Warren Murphy: Acid Rock

Maggot and the Lice, after denuding their uniforms, started offstage. The meat had been swallowed up by two dozen lucky girls in the audience. The rest were infuriated. They charged the line of policemen. The policemen, held, bent, broke, and the girls poured like a human flood onto the stage and then out into the wings.

First, Remo had stood there with Vickie. Then the Lice and Maggot had joined them. Maggot was beginning to thank Remo for his brilliant concept about giving away the meat when Remo was caught in a maelstrom, a whirlpool of hot, sweaty, perfumed, almost-clothed bodies that swirled backstage like a wall of water.

Over the shrieks came the baritone voices of policemen, trying to clear out the audience. Remo felt himself pressed against the lighting-control panel. He turned toward it, felt hopelessly confused, grabbed as many switches as he could and began pulling them all down. The fifth one worked and backstage was plunged into darkness.

Screams became shrieks. Remo pinched his eyes shut for a second with his hands, forcing the pupils to widen, then he opened his eyes. He could see as well as if there were a light on, and he moved through the crowd of blinded tenagers and policemen as if they were not there. He moved toward the door to the alleyway. Vickie had gone. Maggot and the Dead Meat Lice were gone. He moved outdoors into the drizzling rain. Pulling away from the curb was a tan Rolls Royce, a gang of girls racing after it on foot down the street.

Vickie had gotten away again.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Two phone calls concerning Vickie Stoner were made that night from Pittsburgh.

In a rundown hotel, Dr. Gunner Nilsson managed to convince the desk clerk to get him Switzerland, even though he had to put up a fifty dollar cash deposit before the clerk would complete the call. Nilsson took the call in the lobby, to make sure the clerk did not open the key to listen in.

He said simply, "This is Nilsson. Someone else was after the girl tonight."

He listened, then said, "All right, they were not yours, but if any of yours show up, the same thing will happen to them."

He listened again and said "The Darlington Festival? Then that is where this will all end. But I caution you. No more bunglers getting in my way. You might let that be known."

Then, "Thank you." Nilsson hung up and went to his room. He had to clean and polish his revolver. Tomorrow would be his moment. He must be ready.

"Who cares what the papers say?" Remo said into the phone.

Patiently, Smith tried to explain again. The body of Lhasa Nilsson had been found and identified. The press had dredged up his background and was now speculating that he had been in this country on a murder contract when he had met his own death. But now, the word was out in the underworld that the Nilsson family was in the country to take revenge against the killers of Lhasa.

"So I care what the papers say," Smith said. "It means that you and Chiun must be extra careful. Vickie Stoner is now being hunted down by one of the world's great assassins and so, apparently, are you. Be careful. And it would probably improve Vickie Stoner's chances if you could keep her in your sight for more than a minute at a time."

"Yeah, right, right, right," Remo said disgustedly.

"Where are you going to pick up the girl?" Smith asked.

"She got away from us tonight in a riot. But we'll nail her at the Darlington music festival and get her away."

"Be careful."

"Is worrying written into your job description?" Remo asked, but Smith had already hung up and Remo slammed the phone onto the cradle.

"Dr. Smith worries?" Chiun asked.

"Yes. It seems the Nilsson house is after us because of what you did to Lhasa Nilsson."

"Of course, they are," Chiun said, shaking his head sadly. "But that is always the way with upstart houses. They take everything personally."

"But we don't?" Remo said.

"You do, but I don't. It is the difference between the keeper of a tradition, and something the cat dragged in."

Remo was now as annoyed at Chiun as he had been at Smith.

"Well, you better go easy, Chiun. I understand these Nilssons are good. And they're no upstart house. They've been at it for six hundred years."

"Still upstarts," Chiun said. "The House of Sinanju existed when the Nilssons were still living in mud huts."

"Well, Smith says be careful."

"You should take his advice," Chiun said.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Being old hands at the rock festival routine, Maggot and the Dead Meat Lice, along with Vickie Stoner and their chauffeur, drove through the night to get to Darlington, a small village in the New York Catskills, where the concert would be held the next day.

Rooms had already been reserved at the town's one-and-only motel under the name of Calvin. Cadwallader, and there Maggot and company would dress tomorrow before being helicoptered to the concert scene to do their bit. They would also leave by chopper. This approach had come through experience, because they might literally be dismembered if they allowed their bodies to get into the clutches of their adoring-mostly young, mostly female, but all predatory-fans.

As the car rolled heavily away from Pittsburgh, Maggot sat in the back of the Rolls, Vickie next to him. From a compartment alongside the door, he took a pair of white gloves which he put on as carefully and ceremoniously as if he were a professional pallbearer. From the same compartment came the Wall Street Journal, an early edition which he had flown to him wherever he happened to be.

He opened the paper to the New York Stock Exchange tables, after flipping on the airplanetype light in the right rear corner of the car. He began to run a glove-covered right index finger down the columns of type, which were printed bigger in the Wall Street Journal than in most other papers which carried stock prices.

Every so often, he would grunt. Vickie Stoner sat as close to him as his sense of hygiene would allow. Once she had gotten really close and he had simply pushed her back to her side of the seat as if she were a bag of groceries that had fallen on its side. The three Lice sat in a seat in front of them, chattering about music, girls, music, girls, and money.

Calvin Cadwallader grunted again. His finger rested on the name of a conglomerate. He opened the doorside compartment again and took out paper and a ledger pad and wrote down a figure.

"Sell," said Vickie Stoner, who was able to see the name and number Maggot had written.

"Why sell?" Maggot asked. "It just went up a point." For a moment, he forgot that he was talking to an idiotic, sex-strung groupie.

"That's right," Vickie said, "and it's selling at thirty-six times earnings. And there's a Japanese company that's making a breakthrough on this outfit's main product and can produce it for half the cost. So sell, while you can still get out with a profit."

She turned away from Cadwallader and looked through the window at the darkened, dismal Pennsylvania countryside.

"Why didn't my business manager tell me that?" Cadwallader asked.

"Probably he doesn't want you to sell until he unloads his first. Would you blame him? Sell."

"How do you know so much about the market?" Cadwallader asked. "That is, if you do know anything about the market."

"Right now, Maggot," Vickie said, enjoying seeing him wince at the name, "I am worth seventy-two million dollars on the hoof. No one who is worth that much money is allowed to be ignorant or stupid. When my father dies, I should be worth a quarter of a billion dollars. Somebody's got to mind the store."

Cadwallader was impressed. He began to rattle off the names of stocks. "Tell me the truth," he said. "Your honest opinion."

He named a soft drink company.

"Sell. The Russian contract is falling through."