Warren Murphy: Sweet Dreams

Don Salvatore Massello expressed gratitude for the most gracious offer but there was more important business at hand.

And he asked questions about the television set Donald had tried to sell to a fence. Had Donald seen it? Where was it? How did Donald hear of it? And getting an answer, Don Salvatore Massello asked about the girl, Janet Hawley, where she lived, where she worked and all manner of things concerning the girl.

"She don't mean shit to me, sir," said Hooks.

Mr. Massello understood that Donald was too serious a person to let his life be ruined by a skirt. Mr. Massello said this with a knowing smile. Mr. Massello led him to the door, assuring young Donald Basumo his future was secure. He would be a rich man.

And to show his good faith, he provided Donald with a room aboard the yacht that night. And two servants. They followed every instruction Hooks gave them, from bringing in booze and food and a young girl, except one request. Hooks wanted to take a walk in the fresh air. That they could not allow.

"You got everything you want right here. You're not leaving."

During the night, they awakened him and told him he could have his fresh air now. He didn't want it now. They told him he was taking it now.

It was 4:15 a.m. and quite dark. Hooks sat in the back seat of a car again and when they were well down the road headed toward St. Louis, he saw the marina lights come back on. He had left in darkness.

The car left the asphalt road and drove to the yard of a small construction firm. Hooks was surprised to see Janet Hawley waiting for him. She wore a bright yellow print dress covered from the waist up with mud. She was resting. At the bottom of a ditch, with a very big dent in her head.

Hooks started to question the servants about this when one of them interrupted by banging a baseball bat into Donald (Hooks) Basumo's auditory cortex in his temporal lobe. It went crack. And made a very big and final dent in his skull.

Don Salvatore Massello was not around to hear the crack. He was on a plane bound for New York City where he would have something very important to report at the national meeting of the crime families.

CHAPTER TWO

His name was Remo and he must have been cheating. James Merrick was praying for strength to complete his twentieth mile and the skinny bastard in blue had just passed him for the second time.

The next time would be three. Merrick's mind flitted back to the old sea adage of going down for the third time and he giggled hysterically. Suddenly his mirth turned bitter and he squeezed out, through clenched teeth:

"Hey, you. You, skinny. You, the guy in the tee shirt."

The man who had "Remo" written on his number card with a red magic marker turned his head back toward the huffing Merrick and pointed at himself.

"Who, me?" he said.

"Yeah. You. Remo. Wait up."

Remo slowed down and Merrick pulled his anguished legs, back and forth, back and forth, seemingly faster and faster. But he wasn't catching up; the distance between the two remained the same, no matter how hard he pushed his aching body.

"Come on. Slow down," yelled Merrick, in pain.

A moment later, Remo was no longer in front of him. He was directly beside Merrick, smiling distantly, running alongside him stride for stride.

"What do you want?" Remo said lightly.

Merrick stared at him, his eyes fogged with tears of exertion mingling with salty beads of sweat. The guy isn't even breathing hard, he thought.

"What's your number?" Merrick gasped.

Remo didn't answer. He just kept pace as they passed the Danvers town line.

Dammit, who was this maniac who wasn't even sweating? "You see this?" Merrick asked, jabbing the blue number six on his chest.

"Yeah," said Remo. "It's nice. That's called an Arabic number. Roman numbers are like they use for the Super Bowl. You know, x's and i's. Why do they call it an Arabic number? If Arabs could count real well, why don't their wars last more than a few days? Of course, maybe they'd rather lose fast than lose slow. I don't know."

The man was a loon, Merrick realized. "This is my number," Merrick puffed. "This means… I'm the sixth… person… to sign up for… this marathon. See? Now… what's your number?"

Remo did not answer. Suddenly Merrick felt a light touch across his front and then a cool breeze ruffling his graying chest hair. He looked down and saw a hole in his shirt where his number used to be clipped.

He looked back toward Remo but the man was gone. He had lengthened his stride and was pulling away from Merrick as if Merrick had been standing still. Remo's hands were busy at the front of his shirt and Merriclc knew he was pinning on number six. James Merrick's number six.

This was all he needed. Four years of work and this bum was walking away with his race. And his number.

Merrick had wanted to run in the Boston Marathon ever since he was a youth. But four years before he had decided to plan for the Bicentennial Marathon. If he won that one, he would be remembered. For the better part of four years, he worked himself into condition. And then, starting in February, he really turned it on.

Every day after work, he would run the seven miles home, briefcase clutched to his well-tailored chest. He'd arrive to the barely concealed smirk of his wife, Carol, sweat soaking through his Arrow Pacesetter shirt and Brooks Brothers' suit.

Each evening, he practically had to scrape off his jockey shorts. He ruined his Florsheim cordovans the second night, but after that began carrying his Adidas track shoes to work in a paper bag.

Instead of lunch, he'd run in the men's room, stopping to wash or comb his hair every time someone came in. Coffee breaks were used for pushups in the utility room.

Soon his steamy figure became the subject of office chatter and "Merrick" jokes began to circulate.

When an anonymous caller told Merrick's wife one night that there was an office pool betting on whether or not Merrick would die of a coronary before his pungent sweat smell claimed its first victim, she decided to have an intimate discussion with him.

"What the hell are you trying to prove?" she had said. "You're a Sunday athlete. The most running you should do is from the living room to the kitchen."

She liked the way that came out and laughed twice. James Merrick ignored her and kept running.

The Sunday before the race, Merrick had leaned over to his twelve-year-old son in front of the television set and said: "What do you think of your old dad winning the Marathon tomorrow, David?"

"Not now, Pop. Kojak is moving in. Who loves ya, baby?"

Merrick's head snapped up as if slapped to stare at the fat bald man on the Motorola television and he felt the bile rise. Kojak didn't have to run any marathon.

"I'm running twenty-six miles tomorrow, David." Merrick tried to smile but it was wasted on the back of his son's head. "Isn't that pretty good?"

"Yeah, Dad." Merrick felt some relief sweep over him.

"The Six Million Dollar Man did that tonight in an hour," David said.

Merrick saw the tide go out.

"Well, not really an hour, that was what they said it took him, but it was more like five minutes. In slow motion. Wow."

As his son ran around the room in slow motion, Merrick pictured himself on a cold beach and his eyes became as vacant as the horizon.

He'd show them. He'd show them all.

While Merrick had dressed the morning of the race, feeling everything was going to be perfect, Remo had awakened knowing things were perfect and it disgusted him.

It was wrong. It was wrong to sleep perfectly. To get up perfectly. To always be in perfect health. Misery, he decided, was the only thing that made life worth living.

Remo looked into his dark eyes in the bathroom mirror, then let them flick over his tanned face with its high cheekbones. His lean body, even with its extraordinarily thick wrists, gave no hint of the killing machine Remo had become.