had shown to Remo: the stories of agony those dry statistics told; the young children hooked on drugs; the addict infants born to junkie mothers; the lives ruined and lost; the millions stolen and wasted. He thought of his daughter now cold-turkeying it at a farm in Vermont, and he pulled back his hand which had strayed close to the special White House telephone.

  America’s best hope to crack the case was Remo Williams, the Destroyer.

  In the hope of preserving international relations, Smith prayed softly that none of the friendly countries’ operatives would get in Remo’s way.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  DON DOMINIC VERILLIO HAD BEEN LAID TO his eternal rest in the green rolling hills of a cemetery fifteen miles outside the city, where the air was still semi-breathable and where birds sang.

  A police motorcycle escort and honor guard had led the hearse and the flower car. One hundred persons had followed in limousines and stood at the graveside, in early morning dew, as the final funeral rites were held.

  Then people had separated and gone their own ways.

  Willie the Plumber Palumbo had been directed to take Mrs. Hansen, the mayor's wife, back to her home. She was still crying uncontrollably.

  Cynthia Hansen joined Mayor Hansen in driving back to City Hall. She left him at the door of his office and went to her own office.

  Craig Hansen took off his homburg, which he disliked wearing because he felt it added too much age to his face, and stepped through the massive wooden door into his office.

  A man sat there, in his chair, feet up on his desk, reading the sports section of the Daily News.

  The man put down the paper and looked up as the mayor walked in. “Hello, Hansen,” he said. “I've been waiting for you.”

  Hansen had seen the man last night at the funeral home. It was that writer fellow, Remo something or other, who had been pestering Cynthia. Well, Mayor Craig Hansen would make short work of him.

  “Hi there, fellow,” he said, tossing his homburg onto the fourteen-foot long mahogany table. “Something I can do for you?”

  Remo stood up. “Yeah, Hansen. Where's the heroin?”

  “It's a terrible problem, the entire problem of drug addiction,” Hansen said. “It feeds at the vitals of America and there is no real cure for any of our urban ills until this social cancer is removed from the body politic.”

  Hansen had walked over by his desk and Remo stepped aside to make room for Hansen in the mayor's chair.

  “Yeah, but where is it?” Remo persisted.

  “Where is it at? That's the question we continuously hear in the streets of the city. I regard it as an anguished cry for help from those upon whose strength and vigor the city relies for its renewed vitality,” Hansen said. “Can there be any doubt… ”

  As he talked, Remo looked at the vapid, bland face and he knew that Mayor Craig Hansen could no more plot a heroin operation than he could clean a street. He looked closely at his face, all of it seemingly in correct proportions—the right shape—but apparently without a bone in it.

  And Remo thought of other faces. Hansen's wife, with her fine Roman lines. And Verillio who, before his own bullet had removed the top of his skull, had worn a face with character and strength. And he thought of Cynthia Hansen and he realized suddenly where that fine Etruscan face had come from, and why Mrs. Hansen had cried so much, and why Verillio had conceded his own death so quickly.

  Mayor Hansen had spun toward the window and was staring through the dirty dusty glass at the city—his city—and his voice droned on, “without social strength, no real progress is possible, particularly inasmuch as our real estate tax base… ” and he continued on as Remo slipped outside and quietly closed the door behind him.

  Remo walked past a startled clerk-typist and toward the door to Cynthia's office. He stepped inside silently and locked the door behind him.

  Cynthia was seated at her desk, her head down, still crying, her body racked with sobs.

  She wore a black dress that celebrated her body. As Remo stood there and watched her, slowly she realized someone's presence. She looked up and saw him. Shock slowly blasted sorrow from her face.

  “You… ” she said.

  “Me. Your goons last night missed.”

  And Cynthia, whose tears were for Remo as well as Verillio, turned shock into anger and fear into hatred, snarling, “You bastard.”

  She stood up and reached for her top right hand desk drawer. Remo knew it would be a gun. But he had no eyes for a gun, only for her breasts and her long waist, and he was on her, rolling her around, away from the open drawer, around the front of the desk. Then his weight was on her. He had her dress up around her hips, she was pinned and Remo was in her.

  “Just one for the road, baby,” he said.

  She hissed at him, “I hate you, you bastard, I hate you.”

  Remo stayed working at her, pressing into her at her desk. The touch and the contact worked slowly and her fury again turned back to tears, as she said, “How could you? He was my father.”

  “I didn't know.”

  “You didn't really think that creep inside could sire me, did you?” Cynthia asked. It didn't really seem to call for an answer so instead Remo just kept stroking away at Cynthia Hansen, the daughter of Don Dominic Verillio.

  · · ·

  Willie the Plumber Palumbo had coughed savagely several times and paused, leaning on the door of his blue Eldorado, until his eyes cleared and his breath came back. Then he closed the door, not slamming it too hard, and walked around to open the door for Mrs. Hansen.

  Even now, now that he knew she had been Verillio's mistress for years, he still felt her tears were excessive. But that was all right in Willie's book. Let her practice, he thought grimly. She'll soon be crying all over again at the loss of a daughter.

  He helped Mrs. Hansen up the stairs of her home and turned her over to the mercies of the fami
ly maid. Then he went back to his car and began the leisurely drive downtown to City Hall.

  Willie had been promoted yesterday and it had been his third shock of the day. First, there had been Gasso. And then Verillio. And then the ultimate shock of Cynthia Hansen telling him that she alone controlled the heroin and that she needed him now to be her number one man.

  He had always known that Verillio had had a boss, and probably one in City Hall, but he had always thought it was the mayor, not the daughter. And now that he thought about it, about her tears and her honest mourning, he wouldn't be surprised if there were more to it than just the fact that she was Verillio's partner and the one with the heroin. There had to be something more to it than that.

  She was quick, though. He had to admit it. She had done the right things. She had told him to contact the leaders in Atlantic City to tell them the deal was still on. She had told him to get the narcotics cops to finish off Remo Barry. And she had seemed excited when he had told her about the funny machine that tracked down carrots and turnips and poppies. She had even kissed him on the cheek.

  No matter. No matter. She was not Sicilian and she was a woman. She was going to remain Willie the Plumber's boss just long enough to lead him to the heroin and then she was going to join her friend, Mr. Verillio, in a very cold grave. In Willie's city, there would be room for only one boss—and he would be it.

  But for the time being, he'd have to play it cute, Willie the Plumber told himself as he parked his Eldorado in the lot behind City Hall in a spot reserved for the City Clerk.

  He was preparing his opening pleasantry as he rode up in the elevator, and he almost had the words out of his mouth as he used the symbol of his new status, the key Cynthia had given him to her City Hall office. He never got the words out because there she was, dress hiked up around her ass, being humped in front of her desk by that bastard again, that Remo Barry, who Willie thought had been taken care of last night by the narcos.

  Willie the Plumber did not believe in using a bean shooter when a howitzer would do. And he did not understand all the niceties of Gasso, Verillio and probably the narco cops. What is more, he didn't care. So he reached into his jacket and pulled out his pistol. Then the man known as Remo turned around and looked into Willie the Plumber's eyes. Remo's eyes were cold and deadly, like brown ice, and Willie the Plumber knew what Gasso and Verillio must have felt just before they died.

  Remo moved. Willie's finger froze on the trigger and Remo was at him. Then Remo was throwing his floater stroke which if it had hit could have cut Willie in half.

  But unconsciously, Willie the Plumber had discovered one of the great secrets of Oriental combat: the fastest way out of a path is to collapse. Willie collapsed, fainted dead on the floor, and Remo's floater stroke, without a target to use up its energy, continued forward— missing Willie—and all its force, instead of destroying some target, raced back along his own arm. The force was just too much for muscle to take and Remo's shoulder dislocated from its socket. The sudden wrench of pain knocked him out and put him unconscious on the floor next to the twisted body of Willie the Plumber who lay there, terrified and coughing even in his sleep.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  REMO SHIVERED.

  He felt cold and he forced his mind to quicken his body rhythms and his blood began flowing faster, carrying warmth throughout his body. It was only when he was warm that he realized his shoulder hurt.

  He opened his eyes slowly. He was on the stone floor of some kind of factory or warehouse building and it was not just cold in his imagination. He could see swirls of cold air vapor moving slowly across the floor and when he pushed himself into a sitting position he discovered his left arm was useless.

  Chiun had made him a superman, but Chiun could do nothing about changing the human anatomy. Shoulder joints were not designed to withstand the force Remo had applied to his own, no more than knees were designed to resist the tearing and pulling put on them by two-hundred-eighty-pound giants who could run the hundred in 9.5 in football garb. Maybe in twenty generations of evolution. But not yet.

  And it was cold. Cynthia Hansen shivered as she stood in front of him, leaning against a trailer truck. Remo shook his eyes into focus. The truck said Chelsea Trucking but there were four of them in a row, parked neatly, and Remo knew he had found the four Ocean Wheel trucks that had carried the heroin.

  But more important than the four trailers and the cold was something else, this pistol Cynthia Hansen held in her hand, pointed at Remo’s head.

  Remo struggled to his feet and swayed groggily back and forth. His arm was really shot. He could tell. There was no sense of belonging, no sense of muscle, just a numbing pain somewhere south of his left shoulder.

  “Where are we?” he asked, speaking more thickly than was necessary.

  “You’re in the place you’ve been looking for. Our drug factory. These are the trucks of heroin,” Cynthia said.

  Remo allowed himself to be impressed. “Enough here for a tidy little nest egg,” he said.

  “More than enough,” she said and he could sense her grasping for the little straw he had held out.

  “How’d you get me here?”

  “I drove you here. My druggist carried you down from upstairs.”

  “You’ve got a partner?” Remo questioned, trying to sound hurt.

  Cynthia looked up and saw the door leading to the top of the stairs was tightly shut. “Him? He’s an employee,” she said.

  “There’s too much here for one person to spend,” Remo said.

  “Better one than none,” she said, and she shuddered as the cold went through her.

  Remo swung his good right arm as if to warm himself and as her eyes went toward the movement, he slid forward a step, imperceptibly, toward her.

  “Yeah,” he said, “but better two than one.”

  “It could have been, Remo,” she said sadly. “It really could have been.”

  For the first time she met his eyes full and Remo turned on the warmth in them. He forced his mind to conjure up visions of their sex, under tables, among salami skins, against desks and in chairs. His eyes mirrored exactly what was on his mind and she responded to his eyes.

  She said again, “It really could have been. Just you and me.”

  “Yeah, just the three of us. You, me and your gun,” Remo said, swinging his arm again, moving another step closer. “You know,” he said, “we’ve got something. It never took any gun for me to perform.”

  “It was never like that for me before, either,” she said. “But never again. How could I trust you?” she asked, hoping that he could convince her.

  “How do women ever trust men? Most of them don’t need guns,” Remo said.

  “I didn’t think I needed one,” Cynthia said.

  Remo answered, “Everything you ever needed you were born with.”

  Her gun hand wavered slightly. Remo saw it and said, “It would just be you and me.” Slowly the gun came down and she was defenseless before him. He was only a few feet away and, dammit, all he could see was that finely chiseled face and that great bosom and long sloping waist, she leaned her face forward and Remo was on her lips with a groan. When she searched his mouth, he heard the gun drop to the floor with a clank.

  Then he was moving her, their mouths still joined, but slowly, step by step, he was moving her toward the cab of the first truck. He leaned her against the cab and took his good hand from her breasts and reached up and caught the door handle and opened the door. Then he lifted her up and slid her into the seat. And he had her dress up around her eyes and he forced her legs apart so one was up on the dashboard and he forced himself between her legs, ignoring the pain in his torn shoulder and he put himself in.

  The cold was chilling and the cab was uncomfortable, but for Remo, with this woman, it was like an overstuffed bed.

  He leaned against her ear and told her, “I always wanted to do it in a truck,” and he brought her up to his rhythm.

  He kept her th
ere as he kept moving. Her arms came around his head and pulled him close to her face, as she whispered in his ear, “Remo, I love you. I love you. Please. Please.”

  They were both nearing the end. She was bucking and writhing under him on the seat of the truck and she bit into his ear as they came. He pulled back slightly, not to escape her teeth, but to give himself room to pull her skirt up over her face, so she would not see the blow coming as his good hand came up over his head and then down into her waiting face. Remo felt the bones crunch under his hand and he knew she was dead.

  He knew that if he had looked into her face, he might not have been able to do it, and he had to do it. He had to do it in the name of all those teenage junkies who infested the country, whose curse was the source of Cynthia Hansen’s riches, and whose lifelong agonies would pay for her pleasures.

  Out of hatred, he killed her. But because, in a way, he loved her, he had let her die quickly.

  Then Remo pulled away from her and he saw for the first time why the truck cab had seemed crowded. Huddled on the floor in the corner under the steering wheel were the bodies of two men, crowded together for warmth, frozen solid. Remo stared at them unseeing for a moment.

  Then in a flame of anger, he brought his hand up again and down hard into the already crushed face beneath the black skirt, this time with hatred only, and said, “That’s the biz, sweetheart.”

  Remo stepped down from the truck cab. He thought to himself sadly that he had left a great deal of himself in the cab along with the twisted body of Cynthia Hansen.

  Then he tried to remember her face and found out he could not. Perhaps such memories were only for men. And he was not just a man. He was the Destroyer.

  Suddenly he felt cold again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  MYRON HOROWITZ HAD BEEN HUMMING.

  He had helped Cynthia carry that impossible bastard, Remo something or other, down into the deep freeze, had left her down there to shoot him.