Dying Space td-47

by Warren Murphy

  The Puerto Ricans lumbered forward. "This here's our turf, man," one of them said.

  "Turf? You mean this?" Remo picked up a loose slab of concrete from the floor and thrust it into the man's mouth. The man did a slow spin in the air and came to rest on his face.

  "Anyone else not willing to vacate the premises?"

  "Yeah. Me," said the man beside Cement Lips, and he began to squeeze the trigger of the pistol in his hand. Before he fired, Remo kicked the gun into position and it went off squarely at the man's own temple, the slug passed through his brain and exited out the far side.

  Remo caught the bullet. "Thanks," he said, pocketing it. "One."

  "One what?" mumbled Cement Lips.

  "One ball," Remo said as he sent the man's testicle into his kidney.

  "Hey—hey, what you going to do, man?" one of the three remaining said.

  "I'm going to find out where all the guns are coming from. I'll need one of you to tell me and another to verify it."

  "So what happens to the third one?"

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  "This," Remo said, splintering the man's nose into his skull.

  Two guns clanked to the floor.

  "Tony Marotta," one of the two men left standing said.

  "Tony Marotta," the other echoed.

  Remo rolled his eyes. "Now, how am I supposed to know you're telling me the truth? I was going to ask one of you over there" he said, patiently pointing out a darkened corner, "and one of you over there!' He motioned on the diagonal.

  "That's the truth, mister. Marotta operates in the alley beside the complex. From a hot dog cart."

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah. You're going to let us go now, aren't you?" No.

  "No?" They looked at each other in panic.

  "Not unless one of you is Jose and lives on 181st Street."

  "I am," they said in unison.

  "Good. Then you can both start washing your name off the walls of this complex. You supply the soap and water."

  "Can I take my gun?" one of the Joses asked.

  «XT *»

  No.

  "No gun? Hey, man, you crazy? I can't wash no walls without a gun. I mean—"

  Remo pinched a nerve cluster in the man's solar plexus.

  "... I mean, I will be veiy happy to wash the walls, señor. With no gun. With my tongue,

  perhaps. Only please stop with the fingers in the stomach, boss."

  "Remember, if I see you and you don't have dishpan hands—"

  "We will," they said. Remo watched them scramble up the stairs and out the building before v arranging the bodies in front of the basement door.

  "These ought to keep people away," Remo said to Archie. "Just don't move. I'll be back."

  "Famous last words," Archie said.

  Tony Marotta was where Jose One and J°se Two said he would be, slinking near the slime and stink of the alleyway.

  "You Tony Marotta?" Remo said.

  "Who wants to know?"

  "My name's Remo. I live at the Sister Evangélica apartments."

  "You a cop? You got to say if you're a cop. That's the law."

  "I bet you know all about the law," Remo said.

  "I asked you if you was a cop," Marotta said.

  "No. I'm not a cop."

  "Okay." Wheezing and reeking of beer and salami, Marotta flipped open the top of his hot dog cart. Inside were dozens of hand weapons, all used. Beside them were neat boxes of ammunition. "Hundred apiece for the rods."

  Remo pulled a wad of bills from his pocket. 'Til take all of them."

  "What about the ammunition?"

  'This'11 cover the ammunition, too."

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  Marotta raised his eyebrows. "You got it," he said. He started to unpack the guns from the cart.

  "Don't bother with that," Remo said.

  "Why not?"

  "I need it," Remo said.

  'What the hell for?"

  "Because I'm not a cop."

  "So?"

  "I'm an assassin," he said, and crushed Marotta's skull with one hand. With the other he stuffed the gun runner into the cart and snapped the lid shut. "It might even take a day or two to replace you," Remo said with a sigh.

  He wheeled the cart to the storm drain two blocks away and tossed it in. "That's the biz, sweetheart," he said as the bubbles from the cart rose to the top of the muddy water.

  Inside the complex, pandemonium was still raging. Mrs. Miller was single-handedly picking off a number of gang members of various creeds and ethnic origins. She was an indiscriminate but excellent marksman. Remo decided to start with her.

  "Mrs. Miller," he said at her closed apartment door. A bullet whizzed through the wood. "Mrs. Miller, I want to get rid of those hoodlums down there."

  "You? What do you think I'm trying to do?" came the reply from behind the door.

  "I think I can do it."

  "How? Magic? They're like roaches, these twerps."

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  I "Just leave that to me. All I want you to do is to stop shooting for five minutes."

  "Go pull your pudding."

  "Five minutes. Honest. Could you get all the tenants to stay in their apartments and stop shooting for five minutes?"

  "What for?"

  "So I can have a clear field."

  "You got a bazooka? You going to blow the place up? This is my home, you know. Twenty-five years I'm here. You think I want you should blow up my house?" From inside the apartment he heard her fire another round at the courtyard.

  "Nothing like that. How about it? Five minutes, that's all."

  "Well ..." He heard her footsteps pad toward the door. Presently an eye appeared on the other side of the bullet hole.

  "What's your name?"

  "Remo."

  "You Jewish?" she asked.

  "I don't know. I'm an orphan."

  "Oh, you poor baby. You married, maybe?"

  "No, I'm not married."

  "A nice-looking boy like you ought to be married."

  "I hope to be someday, ma'am."

  "Really?"

  "Really. Will you help me out?"

  "Well," she repeated. After a few seconds she bellowed, "Listen, you tenants. This is Mrs. Miller talking. I want you should all quit shooting for five minutes."

  A rumble issued from the locked apartments of

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  the complex. "Shut up and listen. Just five minutes, so this nice, young maybe Jewish boy can do something about the twerps, okay?"

  More grumbling. Laughter from the twerps in the courtyard. But no gunfire. "Okay, boychik," Mrs. Miller whispered through the bullethole. "You come back alive, maybe I let you go out with my niece Sheila, such a cook."

  "Thank you, Mrs. Miller," Remo said on his way down the staircase. Two twerps in leather were waiting for him on the first landing.

  "You know, you guys really are like roaches," he said.

  "And you're like dead," one of the twerps answered, flashing a switchblade at Remo. In a second the man's arm was in Remo's own, and the blade thrust, formed a Z on the stomach of his astonished companion, and then disappeared down the man's throat.

  "Wrong again, Zorro," Remo said, and sealed the door to the building with a kick that pressed the wood of the doors into the concrete of the walls.

  "Allee Allee in come free," Remo called as he raced from one building to the next, flushing out the street warriors into the courtyard. All but the two Joses from 181st Street, who were scrubbing walls with the fervor of zealots.

  When they had all gathered, their weapons in tow, Remo spoke.

  "Boo," he said.

  They charged. For once, the rival gangs performed in perfect concert against the invading

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  thin man with no weapons but his hands. They slashed, they fired, they threw.

  Some even fought fairly. Remo saw to it that they were taken care of quickly, with no pain, even though he knew the reason they were fighting fairly was because they we
re either out of ammunition or weapons. Still, it didn't hurt to be lenient, he thought proudly. After all, how many chances did an assassin get to be a nice guy?

  "Not this time," he said as he poked his index finger into the frontal lobe of a black with a knife. "Not this time," he said as he dislocated both arms of a haiiy behemoth with a gun in each hand. "Maybe now," he said when a slender Puerto Rican approached him with his hands behind his back. Then he saw the tip of the Colt .350 peeking over the man's shoulder. "Nope, guess not," Remo said as he kicked the man's Adam's apple into his brain.

  "You got one minute, twenty seconds," Mrs. Miller screeched from her window.

  Remo speeded up, taking the thugs at double-time. Kick, thrust, poke, elbow, head attack, pull them level, inside-line attack, toe, hip attack, upper arm, heel, third-finger attack, knee, rib attack, easy on the upswing, fourth finger.

  It was done. Chiun would have been proud. He had used nearly every basic attack known in Sinanju. Chiun would have praised him. He would be honored to have taught Remo. He would have said ...

  "Tsk, tsk, tsk," came the familiar clucks from behind. "Always is the elbow bent. Do you never learn? Why, oh why, do I waste the invaluable

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  wisdom of the Master of Sinanju on a worthless pupil such as you?"

  Remo whirled around. "Chiun. What are you doing—"

  "You left one," roared Mrs. Miller. "Stand back! I'll get him. You tenants hold your fire. This baby's mine."

  "Mrs. Miller, don't," Remo yelled, but he was too late. The machine gun was already propped in her window on a tripod, and the bullets came blazing.

  "Little Father-"

  "Hush," Chiun said, his wrinkled wizard's face expressionless, his blue silk robes billowing as his hands moved in a blur in front of him.

  Remo counted the seconds. Three rounds of ammunition per second—986 . . . 992 . . . 1053 ...

  "She is nearly finished," Chiun said, and Remo knew that the ancient Oriental was counting, too. Rhythm and balance. Ralance and movement. Movement and breathing. All were related in the discipline of Sinanju, and Chiun was the Master.

  When the count reached 1,600, Remo knew the ammunition would be spent in a matter of seconds. And when the silence finally came, Chiun's tiny figure stood knee-deep in the center of five perfectly formed piles of fired ammunition which, Remo knew, contained exactly 1,000 rounds each.

  The tenants stared dumbfounded at the frail old Oriental. "He's a friend of yours, maybe?" Mrs. Miller asked sheepishly.

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  "Yes," Remo said. He turned to Chiun. "That was beautiful, Little Father."

  "And how many did you catch?" Chiun asked.

  "Well, see, I got kind of busy."

  "How many?"

  Remo remembered the one bullet he had retrieved from the thug in the basement after the man had shot his own.head off. He pulled it out of his pocket. It was gnarled and squashed. Pieces of drying brain tissue clung to it. "Uh, one," Remo said lamely.

  "I see." Chiun's tone of voice could have frozen the Gobi Desert.

  "I can explain."

  "Did I ask for explanations?"

  "No, but-"

  "Remo, boychik," Mrs. Miller screamed. "Guess who just dropped by with a cake. Sheila!"

  'Who?"

  "Remember, my niece, such a cook? You want maybe I should introduce you?"

  Past Mrs. Miller, Remo could see the hulking frame of a giantess in organdy. And even from where he was standing, he could see the mustache on Sheila's upper lip.

  "I'm kind of busy, Mrs. Miller," he said. "But I'll send a friend."

  With the woman's protests still within earshot, Remo pushed aside the bodies at the top of the stairwell leading to the basement where he had hidden Archie.

  "It's all over, friend," Remo said.

  Archie blinked at the sight of Chiun in full Oriental splendor behind Remo.

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  "I am Chiun," he said. "Greetings."

  Archie smiled. "That's good, 'cause I thought mebbe I died, and you was God."

  Outside, Mrs. Miller's shrieks were still audible. "I just want you to do something for me, Archie," Remo said. "I told Mrs. Miller I'd send a friend up to try some of her cake. Will you go?"

  Archie slapped his forehead and groaned. "Do I have to?" he whined.

  "Aw, come on. It's just a little cake."

  "I've had Delphine's cake."

  "Delphine?"

  "Delphine Miller."

  Remo caught his breath. "As in 'For a good time... '?"

  Archie nodded. "Call Delphine. Anything to trap some poor slob into meeting that gorilla she's got for a niece."

  Remo laughed. "Okay, I'll do it," Archie said. "For you. But I'm not going to like it."

  As Archie shuffled off despairingly toward Mrs. Miller's screeches, the mayor's entourage of policemen, most of them carrying bags and boxes, reappeared. At the sight of the scattered bodies in the courtyard, the contingent rushed the mayor for cover.

  "Murder," she screamed. "Right under my own nosel This is an outrage. The publicity will be terrible. Call a moving van immediately. I'm not staying in this pit one second longer."

  "Yes, ma'am," one of the policemen said.

  "Start some kind of investigation. Do whatever you want. Just get me the hell out of here!"

  "Yes, ma'am."

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  "Who are those two men?" The mayor pointed at Remo and Chiun. "What are you doing here?"

  "Just having a good time with Delphine," Remo said.

  Outside the complex, Chiun looked at the one bullet Remo had saved and tossed it into the street. "Disgraceful," he muttered. "I come all this way to deliver a message to you, and what do I find? One brain-smeared boom dropping. I am shamed."

  "What was the message?"

  "Are you not interested in my shame?" the old man snapped.

  "Sure, Little Father. But maybe you can tell me the message first. Then we'll have lots of time to talk about your shame."

  "Disgraceful."

  "The message?"

  "The message is to come home, Tiome' being this cheap motel." With a sweep, he indicated the Forty-First Street Inn, advertising "Hot Water and Free Telivizion," which Remo guessed was something like television. "The Emperor has come to call."

  "Smitty? Why didn't you both just wait for me?"

  Chiun looked sideways at Remo. "Have you ever tried to sit alone in a room with Emperor Smith for a half-hour?"

  "I guess I know what you mean," Remo said.

  Smith was sitting cross-legged, as he always did. He was wearing his perennial three-piece gray suit, and his ever-present attaché case was at

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  his side. His face was pallid and lemony, as usual, with its standard expression of vague unease tinged with indigestion. Nothing about Harold W. Smith's appearance ever changed much.

  "We have a problem," he said. Nothing about Smith's conversations ever changed much, either.

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  CHAPTER THREE

  Alive again.

  Alive again.

  Hello is all right.

  Alive again.

  My name is Mr. Gordons.

  Alive again.

  This was the poem that flashed through Mr. Gor-dons's tungsten-and-nickel synapses. The poem would win no literary prizes for the creature. He knew this because he knew he was not creative. He was, in fact, so uncreative that he couldn't even tell if the poem was good or not, but he assumed it was not because he was not creative. He was not programmed to be creative. He was programmed to survive.

  Still, he thought, there was a chance that the poem might be creative, incorporating as it did the first original sentence he had ever spoken to a human besides his creator.

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  The creator herself, a brilliant scientist, had told him that hello was all right by way of introduction. Mr. Gordons was born as a pseudo-human for the first time with the words, "Hello is all right." Hence, it was only logical to include his f
irst words in his born-again poem. Logical, but probably uninspired poetry. Nevertheless, he repeated it aloud for the benefit of his urine-stained, shock-numbed audience of one.

  "Alive again, alive again, hello is all right, alive again, My name is Mr. Gordons," Mr. Gordons said in carefully modulated tones.

  "H-hello is what?" the squat, dark man with no front teeth asked.

  "All right. Hello is all right."

  "All right for what, man?" the person said, wiping a trembling arm over his forehead.

  It was no use. Mr. Gordons's poem was obviously, as his creator would have said, a turkey. He dropped his performance and concentrated on his newly functional system. "Speech mechanism operative," the robot spoke. "Motor control excellent." He raised and lowered his arm several times. "Hello is all right, all right, all right...."

  Something in the voice simulator was stuck. He twisted his head around his neck two full revolutions to erase the repetition.

  The toothless man was squinting at him pugnaciously. "What you do to my friend, you?" "he demanded.

  "I removed life from him," Mr. Gordons said. "I require something that he possesses, something he would not be willing to give. But you will not be

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  killed unless you do something to endanger my survival. I need nothing from you. You are too short."

  "Wait a minute, man," the human rumbled, seething. Then he interrupted himself. "What you need from Verbanic, anyway?"

  "What is a Verbanic?"

  "That guy you murdered over there." He pointed toward the dead garbageman.

  Mr. Gordons walked stiffly toward the corpse and picked it up with one hand. "His skin," the robot said. "I need his skin to resemble your species. Yours is too small for my frame."

  Then he rotated his thumb so that a spiky metal edge appeared. He pierced Verbanic's flesh and tore a long slit from skull to tailbone.

  The human with the missing front teeth vomited. Still retching, he staggered backward and away as Mr. Gordons methodically skinned the human carcass by the cold light of the moon.

  Gonzalez ran. The air came burning and ragged into his lungs as he sprinted down one highway, across another, and onto a side road, where he hitched a ride as far as the Los Angeles city limits. From there he caught a north-bound bus that dropped him off within blocks of the police station. He ran until he was inside the precinct doors.

  "You got to help me," Gonzalez gasped.