Warren Murphy: Death Check

When the man came to a few minutes later, his head hurt more than his wrist. His eyes bulged in horror as he realized that his head was squeezed top and bottom between the two metal plates of an electric paint-mixing machine. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Remo toss the "on" switch. Then he felt his head separate from his neck and he never saw anything again.

Remo looked back over the scene. A paint store owner was robbed and brutally attacked. A passerby who tried to stop the robbery had his head locked in the paint mixer. Okay. Then who killed the two robbers? Who stole their wallets? To hell with it. Let the Daily News figure it out. They were good at that sort of thing.

Remo picked up the gray box, stuffed the four dead men's wallets into his raincoat pocket and locked the door behind him.

He stopped at a stationery store, brought a strip of brown wrapping paper, and made a package of the four wallets. He addressed it to Dr. Harold W. Smith, Folcroft Sanatorium, Rye, New York, and mailed it at a small branch post office.

Smith read the papers. He would know what corpses had surrendered the wallets. Remo would find out later who they were.

On the ferry back to New York City, two nine-year-old twin boys going bang-bang with their fingers were given a snub-nosed .38 and a .32 calibre Smith and Wesson-both cartridge free-to play with.

When their shocked mother inquired where the two boys had gotten the guns, they couldn't really describe the man.

"He was nice and-I don't know-he was just a grownup."

"Yeah. He was a real grownup, Mommy."

CHAPTER SIX

When Remo saw the first picture, he began to chuckle. Then laugh. Then guffaw, then shake so hard he almost dropped the whole package into the wet motel sink where he had unravelled the strings according to instructions taught him years before.

Under a half-page biography of Dr. Abram Schulter, M.D., Ph.D., fellow of the American College of Surgeons, Diplomat of the American Neurological Society, Nobel Laureate, pioneer in brain surgery, was a photograph of Doctor Schulter in action.

He was nude, a frail man with a big, happy grin, fornicating with a dark haired girl. Strapped to his back, and just as obviously mounting him, was a toy giraffe, the large furry type children like to pretend they are riding.

Doctor Schulter was smiling as if he had realized something very funny. Perhaps, thought Remo, that he loved the giraffe more.

The two other pictures showed Doctor Schulter: A) mounting the toy with the girl mounting him; B) mounted by the toy which was mounted by the girl.

The biography continued: "Doctor Schulter. Foremost authority on brain waves. Married 20 years, two children, active in Professional Societies, American Art Association, National Disturbed Children Foundation. No serious political connections. Top security clearance."

Then Remo went though the other pictures and biographies.

Dr. Anthony J. Ferrante, an expert in bio-feedback, whatever the hell that was, stood in a karate shirt minus the karate pants. He did not need the pants to protect his modesty because there was a girl in the camera's way. On her knees. Apparently the same girl who had been teaching the neurosurgeon the secrets of the giraffe was now demonstrating a different kind of secret to Dr. Ferrante. Doctor Ferrante was demonstrating to the camera a karate blow. His face was dark and intent. Karate, thought Remo, can be serious business.

Dr. Robert Boyle, a bio-cycle analyst, liked the plain old missionary position. This was not surprising since Doctor Boyle was a Jesuit priest.

Dr. Nils Brewster, distinguished head of Brewster Forum and author of the famous "Dynamics of Peace, the study of aggression and containment," discovered a new level of containment. He was dressed in chains.

Dr. James Ratchett, biochemist, was dressed formally. In a top hat, black cape and bare front. He was being whipped by the black-haired girl who appeared in all the pictures. Two other photos showed Ratchett making it with the girl. He had dropped the cape and still visible across his back were the angry pouting welts of the whip.

But on Doctor Ratchett's biography was a hand-written note. It was Smith's handwriting.

"Dr. Ratchett is a notorious homosexual."

Remo went through the photographs three times. The chuckles had dwindled to boredom by the end of the first round. The girl was the same in each picture. Remo regretted his only cursory knowledge of photography, but the pictures looked extremely well lighted and posed, as though a fine fashion photographer had played the scene for drama-highlights, explosive beams, shadows.

These were the great minds America would rather see dead than.... Than what? Smith had said he did not know than what?

Remo set the photos out in rows on the brown tile motel sink. He opened his eyes wide, then splashed his eyes along the rows of photographs, blinking rapidly, turning his eyes and brain into a giant stroboscopic system registering every detail, every shadow indelibly on his brain. He performed the exercise twice, to be sure he had missed nothing. Done. He had been peaked too long. Ordinarily, once would have been enough.

Smith's words repeated themselves to Remo as he dropped the pictures into the motel washbasin, holding a last typewritten sheet which was a transcription of a conversation Smith had told him:

"All we know is something is wrong. We can't, under any circumstances, allow these people's efforts to be used by any other power. We don't even know yet if whoever is producing these pictures is international or criminal. We just don't know. We do know that we want these scientific abilities to be denied at a moment's notice to whoever is doing whatever the hell is going on there. That means they must be eliminated on command. And that means you must set them up."

And other words came back to Remo: "Stupidity is a function of mankind, ignorance the beginning of wisdom, wisdom the knowledge of ignorance." That was Chiun, his instructor.

Chiun always had a bit of wisdom that didn't seem to mean anything, until one day you needed it." Now it meant something.

He had been kept at peak alert for three months while CURE attempted to figure out what it was protecting, and with the first sign that it was in danger, they sent in their weapon to be able to destroy it on command.

"Brilliant," Remo said to himself, running water into the sink. He watched the photographs become white, then separate, then dissolve and turn the water in the sink to milk. "Brilliant."

And he played with an idea he played with almost every month. Running. He could never be a cop again, he had no past. But he might be able to get into the Teamor even into a job where no one cared about the past. Maybe a salesman. Maybe open a store somewhere after clipping CURE for a bundle. A store. A wife. A family. A home.

And then one day he would lift a car off a person, or settle a dispute in a bar and do it just a mite too well, and CURE would find him. And that would be that, because by then there would be another just like him and if that person came delivering the mail or the milk, Remo would be dead. If a thinking man wants to get you badly enough, he will get you. How few people realized their vulnerability... well, why should they? No one was after them.

And so the pictures were now liquid and Remo Williams pulled the plug and let them go down the drain where they would wash into sewers and then rivers, and then never be seen again. Lucky fucking pictures.

Remo read the transcript. "A conversation between A and B two years ago. B is another agency, same team. A is the head of XXX."

Even in a water seal envelope, CURE took precautions to break links.

"A) What we're doing is taking traditional parts to make a new sum. An interdisciplinary approach to an old situation, the dynamics of conflict.