The Head Men td-31

by Warren Murphy

  "You're welcome to it," said Remo. "First, Walgreen. After Kennedy was killed, the Secret Service started paying off somebody who

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  threatened to kill the next President. Walgreen was out of the service then but they recruited him to act as the bag man. So far, so good. Now this President, he won't pay. So our friendly little assassin kills off Walgreen. Very well, too. He put him in a safe hole and then he blew him away. You staying with me ?"

  "I'm with you," said Smith.

  "Pay attention. I'm going to ask questions later," Remo said. "Now Walgreen tried to get protection. He went to a security agency called Paldor's. It's filled with old Secret Service hands. They couldn't protect him. Now this Paldor's. Yesterday, three of its guys tried to kill me."

  "And me, too," said Chiun from across the room. "Do I count for nothing around here?"

  "And Chiun," Remo said. "Now I would have said those guys who tried to kill me were the ones threatening the President, but-when'd you say the threat to him came ?"

  "I didn't say, but it was last night."

  "Okay. It came after these three were dead. So they didn't have anything to do with it. And I don't know who does. Can't we just buy the bastards off?"

  "The President asked about that," Smith said. "They said no."

  "Then they're not in it just for the money. They've got something else in mind," Remo said.

  "Right. It would seem so."

  "Or maybe they're just loonies, and they're not playing with a full deck anymore," Remo suggested.

  "That could be too."

  "Who threatened the President?" Remo asked.

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  "A telephone call. Mid-southern voice. Forties. They traced the call to a rundown apartment in the east side of the city. Rent was paid three months in advance in cash. Nobody ever saw or remembers the tenant. The phone had been hooked up for two months but this was the first call apparently that had been made anywhere. They're trying to find somebody, either in the building or the phone company or somewhere, who might have seen the tenant, but no luck yet. And they've looked for prints, but they haven't found any."

  "Tuesday, huh?"

  "Yes. Two days to work."

  "That's plenty of time," Remo said.

  "You think you have an idea," said Smith.

  "Yeah. But I can't talk about it now," Remo said.

  After he had hung up, Remo told Chiun about the threat to the President.

  "It is clear then what we must do," Chiun said.

  "What's that?"

  "We must tell this Viola Poombs that the President has rejected our advice so she can be sure to put it in her book. And then we must leave the country. No one can blame us for what will happen if we are not here and anyway he did not take our advice."

  "Frankly, Chiun, I'd hoped we could find something better than just protecting our own reputations. Maybe like saving the President's life."

  "If you insist upon trivializing everything, go ahead," Chiun said. "But important is important. The reputation of the House of Sinanju must be protected."

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  "Well, it doesn't matter," Remo said. "I've got a plan."

  "Is this as good as your plan once to go look for Smith in Pittsburgh because you knew he was in Cincinnati or some name like that?"

  "Even better than that one," Remo said.

  "I can't wait to hear this wonderful plan."

  "I can't tell you about it," said Remo.

  "Why not?" asked Chiun.

  "You'll laugh."

  "How quickly you become wise."

  When he was given the money, Osgood Harley had been given specific instructions. He was to go to 200 different stores. He was to buy 200 Kodak Instamatics and 400 packages of flashcubes. One camera and two packs of cubes in each store. The orders had been precise and specific and he had been warned about deviating from them.

  But 200 stores? Really.

  He had bought fourteen of them at fourteen different stores and carefully stashed them in his fourth-floor walkup apartment on North K Street. But at the Whelan's drugstore on the corner near his apartment, he got to thinking. Who would know? Or care?

  "I'd like a dozen Instamatic cameras," he told the clerk.

  "I beg your pardon."

  "A dozen. Twelve. I'd like twelve Instamatic cameras," Harley said. He was" five feet, eight inches tall with thin stringy hair that wasn't blond enough to look anything but dirty. The clerk noticed this as he looked up at the slack-jawed young man who was wearing four buttons.

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  One protested racism, police brutality, poverty; while three endorsed American Indians, the Irish Republican Army, and reopening of trade markets with Cuba.

  "Twelve cameras. That's very expensive. Thinking of starting your own store?" the middle-aged clerk said with what he presumed to be a smile.

  "I've got the money, don't worry about it," Harley said, peeling a roll of fifties from the front pocket of his white-streaked bleached jeans.

  "I'm sure of that, sir," said the clerk. "Which model would you like?"

  "Farrah Fawcett-Majors."

  "I beg your pardon."

  "The model I'd like. Farrah Fawcett-Majors."

  "Oh, yes. Sure. Wouldn't we all?"

  "The cheapest one," Harley said.

  "Yes sir." The clerk turned the key locking the register and went into the back stockroom and brought down from a middle shelf a dozen Instamatics. None of his business, but who would buy a dozen Instamatics at once? Maybe the young man was a schoolteacher, and this was for a new class in photography starting up somewhere.

  The bill with tax came to almost two hundred dollars. Harley started counting out fifties.

  "Oh, shit. Flashcubes. I need two dozen packs of flashcubes," he said.

  "Got 'em right here." The clerk tossed them into a bag. "And how about film, sir?"

  "Film?" asked Harley.

  "Yes. For the cameras."

  "No. I don't need no film."

  The clerk shrugged. The man might be crazy

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  but the fifty-dollar bills guaranteed enough sanity to do business with him.

  He took five fifties from Harley and made change.

  "Could I have your name, sir?"

  "What for?"

  "We often have specials here in the camera department. I can put you on our mailing list."

  Harley thought a moment. "No. I don't want to leave my name."

  "As you wish."

  Harley walked out whistling with two large bags in his hands. The clerk watched him leave, noticing the slightly bowed legs, the run-down Hush Puppies, and practiced his powers of observation by remembering the four political buttons Osgood Harley wore on his short-sleeved plaid shirt.

  A piece of cake, Harley thought. And he could save himself a lot of money in cab fares by buying in bulk. He wondered if there was a place nearby, a Kodak distribution center, where he could pick up the remaining 174 cameras he needed. Maybe he could have them delivered. Who would know? Or care?

  Sylvester Montrofort was locked in his office, talking into the tape recorder secreted in the top right-hand drawer of his desk.

  "Of course, by now that idiot is buying cameras in bulk. His is not the generation that can either follow instructions or do things the careful, correct way. Having him bungle will just make it that much easier for him to be picked up when the correct time comes. The fool."

  Montrofort wanted to laugh but couldn't. He

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  tried to picture Osgood Harley in his mind's eye but all he could see was the formidable battlements of Viola Poombs, who was coming to dinner that night at his apartment.

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  CHAPTER TEN

  "Hello, young fellow."

  "How are you, Mr. President?" The speaker of the House of Representatives was almost twenty years older than the President and had been fighting in political wars when the President was still in high school. But he accepted the warmth of the Presi
dent's greeting with the eternal optimism of the professional politican, trying to convince himself that it was not just de rigueur warmth but an evidence of some deep-felt admiration, affection, and trust. This was made more difficult by the fact that he knew in his heart that this President, like all the others, would peel off his skin and tan it for huaraches if that was demanded by either the national interest or the presidential whim.

  "We've got to have lunch," the President said.

  "My place or yours?" asked the speaker.

  "I know I'm new around here but that's the first time I've ever been mistaken for a nooner," the President said lightly. "Better make it mine. The last time I ate over at the Capitol, there were roaches in the building. I can't stand roaches."

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  "That was a long time ago, Mr. President. We haven't had roaches in two years."

  "I'll take your word for it, youngster, but let's eat over here."

  "What time, sir?"

  "Make it one o'clock." The President paused. "And don't go telling any of those damned Boston Irish politicians where you'll be. We got us some heavy talking to do."

  The speaker of the House listened through the soup and nodded through the salad but before the fried liver with bacon and onions arrived, he said, "You can't do it. That's all there goddam is to it, you can't do it."

  The President raised a cautionary finger to his lips and the two men waited in awkward silence for the waiter to bring in their luncheon plates and clear away the soup and salad bowls.

  When the private White House dining room was again empty but for them, the President said, "I've thought this through. I can't not do it."

  "You're my President, goddam it. You can't go jeopardizing your life this way."

  "Maybe. But I'm also the President of this country and if the President is going to be held hostage by the whims of some, I don't know what he is, lunatic, then this country better know about it, because it can't be governed any more and maybe we ought to find that out right away. I'm not going to spend four years hiding in here, skulking around, ducking under windowsills every time I walk past glass."

  "That's a narrow view, sir," the speaker said hotly. "I've had one President shot out from un-

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  der me and I've had another one blown away by his own stupidity. I'd rather have the President hiding and the presidency endure than have a brave President shot down. And on the Capitol steps? You can't do it. Case closed. Roma locuta est."

  "I always knew you yankees were gonna throw that damned Catholic altar boy stuff at me some day," the President said, his ample lips trying to smile. "Think about this, though. If I hide, who says the presidency endures? It's been hanging on by a thread since 1963. One President shot and another one forced to hide in the White House and another one thinking he was Louis the Fourteenth. So what've we got? A presidency that's a prison and a President who's a prisoner. Four years of my hiding and there won't be any presidency. The leader of this peckerheaded country may be a damned street mob, for all we know. I'm going and that's that." He hurried on quickly to silence any interruption. "Now the reason I called you here was this. I'm going to make sure the Vice President is at his desk on Saturday and doesn't leave this building for anything. And I don't want you on the Capitol steps with me. Or anybody else if you can swing it. You keep your guys inside."

  "They're going to bitch that you're just trying to keep them off television. Another dirty political plot."

  "Good. Let them bitch. Let them bitch like a constipated hound dog. And with luck they'll still be bitchin' at the end of the day, because everything's been a piece of cake, and maybe we can explain it to them."

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  "And if we can't ... if ..." The Speaker of the House could not bring himself to speak the word "assassination."

  "If we can't, we'll know that we tried to do the right thing. Trust me. This is right."

  After a long wait, the Speaker nodded glumly and began to toy with his liver. Maybe it was right. He had to trust and at least, he wasn't being asked to trust a President who thought he had to be a public macho symbol to the western world. This President's judgment would be cool and unemotional. But the Speaker still did not like the idea of a President walking into an assassination attempt, perhaps without any solid way of defending himself. He looked across the table at the man who sat in the nation's highest office. His face was wrinkled with the twisting gouge of the duties he handled every day; his skin was leathered like a man who had known what it was to make his living out of the inhospitable ground soil, whose own roots in America went back to the days when to survive meant to fight because it was a hostile land, and only the strong had endured. He looked at the President.

  And he trusted him.

  Remo didn't.

  He moved through the darkened White House corridors like a silent wisp of smoke through a cigarette holder.

  Secret Service men stood at every stairway and sat out of sight in alcoves at the intersection of each corridor in the living quarters of the President on the building's third floor. They were a

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  palace guard, the first palace guard in history to ask questions first and to shoot later, Remo thought. But why not? America was a first in history too. The building he was in was an example of English Palladian architecture, designed by an Irishman, for the American chief of state. It was the story of the United States. It had been built by the best from everywhere and so, of all the nations in the world, it worked best. Not because its system was necessarily best, but because its people were the best to be found. That was why, no matter what America and its leaders tried to do, they could not export the American democratic system. It was a system designed by the best of the world, for the best of the world, and to expect cattle to understand it, much less emulate it, was asking too much of cattle.

  Remo decided America had a much better, simpler policy for its relationships with the rest of the world.

  "Screw 'em all and keep your powder dry," he mumbled.

  Remo realized he had spoken aloud when a voice answered from behind him: "My powder's very dry. Don't test it."

  He turned around slowly to confront a Secret Service agent. The man wore a gray suit with a tieless shirt. He had a .45 caliber automatic aimed at Remo's belly, held tight to his hip in safe position, where no sudden move of hand or foot could reach it before the weapon could be fired.

  "Who are you? What are you doing here?"

  Remo realized the man was new to the White House detail. Good procedure didn't call for on-

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  the-spot interrogations. It called for the intruder to be removed from the dangerous area, and then questioned at length somewhere else.

  "I'm looking for the Rose Guest Room," Remo said.

  "Why?"

  "I'm sleeping over tonight and I went to the bathroom but I got lost trying to get back. I'm the Dali Lama."

  There was just a moment's hesitation, just a split second of confusion on the face of the agent, and Remo moved slowly to his right, then darted in quickly to his left. The automatic was out of the agent's hand, and Remo's right thumb and index finger were alongside the large carotid artery in the man's neck, squeezing just hard enough to cut off blood flow and sound. The man collapsed and Remo caught him in his arms, and carried him over to put him on the chair, underneath a large oval gilt mirror.

  He put the man's automatic back in his shoulder holster. He had no more than five minutes and he would have to move quickly now.

  He found the room he wanted and did what he had to do quickly, and then was back out in the corridor moving in the shadows to the President's bedroom. His thin body flowed through the corridors, drifting in and out of shadows, his body rhythms not those of a man walking or running, but randomly smooth, like the passage of air, and no more seen or noticed than the movement of air molecules.

  Then Remo was in the presidential bedroom. The First Lady lay on her side, both hands under the pillow, snoring lightly. Sh
e wore a rhine-

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  stoned mask over her eyes to keep out the light from her husband's late-night in-bed reading. The President slept on his back, his hands folded over his bare chest, his body covered only by a sheet.

  The President's hands moved up when he felt something drop lightly on his chest. Military service had given him the light sleeping habit, and he woke quickly, moved his hands and felt the object. He tried to determine what it was in the dark but couldn't. He reached for the light, but his hand was stopped by another hand before it could reach the switch.

  "Those are the braces out of your daughter's mouth," Remo's voice said. "As easy as that was, that's how easy you go on Saturday."

  The President's voice was close enough to being cool for Remo to be impressed.

  "You're that Remo, aren't you?" the President said in a hushed whisper.

  "Yeah. One and the same. Come to tell you that you're staying home Saturday."

  "You haven't found out anything yet?" the President said.

  "Just enough to convince me you're a damned fool if you think you're going to some open-air rally to stroke a lot of teeny-boppers when someone wants to put you down."

  "That's where we differ, Remo. I'm going."

  "You'll be a brave corpse," said Remo. "We warned you before. You're dead meat. You're still dead meat."

  "That's an opinion," the President said. He lowered his voice as his wife's steady regulated snoring stopped for a second, then resumed.

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  "I can't stay hidden in this building for four years."

  "Not for four years. Just Saturday."

  "Sure. Just Saturday. Then Sunday. Then all of next week . . . next month . . . next year . . . forever. I'm going." The presidential voice was soft, but it had a stubborn intensity to it that made Remo feel like sighing.

  "I could keep you here," Remo said.

  "How?"

  "I could break your leg."

  "I'd go on crutches."

  "I could do something to your voice box and make you silent for the next ninety-six hours."

  "I'd go anyway and watch somebody else read my speech."

  "You're the stubbornest damned cracker I ever met," Remo said.

  "Are you finished threatening me?"

  "I guess so. Unless I can think of something else to do to you."