Midnight Man

CHAPTER FOUR

UPSTAIRS WAS GETTING LESS and less reasonable, Remo thought, as he drove up toward White Plains.

Getting rid of three hospital orderlies all at once was no big deal, but what was the hurry about then having to race over and check the security on some federal witness? It couldn’t wait until tomorrow?

Remo found the address in White Plains and turned his rented Ford into the driveway, expecting to be stopped by guards.

There were no guards.

He drove up the long driveway to the house and was not challenged once. Several men milled about on the front steps. They looked up as Remo walked toward them.

“Anybody want to see my ID?” Remo asked.

“What for?” one man asked. He was seated on the top step, smoking a cigarette.

“Security,” Remo said.

“What security? There’s nothing to secure, nothing to guard.” Then, as if suddenly curious, the man asked, “Who are you anyway, pal?”

“I was sent to check on your security,” Remo said. “I have to tell you, so far you’re a double D minus.”

“Our client won’t mind anymore,” the man said. The other men on the steps chuckled.

Remo went inside and followed the noise upstairs, where he found a gang of federal officers and local police milling around the front bedroom.

On the floor were pieces of the federal witness’s head. His body was two feet away from the pieces.

“You guys couldn’t guard a parked car,” Remo growled, wheeled around, and walked toward the door of the room. It was all he needed, to listen to Upstairs bitching about the dead witness.

There had been ten years of listening to Upstairs bitch ever since Remo Williams, a young Newark policeman, was framed for a murder he didn’t commit, sent to an electric chair that didn’t work, and signed up to work for CURE, a secret agency that didn’t exist. CURE was meant to fight criminals without having to worry about the constitutional restrictions against unfair tactics that seemed to tie the hands of every police department in the country. Remo was to be CURE’s enforcement arm.

His boss was Dr. Harold W. Smith, the only director CURE had ever had, a man so rigid and rockhard, that even now, after ten years, Remo still had no idea what was on the man’s mind at any time.

It had been ten years of work and ten years of training. Training at the hands of an eighty-year-old Korean, Chiun, the latest Master of the House of Sinanju, an ages-old house of assassins from Korea. Remo had taken the training, and he had learned it was more than training. It had not so much changed what he could do. It had changed what he was. And in that changing, it had given him the power to be more than man. And still, sometimes, he would have traded it all for a woman and children and a place to live that wasn’t a hotel room.

· · ·

Chiun’s hands were bridged in front of his eyes, fingertip to fingertip and, as Remo entered the hotel room the ancient Korean did not look up. His golden kimono, draped around his slight body, looked like an elegant pile of laundry on the floor.

“Have you made it possible for old people to die in peace?” he asked.

“Yes.” Remo said. “There was a surprise.”

“What was that?” Chiun said, still studying his fingertips.

“The leader was a woman.”

“And she was young and pretty,” Chiun said.

“Yes.”

“And this surprises you?”

“Well, I figured some fat guy with a beer belly and a bookie bill he couldn’t pay.”

Chiun lowered his hands, shook his head, and looked toward Remo. “You never learn,” he said. “All women are killers, and the young, pretty ones are the worst because they think their beauty is their license to kill. You taught her respect for her elders?”

“I showed them what it was like to have their plugs pulled,” Remo said.

“Isn’t it ironic,” Chiun said, “that someone like you, the most disrespectful of men, should be dispatched to teach someone else respect for their elders?”

“I respect you, Chiun. Honest.”

“How easily the lies spring to your lips,” Chiun said. “Like the dew suddenly appearing on the morning lily.”

“All right, you’re on the snot. Who got you there? Smitty called, right?”

Chiun nodded slowly. “Yes. The Emperor called. He seemed very upset with you. And well he should be. He is your Emperor, Remo, and yet you do nothing he tells you.”

“I did everything tonight he told me to do.”

“Yes? And at the Plains of White?”

“Plains of White?” Remo said aloud. “Plains… White Plains, right. He wanted me to look at the security for a federal witness.”

“And?”

“And there was a problem,” Remo said. “The witness was dead when I got there.”

“The Emperor seems to think you have gone mad. He lectured me on telling you to keep your instructions straight. Are you sure you didn’t… ?”

“Dead when I got there, Chiun,” insisted Remo. “Some security. Somebody goofed good.”

“Probably somebody young,” Chiun said.

· · ·

When Remo and Chiun arrived at the Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York, only fifteen minutes from their hotel room, Dr. Harold W. Smith was standing in his office, his hands clasped behind his back, staring out the one-way glass at the darkness of Long Island Sound. Even from behind, without seeing Smith’s face, Remo could tell that the CURE director was upset.

“What’s the matter, Smitty? Somebody in the kitchen take an extra helping of strawberries?”

Remo saw Smith’s hands clench. He stood in front of Smith’s desk. Chiun sat in a hard backed chair alongside the desk.

Smith finally wheeled around. “I can’t believe you,” Smith snapped.

“What the hell’d I do this time?” Remo asked.

“How could you be so… so… ?” Smith struggled.

“Idiotic,” Chiun offered.

Smith shook his head. “So…”

“Dopey,” suggested Chiun.

“So careless,” Smith finally sputtered out.

“I liked dopey better,” Chiun said.

“How could you get two assignments fouled up? I suppose you spent the night bodyguarding some homicidal hospital orderlies?”

Remo shook his head.

“An explanation,” Smith said. “Is that too much to ask for? One that makes some sense? Two important assignments and you mix them up.” Smith leaned on the back of his desk chair. “We’ve lost a very important federal witness now, because you couldn’t keep assignments straight in your mind. Why in God’s name did you kill Romeo?”

“Are you finished?” Remo asked.

“Show respect,” Chiun scolded him. “This is your Emperor.” He turned to Smith with a nod. “Continue, Emperor.”

“I’m finished,” Smith said. Both he and Chiun looked at Remo.

“I didn’t kill Romeo,” Remo said.

“No? Then who did? Chiun?” said Smith.

“Not me,” Chiun said. “I have learned in many years that you only want me to remove those you want me to remove. I no longer try to guess who they are. Anyway, this was probably sloppy and you know that an execution by a Master of Sinanju is a work of art. A thing of beauty. A…”

“Excuse me, Little Father,” Remo interrupted, “but I don’t think Smitty really suspects you, so please let me defend myself.”

Chiun glared at Remo for the interruption but remained silent.

“Why do you think it was me?” Remo said.

“Who else? Who else could get to that house through two dozen guards and enough guard dogs for a breeding kennel. Who else could have crushed his skull into pieces? Pieces all over the room?”

“Well, first of all, it wasn’t me. Second of all, those hospital people are dead. If they haven’t reported it yet to the police, have them check the clothes closet in the orderlies’ room on the third floor.”

Smith paused, as if considering Remo’s statements. He sat back down, made a phone call, spoke a few moments, and then hung up.

He stared at the receiver in his hand.

“They found the bodies in the hospital,” he said.

“Am I off the hook?” Remo said.

“The telephone is off the hook,” Chiun said. He pointed a long fingernail at the receiver and Smith hung it back up.

“If not you, who? Who else could have that kind of power?” Smith asked.

“We know it wasn’t me. That’s a start,” Remo said.

“I never suspected you for a moment,” Chiun said.

“I appreciate your faith, Little Father.”

“Faith comes naturally to a great Master of Sinanju,” Chiun said.

So does greed, thought Remo, remembering the shipload of gold that went to Chiun’s village of Sinanju every year, as payment for training Remo. But he kept the observation to himself.

Inside Smith’s desk, Remo could hear machinery whirring. Smith touched a button and a computer console lifted up from the desk. It flickered on and as Remo watched, Smith’s face was bathed in a green glow as he read the information that the CURE computer was sending him.

Finally, he sighed, pressed another button and the console receded into the desk.

He looked at Remo. “Police in Brooklyn have found the bodies of two men on a pier there. They were killed the same way as the federal witness, Romeo.”

“And now there are three,” said Remo.

“And now there is trouble,” Smith said. “There is some sort of strange power at work here. Capable of moving around without being seen. Capable of crushing a man’s skull. And we better find out who it is.”

“The two guys in Brooklyn?” Remo asked. “Anything there for a lead?”

“Just some drunk on the pier. He said he was sleeping behind boxes and he peeked out when he heard voices and he saw two men talking to a man who wasn’t there. And the man he couldn’t see was answering them.”

“Two people. Three voices,” Remo said. “One of them probably belonged to the drunk’s pink elephant.”

“Then we’d better find that pink elephant,” Smith said caustically, “because he’s got a way to crush people’s skulls.”

“Who were the victims in Brooklyn?” Remo asked.

“Two small-time hoods. But members of the Mafia family that had put out the contract on Romeo.”

“You think they’re connected?” Remo asked.

“It certainly seems that way,” Smith said. “Three people with skulls shattered like walnut shells. It’s no coincidence.”

“Good,” Remo said. “Let all the gang guys get killed off. It saves us work.”

“We can’t assume that that’s what is going on,” Smith said.

“Of course, we cannot assume that,” Chiun chided Remo. “What a dopey assumption.” He looked pleased that he had finally been able to slip “dopey” into the conversation.

Smith nodded. “Considering our present situation—the nation’s situation—we can’t afford to make any assumptions at all.”

“What situation?” Remo asked suspiciously.

“The presence of the former Emir of Bislami.”

“Oh, him,” Remo said.

“He comes from a good family,” Chiun said. “Bislami was always one of the favorites of our house. Did I ever tell you about the time during the year of the great wind when…”

Smith interrupted and was rewarded with a glare.

“The new rulers of Bislami have placed a ten-million-dollar price tag on his head.”

“Where is he now?” Remo said.

“He’s on an island off the coast of New Jersey were he’s hoping to stay until he dies a natural death. Privately, his doctors say that shouldn’t be too long. But that isn’t all. There are left-wing groups in America who want to kill him. The Russians want to prove to the world that the United States can’t protect its own friends. The total price on his head might be twenty million dollars.”

“What has this got to do with our skull-crusher?” Remo said.

“Well, suppose this. Suppose the man who killed Romeo was a contract killer, hired by those thugs in Brooklyn. And suppose he killed them afterwards to guard his identity.”

“Yeah? So what?”

“Well, if he is a contract killer, how long do you think it’s going to be before he takes a contract on the Emir?”

“I know what this is leading up to,” Remo said.

“Yes, you do.”

“We have to keep the Emir alive until he dies,” Remo said.

“Exactly,” Smith said.

“That makes marvelous sense,” Remo said disgustedly. “You know… twenty million dollars could hire a Kamikaze squad, who’d sacrifice themselves to get the Emir. An attack like that couldn’t miss.”

“Maybe,” said Smith.

“You want Chiun and me to protect him?”

“Not exactly,” Smith said. “First, I want you to go and check his security.”

“I hope it’s better than the security on Romeo, or the Emir’s probably already dead.”

Smith winced. “Don’t even joke about that. The President wants the Emir of Bislami kept alive at all costs.”

“Until he dies,” Remo said.

“That’s correct,” said Smith.

“Remo,” said Chiun. “I don’t understand why you have such trouble following even simple things. The Emperor is being perfectly clear.”

“Thank you, Chiun,” said Smith. He turned back to Remo. “Go check the Emir’s security. See if you can find any holes. And then I want you to get this skull-crusher killer. We can’t wait for him to come to take his shot at the Emir. Find him first.”

“It shall be as you wish, Emperor,” said Chiun.

Remo nodded. “But if he’s dead when we get there, it’s not our fault.”

“Just go,” said Smith, wincing again.