Warren Murphy: Brain Drain

Rex waved an impatient hand in dismissal. Chiun declined to acknowledge the young man's existence.

He sat in one smooth motion in a chair across from Rex's couch.

"I am Chiun. I am the Master of Sinanju. I am employed to make sure that the Consitution of the United Sates continues to fail to work in exactly the same way it has failed to work for two-hundred years. It is a most important job I have, and its only real reward is that it leaves my daytimes free to watch yours and other beautiful poems on the television."

"Very interesting," said Rad Rex. Who said you had to be sane to be in the Mafia? This ninny was probably the head of the Mafia's Far East office.

"What is your nationality?" Rad Rex asked shrewdly. Maybe the man had some Italian blood.

"I am Korean. There is an old story that when God first made man, he put the dough in the oven and…"

After Mr. Gordons had left her, Wanda Reidel snuggled down deeper into her leather-strapped beach chair and reached for more Nubody oil.

She poured a gob of it onto her right palm, replaced the bottle on the tile-topped table next to her, and began to rub the oil into her abdomen and down onto her thighs.

It was all right for Mr. Gordons to tell her to run away from Remo but that was because Mr. Gordons had not been in her office the day Remo showed up there. Mr. Gordons had not seen the look Remo had given her, had not felt his touch on her wrist. If Gordons had seen or felt that, he would have realized that this Remo posed no threat to anybody's plan. He was so hot for Wanda's body nothing else mattered to him.

She rubbed even bigger gobs of the cream into her elbows and knees and neck.

And why shouldn't Remo be? It was amazing the way most men fell all over themselves at the sight of a young, pretty woman and there was no shortage of that type in Hollywood. But that told you more about the man than about the woman. Those women were crap, just crap in Wanda's book, even though she had built a career on them. Crap. A real man wanted a real woman. How odd that someone like Remo, an outsider, could come to town and on first meeting recognize the real woman, the beauty that reposed beneath the mass of sinew, muscles, fat, suet, and lard that was Wanda Reidel.

And he had. She knew. She had seen that look.

So when Remo called soon after Mr. Gordons left, she did not bother to hide from him. Not really. And when Remo came, they would make wild magnificent love. She would allow him her body. And then the two of them would sit and they would make plans for the disposal of Mr. Gordons who had outlived-make that outlasted-his usefulness.

Wanda finished the oiling ritual and began to apply rouge to the mounds of her breasts and a slightly darker-than-natural skin makeup into the crevice between her breasts and around the bottom and sides of them.

She lifted each breast and examined it carefully as she worked, glad that no purplish veins were visible. She hated those young actresses with those breasts that stood up straight, pert and perky as their little bobbed noses.

Wanda's bosom could do the same thing if that was all she had to worry about during the day, just making sure her breasts were firm. But Wanda told herself that she was a working woman and didn't have time for such frills. Oh, for the day when she would be able to do nothing except exercise and keep her body lean and tan. And diet, too. Perhaps one of those all-protein diets. They seemed to work. She thought of cheese Danish and strawberry Danish and apple Danish and decided that when her great days of leisure came, protein diets were basically unhealthy. The body needed carbohydrate. Without carbohydrate, there was no blood sugar. Without blood sugar, resulting stupidity was followed immediately by death.

No. No fad diets for her. She would simply go onto a careful carlorie-counting regimen that she could be sure would be heathful and sound. There was no reason that a diet had to deprive you of all the things you liked. A diet was supposed to make you feel better, not miserable.

After her triumphant move into the New York television market, after that, she definitely would find time to diet.

And to exercise. But not tennis. She hated tennis. It was a mindless insipid game played by mindless insipid twits who just wanted to show off their young, lean, tanned bodies. Like an advertisement that they were all good in bed. As if the body alone had anything to do with that.

When Wanda had first come to Hollywood, she had been the part-time girlfriend of an assistant producer. Later, when she became well known on her own, he had said at a cocktail party that "screwing Wanda Reidel has all the excitement of a stroll through an unused railroad tunnel. All the excitement and half the friction."

The assistant producer was now working as the assistant manager of a restaurant in Sumter, South Carolina. Wanda had seen to that. But the remark had outlived his career. It was one of the crosses Wanda had had to bear. Often when making love to her, men-even men who wanted something from her-would stop in the middle and laugh and she knew what it was. That goddam railroad-tunnel crack. And it wasn't true. God, it wasn't true. She knew it wasn't true. She was warm and loving and tender and sensuous and worldly, and she would prove all that to Remo today when he arrived.

She continued oiling her body. She heard a throat cleared behind her.

Because of the silence of the approach, she knew it was Mr. Gordons returning.

"Don't get upset," she said without turning. "I was just getting ready to go, so cool it."

She hoped he would leave right away. She didn't want him there when Remo arrived. She didn't want Gordons in the way of the monumental orgy that she envisioned for Remo.

"Why don't you pick up and beat it, love?" she said, still without turning.

"Whatever you want, love."

The voice wasn't Mr. Gordons, but before Wanda could turn around in her chair the way she had planned, thinning out her middle by making it longer with a langorous stretch, before she could do that, she found herself being lifted, still in the leather-strapped chair, and tossed into the deep end of the kidney-shaped purple-tiled pool.

She hit with a splat. The heavy-framed chair sunk away beneath her, and she floundered. Water got into her nose and eyes. She coughed. She could feel mucus running out of her nose, down her upper lip.

Through her teared vision, she saw Remo standing at poolside, looking down at her.

"You bastard," she sputtered as she moved toward the side of the pool. "For that, you'll never get into films."

"Ah well, another promising career shot to hell. Where are the papers?"

"Papers?" asked Wanda as she started to pull herself out of the pool. She stopped when Remo's leather-shoed foot pressed lightly on the top of her head.

"The computer papers. The secret organization you're going to make a movie of. Gordons gave them to you, remember?"

"Wouldn't you like to know, you wise bastard? They're going to be in the hands of the press in just an hour."

"Oh?" Remo pressed down with his foot. Wanda felt her hands slip from the smooth glazed tile and her head was again underwater. She opened her eyes. She saw black swirls drifting past her eyes like a ghostly vapor. That goddam eye makeup. It was running. It wasn't supposed to run. She'd do something about that.

The pressure lessened on her head, and she popped upward out of the water like a fishing bobber when the line below it has been snapped by a large fish.

"Where is it, dearest?" said Remo, leaning over poolside. "You may be getting a clue by now that I'm not fooling."

He smiled. It was the same smile he had smiled in her office, but this time she recognized it. It wasn't the smile of a lover; it was the smile of a killer. It was a professional smile. On a lover's face, it meant love because love was his job; on this man's face it meant death because death was his job.