Warren Murphy: Last Call

Mrs. Amelia Binkings had been right. When she had turned the flagpole bracket, the concrete had whirred under her feet. A powerful, solar-fed generator had kicked into life after twenty years and begun sending powerful radio signals into the air, using the flagpole as an antenna.

In Europe, red lights went on. In a garage in Rome, in the backrooms of a Paris bakery, in the cellar of a plush London home, and in the laundry room of a small country house.

And all over Europe, men saw the red lights go on.

And prepared to lull.

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CHAPTER TWO

His name was Remo and his ears hurt. He would have hung up the telephone but that would probably prompt a personal visit and while Ruby Jackson Gonzalez could cause him unbearable pain by shouting at him over the telephone, in person her voice brought him unbelievable agony.

Carefully, so she would not hear, Remo set the receiver of the telephone on the ledge in the booth and walked back out into the luncheonette where an aged Oriental in a powder blue robe stood looking at the covers of magazines on the rack.

"I can still hear her," the Oriental said, in a voice that seemed to have disapproval built in.

"I know, Chiun. So can I," Remo said. He went back and closed the door of the telephone booth, gently so it would not squeak. He rejoined Chiun, who shook his head.

"That woman could broadcast from the ocean floor with no instrument but her mouth," Chiun said.

"I know," said Remo. "Maybe if we stood across the street?"

"That will not do," said Chiun. He reached out

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a long-nailed index finger to riffle the pages of a magazine. "Her voice crosses continents."

"Maybe if I wadded up some bread and shoved it into the earpiece of the phone?"

"Her voice would harden it into cement," Chiun said. He moved his hand to another magazine and, with the long fingernail, flipped the pages. "So many books you people have and none of you read. Maybe you should just do whatever it is she wants you to do."

Remo sighed. "I suspect you're right, Chiun," he said.

Hands clapped tightly over his ears, he ran back to the telephone booth. He pressed the door open with his shoulder. Without uncovering his ears, he yelled into the mouthpiece, "Ruby, stop yelling. I'll do it. I'll do it."

He waited for a few seconds, then released his hands from his ears. Only blessed silence came from the receiver and Remo picked it up, sat on the small stool in the booth and closed the door.

"I'm glad you turned that buzzsaw off, Ruby, so that we can talk," he said. Before she could answer, he added quickly, "Just kidding, Ruby. Just kidding."

"I hope so," said Ruby Gonzalez.

"Why is it these days that whenever I call Smith, I get you?" Remo asked.

"Because that man work too hard," Ruby said. "So I make him go out and play golf and get some rest. I handle all the routine stuff, like you."

"And what about me? Don't I deserve any rest?" asked Remo.

"Your whole life be one vacation," Ruby said.

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"Ruby, will you go to bed with me?" Remo asked.

"I'm not tired."

"I don't mean to sleep," Remo said.

"Why else would I go to bed with you, dodo?"

"Some women find me attractive," Remo said.

"Some women put cheese in their potatoes," Ruby said.

"You know, Ruby, this used to be just one big happy family. Just me and Chiun and Smitty. And then you came along and ruined everything."

"You be the white man and I be the white man's burden," Ruby said.

Remo could picture her smile, even over the telephone. Ruby Gonzalez was not beautiful but her smile was quick and happily blinding, a flash of white in her light chocolate face. She would be sitting in her office outside Smith's, intercepting phone calls, making decisions, lifting his workload to something small enough for four men to handle, instead of the ten-man duties Smith had handled since Remo had known him.

"All right, Ruby," Remo said. "Tell me what dirty rotten job it is this time."

"It be them Nazis. They got that march there tomorrow and you got to stop it. It going to make America look bad in the world, we let Nazis be marching all around."

"I'm not a negotiator," Remo said. "I don't talk people out of doing things." "You just do it," Ruby said. "How?" "You think of something."

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"You know, Ruby, in six months you're going to be running the country," Remo said.

"I figured five myself but I can live with six," Ruby said. "Call me, you need anything." Her abrasive voice turned instantly to softly rippling chocolate milk with cornstarch thickeners. "Be good, Remo. Give my love to Chiun."

Remo waited until he was sure she had hung up before he snarled at the telephone, "You don't have any love to give, you hateful thing."

When Remo came out of the telephone booth, the luncheonette operator looked at him with open curiosity. This was Westport, Connecticut, and he was used to having strange people wander in, but someone yelling at a telephone booth across the room would be strange anywhere.

Not that Remo looked strange. He was about six feet tall, with dark hair and deepset dark eyes. He was as lean as a rope and he moved smoothly. Not quite like an athlete, but more like a ballet dancer, the owner thought. Come to think of it, he was kind of built like a ballet dancer in that black T-shirt and black chinos, but he had wrists that seemed as thick around as tomato juice cans. Remo had been coming into the store almost every day for three months to buy newspapers and a copy of the Daily Variety, the show business newspaper. The store owner didn't think much of his looks but one day his twenty-five-year-old daughter had been working in the store when Remo was there, and when he left, she ran after him to give him change from a ten-dollar bill.

"I paid with a five," Remo had said.

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"I'll give you change for twenty."

"No thanks," Remo had said.

"Fifty? A hundred?"

But Remo had just driven away. His daughter had now taken to parking her car near the luncheonette to catch a glimpse of him, so the store owner guessed that even if he wasn't really handsome, he had something about him that women liked.

"You done with the phone?" he called to Remo.

"Yeah. You want to use it?"

The store owner nodded.

"Let the earpiece cool for a few minutes," Remo said. He walked to where the old Oriental continued to flick through magazines with his fingernails.

"I have looked through all these magazines," Chiun said, glancing up at Remo. The Oriental was aged, with white wisps of hair flitting out from his dried yellow skin. He was barely five feet tall and probably had never seen the fat side of one hundred pounds. "There is not one story in any of them that was written by a Korean. It is no wonder that I cannot sell my books and stories."

"You can't sell your books and stories because you don't write your books and stories," Remo said. "You sit there staring at a piece of paper for hours and then you complain that I'm stopping you from writing because I'm breathing too heavy."

"You are," said Chiun.

"When I'm out in a boat in the middle of the sound?" asked Remo.

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"I can hear your asthmatic snorting halfway across the country," Chiun said. "Come. It is almost time."

"You going back there again today?" "I will go there every day for as long as it takes," Chiun said. "I can get nowhere with all your publishers prejudiced against Koreans, but that will not stop me from writing a movie. I have heard about your Hollywood blacklist. Well, if they have a blacklist to make sure that blacks get work, they can start a yellow list and I can get work."

"That's not what they mean by blacklist," Remo said, but Chiun was already out the door heading toward their car, which was parked illegally along the curbside of the busy Boston Post Road.