Union Bust td-7

by Warren Murphy

  Suddenly walking sounds, hollow, leather, clicking walking sounds came towards him. Two men. Remo pressed against the wall. His blood rushing headward, but unlike ordinary men he could sustain this pressure and function for three hours.

  "Hey, Johnny. One of those idiot driver delegates left his shoes."

  "They should have been picked up by cleaning. That contractor we use is getting sloppy. I mean it. Sloppy. You never should have hired him."

  "What's this "you" jazz? We both hired him."

  "You recommended him."

  "And you said "Okay.""

  "I said "Okay" because you recommended him. I'm not going to listen to your recommendations anymore."

  They stood directly beneath Remo, a bald head and a grease conglomerate swirled in such a way as to hide impending departure of hair. This was very evident to anyone who wanted to cling upside down directly above a grease-coated head.

  "I recommended the drivers. You want to give back their money?"

  "So one of your recommendations finally turns out all right. What do you want, a medal?"

  "I want a little appreciation. You know any other outfit that would pay for a place like this on a day they're not using it?"

  "Yeah, anyone else who signed a contract and at three in the morning said they weren't going to use the place that day."

  "They could hold up the final payment. They could talk deal. They could talk settlement. The people I rent to pay in full, anyway."

  "When you rented at the last minute, I was the one who told you to go ahead. I was the one who, with two pathetic months, broke the contract for that horse show."

  "Because I got you the drivers, dumbell. For the drivers I'd break a contract with God."

  "For five cents you'd break a contract with God. He could fall down right now and you'd break a contract for five cents."

  It was as good a time as any to collect his shoes. The drivers would not be meeting in the giant hall that day, and there was no point getting Abe Bludner indicted for murdering a circus or a basketball team or whoever was there when the vibrations, unaided by Remo, would determine that the beam would fall.

  Remo dropped gently, missing the greasy head.

  "My shoes, please," said Remo indignantly. He grabbed the shoes from the startled men and handed the greasy-headed one the paper-wrapped crowbar. The paper was still flecked with blood.

  "And here's your crowbar. You shouldn't leave it lying around. People could trip over it and get hurt."

  "On the ceiling?" asked the bewildered men.

  Remo slipped into his shoes. "Anywhere," said Remo. "Carelessness cannot be excused."

  And with that he was back into his shoes and walking briskly down a corridor towards anything that resembled an exit. He had wasted his effort, as Chiun had said he would. The crowbar would not be needed now. It was as useless as the Maginot Line. Besides, one didn't need a crowbar when one was going to die.

  Gene Jethro listened as the Pig, his arm getting a fresh bandage from Sigmund Negronski, explained how it had all happened. The Pig was awash in sweat despite the even chill of the air-conditioned basement of the new building.

  "I had it set good. In the lobby like you told me. Twenty-seven guys including me. I was in your third layer central. The first layer was in the lobby or facing it like we planned. You know, rooms surrounding the lobby and the stairs we used for first layer and beginning of second. And the third, I placed it myself because I was in it. I mean I was really careful. The registration desk, I had a guy behind. I had 'em waiting just right, and the guns concealed and every man knew what he was supposed to do. The first layer was the dining room right, the registration clerk center and the…"

  "Go on. Go on," said Jethro.

  Negronski gently taped the bandage and eyed Jethro. The smiling confidence was no longer there. The joyous manipulation of men was no longer in the face grown suddenly old. Deep lines clouded his face. He worked a white handkerchief in his hands. He was wearing yesterday's clothes. He had not changed them. Negronski took both joy and pity in Jethro's condition. He fervently wished that they could return to the Nashville local and wrestle with pensions, threatened layoffs, and jurisdictional disputes. A jurisdictional dispute would be good now. Of jurisdictional disputes, he knew. This was all strange.

  "Okay," said the Pig. "So I got Connor up close to the door as the first layer right. He would fire the first shot. And he's good. He hunts a lot and you know his rep. Like he's made of bones. He's the best man for that first…"

  "Get to it. Get to it, dammit," said Jethro.

  "Connor misses. He's three feet from the guy and he misses. The first time in his life and he misses. Bang. And nothing. This Remo creep moves like he ain't even been touched. Good-bye, Connor. Like three feet and…"

  "Dammit, Pig. Get on with it."

  "Then he goes through the first layer right, and he's into and partially through the second layer, and fast. I mean you think you know fast. You think you've seen fast. You think Gale Sayers is fast. Gale Sayers is a cripple. Bob Hayes is a slug. And shifty? Willie Pep is a plodder. Muhammad Ali walks on his heels."

  "Get on with it, Pig!"

  "'Okay, okay. I'm telling ya what went wrong."

  "You're telling me why you're not responsible for what went wrong, not what went wrong."

  "I did what ya told me."

  "Go on. Go on, damn you."

  "Yeah, well, okay. Then he starts to really move. I mean move. Sometimes you don't see him, he's so fast. I swear on my mother's grave, you don't see him he's moving so fast. And I try to get off a shot. Other guys try to get off shots, and pretty soon we're shooting back at the people who are shooting at us. And then we're in a fire-fight with ourselves and we don't even see this guy Remo get away."

  "That's what I thought, Pig."

  "It wasn't our fault, Mr. Jethro. Honest."

  Jethro sulked. He turned away from Negronski and Pigarello. He twisted the handkerchief, looked at it a moment, then threw it into a wastebasket.

  "You're going to have to wait here, Pig."

  "You ain't gonna do a job on me, are you?"

  "No. No. I don't think so."

  "Whadya mean ya don't think so? I mean what is that? You don't think you're gonna kill me. I mean, what is that?"

  "That, my dear fat New England friend, is where it is at."

  "You ain't gonna kill me, you shit-kicker," said the Pig. He grabbed a chair. "You've had it, pretty boy. We ain't in your little room now, shit-kicker. You get yours now. I seen what McCulloch did to you before he went into that room, and you ain't in that room now." The Pig advanced on Jethro and Negronski went for the chair. With massive, hairy arms the Pig nipped Negronski aside.

  "Stay out of this, Siggy. This is me and Jethro."

  Like a lumbering truckload of gravel, Pigarello moved on Jethro, the heavy oak chair raised above his head as if it were light as matchsticks. Negronski raised himself and saw the chair move towards Jethro's head.

  But Jethro was standing in a strange position, not like when they'd have to face an occasional challenge in a Nashville bar, but like a peculiar old man with a spine injury. The toes were pointed in. The hands outstretched and curved loosely. The wrists stiff. The face impassive and free of hate, as though listening to a column of tax figures.

  The Pig put his bulk into the downward swing of the chair, but Jethro was no longer there. His left hand, with the light-quickness of a laser, was into the Pig's stomach. The chair tumbled harmlessly behind Jethro. The Pig stood as if watching a surprise party for a ghost. The mouth was open. The eyes were popping wide, and his hands dropped to his sides.

  Jethro brought what looked to be a dainty slap to the Pig's head. It was like touching a blood faucet. The Pig spit a stream of red. Like a bowling pin, he began to wobble straight-legged, then down, face forward. Crack. Negronski heard the head hit, and shuddered.

  "I had to do it, Siggy," said Jethro.

  "You want me to get a doctor
down here?" Negronski's voice was flat.

  "No. He's dead, Siggy."

  "I guess we're going to have to move him to that special room."

  "Yeah," said Jethro.

  "We ought to have rollers to that room and a regular conveyer belt."

  "What do you mean by that?"

  "You know what I mean. You know the Pig isn't the last. You know that room is gonna be filled every week. You know it's never going to end, Gene."

  "No. It will. It will. As soon as we get the transportation lock on the country, we'll be home free. Everything will quiet down then. It'll be beautiful, Siggy. Beautiful."

  "It'll be more of this," said Negronski, absently reaching over to the fallen Pigarello and straightening the bandage, for reasons beyond his comprehension. "It was supposed to be beautiful when we got the convention switched to Chicago. It was supposed to be beautiful when we got the building built. It was supposed to be beautiful when you become president of the drivers. Yeah. And the only thing we got was more killing and more bodies, and more of that room over there. It's never gonna end, Gene. Let's give up and go home. I wouldn't even mind doing time now. Going to the cops, levelling the whole thing. There's no death penalty anymore. And I don't think we'd get the chair anyhow even if there was. Give a full confession. Maybe we'd spend most of the rest of our lives in jail, but it would be our lives. Not running to kill this guy because of this, or that guy because of that. It never ends, Gene. What do you say. For old times' sake. Let's chuck this thing."

  "We can't," said Jethro. "Help me with the body."

  "It used to be Pigarello. He's not just a body."

  "It's a body, Siggy. And it's either our bodies or his body. Now which do you want it to be?"

  "Nobody, Gene. I'm through." Sigmund Negronski rose to his full height. His legs planted firm, he stared the new president of the International Brotherhood of Drivers directly in the eye.

  "I'm through, Gene. No more. Maybe you can't stop. Maybe you can't get out, but I can. I quit. Right now I wouldn't even touch a sparrow if it were pecking at my head. I'd run. And right now, I'm running. I'm through. I helped you. I stepped aside for you. I helped you, but I'm not helping you anymore. I'm not gonna talk to the police because I know you'd kill me, Gene. That's the way it is nowadays, and I want to live. I want to see tomorrow so bad I can breathe the morning already. Back home. Not here in Chicago. I want to wake up with my wife next to me with her cold cream and curlers and bitching for me to make the coffee, and I want to worry about getting up the mortgage money, not the body counts. I want to walk down the street and be happy to see people, not happy to not see them, if you know what I mean. I want to live and you can take this union and shove it up your velvet bell bottoms. Good-bye. I'm going back to driving a truck. I'm good at that."

  "Siggy, before you go, help me with this," said Jethro. His voice was cold and smooth like an ice pond.

  "No," said Negronski.

  "Just to the room and then you're through," Jethro smiled the old smile again, the smile that washed away worries and used to make the business fun.

  "Okay. Just to the room."

  When Gene Jethro left the special room an hour later, there were two giant green Garby Bags sitting by the door with a note to the janitor to dump them in the building's furnace. Jethro left the room alone.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  "I have failed, little father."

  Remo said this mournfully, daring to interrupt Chiun who sat before the hotel television set, entranced by the problems of a housewife telling all to her psychiatrist. Remo knew Chiun had heard him enter. He was on his way to change his clothes when Chiun did something Remo had never seen him do before. He turned off the picture on the television. Voluntarily—by himself.

  He beckoned Remo to him, turning in his seated position to an empty space on the floor. It was a gesture used by countless Korean teachers of previous generations to students who were to listen to something of great import. It was a gesture of a priest to a neophyte.

  Remo sat down on the carpeting facing Chiun, his legs crossed beneath him in the position taught him many years before when just a few minutes of sitting like this would bring excruciating back pains. Now Remo could sleep with his legs tucked under him, his back straight, and awake refreshed.

  He looked into the wise, un-telling eyes of the man he had first hated, then feared, then respected and finally loved, a father for a man who had known no father, a father for the creation of a new man.

  "You know the story of Sinanju, the village of my birth, the village of my father and my father's father and his father before him; of our poverty, of our babies for whom there was naught to eat and who during times of famine would be sent home in the cold waters to return to the larger womb of the sea.

  "This then, Remo, you know. You know how the sons must support the village through their knowledge of the martial arts. You know that my monies are shipped to my village. You know how poor the land is there, and that our only resource is the strength of our sons."

  Remo nodded respectfully.

  "This you know. But you do not know all. You know I am the Master of Sinanju, but if I am the master, then who is the student?"

  "I, little father, am the student," said Remo.

  "I was the Master of Sinanju before you were born."

  "Then there is someone else."

  "Yes, Remo. When I approached that building, the building you could not penetrate, I suspected that you could not penetrate it because if was designed to stop approaches with which you are familiar. When I saw the name of the road leading to the building, I knew who had ordered the construction of that building. I knew there was great danger in there."

  "For me, little father?"

  "Especially for you. Why do I of such age have such ease in taking you when we practice, despite your death lunges?"

  "Because you are the greatest, little father."

  "Besides that obvious fact."

  "I'm not sure. I guess you know me."

  "Correct. I have taught you all the moves you know. I know what you will do. It is like fighting myself as a young man. I know what you will do before you know what you will do. There is someone else who knows what you will do, and he knows this because I taught him. He has trained since birth, and I have not seen his name until I read a sign leading to that building. Then I needed to know no more. The man you face betrayed his calling and his village. The man who can destroy you is named Nuihc, as the road is named."

  "I've heard that name from one of the sources I used."

  "True. If you reverse the letters you will see that his name and mine are the same."

  "He reversed his name?"

  "No. I did. This man, the son of my brother, left his village and plied the craft we taught him, and did not return the sustenance to the people who needed him. In shame before my villagers, I, a teacher, reversed my family name, and left my teaching for service abroad. After me, there is no master of Sinanju. After me, there is no one to support the village. After me, starvation."

  "I am sorry to hear that, little father."

  "Do not be. I have found a student. I have found the new Master of Sinanju to take my place on the day I return home to the womb waters separating China from Korea upon which Sinanju sits like a blessed pearl."

  "That is a great honour, little father."

  "You will be worthy if you do not allow your arrogance and laziness and impure habits to destroy the magnificence of the progress I have initiated and nurtured."

  "Your success but my failure, little father," said Remo smiling. "Don't I get a chance to do anything right?"

  "When you will have a pupil you will do everything right," said Chiun with ever so slight a smile, giving himself full approval for a witticism he was sure deserved it.

  "This Nuihc. How do I rate next to him?"

  Chiun lifted his fingers and closed them to a hair's breadth.

  "You are that far away," he said.

  "Good," sa
id Remo. "Then I'm in the ball game."

  Chiun shook his head. "A close second is not a desirable place to finish in a battle to the death."

  "It doesn't have to be a second. I could work something."

  "My son, in five years, you will be this much," said Chiun, holding his hands a half-foot apart, "better than he. You must be an aberration of your white race. But this is truth. In five years Nuihc, the ingrate and deserter, will be second place. In five years, I unleash you against the son of my brother and we will bring his kimono back to Sinanju in triumph. In five years there will be no parallel to you. In five years you will surpass even my greatest ancestors. Thus it is written. Thus it is becoming."

  Chiun's voice echoed with pride. Lest his pupil indulge in the vanities to which he was so addicted, Chiun added another thought.

  "Thus have I made greatness from nothing."

  "Little father," said Remo. 'I don't have five years. My country does not have five years. It has until this afternoon."

  "It is a big country. So today one group robs it instead of another. It will be here tomorrow, rich and fat. What is your country to you? Your country executed you. Your country forced you into a life you did not seek. Your country unjustly accused you of a crime."

  "America is my Sinanju, little father."

  Chiun bowed gravely. "This I understand. But if my village had wronged me as you have been wronged, I would not be its master."

  "A mother cannot wrong a son…"

  "That is untrue, Remo."

  "I did not finish. A mother cannot wrong a son to such a degree that he will not save her in time of danger. If you are the father I never had, then this nation is the mother I never had."

  "Then in five years give your mother a present of Nuihc's kimono."

  "She must have it now. Come with me. The two of us can surely overcome this Nuihc."

  "Ah, unfortunately at this stage we would only endanger ourselves. We would have to cross lines of attack only for a fraction of a moment, and we would both be dead. I have trained you as no other man has been trained. Greatness lies on the morrow. You are not some tin soldier to go marching off to his death because bugles call. You are what you are, and what you are does not march foolishly to his death. No training, no skill, no energy or force can overcome the mind of a fool. Do not be a fool. This I command."