Warren Murphy: Murder's Shield

"You've been around," said Milken.

"Well, we all have to live, don't we?"

"This precinct usually doesn't get much business. And there's nothing I can do for you in prostitution and drugs; some other areas have already been taken."

"You're trying to find out what I do, right?"

"Well, yes."

"All right. When you find out, if you say no, I'll stop. If you say yes and think you're not getting enough, then you let me know. But what I do is what I do. I just don't want to be hassled every time somebody swipes a car in this precinct."

"You're paying a stiff price for maybe nothing," said Captain Milken.

"Maybe," Remo said. "It's the way I work."

Milken stood up and took his wallet from his hip pocket. "Anytime you need me, call," he said, opening the wallet and removing a business card.

"That's an interesting badge," Remo said.

Milken looked down at his wallet. Inside its fold was a golden five-pointed star, with a clenched fist in the center. "What's it for?" Remo asked.

"An organization I belong to," Captain Milken said. "The Men of the Shield. Ever hear of it?"

"No. Can't say I have."

Captain Milken smiled. "I think you should. You might find some of our projects personally interesting. Would you like to meet our leader? Inspector William McGurk. A hell of a guy."

"McGurk," said Remo, filing the name. "Sure I would."

"Fine. I'll set it up. I'm sure he'd like to meet you."

CHAPTER SEVEN

James Hardesty III descended from the helicopter in a broad rolling stretch of Wyoming where his cattle grazed on the rich grasslands and his ranch hands galloped to the landing zone to meet him.

They called him "Jim" and said among themselves that at heart this multimillionaire was just a cowboy. Hardesty, tall and lean and clean of features, made it to the ground in a short hop and almost pulled the foreman off his horse with the ferocity of his handshake. Jim Hardesty was real people. Jim Hardesty was one of them but for some great passels of money.

If any of the cowboys had spent much time analyzing systems, they would have realized that Jim Hardesty just happened to be real people five times in year A, four times in year B, three times in year C, then back to five times again in the pattern 54-3, 5-4-3. He had found this cycle took the least of his time and was sufficient to maintain employee morale.

The shared lunches also worked on a pattern, including buying a round of drinks for the employees he would meet in Cheyenne.

"What other boss as rich as Jim Hardesty would grub down with his hands?" was the question.

"Anyone who understood industrial relations." was the answer from one hand who was given his walking papers the next day.

Jim Hardesty howdied his way through the Bar H ranch, better known to him as V.108.08. The number stood for things like marketability, gross worth, net worth, and a special inventory formula that calculated cattle in relation to the cost of feed.

"You Bar H boys'll be the death of me yet," laughed Big Jim Hardesty.

"Give me some of that good Bar H beef," he said and the ranch hands led him over a hill where a chuck wagon was set up and steaks were being cooked on an open fire.

There was good money in beef, and it was made even better when Jim Hardesty's packing house jacked up the price a notch and Jim Hardesty's trucking line jacked up the price a notch, and Jim Hardesty's city distributors jacked up the price a notch and a half. While violating the antitrust laws in spirit, they did not violate them in fact because Jim Hardesty's friends owned the packing house and truck lines and distributorships, and if they were just figureheads, well, you go ahead and prove it, pardner.

What assured Jim Hardesty's tidy profits was the inability of other people to cut prices on him. He was a reasonable man and in the majority of cases he could show a rancher or a packer or a distributor that when he tried to cut Jim Hardesty's prices he was really only cutting his own throat. And if the man was unable to visualize this, some friends of Jim Hardesty would bring the point home. From ear to ear. It was even hinted darkly in the underworld that you didn't order Hardesty hamburger if you liked 100 per cent beef.

Of course, between Jim Hardesty and the hamburger were several layers of personnel, and Big Jim had been known to use violence only once, when some sidewinders were talking foul in front of ladies. And then it was just fists. Yessir, Big Jim Hardesty was a real man. Salt of the earth.

So when he raised a toast to the "greatest ranch hands a fella could ever count on," the ranch hands were surprised to see him tumble over in a faint. No. He was dead. Heart attack? Wait. Let me smell that liquor. Pizened. Who touched the liquor? Get the cook.

The cook tearfully admitted he had poisoned Hardesty when a rope was thrown around his neck. He said he did it to pay off big debts. He pointed to his tattooed arm and showed the needle holes. He was hooked on heroin, he said, and deeply in debt and two men promised to clear his debts and keep him supplied for the rest of his life, if he poisoned Big Jim Hardesty.

"Skin him alive!" cried one of the hands, brandishing a bowie knife.

"Wait. Let's get the two men. Keep him alive until then."

So they brought the shaking, crying cook to the local sheriff who said he would get a description of the men from the cook and put out an all-points.

The cook saw the two men again that night in his jail cell. They were wearing state trooper's uniforms but as always they talked funny, like Easterners. Now, what were they doing in troopers' uniforms, these short squat men built like double filing cabinets?

Were they really Wyoming state troopers sent to take him to the penitentiary?

The cook got his answer in a ditch beside a highway. One of the troopers put his pistol to the cook's head and pulled the trigger. The cook didn't even hear the shot. His eardrums were in the next county.

Meanwhile, in Las Vegas, Nicholas Parsoupoulous took a sip of his special wine while rolling in his room-sized bathtub with four of the girls from his chorus line. He was in his late fifties and it was half an hour before the girls realized Mr. Parsoupoulous was dead.

"I thought there was something different," said a blonde. "He seemed nicer, sort of."

At the inquest into his death, it came to light that Parsoupoulous was a key link in a prostitution chain that moved girls from coast to coast. He had been poisoned.

In New York City Police Headquarters, the moon face of Inspector William McGurk was beaming. Wyoming, good. Las Vegas, good.

He walked to the map on his wall. Round-headed red pins were poked into the map along the East Coast. He picked up two pins now and put one in Wyoming and the other in Las Vegas, then went back to his desk to look at the map.

It was their first venture outside the East, and it had gone like a charm. Right now, Hardesty's killers were back on duty in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The men who handled Parsoupoulous should be riding in a patrol car someplace in the Bronx. The timing had been perfect; the logistical problem of moving the men to the targets and back on time had been solved easily. Now, nothing could stop the secret police army.

And the best was yet to come.

No one ever solidified a power base just with force. It had to be followed with something. McGurk ruffled through a sheaf of papers before him. There was large type printed on the pages, like headlines. It was a speech and it was what would follow the wave of killings.

The question was who would give the speech. There really wasn't anyone good enough that he knew of. If Duffy had had any common sense and had not been ruined by that Fordham nonsense but had gone instead to St. John's where people weren't that concerned with books, least of all pinko faggy books-Duffy might have done. But Congressman Duffy was dead.