Warren Murphy: Sweet Dreams

On a coffee table between them was a small plastic box, the size of a large dictionary, crammed with wires and transistors.

"You got it," Grassione said.

Massello shushed him with a slight upward wave of his right hand. He was wearing a silken smoking jacket. He rose and said, "Leen Forth, this is Mr. Grassione, a businesss associate. Arthur, this is Leen Forth Wooley. She has just suffered a terrible tragedy. Her father passed away today."

The girl stood up and turned to Grassione. There were tears in the angled eyes, that ran gently down her round cheeks. Grassione had not noticed the other night how beautiful the girl was.

"Sorry about your father," he mumbled.

"Thank you," she said. She lowered her eyes.

"Leen Forth," Masselo said, putting a fatherly arm around the girl's shoulders. "Why don't you go up and walk on deck? Arthur and I will only be a few moments. The air will do you good."

Dully, like a battery-powered doll that was running down, Leen Forth nodded and shuffled past Grassione. He watched her behind approvingly as she passed through the door toward the stairs.

Massello waited until the door was closed before he said to Grassione: "Success. We have it. And the girl will do anything I say."

"Anything?" Grassione said with a lift of his eyebrows.

"Do not be vulgar, Arthur. She is little more than a child."

"Yeah, but you know how them gooks are. They start when they're ten, eleven years old."

Massello took a cigar from a pearl-inlaid box and lit it with a wood-encased butane lighter whose color matched the deep rich paneling of the walls.

"Yes," he said exhaling a puff of smoke. "But we have other things to do than to discuss the sexual customs of the Orient. I suppose you'll be returning now to New York."

Grassione nodded. He turned away to look at the room.

"Your Uncle Pietro will be very happy," Massello said. "We will pay less for the device than we expected."

"Much less," said Grassione. He snaked his hand under his jacket and wheeled on Salvatore Massello. "Much less," he repeated.

Massello coolly took another puff on his cigar before nodding toward the automatic in Grassione's hand.

"What is this, Arthur?"

"Uncle Pietro sends his love, Don Salvatore. Take it with you to hell."

Grassione squeezed the trigger once. The heavy .45 slug kicked into Massello's body and seemed to push him back away from his cigar which dropped onto the table. The man hit the wall with a heavy thud, then began to sink down into a sitting position.

"You fool," he gasped.

Grassione fired again, into Massello's face, and the silver-haired man spoke no more.

From the deck, Grassione heard the answering sounds of gunfire. A quick flurry and then it was over, as suddenly as it had started.

Grassione walked to the coffee table and picked up Massello's cigar and puffed on it. No sense wasting a good cigar.

He looked down at the Dreamocizer, thought of the Oriental girl on deck, stubbed the cigar out in the ashtray and walked to the door.

Marino and Leung had shot Massello's two bodyguards as they started toward the stairs leading down to the lounge from which they had heard the two gunshots.

As Marino toed the bodies to make sure they were dead, Edward Leung turned and saw Leen Forth staring at him, her eyes shocked wide, and he made a decision.

He ran along the deck, grabbed the girl by the arm, and ran to the bow of the ship.

Behind him, he heard Marino yell.

He kept running and just as he and the girl ducked into a door at the bow of the ship, he heard a shot splinter the wood over his head.

Now the two sat on the cold tile of the shower floor in the crew's locker room.

"You must be quiet," Leung whispered. "Grassione is an evil man and would kill you. We will wait till dark and then escape."

She just stared at him with her big brown questioning eyes, then surrendered with a sob and threw herself into Leung's arms.

Leung looked down at the girl and when she looked up he smiled broadly, as if to give her confidence.

"Now isn't that sweet?"

Leung swung forward to his knees and pushed Leen Forth behind him. He raised his gun toward the voice, but before he could squeeze the trigger, it was kicked out of his hand.

Arthur Grassione stood in the entrance to the shower stall.

"What do you think, I'm stupid? The first place you filthy gooks would hide would be in a shower."

Leung stood up to face the man. He looked toward the gun but realized he would never reach it in time. Behind Grassione stood Big Vince Marino.

Leen Forth looked at the two men from between Leung's legs. Her face said nothing.

"Don't you think I know you Chinks'd stick together?" Grassione said.

Leung spat on Grassione's shoes. "Of course I think you're stupid," he said. "Because you are stupid. You're a stupid man getting stupider all the time."

Leung rose to his full height and walked toward Grassione, who gave way, then stepped aside and Big Vince Marino pushed a gun into Leung's forehead.

Leung stopped short.

"Stupid, huh?" Grassione said. "You were nothing but a gook fortune teller when I met you. And since then you been good for nothing more than taking out the garbage."

And because he was going to die and nothing would change that, Edward Leung let his anger give way to pity because he saw in a flash that came before his eyes that Grassione was going to die worse than he was.

"I told you," Leung said, "of death and dreams. Now you have your dream machine. Your death is following."

"Stuff it," said Grassione. Grassione bent down and picked up a large metal spike from the floor of the shower area. He walked very carefully up to Leung and with his left hand grabbed a handful of the man's black shiny hair and twisted.

Leung opened his mouth to scream but only a squeak came out. His eyes screwed shut in pain and his knees buckled. He felt Marino's gun jab into the back of his neck under his right ear.

Grassione's hand twisted harder. The pain coursed through Leung's body. His arms rose to the level of his shoulders, then swung down and his hands slapped the hard tile floor.

He was on his knees now, tears dripping across the bridge of his nose. His left ear touched the floor, the roar of silence filling it as his face was pressed down. His bent knees were kicked out from under him and he settled heavily onto his stomach. The hand was still twisted painfully in his hair, but all he really felt was the cold weight of the gun muzzle pressing under his right ear.

Grassione was on one knee, his face hard, his hand buried in moist hair, his knuckles white. Marino kept the automatic pushed against Leung's neck.

Grassione felt the weight of the iron spike in his hand.

Leung opened his eyes for the last time and stared at Leen Forth who huddled in the corner of the shower stall. He wanted to scream to her to run but his lips could form only the word "help." It came out in a soft whisper and his mouth stayed open. It was the last word he ever spoke.

Grassione drove the spike down into Leung's right ear.

The four inches of exposed steel under his clenched fist tore deep into Leung's head and his entire body jerked as all the brain's organic alarms and defenses rallied to that point.

Blood spurted out of the raw wound as Leung screamed and started to struggle.

Marino sat heavily on Leung's back, holding the screaming man down. Grassione looked around, saw a hammer on the floor and lifted it up. As Leung uttered a last scream, Grassione brought the hammer down with all his strength onto the head of the spike.

The first swing drove the steel ram halfway through the brain. The second brought it to the left wall of the cranium, the skull cracking. The third connected the head to the locker room floor.