Warren Murphy: Brain Storm

"What is?"

Newton pointed at the screen. "As you know, the Dynamic Interface System not only manipulates the human mind, but we are able to download information as if it was stored on a computer. Which, in effect, is what the human brain is."

"So?"

"There was one individual in the bank who wasn't affected by our immobilization program."

"That is impossible. No one moved but us."

"Yes, yes," Newton said impatiently. "But look." His hands moved in a flurry over the keyboard. In a matter of seconds, he had pulled up the CD recorder files from the bank's stationary cameras.

Displayed on the small screen was an unremarkable man in gray standing before one of the bank lobby desks.

"He's not moving," Holz said.

"Look more closely."

Setting his champagne glass on a console, Holz leaned closer to the monitor. The old man was as frozen as everyone else, staring blankly in the direction of the would-be robbers. Holz was about to tell the scientist that he saw nothing that wasn't expected from the man when all at once he noticed movement at the end of the man's hand.

As he watched more carefully, he saw that the old man was swaying from side to side. It was obvious from the footage that this man was somehow immune to the immobilizing effects of the interface system.

He was only mimicking the rest of the bank patrons.

"Explain this," Lothar Holz demanded, indicating the monitor.

On the small screen, the drama continued to play out. The robbers were circulating among the crowd, passing out money.

"I don't understand it."

Holz's features were grim. "Did the rest of the interface work?"

"We downloaded his thought patterns into our system along with the others in the bank. And that's another remarkable thing. If I didn't see him with my own eyes, I would swear the patterns were a computer construct. This man interfaces with the computer better than any human I've ever seen. He's remarkable."

Lothar Holz stood. "Use him as a test subject."

Newton seemed delighted at the prospect.

"Gladly," he said. He couldn't wait to download the hard-drive information into the mainframes back at PlattDeutsche America's headquarters in Edison, New Jersey. The man's thoughts were so precise, so logical, that they would be easier to read than those of any of the laboratory test subjects he had used up until now. He couldn't wait to use the revolutionary new interface program to tinker around in the old man's head and see what secrets were hidden up there.

He watched the small monitor screen excitedly. On it, Harold W. Smith, the man on whom the "revolutionary new interface program" had no immobilizing effect, hurriedly dropped the robbery money onto the desk of Andy Frost. Without so much as a glance in the direction of Lothar Holz, he tucked his bankbook into the torn plastic cover he had received when he opened his original account at the Butler Bank of New York thirty years before and ducked out the bank's side entrance.

His name was Remo, and the last thing he wanted was the first thing he got.

The waiter dropped the glass of water to the red-and-white-checkered tablecloth. He did this from at least one foot above the table's surface. Warm water spilled over the rim of the glass and spread in a widening stain across the ragged and faded check-erboard tablecloth. Remo inspected the translucent glass carefully. A brown-crusted residue clung to the lip of the glass. He doubted it was food.

"What is this?" he asked, pointing to the glass.

"What's this?" the waiter mocked in a thick Bronx accent. "What are you, a comedian? What's this? It's water."

"I wanted the rice first," Remo explained.

"You wanted the water, then rice," the waiter replied flatly.

Remo closed his eyes patiently. Though he had kept his breathing shallow since he had first walked through the door to the tiny Manhattan bistro, the fumes from the kitchen were already getting to him.

"Look, I don't care what you think you heard,"

Remo said. "I want my rice, then my water." He pushed the glass away. "And would it be too much trouble to put a little soap in the dishwasher next time?"

The waiter's eyes were angry, but the man didn't say a word.

Instead, he left the glass where it sat, spun on his heel and returned to the kitchen through a battered steel swinging door. A menacing red-printed sign beneath the filthy Plexiglas window warned that this entry was for employees only.

Occasionally a head would pop into view behind the grease-striped glass, and a pair of blurry eyes would peer nervously in his direction.

Remo had been aware of the stares from the back room ever since he had entered the restaurant. Although he was used to hard looks from potential targets when he was on assignment, this time the agitation among the kitchen staff had nothing to do with him. They were staring beyond Remo, at a tiny table set at the very back of the small room.

It looked as if it had been a booth in a previous lifetime, for there was a high-backed parson's bench with accompanying torn and faded vinyl seat cover pressed firmly up against the rear wall. The table seemed to match the restaurant's original decor, but on the nearer side the bench had been replaced with three uncomfortable-looking hard-back chairs. The absence of the bench allowed the occupant on the far side of the table an unobstructed view of the entire interior.

Though the restaurant wasn't large, a generous amount of space had been cleared around this lone table.

Three burly men in ill-fitting suits packed the bench awkwardly, their amply padded elbows jos-tling their neighbors' hands with every forkful of spaghetti that traveled up from their overflowing plates.

As they slurped up generous quantities of sauce-freighted pasta, the men crowding around the table used their vantage point to keep their watchful eyes trained suspiciously on the other bistro patrons as they came and went.

Only one of the three chairs was occupied. One man sat across the table from the others, his back to the rest of the room. His shoulders were broad, though not as muscled as those of the watchers, and they were clad in sea blue fabric that shimmered like silk. The suit jacket was cut perfectly, the matching trousers seeming to have been tailored to his legs where he sat. The shoes were the finest cordovan leather and polished with a shine so fierce that it reflected and amplified the dull glow of the spotty overhead fluorescent lights so that it looked as if the dingy room were illuminated all around with halos of golden fire.

Remo knew the man from various television news programs and newspaper articles. His legal exploits in New York City were grist for all of the late-night comedians.

Don Anselmo Scubisci.

With his back to the room, he exuded a cool confidence that almost dared someone to try to take him on. Of course, it didn't hurt that he had a trio of gorillas in suits staring down every man, woman or child who got within fifty yards of their boss.

Remo had heard that since the death of old Don Pietro Scubisci a few years back, a vacuum had developed in the upper echelon of the Manhattan Mafia.

This was not so unusual. Organized-crime families were reeling nationwide, due to the combined efforts of various law-enforcement agencies. Things had gotten so bad for the Mob of late that no one was moving up in any family for fear that a long-trusted ally could turn out to be a high-level government plant. The dons became fewer and older, the money became scarcer and the power from the old days had just about disappeared.

After the death of the elder Scubisci, there had been a few bloody years when sparring families, intent on getting a piece of the Scubisci Family action, had participated in a violent turf war.