Warren Murphy: The Eleventh Hour

"And the second?" Remo inquired politely.

"I'll burn your house down and everyone in it."

"Nice guy."

"Hey, you want to play, you gotta pay. Be on your way now."

"Wait a minute. Don't you want to tell me which buildings I should torch?

"Be creative. Just don't touch the four blocks around this one. These people pay for protection. And no auto companies. They pay for protection too."

"You do this for the money?" Remo said.

"What else? Money. And I like to see things burn."

"I'll try not to disappoint you," Remo said. He twisted off the sealed cap and gasoline fumes rose into the room like a chemical genie. "Gasoline, all right," Remo said.

"High octane. Only the best. Now be off."

"Got any matches?"

"Oh, sure." Joakley dug into the pocket of his purple dressing gown. "Here you are."

Remo reached for the book and accidentally spilled half the bottle over Moe Joakley's ample tummy.

"Watch it! This is pure silk!"

"Sorry," said Remo. "Here, let me help you wipe it off."

"What are you doing? You can't wipe this stuff off with your bare hands."

Moe tried to back away but Remo's hands held him. They were rubbing at the front of his dressing gown so fast they blurred. The gown began to feel strangely warm. A curt of smoke drifted up.

"Hey!" Joakley said again. And then went up in flames with a loud Whooosh!

"Arrgh!" Moe Joakley screamed. "I'm on fire!"

"Does it hurt?" Remo asked solicitously.

"Arrgh!" Joakley said again. Remo took that as a yes.

"Now you know how it feels," Remo said. "The only person who ever cared for me is in a hospital because of you."

"I'm burning. I'm burning to death. You can't let me burn."

"Wanna bet?"

A smell like roast pork filled the roam as Moe Joakley scurried around the room like a flaming pinwheel. And Remo knew that, whatever he did, he couldn't just let Moe Joakley burn. Burning was too easy.

"Get down on the floor," Remo yelled. "Roll on the rug."

Moe Joakley rolled on the rug like a dog rolling in something that stank, only he rolled faster. The gas-fed flames refused to die. In fact, they got worse because the rug caught.

Remo grabbed a heavy blanket from the bedroom and threw it over Moe Joakley's squirming, flaming body, trying to smother the fire.

Joakley screamed louder.

Remo suddenly remembered reading somewhere that flames could be extinguished by slapping them hard. He began slapping Moe Joakley's body through the blanket. The screams suddenly stopped and little tendrils of smoke curled up from under the blanket. "Is it out?" Remo asked.

"I dunno. I still feel hot."

Remo kept slapping the man. Harder now. The smacking sounds grew louder. So did the screams. "I think you can stop now," Joakley howled.

But Remo didn't stop. He kept slapping at the wriggling form under the blanket. His hands drummed like pistons. The sounds emerging from under the blanket grew meatier-occasionally punctuated by a mushy crushing of bone.

Moe Joakley's protests grew mushy too, like the burbling of a baby.

Gradually, under Remo's drumming hands, the shape under the blanket lost its human outlines. When Remo was done, the blanket was almost flat. He stood up and left the apartment in silence. He did not look under the blanket. He did not need to. The next day, after the body was discovered by a maid, the police looked under the blanket. Their first thought was that they had discovered an alien life form.

"Looks like an amoeba," suggested the medical examiner. "Or maybe a dead fetus."

"Too big for an amoeba," said a detective. "Or a fetus."

When the medical examiner found a human tooth lying on the rug, he realized for the first time the hairless thing under the blanket had once been a man. He got violently sick. Then he went into another line of work.

They got two morgue attendants to load Moe Joakley's roasted carcass into a body bag. They had to use shovels, and Joakley kept slipping off like a runny omelet.

The morgue attendants went into new lines of work too.

And although a thorough investigation was conducted, no trace of the runaway robot murder suspect was ever discovered.

Chapter 4

"Mr. Murray. He's asking for you."

In the waiting room of the hospital, Remo Williams did not look up. He wore fresh clothes that he had picked up at his hotel, where he had quickly showered the soot from his body. A turtleneck jersey helped conceal the livid bruise on his throat.

"Mr. Murray," the nurse said again, tapping him gently. "You are Remo Murray, aren't you?"

"Oh, right, yeah, Remo Murray," Remo said. It was the cover name under which he'd registered at the Detroit Plaza Hotel. He had forgotten it.

"How is he?" Remo asked, following the nurse into the ward.

"He's comfortable," she said noncommittally.

Dr. Henrietta Gale was hovering at Chiun's bedside. She frowned when she saw Remo enter. "Normally, I would not allow this, but poor Mr. Chiun insists."

Remo ignored her. "Little Father, how do you feel?" he asked gently.

"I am hurt," Chiun said, staring at the ceiling.

"How bad?"

"To my very core," Chiun said, refusing to meet Remo's eyes. "I am told while I lie between life and death you deserted my bedside."

Remo bent to Chiun's ear. "The hit, remember?" he whispered. "I got the guy who caused all those fires. Who hurt you."

"He could not wait?" Chiun asked.

"Never mind him. What about you?"

"My end may be near."

"Because of some stupid smoke," Remo said loudly. "I don't believe it."

"I knew this was a mistake," Dr. Gale said. She tried to pull Remo away from the bedside. She took his shoulders in her firm doctor's hands. The shoulders did not budge. They might as well have been set in concrete.

"Sir. I'll have to ask you to step over here. I must speak with you."

Remo came erect with a stricken look on his face. "What's wrong with him?" Remo hissed when they were on the other side of the room.

"I don't know. We performed every kind of test known to medical science. His blood has been analyzed. We put him through a CAT scan. Ultrasound. Everything. We can find nothing wrong with him physically."

"Then he's going to be okay?"

"No. I'm sorry to tell you that your friend is dying."

"You just said he was fine."

"He's an unbelievable human speciman. Not just for his age, but for any age. My God, do you know that his body is perfectly bisymmetrical?"

"Is that bad?"

"It's incredible. Even in normal people one leg is usually longer than the other. Right-handed people usually have weaker musculature in their left arms, and of course vice versa. In women, it's not uncommon for one breast to be larger. But not this man.

His arms and legs are exactly the same respective lengths. His muscles are perfectly balanced. Even his bone structure is unnaturally symmetrical."

"But what does it mean?"

"It means," said Dr. Gale seriously, "that his body is perfectly proportioned. Perfectly."

Remo nodded. Sinanju. It balanced everything.

"I looked it up in the medical records., There's never been any recorded example of absolute human bisymmetry. I don't want to be precipitate, but I have here a standard medical donor form. If you would consider willing the body to science, I can assure you that the utmost respect will be paid to the remains."

Remo took the form and silently folded it into a delta-winged paper airplane. He sailed it past Dr. Gale's ear. It seemed to just tap a wall mirror, but the glass spiderwebbed with a brittle crack!

"My goodness!" Dr. Gale said.

"I want some answers, or I'll start folding you next."

Dr. Gale fingered her shiny new stethoscope and chose her next words carefully.

"As I told you, sir, we can find nothing organically wrong with the dear sweet man. But his life signs are definitely failing. It's not his heart, and although we suctioned smoke traces from his lungs, they don't appear to be damaged either. But all indications are that he is simply ... expiring."