Warren Murphy: Mugger Blood

Remo looked around the street. Chiun slowly shook his head.

"I'm going to find out who did in Mrs. Mueller," Remo said.

"And then what?"

"Then I am going to see that justice is done," Remo said.

"Aieee," wailed Chiun. "What a waste of a good assassin. My precious work and time squandered in fits of emotion." Ordinarily Chiun would seclude himself in a cloak of silence upon hearing such Western nonsense.

But this time he did not. He asked what sort of justice Remo sought. If it were youngsters who killed the old woman, then they took but a few years of her life. Should he take many years of their lives? That would be unjust.

The body of the man Remo had killed lay on the sidewalk. Police would come in the morning, thought Remo. Just as people had seen him from the windows, there must have been people who had seen the killers or killer come out of Mrs. Mueller's house. Or if it were a gang, one of them must have talked.

Smith had given Remo some details about the gadget he was looking for and about Gerd Mueller's work in Germany. The only thing mentioned about the old woman's death was that it was apparently not done by anyone important.

"You," said Remo to a fat woman leaning out the window, her large black globular breasts pushed up over her fat black arms. "You live there?"

"No. Ah just comes down here to see how the colored lives."

"I'm willing to pay for information."

"Brother," she said. She had a deep throaty voice. "That makes you down home people."

Remo offered a five and that was taken and the woman asked where the rest was. And Remo held up two hundred-dollar bills very close to her face and she made a goodly snatch at the bills, but Remo lowered them, then raised them, giving her the feeling that she had grabbed at the bills but they had dematerialized for a moment. It was so amazing to her that she tried again. And then again.

"How you do that?" asked the woman.

"I got rhythm," said Remo.

"What you wanna know?"

"There was an old woman, a white woman."

"De Missus Mueller."

"That's right."

"She daid. I know that the woman you want 'cause everybody axes about her."

"I know that. But do you know anyone who went into that house that day? What do you hear on the street?"

"Well, now, I been axed that a lot. And I been real fine at that. I tells them nothing. It funny they axes so much, 'cause it only a killing."

"Did you know her?"

"No. De whites don' usually go out, 'cepting 'bout de ungodly hour."

"When's that? The ungodly hour?" asked Remo.

"Nine o'clock in de morning," said the woman.

"Do you know who operates around here? What sort of gangs? Maybe they know more things. I pay good money."

"You want to know who kill her, white boy?"

"That's what I want."

"De Lawds."

"You know that?"

"Everybody know that. De Lawds, dey got dis street. It theirs. Their turf. Dey gonna get you too, white boy, lessen you come inside, you and that funny-looking yellow friend of yours."

Remo offered up the bills again and this time he let her hand close on them. But he held the bottoms of the two bills.

"How come you can lean out of that window in safety, leaving it open and all that?" Remo asked.

" 'Cause I black."

"No," said Remo. "Punks will do it to anybody weak enough. Your skin doesn't protect you."

" 'Cause I black and I blow they muthafucking heads off," she said, and with the other hand, she brought out a sawed-off shotgun. "I gots my saviour here. I got one of them in the balls four years ago 'bout. He lay on that sidewalk theah and hollered. Than I gives him a bit of de ole Georgia Peach in de eyes."

"That's boiling lye?" asked Remo incredulously.

"The best. I keeps a pot boilin' all the time. Now you take you whites. They don't 'stablish themselves as peoples what got to be respected no more. I black. I speak the street language. Sawed off in the balls and lye in the face and I ain' had no trouble sincet. You and you funny-lookin' friend oughtta come in here for the night. You gonna be like that whitey you killed 'cross the street. They ain't no more white men on this block like they was yesterday. No sir."

"Thank you, granny, but I'll take my chances. The Lords, you say?"

"De Saxon Lawds."

"Thanks again."

"The policemens know about them. They knows who did it. The ones who gets the body. It was real early so I wasn't about yet but they comes out and they did that barbarous thing, over in that alley, 'cept they ain't no alley no more 'cause they takes the building down. But they was an alley then. And some boys, they up real late and they not thinkin' or nuffin' and they think it just a white folks and not a policemans and the policemans does the 'trocity, he shoots the boy in the arm. That the barbarousness of it."

Remo wasn't interested in the barbarousness of some black kid getting shot when he tried to steal a cop's gun.

"Do you know the names of the cops who know who killed the old woman?" he asked.

"Ah doan know de names of policemens. Ah doan truck wif dem. Ah doan have no numbahs, no dope."

"Thank you, ma'am, and have a pleasant evening."

"You cute there, whitey. Watch you ass, y'hear?"

The headquarters of this Bronx Police Precinct was nicknamed Fort Mohican. Sandbags covered the windows. Remo saw a patrol car pull out of an alley with two illegal Russian Kalashnikov assault rifles and hand grenades on the dashboard.

Remo knocked on the closed precinct door.

"Come back in the morning," said a voice.

"FBI," said Remo, juggling through some identification cards he always carried. He found the FBI card with his photograph. He held it up to a small telescopic peephole in the door.

"Yeah, FBI, what do you want?"

"I want to come in and talk," said Remo. Chiun looked around with disdain.

"The mark of a civilization," Chiun said, "is how little its people need to know about defending themselves."

"Shhhh," said Remo.

"Is there someone out there with you?"

"Yes," said Remo.

"Move fifty yards away or we'll start lobbing mortars."

"I want to talk to you."

"This is a New York City police precinct. We don't open till nine a.m. for visitors."

"I'm from the FBI."

"Then tap our phones from Downtown."

"I want to talk to you."

"Did the patrol make it out safely?"

"You mean that police car?"

"Yes."

"It did."

"How did you get here at night?"

"We got here," said Remo.

"You must have had a convoy."

"No convoy. Just us."

"Look around. Is anybody loitering nearby? Anybody watching us?"

Remo turned and looked. "No," he said.

"Okay. Get in here fast." The door opened a crack and Remo eased his way in, followed, by Chiun.

"What is this old guy, a magician? Is that how you got here?" asked the policeman. He had dark black hair but his face was fraught with tension and age. He kept his hand on his pistol. The officer wanted to know who Chiun was in those strange robes. He wanted to see if Chiun had a concealed weapon. He thought Chiun was a magician and that was how the two got through to Fort Mohican. His name was Sergeant Pleskoff. He had been promoted to sergeant because he had never fired at what was called "a Third World person." He knew a lot about crime. He had seen hundreds of muggings and twenty-nine homicides. And he was very close to his first arrest.

He was the new breed of American police officer, no longer a racist, hard-nosed bully but a man who could relate to his community. The other officers liked Sergeant Pleskoff too. He made sure their pay records were always in order and he wasn't one of those narrow-minded, old-fashioned annoying sort of sergeants who, when you were 'on duty, actually expected you to be in the state of New York.