Warren Murphy: Mugger Blood

The three young men collected with Tyrone in a corner and whispered to him. Tyrone came back to give the message to Remo as they watched suspiciously.

"De Revin Wadson, he wanna talk to you."

"Who? Oh, yeah. The fence."

"Right. He wanna see you."

"Good. I want to see him too," Remo said.

"Dey say he know somefin' about de Missus Mueller," Tyrone said.

"Where do I find him?" Remo asked.

"He gots de big 'partment up in Harlem. Dey takes you dere."

"Good. You can come too."

"Me? Whuffo?"

"In case I need a translator. And you three, get rid of your garbage," Remo said, pointing to the body of the Saxon Lords' Leader for Life, who, since touching Chiun, no longer led. Or lived.

Ingrid did not like the Reverend Josiah Wadson, so at random moments during the day, she jogged the toggle switch on the little black box controlling the strangulation ring. And she smiled when she was rewarded with a roar of pain from wherever in his apartment Wadson was trying to rest.

Before setting foot in Wadson's apartment the night before, she had guessed what she would find. Loud, grotesque, expensive furniture, paid for with money that should have gone to the poor whose case he was always talking up.

But Wadson's life style was lavish, even for her expectations. And unusual.

He had two live-in maids, both young and white, both paid by the federal government as program coordinators for Affirmative Housing II. They looked as if they had majored in Massage Parlor. They dressed like burlesque queens and they were both holding crystal tumblers of whiskey when Ingrid and Wadson returned to the apartment on the fringes of Harlem.

The main living room of the apartment was crammed full, like a junk drawer in a kitchen sink. Statuary, oil paintings, metal sculptures, gold medallions, jewelry were everywhere.

"Where did you get all this dross?" she asked Wadson, after she dismissed the two maids and told them to take the rest of the week off, a gift for loyal service from a grateful government.

"Deys gifts from faithful followers who join me in de Lawd's woik."

"In other words, from poor people you fleeced."

Wadson tried to engage her with a "that's life" grin, wide enough to show every one of his thirty-two teeth and most of the gold that lined the biting surfaces.

"I thought as much," she said in disgust. To emphasize the point, she pushed the toggle switch on the black box a millimeter forward. The pain in his groin brought Wadson to his knees.

But she was truly surprised when she saw the rest of the apartment. The living room, kitchen, and two bedrooms were in use. But there were six other rooms in the apartment and each was filled, from floor to ceiling, with television sets, radios, pots and pans, stereo record players, hubcaps. As she went from room to room looking at the treasure trove, it dawned on her what Wadson was. He was a fence for the goods stolen by the street gangs.

It was a suspicion and she asked him if it were true.

Lying was out of the question, he knew. He grinned again.

She left him groaning on the floor of the living room and went into the kitchen to make herself coffee. Only when the coffee had been made and cooled and half consumed, did she return and lighten the pressure on the strangulation ring.

It took an hour of rooting around for Wadson to find the device that had been stolen from the Muellers' apartment. He handed it to Ingrid, hoping for some sign of approval.

"You go to bed now," she said.

She stayed in a chair alongside the bed until she was sure Wadson was asleep. Then she telephoned Spesk and described to him the secret device and they shared a laugh.

She spent the night sitting in the chair next to Wadson's bed.

She stood alongside him when he talked to the Saxon Lords about how important it was to find the thin American and the Oriental, and they both learned that the two targets had kidnapped one of the Lords, Tyrone Walker. Wadson was at his unctuous worst in talking to the Lords and it gave her pleasure to toy with the little switch and bring the sweat out on his forehead and cause him to stumble over his own words.

She was still at his side now, as he sat in a chair facing the thin American and the ancient Oriental, and the tall thin black boy who had accompanied them.

"Why he here?" Wadson asked, motioning to Tyrone. "Why is this child here involved in the business of men?" He winced as the pain reminded him of Ingrid standing behind his chair. "And women."

"He's here because I wanted him here," said Remo. "Now what do you want with us?"

"You interested in de Missus Mueller, I hear."

"You hear good," said Remo.

"Well," said Tyrone.

"What?" asked Remo.

"You say he hear good," Tyrone said. "Dat wrong. You sposed say he hear well. Ah learns dat in school."

"Shut up," Remo said. "I'm interested in two things," he said to Waclson. "The person that killed her. And to get some kind of device she may have had."

"Ah gots de dee-vice," said Wadson.

"I wants it," Remo said. "Dammit, Tyrone, now you've got me doing it. I want it."

"Very good," Chiun said to Remo.

"I'll get it for you," Wadson said.

He rose slowly to his feet and walked toward a far corner of the room. Chiun caught Remo's eyes and nodded slightly, calling his attention to Wadson's labored walk and obvious pain.

Ingrid watched Wadson with the shrewd suspicious eyes of a chicken farmer looking in the barnyard for fox tracks. Remo watched Ingrid. He guessed her as the source of Wadson's pain but he could not tell what kind. The black minister walked heavily, planting one foot in front of the other delicately, as if he suspected the floor was land-mined.

Wadson opened the drop front of an antique desk and took from inside it a cardboard box almost a foot square. From the box, he lifted a device that looked like a metronome with four arms. Three wires led out of the machine.

He brought it back and handed it to Remo. Wadson walked back to his chair. Ingrid smiled as he raised his eyes to hers in an unspoken appeal to be allowed to sit. She nodded slightly and, shielded from the view of the others by the backs of the large chair, lightened the pressure on the toggle switch slightly. Wadson's sigh of relief filled the room.

"What's it do?" Remo asked, after turning the metronome over and over in his hand. He had never understood machinery. This looked like just another dippy toy.

"Dunno," Wadson said. "But that's it."

Remo shrugged. "One last thing. Big-Big somebody. He killed Mrs. Mueller. Where is he?"

"I hear he's in Newark."

"Where?" asked Remo.

"Ah'm lookin' for him," Wadson said.

"If he's in Newark, how'd you get this?" asked Remo.

"Somebody left it outside my door with a note dat the government was looking for it," Wadson said.

"I think that's crap, but we'll let it pass," Remo said. "I want this Big-Big."

"What'll you do for me?" Wadson said. "Iffen I find him?"

"Let you live," Remo said. "I don't know what's wrong with you, Reverend, but you look like you're in pain. Whatever it is, it'll be nothing compared to what I've got for you, if you're not straight with me."

Wadson raised his hands in a gesture that might have been protest, or the instinctive movement of a man trying to hold back a brick wall that was ready to fall on him.

"I'm not jivin' you," he said. "I got peoples all over de street. I find out soon."

"You let me know right away."

"Who are you anyway?" asked Wadson.

"Let's just say I'm not a private citizen."

"You got family? Mrs. Mueller you family?"

"No," said Remo. I'm an orphan. The nuns raised me. Chiun here is my only family."

"Adopted," Chiun said, lest anyone get the idea that he had white blood in him.