Warren Murphy: Mugger Blood

"No," Chiun said.

"Did you ever?" Remo asked.

Chiun smiled. "Of course. I was a child once too, Remo."

CHAPTER TWELVE

When Remo's cab pulled up in front of Reverend Wadson's apartment building, the crowd was pulsating on the street and sidewalk. Some carried signs, others were chanting. "Brutality. Atrocity."

Remo tapped the driver on the shoulder and motioned him to the curb.

"Wait here for me," he said.

The cabbie looked at the two hundred people milling around across the street, then swiveled on his seat to look at Remo.

"I'm not staying here, buddy. Not with that gang over there. They'll use me for chum if they spot me."

"I'd like to stay and discuss it with you," said Remo, "but I don't have the time." His hand slipped forward past the driver, turned the ignition key off, and plucked it from its slot on the steering column, all in one deft movement. "You wait. Lock the doors, but wait. I'll be right back."

"Where you going?"

"Over there." Remo motioned to the apartment house.

"You'll never be back."

Remo dropped the keys into his trouser pocket. As he trotted across the street, he could hear the heavy mechanical click of the four door locks in the cab behind him.

The crowd was being kept at bay by the locked front doors of the apartment building. Inside the lobby, a uniformed doorman kept motioning the people to leave.

"What's going on?" Remo asked the question of a young man with a shaved head and a Fu Manchu mustache who stood on the fringe of the crowd.

The man looked at Remo. His face curled down in disgust and he turned away silently.

"We'll try one more time," Remo said gently. "What's going on?" He punctuated the question, using his right hand to grip the muscles on both sides of the man's lower spine.

The man straightened up from the pain, taller than he had ever stood before in his life.

"They got Reverend Wadson."

"Who's they?"

"I don't know who they is. His enemies. Enemies of the people. The oppressors."

"What do you mean, they got Wadson?"

"He's dead. They killed him. Cut him up and butchered him. Let go, that hurts."

Remo did not let go. "And 'they' did it?"

"That's right."

"And what do these people want? Why are they marching around here?"

"They want justice."

"They think you get it by singing?"

The young man tried to shrug. It felt as if his shoulders were going up and leaving his spinal column behind. He changed his mind.

"Police arrive yet?" asked Remo.

"They just been called."

"Thank you. A pleasure talking with you," Remo said.

He released the young man and moved along the perimeter of the crowd. If he went through the front door, he'd just open a path for this mob. Behind him, the young man tried to marshal his breath to sic the crowd on Remo but every time he tried to fill his lungs to shout, the pain returned to his back. He decided that silence was golden.

Remo surged forward and back with the crowd, moving from spot to spot, being seen, then disappearing, visible, invisible, never in anyone's field of vision for more than a split second, until he had moved to the alley alongside the apartment building. The alley was barred by a locked iron gate eight feet high, with spikes atop it, and barbed wire laced in and out of the spikes.

Remo grabbed the heavy lock and wrenched it with his right hand and the gate gave way smoothly. Remo slipped aside, then punished the lock again until it merged with the metal of the fence and stayed closed. The fire escapes were in the rear of the building and Remo went up the fourteen stories until he got to a window outside Wadson's apartment. He was ready to push open the window when the drapes inside were flung back and the window was opened.

Ingrid stifled a scream when she saw Remo on the fire escape, then said, "Thank God you're here."

"What happened?" Remo asked.

"Josiah's dead." Tears poured from her eyes.

"I know. Who did it?"

"A blond man. With a foreign accent. I was sleeping but he came into the apartment and I heard him talking to Josiah and then I heard screams and when I got up, Josiah was all cut up and dead. The blond man was running out the door. I called the doorman to stop him, but I guess he escaped."

"Why are you running away before the police arrive?"

"This'll cost me my job if I'm found here. I was supposed to be doing a film documentary. I wasn't supposed to fall in love with a black man." She climbed out onto the fire escape. "I loved that man. I really did." She buried her face in Remo's shoulder and wept. "Please get me away from here."

"All right," Remo said.

Remo closed the window again, then hustled her down the fire escape and out another alley behind the building. It exited onto another side street, secured by an identical heavy iron gate. Remo snapped the steel with his hands. He turned to see Ingrid staring at the twisted metal.

"How'd you do that?" she asked.

"Must have been defective," Remo answered, as he steered her around the corner to the cab. The driver was lying on the front seat of the cab, trying to keep out of sight and Remo had to thump loudly on the window to get him to look up. Remo gave him his keys back and the driver peeled rubber leaving the neighborhood. The crowd had already grown larger in front of the apartment building because the word had spread that the television cameramen were coming and no one wanted to miss his chance to be on the tube. Especially the veterans of the civil rights riots who left their liquor stores and their card games to come over and carry signs.

When Ingrid came into the Plaza suite with Remo, Chiun said nothing, but saw the boxy lump hidden inside her purse.

While she was in the bathroom, Remo said, "Wadson's dead. I got her out of there. She's staying with us awhile."

"Good ting," Tyrone said. "She can sleep in my bed. She some hunk of honkey."

"Lacks bulk," Chiun said.

"Hands off," Remo said to Tyrone.

"Sheeit," said Tyrone and went back to watching the rerun of Leave it to Beaver, Chiun changed it to Sesame Street.

While Remo had been at Wadson's apartment, the management had installed a new telephone in the suite. And now, while Ingrid was at the drugstore in the Plaza lobby, the phone rang.

"Yeah," said Remo, expecting to hear Smith's voice.

"This is Speskaya," a voice said. There was something in the voice that Remo remembered. But where? Who? The voice was not accented but sounded as if it should have been. "I killed Wadson."

"What do you want?" Remo asked.

"To offer you work. You and the Oriental gentleman."

"Sure. Let's talk about it," Remo said.

"That is just too easily said for me to believe you."

"Would you believe I want your job if I say I don't want it?" Remo asked.

"Job?" Chiun said. He was sitting on the sofa. He looked toward Remo. "Someone is offering us a job?"

Remo raised his hand to silence Chiun.

Speskaya said, "It is difficult to gauge your motives." The voice was familiar, but Remo could not put it together with a face.

"I can't help that," Remo said.

"What is the offer?" Chiun said.

Remo waved a hand to shush him.

"You work for a country which is breaking down,"

Speskaya said. "People are butchered in their homes. You, who are no stranger to death, find that offensive. Why not come over with us?"

"Look, let's stop mousing around. I've got a secret weapon you want. I'll give it to you. You tell me about the secret weapons you're working on and we'll be square and you can go back to Russia," Remo said.

"Secret weapons? I'm working on?"

"Yeah. Two of them."

There was a long pause, then a boyish laugh over the telephone. "Of course. Two secret weapons."

"What's so funny?" Remo said.