Ghost in the Machine td-90

by Warren Murphy

  It was a smooth descent. At first. But the wind gusts that blew harmlessly through the insubstantial Rumpp Tower were swirling and spiraling around other tall buildings, creating the kind of turbulence that plucks hats off pedestrians.

  One eddy pushed the Sikorsky into the south side of the tower.

  A collective gasp rose from the crowd. Faces turned away. Others craned eagerly to see.

  They all saw what Remo Williams saw.

  The rotor blades chopped through the golden panes. They beat wildly, as the pilot attempted to correct his equilibrium.

  Not a pane of glass shattered. Other than the rotor whine, no noise came from above.

  The chopper pitched and turned. In his effort to clear the tower, the pilot managed to send the tail rotor slipping into the facade. It disappeared as if into still golden water.

  "It's being sucked in!" someone screamed.

  It looked that way. But only for a moment.

  The white Sikorsky veered back into view and, evidently giving up, rattled eastward like a frightened bird.

  "Okay," Remo said to himself, "it's not really there."

  A screechy voice from somewhere near called, "Rocco!"

  "Oh no," moaned Remo. Without looking in the direction of the voice, he ducked down and tried to move as far away from the sound as he could.

  The voice called after him. This time it said, "Beppo!"

  "Not even warm," Remo muttered.

  He slipped back into the crowd at a convenient spot and tried to blend in. He took a moment to break the thumbs of another pickpocket, and to his surprise the moment the man began screaming the area around Remo cleared, as if the people were water and evaporation was taking place.

  "The sidewalk's going here, too!" a voice shrieked.

  It came from a disheveled man who had been holding a soup can in one hand and a sign that said HELP ME. I AM AN AIDS VICTIM in the other. He was the fifth AIDS panhandler Remo had passed in the crowd, which Remo thought as demographically unlikely as spotting zebra in Central Park. And he ran like a marathon runner.

  Since the sudden evacuation had left Remo as exposed as a baby's behind, he moved with the crowd as far as the Rolex Building. There he broke off and slipped into an alley, where he almost stepped on the burning human hand.

  Remo stopped. The hand was definitely human. It was shriveled, and a pale, waxy yellow. It was set in a kind of ebony base, with the thumb and fingers pointing skyward.

  The tips of each digit glowed with a sick green light.

  Before Remo could take it in, a cool voice from the shadows intoned, "You see. You cannot escape your destiny."

  Remo hesitated. Before he could reverse himself the screechy voice, sounding very close now, called, "Geno! Oh, Geno!"

  Remo groaned like a wounded bear. He had no place to run now.

  Chapter 6

  "Harm not ye hand of glory," warned Delpha Rohmer, as she emerged from the shadows, her pale hands making weaving patterns in the air before her. The spidery hem of her long black gown swept the dirty concrete, quickly turning gray with urban grime.

  "Glory hand?" Remo asked, one eye on the alley mouth.

  "It is potent magic. It will dispel any visitant from the nether realms."

  Remo brightened. "Does it work on anchorwomen?" he asked.

  "I do not understand."

  Cheeta Ching picked that exact moment to burst into the alley, huffing as if from a hard run.

  "Guido!"

  "Not even close," Remo said.

  Cheeta showed her teeth in a smug grin. "I have something to tell you," she said.

  "Go ahead."

  "I'm pregnant."

  "I know. It's on the cover of every magazine in sight."

  "And you're not the father."

  "Louder. I want there to be no doubt."

  "But you could have been," Cheeta said quickly. "You could have been the father to the most famous baby to be born in the nineties. Mine."

  "I stand chastised," Remo said sourly. "My life in ruins."

  "Good. I wanted you to understand the golden opportunity you lost when you spurned me."

  At that point, Cheeta's predatory eye fell on the shadowy figure of Delpha Rohmer.

  "Who is this?" she demanded.

  Remo decided to go with the flow. "Cheeta, meet Delpha. Delpha, meet Cheeta. Delpha's a witch. Cheeta just rhymes."

  Both women looked blank.

  "What?"

  "What?"

  "Never mind," Remo sighed. "I don't suppose you've seen hide nor hair of Chiun?" he asked Cheeta.

  "You mean the man responsible for the glorious fulfillment of my womb?" Cheeta returned.

  Remo's eyes went wide. On his last assignment, the Master of Sinanju had achieved a long-held ambition: to meet the Korean anchor. Chiun had been carrying a torch for her since he had first beheld her barracuda face on TV. He had had visions of fulfilling the childless anchorwoman and siring Remo's successor in Sinanju with one stroke. But Cheeta had instead fallen for Remo. Remo, for his part, would rather have eaten sand.

  By the time it had all been straightened out, Cheeta and the Master of Sinanju had gone off together. Chiun had returned home silent but contented. Cheeta had returned to the airwaves with news of her ovulatory breakthrough.

  Still, Remo refused to believe it. Now he could only sputter, "You mean Chiun is the father?"

  "I didn't say that," Cheeta said tartly. "I'm a married woman. In fact, I categorically deny that my husband isn't the father."

  "Please, please," Delpha implored. "You're disturbing the spell. The atmosphere of power must not be dispelled by negativity."

  "Spell?" asked Cheeta.

  "I told you, Delpha's a witch," Remo said. "She's trying to un-hex the Rumpp Tower."

  Cheeta Ching walked up to the smoldering hand of glory.

  "Is that real? I mean, a real hand?"

  "Sure," Remo said brightly. "In fact, it's probably good enough to eat."

  "I resent the implication that I'm a cannibal!" Cheeta flared. "I'm a mother-to-be!" Her bloodred nails flashed and curled before her.

  Remo backed away. "Hey, it was just a suggestion." He snapped his fingers loudly. "I know! Now that you two have been introduced, why don't you do an interview? Together. Leave me out of it. I'll find Chiun on my own hook."

  A cold voice directly behind Remo said, "Look no further, late one."

  Remo whirled.

  Chiun, Reigning Master of Sinanju, stood in the alley mouth, his face severe, his long-nailed hands obscured by his joined sleeves.

  "There you are," said Remo, relief in his voice.

  "You are late," Chiun sniffed, drawing himself to his full height.

  "Blame it on the disintegrating infrastructure."

  "Grandfather!" Cheeta cried, rushing up to the Master of Sinanju.

  Chiun's face stiffened. He froze, as if uncertain how to react.

  Then, before Remo's astonished eyes, Cheeta Ching, self-styled supreme anchorwoman in the known universe, bowed before him. Twice.

  Regally, the Master of Sinanju returned the bow. Once.

  "It is good to see you again, grandfather," Cheeta murmured.

  "And you, child. The baby quickens?"

  "Only due to your greatness," Cheeta returned.

  "Am I hearing this?" Remo shouted. "I'm not hearing this! You're not the father, Chiun-are you?"

  The wise hazel eyes of the Master of Sinanju looked over to the face of his pupil opaquely, and tracked beyond him.

  His hands emerged from his sleeves. One birdlike claw of a hand lifted and curled, gesturing with a bony yellow finger.

  "Remo. Who is this mudang I find you with?"

  Remo looked over his shoulder. Delpha Rohmer stared back.

  "Mudang?" Remo asked Chiun. His Korean was good, but not perfect.

  "A white witch," replied Chiun.

  "You are very wise to know me for what I am," Delpha intoned.

  "He doesn't mean 'whit
e' the way you mean 'white,' " Remo snapped.

  "I can see that he is in contact with greater harmonies," Delpha returned. "His aura is perfect."

  "Absolutely," Cheeta said. "He helped me unlock my burgeoning womanhood."

  "You are both properly respectful," said the Master of Sinanju. His eyes went to Remo's. "Unlike some."

  Remo put his hands on his lean hips. "Look. We're here to do a job. Let's do it."

  "One moment, Remo. I must examine this artifact." The old Korean strode up to the hand of glory and sniffed the smoke being exuded by its shriveling black fingers.

  He looked to Delpha. "The hand of a hanged man?"

  Delpha nodded. "I dug it up. It's very old. But there was still enough fat in it to burn."

  "That's sick!" Remo said.

  "Sick would be to use a woman's hand," Cheeta inserted.

  Everyone nodded in agreement except Remo.

  "It is potent magic," Delpha said.

  "Can it help me get my cameraman back?" Cheeta wondered, circling it. She lifted her minicam to one shoulder and captured the smoking member on tape.

  "Don't tell me you nibbled on another one?" Remo asked pointedly.

  "Silence, Remo!" Chiun spat. "Do not remind this poor creature of her recent misfortune."

  "Misfortune? She's buried alive with her cameraman and she eats him."

  "I did not eat my cameraman!" Cheeta blazed. "Whole . . . I just noshed on a piece he wasn't using."

  "His leg?"

  "He was dead. He wasn't about to jump up and run marathons."

  "This is a perfectly reasonable thing, Remo," Chiun inserted. "Now be silent. We must be about our important work."

  Delpha lifted welcoming hands. "It is our destiny to work together. The three of us."

  Remo told Cheeta, "I guess that leaves you out. Sorry."

  "I meant, the three of us who understand the elder wisdom," Delpha added imperiously.

  Remo frowned. "What am I-the spear-carrier?"

  "No. But you may carry the hand of glory."

  "I'm not touching that."

  "Remo," Chiun said flatly. "Carry the hand. Come, we will solve this mystery before it blights the entire city."

  The three started off, Chiun flanked by the two women. Remo watched them go. He looked down at the smoldering hand of glory.

  "Damn," he muttered, stooping to pick it up. "Why do I always end up with the short end of the stick?"

  Chapter 7

  Randal T. Rumpp had not gotten where he was in life by being timid. He had his brashness to thank for his steady rise to the princedom of Manhattan real estate, and just as surely to blame now that he had plummeted to the sad status of paper billionaire in such a stunningly short time.

  He did not understand the freaky thing that had befallen the Rumpp Tower. He dimly understood that he was trapped, as was everyone who had had the misfortune to be caught within its narrow confines when the mysterious event occurred.

  What Randal Rumpp did understand was that there had to be some way he could turn the situation to his advantage.

  The phones shrilled in his ears so loudly he could barely hear himself think. In other rooms on this floor, they also were clamoring for attention.

  Hanging up did no good. So Randal Rumpp, because doing something physical always helped his brain to work better, went around his luxurious, selfportrait-dense office and started taking them off the hook, one at a time.

  Once in a while, he would check for a dial tone.

  The first time he did this he got a weird voice crying plaintively, "Help! I am trapped in telephone!"

  "My ass," said Randal Rumpp, going to the next phone.

  "Help me! Help me! Help me!" said another phone. It sounded like the same voice, so Randal gave it a shot.

  "You say you're trapped?" he demanded.

  "Yes! Help me, American! Please help me!"

  "How much?"

  "How much what?"

  "How much would you pay me if I got you out?" demanded Randal Rumpp, getting right to the point.

  "I will pay any price. Honestly."

  "Okay, I need three billion bucks."

  "Billion with a b?"

  "Yes."

  "Okay, I do this for you. Three billion."

  "Up front."

  "I cannot advance any money while I am in telephone," the weird, tinny voice said, reasonably enough.

  "I'll settle for half up front," countered Randal Rumpp, who, had he not been so hard-up, would never have wasted time talking to the disembodied voice. But the man sounded hard-up. And vaguely foreign. The real money today was in foreign hands. Maybe this was some wealthy Japanese industrialist, and Randal Rumpp would luck into a killing. It had happened before.

  "I am sorry. You must release me first."

  "What are you, some kind of telephone genie? I pop the cork, and you give me three wishes?"

  "Three billions. That is our agreement."

  "Get lost," said Randal Rumpp, knowing a scam when he smelled one.

  The cacophony of office phones having fallen silent, he moved on to his executive assistant's office.

  "Dorma, I want every phone on this floor off the hook. Now."

  The woman sat frozen at her desk, eyes staring straight ahead in the classic thousand-yard stare. They were misting over. She held a white linen handkerchief before her, as if it were too heavy to raise to her eyes or let fall to her lap.

  "Did you hear me?"

  "They . . . sank . . . without a trace . . . ." she moaned.

  "How would you like to sink without a trace?" suggested Randal Rumpp, who boasted in his autobiography that he hired women to staff his empire because he felt they were just as capable as men. He neglected to mention that they also worked a third more cheaply and were twice as easy to intimidate as men.

  "I . . . don't . . . care. . . ." Dorma whispered eerily.

  "Then I'll do it myself," Rumpp snapped.

  It took a while. Every so often he heard the weird foreign voice crying out from the receiver's diaphragm, like a lost soul. He slammed those phones harder than the others.

  By the time the floor had fallen silent, the sun was setting. It was then and only then that Randal Rumpp realized the electricity was off. It had not been off before. The computers had been running. Now their screens were dim to the point of grayness.

  Whatever had happened, the electricity was no longer flowing through the building's wiring.

  He made a mental note to sue the contractor who had put in the wiring, and Con Ed as well. If he sued enough people, he was bound to recoup enough of his losses to bounce back.

  Randal Rumpp brushed past his executive assistant and plunked himself down behind his massive desk. He decided to play a hunch.

  There was one cellular phone in the office. It had not gone crazy like the others. He picked it up, extended the antenna, and stabbed out the number of the President of Chemical Percolators Hoboken, his chief creditor.

  "Mr. Longstreet's office," a crisp voice announced.

  "Randal Rumpp calling."

  He was put through without another word.

  "Alan? Randal here. By any chance have you heard about what's going on up here in the Rumpp Tower?"

  "The TV is full of it. I don't understand. What is going on? Are you all right?"

  "Never felt better. Listen, I don't appreciate being foreclosed on."

  "The Tower was our collateral on the Shangri-Rumpp deal, and we had to call in the note. We had no choice."

  "And neither did I."

  "Beg pardon?"

  "You can't seize a building you can't touch," Randal Rumpp said flatly, looking at his face reflected in his buffed and polished fingernails.

  "Are you saying you're responsible for this . . . this Halloween prank?"

  "No prank, Chuck. The Rumpp Tower is Randal Rumpp's top tangible asset. Now it's been converted into an intangible asset. Never play against a born winner. Chumps like you always lose."

 
At that Randal Rumpp hung up, smiling a simpering smile that could have belonged to a turn-of-the-century chorus girl.

  "That ought to tangle up their balance sheets while I formulate my next move."

  The trouble was, Randal Rumpp didn't have a next move. In fact, he still didn't know what the heck was going on. But in the game of life, he knew, he who talks big and bluffs high usually walks away with the jackpot.

  And since he was a virtual untouchable in his own tower, he might as well pull on people's chains a little more.

  "Get me BCN," he called into the next room.

  "How? The phone's are all dead."

  "Never mind. I'll do it myself." He stabbed out a number on his cellular and identified himself to the BCN switchboard. He was put through to the news director at once.

  "Let me speak with Don Cooder."

  "He's covering the Lincoln Tunnel collapse."

  "Really?" said Randal. "It collapsed, huh? Maybe I'll rebuild it. How about the baby-maker-what's her name?"

  "Cheeta Ching?"

  "That's the one. Put her on. Tell her Randal Rumpp is offering her an exclusive in the Rumpp Tower spectacular."

  "Spectacular?"

  "You are covering this story, aren't you?"

  "As a matter of fact, Miss Ching is down on Fifth Avenue now."

  "Great. Tell her to meet me in the lobby in five minutes."

  "But-"

  Randal Rumpp hung up. He went to a wall mirror and primped his hair, straightening his fire-engine-red Hermes tie. He had to duck and twist to see himself clearly, inasmuch as he had had his last name etched vertically into the mirror surface. It was an antique, for which he had overpaid. But with his name on it, it was sure to fetch a princely sum when he got around to selling it.

  "I look great," he said. "A winner."

  As he walked past his secretary he said, "If anyone wants me I'll be down in the lobby, schmoozing with the media."

  The woman looked up, pale and drawn. "There are no media in the lobby."

  "There will be by the time I get down there," Randal Rumpp said confidently.

  It was a prediction that proved true only because the elevators had gone dead. Randal Rumpp began the slow, tortuous stairwell descent to the lobby, vowing that when things got back to normal he would have a greased brass firepole installed in a masonry column, so if this ever happened again he could zip down to the lobby, just like Adam West.