Warren Murphy: Deadly Seeds

"You have very unnice friends," said Remo to Fielding.

"What do you mean?"

"Your friends kill people."

"Those deaths in the shed that everyone's yelling about?"

"Others," said Remo. "Commodities men. Construction men."

"What?" said Fielding. He was feeling weak, he said.

"Feel stronger or you'll go the way of your soybean. Planted." But Fielding collapsed and Remo could tell it was not an act.

Remo carried Fielding to a small shack built inside the fenced compound for security guards and there, Fielding recovered and told Remo how he had discovered a grain process that could end starvation, could literally end hunger and want. All his troubles had started when he discovered this. Yes, he knew about the commodities men. He knew about the depressed grain market.

"I told them, I told Jordan, we didn't need that sort of help. The Oliver method, as I called it-now it's Wondergrain-it didn't need artificial help. It would replace other grains naturally because it's better. But they wouldn't listen to me. I don't even own the company anymore. I'll show you the papers. Greed has ruined us. Millions will starve because of greed. I'm going to have to go to court, won't I?"

"I guess," said Remo.

"All I need is four months. Then I'm willing to go to jail for life or whatever. Just four months and I can make the most significant contribution to mankind, ever."

"Four months?" asked Remo.

"But that won't do any good," said Fielding.

"Why not?"

"Because people have been trying to stop me since I started. Did I say four months? Well, really I don't need that. Just a month. Just thirty days until the miracle grain comes up. Then the whole world will plant it. They will throw out their old crops and put in the new feed for mankind. I know it."

"I'm not in the food business," said Remo. But what the man said haunted him and he sneaked some seeds from the briefcase of James Orayo Fielding and told him he might be able to help.

"How?" asked Fielding.

"We'll see," said Remo who that afternoon checked out two things. One, according to a botanist, was that the seeds were real. The second, according to a city clerk in the Denver municipal building, Feldman, O'Connor and Jordan now owned the controlling shares of the corporation which had rights to Wondergrain, as of a date three months and sixteen days in the future.

As Remo explained to Chiun that night:

"Little Father, I have a chance to do something really good for the world. This man is honest."

"For one to do what he knows, is good," said Chiun. "That is all the good any man can do. All else is ignorance."

"No," said Remo. "I can save the world."

And to this the Master of Sinanju shook his head sadly.

"In our records, my son, we know that those who would make heaven tomorrow make hell today. All the robbers who ever stole and all the conquerers who ever conquered and all the petty evil men who preyed on the helpless have not, in their counted history, caused as much massive grief as one man who attempts to save mankind and gets others to follow him."

"But I don't need others," said Remo.

"So much the worse," said the Master of Sinanju.

CHAPTER SIX

Johnny "Deuce" Deussio saw it on television while waiting for the Johnny Carson show. It was the latenight action news. Johnny Deuce always watched it between his feet. Beth Marie did her nails. She had so many curlers and pins and rods in her starkly blonde hair that Johnny Deuce long ago stopped making advances to her. It was too much like loving an erector set with cream.

Beth Marie did not complain. She thought it was nice, in fact, and that Johnny was becoming more gentlemanly. The bed came around their feet in a circle. To his left was the light panel indicating the electronic security systems were working. It also had an open phone to his cousin, Sally. Because of the dream that night, he now had a small-caliber pistol tucked near the control panel.

Beth Marie lathered cream on her face to his right. He fingered the panel a lot while watching late night action news, starring Gil Braddigan, anchorman. Un-like many other newsmen of St. Louis, Braddigan did not require little gifts to do favors. He didn't know enough to be bought off. Beth Marie thought Braddigan was sexy. Johnny Deuce did not tell her that Braddigan was a flaming fag. You didn't use that kind of language to your wife in bed.

"I think he's sexy," said Beth Marie, as Braddigan rode the television into their bedroom with manicured face, hair, smile, and voice. Johnny Deuce fingered the rising edge of the plastic call buttons on the panel. He hoped Johnny Carson wouldn't unload another rerun or have that squeaky-voiced writer as moderator. Johnny Deuce did not like to fall asleep without the sounds of friendly voices.

"Terrible," said Beth Marie.

"Huh?" said Johnny Deuce.

"Three men were mauled to death in some vegetable laboratory. Out in the desert."

"Too bad," said Deussio. He was thinking about business. His secretary had nice legs. She had nice breasts and a nice duff. She had a sweet face. She wanted Deussio to get a divorce. Even though she worked in only the legitimate fronts of Deussio enterprises, she knew too much already. She had threatened that either she got Deussio in marriage or she would leave. This was not a major business decision. It was a simple one. If she left, her next residence would be the bottom of the Missouri with concrete panty hose over that lovely duff. Such was life. Deussio was startled to feel Beth Marie touch him. In bed no less.

"They found one guy in this press room with a typewriter mashed into his chest," she said.

"Awful," said Deussio. Willie "Pans" Panzini was another matter. He was spending too much money on what Deussio was paying him. This meant that Willie Pans was either stealing from Deussio, which was bad and could be corrected by a firm lecture or some moderate grief, or he was collecting money on his own from other sources, which would be nonnegotiably terminal. Sally would have to find out which. Perhaps stick a blowtorch in Willie Pans's face. Blowtorches brought the truth out of people.

"Another man had his back broken. A whole piece of his spine went right through his stomach. That's what the coroner out there said," Beth Marie said.

"Awful," said Deussio.

"I think we knew him. We knew the man. We saw him last year when we went to the coast. That lovely public relations person."

"What?" said Deussio sitting up in bed.

"All those killings. Your friend James Jordan was killed today at some vegetable experiment."

"Wondergrain?"

"That's right."

"Jeeez," said Deussio, grabbing Beth Marie's shoulders and demanding she repeat everything Gil Braddigan had said about the desert killings. This was much like getting a stock market report told to a social worker and filtered through a retard. All he got was intimations of something horrible happening to their friend Jordan whose wife had set such a nice spread in their Carmel home. As Deussio listened and questioned he began to wonder.

"Thanks," he said, leaving the bed and ringing for Sally.

"John," said Beth Marie.

"What?"

"You want to?"

"Want to what?"

"You know what," said Beth Marie. "That."

"That's some way for a wife of eighteen years to talk," said Deussio and met Sally running up the hallway with a drawn snub-nosed .38.

He slapped Sally in the face.

"Dummy," said Johnny Deuce.

"What I do? What I do?"

And for that Johnny Deuce hit harder. The smack echoed down the hallway.

"Will you shut up out there, I'm trying to watch TV," came Beth Marie's voice.

"Why didn't you tell me about Giordano, out-on-the-coast Giordano?"

"What Giordano?"

"Giordano who was killed today. Dreaming, huh? I was dreaming that last time, huh? Dreaming. Those guys was frigging crushed to death."