Warren Murphy: Murder's Shield

"O'Toole? That psalm-singing liberal twit?"

"None other," McGurk said. "And now, like liberals always do, he's getting cold feet. He's told me if I don't cancel tonight, he'll expose the whole thing himself."

Remo nodded. That explained a lot of things, such as why McGurk, even though still a policeman, seemed to have all the time he needed to work on the Men of the Shield.

But O'Toole? Remo shook his head. "He'll never blow the whistle," he said.

"Why not?"

"Because it requires him to do something. Liberals are no good at that. They're good at talking, zero at doing."

"You're probably right, but we can't afford to take the chance. So…"

"So?"

"So you've got your first job."

"Quite a job," Remo said.

"Nothing you can't handle."

"When and where?"

McGurk went back behind his desk. He picked up the tube of cigar cellophane and began to fold it neatly into quarters.

"O'Toole's a creature of habit. Tonight, he always eats dinner at his home with Janet. Get him there. Dinner time. I've got the key to the place for you."

"And what about the girl?"

"I'll keep her here working late. She won't be around to bother you."

Remo thought a minute. "Okay," he said. "One last thing."

"Yeah?"

Remo rubbed his fingers together. "Cash."

"What's your going rate for this kind of a job?"

"For a police commissioner? Fifty big ones."

"You got it."

"In advance," Remo said.

"You got that too."

McGurk opened the safe on the other side of the room and took out a metal strongbox of money. He counted out fifty thousand and gave it to Remo who slid it inside his jacket pocket. "Another thing, McGurk. Why me? Why not one of your teams?"

"I want it done by one man. No teams. No involvements. And besides, it's a tough assignment to give a police team… to get another cop."

Remo nodded. He knew the feeling. It was hard to kill another cop. He stood up to leave. "Anything else?" he asked.

McGurk shook his head. He gave Remo a key and O'Toole's address. "Good luck," he offered.

"Luck has nothing to do with it."

McGurk watched him leave, then struck a match and lit his small cigar. He touched the match to the folded cellophane on the desk and watched it brown, bubble, and then burst into flame.

Outside, Remo realized that McGurk had not told him what he should do after the O'Toole hit. Well, no matter. He'd be back here for the eight o'clock meeting. It wouldn't do for the new training director not to show. He smiled appreciatively at Janet's mini-clad behind as he walked through the office, but she did not see or hear him leave.

There were three hours left before Remo had to go to O'Toole's house and he drove slowly back to his own home in the beige Fleetwood, thinking.

All along, through this case, he had been reluctant to go up against cops. But yet, when McGurk had told him to hit O'Toole, Remo had not even hesitated. But why? O'Toole was a cop too.

C'mon, Remo, is it because he's a liberal, and you like your cops to be straight, hard-line lapel pinners?

No, it's not. I'm doing my job. O'Toole's the man behind this, and my job is to eliminate.

You don't really believe that, Remo. Stop trying to snow yourself. You don't even know for sure that O'Toole has anything to do with it. All you've got is McGurk's word, and that and twenty cents'll buy you a beer.

Remo argued with himself all the way to his home. He continued the argument while lying on the couch and Chiun watched him cautiously from the kitchen doorway.

It was moving on into late afternoon when Remo decided. He would go on the O'Toole job. But before he did anything, he would make sure for himself whether or not O'Toole was really the brains behind the Men of the Shield. If he wasn't, he lived. If he was, he died. That was the way it would be.

When Remo got up to leave, he was surprised to see that Chiun had changed from his white robe into a green garment of heavy brocade.

"Going somewhere?"

"Yes," Chiun said. "With you."

"There's no need for that," Remo said.

"All day long," Chiun said, "I stay in this house, cooking, cleaning, with no enjoyment, with no variety, while you are out having fun, teaching fools to be wonderful." His tone was petulant and whining.

"What's the matter with you, Chiun?"

"There is nothing the matter with the Master that will not be cured by getting out into the fresh air. Oh, to see the sky again, to feel the grass under my feet."

"There isn't any grass in this city. And no one's seen the sky for seven years."

"Enough of this bickering. I am going."

"All right, all right. But you stay in the car," Remo warned.

"Shall I bring a rope so you can tie me to the steering wheel?"

"No nonsense. You stay in the car."

And stay in the car Chiun did as Remo let himself into O'Toole's modest brick house with the key McGurk had given him.

Remo sat in the living room and watched the darkness settle over New York. Out there in the city were thousands of criminals, thousands who would hurt and rob and maim and kill. Thousands, of whom only a fraction were ever caught and punished by the law. What made it so wrong if the police helped the law along? It was only what Remo himself did. Did he have a special permit because he was sanctioned by a higher agency of government? Was it a question of rank having its privileges, killing being one of them?

He looked around the room, at the mantel crowded with trophies, under a wall papered with plaques, the remnants of O'Toole's lifetime in police work.

No, he told himself. Remo and O'Toole were different. When Remo was assigned a job, it was that-a job. Not a vendetta, not the start of an unbroken string of assaults and killings. Just a job. But with the Men of the Shield, one killing must lead to another, one simple step following another simple step. It started out killing criminals. It graduated to a congressman. And now Remo was here, assigned by one cop to kill another cop.

Once the killing started, where was it checked? Who was to decide? The man with the most guns? Must it someday come to every man for himself, to the building of arsenals and armies? And he realized something that seemed forever to escape the changers of society: when the law was overturned, the land would be ruled by power. The rich and the strong and the guileful would survive, and the ones who would suffer most would be the poor and the weak, the very ones who screamed most for the system to be overthrown.

But the system must be preserved. And if it was entrusted to Remo Williams to preserve it, well, that was the biz, sweetheart.

Darkness was spreading when Remo heard the front door open, and then the soft footsteps padding down the hallway rug, and O'Toole entered the living room.

Remo stood up and said, "Good evening, O'Toole. I've come to kill you."

O'Toole looked at him in mild surprise, finally placed his face, and said: "The Mafia?"

"No. McGurk."

"That's what I would have guessed," O'Toole said. "It was only a matter of time."

"Once the killing starts," Remo said.

"Who's to finish it?"

"I'm afraid I am," Remo said. "You know why, don't you?"

"I do," O'Toole said. "Do you?"

"I think so. Because you're dangerous. A few more like you and this country won't survive."

"That's the right reason," O'Toole said. "But it's not why you're here. You're here because McGurk sent you and McGurk sent you because I'm the only one that stands in the way of his drive to political power."

"Come on," Remo said. "Political power. What's his platform? Bullets, not bullshit?"

"When he makes the Men of the Shield a pack of nationwide vigilantes… when he has every cop in America signed up… every police buff, every nit-nat flag waver, every right-wing racist, when he's got them all under the banner of that clenched fist, then he's got political power."