Warren Murphy - Chinese Puzzle

The pill was white and oblong with bevelled edges like a coffin. That was to let people know it was poison and not to be consumed. Smith had learned that when he was six. It was the sort of information that remained with a person. He had not, in his lifetime, ever had use for it.

With his mind now floating in the nether world of faces and words and feelings he had thought he had forgotten, Smith spun the coffin-like pill on the memo that would take the aluminium box to Parsippany, New Jersey.

The central phone rang. Smith picked it up and noticed his hand was trembling and the phone slippery from the perspiration.

"I've got good news for you," came Remo's voice.

"Yes?" said Smith.

"I think I can latch on to our man. And I'm going to where he is."

"Very good," said Dr. Smith. "Nice going. By the way, you can tell Chiun to return to Folcroft."

"Nah," said Remo. "He's gonna work out fine. I know just how to use him."

"Well," said Smith. "He doesn't really fit into the picture now. You send him back."

"No way," said Remo. "I need him now. Don't worry. Everything is going to work out fine."

"Well, then," Smith's voice was calm in appearance, "just tell him that I asked for him to return, okay?"

"No good. I know what you're doing. I tell him that and he'll return, no matter what else I tell him. He's a pro like that."

"You be a pro like that. I want him back now."

"You'll get him tomorrow."

"Tell him today."

"No deal, sweetheart."

"Remo, this is an order. This is an important order."

There was silence at the other end of the phone, an open line to somewhere. Dr. Smith could not afford to give away what he had just given away and yet he had had to try strength.

It didn't work. "Hell, you're always worrying about something. I'll check with you tomorrow. Another day won't cripple you."

"Are you refusing an order?"

"Sue me," came the voice and Smith heard the click of a dead line.

Dr. Smith returned the receiver to the cradle, returned the pill to the little bottle, returned the bottle to his vest, and buzzed his secretary.

"Phone my wife. Tell her I'll be home late for dinner, then phone the club and get me a tee time."

"Yes, sir. About the memo on the shipment of the goods downstairs? Should I send it?"

"Not today," said Dr. Smith.

There was nothing he would be needed for until tomorrow at noon. The only function he had left was to die and take an organization with him. He could not do that until the first step-the death of Remo-was settled. And since he had no other decisions to make, he would go golfing. Of course, under all this pressure, he wouldn't break 80. If he could break 90, that would be an accomplishment under the circumstances of today. Breaking 90 today would be the equivalent of breaking 80 under other circumstances. Because of the seriousness of the day, Smith would allow himself a mulligan. No, two mulligans.

It was a peculiarity of Dr. Harold W. Smith that his honesty and integrity, steel bound unto death, would, when he put a white ball on a wooden tee, dissolve into marshmallow.

By the time he waggled himself into a solid stance at the first tee, Dr. Smith had given himself four strokes for his impending demise, winter rules because of his lower body temperature, and any putt within six feet of the pin. The last advantage still awaited a rationale, but Dr. Smith was sure he would have it by the first green.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Bernoy Jackson packed a .357 Magnum revolver into his attaché case, a pistol known as a cannon with a handle. He would have taken a real cannon, but it would not have fit, either into his attaché case, or into the main floor of Bong Rhee's Karate Dojo.

He would have liked to have brought with him five button men from his own organization and perhaps, an enforcer or two from organizations in Brooklyn and the Bronx.

What he really wanted, and he knew this very well when he pulled his customized Fleetwood from the garage around the corner and clipped a hydrant on his way out, was to not be going to the school at all.

As the $14,000 gray vehicle with sun roof, stereo, bar, phone and colour TV, moved down 125th Street toward the East River Drive, he thought for a moment that if he turned north on the drive he could keep going. Of course, he would have to go back to his pad first, and remove cash from the hidden safe behind the third plant. What was that? $120,000. It was just a fraction of his worth, but he would be alive to spend it. Then he could start again, take his time, set up slowly. He had the bankroll for a good numbers operation and he knew how to run it.

The wheel was sweat-slippery in his hands as he passed under the Penn Central Railroad tracks. He was nine when he realized those tracks did not lead to all the faraway wonderful places in the world but just to upstate New York with Ossining on its way and an awful lot of towns that didn't want Nigger boys like Bernoy Jackson.

His grandmother had been so wise: "The man ain't ever gonna do you right, boy."

And he believed it. And when he should have believed it most, eight years before, he didn't. And now, as befitting life in Harlem, having made the wrong decision, he was going to die for it.

Jackson turned the air conditioner to high, but found little comfort. He was simultaneously chilled and perspiring. He wiped his right hand against the soft dry material of the seat. His first Cadillac was lined with white fur, an incredibly silly venture, but one he had dreamed of. The fur wore too quickly and the car was vandalized five times in the first month, even in the garage.

Now his Fleetwood was gray with all the good things neatly hidden. He would be at the East Rivet Drive soon. And when he turned right to go south, to go downtown, to go to his death, there would be no turning back. That was the big difference between Harlem and white America.

In white America, people could make a major mistake and recoup. In Harlem, your first big one was your last big one. It had seemed so easy eight years before when he should have remembered his grandmother's advice and taken counsel of his own beliefs. But the money was so good.

He was sipping a Big Apple special, three shots of scotch for the price of two, when another runner, they were all small time then, laid the word on him that a man wanted to see him.

He had purposely continued to sip his scotch slowly, showing no great concern. When he was finished, with great effort at being casual he left the Big Apple bar, out onto chilly Lenox Avenue, where a black man in a gray suit sat in a gray car and nodded to him.

"Sweet Shiv?" said the man, opening the door.

"Yeah," said Jackson, not moving closer, but keeping his hand in the right pocket of his jacket over the neat .25 calibre Beretta.

"I want to give you two numbers and $100," the man said. "The first number you play tomorrow. The second number you phone tomorrow night. Play only $10 and don't play with your boss, Derellio."

He should have asked why he was the lucky recipient. He should have been more suspicious at the man knowing his nature so well, knowing that having been told to play a number with all the money, he would have played none of it. Having been just given a number he would have ignored it. But having been given $100 to play $10, he would risk the $10, just to make the phone call more interesting.

Jackson's first thought was that he was being set up to break a banker. But not on $10. Did the man in the car really want him to play the $100 and another $500 on top of that?

If so, why pick Sweet Shiv? Sweet Shiv wasn't going to put his own money into something he couldn't control. That was for little old ladies with their quarters and their dreams. That was what the numbers were in Harlem. The dream. If people really wanted to make money they would go to the Man's numbers, the stock market, where the odds were in your favour. But the Man's numbers were too real, it reminded you you didn't have nothing worth betting and you'd never make it out of the mud.