Feast or Famine td-107

by Warren Murphy

  "Renown does not equal correctness," sniffed Chiun. He eyed Dr. Schiff. "Do you know the name of the finest assassin in the world?"

  "I do not."

  "Or his title?"

  "Of course not. Therefore what?"

  "He is not renowned."

  "That makes him perhaps more, not less great," said the Master of Sinanju, handing the slide back and leaving the room in a rustle and swirl of kimono skirts.

  Outside, Remo turned to Chiun and asked, "So, we got nothing?"

  "On the contrary. We have something terrible."

  "What's that?"

  "The bee that is not."

  And that was all Remo could get out of the Master of Sinanju.

  Chapter 9

  The New York Public Library near Bryant Park was a lot bigger than Tammy Terrill expected it to be. She immediately got lost among the bewildering maze of book-laden shelves.

  "Where's the bug department?" she asked a librarian.

  The woman looked up from reshelving a cart full of books. "The what?"

  "Uh, the department of insects?"

  "Try biology."

  "Is that near here?"

  Her tone and face were so helpless that the librarian broke down and escorted Tammy to the biology section and indicated a row of fat books so long Tammy blurted, "I didn't know there were that many books in the world!"

  "Insects outnumber people by billions. In fact, if you could place every ant on earth on one side of a balance scale and every human being on the other, ants would outweigh mankind."

  "Ooh. Neat factoid. You must watch the Discover Channel constantly. "

  "No," the librarian said frostily, "I read."

  "I read, too. TelePrompTers. Sometimes AP wire stories when I absolutely have to."

  "I'll leave you to your digging," the librarian said.

  Her eyes widening, Tammy grabbed the woman by her skinny arm. "Wait. I only need to know about bees."

  "Bees?"

  "Killer bees."

  The librarian walked the length of the long rows of shelving and, without seeming to look at the spines, stopped and indicated an upper section of shelf.

  "Here," she said.

  "You really know this shelf, don't you?"

  "I work here," the librarian returned, and walked off, trailing a faint scent of lilac.

  There were a lot of bee books, Tammy found. Two on killer bees alone. Both were titled The Killer Bees, but they were not the same book. The author names were completely different. Tammy wondered if it was legal for two people to write a book on the same subject with the same title and decided because they were books, nobody probably read them much and by this time nobody really cared. Reading was so pre-MTV.

  She took the books off the shelf and saw they were pretty old-mid 1970s. It gave her a weird chill to think that she herself was as old as an actual book. And vice versa.

  The upside was that the prices were really, really cheap.

  At the checkout line, they wouldn't accept Visa. Or Discover, Tammy found.

  "Miss, I need to see your library card," a prim woman told her.

  "Oh, I don't have that one. Must have maxed it out. Will you take a check?"

  They wouldn't take checks. Or cash, either.

  "You'll have to apply for a card. Or read them here."

  Tammy still didn't quite get it, but figured if they were stupid enough to let her read the books on the premises, why should she bother to buy?

  At a desk, she skimmed through both books, absorbing factoids by the score. This was how she did most of her research. Tammy had discovered long ago, you didn't need much to get through for a three-minute stand-up report. A necklace of names and facts usually carried the segment.

  While skimming, she committed dozens of interesting facts to memory.

  Bees, she learned, were very, very important. They gathered the pollen grains that fertilized all plants on earth. Without bees, flowers couldn't reproduce.

  "Great! A sex angle."

  Bees were good insects, because they fertilized food plants. And they made honey. Another good, beneficial thing.

  "Ooh, a diet angle. It's getting better."

  Then she got to the juicy stuff.

  The proper name was Africanized killer bee. That presented an image problem, but that would be up to Fox standard practices whether or not to identify killer bees by race.

  Early on, she read that there was no known geographic or climatic barrier that would prevent the spread of the killer bee into North America. That one she wrote down because it was an actual quote and she wanted to get it right in case someone actually checked. It sounded perfect for her lead.

  Killer bees, Tammy further discovered, injected a neurotoxin that was more deadly than the simple toxin of ordinary honeybees. They were also unusually aggressive and easily provoked.

  "More people succumb each year to bee stings than to snakebites," she muttered, moving her lips with each enunciated word.

  "Deadlier than a rattlesnake!" she cried, instantly coining a new lead.

  "Shh!"

  Tammy ignored the other browsers at their tables. She wondered how libraries made money. Everyone seemed to be reading, not buying.

  She was surprised to find that bees were kept in apiaries.

  "Wonder where apes are kept. In honeycombs?"

  She shrieked a resounding "Eureka" when she came to an illustration in the version of The Killer Bees, copyright 1977, that showed a projection graph of killer-bee migration that predicted they would reach New York by 1993.

  "Perfect!" she added, rushing off to make a photocopy.

  Leaving the library, clutching her notes, she found her cameraman eating a hot pretzel with mustard at a vending cart.

  "I got everything I need," she said, waving her notes in his slowly chewing face.

  "Except a talking head of an expert," the cameraman reminded.

  "Expert what?" asked Tammy.

  "On bugs, natch."

  "Oh, damn. Where do I find one of those?"

  "That's what news directors are for. Ask yours."

  CLYDE SMOOT, news director of WHO-Fox, listened patiently to Tammy's breathless recitation of factoids and said, "You're on to something."

  "I knew it! I knew it!"

  "But you need a talking-head expert," he added.

  "Told you so," the hovering cameraman said.

  "Where do I find one?" Tammy asked.

  "In the Fox research library," Smoot said.

  "We have one of those?"

  "For paranormal stories, absolutely."

  And crooking a finger, Smoot motioned Tammy to follow him.

  In a room marked Storage, he flicked a light switch and rummaged through shelves of black videocassettes. Finding a certain one, he popped it into a deck and fast-forwarded it to the end.

  "Isn't that Fox Mulder?" Tammy asked, squinting at the off-color image.

  "Yeah."

  "Since when is an 'X-Files' episode considered news research?"

  "Since it's the killer-bee episode."

  "They did one?"

  "Here's the end credit." Smoot slowed the tape down. Eerie music floated through the air, and he hit Pause.

  "What's that?" Tammy asked.

  Smoot laid a finger on a jittery line in the end credits and read it aloud.

  " 'Special thanks to Helwig X. Wurmlinger, special consultant.'"

  "On what?"

  "If this were the poltergeist episode, I'd say poltergeist. But it's the killer-bee episode, so it's gotta be-"

  "Killer bees!" Tammy cried joyously.

  "There you go. Call the 'X-Files' production office in Toronto, and they'll point you in the right direction."

  "Shouldn't I air a preliminary report first?"

  "With stuff from stuffy old books and morgue shots? No way. We need a talking head for credibility."

  "Oh, all right..."

  At her desk, Tammy worked the phone.

  "I'm doing a s
tory on killer bees," she explained.

  "They're old hat," the "X-Files" production office told her.

  "My story will prove they've hit New York. A guy's already plotzed with his brain eaten out."

  "Damn!"

  "What's the problem? You're way down there in Canada."

  "Canada is up. And we already did a killer-bee episode. We can't do another. We're already in secondary syndication."

  "Tough break. Now, how about Wurmlinger's address?"

  "All my Rolodex has is a telephone number."

  "Shoot," said Tammy.

  After hanging up, Tammy immediately dialed the number of Helwig X. Wurmlinger.

  "Hello?" a low, buzzing voice said.

  "Is this Earwig Wurmlinger?"

  "It is not. And I cannot talk to you at present."

  "This is for TV."

  "I will have no statements until I have examined the victim."

  "Which victim?"

  "Why, the deceased medical examiner, of course."

  "I saw the autopsy. They think it's bee poison."

  "Toxin. Bees produce venom. Poison is another secretion entirely."

  "How about I meet you at the New York morgue?"

  "Impossible."

  "Why?"

  "Because I am about to catch a flight for Los Angeles and the L.A. County morgue."

  "But the New York morgue is here in Manhattan," Tammy protested.

  "I do not know what you are talking about, but the stricken medical examiner is in Los Angeles."

  "Are we talking about the same M.E.? Died of a bee sting?"

  "A suspected bee sting. After autopsying a person who appeared to have succumbed to the same malady."

  "There are killer bees in L.A.?"

  "I deal in theories," Helwig X. Wurmlinger said stiffly, over what Tammy realized was a background buzzing.

  "And I deal in coincidences," exulted Tammy. "I'm on my way to L.A. See you there."

  Turning to her cameraman, she said, "It's a bicoastal story. Can you believe it? Bicoastal. My story has gone nationwide, and I haven't even been on the air yet!"

  Chapter 10

  On the flight to Los Angeles, Remo found he had time on his hands.

  The flight attendants were ignoring him as if he didn't exist. There was only one exception.

  "Don't I know you?" asked a fleshy blonde whose lips were so red they were almost black.

  "Search me."

  "You look familiar to me," she said as she lowered his seat-back tray and laid down a monogrammed napkin.

  "All stewardesses look the same to me," Remo said truthfully.

  "How's that?"

  "Hungry for love."

  "I'm happily married," the blonde said disdainfully. Her name tag said Loma. Her eyes went to Remo's thick wrists. Recognition bloomed in them.

  "I know you! I served you on a Detroit flight a few years ago." Then, memory clarifying, she blushed a beet red. "Oh."

  "Don't tell me," said Remo. "You tried to sit on my lap while I was standing."

  "I-I wasn't married then," she stammered. "Would you like a refreshment, sir?"

  "No," said the Master of Sinanju, who was indifferent to stewardesses.

  "And you?" she asked of Remo.

  "Mineral water."

  As she poured mineral water into a short plastic glass, the stewardess said, "I want to apologize for my behavior."

  "Apology accepted."

  "I don't know what possessed me. I never tried to sit in passengers' laps, married or not."

  "No problem. I put it behind me a long time ago."

  "Did you age or something?"

  "No."

  "Lose weight?"

  "No," said Remo, taking the glass. "Why?"

  "It's just ...I don't know what I saw in you." Her fingers flew to her mouth. "Oops. That just came out."

  "Don't sweat it," Remo said sourly as the flight attendant bustled on to the next row.

  In his seat, Remo's face darkened in cast.

  "What troubles you?" asked Chiun.

  "I don't know... I think I'm starting to miss stewardesses falling all over me."

  "Stop eating malodorous carnivorous fish, and they will return to their former predatory ways."

  "I wonder if I'm going through a midlife crisis."

  "Not unless you are planning upon dying young, and if you are, I would consider advance warning a boon, for I must train your replacement."

  Remo grinned. "No one could ever replace me, right?"

  "No one could ever replace you," the Master of Sinanju agreed.

  Remo's grin widened.

  "Without my guidance and assistance," Chiun added. "And of course I would mourn. For a time. Not long. Enough to be seemly. Too much mourning would be unseemly. I will not mourn long. Only a prescribed interval."

  "Can it, Little Father."

  Chiun resumed his examination of the sleek aluminum wing, which he feared might fall off. It was a longtime phobia. It had never happened, but as Chiun was forever reminding Remo, aircraft fell out of the sky constantly. At least three per season-which was too many.

  Remo remembered what the Master of Sinanju had said at the Manhattan morgue about the cause of death of the late medical examiner.

  "Hey, Chiun. When is a bee not a bee?"

  "When it is not," Chiun said flatly.

  "Care to elaborate?"

  "My wisdom would be wasted upon small minds."

  "Bees are bees."

  "Except when they are not."

  "I saw a bee. A very tiny bee."

  "And you do not question what your eyes see?"

  "Hardly ever."

  "Then you saw a bee."

  "What did you see?"

  "A not-bee."

  "Is that anything like a knothole?"

  "I will not answer your riddle because it has no answer," Chiun said elliptically.

  "Suit yourself. I'm going to catnap. It's a long way to L.A."

  "With you snoring at my side, an eternity," Chiun sniffed.

  But Remo dropped off to sleep anyway.

  He dreamed of stewardesses dressed in bumblebee uniforms. They kept trying to sting him with their fingernails.

  Chapter 11

  Los Angeles County Deputy Coroner Gideon Krombold was certain of his diagnosis.

  "Dr. Nozoki succumbed to anaphylactic shock," he was saying.

  "I concur," said his visitor. He was long of body, with the pinched, inquisitive face of a locust. His features twitched. Dr. Krombold thought Helwig X. Wurmlinger was twitchy because he was used to dissecting insects, not humans. But as his dark eyes lifted from a cursory examination of Dr. Nozoki's undraped body, his face continued to twitch. The man clearly suffered from a nervous tick.

  "The cyanosis, facial mottling, constricted windpipe and other symptoms all point to toxic systemic shock induced by hypersensitivity to a bee's sting. In other words, death by anaphylaxis."

  "Did you discover the ovipositor?"

  "No. There is a puncture wound. But no stinger."

  "Show me," said Helwig X. Wurmlinger, his left eye twitching to the right. His mouth twitched in the opposite direction. He wore glasses whose lenses were as thick as ice pried off a midwinter sidewalk.

  They distorted his tea-colored eyes into the swimmy orbs of a frog.

  Dr. Krombold lifted a dead gray arm and turned it so the elbow was visible beneath the overhead fluorescents.

  "Here."

  Wurmlinger took off his glasses, and his eyes jumped back to normal size with a speed that was unnerving.

  He used one lens like a magnifying glass to inspect the dead man's elbow.

  "I see a puncture wound consistent with a bee's sting, but there is no barb."

  "Maybe he scraped it out," Dr. Krombold suggested.

  "It is possible. That is the recommended procedure. But typically, those who are allergic to the toxins of Apis fall into respiratory distress very quickly. He would have to have had great presence of
mind to have removed the stinger before collapsing." Wurmlinger replaced his glasses and regarded Dr. Krombold with his froggy orbs. "Was there any evidence of a tool in his hand when he was found?"

  "No."

  "Any sign of disarray?"

  "No. In fact, he was found seated in his chair."

  "Wearing long or short sleeves?"

  "Long."

  "Odd. A lone bee rarely stings though clothing."

  "But one could, am I not correct?"

  "It is possible. The bee in question might have entered via a sleeve by accident and, becoming trapped, grew enraged. Was a bee found?"

  "No."

  "Peculiar. No sting and no dead bee. Bees die after they sting, for the barbs prevent the stinger from being withdrawn from human flesh. The effort required for the bee to disassociate itself from its victim literally disembowels it. There should be a dead bee. It is inescapable."

  "I had Dr. Nozoki's office vacuumed. No dead bee was found."

  Dr. Wurmlinger's face twitched in every direction conceivable. "Peculiar. Most peculiar," he murmured.

  "Maybe it flew away and died under something," Krombold offered.

  Wurmlinger shook his head firmly. "Upon losing its sting, the bee suffers immediate distress. It cannot fly and can barely crawl. This is much the same as losing a leg. It could not have gotten far."

  "Well," Krombold said helplessly, "there was no bee."

  "There was no bee found," Wurmlinger corrected.

  "True." Dr. Krombold cleared his throat. He was becoming uncomfortable with this pedantic entomologist. "Would you like to see the other victims?"

  "No. I would prefer to see the contents of their thoraxes."

  "You mean stomachs."

  "Yes, yes. Of course."

  "This way, Dr. Wurmlinger."

  In a laboratory, Dr. Krombold sorted through several blackish green piles of organic matter-the partially-digested stomach contents of Perry Noto, his wife, Heather, and their chef, Remy.

  Wurmlinger was as methodically creepy as a night crawler, Krombold thought after watching him pick through the stomach contents and take tiny bits of insect matter to a waiting microscope for study.

  Krombold had to leave in the middle of it, but Wurmlinger seemed as happy as a dung beetle in shit.

  "I'll wait for you in my office," the deputy coroner said, closing the door after himself.

  Wurmlinger nodded absently.

  Dr. Krombold wasn't in his office very long when a blond woman with the energy of a hyperactive Ritalin candidate stormed in.