Warren Murphy: Murder's Shield

"What is this talk?" said McGurk angrily.

"You're going to get orders to kill me tonight. You left word where you can be reached?"

"Not at the department."

"No. With your real boss. Whoever you're really working for now. He couldn't let his killer arm go wandering around out of touch for any length of time. You are the killer arm?"

"That's right. So what do you have to worry about? You're the one person I can't kill. You're golden, sweetheart."

"I'm dead, Bill. Dead meat."

"Okay, dead meat. We may have some frozen hamburgers. You want one?"

"No."

They drank in silence as the hamburgers sizzled. A few times, McGurk attempted jokes. "How does it feel to be dead?" or "Wow, are you lucky. I haven't killed you for five minutes."

The phone rang, a ting-a-ling upstate ring so strange to people from New York City.

"It's for you, Bill. It's your boss," said Duffy without rising.

The phone continued to ring.

"If it isn't my boss, will you relax?"

Duffy smiled. "They're the only ones who know you're up here. No one knows where I am. So it's them. And they're going to tell you to kill me. Probably make it look like a suicide to discredit my investigation."

McGurk laughed. "Why should I even answer the phone? You know everything."

His hand was on the phone and he lifted it to his ear. He was still smiling as he said, "Yes, yes, yes." And, "Are you sure?" But the smile was different at the end of the call. It had become a mask.

"How you fixed for another drink?" asked McGurk.

"I'll get it. You never fill the ice cube tray," said Duffy.

In the kitchen, he opened the refrigerator door. Using that as a shield, he eased open the kitchen door, and slid out, onto the gravel; then he was running to the car. He didn't make it. He was tackled from behind and before he could get his hand around to ward off any blows, he slipped into deep darkness, realizing that at last he was paying the final price for tolerating McGurk's brutality for so long.

On his way to the last sleep, a strange thing appeared to Duffy's mind. It was a vision; he was told that he would be forgiven his transgressions and given the reward of a good life. And in that brief moment at the threshold of dark eternity, he was told that a force of nature would take up standards against his killers and that from the depth of human strength would be unleashed a terrible shattering force.

And then the brief moment was over.

CHAPTER TWO

His name was Remo and as he stood on the platform high in the darkened tent, he felt that his body was one with the forces of nature and he was the depth of all human strength.

The animal smells of the empty arena below were strong eighty feet above the sawdust The outside breeze slapped at the tent. It was cold in that little high pocket where he stood and the swinging bar felt cold as death under his hands as he flipped it back in a long smooth arc.

"Has he done it yet?" said someone down below.

"You have not been paid to witness but to provide this area which you are not using now. Begone," responded a squeaky Oriental voice below.

"But there are no safety nets."

"You were not asked to supervise safety," came the creaky Oriental voice.

"But I gotta see this. There's no lights up there. He's at the top of the high trapeze with no lights."

"One finds seeing things difficult when one's face is buried in the ground."

"Are you trying to threaten me, Pops? C'mon, old man."

Remo stopped the bar. He yelled down to the cavernous arena.

"Chiun. Leave him alone. And you, buddy, if you don't get out of here, you don't get paid."

"What's it any skin off your nose? You're committing suicide anyway. Besides, I already got my money."

"Look," yelled Remo. "Just get away from that little old man. Please."

"The noble elderly gentleman with the wise eyes," added Chiun, lest the circus owner be confused by Remo's description.

"I ain't botherin' no one."

"You are bothering me," said Chiun.

"Well, Pops, that's the way it goes. I'm sitting down right here."

Suddenly there was a piercing scream at the floor of the tent. Remo saw a large balloon of a figure pitch forward and land on its face. It did not move.

"Chiun. That guy just wanted to sit down. You better not have done anything serious."

"When one removes garbage, one does not do anything serious."

"He'd better be alive."

"He never was alive. I could smell hamburger meat on his foul breath. You could smell the meat miles away. He was not alive."

"Well, his heart better be beating."

"It's beating," came the response from below. "And I am aging, waiting to see the simplest of skills, the meagre accomplishments of my great and intense years of training, some small proof that the best years of my life have not been wasted on a dullard."

"I mean beating so that he will wake up, not just the twitching of a stiff."

"Do you wish to come down here and kiss him?"

"All right, all right."

"And let us attempt decent form this time, please."

Remo threw the bar out. He knew that Chiun could see him as if stage lights flooded the darkness at the top of the tent. The eye was a muscle and to see in darkness was only an adjustment of that muscle, which could be trained as any other muscle could. It was almost a decade before that Chiun had first told him this, told him that most men go to the grave using less than ten per cent of their skills, muscles, coordination and nerves. "One must only look at the grasshopper," Chiun had said, "or the ant to see energy properly used. Man has forgotten this use. I will remind you."

Remind him he had, in years of training that had more than once brought Remo to the threshold of mind-shattering pain, past the limits of what he had thought a human body could do. And always there were new limits.

"Get on with it," came Chiun's voice.

Remo caught the bar and threw it again. He felt its presence swing out across the tent. Then his body took over. The toes flipped and the hands were forward and he was in space, rising to the apex before the fall, and at the apex, the bar which his senses perceived in the darkness was there in his hands. Up he swung, flipping his body in somersaults just above the swinging bar within the frame of the two wires holding the bar. One. Two.

Three. Four. Then catch the bar with the knees and balance. Hands at sides, knees on bar swinging backward, again to the apex and then, like a chess piece, topple backward, free of the bar, free of any support, falling, down to the sawdust, a lead force dropping to earth, and no movement, head first, not a muscle moving, not even a vagrant thought in the mind. Bang. The cat-fast center of the body forward, feet out, catch the ground, go down to it, perfect even decompression.

On the feet, stand up straight, weight perfectly balanced.

"Perfect," thought Remo. "I was perfect this time. Even Chiun must admit it. As good as any Korean ever. As good as good Chiun, because this was perfection."

Remo strolled over to the aged Korean in the flowing white, golden-bordered robe.

"I think it came off fairly well," Remo said with feigned casualness.

"What?" said Chiun.

"The World Series. What do you think I was talking about?" said Remo.

"Oh, that," said Chiun.

"That," said Remo.

"That was proof that if you have someone of the quality of the Master of Sinanju, you can get a reasonable performance occasionally. Even from a white man."

"Reasonable?" Remo yelled. "Reasonable? That was perfect. That was perfection and I did it. If it wasn't perfect, what was wrong? Tell me, what was wrong?"

"It's chilly in here. Let us go."

"Name one thing any Master of Sinanju could have done better."

"Show less pride because pride is flaw."