Warren Murphy: Death Check

"Glad to see you," Doctor Brewster crooned in a low Massachusetts mumble which crackled saliva on the S's. "You're Remo . . . Remo. . . ."

"Remo Pelham."

"That's right. Our chess-playing policeman. Well, what can I do for you?"

"Well, first of all, I'd like to know what you do here?"

"Why?"

"Because I can't figure out what I'm supposed to do here, until I find out what you do here, can I?"

"Never mind."

"Never mind?"

Remo stood before the desk still, waiting to be offered a seat. The offer did not come, so he sat anyway.

"That's right, never mind." Brewster said this with a smile.

"Why should I never mind?"

"Simply because you wouldn't understand."

"Try me."

"I'd rather not."

"I'd rather you would," Remo said.

"Really now," Brewster said, crossing a leg while sucking the fumes from the lit pipe. "You'd rather I would. Well, do you know that the only reason you're here is because of a government grant? You come with it. Now I don't wish to make your stay here unpleasant, but you are an unwanted guest. Already, last night, with your uncivil behaviour at the chess tournament, you have created dissension among my staff. I can do without that. I can also do without your skulking about trying to provide security and protection for things that need neither security nor protection."

"Did McCarthy understand that?"

"McCarthy was a policeman, for heaven's sakes."

"Who is a dead policeman."

"Right. A dead policeman." Brewster said it as if he had been asked to say a prayer for a departed piece of roast beef. "Oppressive violence-that is, violence in reaction to violence-breeds greater violence. A pure example is McCarthy. Do you understand what I'm talking about?"

"I think you're trying to say that McCarthy got himself killed."

"Right. You're brighter than I thought. Now, let's take this supposition a little farther. Let us assume that violence is an expurgative, that it is-try to follow me-a natural and necessary occurrence and that to try to curb it or redirect it produces awesomely more-devastating circumstances by a basic geometric progression of intensity, an intensity that we cannot now measure but that we will ultimately use as a guideline, much in the way of E equals MC square. Do you follow?"

"Yes. You're full of shit."

"Really? How?"

"Never mind. I really don't think I can explain it to you."

Brewster broke into the kind of delighted grin a father gets when his six year old son challenges him to checkers.

"You can't explain it to me?"

"No. No, I can't," Remo said, and he was not smiling or enjoying what he said. "I can only say that violence has all the virtue of a cut into flesh. Done to cure-to heal-it is good. Done to harm, it is bad. The act itself is neither good nor bad. Just painful."

"But don't you see, Mr. Pelham, that for violence to be employed for good or bad is impossible. There is no good or bad." Doctor Brewster sat with limbs close to body and smiled as if he had a belly full of warm milk.

"You are full of shit," Remo said.

"And you are another fascist functionary who dribbles righteousness until I cross your palm with silver. The good guys and the bad guys. Law and order versus the people in black hats. It is not that way, Mr. Pelham."

"It can be no other way, Doctor Brewster," Remo said and he caught his jaw trembling. Goddam it, it was the peak. More than three months of it this and he was coming apart at the seams. Sitting here, trying to talk sense to this liberalistic lunatic. Brewster was still talking:

"Please. We really just cannot afford this here, of all places. I am willing to discuss anything you wish, but please no overreaction. You have a job to do, such as it is, and I have a job to do. We're here together, let's make the most of it."

"What makes you think McCarthy was killed?" Remo said, calm again.

"I knew you would come back to that. I think he was killed because he is not the sort of man to use heroin. To use heroin, you must have a basic dissatisfaction with your role in life. McCarthy never had enough imagination to be dissatisfied. He was a bear-in-a-saloon type, Knights of Columbus, worry about mortgage. Very nice fellow, indeed. And frankly, I prefer him to you. McCarthy was a realist."

"And knowing or believing he was murdered, you didn't give your suspicions to anyone?"

"And have this place crawling with law enforcement types?"

Brewster sucked on his pipe with finality, a man who saw the world in clear light while the rest muddled in the fog. The Remo Pelhams of the world who comprehended nothing, even of such an elemental subject as violence.

Through the English glass windows of the office came a distant roar that rather rapidly became louder, than a symphony of belching exhausts that rode into the circle, and then round and round the small blue fountain.

The motorcycle riders looked like refugees from the SS. They had black leather jackets, high peaked caps, and swastikas on their backs. Unlike the SS, however, they were unshaven, and there was no uniformity to their cycles, green and red and yellow and black, festooned with ribbons, banners and skull, leather pieces flowing over highly polished chrome.

Brewster went to the window. Remo behind him. Out of the cottages, the office-homes that surrounded the cirle came the department directors of Brewster Forum. There was Father Boyle and Professor Schulter. There was Ferrante, and on the right was Ratchett. And there was a fifth. She came from the farthest cottage. A young woman who could have been twenty or thirty. Her high cheek bones and strong aristocratic nose were ageless. Her dark hair flowed down over her shoulders like a royal mantle. Her lips were etched deeply in milk smooth skin.

While her colleagues hovered by their doors, she went to the edge of the gravel. The leader of the motorcycles aimed at her and charged her headlong, swerving sharply at the last moment.

She smiled. Remo thought, she's amused.

Another cyclist circled behind her and still she did not move. The pack roared around again, and this time the leader drove into a skid stop that sprayed gravel at her feet. Still smiling, she turned and walked back calmly to her office.

Remo smiled to himself. She was a rare one. If she had tried to run, the group would have been at her like a pack of dogs. But she waited until the leader temporarily turned off the aggression by sliding into that skid stop and then she just walked away. She disappeared as an attack object. Quite a performance.

Now Ratchett waddled out to the leader so rapidly he appeared to be skipping. His hair flowed behind him and his tiny fingers tickled the air excitedly at the farthest reaches of his arms. He whispered into the gold-ringed ear of the leader who grabbed the collar of Ratchett's velvet shirt and began to twist, as Ratchett's face grew pink, then red. When Ratchett managed to get a roll of bills out of his pocket, the hand loosened. Ratchett kissed the wrist of the hand at his throat; then the leader released him and he stood like a little boy hiding his privates in a public shower.

The leader strode the sidewalk, his boots galonking on the pavement, his followers' boots adding support to the galonk, galonk, galonk toward Brewster's office.

Brewster turned to Remo. "Now I don't want any trouble. Remember violence begets worse, etc. We can just ignore the whole thing."

Remo went back to his chair.

"Hey cop," yelled the leader of the gang. "Come out here."

Remo stage-whispered to Brewster: "I'm doing nothing sitting right here."

"Good."

"Hey, Pelham. You straight shit. Get out here." The leader was over six-feet-six and massive. But the bulk was weight-lifter's bulk. His walk was a pose. His challenge was a pose. Mr. Six-Foot-Six had won most of his battles by posing menacingly. His major weapon was fear in the hearts of the timid.