Warren Murphy: Last Drop

"Ladies, ladies," Remo attempted. He got a curvaceous calf in his mouth for the effort. A finger attached to a three-inch-long orange fingernail darted alarmingly, near his right eye, and when he recovered his balance, a well-muscled female belly enveloped him.

"Get off me," Remo griped. "What are you, Hassam's army?"

"Psst. Come with me," whispered the girl attached to the belly. She was a pretty little blonde with the kind of puckish, innocent features that reminded him of old Tuesday Weld movies. She led him, crawling combat style, out of the melee and into the shadows of some tiger lilies.

"I'm Sandy," she sighed, kissing Remo full on the mouth.

"That's okay," Remo said. "I'm a little dusty myself." He smiled broadly.

"Huh?" She batted a lot of genuine mink eyelashes in his direction.

"Never mind. Why'd they attack me?"

Sandy giggled. "It wasn't you they were attacking, silly. It was each other. Men are so scarce around here, every girl wanted you for herself." Her tongue flicked between her lips. "Wanna play doctor?"

A high-heeled shoe whizzed overhead. "Aerial attack," the girl said. Her smile widened into a lascivious grin. "Better stay close to me, Brown Eyes." She ground herself on him to ensure maximum protection. "Can't tell what they'd do for a man."

"Why don't they try the bars?" Remo offered.

"We're not allowed. It's part of the contract."

"What contract?"

"To the sheik." She wriggled onto his lap. Before he could protest, the tiny bikini top she was wearing sprang off and flew into the bushes. "Oops," the girl said, her breasts quivering in Remo's face. "It must have slipped. Well, men will take advantage when the opportunity comes up," she giggled. She drummed her fingers on his thigh as the moments passed. Her smile faded. "They will, won't they?" she asked uncertainly.

"Not always," Remo said gallantly, plucking two leaves off a plant and presenting them to her. "What contract?"

"Our work contract," she said, accidentally losing the leaves in Remo's hair. "Hassam's our employer. We're his harem." She appraised Remo's reaction. "So it's a job," she said.

"Uh, yeah," Remo said. "What do harem girls do, exactly?"

"Not what you think. Squirt's no stallion. His wife sees to that. We're just dancers. Kind of."

"Kind of?"

"Sure. That weird dancing Arabs like. Bumps and grinds and shimmies. I'm the best one here." She demonstrated for Remo at point-blank range. "Works better with tassels, I think."

"I see," Remo said.

"I'm the only real dancer in the bunch. My last job was at the Whiskey à Go-Go in L.A." She arched her back proudly. "Naturally, I feel sort of dumb listing 'harem girl' on my W-2," she reflected, "what with my background and all. But for five grand a week, who's complaining? And Squirt's such a nice guy."

"Squirt?"

"The sheik. Hassam, that is. He's not really a sheik. But his wife makes us call him that." She laughed. "Everybody knows they were both date pickers in some desert slum before Squirt hit it big on the drug scene."

"So I've heard. I want to see him."

"Forget it. Squirt's got the hordes of Allah surrounding him. Besides, what do you want with him when you can see me?" As if to illustrate her point, the bottom of her bikini slithered off inexplicably.

"Is he in the house?"

"Who, Squirt? Sure. Hiding from the sheikess, or whatever the old battle-axe calls herself. Squirt goes into his secret room up in the attic for an eyeful whenever the girls are out here by the pool."

"In that room?" Remo pointed to a small window overlooking the pool, where the harem had retreated after losing sight of their quarry.

"That's the one. You can see his binoculars. Poor old Squirt. It's the only jollies he gets." She fought for position as Remo tried to remove her from his lap. "Hey, don't waste your time, big boy. Squirt's got twenty-four-hour bodyguards. And take my word for it, I smell a lot better than they do. Better stick around here."

"Sorry, sweetheart," Remo said, lifting her gently and depositing her beside him. She looked as if she were about to cry. "It's nothing personal," he said.

"I used to be a respectable go-go girl," she said bravely. "More boom boom than I knew what to do with. Dinners, they gave me. Cab fare. One guy even kept me in fancy underpants for a whole year. Now I can't even land a quickie in the damn bushes."

Her pretty eyes were beginning to squeeze shut miserably, so Remo did the only thing he could think of. He pinched a nerve on the left side of her back that sent her moaning in orgiastic delight. "Oh, baby, what's that, telepathy?" she squealed.

"Just an old Korean trick. It'll go away in about an hour. Unless you don't like it." He reached toward her, but she squirmed away.

"I'll let you know how I like it in an hour," she said, smiling.

He headed for the house. One of the girls spotted him, and the stampede was on again, but they called off the chase as soon as Remo started climbing up the sheer face of the wall.

"He can't be for real," one of the harem said as Remo slapped one hand over the other on his spiderlike crawl to the third story. Remo usually didn't like to have people watching him while he worked, but wall climbing was about as elementary as you could get. Even if Amfat Hassam did let loose with a piercing scream when Remo's legs swung in front of his binoculars and into the window.

Four goons who looked as if they'd been weaned on blood adhering to the ends of sabers appeared out of nowhere. They were swathed in flowing nomadic robes. Long curved knives hung glinting from their belts. Their fierce eyes spoke of a thousand years of desert fighting.

"Let's moider da creep, Joey," the biggest one said, pulling a revolver out of his sleeve.

"Hold it, fellas. I just want to talk."

"Talk to dis," another warrior said, thrusting a brass-knuckled fist toward Remo's nose.

"You're not very polite," Remo said, before embedding the man's knuckles in the man's throat.

The big one fired his revolver. The bullet missed, an event the gunman seemed to find amazing, considering he had fired five inches from Remo's chest.

"Your manners aren't very good, either," Remo said, poking him in the forehead with his index finger. A little cylinder of brain tissue about the diameter of a dime shot out the back of the man's skull.

For a moment, Remo was afraid he had killed the man, but his fears were allayed when the man smiled. "Only a lobotomy," Remo said to the two remaining guards who were closing in on him. "Now, now," he said. "You two look like you're thinking impure thoughts."

He picked one up in each hand and flung them to opposite sides of the room. Their weapons, still in their outstretched hands, hit the wall first, cracking apart and spilling two showers of unspent bullets on the floor. A split second later, their bodies made contact with the plaster and tunneled inside it like jewels in a mosaic.

After checking to see that they were breathing, Remo turned to the little man with the binoculars. He was wearing a pair of baggy Bermuda shorts, which trembled pitifully around his knocking knees.

"Me, I have excellent manners," he said quickly. "I buy the cookies from the Girl Scouts. I help old ladies cross the street. I use a napkin, always. You would like perhaps a drink?"

He shambled over to a tray filled with decanters, clattered a rapid tattoo while he filled a glass, and offered it spastically to Remo.

"I don't drink."

"Thank you," the sheik said, downing the contents of the glass with one gulp. The thinning strands of hair on his head quivered.

"I thought Arabs didn't drink, either."

Hassam dropped his glass instantly. "I will never drink again. I swear it."

Remo was about to tell Hassam that he didn't care whether anybody drank or not. Then he remembered that the day his body had reached the level of development where he could no longer ingest alcohol had been a sad day in his life. No more Scotch Mists to soften the blows of life's slings and arrows. No vacation Mai Tais in coconuts with little umbrellas in them. Not even a beer after a good football game. The experience had left him with a perverse envy of people who could down a little nip now and then. Drunks made lousy assassins, but sobriety was hell sometimes. So why shouldn't a heroin smuggler feel at least as rotten as he did, he reasoned.