Warren Murphy - Last Drop

"This is Arnold, my son," she said, appealing to the boy with her eyes.

Remo looked from the pimply creature in the doorway to the woman beside him.

"Stepson," Arnold corrected. A smile, practiced, cold came to his lips. "But we're still a family, aren't we, Mater? We have our affairs to ourselves."

There was a hushed moment. The silence weighed a metric ton.

"Don't we?" the boy repeated, never raising his voice.

"Of... course," Esmeralda faltered.

"Good." The boy turned and left.

Remo followed him. In the corridor behind the archway where Arnold had stood was a closed door beside a telephone set in the wall. Next to the phone was a large red button. Remo opened the door. A skeleton hung inside. With a shudder he slammed it.

"Very funny," he said. He pressed the red button beside the phone, but nothing happened. There was no noise, no signal of any kind. He lifted the telephone. It was an ordinary instrument that gave off only a dial tone.

Arnold had vanished.

"Where'd he go?" Remo asked.

Esmeralda avoided his eyes. "Oh, Arnold makes his own passageways," she said evasively. "He is a genius, you know."

"At what, designing funhouses?" He didn't like the kid. He didn't even like the memory of him. In the archway, Remo could still smell him, a sickly sweet odor. Probably all the starch in his shirt, Remo said to himself.

"The skeleton in the closet— a genius's idea of fun, I suppose."

"I— I will explain," Esmeralda whispered. Her eyes scanned the corners of the house as she took his arm. "Let us go back to the library."

"He didn't even mention the dead man in the entrance," Remo said, settling into an overstuffed chair where Esmeralda placed him.

"He is a strange boy. That is why he is here, away from his home."

"Where is his home?"

"Shhh," Esmeralda said, settling on Remo's lap. "There is time to talk of Arnold later. Let us finish what we have started."

"What? Are you kidding?"

She placed her lips on his. Almost immediately the fire inside him rekindled.

"I suppose we've got a few minutes," Remo said, hating himself.

He stripped her slowly, enjoying every part of her. The rosy hot glow returned, the private music. Only there was a discordant note in the music. It was a tiny metallic ping that sounded somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind.

Remo hesitated. No, not his mind. It was some kind of switch, a mechanical device, and it was deep in the recesses of the chair.

He sprang up, dropping Esmeralda in a heap on the floor, just as a sparkling steel blade shot out of the tufted back of the chair at the exact place where Remo's neck had been.

"What was the idea of that?" Remo yelled.

Esmeralda was abject. "Oh, I am so sorrowful. It is one of Arnold's devices. His hobby."

"Murder? Nice hobby. Releases tension, I understand. Very creative."

"Oh, Remo." She backed him toward the bookcase, her lips quivering.

It was there again. The little click. "Move aside, lady," he said as a barrage of bullets blasted out of a gilt-bound volume of the Collected Works of Mario Vareas Llosa.

"What else is there in this arsenal?" Remo moved quickly around the room, banging on surfaces and listening for the release clicks.

A net of fine nylon spiked with razor-sharp diamond slivers ballooned out of the ceiling. A thin wire sprang from behind a Louis XV chair and looped into a rapid coil in front of it.

"Nothing like a little strangulation with the evening brandy," Remo said.

Standing back he opened a cigar humidor on the big mahogany desk. A white shaft of laser light streamed out of it and burned a smoking hole in the ceiling.

"Nice," Remo said, closing the lid.

"Oh, let us get out of here," Esmeralda cried.

"What for? You're the one who set me up here."

"No, it's not true. Just let me—"

"They said she, you know. The guys on the plane. A woman set them up, too. Guess which woman?"

"Plane? I know nothing of a plane."

"And little Arnie there. Probably some nut you pulled out of the looney bin to keep you in ideas in case somebody got past Manuel the Iron Man. Very neat, Esmeralda."

"Please," she pleaded. Her voice was hoarse, and the fear shone in her eyes. She gestured with her head toward the doorway. Once in the corridor, she led Remo into a short cul-de-sac in which a single door stood. Placing her finger over her lips, she opened the door and led him inside. There was a large bed, a bar, and some canvases by Miró.

"This is my bedroom," she said.

"Another chamber of horrors, I presume?"

"No. It is safe here. We can talk. You see, I had to take you into the library. Arnold would have known if I hadn't. He would have killed me."

"It was you or me, huh?"

She hung her head. "I am shamed. I was so afraid. But Arnold will think you are dead by now."

"Oh, I see. He doesn't check on these minor occurrences, naturally."

"No. He is busy with— other things. He will leave you to me."

Remo felt his heart sinking. "You mean you've done this before?"

"Once," she said softly. "Or twice. Unless you count—"

"Oh, glory," Remo said.

"They were only field hands," she explained earnestly. "Just nosy workers who found out about the coffee and wanted to blackmail us."

Remo sighed. "I don't know why I should be surprised," he said, more to himself than to her. "There are over a dozen people in Miami whose heads you've ventilated."

"I have never been in Miami. And—"

"Right, right. You've never sabotaged a plane, either."

"I know nothing of this plane you keep mentioning. I wish you would explain."

"Drop it," Remo said. "It's time you explained some things to me." He waved his arms in despair. "Start anywhere."

She smiled. "Hokay." She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him onto the blue satin bed.

"Not that."

"Just once."

"First we talk."

She kissed him. "We talk, we kiss. We make love. We do everything the same time. It is economical, sí? Like smorgasbord."

"We talk. Period," Remo said.

Esmeralda undressed.

"Beginning with the coffee."

She straddled him. "The coffee is made with heroin. Arnold makes it. It grows here."

Coffee wasn't the only thing that was growing, Remo noticed. He tried to force the demon urges from him, but Esmeralda was running her lips on him, and her hands were taking off his clothes again, and her hips were moving round and slow and hot, so hot he was going to burst.

He turned her over so that she was looking up at him, and he groaned once, pushing deeply inside her. She panted and cried out as she came, once, twice, again, without stopping, the momentum building, the fire licking him with its heat until it consumed him and they lay together, spent. It was a hell of a way to conduct yourself with someone you ought to be saving democracy from, Remo thought.

He got dressed and sat back down beside her. "That— that doesn't change anything," he said guiltily.

"But it was still wonderful, jes?" she answered. "You will take me home with you, to America, jes?"

"You'd go to jail."

"That is all right. It will be better than this place. I am so afraid here, always so afraid. Only in this room am I safe. My husband has made Arnold promise. He cannot touch my room with his tricks."

Remo lifted his head. "Your husband? You really have a husband?"

"But what do you think?" she asked indignantly. "Do you imagine that a woman in South America with the beauty of Esmeralda would be an old maid? Of course I have a husband." She bounced off the bed proudly. "I will make us the drinks. What do you wish?"

"Water," Remo said. He sat up on the bed. "Who is he?"

"Who?"

"Your husband. A Colombian?"

"No, no. He is Arnold's father. An American, like you." She stepped from behind the bar, carrying the glasses. "He is a very important man in Amer—" She screamed.