Shock Value td-51

by Warren Murphy

  "Please, somebody, help."

  He was operating at peak now. His ears located the exact source of the voice, and Remo concentrated on the spot, focusing his whole body and mind on it, the wedge balanced easily in his right hand. Then, weighing his weapon, feeling its center and essence, he loosed the wedge of brick onto the tarpaper surface with a crack that split the air.

  The brick sliced cleanly through the pebbled tarpaper, and below it, the wooden beams cracked as the roof split and gave. He smashed through the broken surface with one foot. After that, the roof gave way like a spiderweb, and he crawled in after the trapped child.

  It was hot inside. The building, Remo knew, was ready to blow. The top floor hadn't yet been touched by the flames, but the heat had all but sucked out what oxygen there had been, and the smoke, coming in from every crack in the room, hung heavy as mist.

  Enlarging his pupils to adjust instantly to the smoky darkness inside the building, he spotted what he was looking for. A bundle of rags lay in a corner, whimpering. "Help," it called again.

  "Don't worry, sweetheart," Remo said gently, making his way toward the rags. "You'll be out of here in no time." He reached out his arms to encircle the trembling child. "You're safe now," he whispered. "You're safe."

  "Safer than you." The voice inside the rags had changed in an instant to one of grating mockery, and in that same instant, a hand flashed out from the folds of filthy cloth. Remo caught the glint of metal as the switchblade sang, arcing, toward him.

  Stunned, his reflexes performed the tasks his mind was too confused to follow. He drew back, feeling the whistle of the knife's wake against the skin on his throat. At the same time, one foot jutted upward to shatter the attacker's knife hand. As an extension of the same movement, his left arm swung around to meet the man's neck. It was a killing blow, as all of Remo's automatic moves were, and he watched the head bob once, almost delicately, before the eyes rolled white and the man slid to the floor. It was finished in milli-seconds.

  Remo stood, waiting. The room was not empty; he had no need to turn around to know that others were behind him. For Remo, space was a palpable thing. Just as fish can sense the occupancy of their waters, so Remo knew that the silent room had three other people in it, and that those three had not come empty-handed. But there was no real movement from them, nothing but the usual sloppy motions of breathing and shifting weight that most human beings performed without even knowing it, so Remo waited. When they attacked, as he was sure they would, he would be ready. For the moment, though, he wanted to see the man he had killed.

  He was young. The sparse beard on his chin was probably in its first growth. Out of the denim jacket he wore, covered with emblems and chrome studs, spilled several packs of matches. The jacket, indeed the whole room, smelled faintly of kerosene.

  "Some fun, huh, kid?" Remo said absently to the corpse.

  "Watch it. We got a gun," came the inevitable boast from behind him.

  Remo turned slowly. He was relieved to see that the others were older than the dead boy. The one holding the pistol, their apparent leader, stepped forward, grinning and wielding the gun with the bravado of an amateur. He was ugly and muscular, and the grime on his face looked as if it had arrived there thirty years before and rested undisturbed since then. The gun in his hand was an old .22 Beretta, well used and discarded by its original owner, from the looks of it.

  "We heard you nosing up there on the roof," he said, the arrogant smile baring an incomplete set of bad teeth. "You think you're Mr. Good Citizen or something?"

  "Well, something anyway," Remo said.

  "I got news for you, Mr. Good Citizen. This fire's ours."

  "No kidding. I never would have guessed."

  "This here fire's for the oppressed," put in one of the others stolidly.

  "Yeah. Nobody should live in slums like this," said the third.

  Outside, the fire engines and ambulances pulled to a halt, their sirens winding down to a low cry as the injured tenants screamed in relief and impatience. "You've done good," Remo said. "Now everybody can live on the street."

  "Big deal," the leader said. "These buildings should have burned years ago. We just did those slobs down there a favor." His scowl turned into a grim smile. "Plus we got our rocks off. Right, boys?"

  "Right," the two behind him agreed.

  Smoke was pouring in from a crack in the far side of the ceiling, well away from the hole Remo had made when he entered. "Uh, listen, fellas..." he began.

  "You listen, shithead!" the leader shouted.

  Remo rolled his eyes. "Take your time, pal. But you might want to know that the roof's going to give." His eyes wandered back to the spot in the ceiling behind the men, where the smoke was jetting out in a thin black stream.

  The leader smiled. "That's an old trick. There's nothing burning back there."

  "I said the roof was going to give. The burning'll come after."

  "How do you know?" asked one of the others.

  "I can feel the vibrations from the beams," Remo said.

  "Very funny. What do you take me for, a fool?"

  Remo shrugged. "I wouldn't take you to a public trough."

  "Shut up!" the leader yelled, his eyes glowing. "Now you listen and you listen good." He spoke with a whispered intensity. "Those cops down there are going to want somebody to pin this on. And it ain't going to be us, get it?"

  "Heaven forbid," Remo said. "Then you wouldn't be free to start another fire down the street."

  "You're catching on."

  "The roof's going to give," Remo reminded him.

  "Look, jerk, that roof crap didn't work before, and it's not going to work now, see?"

  "Just trying to be Mr. Good Citizen."

  "Well, you're going to get your chance, right, boys?"

  "Yeah," one of the men said in a nasal twang as he stuffed his index finger into one nostril. "A chance to keep us out of jail." The three laughed uproariously.

  "Here's what you do. First, we go up on the roof—"

  "The roof won't be here in another thirty seconds," Remo said.

  "The next roof, stupid. I got a can of kerosene all ready for you."

  "Use it yourself," Remo said. "It's wonderful for cutting through grease and grime."

  "Then Junior's going to kill you."

  Junior swung a baseball bat from behind his back, grinning delightedly.

  "Then we stick the can of kerosene in your hands and push you off. One dead arsonist for the pigs."

  "Oh," Remo said. "I thought you wanted me to do something hard."

  "Get over there," the leader said, shoving Remo toward the hole in the ceiling. "I'm going first. Then you, smart mouth, and don't try any funny stuff, 'cause Junior'll be right behind you."

  "Junior's never going to make it," Remo said.

  "The roof?"

  Remo nodded.

  "We'll take our chances," the leader said disgustedly, climbing out onto the roof.

  Three seconds later the first section of the roof collapsed.

  The leader scrambled clumsily to the edge as the screams of the trapped men died beneath the falling timber. He remained there for a moment, frozen, trying to decide whether to check on the others or run. He opted for running.

  "They're all dead anyway," he muttered as he pulled himself across the gap of sky between one building and the next. The firemen below would be too busy battling the flames to chase after him. He could crawl down the fire escape and lose himself in the crowd of displaced tenants on the sidewalks. No one would catch on. And the bodies on the top floor would tell the story about who set the fires.

  It was all worked out. He breathed easier as he brought himself to his knees on the roof containing the kerosene can. Just a few feet over to the fire escape...

  "Hey, what about your friends?" called a voice from the smoking wreckage behind him. It was the stranger with the thick wrists, pulling himself onto the edge of the building with one hand while he dragged something wit
h the other.

  "How'd you get out?" the arsonist choked, unbelieving.

  "I flew. I have a wonderful body," Remo said, his hands busy. "Thanks to twelve minutes of pulse-raising exercise every other day."

  "Wh-what about...?" The leader edged toward the fire escape. "They alive?"

  "No, they're dead," Remo said, flinging something out of the wreckage. It sailed high into the air, coming to rest with a heavy thump at the arsonist's feet, directly in front of the fire escape. It was the bodies of the two men, their limbs broken and knotted together.

  "Real dead," Remo said. "And guess who's next."

  The arsonist screamed.

  Blubbering in fear, he pushed and pulled at the twisted mass of flesh in front of him to clear the way for his escape. But the stranger with the thick wrists had crossed the roof in one easy stride and was practically on him now. The arsonist rolled away, his teeth bared. From his pocket he extracted a squat, dark object. With a snap, the blade shot upward and gleamed in the moonlight.

  "Okay," he said hoarsely, his smile twitching. "You try and get me now." He circled Remo menacingly, the blade slashing.

  "First things first," Remo said. He stepped over the dead bodies and yanked up hard on the metal railings of the fire escape. It gave with a crash, bolts and shards flying as the stairway came loose and splintered to the ground. "Now, you were saying?"

  The arsonist stared at him with eyes like saucers. "How'd you do that?" he cheeped.

  "The same way I do this." Entering into a flying spiral, Remo left the surface of the roof in a movement that looked like a dance, except that the turns in his maneuver were fifty times faster than any dancer's. His foot shot out a full two feet away from the arsonist. Still, the knife soared, shattering in the air high above their heads. The arsonist stared at his empty hand in amazement, then at the empty place where the fire escape once stood.

  "Nuh," the man blurted, rushing for Remo in a desperate tackle.

  Remo picked up the kerosene can. "Catch." He tossed it in what looked like a slow underhand lob, but the impact of the can broke both the man's arms and shattered his ribs before propelling him toward the edge of the building.

  "Don't kill me," the man wheezed as he tottered on the brick skirt of the roof, the kerosene can lodged in his chest.

  "Now, why should I kill you?" Remo asked. He poked the can with two fingers. "Gravity's going to kill you." With that, the man careened over the edge and screamed his way to the pavement below.

  "That's the biz, sweetheart," Remo said, looking absently for a way off the roof.

  There was only one. Straight down.

  He readied himself now. The back of the building faced onto a court of sorts, a jumble of debris surrounded by chicken wire. Still, it made a better surface than concrete if you were planning to make a fifty-foot dive and come out of it alive.

  He balanced on the balls of his feet, preparing. When he was in perfect balance, the muscles relaxed, the spine loose and ready, the feet in position to spring, he jumped high and wide, somersaulting in the air.

  He landed on the balls of his feet, in exactly the same position in which he had started. In front of the row of burning buildings, a team of ambulance paramedics was scraping the arsonist's remains off the sidewalk.

  "Anything I can do?" Remo offered as he sauntered out of the alley between the buildings.

  "No, thanks," the paramedic said, pushing the body into a plastic bag. "There's nothing anybody can do for the jumpers. People get scared in a fire, they jump, you know? They don't wait for the fire department."

  "Maybe they don't feel like burning," Remo said.

  "Jumping's just as bad. Every fire, there's a jumper. Somebody just said he saw another one."

  "A jumper?"

  "Yeah. Off the back."

  Remo groaned. It was a policy of Harold Smith's that anyone who could identify Remo and consequently compromise CURE had to be eliminated. Remo was tired. The last thing he was in the mood for was another death. "Okay," Remo said, scanning the crowd. "Where is he? What's he look like?"

  "Old guy. Big thick glasses, can't see too good. He couldn't describe the jumper."

  "Oh," Remo said, smiling.

  "Don't matter, though. They all look the same after they jump." He pointed to the plastic bag. "Listen, in case you got any ideas, don't bother going back there to check. It'll just gross you out." He went back to slopping the arsonist's remains.

  "Thanks for the advice," Remo said.

  Chiun, master assassin of the ancient Korean House of Sinanju, was waiting for him in the motel room they shared in upper Manhattan. Remo walked in reeking of smoke. He discarded his tattered clothes in the garbage, then went to shower. Chiun was sitting in full lotus on his fragrant tatami mat in front of the television set as dramatic organ music blared into the room. When Remo came out of the shower, the old man was still in position, his eyes glued to the screen.

  "Sorry I'm late. I was in a fire."

  "Silence, odiferous one," Chiun said softly, his gaze unmoving. "Go bury those clothes. They smell as if you were in a fire."

  "I was in a fire. I told you."

  "Be still. I am concentrating on the beautiful drama unfolding before me." The picture on the television faded out with appropriately dramatic musical cascades, and was replaced by the bare hindquarters of two white infants.

  Remo exhaled noisily. "Really, you'd think you'd get tired of watching 'As the Planet Revolves' after the first few hundred reruns. That soap's been off the air for five years. Rad Rex has got to be the oldest fag actor in Hollywood by now."

  Chiun shot him a withering look. "I pay no heed to your disrespect. Who can expect respect from a fat white thing, anyway?"

  "I am not fat."

  The old man slid his eyes contemptuously up and down Remo's lean, hard frame. As usual, Remo unconsciously sucked in his stomach. "Fat," Chiun declared. "And stupid besides. Any fool could see I was not watching 'As the Planet Revolves.' It is a new drama, even more lovely."

  The commercial faded into a picture of a teenager wearing a green surgeon's smock as he traipsed through a jungle wilderness. "Go do your exercises," Chiun said, staring fixedly at the television.

  "Exercises? I just walked through four burning buildings."

  "Next time run," Chiun said. "Running is recommended for obese persons."

  The phone rang.

  The connection crackled with the beeps and clicks of a telephone scrambler. These devices, Remo knew, were standard equipment on all of Harold Smith's phones, including the portable one he carried in his briefcase.

  "This is a secure line," the lemony voice said.

  "What difference does that make?" Remo snapped testily. "You're still going to say everything in code, and I'm still going to have to meet you in some godforsaken place—"

  "There's no time," Smith said. "Three international terrorists have been killed."

  "I didn't do it," Remo said defensively.

  "I know that. The assassins were all captured at the scene."

  "Then what's the problem?"

  "Haven't you read the newspapers?"

  "I've been busy," Remo said.

  Smith sighed. "The problem is that all three murders— in Rome, in Munich, and in Beirut— occurred at exactly the same time. It indicates an organizing force behind them."

  "Sounds like whoever it was did the world a good turn."

  "Not according to the international diplomatic community. The Soviet Union is blaming the United States for the murder in Rome, since the killer was an American. They say it was a CIA attempt to wipe out leftist influences in Italy. The PLO, naturally, is blaming Israel for the attack on Quanoosa in Beirut. Meanwhile, the Israelis think the Palestinians attacked their own man to make Israel look as if it's provoking another war. The man who killed the German gang leader was Dutch, so now the Hollanders and the Germans are at each other's throat.... It just goes on and on," Smith said wearily. "What it comes down to is that nearl
y every military power in the world is angry about the assassinations."

  "Even though the men who got assassinated were terrorists?" Remo asked, incredulous.

  "The world of diplomacy has never been easy to understand."

  "Neither is baby talk," Remo said. "Why are you bothering me with this crap?"

  "Nothing will be resolved until whoever set up the killings is found," Smith said.

  "What about the assassins? You said they were caught in the act."

  "All dead," Smith said. "Even that was arranged. Two of them took cyanide. The third, an American, was beaten to death before the police got there. That's where I want you to start."

  "At the cemetery? Now I communicate with the dead?"

  "At the widow's house. CIA investigators picked one interesting fact out of this affair. It seems that not only did the assassinations occur at the same time, but the assassins each disappeared from their homes on the same day as well, exactly three weeks before the killings took place. They all left suddenly, with no luggage and— according to the CIA— no word to their families."

  "Doesn't sound right," Remo said.

  "Precisely. My thought is that the CIA's methods of questioning the widow might not have been effective. It tends to lack a certain..." He fumbled for the word.

  "Intelligence," Remo offered.

  "Finesse. Especially with women. If their husbands had told them that they'd decided to leave their homes and countries to do murder, it seems unlikely that the women would admit it to CIA interrogators. But perhaps to you..."

  "I'll take care of it," Remo said. "What's the address?"

  "Two twenty-one Bluebird Lane in West Mahomset, Ohio. The widow's name is Arlene Peabody. I've sent a package to you via special courier containing the American assassin's picture and biographical data. It should reach you soon. You can leave for West Mahomset in the morning."

  "Is the picture recent?"

  "The most recent. A tourist was taking pictures of the rally when Peabody killed the Italian terrorist. The police confiscated it, but I've got a copy. In color."

  "That figures." Remo never questioned how Smith got his information anymore. It was always accurate, and that was all that mattered. "I'll see what I can dig up. Do I talk to the other widows next?"