Warren Murphy: Last Call

Chiun turned off the television.

"I am trying to talk to you and you are watching creatures in brown shirts."

"Chiun, dammit, that's my assignment for tonight."

"Forget your assignment," Chiun said. "This is important."

"Can I tell Ruby you told me to forget my assignment?"

Chiun turned the television back on.

"Being an artist among the Philistines is the cross I have to bear," he said.

The American Nazidom Party was holed up in a house on narrow, twisting Greens Farms Road. They had been talking for weeks about a massive march of thousands, but so far only six had arrived. They were holed up in the house.

They were outnumbered forty to one by the people milling around outside. Thirty of them were pickets protesting the planned march. The other thirty were volunteer lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, who were busy showing the protestors restraining orders they had gotten from the Federal circuit courts, which said that everybody had to behave and let the Nazis march as an exercise of free speech.

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The picketers and lawyers were also outnumbered by the state police and Westport local police, who ringed the house on all four sides to make sure no one got at the Nazis inside.

And all together, they were outnumbered by the press, who milled around in abject confusion, interviewing each other on the deeper philosophical ramifications of this latest display of white American racism. They all agreed it was bad, but typical, because what else could you expect of a country that had once elected Richard Nixon.

At 10 P.M., the television crews left, followed thirty seconds later by the print media. At 10:02, the protestors left, followed at 10:03 by the ACLU lawyers. At 10:04, the police left. Remaining behind were two tired Westport policemen who sat in a prowl car.

At 10:05, the Nazis looked at the window and saw that the coast was clear, so they sent a guard named Freddy outside to stand on the porch with a nightstick and look threatening. The other five stayed inside. Obersturmbannfuhrer Ernest Scheisskopf swept the chess pieces off the board and onto the floor. They had set up the chess board in case anyone should look through the window, and he could report that the intellectual Nazis spent their time at an intellectual game like chess. But none of them could play chess; they couldn't remember how the knights moved. One of them now got out the checker pieces and they set the board up to play checkers. Two of them knew the moves and were giving lessons to the others.

At 10:06, Remo arrived and leaned his head into the Westport police car. The two cops looked

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at him in surprise. They had not seen or heard him coming.

"Long day, huh?" Remo said with a grin.

"Better believe it," the cop behind the wheel said.

"Get some rest," Remo said. His two hands darted out. Each touched one of the policemen in the small hollow between the neck and the shoulder collarbone. Both policemen opened their mouths, as if to yell, then their heads dropped forward as they lost consciousness.

Remo shuffled down the flagstone path to the neat frame house.

Freddy, in full uniform on the porch, stiffened to attention as Remo approached.

"Who are you ?" he demanded.

"I'm from the Jewish Standard. I want an interview," Remo said.

"We give no interviews to the Jewish press," Freddy said. He jabbed at Remo's midsection with the nightstick.

The dark-eyed man did not move, but inexplicably, the nightstick missed his belly.

"Don't do that," Remo said. "That's not nice."

"In the new day to come, we will not be nice to you people either," Freddy said. "Get used to it."

He pulled back the nightstick and this time jammed it full force at Remo's stomach. Still Remo did not move, but somehow the nightstick missed his stomach and slid by alongside his hip.

"I said, stop that," Remo said. "I've been sent here to negotiate. Now behave yourself."

"I'll negotiate," Freddy snarled. He raised the

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club over his head to smash it down across Remo's skull.

"That's it," Remo said. "That's what I get for trying to be a nice guy."

The nightstick swung down toward his head. Then Freddy felt it being removed from his hand. He felt himself being swung around, then felt the blunted edge of the club at his left ear. He saw the thin man's fist wad up into a club and swing at the other end of the nightstick. The first blow jammed the nightstick into Freddy's ear. His other ear worked well enough to hear two more thuds of Remo's fist. Then he heard nothing more as the club passed through his brain and the large end exited out of the ear on the other side of his head.

"Guggg, gugggg, gugggg," Freddy said as he sank to his knees, the club protruding from both sides of his head, like scooter handles.

"What'd you say?" Remo asked.

"Guggg, gugggg, gugggg," Freddy repeated.

"L'chaim," said Remo.

He knocked on the door and heard feet shuffling about inside.

"Who's there ?" asked a voice from behind the locked door.

"Herr Oberlieutenantstiirmbannfuhrergauleiterreichsfieldmarshall O'Brien," Remo said.

"Who?"

"Come on, it's too long to repeat. Open the door."

"Where's Freddy?"

"Freddy's the guard?"

"Yeah. Where is he?"

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Remo looked at Freddy, down on his knees, the long thick nightstick protruding from both ears.

"He's busy right now," Remo said. "But he identified me."

"I want to see your identification," the voice said.

"Freddy's my identification," Remo said.

"I don't want to hear that. Just slide your identification under the door."

"It won't fit," Remo said.

"It'll fit. Just slide it under."

"All right," Remo said.

Inside the room, the five Nazis looked at the door. They heard a scratching sound at the bottom of it. Something began to slip under it into the room. The something was pink. And then there were four other things just like it. They were fingers. Then a hand. Then a brown shirt.

"Oh, my god, that's Freddy," said Ernest Sche-isskopf. The men jumped to their feet to run to the door. Freddy's arm, flattened as if it had been run over by a steamroller, was through the crack at the bottom of the door. It kept moving into the room. It was as if Freddy had been photographed and the picture had been mounted on cardboard. Now strings of blond hair came through the crack, and there was a splintering sound as Freddy's skull began to break to fit under the door, but the door shuddered, the wood creaked, and the door flew back off its hinges, into the room, landing on the floor like a thick wooden rug.

Remo stood in the doorway. At his feet was the

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rest of Freddy. The five Nazis stared at the nightstick imbedded in his skull.

"Hi," Remo said. "I told you it wouldn't fit."

"Guggg, guggg, guggg," said Scheisskopf.

"That's what Freddy said," Remo explained.

"Who are you?" one Nazi sputtered.

"What do you want?" another called out.

"What did you do with Freddy?" came another voice.

"Just a minute," Remo said. "We're not going to get anywhere with everybody talking at once. Me first. You." Remo nodded to Scheisskopf. "Stop throwing up and listen to me."

"Guggg, guggg, guggg," Scheisskopf said as he continued to spray the room with Arthur Treacher's Fish & Chips.

"Stop it, I said," Remo said.

Scheisskopf swallowed a deep breath and tried to stop retching. He wiped the specks of food off his face with his uniform shirt sleeve.

"Is there any way I can convince you not to march tomorrow?" Remo asked. "I was sent here to negotiate."

"No chance," said Scheisskopf. "Never."

"Don't be hasty," Remo said. "I convinced Freddy."

"Never," Scheisskopf snarled again. "We march for freedom and for the rights of white men everywhere. We march against the race-mixing ..."