American Obsession td-109

by Warren Murphy

  As the ambulance attendants reached for the rear doors, the senator twisted around in his wheelchair. He already had one of the bags torn open and with both hands was mashing a greasy, four-inch-thick sandwich into his mouth. His eyes were slitted with pleasure. Drool and escaping grease glistened all down his chin and neck. Then the doors slammed closed.

  With sirens blaring, the ambulance sped away. It had a three-cruiser escort.

  "Come on, Little Father," Remo said, "we've got to follow him."

  Because of the ambulance's spinning lights and wailing sirens, it wasn't in theory a hard thing to do. The problem was, every other member of the crowd had the same idea. All the reporters and their crews dashed for their cars and satellite-dished minivans. And in a matter of seconds, Pacific Coast Highway was like the Daytona 500 in pursuit of the speeding ambulance. The best Remo could do with the underpowered rental car was maintain position dead in the middle of the pack.

  The ambulance turned onto the Santa Monica Freeway, and in short order led the honking, swerving entourage to the emergency entrance of Marshall Connors Memorial Hospital.

  Immediately, some of the media vehicles turned off for the hospital's parking area. Other drivers pulled up onto the sidewalk and highballed it across the lawn for the emergency entrance. Amazingly, those daring souls skidded their vehicles to a stop without colliding with each other or with any of the madly scattering pedestrians. The car and van doors flew open, disgorging reporters and video cameramen, who raced to get a picture of the senator as he was carried from the ambulance.

  "I'd better find a place to park," Remo said.

  "No, wait," Chiun commanded. "All is not as it appears."

  "Don't tell me. You're getting a news flash from the satellite dish in your head?"

  Chiun clucked his tongue. "If your senses were not so impaired, you too would know that the man we seek is at this moment leaving by the building's side exit."

  "And how would you know that?"

  The Master reached a slender hand out the open passenger window and wafted the air to his flared nostrils. "Go that way," he ordered, pointing with a long finger. "And hurry!"

  Remo leaned on his horn and turned right, forcing his way between the jam of backed-up media cars. He drove over the landscaped concrete island, onto the hospital front lawn and then around the side of the hospital. When he came to the wide red-brick entry walkway he turned again, this time for the street.

  "What car did he get in?" Remo demanded. "What the hell am I supposed to be looking for?"

  Chiun stuck his head out the window and, his scraggly beard flapping in the breeze, shut his eyes and took a deep, slow breath. "That way!"

  Remo bounced over the curb and back onto the road, fishtailing around oncoming traffic.

  "Are we getting closer?" he asked.

  Chiun sampled the air. Then he opened his eyes and pointed again. "That one!" he exclaimed. "The stinker is in that one!"

  The vehicle the Master had identified was a stretch limo, navy blue, with a silver TV antenna on the roof. "Gee, I wonder who the limo belongs to?" Remo said as he closed the gap between the cars.

  The limousine's personalized California license plate read MY-T-MAUS.

  Even though Remo sang a bar or two of the theme song for him-"Here I am to save the day!"-Chiun didn't get it. The cartoon show had been off the air for decades before the Master had picked up his nasty TV habit.

  The limo turned onto an on-ramp for Interstate 5 North. After traveling six or seven miles, it exited the freeway and headed into the hills of Brentwood. Once they got onto the city streets, Remo dropped back a bit to avoid being seen.

  "You realize we have a much more serious problem on our hands with this one," he said to the Master.

  Chiun gave him a deadpan look.

  "Ludlow Baculum is a U.S. senator," Remo explained. "His security team will most likely be either federal agents or enforcers from whoever is importing the drug."

  "So?"

  "So they will not wait to use deadly force against us."

  "If they are in the employ of this inhuman monster, then they, too, must die."

  "No, Chiun," Remo said. "Listen to me. If the security is federal, it works for the government, not the senator. We work for the government, too. Indirectly. We can't kill those guys for doing their job. And we can't kill the senator, either."

  "But Emperor Smith-"

  "He wants a live subject to interview. We can't have a repeat of what happened on the football field."

  "It was I who captured the stink patch...."

  "Yes, but that's all we got." Remo waited for the message to sink in, then he said, "And there's another thing. It's a crime punishable by death to kill a member of the U.S. Senate. If we do that and get caught, even Smith won't be able to save us."

  "Do you suggest that I might be the one to lose control?"

  Remo grimaced; no way could he miss the outraged tone of the Master's voice. "Lighten up, Chiun," he told his companion. "All I'm saying is, this time let's try and not slaughter the man we're after."

  Chiun appeared to sulk, his hands and neck disappearing inside the cuffs and collar of his brocaded robe.

  "Sheesh," Remo said.

  Ahead, the limo slowed to a crawl as it approached a pair of tall white steel gates on the left. Gates that immediately opened, allowing the limo to enter a treelined asphalt drive. Remo kept on driving. The estate was ringed by a twelve-foot-high perimeter wall, which in turn was topped with tastefully rendered iron spikes. Remo continued on up the hill. As he rolled past the gate, he got a look at the men guarding the entrance. In suits, ties, shades, headsets and carrying mini-Uzis, they were Feds for sure.

  Remo parked a couple of blocks farther on, in front of a gardener's pickup truck, the bed of which was loaded down with bags of grass and yard tools. The gardener in question had ear protectors on and was in the middle of mowing the front lawn of a three-story Spanish-style home.

  "Let me handle the guys at the gate," he told Chiun as they got out of the car.

  The Master, still miffed, said nothing.

  As they passed the pickup, Remo grabbed a rake and a limb trimmer on an aluminum extender pole from the back. "Here," he told Chiun. "Carry this." The Master accepted the rake in silence.

  The two of them crossed the street and walked down the hill toward the white gates. As Remo and Chiun approached, through cascades of purple-and-pink bougainvillea, they could see the blue limo parked under the mansion's porticoed auto entrance. The huge home was without frills: modern, multilevel, with lots of glass exterior walls. They were about ten feet from the gate when the two security men on the other side moved into position.

  The Fed who wore his pale brown hair in a supershort crew cut spoke crisply into his headset, "We've got a pair of bogeys at nine o'clock. Stations Red and Blue on intruder alert."

  With the limb trimmer resting over his shoulder, Remo stopped in front of the gate.

  "Move on," said the Fed.

  "We're supposed to do some pruning inside," Remo told him.

  "No, you're not. Move on, lawn boy." The security men shared a smirk.

  Remo set the tip of the long metal pole on the sidewalk and stepped a little closer to the gate's bars. "My partner here," he said, gesturing at the little old Oriental with the rake, "is the world's foremost expert on the monkey puzzle tree. He's made time in his busy schedule, as a personal favor to Mr. Koch-Roche, in order to inspect a suspected fungal outbreak on a museum-quality specimen on the grounds. I don't think Mr. Koch-Roche will be amused if you turn him away."

  The crew-cut Fed gave Remo an irritated look, then spoke again into his mike. "Station Yellow here," he said, sizing up the men on the other side of the gate. "We've got a couple of guys claiming to be gardeners at the gate. See if they're expected. One's an old Jap-"

  Remo hadn't quite reached the optimum position for the strike he had planned-the tip of the pole was a little too far to the left-but he knew
he had no choice but to go for it. Chiun had already whipped the handle of his rake around, and was thrusting it between the steel bars like a lance.

  With a loud crack, the wooden handle splintered against the crew-cut Fed's body armor, but not before Chiun had delivered a paralyzing shock to his diaphragm. The Fed crumpled and dropped to his side, curling up in a fetal position on the drive.

  Crew-cut's partner had his hand on his mini-Uzi when Remo made his own thrust. The long aluminum pole bowed in the middle as its butt made solid contact with the man's chin. The bend in the pole absorbed some of the blow's power, which was still sufficient to stun the Fed and make him drop his weapon.

  Remo quickly scaled the gate and used the lever to open it for Chiun, who with great dignity walked through the opening and stepped over the fallen form of the crew-cut Fed.

  The Master paused to kneel beside the wheezing man.

  "Korean," Chiun said slowly and distinctly, as if addressing a child. "I am Korean."

  Chapter 17

  Senator Ludlow Baculum carefully peeled the adhesive patch from his right buttock. He observed the entire operation in the master bathroom's floor-to-ceiling mirror wall, while standing on the gold marble steps leading up to a vast, Mayan-temple-motif bathtub. Having removed the spent patch, the senator carelessly discarded it over his shoulder, mesmerized as he was by the sight of his own behind.

  Ludlow's butt was monumental. Not even as a young man had it jutted so firmly, so solidly. As he walked up and down the bathtub steps, he could see the various muscle groups rippling under skin stretched thin as an overinflated balloon.

  Oh, he was a manly man indeed.

  Even if Koch-Roche had been charging ten million a year for the patch, Lud would have paid it gladly. The wonder drug had resurrected him from the dead. Though his mind was still razor sharp, he had been trapped in a decaying, ancient hulk of a body.

  His was the tragedy of the aging horndog.

  His sexual desires were still intense as ever, but he no longer had the physical wherewithal to satisfy himself or anyone else. Before he'd started taking the drug, when he had put his palsied, liver-spotted hand upon a young woman's naked body, the sensation was dim, as if he were groping through many layers of fabric. Even his sense of touch had been dulled by time.

  That his continuing interest in women had become a joke, a widely circulated joke, had stung the senator most bitterly. But it hadn't stopped him from chasing women young enough to be his great-great-granddaughters. Because he was hampered by his walker and oxygen tank, Baculum's Washington, D.C., staff--comprised entirely of women under thirty-could usually avoid being cornered by him in the office. Elevators were a different story. As he slipped into his mid-eighties, Ludlow Baculum had spent many happy and profitable hours lurking in the back of a crowded car, his fingertips poised for a quick pinch or a shuddering grope.

  All that was past.

  Now he had a new body to match his desire. After an absence of a little more than a quarter century, Lud the Stud was back.

  The senator peeled the backing off a new patch and stuck it on his other buttock. Then he did some Mr. Universe poses in front of the mirror, squinting ferociously so he could focus on his popping biceps and hulking traps without donning his specs. It didn't mat ter to him that he still had a ninety-plus-year-old face, no hair and three teeth. Thanks to more than thirty years of carefully cultivated PAC contributions, of corporate under-the-table payoffs, he was filthy rich. Pretty young women could often overlook a bit of toothless blotch face when it controlled a few hundred million in purely liquid assets. Especially the type of pretty women he was attracted to: screamers in the sack with shoe-size IQs. His taste in lady friends hadn't changed since Woodrow Wilson took office.

  What Lud anticipated, now that he had a worldclass bod, was fewer serial marriages and many more casual love partners. Many more. Not only would he be faster on the grab, but given his more attractive physique, his prey would be less likely to try to escape. In the long run, the senator figured to break even on the price of the drug because the cost of his prenuptial agreements was bound to take a precipitous drop.

  Lud barefooted across the marble over to the sink counter, where he had left the remains of his most recent snack. He poked around in the bottom of the translucent paper sack and came up with a tiny shard of overcooked french fry and a few grains of salt. Which he quickly consumed. Then he held the bag up to the light. It was drenched in grease. He could feel it all slimy under his fingers. Delicious but inaccessible grease.

  Well, not quite.

  The senator wadded the bag into his mouth and chewed and sucked the oily goodness from the paper. When he was done, to make sure he hadn't missed any, he swallowed the bolus down.

  As he licked his lips, he heard soft singing from the next room.

  And he smelled Woman.

  In the past ten hours, his sense of smell had become most amazingly acute. Even the faintest hint of the opposite sex was for him a beacon, a Klaxon, a war cry. From her aroma, the senator judged the woman's age at twenty-two, well into the range of his target zone. And he guessed that she was Latina.

  He ducked his bald, spotted head around the bathroom doorjamb.

  Right on both counts.

  Jimmy Koch-Roche's live-in maid was bent over the queen-size bed, fluffing up the pillows.

  "Hola, Lupe!" Lud said, stepping into the bedroom.

  The girl looked up from her work. The friendly smile on her face vanished as she saw that the man who had hailed her was both naked and fully aroused.

  Lupe was no delicate flower. Though short in stature, she weighed a good 160 pounds. Her working clothes weren't the frilly, short-skirted French-maid outfits sold in sex-fantasy shops, but the cotton, sensible, no-nonsense, loose-fitting pants and shirt jacket of a nurse or beautician. She had no waist to speak of, and therefore no apparent hips. She wore her hair twisted up into a bun at the back of her head.

  None of which mattered in the least to Senator Baculum, whose dander was most definitely up. "iVenga aqui, Lupe!" he said, opening his huge powerful arms to her.

  Lupe let out a yelp and ran over the bed in her pink Reeboks, trying to reach the hallway door and, she hoped, safety.

  Lud was too quick for her. He blocked the exit with his massive body.

  "Come to me, my little frijole negra," the senator cooed.

  Lupe had no intention of doing anything of the kind. She dashed back over the bed and through the bathroom door. She slammed the door shut, shot the bolt and started yelling for help at the top of her lungs.

  The senator booted the heavy door off its hinges with a single kick, then walked over the fallen door. The maid was nowhere in sight. At first, he thought she might have escaped out a window. But behind the frosted glass of the huge shower stall, he saw her shadow. She cowered there, too scared to utter a sound.

  When Lud jerked open the door and stepped in, Lupe slumped down the wall to the floor, covering her head with her arms. She was sobbing, her black hair falling around her shoulders.

  "Don't cry now, Lupe," Lud said in a soothing voice. "I'm not one of your wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am Latin lovers. I'm from the old school of romance. I believe in foreplay, foreplay, foreplay...."

  With that, he dragged her bodily from the stall by her hair, sank his three teeth into her shoulder blade and started shaking her around the room like a terrier with an old knotted sock.

  "FREEZE!" said a voice behind Remo and Chiun as they mounted the low, broad steps to the mansion's side entrance. The command was followed immediately by "Get your hands up!"

  Remo turned to face a very excited young man with a very stubby machine pistol. The mini-Uzi's red laser-sight dot jitterdanced across the breast of his black T-shirt.

  "Please don't point that thing at me," Remo said, lifting his hands. "It makes me nervous."

  "Shut up!" The young Fed shifted his aim to Chiun. "You, too. Get 'em up!"

  The red dot played over the
Master's scrawny throat and brushed his smiling lips.

  "What're you grinn-?"

  Before the federal agent could finish the word, let alone his sentence, it was over.

  He had been rendered unconscious by what appeared to be a wave of a hand, a gesture that never actually made contact with the side of his head. The vacuum, the back draft created by Chiun's movement, had caused the young man's skull to lurch violently sideways and his brain to slam into the walls of that bony chamber.

  After disarming the agent, Remo and Chiun entered the mansion. At once, they heard a woman's screams. "Sounds like old Lud's at it again," Remo said. And then came the sound of heavy running feet. The running feet belonged to the rest of the mansion's security staff. Remo and Chiun were confronted by four more machine-pistol-toting Feds and a trio of Koch-Roche's personal bodyguards. The latter pointed blue-steel .40-caliber SIG-Sauer pistols at them.

  "Stop right there!" shouted the Fed in charge. "Stop where you stand or we'll fire."

  Remo raised his hands above his head. "We aren't going anywhere," he said. "Aren't you going to check out those screams? Or don't you understand Spanish for 'Please don't kill me'?"

  "You are our only problem at the moment," the Fed said. A pair of big, mirror-surfaced aviator sunglasses was perched on top of his head. "Cuff 'em, Roberts."

  "Somebody's getting murdered in the next room, and you're worried about a couple of gate-crashers?" Remo said in disbelief.

  "Somebody's going to get killed in this room if you don't zip it in a hurry, pal."

  Roberts gestured for Remo and Chiun to face the flagstone wall that framed the enormous fireplace. "Lean forward, hands on the wall and spread your legs," Roberts directed.

  Remo and Chiun obeyed the man's order and allowed themselves to be quickly frisked.

  "Okay," Roberts continued, "put your right hands behind your backs."

  Even though the other six men had their weapons trained on the two suspects, even though they were watching as intently as was humanly possible, the little Oriental seemed to vanish. One second he had his hand behind his back, in an off balance and totally vulnerable position, and the next second he was simply and totally gone.