Warren Murphy - Assassins Play Off

"It's Hawley Bardwell," said the senior vice president of Tenafly Trust and Savings. He had his thick-fingered hands over his cards, his sludgy gray eyes glancing from Bardwell to the man on his left, whose cards were tilted forward, an absent-minded exposure obviously caused by Bard well's entrance.

"Who?" said a flaccid-faced man with crowning silver hair whom Bardwell recognized as the president of Tenafly Trust and Savings. His cards had been lowered beneath the table.

"Lynette Bardwell's husband," said the senior vice president.

"Who?" said the president, adjusting his sleek horn-rim glasses.

"Assistant head teller. Won 'employee of the year' award," said the senior vice president and the president's face squinted in fruitless mental search. The vice president leaned across the table and whispered:

"The blonde with the nice ass, sir."

"Oh. You're the gym teacher they fired for some sort of brutality, Bardwell."

"I was the football coach."

"Oh, well. What do you want? We're having an important meeting, as you can see. Tell me what you want, and after that you can tell me how you got in."

"No meeting," said Bardwell. "It's a card game."

"This is our regular Thursday night meeting, and sometimes we end it with cards," said the president of Tenafly Trust and Savings. "It's also none of your business, Mr. Bardwell. Now, what do you want?"

Hawley Bardwell smiled a delicious smile and he could taste his joy, just looking at the five men. He could no longer resist. He took the closest, whose head was twisted around looking at him and popped him right square in the forehead with the heel of his right hand. The skull whipped back like a giant lead sash had yanked it and the neck snapped like stretched cellophane punctured by a toothpick. The head hit the table, startling the chips in the center with a shock wave.

Before anyone could adjust to the kill and realize this was something more than a fistfight, Bardwell moved left into the president of Tenafly Trust and Savings, who was raising himself in indignation. Bardwell lowered him with a stroke face center with the fingertips of his flat hand, splitting the jaw like an overstuffed sausage casing. The eyes blinked, the head lowered, and Bardwell flipped the unconscious man across the room and charged into a man backpedaling away, holding his cards in front of his face and wincing. As funny as the fan of cards seemed, they obstructed a solid stroke and Bardwell would not risk his flesh against the celluloid edges. The burly comptroller was across the table swinging at Bardwell from his knees, planted on the pile of chips, and this gave Bardwell his shoulder stroke. The man's left-hand punch was blocked, then his shoulder popped, and Bardwell's right hand drove to the nerves and was back. The comptroller shrieked in pain. Then the senior vice president, who had known Lynette had a nice ass, did a very foolish thing. He went toes centered into the sanchin-dachi and Bardwell got his second shoulder shot this time with even more help from the blocking elbow. The senior vice president spun as if he were on a cord, and Bardwell moved back into the man, who now cringed in the corner. Bardwell got the cards down with a light kick into the groin and then from a close position, well-centered within himself, used the shoulder stroke skull center. Perhaps it was the wall corners, holding the head square like the inside of a triangle vise, but there was no pop of the neck. Bardwell saw his fingertips surrounded by bloody forehead up to his knuckles. His fingertips felt warm gush, and he knew his nails were in the man's brain. He eased his hand from the moistness and it struck him as odd that it felt like Lynette's vagina. He wiped the reddish gook off on the comptroller's white shirt. Then at his leisure and pleasure, with foot and chairleg, he finished the comptroller, the senior vice president, and the president of Tenafly Trust and Savings, and took from their persons $14,375.

"There's $625 missing," thought Bardwell, but he would not delay longer looking for it. Like almost every employer, these bankers thought their secrets were safe because no one dared mention anything to them. As Mr. Winch had said, "A servant is a person who knows the most about his master and tells him the least." So their secret Thursday night poker game was a secret just to them. Others knew, and men as brilliant as Mr. Winch could find out, about bankers who knew most of all that a check wasn't nearly as good as cash, especially in a gambling game. Bankers who wouldn't trust their colleagues for a temporary loan, bankers who every Thursday night brought $3,000 apiece to a poker game and shielded the game from the street with only their minds, not even bothering to draw drapes. Bankers who thought there was nothing safer than a bank. Dead men.

That night, when Lynette lusted, Hawley Bardwell turned away from her in the bed. How could he tell her he had already been totally satisfied that evening, and just sex with a woman would be a pale letdown, something akin to masturbating after spending a weekend with a sexy movie star.

He not only had what he wanted, but, as Mr. Winch said, he would have more. It was all to get the man he wanted. His target.

When the target was notified of what the press called "the horror at the bank," he thought the call from upstairs was notification that Chiun was returning from Sinanju, or had changed his mind about going.

"No, Remo," said Smith. "Sub left on schedule. He's gone. But I would suggest you read carefully a very interesting story out of Tenafly, New Jersey. I think we've been given a break."

"Why?"

"You don't know what happened in Tenafly? It's the biggest story in the country today. It has all the gruesome and irrelevant facts that the press loves. But there's something in it for us, too. I'm surprised you didn't catch it on a newsstand."

"I haven't been out today."

"It was in yesterday's papers, too. I thought you would be in Tenafly by now."

"Wasn't out yesterday either," said Remo. "Or the day before."

"Well, I think you should get out now and look at the story. Particularly the way the men died."

"Yeah. Right. Right away," said Remo. He hung up and watched the light on the taping machine that indicated Chiun's programs were being recorded for his return. The machine would turn off automatically by three-thirty P.M. that afternoon, but Remo watched the light anyway for the whole afternoon. By four P.M. he had a sock on and by seven P.M. he had the other sock on, and by ten o'clock he was in his shorts with trousers, and by the time it was all put together with turtleneck sweater and tan loafers, it was eleven-thirty P.M., so Remo postponed the trip until the next morning when, wearing the clothes he had slept in, he left the motel at four-thirty A.M. because he couldn't sleep anymore.

The clerk at the motel outside Raleigh-Durham Airport asked where Remo's friend was because everyone had taken a liking to him even though the old Oriental didn't go out much, and Remo answered:

"I don't need him and I don't even miss him."

"Oh sure, sure," said the clerk. "Just asking if he was going to come back, sort of."

"I couldn't care less," said Remo.

"Sure," said the clerk.

"You got newspapers here?"

"Just yesterday's."

"Fine," said Remo.

"When will you be back?"

"Couple of days or so. Don't touch my television."

"Sure. What should I do if the old fella comes back while you're gone?"

"He won't," said Remo, and he heard his voice crack. On the plane, which landed at Newark, he read about the "the horror at the bank."

He took a taxi to Tenafly, a rather long and expensive trip, and when he got to the bank there appeared to be no police lines.

"In back," said a passerby. "It happened up there on the second floor, but everyone is in the back."