Warren Murphy - Bottom Line

"You know who we are?"

"I know that you've been sent here by people in very high places to see to our security. I don't know why. I don't know anything about it. I've bean asked to cooperate with you, even though we've been doing a pretty good job of protecting ourselves for as long as I've been alive."

"And your son who practiced swan diving into the street? Could he protect himself, too?" asked Remo.

Lippmcott's face reddened and his big hands clenched into tight fists.

"Lern was sick," he said. "He just cracked under the strain."

"Some people in Washington think maybe he was helped to crack," Remo said.

"Not a chance," said Lippincott.

"Enough trivia," said Chiun. "About those paintings . . ."

"Please, Chiun," said Remo. "Not now."

Chiun folded his arms and his hands disappeared into the open flowing sleeves of his blue kimono. He gazed impassively at the ceiling. ¦

"Who's taking over the Japanese deal?" Remo asked.

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"My son, Randall. The deal's just got to be tied up."

"Then he's the one we've got to watch," Remo said. "Where do we find him?"

"He lives in New York City," Lippincott said. He mentioned an address in the east sixties. "I'll tell him you're coming."

"Please do that," Remo said. He stood up. "Are you ready, Little Father?" "Am I allowed not to talk about these priceless artworks that have been in my family for ten or eleven years?" asked Chiun.

"What art works?" Lippincott said. "Paintings of the most noble, most gentle, most . . ."

"Never mind," Remo told Lippincott. "You wouldn't like them."

He nodded to Chiun to follow him and walked to the door. He stopped and looked back at Lippincott.

"Your son, Lem," Remo said. "Yes?"

"Did he have any pets?"

"Pets?" Lippincott thought a moment. "No. Why?" "No contact with animals?" asked Remo. Lippincott shrugged. "Not that I know of. Why?" "I don't know," Remo said. "Something about animals maybe involved in his death."

"That might make sense to you," said Lippincott, "but it doesn't make any to me."

"Me neither," Remo agreed. "We'll see you." He preceded Chiun into the hallway and walked toward the front door. At the top of the broad night

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of steps leading toward the second floor, they saw a tall blonde woman wearing a white satin dressing gown, her stomach swelled with the child she was bearing. She smiled down at them, before walking

away.

"There is something I do not understand," Chiun

said.

"What's that?" asked Remo.

"I do not understand how there come to be so many Americans."

"What?" asked Remo.

"That is the first women with child I have seen in this country in more than a year."

Remo wasn't listening. At the front door, he asked the guard:

"Who's the blonde?"

"Mrs. Lippincott." \

"What Mrs. Lippincott?"

"Mrs. Elmer Lippincott Sr."

Remo winked to the guard. "No wonder the old man keeps looking so fit."

The guard nodded. "You better believe it."

Behind his locked office door, Elmer Lippincott was directing the mobile operator to contact the car of Elena Gladstone.

When she came on the air, he said "Those two men. They wanted to know something about animals."

"I see," said Elena Gladstone after a pause.

"Perhaps things should cool down for a while."

"Leave it with me," she said. She replaced the receiver in the console of her silver Jaguar XJ-12. In

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her mind's eye, she saw the two men outside Lippin-cott's office. The old Oriental and the young American with the piercing eyes and the smooth movements of an athlete. No, it wasn't an athlete. The movements didn't look so much like power as they did like grace. Perhaps, like a ballet dancer. She hoped she saw them again. Especially the-young one. She parked her car in the public garage next to the Lifeline Laboratory, walked into her building and went straight to her private office. She made two telephone calls. On the first, she quickly recounted that two government agents were interested. "I think the old man's getting cold feet," she said. "About Randall." She got a two-word reply. "Kill him."

"But the old man?" she said. "I'll take care of him." She nodded as the phone clicked in her ear. Her next telephone call was to the headquarters of the Lippincott National Bank, into the private office of Randall Lippincott.

"Randall," she said, "this is Dr. Gladstone." "Hello, Elena. What can I do for you? You need a couple of mill?"

"Thanks but no thanks. It's time for your checkup. I've managed to squirrel an hour away right after lunch."

"Sorry. I can't make it. My schedule's full up." "Mr. Lippincott told me to call you," she said. "You know how he is."

Randall Lippincott sighed. "He makes me crazy with all this nonsense," he said. "Checkups, vitamin

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shots, tests. Why can't I be a normal walking wreck just like everybody else?"

"I'm sorry, dear," said Dr. Gladstone. "You'll have to take that up with him. One o'clock?"

"I'll be there."

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CHAPTER SIX

Ruby Gonzalez choked back her disgust as she looked down filth-littered East Seventh Street. Zack Meadows's last address was in a fourth-floor walkup, a half-block east of the Bowery, a street so sodden and degenerate that it had lent its once-proud Dutch name to a way of life, as in "Bowery bum."

She walked down the block toward Meadows's building, which was jammed neatly in between a store that sold handmade leather purses and belts and had gone out of business, apparently failing to realize that the belts that were important in the Bowery weren't made of leather, and a cheese store, which did better than the belt shop because it also sold wine.

The litter in front of Meadows's building was so thick and resolute, it looked as if it had been brewed and boiled to a uniform consistency and then spray-painted on the sidewalk.

In this section of town, the news from uptown about people being required to clean up after their dogs hadn't yet arrived, because the sidewalk and the gutter and the street were festooned with dog reminders.

Ruby picked her way neatly through the piles and

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walked up the cracked concrete steps of the building. She had been in New York often enough to know that doorbells in places like this never worked, so she looked for the superintendent's apartment number, which was written on the wall with a magic marker, then slipped the inside lock with a credit card from a Wisconsin cheese-by-mail shop.

The sign outside the apartment door said "Mr. Ar-maducci." Ruby rang the superintendent's bell. She had been prepared to charm the super when he appeared, but a look at the hulk wearing a strapped undershirt with hair on the tops of his shoulders was too much, even for Ruby's well-defined sense of duty.

He growled at her, "Wotcha want?" and she fished in her pocketbook and came up with a laminated card that identified her as a member of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

He fingered the card with grease-stained fingers and she made a mental note to throw it away as soon as she got back outside.

"I want to see the Meadows apartment," she said. "Yeah?" he said in the clever patois that all New Yorkers learn, as a consequence of their school system being the most expensive to operate in the United States.

"Gee, you got it. First time too," Ruby said. "You got a warrant?" Mr. Armaducci said. That was the second thing New Yorkers learned to say. It gave them their world-wide reputation for sophistication.

"Do I need one?" Ruby asked. "You got no warrant, you don't get to see nuthinV

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"If I have to go get a warrant, I won't come back alone," Ruby said.

"No?"

"I'll bring back half the health department," she said.

"Big deal. Wha they gonna do, fine the landlord? How the hell they fine him, I can't even find him."