Warren Murphy: Acid Rock

"All right. You with the football," yelled the head coach. "Give it back and get your pennant."

"This is a tryout," said Remo, returning for scrimmage. "I'm not going until you prove to me I haven't made the team. Just once, prove it," said the former Weequahic mediocre.

"Okay," said the head coach, a tall man whose paunch filled out a white sweat shirt at girth. "Wolsczak and Doffman, move the little guy already. Same play. Off tackle. Hooker, get off your damned knees."

"I can't move, coach," said Hooker.

"Well then, run it out, Hooker," yelled the coach and the trainer and water boy helped him from the field. "You there. Bettee. What are you doing lining up behind the middle guard? You're the left tackle, dummy."

With a grunt, and a malicious smile, Lerone Marion Bettee sidestepped to the left but kept his eye on the frail, shoeless middle guard.

"Leave him alone," the all-pro middle linebacker whispered to Bettee and when the ball was snapped, he blocked Bettee, his own defensive teammate, to stop him from pulverising the little guy without shoes.

The caution was not needed.

There was the amateur, wiggling down the field again and second-string fullback Bull Throck was on his face, three yards behind the line of scrimmage. Doffman was holding his shoulder and wincing in pain and the center was still looking for his blocking assignment.

"What is the matter with you?" yelled the head coach. This time he called for a right side sweep and Lerone Marion Bettee couldn't wait for the little man without shoes to get in his way. But all he saw was the flash of white socks and Willie Jeeter scurrying around the right side of the line was dumped precisely two yards behind the line of scrimmage. Jeeter did better than the fullbacks. He held on to the ball.

By the fourth play, five men had been injured and the little fellow in white socks had made four tackles in a row, two of them stealing the ball.

The head coach, known for his shrewdness in judging talent, began to suspect he might have something here. He promptly bawled out an assistant coach for not spotting the guy earlier.

"You," he yelled at Remo. "What's your name?"

"Doesn't matter," said Remo, whose mouth was again deliciously free of salt. "I'll take my pennant now and go."

Remo walked toward the sidelines and the coach yelled out, "Stop that man," which was all Lerone Marion Bettee had to hear. With awesome speed for his overpowering bulk, Bettee was charging across the field to clip the little fellow from behind. But what Bettee did not realize was that every man, and especially someone of his size, creates air pressure when he runs and while most people, especially those with eyesight, are not sensitive to those pressures, the frail little guard was sensitive even unto his muscle fibers. Bettee plowed down into the man and kept on plowing into the ground. The man kept walking away. Bettee's right forearm, which had been a weapon of war in the National Football League, was numb. It would remain that way for eighteen months. Bettee lay on the ground paralyzed. In a week, he would be able to move his head, and in a month, he would begin to walk again.

"You there, Bettee," yelled the coach. "Run it out."

He turned to one of the assistant coaches. "Well, we got that little fellow signed anyhow."

"All we have are liability releases, coach. You said we shouldn't waste the other forms on the tryouts."

"You're fired," said the coach. He scrambled across the field after Remo. He said the young man showed promise and since the coach liked him and he seemed to be a real team player and the team could go all the way this year, he was offering Remo a chance to get in on the ground floor. The minimum contract, which left him all that wonderful room for salary growth.

Remo shook his head. He shook his head as he put on his street clothes, all the way through three final offers, the last two of which the coach assured him priced him out of the National Football League.

"We can always draft you and then you go nowhere."

"Draft away," said Remo. "You don't even know my name."

"Yes, we do," said the coach, looking at a release form. "We have your signature, Abraham, and you're ours. You really are. Now be reasonable, Mr. Lincoln. You've eaten our food, soiled our uniforms, you owe us something."

Back at the hotel, Smith was furious. He sat stone-faced as Remo entered. Chiun was watching his daytime serials. Remo and Smith went into the bedroom, so as not to disturb the Master of Sinanju.

"Chiun seems to think your disappearance when you were supposed to be here is some sort of a progression," said Smith. "I consider it undependable."

"Have an Eagle pennant," Remo said.

"I hope you're happy," Smith said. "Because you are going to bodyguard someone whom we are not even sure is alive, whose whereabouts we do not know, and who has to be guarded against assassins we do not know."

"Your unparalleled intelligence service is up to par, Smitty," said Remo.

"We have one lead," Smith said. "One possibility. What do you know about acid rock?" "It's loud," Remo said.

CHAPTER THREE

"I don't like that kind of music," said Willie "The Bomb" Bombella.

Morris Edelstein made sure the intercom that connected him to his secretary was off. For a little final security he ran a small metal detector around his office walls again. He locked his telephone in his top desk drawer which was lined with lead, because, as anyone knew, even a dead telephone receiver could be a line for a bug.

"What're you doing?" asked Willie the Bomb.

"Shut up," said Morris Edelstein.

"You think everyplace is bugged. You'd think your own bathroom was bugged to catch your farts, Mo," said Willie the Bomb.

"It so happens I found a bug in the hamper last year," Edelstein replied.

"The feds?"

"No. My ex-wife. But it could have been anything, anyone."

"You worry a lot, Mo," said Willie the Bomb, and he placed his two giant hands on his massive belly that stretched the middle of his size eighteen extra-large silk shirt. A small gray fedora topped a craggy face made craggier by a scar across his nose, suffered when an union dispute was settled with baseball bats. Against Willie the Bomb's face, the bat finished second. It broke,

Along with its wielder's left arm and back. When the bat-wielder was released from the hospital, he found out something very strange about his front door lock. It did a funny thing when you turned the key. It took off the front of the house.

Police in St. Louis attributed this to a bomb and questioned Willie the Bomb Bombella at length. But Willie said nothing, on advice of his attorney, Mo Edelstein, who triumphed once again over the unfair police harrassment of his client, reinforcing the constitutional concepts of men like Jefferson, Franklin, and Hamilton, and making it possible for at least three St. Louis citizens a year to get surprises when they started their cars, opened their front doors, or peeked into unexpected packages.

"I wanna see my lawyer, Mo Edelstein," were the words used over and over again by Willie the Bomb, who had a good thing going, except for one little flaw. Which was what Edelstein had called him into the office about that morning.

Edelstein locked the metal detector in another drawer and lowered the shades, shutting out what might charitably be called the St. Louis skyline, but more accurately the surviving remnants of a city that went from frontier outpost to slum with barely a pause at civilization.

"First of all, Willie, I am not broaching this subject because I think you like acid rock."

"I don't like it at all," said Willie, "but I own a piece of Vampire Records."

"Which doesn't make you much money, right?"

"It's only a little piece," said Willie.