Warren Murphy: Last Drop

"Perhaps you should try some deep breathing," Chiun suggested.

"Hookers and numbers. You ever try to make a living on hookers and numbers? I'm going to have to go back into the dry-cleaning business."

"There are plenty of addicts," Remo said consolingly. "More than ever, I hear."

"Think so? Go look at the streets. Where are the wasted dregs of humanity who used to lie in empty doorways begging strangers for enough change to buy a nickel bag? Where are the degenerate kids with their runny noses and pasty skin? The girls with the track marks running up their arms and legs? The old junkies, shaking like leaves, dying for a shot—"

"How revolting," Chiun observed.

"Where are they?" Remo asked.

"At Chock Full O' Nuts, that's where!" Arcadi roared.

"What?"

The fat man looked up with red-rimmed eyes. "You think I'm kidding? Hah. Go check out the restaurants. That's where the junkies are. Hanging out in the coffee shops, swilling java and feeling like kings. It's disgusting."

"Restaurants?"

"Ever hear of such a thing? Junkies don't eat. It's not done. Goes against the whole tradition. You'd think they'd have some pride. Never trust a junkie."

"You mean," Remo said, "that everybody's trying heroin— except the junkies, who are used to it?"

Arcadi rolled his eyes. "What a lame-brain. No," he said with exaggerated patience. "Don't you hear nothing? I am saying that nobody wants heroin. No deals, no sales. That's how come all this stuff is still here in the warehouse. I can't give it away. That is what I'm saying. And your boss knows it, even if you don't, lunkhead."

"My boss?"

"The slimy Ay-rab in the turban."

Remo's thoughts drifted to Dr. Harold W. Smith, staring at his computer console through steel-rimmed spectacles. Somehow Arcadi's description didn't quite connect.

"What Arab in the turban?"

"Amfat Hassam," Arcadi said querulously. "You think I was born yesterday? Everybody in the business knows the Ay-rabs been moving Horse into this country for years." He raised his head and shoulders in a posture of dignity. "It's part of a foreign plot to undermine the morale of the nation," he said, giving appropriate weight to each word.

"And you were one of the middlemen," Remo concluded.

"We sell to junkies," Arcadi said dismissively. "Who cares about the morale of junkies?"

"Let me get this straight," Remo said. "Amfat Hassam has been supplying the pure heroin."

"Correct."

"And you have been buying that heroin, cutting it to spread out the volume, and selling it to dealers in the area."

"Right."

"Only now nobody wants to buy heroin anymore."

"Bingo."

"So why is eighty percent of the American public high as a kite?"

"How the hell should I know?" Arcadi screamed. "You think I like this situation? You think I like working hookers and numbers? Your boss, Hassam, he knows. This is part of some kind of new Ay-rab plot, I tell you. Get 'em zonked on something else, and eliminate heroin from the whole scene. Put thousands out of work."

"But it is heroin that everyone's stoned on."

"Then find out from Hassam how they're getting it, 'cause it sure ain't coming from me."

"I will," Remo said.

"And tell him he can take this warehouse full of dope and stick it up his bazonka."

"Okay."

"And now you're going to kill me, I suppose."

"Well..."

"Go ahead," Chiun prodded. "When one falls from a camel, one must quickly mount the same camel. An old Persian proverb."

"What's from camels?" Arcadi snarled. "Are you gonna off me, or what?"

"Quiet, large mouth, that is what we are discussing," Chiun said.

"Oh, excuse me," Arcadi said with an elaborate gesture. "While you two are making conversation, I think I'll just take a little air." He sauntered toward the demolished wall.

"The Emperor will be most displeased if you permit this man to go free," Chiun said in Korean.

"I'm telling you, I just can't kill anymore. Not even a beanbag like Arcadi. I don't have the stomach for it."

Chiun sighed noisily. "All right. But let it be on your head."

"Arcadi," Remo shouted.

Arcadi was sprinting down the street. Remo flew at him in a tackle and brought him to the ground. He bounced him back inside the warehouse and tied his wrists and ankles together with Arcadi's necktie. Then he picked up the telephone and dialed the Chicago Dial-A-Prayer number that eventually reached Harold W. Smith at Folcroft Sanitarium.

"You okay?"

"Er... fine," Smith said, rather stiffly. "It must have been some manifestation of stress."

"You were blasted, but never mind," Remo said. "Are you sure that stuff that's going around is heroin?" He explained Arcadi's predicament. "There isn't any market for heroin these days."

"Interesting," Smith said. "But it's heroin, or a close molecular derivative. And organic. There's no mistake."

"All right," Remo said uncertainly. "By the way, you'd better alert the Miami police to come pick up Arcadi."

"He's— he's alive?"

"Yeah," Remo said defensively. "What of it?"

"Remo, I must advise you—"

"Forget it," Remo said, and hung up.

He turned to Arcadi. "Everybody wants you dead."

Arcadi shrugged. "Breaks my heart."

"Well, I'm not going to kill you."

"Don't do me no favors."

"You could be a little grateful."

Arcadi made a disgusted noise. "You mash my assistant into a human bowling ball, then you beat the gas out of me, tie me up like a frigging doughnut, and leave me here for the cops in a warehouse full of smack, and you want gratitude?"

Remo walked away. "Dumb ingrate," he said.

Chiun sniffed. "And you call yourself an assassin," he said. "I am returning to our motel. You can see your Mr. Hassam and not kill him by yourself. Be back by five o'clock. We are eating duck tonight."

?Chapter Four

Amfat Hassam's residence wasn't hard to find. The lawn in front of the mansion was studded with classical Greek statues painted in vivid flesh tones and anatomically correct. Three gigantic fountains sprayed particolored water into the air above a rhinestone-studded reflecting pool with a mosaic of Ann Margaret on the bottom. Although it was only October, twinkling Christmas lights sparkled on the colonnaded façade of the house, which was a replica of the White House except that it was painted Schiaparelli pink.

Remo vaulted over the ten-foot-high brass gates and walked around to the back. In the middle of a vast orchid garden stretched the blue expanse of a star-shaped swimming pool surrounded by leggy girls in bikinis.

"Oooo," a buxom blonde crooned when she saw Remo.

Gorgeous girls no longer had the effect on Remo they once had. Through years of "oooos" and "ahhhs" and the stray manicured hand brushing accidentally against his buttocks, he had grown to accept the fact that he was the sort of man women found attractive. To him, it all seemed like standard equipment. He was tall, and they liked that. He had dark hair and eyes to match.

The eyes, he had to admit, were pretty extraordinary: he could see about a mile in any kind of weather, and his night vision was as good as the daylight variety. Chiun had taught him to control the diameter of his pupils, a feat that had taken nearly four years to learn. But the girls didn't know that. They just thought his eyes were cute, as if that made any difference whatever.

Or cruel. Women were always telling him how cruel his eyes were. Kiss me, you brute. Remo sincerely wondered what mechanism made women enjoy the company of men they found frightening, but his was not to reason why. Women were a species unto themselves, and nothing they said or did surprised him anymore.

Which was why he didn't say anything when the blonde with the rack on her pulled off his T-shirt with one deft motion and buried her face in his chest. Or when the statuesque redhead standing nearby grabbed him by the hair and stuck her tongue in his ear. Or when the brunette with the freckles wound herself around his legs and bit the blonde on the knee. There was no reasoning with them after that, with claws flying and perfumed hair coming out by the handful and enough shrieking and cussing to make Hassam's tropical paradise sound like a cathouse during a panty raid.