Warren Murphy: The Head Men

And there was always a danger in Smith meeting Remo, because to be seen with the killer arm of CURE would be a crucial link to admitting that there even was a CURE, the government's extra-legal organization, set up in a desperate attempt to stave off the impending chaos of a government weakened by its own laws but still resolved to administer them publicly.

Remo watched the cab slow down, then take off by him. The driver had seen him. Remo knew that. The driver had looked right at him, slowed, then stepped on the gas.

So Remo kicked off the loose loafers, so that the soles of his feet could skim better along the pavement.

He wore a tight black tee shirt over loose gray pants that snapped as the wind pressure whipped

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on the skimming, darting legs. He was moving on the cab, out into the cool morning asphalt of the gutter. Stench-burning smell of slum and slam. Bang onto the rear of the cab. Remo heard all four doors lock.

Cabs had become little fortresses nowadays because sticking a gun in the back of the head of a driver had become a very easy way to collect money. So the American taxi in large cities had evolved into a rolling bunker, with bulletproof windshields behind the driver's head and doors that locked simultaneously with a switch near the driver's radio and a special beep in his dispatcher to indicate that a robbery was in progress. This driver did not have a chance to use the beeper.

The unfortified weakness of the cab was the top. Remo felt it as his body pressed against it. He crushed his straightened fingers down into the thin metal sheet of roofing and, closing his hand on vinyl interior upholstery compressed with insulation between and bright yellow painted metal on top, and he yanked, ripping off a slab of the roof like someone separating Swiss cheese slices. One, two, three rips and he could wedge himself down next to the driver who, by now, was accelerating, twisting, slamming on brakes, and screaming all sorts of incipient mayhem to his dispatchers.

"Mind if I ride in the front?" asked Remo. "No. Go right ahead. Want a cigarette?" said the driver. He laughed lightly. He wet his pants. The wet went down his leg to the accelerator. Every once in a while, he looked up over him where the roof had suddenly opened to great metal-chomping rips. He had thought he was being attacked by a dinosaur that ate metal. The thin

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man with the thick wrists told him where he wanted to go. It was a hotel.

"You really know how to hail a cab, fella," the driver said.

"You didn't stop," said Remo.

"I'll stop next time. I got nothin' against anybody but you stop in the colored neighborhoods and it's your life."

"What color?" Remo asked.

"Whaddya mean, what color? Black color. You think I'm talkin' orange already? Colored colored."

"There's yellow, there's red, there's brown, there's pale white. There's off white, there's pink. Sometimes," Remo said, "there's even a burnt umber perambulating around."

"Spook," said the driver.

But Remo was contemplating the rainbow of people. The divisions by simple color of black and white or red and yellow were not really the colors of people but racial designations. Yet races were not the big difference. The big difference was how people used themselves, raised themselves closer to what they could be. There were undoubtedly differences between groups but they were inordinately small compared to the difference between what all people were and what all people could be.

It was like a car. One car might have eight cylinders and another six and another four. If none of the cars used more than one cylinder, then there was no real difference among them. Such it was with man. Any man who used two of his cylinders was considered a great athlete.

And of course, there were one or two who used all eight cylinders.

"Forty-two Zebra, you still being eaten?"

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"No. Nothing is wrong," said the driver.

"Is that your code for trouble?" Remo asked. "That nothing is wrong?"

"Nah," said the driver.

"That is inordinately silly," Remo said. "Here I am sitting in the front seat with you and that police car several blocks back there is going to chase us. Now if there's a fight, look who's right in the middle."

"What police car?"

"Back there."

"Oh, Jesus," said the driver, finally seeing police markings back down the broad street.

Up ahead, another police cruiser stuck its nose out into the street.

"I guess we'd better stop and give ourselves up," said the driver.

"Let's run for it," Remo said. He winked at the driver who felt the wheel move on its own accord, and then that lunatic, the guy who had ripped the roof and climbed in the torn hole, that guy who didn't know how to get into a cab decently, was leaning into him. He was steering. Then the cab was going crazy, throating out full throttle, whip, zip, almost hitting the squad car that was in front. Now it was in back, pursuing the cab, then up onto the sidewalk and taking a phalanx of morning garbage cans like bowling pins.

The cabdriver glanced into the rearview mirror. Strike. There wasn't a garbage can left standing.

Sirens screamed. Tires squealed. The driver moaned. He couldn't even budge the wheel from the lunatic. He tried punching. He had been middleweight champion of his high school, so he punched. Right and left and the lunatic had his

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hands on the wheel and was leaning into him and he missed. The lunatic was anchored to the wheel. But both punches missed. Right and left missed.

How did the lunatic move his body that way? It was as if the lunatic could move his chest, attached to two arms attached to the steering wheel, faster than the driver could throw punches. Eight and left punches. Punches from the former middleweight champion of Pacifica High.

Guy was good. Great maybe. Rips out car roofs with his hands. Wasn't that good a roof, maybe. Lunatic could dodge punches while going eighty-five miles an hour. Eighty-five miles an hour?

The driver moaned. They were going to be killed. At eighty-five miles an hour, you weren't driving in Los Angeles, you were aiming.

The driver tried to kick the lunatic's foot off the pedal. It didn't kick. The lunatic could hold his foot out with more stability than the car itself. It was like kicking a lamp post.

"I'll sit back and enjoy it," said the driver. Lunatics, he knew, had abnormal strength.

"Your cab insured ?"

"Insurance never covers," said the driver.

"Sometimes it covers more," said Remo. "I know a lawyer."

"Look. You want to do me a favor? Leave me alone."

"All right. Bye," said Remo and kicked open the door to his right and let the cab careen across an empty lot as he floated free and out, the sidewalk moving quickly beneath him, his legs running-which was the key, to keep on moving quickly and not to stop-out onto the street, behind the hotel and in through the alley.

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He entered through a back kitchen, asking who bought the fresh meat for the hotel. Workers didn't notice salesmen coming into a kitchen area, looking to sell something. For a guest to enter, however, would have attracted attention. The kitchen reeked of eggs bubbling in cow grease called butter.

At Remo's suite of rooms, a shaken Smith waited at the door, face gaunt, hands knuckle-white over his briefcase, his middle-aged body taut with anger.

"What in God's name was that downstairs ?"

"What downstairs?"

"The police. The chase. I saw from the window. The taxicab you came flying out of."

"You wanted me to be on time, didn't you ? You said this was important enough for you to come out here personally. That's how important it was. You said you could only stay ten minutes for the meeting, so that there would be no chance of us being seen together. You said this was touchy. What's touchy?"