Warren Murphy: Last Drop

"He'll be here," Remo said.

"Uh-uh. That five-minute stuff, that was no good, not with Johnny Arcadi. Like he ain't used to taking orders from nobody, you know what I mean?"

"I said he'll be here." Remo glanced at the clock on the wall of the shoemaker's shop. Fifty-eight seconds had elapsed.

"How do you know he'll come?" the shoemaker persisted.

"Say I've got ESP," Remo said.

"Yeah, but if he don't come, what then? Then you murder me, right? Like maybe you think that's going to make Johnny Arcadi die of sadness or something." He expelled a little puff of air. "It just don't work that way, you know. Like you'll kill me, and he won't give a good flying crap, you know?"

"I'm not going to kill you. I'm not going to kill anybody."

The man rubbed the spot on his neck that moments before had sent him into spasms of agony. "Okay. You remember that. But he ain't coming."

"He's coming."

Outside there was a skid of tires and a splintering of glass. Then the rotund form of Johnny Arcadi flew through the hole in the wall.

"I told you he was coming," Remo said.

"Johnny." The shoemaker's eyes shone with relief. "You cared. You really cared. Hey, I ain't going to forget this, boss, honest."

"Cram it," Arcadi moaned, rubbing his bald head where he had landed on the cement flooring. Through the hole in the wall walked a slight figure with wispy white hair bobbing over a yellow satin robe.

"Greetings," Chiun said.

The shoemaker looked from Arcadi to the old Oriental. "Who's the old gook?"

"Some maniac," Arcadi mumbled, getting shakily to his feet. "Here I am, halfway to heaven with a chick looking like a Penthouse centerfold, and along comes this old geezer and turns my legs into pretzels. Tears my arms out by the sockets. Makes my neck into a dartboard with those pointy little fingernails. Sheesh. What're you, some kind of Bruce Lee nut?" He wiped his brow with a handkerchief.

"I do not associate with persons named Bruce," Chiun said with dignity.

The shoemaker smiled. "He beat you up? You got to be kidding, boss. He can't weigh more than a hundred pounds."

"That broad'll never let me so much as cop a feel again.... Hey, you think you could do any better with the old man, smartass?"

"No offense, boss," the shoemaker said apologetically.

"I'm asking. Do you think you could cream the old gook, or don't you?"

"Well..." he smiled. "Yeah. I think I could. Sure."

Then he looked at Remo. "Oh, I get it. You look out for the old guy, don't you. I lay a finger on Pops here, and you step in and brain me, right?"

"Brain him, Remo," Chiun said. "He could use a brain."

"Hey, watch it, you old goat—"

"I won't lift a finger," Remo said.

"Even if I kill him?"

"Be my guest."

"Be his guest," Chiun said.

Remo touched Chiun's shoulder. "Don't kill him, okay?"

Chiun's jaw tightened. "You are impossible," he said.

"And you're dead," the shoemaker said. He advanced on the frail-looking old man and circled him, his fists held in front of his face. "You could at least put your hands up," he said with a smile.

"Why?" Chiun asked. "You have never seen hands?"

"You sure your friend ain't going to step in?"

"Absolutely sure. He has embraced nonviolence."

"And you haven't, right?" He laughed.

"That is correct," Chiun said.

"Okay, then. This is for what he done to me." He poked a mean right at the old Oriental. It missed. And then there was a blur of yellow satin and a sputtering of breathing sounds, and then Chiun was standing in his former position, hands tucked inside the sleeves of his gown, his face serene.

Beside him lay a spheroid shape banded by a braid of arms and legs.

"Is he dead?" Remo asked.

"No," Chiun said with disgust. "It is breathing. It will continue to breathe. That is all."

Arcadi touched the mass with his toe. It rolled away. "What a cluck," he said.

"Want to talk?" Remo asked.

"Yeah, sure." Arcadi's voice was heavy with resignation. "You're taking over the operation, I suppose."

"What if we are?"

"Then welcome to it. I'm sick of it anyway. Business. Poot." He spat significantly toward the blob of inert tissue that was the shoemaker.

"Not good?"

"Not good? You kidding? You're looking at a ruined man. You think there's any living in hookers and numbers? That's all I got left. Ready for the poor farm, that's what I am."

"Hookers and numbers? I'm talking about heroin," Remo explained.

"You and everybody else. Heroin." He looked up nostalgically, savoring the word. "Horse. Smack. Dope. H. Heroin used to mean something," he said through misty eyes. "Secret cargoes by sea. Special cars with the stuff built into the doors. Airline stews with a little stash up their bazonkas."

"Yeah," Remo sighed. "Junkies screaming. Narcotics raids. Teenage girls turning to prostitution to support their habits."

"You got it," Johnny Arcadi said with a dreamy smile. "Them were the days." He snapped out of his reverie with tight-lipped resolution. "That's all ancient history now."

"What's ancient history?"

"As if you don't know."

"Maybe I do and maybe I don't," Remo hedged.

"Come on."

"You come on, Arcadi. The whole country's blasted to the gills. On heroin."

Arcadi snorted in contempt.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Jeez, you guys are even dumber than you look," Arcadi said. No wonder you got picked to close me down. You don't know nothing." He walked slowly to the far wall of the warehouse and lifted up a wooden crate. "Allow me to explain to youse."

He tossed the crate on the floor with a crash of splintering wood. Out of the broken sides slid a fat five-pound plastic bag filled with white powder. Arcadi picked it up.

"This here," he said, raising the bag to shoulder level as if demonstrating a product on television, "is your standard street heroin. Properly adulterated so as not to encourage OD's by addicts, since everybody knows junkies are pigs when it comes to dope and will shoot up as much pure heroin as cut heroin and will die, thereby diminishing the number of customers."

"Can the lecture, Arcadi."

"Please. I am making a point," Arcadi said, his brow furrowed eruditely. "Since this is not pure heroin, it was valued last week at approximately one hundred and sixty thousand dollars. Not the treasure of the Sierra Madre, Maybe, but a living." He shrugged.

"Why last week?" Remo asked.

"Ah, yes. A good question. Why do I say that last week this little packet was worth a hundred sixty thousand smackeroos?" He squeezed the bag with both hands until his face turned red and his teeth clenched and his limbs shook, and finally the packet burst open with a spray of white dust that coated the warehouse floor.

"Because this week it ain't worth bullshit!" Arcadi screamed, ripping the remaining plastic like a man possessed. He proceeded to tear open the other bags in the crate and flung their contents to the winds. "Junk is now as obsolete as the horseless carriage. Garters. Suspenders. Ocean liners. Black and white TV."

The warehouse was a blizzard of flying white dust that coated them all like bakers' apprentices as Arcadi moved frenziedly from crate to crate, ripping open the bags of heroin and dumping them in every direction.

Chiun made a corkscrew with his finger near his temple and cocked his head toward Arcadi. Remo went over to the man, who was sitting, sobbing, on a pile of sparkling powder.

"Get a grip on yourself," Remo said.

"Whoever would have thought it was possible," the fat man cried. "The price of gold, yes. That goes up and down all the time. Diamonds, sugar, art. The dollar. The value of Cuba. But the bottom falling out of heroin? I'm ruined, I tell you. Finished. A bum. I'm a bum."