He came up close to the old Korean and said softly, “Chiun.”
Chiun’s eyes opened as if the lids had been pulled apart by springs. When he saw Remo there was just a flicker of approval.
“Thank you,” Remo said.
“You look like something the cat dragged in,” Chiun said.
“Thank you,” Remo said.
“And you smell bad,” Chiun said.
“Thank you,” Remo said.
“If I hadn’t met a nice man, I would have missedThe Gathering Clouds. But do you care?”
“Thank you,” Remo said.
“What is this silly prattling?” Chiun asked.
“Thank you,” Remo said.
“Aaaaah,” said Chiun in disgust. He rose smoothly to his feet and walked a few steps away. He stopped, his back still to Remo and said:
“You’re welcome. But the next time you get out of fires by yourself.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
WHEN BIG VINCE MARINO and Edward Leung had found no trace of either Leen Forth Wooley or the Dreamocizer in Professor Wooley’s house, Arthur Grassione had wanted to leave immediately for Don Salvatore Massello’s boat.
But he couldn’t.
The ancient Oriental who had taken over most of the back seat of Grassione’s limousine had made that very clear.
“Just a little longer,” he had said.
“And then it’ll be over?” Grassione asked.
“Yes. And then there is Search for Yesterday and Private Sanitarium and The Young and the Foolish and Hours of Our Sorrow and finally Rad Rex starring as Dr. Whitlow Wyatt, noted surgeon, in As the Planet Revolves.”
“That’ll take all day. I can’t wait for all that crap,” Grassione said. He looked to the front of the car and Big Vince Marino turned around on the seat, ready to help Grassione if he needed it.
“What?” Chiun said. “You would leave before seeing As the Planet Revolves? Starring Rad Rex?”
“You’re damned right,” Grassione said, but the old man did not answer because the commercials had ended and The Gathering Clouds had started again.
Grassione was ready to tell Marino to chase the old man from the car when there was a loud thump, as if there had been an explosion nearby.
The old Oriental sat bolt upright on the car seat. He closed his eyes as if concentrating, then pushed open the door.
“I would like to stay with you to watch our daytime dramas,” he said, “but my child needs me.”
“Yeah, right,” Grassione said. “We always gotta take care of our kids.”
“Isn’t it true?” Chiun said, and then he was gone from the car, and Grassione, without looking back, motioned Marino to drive off. If it had been an explosion, he didn’t want to be on campus when the police arrived to investigate.
On the way to the boatyard, Grassione explained his plans to Leung and Marino. They would kill Massello, kill Leen Forth, and take Wooley’s Dreamocizer back to Uncle Pietro in New York.
He rubbed his hands in anticipation. “It’ll be a good day’s work.”
“Sure will, boss,” Marino chuckled. “Sure will.”
Edward Leung said nothing.
A guard stood at the gate to the boatyard when the black limousine pulled up. He looked into the back seat where Grassione was watching a rerun of Death Valley Days.
“Hello, Mr. Grassione,” he said.
“Hi, kid,” Grassione said.
“Don Salvatore’s expecting you. Go right on in.”
Grassione winked and waved. Throughout the entire conversation, he had not taken his eyes off the television set.
Leung drove slowly forward over the bumpy rutted road and Grassione told the two men what to do.
“I’ll take care of Don Salvatore,” he said. “You be hanging around and when you hear the shot, then you take care of his men. Do it quick and do it right. You understand?”
“Right, boss,” Marino said.
“What about you, Charlie Chan?” Grassione asked.
“Whatever you say,” Leung said sullenly.
Grassione left Leung and Marino on the deck talking to Massello’s two bodyguards as he went down the steps into the body of the ship.
Don Salvatore was sitting in a lounge big enough to be a restaurant’s dining room when Grassione entered. Seated on a chair across from Massello was Leen Forth. She was crying.
On a coffee table between them was a small plastic box, the size of a large dictionary, crammed with wires and transistors.
“You got it,” Grassione said.
Massello shushed him with a slight upward wave of his right hand. He was wearing a silken smoking jacket. He rose and said, “Leen Forth, this is Mr. Grassione, a business associate. Arthur, this is Leen Forth Wooley. She has just suffered a terrible tragedy. Her father passed away today.”
The girl stood up and turned to Grassione. In the angled eyes, there were tears that ran gently down her round cheeks. Grassione had not noticed the other night how beautiful the girl was.
“Sorry about your father,” he mumbled.
“Thank you,” she said. She lowered her eyes.
“Leen Forth,” Massello said, putting a fatherly arm around the girl’s shoulders. “Why don’t you go up and walk on deck? Arthur and I will only be a few moments. The air will do you good.”
Dully, like a battery-powered doll that was running down, Leen Forth nodded and shuffled past Grassione. He watched her behind approvingly as she passed through the door toward the stairs.
Massello waited until the door was closed before he said to Grassione: “Success. We have it. And the girl will do anything I say.”
“Anything?” Grassione said with a lift of his eyebrows.
“Do not be vulgar, Arthur. She is little more than a child.”
“Yeah, but you know how them gooks are. They start when they’re ten, eleven years old.”
Massello took a cigar from a pearl-inlaid box and lit it with a wood-encased butane lighter whose color matched the deep rich paneling of the walls.
“Yes,” he said exhaling a puff of smoke. “But we have other things to do than to discuss the sexual customs of the Orient. I suppose you’ll be returning now to New York.”
Grassione nodded. He turned away to look at the room.
“Your Uncle Pietro will be very happy,” Massello said. “We will pay less for the device than we expected.”
“Much less,” said Grassione. He snaked his hand under his jacket and wheeled on Salvatore Massello. “Much less,” he repeated.
Massello coolly took another puff on his cigar before nodding toward the automatic in Grassione’s hand.
“What is this, Arthur?”
“Uncle Pietro sends his love, Don Salvatore. Take it with you to hell.”
Grassione squeezed the trigger once. The heavy .45 slug kicked into Massello’s body and seemed to push him back away from his cigar which dropped onto the table. The man hit the wall with a heavy thud, then began to sink down into a sitting position.
“You fool,” he gasped.
Grassione fired again, into Massello’s face, and the silver-haired man spoke no more.
From the deck, Grassione heard the answering sounds of gunfire. A quick flurry and then it was over, as suddenly as it had started.
Grassione walked to the coffee table and picked up Massello’s cigar and puffed on it. No sense wasting a good cigar.
He looked down at the Dreamocizer, thought of the Oriental girl on deck, stubbed the cigar out in the ashtray and walked to the door.
Marino and Leung had shot Massello’s two bodyguards as they started toward the stairs leading down to the lounge from which they had heard the two gunshots.
As Marino toed the bodies to make sure they were dead, Edward Leung turned and saw Leen Forth staring at him, her eyes shocked wide, and he made a decision.
He ran along the deck, grabbed the girl by the arm, and ran to the bow of the ship.
Behind him, he heard Marino yell.
He kept running and just as he and the girl ducked into a door at the bow of the ship, he heard a shot splinter the wood over his head.
Now the two sat on the cold tile of the shower floor in the crew’s locker room.
“You must be quiet,” Leung whispered. “Grassione is an evil man and would kill you. We will wait till dark and then escape.”
She just stared at him with her big brown questioning eyes, then surrendered with a sob and threw herself into Leung’s arms.
Leung looked down at the girl and when she looked up he smiled broadly, as if to give her confidence.
“Now isn’t that sweet?”
Leung swung forward to his knees and pushed Leen Forth behind him. He raised his gun toward the voice, but before he could squeeze the trigger, it was kicked out of his hand.
Arthur Grassione stood in the entrance to the shower stall.
“What do you think, I’m stupid? The first place you filthy gooks would hide would be in a shower.”
Leung stood up to face the man. He looked toward the gun but realized he would never reach it in time. Behind Grassione stood Big Vince Marino.
Leen Forth looked at the two men from between Leung’s legs. Her face said nothing.
“Don’t you think I know you Chinks’d stick together?” Grassione said.
Leung spat on Grassione’s shoes. “Of course I think you’re stupid,” he said. “Because you are stupid. You’re a stupid man getting stupider all the time.”
Leung rose to his full height and walked toward Grassione, who gave way, then stepped aside and Big Vince Marino pushed a gun into Leung’s forehead.
Leung stopped short.
“Stupid, huh?” Grassione said. “You were nothing but a gook fortune teller when I met you. And since then you been good for nothing more than taking out the garbage.”
And because he was going to die and nothing would change that, Edward Leung let his anger give way to pity because he saw in a flash that came before his eyes that Grassione was going to die worse than he was.
“I told you,” Leung said, “of death and dreams. Now you have your dream machine. Your death is following.”
“Stuff it,” said Grassione. Grassione bent down and picked up a large metal spike from the floor of the shower area. He walked very carefully up to Leung and with his left hand grabbed a handful of the man’s black shiny hair and twisted.
Leung opened his mouth to scream but only a squeak came out. His eyes screwed shut in pain and his knees buckled. He felt Marino’s gun jab into the back of his neck under his right ear.
Grassione’s hand twisted harder. The pain coursed through Leung’s body. His arms rose to the level of his shoulders, then swung down and his hands slapped the hard tile floor.
He was on his knees now, tears dripping across the bridge of his nose. His left ear touched the floor, the roar of silence filling it as his face was pressed down. His bent knees were kicked out from under him and he settled heavily onto his stomach. The hand was still twisted painfully in his hair, but all he really felt was the cold weight of the gun muzzle pressing under his right ear.
Grassione was on one knee, his face hard, his hand buried in moist hair, his knuckles white. Marino kept the automatic pushed against Leung’s neck.
Grassione felt the weight of the iron spike in his hand.
Leung opened his eyes for the last time and stared at Leen Forth who huddled in the corner of the shower stall. He wanted to scream to her to run but his lips could form only the word “help.” It came out in a soft whisper and his mouth stayed open. It was the last word he ever spoke.
Grassione drove the spike down into Leung’s right ear.
The four inches of exposed steel under his clenched fist tore deep into Leung’s head and his entire body jerked as all the brain’s organic alarms and defenses rallied to that point.
Blood spurted out of the raw wound as Leung screamed and started to struggle.
Marino sat heavily on Leung’s back, holding the screaming man down. Grassione looked around, saw a hammer on the floor and lifted it up. As Leung uttered a last scream, Grassione brought the hammer down with all his strength onto the head of the spike.
The first swing drove the steel ram halfway through the brain. The second brought it to the left wall of the cranium, the skull cracking. The third connected the head to the locker room floor.
Grassione wiped his hands on Leung’s suit, then stood up and wiped the sweat from his face with a monogrammed handkerchief.
He stood up and saw Leen Forth huddled in the corner of the shower stall.
Without a word, he moved his head sideways and Big Vince Marino left the room.
Still mopping his face, Grassione moved to where Leen Forth huddled and spun her around. He gave her one chance to scream, then stuffed his handkerchief deep into her throat.
He slapped her hard across the face, twice, threw her against the wall, and began to rip at the snap and zipper of her jeans.
For the first time since he’d boarded the boat, he heard the sound of the Muzak that was piped gently all over the yacht.
It was playing “Love Will Keep Us Together.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“I WISH I KNEW where the girl was,” Remo said.
“She is no longer on this rumpus,” Chiun said.
“Campus. How do you know that?”
“She is on somebody’s boat,” Chiun said. “I know that because I am the Master.”
“Yeah, but how do you really know?”
“The nice man with the television set said so.”
“What nice man?”
“I don’t know his name,” Chiun said. “All those names sound alike.”
“What boat is Leen Forth on?” Remo asked.
“Who knows? All boats look alike.”
“You must have some idea,” Remo said. He looked around at the trees that bordered the grassy field in front of Professor Wooley’s house and wished that he were conducting this interrogation with a scarlet-crested titwillow. At least he could get an answer.
“Come on, Chiun, think,” Remo said. “That little girl’s life may be in danger.”
“She is a Vietnamese,” Chiun said. “A South Vietnamese at that. But never mind. I will do this for my country. She is on marshmallow’s boat.”
“Marshmallow?” Remo asked.
“Yes. Something like that.”
“Massello?” Remo asked. “Was that the name? Massello?”
“Yes. Marshmallow. As I said. And another thing. She has the dream machine with her.”
“The nice man told you,” Remo said.
“Right.”
“Was that nice man’s name Grassione?” Remo asked.
“Yes. That was it.”
“Chiun, that man is the leading contract killer for the crime syndicate in the United States.”
“I knew there was something about him I liked.”
It took Remo a telephone call to the local St. Louis Power Squadron to find out that Mr. S. Massello’s yacht was docked in the Captain’s Cove Marina in the southern part of the city, near Point Breese, and a few minutes later, in a car that might generously be called borrowed, they were zipping south along Route 55.
The gate to the boat yard was closed and bolted when Remo and Chiun arrived. The late afternoon sun was behind them and the Mississippi looked flat and black in its dying rays.
Chiun snapped the chain on the gate and he and Remo trotted quickly toward the back of the marina, when Remo saw the boat: Il Avvocato.
“It is strange to name a boat after a fruit,” said Chiun.
“That’s Italian for lawyer,” Remo explained.
“And it is English for fruit,” Chiun said. “Do not lie to me. I have not forgotten about electrical Washington.”
The guard who had earlier been posted on the front gate had been pressed into service by Arthur Grassione after the “unfortunate accident” that had claimed the lives of Don Salvatore Massello
and his two bodyguards, and now he patrolled the deck of the yacht with Big Vince Marino. The guard was the first to see Remo and Chiun as they came up the steps of the gangplank.
“Hold it,” he called. “You can’t come up here.”
“Not even if I answer a riddle?” Remo said.
“Get out of here,” the man said. He took his gun from a shoulder holster and waved it at Remo for emphasis. “G’wan. Beat it.”
Remo nodded to Chiun who stood alongside him.
Just then Marino came around from the port side of the boat. “What’s going on here?” he called.
“Trespassers, Vince,” the other guard said.
Marino pulled his revolver and approached them at a lope. He stopped at the top of the gangplank and said, “What do you two want? Hey, it’s the old guy with the television. What do you want?”
“Is this all of you?” Remo asked. “Are we all here?”
Marino pointed the gun at him in threatening concentric circles that narrowed until the muzzle was fixed directly on Remo’s stomach.
“You better beat it, pal.”
“Just what I had in mind,” Remo said. Without tensing his legs, he was airborne, moving toward the top of the gangplank. He clapped a hand over the young guard’s face. The man fell back; his gun dropped helplessly to his side; he looked at Marino with two gaping cavities where his eyes had been, and then fell over the rail into the brackish waters of the river where he sank like a stone.
Marino tried to squeeze the trigger at Remo, but his finger wouldn’t close on the ridged metal. The old Oriental had come up the gangplank and now his hand was around Marino’s hand, and there was something wrong with the bones of Marino’s hand, they wouldn’t work anymore, and he looked down to see what was wrong, and he saw the old man’s thin bony yellow hand close around the barrel of his gun and he saw the barrel bend toward the deck, as if it were made of summer tar.
“Where’s the girl?” Remo said.
Marino shrugged.
“One more time,” Remo said. “The girl.”
“Dead. Dead. They’re all dead,” Marino gasped. The pain in his right hand where the old man held it was now radiating up his arm.
“Who killed her?” Remo asked.
“The boss,” Marino gasped. “Grassione.”
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