Warren Murphy - The End of the Game

Remo reached out to ring the buzzer but Pamela grabbed his hand.

"Shouldn't we sneak in or something?" she said.

"Not if we don't have to. Why make work?" Remo said. He pressed the buzzer. There was no answer so he pressed it again.

A voice answered, coming from a small speaker hiding near the gate's top hinge.

"Who is it?" the voice asked.

"What's the owner's name of this place?" Remo asked.

"Mr. Buell," the voice said. "Who wants to know?"

"I do," Remo said.

"Who are you? What do you want?"

"I've come to kill Mr. Buell. Is he in?"

"Go away or I'll call the police," the voice answered.

"Don't be that way," Remo said. "Do you know how long I've been driving to get here?"

"I'm calling the police."

There was a sharp click as the speaker went dead.

"That was wonderful," Pamela said sarcastically. "We're still out on the street and now we're going to have the police for company." She kicked the iron gate in frustration.

"Don't worry about it," Remo said. He grabbed the handle of the locked gate, feeling the warm steel under his skin. Gently, he began to twist the handle back and forth until he could almost hear the hum of the metal as it vibrated under his hand. He speeded the twisting motion and the vibrations grew more rapid. He didn't know how he was doing what he was doing. It was a thing he had learned but it was so long ago that he had forgotten exactly what it was he had learned. But he remembered the result and how to produce it.

When he knew, by feel, that the metal was vibrating at the correct speed, he slapped out with the heel of his other hand at the steel plate just above the gate's lock and the steel plate snapped and fell, lock mechanism included, at his feet. He pushed the gate open with his right pinky.

"How'd you do that?" Pamela said.

"I sent away once for a 'Be a locksmith by mail. Earn Big Money.' This is all I remember from the course," he said. "When I figured out it wasn't going to make me rich, that's when I joined the telephone company."

Inside the house, Bondini put down the microphone and said, "I think he'll be coming in now. Everybody remember what to do?"

Hubble and Franko nodded. They were crouched behind couches with machine guns pointed at the front door. Bondini held a.44 Magnum. They all held the unfamiliar weapons gingerly, as if they might fire at any moment by themselves.

"Okay," Bondini said. "And then when we kill them, we get out of here."

"Right," said Franko.

"Anybody got any problems with that?" Bondini asked.

"Anything's better than screwing a sheep," Hubble said.

Almost three hundred miles away in a mammoth stone house built on a promontory overlooking the Pacific, Abner Buell watched a television monitor and saw the three men with guns in the living room of his Malibu home. Sitting alongside him was Mr. Hamuta.

"I don't really understand," Mr. Hamuta said. "I thought you called me for--"

"You will get your chance," Buell said.

"But those three men?"

"You will get your chance," Buell said. He snapped his fingers and Marcia, who had been standing in the corner of the room, rushed forward to refill his cup of mandarin-orange herbal tea. She did it silently, then backed away, never taking her eyes off the television monitor.

Pamela walked toward the front door of the house, her hand extended toward the doorknob, when Remo said, "You really going to do that?"

"Why not? You let everybody know we're here." In her other hand, she held her small revolver. "You think we're going to surprise anybody now?"

"No. But I think they're going to surprise you when you go through that door. Don't you know a trap when you see one?"

"I know that they probably think we've buzzed off," she said.

"Not a chance. They're waiting for us."

"You keep saying 'they,'" she said. "Why they? There was only one voice on the speaker."

"It's they. There's three of them," Remo said.

"How do you know that?" she asked.

"I can hear them."

She put her ear close to the door. "I can't hear anything," she whispered after a moment.

"That has more to do with your hearing than their noise," Remo said. "There's three of them. One of them has asthma or something 'cause he's breathing funny."

Pamela Thrushwell smiled. She knew when she was being joshed. "And the other two?" she asked pleasantly.

"They're breathing normally. For white men, that is. But they're nervous. The breaths are short. I figure that they're carrying weapons and they're not used to them."

"This is all the worst pile of rot I ever heard," Pamela said.

"Have it your own way," Remo said. "You go through the door if you want." He raised his voice. "But I'm going around the back and coming in through the ocean side."

He walked away from her and a moment later heard her feet padding after him.

"Wait for me," she said.

"Good." He leaned close to her and whispered, "We'll go up this trellis to the second floor."

"I--" she started, but Remo put a hand over her mouth.

"Whisper," he said.

"I thought we were going around the back."

"You're not too smart, are you?" Remo said. "I said that for them inside."

"Why?"

He pointed over the front door. "They've got microphones and cameras all over the place. I don't want them to know what we're doing."

"Don't tell me you're afraid," Pamela said.

"Not for me," said Remo.

Pamela thought, then nodded. "All right. I'll be right behind you."

The second-floor window was open and Remo hoisted Pamela through before slipping inside himself. They were in a guest bedroom, whose walls, bedspread, furniture, rug, and drapes were all a bright red.

"This room looks like a freaking hemorrhage," Remo said.

"I kind of like it," Pamela said.

"Great place to bleed to death," Remo said. "If they get you, I'll bring you up here to die."

"Thank you. I'd really appreciate that," she said dryly.

The bedroom door opened onto a balcony which fronted all the rooms on the second floor and looked down into the large living and dining areas.

Remo gestured to Pamela for silence and brought her to the edge of the balcony. Below, they saw the three men hiding behind sofas and chairs, aiming guns at the sliding glass doors that led to an outside patio and the sandy beach beyond. The ocean looked very green today. It reminded Remo of the Caribbean.

"Should I shoot them?" she whispered softly in his ear.

"Why would you want to do that?"

"Get them before they get us. They've got us outgunned."

"Christ, you even think like James Bond," he said.

"Well, we can't just stand here until they all fall asleep," she hissed again.

He raised a hand to silence her. "Leave it to me," he said. He lightly vaulted over the railing and dropped the fifteen feet to the room below. He landed on the cushions of the sofa, rolled backward over its back, landed on his feet between two of the would-be gunmen, and snapped the machine guns from their hands.

The man behind the chair heard the sound and turned toward him, slowly raising his Magnum to firing height. But before he could do anything with it, Remo had taken it from his hand. Remo stood there among the three men holding all three guns. Three guns were awkward, he realized. He tried holding one machine gun in each hand and the revolver under his chin but that wasn't comfortable.

"Who are you? What do you want?" the man behind the chair said.

"Just hold your horses," Remo said. It was hard to talk holding a gun under your chin.

He put both machine guns under one arm and held the pistol in his other hand, but the machine guns began to slip. They might fall out, go off and hurt somebody that way, he thought.

"Are you all right?" Pamela yelled from the balcony.