Warren Murphy: Power Play

If he could only keep this Remo talking, he might yet be able to escape with his life.

"Time's up," Remo said. "I've got to go now."

"You can't just come in here and kill me," Winstler said. "It's not... it's not right."

"I don't want to hear about that," Remo said. "Everybody's always telling me what I can and can't do. I'm tired of that."

"But you can't. You can't just kill me."

Remo leaned closer and smiled at Kenroth Winstler. "You know what?" he asked.

"What?"

"I just did," Remo said.

The fingertips pressing into the kidney were so fast that Winstler never really felt pain. Remo wiped his right hand on the table cloth and stood up. He let Winstler's head slump forward softly on the table cloth and walked away.

Fascist, Winstler had called him. That annoyed him and Remo didn't believe it for a minute. Fascist. If it weren't for lawyers like Winstler who spent so much time and effort and other people's money getting criminals off, there would be no need for Remo and people like him. He wished he had not killed Winstler so fast, so he could tell him that.

Fascist? Remo? It was laughable.

He still wished he could remember something else he was supposed to do that night. It nagged at him.

On his way out, he tapped the waiter on the shoulder.

"Yes sir," the waiter said as he turned. He recognized Remo and his eyes frosted over. "What is it?" he said.

"That man at my table?" Remo said.

"Yes. Mr. Winstler."

"Well, he's dead."

"What?" the waiter said. His eyes peered toward the table where Winstler slumped forward, his hands under his face.

"I said dead," Remo said again. "I killed him. And if you don't do something about this noise in here, I'm coming back for you."

The waiter looked away from the table to Remo. But the thin man in the black T-shirt was gone. The waiter looked around, into the crowd, but saw no sign of him. It was as if the earth had opened and swallowed him up.

Downstairs at the party, they had only marijuana, and speed and LSD and snow and horse and fairy princess and HTC and amyl nitrate and aspirins in Coke and opium lettuce and Acapulco Gold and Tijuana Small and Kent Golden Lights so it was really a drag and Marcia went up on the roof with Jeffrey because he had some good shit and he didn't have enough to share with everybody else.

On the roof of the small apartment building in the east seventies, they unwrapped the package of Lightning Dust, following the careful directions Jeffrey had been given along with the drug by a guru with an eighth-grade education that qualified him to be a spokesman for the eternal power of the universe, which meant drug dealing.

They had to inhale a puff of the powder through the left nostril and exhale their breath through the right nostril. Then they had to inhale through the right nostril and exhale through the left nostril. Then, while humming their mantra, just hard enough for their vocal cords to vibrate, they had to touch their tongue to the powder on the small square of paper, wet it with saliva, swallow it down, and then lie back to wait for ecstasy.

The exact sequence was very important, Jeffrey had been told. They followed it precisely, then lay on the sharp-pebbled roof, waiting for bliss. It was longer in coming than they expected, which was not surprising because Jeffrey had spent sixty dollars for a quarter ounce of powdered milk, mixed one-to-one with powdered vitamin C. Its total cost to the dealer had been three-tenths of a cent. Its caloric content was higher than that.

Jeffrey interlocked his fingers with Marcia who lay alongside him, then closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the stars were still shining brightly in the dark night sky. He glanced from side to side. Nothing. He had been promised light shows and sonic booms and celestial pyrotechnics, but nothing.

"You getting it yet?" he asked Marcia.

"I don't know," she said. "I don't think so. Everything's the same."

They raised themselves into a sitting position, propped against the brick wall around the roof, and tried another dose. Left nostril, right nostril, tongue, saliva, swallow.

And then they saw it.

A man came over the wall of the roof, as if he had climbed up the side of the building. He was a thin man, dressed in black T-shirt and chinos and his eyes were dark and his hair was dark and his wrists were thick. As he moved across the roof, he nodded to them.

"Just keep doing whatever it is you're doing," he said. "I won't be but a few minutes."

Then he vanished over the far wall of the roof, and Jeffrey and Marcia looked at each other with surprise on their faces.

"There's no fire escape there," Jeffrey said.

"I know," Marcia said. "Wow."

They went to the edge of the roof where the man had disappeared. When they looked down, he was going down the smooth side of the brick building, as easily as if he were walking down a ladder. But there was no ladder and no fire escape.

"How you doing that, fella?" Marcia called. "Going down like that and all?"

"Shhhh," Remo called up. "It's an optical illusion. Actually, I'm staying still and you're going up."

"Hey, wow," Marcia said. "Jeff, you got any more of that?"

They sniffed and salivaed and swallowed and kept watching but they were quiet.

Remo would have preferred it if they had gone away because he didn't like performing in front of witnesses, but he didn't have much choice. And besides he had a problem.

There was a window about ten feet away that led into the apartment where the Red Regiment was holed up. If he went through the window, they might be able to kill the businessman before he could rescue him. That was why he had not gone through the apartment's front door. He not only had to get into the apartment quickly, but shockingly enough to stun the Red Regiment so it had no chance to react.

As Jeffrey and Marcia finished their new sniff of powdered milk and vitamin C, Jeffrey looked up to the sky, but the stars were still dully immobile.

"Nothing with the stars," he said. "Maybe this stuff only works with your perception of people."

Marcia nodded. She had not been able to take her eyes off the thin man since he had crossed the rooftop. There was something about his eyes and the way he moved, something that made her know that he could make her forget every other man in the world. She watched the apparition hang to the side of the building. He was holding onto the smooth brick with his left hand, with no more effort than if he had been leaning against the wall of an elevator. His right fingertips were being driven into the building.

"Look," she hissed. "He's pulling bricks out of the building."

Jeffrey looked down. One by one, Remo was removing bricks from the wall and dropping them down into the small dirty yard behind the old apartment building.

"How's he doing that?" she said.

Jeffrey's voice was thick. "Gotta remember," he said. "He's not doing nothing. Our heads are doing it. He ain't really there. We're here. We make him there in our heads. If we close our eyes and want him to go away, when we open our eyes, he'll go away."

Marcia tried it. She closed her eyes, squinted them together real hard, then opened them. Remo was still tossing bricks into the yard, making a hole in the building wall.

"Whooops," she said. She was happy he was still there.

Jeffrey had tried also. "Gotta practice some more," he said. "This stuffs not easy to use."

"How you doin' that?" Marcia yelled at Remo.

"I'm not doing it," he called back. "Actually I'm staying still and you and the building are moving backwards. Have some more grass."

"This isn't grass. It's Lightning Dust. Wanna come up and make it with me?"

"Later," Remo said. "Soon as I'm done."