Warren Murphy: Death Sentence

Smith was not exactly the kind of person you'd invite over for a barbecue. He was a dry, lanky cut of a man who always wore a gray three-piece suit and the same striped school tie. His hair was the dirty white of a thin stormcloud. His eyes were gray. Even his skin was gray. That was the truly unappetizing thing about the man, that lizardy gray skin.

As the gray man named Smith emerged from the aisle, hugging exactly eight boxes of Flako Magic Potato Mix under his bony Adam's apple, Buddy Newman gave out a little groan.

There were six cashiers at the Sak-N-Save, and Buddy had the express aisle. Eight items or less. He sighed.

The gray man set the boxes down on the conveyor belt and reached into his pocket, extracting a worn leather wallet. Buddy began running the boxes past the optical bar-code reader, knowing that even before his register totaled up the amount, the gray man would have arrived at the correct figure mentally. Buddy knew this because the man invariably counted out the exact change before Buddy had a machine total. Once the man had insisted that Buddy's cash register was in error. Buddy politely told him that the bar-code reader did not make mistakes.

The gray man had insisted in a lemony voice and Buddy had had to call the manager. It was Buddy's first month on the job and he hadn't yet learned how to deal with troublesome customers. He hoped that the manager would toss the gray man out into the parking lot.

Instead, the gray man pointed to a flawed bar code on one box and impatiently stood by while the manager entered the cost by hand. He then reprimanded Buddy for not having the sense to simply hit the repeat key after the scanner picked the price off the first box.

Buddy actually turned beet-red at that, his first reprimand. He never again forgot to use the repeat key.

But this time Buddy deliberately didn't hit the repeat key. Let the guy suffer, he thought, just as he himself suffered every time the gray man pulled out his red change holder and counted out exact change with maddening care. That was the thing that drove Buddy crazy. Anyone else would be content to slap down two or three quarters and accept the change. The man insisted on counting out every last penny, no matter how much he had to scrounge in that ridiculous plastic change holder.

So this time Buddy took his time totaling the bill. Maybe the gray man-whose skin looked even grayer than usual today-would take his purchases to another register next time.

The man clutched his change in hand while Buddy pretended to have trouble with the scanner. He knew from long practice how to hold the box so that it would misread. He did this repeatedly.

"Hold the box flatter," the gray man suggested in a voice that sounded as if it had been squeezed from a lemon peel.

"Sorry, sir," Buddy said, secretly glad that he had touched a nerve. He fussed with the box, noting the thinning of the man's bloodless lips. He noticed again the flat grayness of his skin. Normally it was the color of fish skin. Tonight it resembled pencil lead.

As the gray man squirmed impatiently, his eyes wandered to the magazine rack, where the latest editions of the women's magazines and various tabloids screamed their coverlines.

The gray man did a comical double-take. One gray hand reached out for the latest Enquirer with shocking urgency. He took in the cover with eyes that showed white all the way around behind the transparent shields of his rimless glasses. He tore the paper open, searching for something. When he found what he sought, his skin went even grayer, if anything, and his eyes wider.

Buddy Newman was so surprised at this uncharacteristic behavior that he actually stopped working and looked at the man in wonderment. It was the shortest-lived expression that Buddy Newman ever had on his face.

For the gray man suddenly clutched at his chest, the pages of the Enquirer scattering like origami pigeons. His mouth went wide. His lips and fingernails seemed almost blue. His eyes strained from their sockets like hard-boiled eggs from a clenched fist, and the gray man folded like a lawn chair, landing on the conveyor belt. He was carried along until he jammed up against the coupon shelf in a welter of limbs.

Buddy Newman recognized the signs of a heart attack from his CPR class and hit the manager's bell. Without waiting, he flipped the gray man around so that he could get to his face. It was as gray as a corpse's face now.

Buddy pinched off the nose and pried open the man's gasping mouth, checking first to see that he hadn't swallowed his tongue. He hadn't. It lay in his mouth, a fat gray slug. Steeling himself for the distastefulness of his task, Buddy pressed his mouth to the gray man's lips. They were turning a grayish-blue. He exhaled forcefully, withdrew, then repeated the procedure.

The manager hurried up and Buddy shouted to him, "Call an ambulance! He's dying!" Then he put his lips to those of the gray man named Smith. Smith's lips were cold as fresh cod. And just about as tasty. Buddy forced more air into the unresponsive lungs, hot tears in his eyes.

After the ambulance attendants had wheeled the gray man out the electric doors, Buddy sat on the conveyor belt that normally carried apples and doughnuts and pork chops to their ultimate destiny and listened silently to the manager's distant but reassuring voice telling him that he would probably receive some kind of commendation from the chain, if the customer survived.

Buddy didn't think the man would survive. The cold taste on his lips made him feel as if he'd kissed a corpse.

Finally, after Buddy had calmed down, the manager sent him home early. Buddy took with him a copy of the Enquirer.

There were several headlines, Buddy saw as he walked to his house. One of them, he felt, had caused the man to have a heart attack.

Buddy instantly dismissed the top headline, which informed the world, STARTLING NEW EVIDENCE! SAME ASSASSIN KILLED ROY ORBISON, LUCILLE BALL, AND AYATOLLAH KHOMEINI!"

There was a box item that promised to reveal the secret of the Enquirer All-Pizza Weight-Loss Program. Smith hadn't looked as if he'd ever eaten a pizza in his life.

That left only one other story. The headline read: AMAZING TRUTH REVEALED. EVOLUTIONARY SUPERMAN LOOSE IN U.S.!

Below that was an artist's rendition of a man's cruel face. He had high cheekbones and the deadest eyes Buddy had ever seen. Even in the sketch, those eyes seemed to bore through Buddy's shaken soul like drill bits.

He opened to the inside page and by the lights of passing streetlamps read about the being whom the reporter had dubbed "Dead Man," who, if the reports could be believed, roamed the streets of America committing actions of indescribable violence. It sounded to Buddy like someone's idea for a bad comic book. Then he looked back at the dead eyes that stared out from the cover and shuddered uncontrollably.

No wonder Smith had keeled over. The guy looked like death personified.

Convinced he had solved the mystery of Smith's apparent heart attack, Buddy Newman hurried to his parents' house and had nightmares in which the express-line conveyor belt was choked with corpses who clutched alien coins while Buddy frantically tried to bag them before they died on him.

Chapter 2

His name was Remo and the sound of the buzzer snapped him from sleep.

He lay there, letting his slow-to-focus brown eyes take in the unfamiliar surroundings. He didn't recognize the ceiling. It was too white. He blinked, and sat up slowly. His head hurt. There was a dull pain in back of his deep-set eyes. It felt like the optic nerves had been seared and not quite healed.

He rolled to the side of the lumpy cot and took his head in his hands. When he lifted his face, he looked around the cell, which was illuminated by the strong light from outside the bars.