Warren Murphy: Mugger Blood

"Where'd you learn to do what you do?" Wadson asked.

"Just what is it I do?"

"I heard you kinda cuffed around de Lawds de other night. That kind of do."

"Just a trick," Remo said.

Tyrone was walking about the room, looking at the statues and the small pieces of crystal and jewelry on the shelves.

"Don' you go liftin' none of them," Wadson yelled. "Dey mine."

Tyrone looked miffed that anyone might think him capable of theft. He stepped away from the shelf and continued walking around the room. He stopped near Ingrid, saw what she was doing, and with the quick practiced hands of a purse snatcher, reached over and snatched the black box from her hand.

"Look at this," he said, holding it forward to Remo.

"Boy, don' touch that switch," Wadson said. "Please."

"Which switch?" said Tyrone. "Dis one here?" He put his fingers on the toggle switch.

"Please, boy. Let go of it."

"Give it back to me, Tyrone," Ingrid said coolly. "Just hand it back to me."

"What's it do?" Tyrone asked.

"It's a pain-killing device for people with migraine headaches," she said. "The reverend suffers greatly from that feeling of tightness around his head. That relieves it. Please give it back to me." She extended her hand for the little black box.

Tyrone looked at Remo who shrugged. "Give it back to her," he said.

"I do," said Tyrone. He started to extend the little box, but couldn't resist giving the switch a tiny push.

"Aiieee!" screamed Wadson.

Ingrid snatched the box from Tyrone's hands and quickly moved the switch back. Wadson sipped air in relief, so deeply it sounded as if someone had turned on a vacuum cleaner. He was still hissing when they left. Ingrid stood behind him smiling.

In the hallway walking downstairs, Remo asked, "What do you think, Little Father?"

"About what?"

"About Reverend Wadson?"

"There is less there than meets the eye," said Chiun.

"And about this machine of the Muellers?"

"It is a machine. All machines are alike. They break. Send it to Smith. He likes to play with toys."

The device was delivered to Smith's office in Rye, New York at two a.m. by a cabdriver who had been paid with half of a hundred dollar bill and a grinding brief pain in his right kidney. He was told to deliver it fast and he would get the other half of the hundred at the Hotel Plaza desk and would not get the rest of the pain.

It was the middle of the night and Tyrone was asleep in the bathroom when there was a knock on the door.

"Who is it?" Remo called.

"The bellboy, sir. There's a phone call for you. And your phone is out of order."

"I know. I'll take it in the lobby."

"I received the package," Smith told Remo when he picked up the telephone downstairs.

"Oh, Smitty. Nice to hear from you again. You recruit my replacement yet?"

"I only hope that if I do he will be more reasonable to deal with than you are." Remo was surprised. Smith never showed temper. Or any other emotion for that matter. The realization that this was a first chastened Remo.

"What's with the device?" he asked. "Any value?"

"None. It's a lie detector that runs on induction."

"What's that mean?"

"They don't have to attach wires to the subject. So it's useful in questioning a suspect whom you don't want to know he's a suspect. You can ask him questions and hook that device up to the bottom of his chair and it'll register whether he's telling the truth or not."

"Sounds good," Remo said.

"Fair," said Smith. "We've got better stuff now. And with pentothal, nobody in tradework uses devices much anymore."

"Okay, so I'm done here and now I can get about my other business?"

"Which is?"

"Finding the man who killed that old lady to steal a machine that didn't have any value."

"That'll have to wait," Smith said. "You're not done."

"What else?" Remo asked.

"Don't forget. I told you about Colonel Speskaya being in the country and two other weapons he was trying to get his hands on."

"Probably more lie detectors," Remo said.

"I doubt it. He's too good to be fooled. So that's your job. Find out what he's after and get it for us."

"And when I'm done with that?"

"Then you can do anything you want. Really, Remo, I don't know why this is so important to you."

"Because somebody out there put an icepick in an old lady's eye just for fun. Killing for sport cheapens the work I do. I'm going to keep the amateurs out."

"Making the world safe for assassins?" Smith asked.

"Making it unsafe for animals."

"You do it. I just hope you can tell the difference," said Smith before the telephone line clicked in Remo's ear.

Remo put down the telephone with the same faint feeling of unease that conversations with Smith always gave him. It was as if, without saying a word, Smith entered a continuous moral judgment against Remo. But where was the immorality since it had been Smith who virtually kidnaped Remo from his straight middle-America life to make him a killer? Were moral judgments only valid for what other people did, and expediency the only yardstick one used on himself?

Chiun noticed the puzzled look on Remo and was about to speak when they heard the scratching on the bathroom door. Simultaneously, they decided to ignore Tyrone.

"You worry, my son, because you are yet a child."

"Dammit, Chiun, I'm no child. I'm a grown man. And I don't like what's going down. Smith's got me running around looking for two more secret weapons and I just… well, I'm just not interested in it all anymore."

"You will always be a child if you expect men to be more than they are. If you are walking through the woods, you do not get angry at a tree that happened to grow up directly in your path. The tree could not help it. It existed. You do not sit on the ground in front of that tree and lecture it. You ignore it. And if you cannot ignore it, you remove it. So you must act with people. They are, for the most part, like trees. They do what they do because they are what they are."

"And so I should ignore all those that I can and remove those that I can't?"

"Now you are seeing the light of wisdom," Chiun said, folding his hands in front of him with a movement as smooth as that of an underwater plant.

"Chiun, the world you give me is a world without morality. Where nothing counts for anything except keeping your elbow straight and breathing right and attacking correctly. You give me no morality and that makes me happy. Smith gives me a shitpot full of morality and it disgusts me. But I like his world better than yours."

Chiun shrugged. "That is because you do not understand the real meaning of my world. I do not give you a world without morality. I give you a world of total morality but the only morality you totally control is your own. Be moral. You can do no greater thing in your life." He moved his arms around in a large slow circle. "Try to make other people moral and you are trying to ignite ice with a match."

Tyrone stopped scratching. "Hey, when ah gets out of here?" his muffled voice called. Remo looked toward the locked bathroom door.

"And him?"

"He is what he is," Chiun said. "A candy wrapper on the street, an orange peel in the garbage. A man who decides to worry about everyone will have no shortage of things to keep him busy."

"You say I should let him go?"

"I say you should do whatever makes you a better person," Chiun said.

"And what about the man who killed Mrs. Mueller? Let him go too?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because you need that one if you are to be at peace with yourself. So find him and do what it is you wish with him."

"That's a selfish view of life, Little Father. Tell me. Don't you ever wish you could just get rid of all the evil people in the world, all the garbage, all the animals?"