Warren Murphy: Sweet Dreams

Grassione wiped his hands on Leung's suit, then stood up and wiped the sweat from his face with a monogrammed handkerchief.

He stood up and saw Leen Forth huddled in the corner of the shower stall.

Without a word, he moved his head sideways and Big Vince Marino left the room.

Still mopping his face, Grassione moved to where Leen Forth huddled and spun her around. He gave her one chance to scream, then stuffed his handkerchief deep into her throat.

He slapped her hard across the face, twice, threw her against the wall, and began to rip at the snap and zipper of her jeans.

For the first time since he'd boarded the boat, he heard the sound of the Muzak that was piped gently all over the yacht.

It was playing "Love Will Keep Us Together."

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

"I wish I knew where the girl was," Remo said.

"She is no longer on this rumpus," Chiun said.

"Campus. How do you know that?"

"She is on somebody's boat," Chiun said. "I know that because I am the Master."

"Yeah, but how do you really know?"

"The nice man with the television set said so."

"What nice man?"

"I don't know his name," Chiun said. "All those names sound alike."

"What boat is Leen Forth on?" Remo asked.

"Who knows? All boats look alike."

"You must have some idea," Remo said. He looked around at the trees that bordered the grassy field in front of Professor Wooley's house and wished that he were conducting this interrogation with a scarlet-crested titwillow. At least he could get an answer.

"Come on, Chiun, think," Remo said. "That little girl's life may be in danger."

"She is a Vietnamese," Chiun said. "A South Vietnamese at that. But never mind. I will do this for my country. She is on marshmallow's boat."

"Marshmallow?" Remo asked.

"Yes. Something like that."

"Massello?" Remo asked. "Was that the name? Massello?"

"Yes. Marshmallow. As I said. And another thing. She has the dream machine with her."

"The nice man told you," Remo said.

"Right."

"Was that nice man's name Grassione?" Remo asked.

"Yes. That was it."

"Chiun, that man is the leading contract killer for the crime syndicate in the United States."

"I knew there was something about him I liked."

It took Remo a telephone call to the local St. Louis Power Squadron to find out that Mr. S. Massello's yacht was docked in the Captain's Cove Marina in the southern part of the city, near Point Breese, and a few minutes later, in a car that might generously be called borrowed, they were zipping south along Route 55.

The gate to the boat yard was closed and bolted when Remo and Chiun arrived. The late afternoon sun was behind them and the Mississippi looked flat and black in its dying rays.

Chiun snapped the chain on the gate and he and Remo trotted quickly toward the back of the marina, when Remo saw the boat: Il Avvocato.

"It is strange to name a boat after a fruit," said Chiun.

"That's Italian for lawyer," Remo explained.

"And it is English for fruit," Chiun said. "Do not lie to me. I have not forgotten about electrical Washington."

The guard who had earlier been posted on the front gate had been pressed into service by Arthur Grassione after the "unfortunate accident" that had claimed the lives of Don Salvatore Massello and his two bodyguards, and now he patrolled the deck of the yacht with Big Vince Marino. The guard was the first to see Remo and Chiun as they came up the steps of the gangplank.

"Hold it," he called. "You can't come up here.

"Not even if I answer a riddle?" Remo said.

"Get out of here," the man said. He took his gun from a shoulder holster and waved it at Remo for emphasis. "G'wan. Beat it."

Remo nodded to Chiun who stood alongside him.

Just then Marino came around from the port side of the boat. "What's going on here?" he called.

"Trespassers, Vince," the other guard said.

Marion pulled his revolver and approached them at a lope. He stopped at the top of the gangplank and said, "What do you two want? Hey, it's the old guy with the television. What do you want?"

"Is this all of you?" Remo asked. "Are we all here?"

Marino pointed the gun at him in threatening concentric circles that narrowed until the muzzle was fixed directly on Remo's stomach.

"You better beat it, pal."

"Just what I had in mind," Remo said. Without tensing his legs, he was airborne, moving toward the top of the gangplank. He clapped a hand over the young guard's face. The man fell back; his gun dropped helplessly to his side; he looked at Marino with two gaping cavities where his eyes had been, and then fell over the rail into the brackish waters of the river where he sank like a stone.

Marino tried to squeeze the trigger at Remo, but his finger wouldn't close on the ridged metal. The old Oriental had come up the gangplank and now his hand was around Marino's hand, and there was something wrong with the bones of Marino's hand, they wouldn't work anymore, and he looked down to see what was wrong, and he saw the old man's thin bony yellow hand close around the barrel of his gun and he saw the barrel bend toward the deck, as if it were made of summer tar.

"Where's the girl?" Remo said.

Marino shrugged.

"One more time," Remo said. "The girl."

"Dead. Dead. They're all dead," Marino gasped. The pain in his right hand where the old man held it was now radiating up his arm.

"Who killed her?" Remo asked.

"The boss," Marino gasped. "Grassione."

"You're not Grassione?" Remo said.

Marino shook his head vigorously. "No. No."

"You know what that makes you?" Remo asked.

"What?" Big Vince Marino gasped.

"Lucky. 'Cause you die fast."

He nodded to Chiun and then Marino felt the pain in his right hand, wrist and arm move upward to his shoulder. It spread outward, like the ripples of a rock in a stream, and when the small, almost gentle vibrations reached his heart, it stopped.

The man dropped heavily at Chiun's feet. Chiun looked down at him.

"What are you posing for?" Remo asked.

"Just basking in the excellence of technique," Chiun said.

"Well, bask around this boat and see if there are any more of these goons aboard. I'm going to look for Grassione."

"If you find him…"

"Yes," Remo said.

"Tell him thank you for lending me his television set today," Chiun said.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Arthur Grassione had the Dreamocizer on.

He was sitting in the downstairs lounge of the yacht, Il Avvocato, alone but for the bullet-shattered body of Don Salvatore Massello which lounged against the room's fireplace wall.

Grassione had used the telephone in the lounge to call Uncle Pietro in New York who had awarded his nephew warm congratulations on a job well done, and a promise that he, Pietro Scubisci, himself would call St. Louis now to inform people that Grassione had been working on the instructions of the national council and that any attack upon him would be regarded as an attack upon the national council itself.

"I got the machine too, Uncle," Grassione had said.

"What machine, nephew?"

"The television thing. They call it a Dreamocizer."

"Oh, that. Well, I do not watch much television anymore," Pietro Scubisci said. "Not since they take off the Montefuscos. That was a funny, that show. Like the old days with Mama and Pappa."

"Uncle, I think you should see this machine. I think we can make much money with it," Grassione said.

"How is that?" Scubisci asked quickly. "How is this different from the television set Cousin Eugenio got for me off the truck?"

And Grassione explained how Professor Wooley's Dreamocizer telecast a person's dreams, his wishes.

"You mean, I watch this television, I can see myself with lots of money, young again, with feet that don't hurt? Your aunt no longer has the boobies like two loaves of bread?"