Warren Murphy: Lost Yesterday

“Well, you certainly needed something more with that witness, Drumola.”

“I turned him back.”

“Well, he didn't remember a thing last night,” said Smith, taking a sheet of paper out of a thin briefcase he had on his lap. It was a memo from a U.S. attorney regarding one Gennaro Drumola.

It read:

“This afternoon, subject had a sudden change of heart. As in so many of those cases where witnesses have turned against their testimony and then suddenly turn back, it was mysterious. We have been having many of these mysterious reversions in the last few years, and I saw no need to press an investigation of it at this time. But in the case of this subject, his reversion didn't seem to take hold. He seemed willing enough to cooperate, but when I pressed him for details he didn't remember anything about the testimony he now suddenly said he remembered. Moreover, a medical examination showed he was in a state of high anxiety.”

Remo returned the copy of the memo.

“I don't know what happened to him. I know I had him. I know when I have someone.”

“You see, little mistakes always lead to big ones. I am glad that you have decided to wait until Remo can glorify you instead of fail,” said Chiun.

“I didn't fail. I know when someone has been turned. You, Little Father, know that I know.”

“I understand. I, too, would be reluctant to admit that I failed before such a gracious emperor,” said Chiun. He of course said this in English. Remo knew this was only for Smith's benefit. In Korean, Remo told Chiun he was full of the droppings of a diarrhetic duck.

Chiun, hearing this insult from Remo, took the injury to his heart, where he could nurture it and make it grow. One day he would use it profitably against the man who had become his child.

Smith only waited. More and more now, these two would drift into Korean that he didn't understand.

“I want another crack at that guy,” said Remo.

“They've moved him,” said Smith.

“I don't care where he is. I want him,” said Remo.

* * *

Gennaro Drumola was eating a triple order of spare ribs in the penthouse suite of the San Francisco Forty-Niner Hotel when the thin man with the thick wrists dropped in on him again, this time through the window.

Drums did not know how he could have gotten through the guards, much less to the window. The guy had to climb walls.

Drums cleaned his dripping hands on his great mound of belly covered by a white T-shirt. Thick black hair sprouted from the shirt's every opening. Even his knuckles had hair. This time Drumola would be ready for him. He would not be caught napping. Drumola picked up a chair, cracked it in two with his bare hands, and was ready to put a sharp splinter into the skinny guy's face when he felt himself being dragged by an awesome force right through the window. Drums would have screamed but his lips were pressed together just like back at the camp when he felt a mountain had collapsed on him.

His lips were closed and he was being swung thirty stories above San Francisco by something that felt like a vise. Upside down, looking down at the street as he moved like a pendulum, he wished it were even tighter.

“Okay, sweetheart. What happened?”

Drums felt the man release his lips. He was supposed to talk. He talked.

“Nothin' happened. I did what you said. I said I remembered.”

“But then you forgot.”

“For Chrissakes. I wish I could remember. I don't remember.”

“Well, try,” said the man, and dropped him a story. It felt like it was going to be twenty-nine more of them, but something caught him again.

“Are we getting any better?”

“I don't know nothin'.”

Drumola felt warm liquid run up his ears. He knew what it was. It was running from his pants, down his stomach and chest, and dripping out his shirt around his ears. His bladder had released in fear.

Remo swung Drumola back up to his penthouse suite. The man wasn't lying. He was tempted to let him drop all the way, but that would have let the world think the mob had killed him. Remo stuffed Drumola's face back into the spare ribs and left him there.

Remo had failed. It was the first time he had failed to persuade a witness. There was an instant before death, he had been taught by Chiun, when fear takes over the body. In that instant, the will to live became so strong that it grew into an overpowering fear of death. And at that moment, nothing else mattered— not greed, or love, or hate. All that mattered was the will to live.

Drumola had been in that state of fear. He could not lie. And yet Remo had failed to turn him back to his testimony.

“I am not losing it,” he told Smith.

“I'm asking because we have what seems to be a sudden rash of forgetful witnesses.”

“Then let's get 'em. I need the practice.”

“I never heard you say that before.”

“Well, I said it. But it doesn't mean I'm losing anything,” said Remo into the telephone. He wondered if he should visit Smith and perhaps shred the steel gates of Folcroft over Smith's head. He hadn't been to the sanitarium headquarters of the organization for a long while now.

“All right,” said Smith. The voice was weak.

“If you don't want me to do it, just say so. And I won't.”

“Of course we need you, Remo. But I was wondering about Chiun.”

“You don't even know Chiun,” said Remo. He was at a telephone at the Portland, Oregon, airport. A woman at the phone next to him asked him to be quiet. He told her he wasn't yelling. She said he was. He said if she wanted to hear yelling, he could yell. She said he was yelling right now.

“No,” said Remo, collecting power in his lungs, and then setting a high pitch to his voice. “This,” he sang so that the very lights quivered in the ceiling, “is yelling.”

The three floor-to-ceiling windows at gates seven, eight, and nine collapsed like a commercial for sound tape.

“Well,” said the woman. “That certainly is yelling to me.” And she hung up and walked away.

Smith was still on the phone saying shocks had somehow altered the scrambler system and he was getting warning signals that this might be an open line very soon. No protection for secrecy.

“I'm all right,” said Remo. “I know I had my target in panic. That's what does it. Making the life force take over.”

“Does that life force have anything to do with the cosmic relationship?”

“No. That's timing. That's me. Life force is them. No. The answer to your question is no.”

“All right, Remo. All right.”

“The life force is not me,” he said.

“All right,” said Smith.

“All right,” said Remo.

“The name is Gladys Smith. She is twenty-nine years old, a secretary to one of the largest grain-trading companies in the world. She is testifying against her entire firm, which has been making secret deals with the Russians undercutting our entire agricultural policy. The government is keeping her in a Chicago apartment. She is not that heavily defended, but she is defended.”

“So she's defended. Defenses aren't a problem for me,” said Remo.

“I didn't say they were. Remo, you are more important to us than these cases. We've got to know we have you. America needs you. You're upset now.”

“I'm always upset,” said Remo. “Just give me her address.”

When he left the little phone area, he saw workmen were cleaning up the barrier glass at the gates and people were staring at him. Someone was mumbling that Remo was the one whose voice had shattered the windows. But an airport maintenance director said that was impossible. A car could drive into that glass and it would not shatter.

Remo grabbed the next flight to Chicago and dozed in first class. Before they landed he did his breathing and felt the good leveling force of all power move through him, calming him. He realized then he had done what he should never do, let his mind take over, the mind where doubts lived and thrived on selected pieces of negative information culled from the universe of information. He knew he had done his job right. The witness had somehow truly forgotten. He decided not to use fear this time.