Warren Murphy: Brain Drain

"They're in my briefcase. Just inside the door," she gasped, frightened and hoping that Mr. Gordons would find a reason to come back.

Remo gave her a wait-there-awhile push under the water with his foot. She felt her toes hit bottom. She spluttered and splashed. By the time she had struggled back to the surface, Remo was trotting out of the house. He had a pile of papers in his arms and was looking through them.

"This is it. Where'd you have the copies made?"

"Mr. Gordons made them."

"How many?"

"I don't know. He gave me eight and the original."

Remo shuffled through the large stack of papers. "Seems right. Nine here. Any more? Stick one in the files at your office?"

"No."

"Press releases? About your new movie?"

Wanda shook her head. Her sparse hair, all the lacquer washed out of it, shook around her head like wet strands of rope.

"I always work verbally with the press. I'm going to do that today."

"Correction love. You were going to do that today."

As Remo walked by her again, he used his foot to press her head down under the surface of the water. He went to a large baker's oven in the rear of the patio, California's nouveau riche version of a barbecue, its only concession to American style being that the giant oven was set atop a mass of red bricks. He found an electric on-off switch, kicked it on, and opened the oven door. Inside gas jets flamed and began to bring a glow to ceramic imitation charcoal. He waited a few seconds until the fire was sizzling, then began to throw in the batches of computer paper, a few sheets at a time, watching them flare and burn orange in the bluish glow of the bottled gas.

When all the paper was in and burned, Remo took a poker, designed to look like a fencing sword, and shuffled up the ashes and incompletely burned clumps of blackened paper. They flashed into fire all over again. Remo stirred up the remainder, turned the oven onto high, and closed the door.

When he turned, Wanda Reidel was standing behind him. He laughed aloud.

Her skin was pasty and dry looking, because the unaccustomed dousing had washed off all the Nubody oil. Her breasts sagged, forming a perfect two-pointed tiara for her stomach which sagged too. Her hair hung in loose strands down around her face, a pasty mass of uncooked dough in which her eyes, shorn of makeup, looked like two unhealthy raisins. Her legs rubbed together from top of thigh to knee, even though her feet were apart.

She had a pistol in her hand.

"You bastard," she said.

Remo laughed again. "I saw this scene in a movie once," he said. "Your breasts are supposed to be straining against some kind of thin gauze, struggling to be free."

"Yeah?" she said. "I saw that movie. It was a doggo."

"Funny. I sort of liked it," Remo said.

"The ending didn't work. It needed a new ending. Like this one." Wanda raised the pistol in both hands up in front of her right eye, squinted down the barrel and took aim at Remo.

Remo watched her leg muscles, waiting for the tell-tale tensing that would announce she was ready to fire. The almost hidden muscles in her calves tightened.

Remo looked up.

"Die, you bastard," Wanda yelled.

Remo's right hand flashed forward. The sword-like poker moved out in front of him. Its point slammed into the barrel of the gun and Remo jammed it in, deep, just as Wanda pulled the trigger.

The hammer hit the shell casing, and the bullet, blocked by the poker from leaving the barrel, exploded, backwards, all over Wanda's face. She stumbled back, her face pulp. Her foot hit the wet edge of the pool and she stumbled back into the water, holding the pistol in a death grip, sword still protruding from the front. And then the gun and poker dropped away, under the water, and Wanda floated limply atop the pool like a dead fish, staring up toward Remo with eye sockets blown empty by the exploding gun.

"All's well that ends well," said Remo.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The conversation could have been dull, but it hadn't been, since the old man talked about the thing Rad Rex considered most important in the world. Rad Rex.

"But I must confess," Chiun said, "there is one aspect of your shows that I find distasteful."

"What's that?" asked Rex, truly interested.

"The excessive violence," said Chiun. "In shows of such rare beauty it is a terrible thing to let violence intrude."

Rex tried to think of what violence the old man might be talking about. He could remember no fights, no shootings. Dr. Witlow Wyatt ran the only absolutely bloodless operating room in the world, and the most violent thing he had ever done was tear up a prescription blank.

"What violence?" he finally asked.

"There was a show. A nurse struck you." He looked at Rad Rex carefully to see if the man would remember."

"Oh, that."

"Yes, precisely. That. It is a bad thing, this violence."

"But it was only a slap," said Rex, regretting almost instantly having said it. From the pained look on Chiun's face, he could understand how the old man might regard a slap as the equivalent of World War III.

"Ah yes. But a slap may lead to a punch. And a punch may lead to an effective blow. Before you know it, you will be dodging guns and bombs."

Rad Rex nodded. The old man was serious.

"Don't worry. If it ever happens again," he said, "I'll take care of her." The actor rose to his feet and assumed a karate stance, arms held high and away from his body. "One blow to the solar plexis and she will never strike a physician."

"That is the correct attitude," said Chiun. "Because you allowed her to deal you a bad blow. Badly done, badly aimed, badly stroked. It can only embolden her."

"When I get her, I'll fix her. Aaaah. Aaaah. Aaaah," shouted Rex, slashing imaginary targets with karate hand swords.

"I can break a board, you know," he said pridefully.

"That nurse did not look like a board," said Chiun. "She might strike back."

"She'll never have the chance," said Rad Rex. He wheeled on an imaginary opponent. Out darted his left hand, fingers pointed like a spear; over his head came his right hand, crashing down as if it were an axe.

He saw a wooden pool cue in a rack in a far corner of the room and whirled toward it, yanking it from the rack. He brought it back and placed it between the end of the sofa and the dressing table, stared at it, took a deep breath, then slashed his hand down onto the cue, which obediently cracked and clattered to the floor in two pieces.

"Aaaah, aaaah, aaaah," he yelled, then smiled and looked at Chiun. "Pretty good, eh?"

"You are a very good actor," said Chiun. "Where I come from you would be honored for your skill as an artificer,"

"Yeah, yeah. But how about my karate, huh?" Rad Rex went into another rapid series of hand slashes. "How about that?"

"Awe-inspiring," said Chiun.

The telephone rang before Rad Rex could show Chiun any more of his martial arts skill.

"Yes," said Rex.

The voice was a woman's but a strange woman's voice, ice-cold and iron-hard, with no regional inflection, with not even the touch of the old South that was popular in most parts of California among women who spent their worktime talking on the telephone.

"I am calling for Ms. Reidel. The set to which you are to take your visitor is ready now. You may take him there now. It is the set in back of the main building in the far corner of the lot. Do not tarry. Take him now."

Click. The caller hung up before Rad Rex could speak.

The actor grinned sheepishly at Chiun. "That's one of the things I hate about being in a new town. People herd you about like an animal."

"True," said Chiun. "Therefore one must never go to a new town. One must be at home everywhere."

"How to do that would be a secret worth knowing."