Union Bust

by Warren Murphy

  “You’re going to fight it in the courts?”

  “You’re damned right I am.”

  The president of the International Stevedores Association had a very interesting lower right rib. Remo readjusted it. The gentleman, amid a loud wail, reconsidered his legal course and agreed to get out of Chicago.

  There was a mass exodus from the hotel that morning as the first faint red lines appeared in the gray Chicago sky. First the ladies of the evening. Then, the husbands and wives. But Remo, leaning against a lamppost, waiting to make sure, was not really sure at all as he saw the last husband engage the attention of the other couples. At the end of the block they flagged down a squad car. The two other husbands and all the women suddenly pretended they did not know this man, as he spoke to the two policemen in the squad car.

  When Remo saw the driver laugh, he knew his little ploy had been shot. The third man had not been panicked by the situation. He had kept his head. Checked out an ordinance. Found out it was nonexistent, and through his coolness of action was going to get himself and his companions killed today—a beam would go hurtling down on a row of union delegates who knew no such morals law had been passed in 1887. Unanimously. The way they would have to die.

  It was a bad report for Smith. Extreme actions are to be used when you have lost everything else. Only fools, madmen, and losers resort to them. As Remo ducked out of sight, he knew he was in the latter category.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE PLAN WAS SIMPLE. And it was safe.

  Rocco Pigarello explained it again to the twenty-six other men. He wasn’t asking anyone to get killed. He wasn’t asking anyone to commit murder. He was asking the men merely to make some money. He wasn’t even going to mention that these men were the least important in the entire union because they were muscle and muscle could be bought cheap anytime. No. He wasn’t going to mention unpleasant things because he had a very pleasant proposition and he did not wish to mar its sweetness.

  “What I want from you guys is a little common sense and that you should defend yourselves if attacked or if anyone attacks one of your driver brothers. Right?”

  A few suspicious mumbles of “right,” “yeah,” and “okay” emanated from the twenty-six men sitting sullenly and sleepily in the large auditorium that smelled of fresh paint. They had been awakened in the motel rooms and hotel rooms in the wee hours and hustled to this new building just outside Chicago. In some cases it was the president of the local who woke them. In others it was another delegate or a business agent. It was always someone in direct command over them. And they were not asked to get up early, they were told to do so. Or else.

  As soon as the auditorium started filling, the men recognized each other. Muscle. From Dallas, San Francisco, Columbus, Savannah. Twenty-six men with special reps. They saw each other and they knew there would be blood, and they didn’t like it because this convention was to be one of their rewards for loyal service, not some more work.

  The Pig continued. “I know many of you guys think it unfair to bring you here at this hour. I know many of you guys think you ought to be back asleep. But let me tell you, you’re here because… because…” Pigarello thought a moment. “Because you’re here.”

  Angry mumbling from the men.

  “Now I am asking you to protect a brother driver. I am asking you to protect a fellow union member from vicious goons. I’m gonna tell you all your places. If you see anyone attacking a fellow driver, shoot him in defense of that fellow driver. We have the lawyers ready and we foresee no trouble. No trouble, okay.”

  Angry mumbles.

  “Now, it is my suspicion that this company goon, this strong-arm man, will attack me with a pistol. I am sure all of you will see this. You will see the attack with the pistol. Once you hear a shot, it will mean he has begun to attack a brother driver. You will defend that brother driver. This is the picture of the man I expect to attack me.” The Pig raised a glossy, magazine-sized photograph above his head.

  A few mumbles of shock. The recording secretary. They were going to do a job on the recording secretary.

  “Now. Any questions?”

  A delegate from a Wyoming local rose. He was as tall and lean and rawboned as his cowboy ancestors.

  “How many men is that gentleman going to bring? I mean we have twenty-seven men, Pig, and I don’t hanker to go up against no fifty or a hundred of Abe Bludner’s boys.”

  “Bludner is on our side,” said the Pig.

  Mumbles of approval.

  “You mean to say, this Remo Jones is going up against you without his president’s approval?” asked the Wyoming delegate.

  “You heard me.”

  “Where’s he getting his support?”

  “He ain’t got none.”

  “You mean to tell me he’s all alone and he’s going up against you, Pig?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t rightly believe that.”

  “Yeah, well you better rightly believe it, shitkicker, because this guy is gonna do just that. Now sit down. Any more questions?”

  Three hands raised.

  “Take ’em down,” said the Pig. “Questions are over.”

  · · ·

  Remo hailed a cab.

  “How much time do you have left on your shift?” he asked.

  The cabby looked puzzled.

  “How much time are you willing to work today?”

  The driver shrugged. “Usually people ask are you willing to go this far or that far, not how much time.”

  “Well I’m not usual people and I’ve got some unusual money.”

  “Look, I’ve had a good day. I’m not interested in anything shady.”

  “Nothing shady. You want to earn twelve hours?”

  “I’m beat.”

  “A hundred dollars.”

  “I feel refreshed.”

  “Good. Just drive this lady around Chicago for twelve hours and don’t stop for more than ten minutes anywhere.”

  Remo eased Chris into the back of the cab.

  “Honey. You get your rest right here in the back of the cab,” he said. He ostentatiously handed Chris a wad of bills, letting the driver know there was money to be paid.

  “But why can’t I go to your hotel with you, darling?” said Chris.

  Remo whispered in her ear. “Because we’re marked people. You’re a target. I’d bet on it. I’ll meet you at O’Hare International Airport at six or seven tonight. The bar in the best restaurant. Whatever it is. If I’m not there, wait until midnight. If I don’t come, run for your life. Change your name and keep going. In two days stop.”

  “Why two days?”

  “Because it’s been worked out that two days is an ideal time in a run pattern like this, and I don’t have time to explain.”

  “Why can’t I just book a six-hour flight out and a six-hour flight back if you want me to keep traveling for twelve hours?”

  “Because a scheduled flight is like an elevator. In something like this it functions like a stationary room that keeps you locked in. Take my word. This is best.”

  “I’m not afraid of Gene, darling.”

  “I am. Move.” Remo kissed Chris on the cheek and nodded to the cab driver. He made obvious a check of the cabbie’s identification, not that he would remember it. He just wanted the man to believe that he would be remembered and vulnerable if anything should happen to the girl.

  April 17 was a hot day in Chicago, the muggy, skin-soaking kind of morning that makes you feel you’ve worked a full day when you get up. Remo hadn’t slept. He could make do with twenty minutes rather easily, and with this intention he headed back to his hotel.

  He did not get rest. As he entered the marble-floored lobby, he saw a man ease a rifle barrel in his direction. Automatically he did not respond to this man who had taken the rifle out of a golf bag leaning against a lobby sofa. As he had been trained to do, he first checked—in an instant—the entire pattern he was in. Other guns came out. From suitcases, from a c
arton, from behind the registration clerk’s desk. Ambush.

  Remo would work it left to right. Not bothering to feint, he was into a rugged man who was squeezing the trigger on a Mauser. The Mauser did not fire. It was jammed up into the solar plexus, taking part of a lung with it. The man vomited his lungs, and Remo continued to work right so that his being in the right firing pattern prevented the center and left from getting him without shooting into their own men.

  A woman screamed. A porter jumped for cover, catching a wayward bullet in the throat. Two young children huddled against a sofa. Remo would have to work the line of fire away from the children. But if he could not, whoever might have fired the shots that injured the youngsters would not die quickly.

  The right side was too bunched. Amateurs. Remo thumbed a side of a head, and interior attacked a thin man with a .357 Magnum. It was held too close to the body, as though the man were working a snub-nose at close quarters. The trigger finger was squeezing off a shot so the gun went first. With a wrist. Then the head caved in and Remo was moving towards the center, going under a rifle line to come up under it when a shot cracked passed his head. He felt it in his hair.

  Double layer. Remo finished the driver through the rifleman, taking off his testicles. The man would be stunned until dead. He spun back to where the second level of fire came from, another bullet narrowly missing him from the center. He was now in cross fire. Very stupid move on his part.

  He quickly put a post between him and center left, taking that line into the dining room, whence the second-level fire came.

  They were using tables here as cover. One man got a table top, tablecloth and all, in his mouth. Down through a vertebra. A nervous, wildly chattering machine gun ended its chirp with the barrel in its user’s mouth, still firing from a trigger finger that could no longer receive messages to stop. The bullets took skull fragments and brain into the ceiling.

  Remo’s body wove and jerk-ran into a free space that suddenly had a bullet in it, taking flesh from Remo’s right side. Minor wound.

  Without thinking, Remo reacted. His body reacted as it had been taught to react in the painful, pressing hours of training, reacted as Chiun had taught it despite Remo’s protests, despite Remo’s conscious begging for surcease, despite the long hours and high temperatures.

  As it had been taught and no other way. Scarlet Ribbon for the three times three times three. It was not only the only defense, but against this combination it was invincible. Back toward the center he moved, keeping lines of fire within the ambush itself. He did not attack men anymore because that would remove them, and the Ribbon depended upon the men to destroy themselves, like using the greater mass of a body against itself.

  He brushed the center and spun back, careful not to let any close shots, which were the easiest to avoid, get him. The distant, more dangerous, shots were now no worry because there would be other men in their line.

  With incredible, balanced speed, Remo, like a darting flash of light brought down from the heavens, spun his ribbon in the three-layered defense. Guns silenced when the speeding body disappeared among other men of the ambush, then resumed in the fleeting second he was visible. Wild shots. Hesitant shots. The target was no longer the center of the ambush. The target was part of it.

  Through the registration desk, back up through the triple layer left, over the staircase, keeping close and un-hittable to the confused and now panicked men, Remo worked to third layer center, second layer center, picked off a first layer center only for the rebound back to third layer right.

  Bullets cracked into light fixtures spraying the lobby with a shower of glass. Mindless screaming and yelling whipped the panic still further. An elevator door opened and a maid was cut in two by a shotgun blast. On the final spin of the ribbon, Remo took care of the man who fired the shotgun. He creased the man’s eyes with his fingernails, leaving two blood-gushing sockets in the skull.

  Then fast up the middle, picking up the two children from the couch, then a reverse into the dining room, out again and behind the third layer that did not know he had penetrated up the steps, and wait. Standing on the steps, waiting. The gunfire continued. The two children stared at him, confused.

  What had happened was natural. Instead of acting like professionals, the men in the parts of the ambush catching fire, returned it. The men were fighting for their lives against each other. The Scarlet Ribbon had woven the blood curse of fear and confusion into the ambush. It would never recover. If Remo wished, he could wait to the last spurts of firing, and move in for the final kill. But that was not his purpose. The only thing he wanted from the ambush was to get through it alive.

  The little girl looked stunned. The boy was smiling.

  “Bang, bang,” said the boy. “Bang, bang.”

  “Your mommy and daddy around here?” asked Remo.

  “They’re on the third floor. They told us to play in the lobby.”

  “Well you go back up to your parents’ room.”

  “They said we shouldn’t come back until 9:30,” said the girl.

  “Bang, bang,” said the boy.

  “You can’t go downstairs again.”

  Rifle fire cracked sporadically in the hallway. Sounds of far-off sirens could be heard filtering into the stairway where Remo stood with the two children.

  “All right. But would you come with us?” said the girl.

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “And tell my mommy and daddy that we can’t play in the lobby.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “And tell them we didn’t do the trouble downstairs.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “And give us a dollar.”

  “Why give you a dollar?”

  “Well, a dollar would be nice, too.”

  “I’ll give you a quarter,” said Remo. “A nice shiny quarter.”

  “I’d rather have a dirty old dollar.”

  Remo brought the two youngsters to their parents’ room. His shirt was bloody and his pants were beginning to darken. It was uncomfortable, but not serious.

  The father opened the door. He was bleary-eyed, a face of anguish, a face of alcohol-damaged brain cells, the damaging process of which was pleasant, and the results painful.

  “What trouble did you kids cause now?”

  “They didn’t cause any trouble, sir. Some madmen went amok with guns downstairs, and your children might have been killed.”

  “I didn’t know,” said the man. He tied the terrycloth belt around his terrycloth robe. “Are they all right? Are you all right?”

  “Yes. I got nicked. You know us innocent passersby. Always getting hurt.”

  “Terrible what’s happening to America these days. Is it safe to go downstairs?”

  Remo listened. The gunfire had stopped. The police were probably flooding the lobby now. The sirens were about that much time away when he first heard them.

  “Yes. But I’d advise you to go back to sleep. It’s not a pretty sight.”

  “Yeah, thanks. C’mon in, kids.”

  “Bang, bang,” said the little boy.

  “Shut up,” said the father.

  “What is it dear?” came a woman’s voice.

  “Some trouble in the lobby.”

  “Those kids are gonna get it,” yelled the woman.

  “Not their fault,” said the father, shutting the door.

  Remo walked up the flights to his floor. The blood flow was stemming now, coagulating as it should. The shirt became sticky. When he entered the suite, Chiun was asleep by the window, lying on his floor mat, curled like a fetus in peaceful repose, his face to the window.

  “You’re wounded,” he said without turning around, without the twitch of body to indicate awakeness. He was sleeping and his mind registered sounds, and he was quietly awake in an instant, trained since childhood to awake immediately upon the entrance of a strange sound and trained to awake in such a manner as to avoid giving any indications that he was awake. It was many of
the little advantages that made up the Master of Sinanju, supreme teacher of the martial arts, respected leader of the small Korean village that depended on his rented services for its financial survival.

  “Not serious,” said Remo.

  “Every wound is serious. A sneeze is serious. Wash it clean and rest.”

  “Yes, little father.”

  “How did it go?”

  “Not too well.”

  “It went well enough. I felt vibrations of rifle fire through the floor.”

  “Oh, that. Yeah it was a three, three, three that took a Scarlet Ribbon.”

  “Why are you wounded ?”

  “I started the Ribbon late.”

  “Never before,” said Chiun, “has so much been given to so few who used it so little. I might as well give my instructions to walls as to a white man.”

  “All right. All right. I’m wounded. Lay off.”

  “Wounded. A minor flesh wound, and we make it into the great tragedy. We have more important problems. You must rest. We will flee soon.”

  “Run?”

  “That is the usual word in the English language for run, is it not?”

  “I can’t go, Chiun. I have work. We can’t run.”

  “You are talking silliness and I am trying to rest.”

  “What happened at the building, Chiun?” Remo asked.

  “What happened at the building is why we must run.”

  · · ·

  Dr. Harold Smith got the report late in the morning, at 10:12. The phone line was activated ever hour at twelve minutes past the hour. From 6 a.m. Eastern Standard Time until 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, this was done with direct link to Smith. If he were not in his office, a tape recording would be accepted. Into this tape recording Remo would read the message as best he could in medical terms. Thus, if the message were discovered by others, it would only be a doctor reading in an odd hour report.

  At 10:12 when the buzzer on his phone rang, Smith knew from the very first words that the plan would be the extreme one.

  “My alternate plan didn’t work,” came Remo’s voice.

  “All right,” said Dr. Smith. “You know what to do.”