Warren Murphy: Death Check

It was the high elected official who had given the go-ahead for what Remo would do. What he would do was kill. When all else failed, he would kill.

"But why me?" Remo had asked.

"A lot of things," MacCleary, the recruiter, had answered. "I saw you in operation in Nam. According to a shrink who didn't know why he was testing young policeman you have a compulsion to mete out punishment, a vengeance fixation, he called it. Frankly, I think he's a bag of wind. I want you because I've seen you move."

It was a good explanation. Incredibly complex training followed at the hands of Chiun, an aged Korean, who could kill with a fingernail and in whose parchment hands anything became a lethal weapon. And then Remo saw the man with the hook again. He saw him dying and he had orders to kill him.

That had been eight years ago and now he didn't even have an old jacket. Everything was new; nothing had worth. The Hudson breathed its stink of civilization out into the Atlantic, a giant sewer from a civilization that made everything a sewer.

"It certainly is a lovely river," said the woman.

"Lady," said Remo Pelham, "you've got taste up your ass."

As he began to walk away, she shrieked, "What about my luggage? You can't leave me here with this luggage. I came with you. You're the man! You've got to do something about this luggage."

And Remo took care of the luggage, a large heavy suitcase and a small modelling box, by flipping them over the dark stone wall to the West Side Highway forty yards below where they burst on the roof of a passing Cadillac.

CHAPTER FOUR

The bitter-faced man sat just beyond the spotlight's reach, his legs crossed, his left elbow on the small round table, his right hand resting in the crook of the opposite elbow. He wore a gray suit, white shirt and gray tie. His rimless glasses occasionally reflected the light as did his precision combed hairline with its micrometer-straight part.

He did not move from this position for fifteen minutes, not when the voluptuous dancer strained in sweaty ecstasy against the confines of her beads, or when joyful enthusiasm threw dollar bills onto the floor or stuffed them in her jewelled breast cups. Smoke curled to the ceiling. Sweets-loaded trays hovered over the heads of scurrying waiters. The plinking excitement of the bouzoukis caught the audience in its rhythms and joys and shrieks of life. The man did not move.

One man moved, almost floating through the dark crowd to the table of the bitter-faced man.

"You're as obvious as a bowl of garbage, in Tiffany's," said the man known as Remo Pelham.

"Good to see you. I want to congratulate you on your selection as director of security for Brewster Forum."

"You're sitting here like a stone. Don't you think someone might wonder what a man who acts like an embalmer is doing in the Port Alexandria? Isn't it obvious you're here to meet someone?"

"So what?"

"So look as if you're having some fun. After all, aren't we playing the sex-frustrated executive who frequents places like this for voyeuristic thrills?"

"Something like that. Even better, the noise levels here have been checked out."

"You don't look like a voyeur," Remo insisted. "You aren't even interested in the women."

"I'm interested in getting out of here. Now listen-Dammit, why the hell do I have so much trouble with you? Listen." Smith leaned forward as a new dancer came center floor to heavy applause.

"You look upset."

"I am. Listen. You will meet a man on the Staten Island ferry leaving the Battery at 11 a.m. tomorrow. He will be wearing a blue and red striped tie and carrying a gray wrapped package the size of a briefcase. It's heavy because it's a water case around water soluble documents. Pictures and biographies. You can get the documents out dry using the Oriental string puzzle Chiun says you know."

"How is Chiun?"

"Dammit, will you listen?"

"Will you tell me how Chiun is?"

"He's fine."

"He was worried about his arteries."

"I don't know about his arteries. He's always fine. Now listen. Major point. Brewster Forum is of utmost importance to the country, maybe the world. Your predecessor was one of ours at a low level. He was murdered, even though it was covered as a suicidal overdose of heroin. He stumbled onto something."

"What?"

"We're not sure. Pornographic photos of the top staff at the forum. The photos are genuine. But still the whole thing doesn't ring true. You'll see that when you meet the staff. And check resume four against pictures 10, 11, and 12."

"It doesn't sound like it's in my line," Remo said.

Smith ignored the interruption. "Ordinarily, we'd suspect blackmail. But that doesn't cut either. Why would a blackmailer be working on the whole staff at Brewster Forum? There are other wealthier, more obvious, victims. No, there's something more to it."

"It still doesn't sound like it's in my line."

Smith looked up into Remo's placid brown eyes. "Don't misunderstand. Brewster Forum is very, very important."

He leaned forward conspiratorially. "A plan to conquer the world. You'll see on a transcript that's with the photo. My superior doesn't want that work stopped. But if it's going to be stopped, we'll do the stopping. That's you. If you can find out who's responsible for the sex photos, well and good. If you can straighten out that mess without harm to the Forum's work, even better. But your mission is to set up the deaths of every one of the top staff at Brewster Forum, either as a group or individually, on a one-hour call if necessary. No misses. Death as an absolute certainty."

Remo interrupted. "I read something like this once. We're going to destroy them in order to save them?"

"Don't get cute," Smith said. "Whatever it is they're working on there, my superior is worried about an enemy getting his hands on it. Someone might be planning to blackmail our government. That could explain those photo’s. It would make them worth a bundle. But other agents are planning to deal with the photos. We just want to be ready to move in case they come up empty, and the Forum is endangered."

"How much time do I have?"

"We don't know. We think we bought some time because McCarthy, he was the security director, came up with the negatives. If those photos are really tied in with this, it might mean they have to all be done over. That would have to take a while. By the way...."

"I know what 'by the way' means."

"By the way. When you get your package from the man on the ferry, he will probably want to talk to you. Ask you about your job. You might even be attacked. If you are, you know what to do."

"Yes, I know what to do. I also know that you have a nasty little habit of cleaning house every time you give me a go-ahead. Who is the guy?"

"None of your business."

"Maybe I'll just take the package."

"Maybe you will. When you see him, mention that you intend to take up photography because you know you could take great pictures of New York's skyline."

"Right. Now let me give you a 'by the way.' I'm just taking the package."

"You could do us a lot of good."

Remo leaned back and smiled, letting his brown eyes roam from the voluptuous figure, glistening and writhing in rhythm on the floor to the very stiff, unusually tense for a non-budget month, Harold W. Smith, operational head of CURE.

"Put a dollar in her bra."

"What?," said Smith.

"Put a dollar in her bra."

"I will not."

"You will."

"You mean to tell me that other things depend upon your gratification from embarrassing me?"

"By the way, I don't know." Remo grinned.

"All right. A dollar, you said."

Remo watched Smith take a dollar from his wallet and, holding it like, a live bug, extend it out over the dance floor. The woman, whose milky skin glistened from perspiration shimmy shouldered over beneath the dollar and Smith dropped it, then turned quickly back to the table pretending he had never been involved in anything so sordid. The bill lay on the throbbing pink-white mound.