King's Curse

by Warren Murphy

  The men said nothing. The long robes of yellow feathers hung down to their knees and were open in front, revealing bare chests and white loin cloths.

  “I said we already have a very fine band of Mohawk dancers. Those aren’t even American Indian trappings you’re wearing. More South American, if you will. Aztec.”

  “Not Aztec,” said the farthest man, who held what appeared to be a phallic symbol made of a light colored chipped stone. The other four men stood at the sides like a formation of twos.

  “Well, we can’t use Mayas either,” she said.

  “Not Maya.”

  “You don’t look like Indians anyway,” said Mrs. Delpheen, forcing the smile now. She fingered a pearl at the end of a strand that hung looping over her ample breasts enclosed in basic black. The pearls became sweat-slippery in her hands.

  “We are all of Indian blood,” said the man with the pointed stone.

  “That’s lovely,” said Mrs. Delpheen. “I think the beauty of America is that so many groups have made such significant contributions. But you see, the…uh…Incas weren’t one of them.”

  “Not Inca. Actatl.”

  “I’ve never heard of them.”

  “Because you would not allow us to live. Not in our real skins. So we chose your skins and your hair and your eyes, but we are all Actatl. All we wished for was to live. But you would not let us. Not in our real skins. Now you have violated what we hold precious and worthy, the stone of our ancestors, the life force of our hearts, the most gracious and central inspiration of our being. So holy that you may only know it as Uctut.”

  “Well, I’m certainly sorry for anything I have done. I’m sure we can make amends.”

  “You shall.”

  Two of the men in feathered capes latched onto Mrs. Delpheen’s wrists, and she said there was no need to be physical. But when the other two reached for her ankles, she had another idea.

  “All right, if it’s kinky rape you want, I can’t stop you. But at least let’s go into the bedroom.”

  They hoisted her bulky frame to the desk top, and the man with the pointed stone chanted a monotone song in a language and tune she did not recognize. She tried twisting an arm from a locking grip, but it only was gripped even more firmly. She tried kicking, but she couldn’t get a leg back far enough for a good forward thrust. She smelled the sharp odor of fear and excitement, like urine mixed with a stale perfume. The man holding her right wrist had pupil-wide eyes, just like her first husband had had at orgasm. Sweat made his yellowish forehead glisten in the gentle light from the crystal cut chandelier overhead. A small stone replica of an Egyptian pyramid she had used for a paperweight cut painfully into her right hip, but she could not get her body shifted to avoid it. The two men at her ankles joined their free hands, pinning her belly also.

  Looking up at the chandelier, she had a strange thought. It had not been dusted for a long while, and that was all she could think of. The chandelier had not been dusted, and probably the one in the main hall was the same.

  Both of the men holding at her hands simultaneously reached to her neck and with a single rip tore down the top of her basic black dress. They also unleashed the pearls which clicked across the desk top and fell chattering to the wood parquet floor. Then one unsnapped her bra.

  “Talk about kinky,” said Mrs. Delpheen. “Do you fellows need feathers to get it up?”

  The man with the phallic symbol of stone raised it above her head, and to Mrs. Delpheen, her dress half-off down to her waist, the downward thrust of the stone seemed very slow until it rammed into her chest. Not cut, rammed. Like someone had hit her chest with a ball peen hammer that kept going inside, and then she saw very clearly the stone move slowly toward her navel, and it felt like pulleys were ripping her insides out, taking her shoulders into her body, and then she screamed-a wail stifled by a lack of air coming into her. She saw a big grin on the face of the fifth man, pulling the stone around her chest.

  “More,” he said. “Scream more.”

  And then the chandeliers didn’t matter any more because they were now away, going far away down a long tunnel that became gray, then black, and quickly nothing to worry about any more.

  The man with the stone knife saw the fat face become flat and almost waxy, and he knew there would be no more screams of honor to Uctut. He worked quickly, severing the last arteries, and then with a rip he tore the heart out of the body cavity and held it aloft, still pumping bloodily in his hands. There was no need for the two at the arms to hold on any longer, and they reached behind them under their robes where leather thongs held clay bowls.

  Each unsnapped his bowl and waited while the heart pumped violently and then with a small flutter stopped. The man with the stone knife delicately placed the mass of bloody muscle into one upturned bowl. The second bowl went on top with a neat interlocking click.

  The men at the ankles turned the lifeless hulk over so that the open chest cavity faced downward over the desk. And the man who had cut out the heart left a typewritten note with its corners carefully smeared with Mrs. Delpheen’s blood.

  · · ·

  Remo heard about the killing in New York City just as he and Chiun entered Dulles Airport outside Washington. They had gone there, Remo had said, to examine “the scene of the crime” where the congressman had been killed.

  “What crime?” Chiun had asked. “Smith said nothing of robbery or deceit, or worse, not paying a worker for his just efforts.”

  “The killing,” Remo had said. “That’s what crime.”

  “Was it not paid for?” Chiun asked.

  “The killing was the crime,” Remo had said.

  “Then every leader of every country is a criminal. No, this is impossible. Emperors cannot be criminals because they make the laws. Those who defy emperors are criminals.”

  “It’s against the law in this country to kill someone,” Remo had said.

  Chiun had thought a moment, then shook his head.

  “Impossible. That would make us criminals, and we most certainly are not. A criminal is someone without our strong standards.”

  “It’s complicated,” Remo said. “Take my word for it. It’s complicated.”

  “I do not need your word for it,” Chiun had said, and he told a banker from Des Moines, sitting across the aisle from them, that the American way of life was incredibly inscrutable, but if it worked to America’s satisfaction, Chiun was not one to complain.

  That had been in the plane. Now in the airport Remo heard a pocket radio news report and caught the last words about the second such killing. The afternoon Washington Star had a small story:

  BULLETIN

  New York (API) A rich widow was discovered slain in her fashionable home here today in a manner similar to that of the congressman investigating legal abuses by the FBI and CIA. The woman, Mrs. Ramona H. Delpheen, 51, was found by her butler slumped over her desk, her heart ripped from her body.

  Remo paid for the newspaper but returned it to its stack.

  “Well,” said Chiun, “I await your brilliant plan to go looking for someone, you do not know who, to do something to him, you do not know what, in a place where he may or may not be, but was once.”

  “I’ve changed my mind,” Remo said, somewhat embarrassed.

  “How can you change what you have yet to show?” Chiun asked.

  “We’re going to New York.”

  “I like New York,” said Chiun. “It has some restaurants that aren’t foreign. Of course, the Korean restaurants are not the best, but very good considering how far they are from civilization.”

  The shuttle flight to New York took less than an hour, the cab ride from the airport twice that.

  Chiun made a small comment that they had gone to four cities so far, and perhaps they might try Tacoma. He had not discovered Tacoma, Washington, yet. Remo said Chiun could go back and watch his trunks if he wished. Chiun said there was nothing worth more than seeing what Remo planned to do next. Perhaps he would like
to clean a stable. A uniformed patrolman stood in front of the Delpheen mansion. Remo walked by him with authority. Chiun stopped to chat. He asked the patrolman what he was doing there. The patrolman said there had been a murder committed there the night before. Chiun asked why the patrolman hadn’t been there the night before instead.

  He did not wait for an answer. The door opened for Remo. A gaunt man in a white jacket and dark pants refused Remo entrance. Chiun muttered in Korean how foolish it was to use doors that were closed to you when the windows in the upper floors were of such easy access and were always open to you. But, he added, the people who used windows usually knew what they were looking for.

  “The family is not receiving visitors,” said the butler.

  “I’m not exactly a visitor,” said Remo, sidestepping past the butler. As the butler turned to stop Remo, Chiun went by the other side.

  “Where’d the killing take place?” Remo asked.

  “I must ask you to leave,” the butler said.

  “We’ll be going in a minute. Relax,” Remo said.

  “Miss Delpheen is in a deep state of shock, over grief for her mother. You must leave.”

  A young woman, her gray blue eyes staring dumbly into a far-off nowhere, padded into the main hall. She wore white shorts and a white blouse, and her small anklet sneakers moved sluggishly. A tennis racket hung limply from her right hand. She had sandy yellow hair and her skin was gently golden from much sun.

  “I can’t believe it,” she said softly. “I can’t believe it.”

  “I’m sorry to hear about your mother,” Remo said. “She was your mother, wasn’t she?”

  “Who?” said the girl, pausing under a large chandelier that looked like an upside-down bush of glass.

  “The tragedy. The woman who was killed.”

  “Oh. Mother. Yes. She’s dead. I can’t believe it”

  “I’ve come to help,” Remo said.

  “I can’t believe it,” the girl repeated. “Six-four, six-two, six-love. And I double faulted four times. I never double fault. Once, maybe, if I’m on the verge of death.”

  “Tennis?” said Remo. “You’re worried about a tennis loss?”

  “Loss? It was a fucking massacre. I’m Bobbi Delpheen. What can I do for you?”

  “I think you’re involved in something far more sinister than you realize. I’ve come about your mother’s death. I’ve come to help you.”

  “Mother’s taken care of. She’s at the morgue. Funeral’s been taken care of too. Six-four, six-two, six-love. And I double faulted four times. Four times. Can you believe it?”

  “Miss Delpheen,” said Remo somberly. “Your mother’s been murdered. I don’t think the police can help, but I can.”

  “With what?” she said. She had a perky charm and a sweet face, as though she’d been designed by a cartoonist for a toothpaste company. Cute, thought Remo. White, thought Chiun.

  “With your mother’s tragedy,” Remo said.

  “Her problems are over. I’ve got my own. Leave me alone. Four double faults.” She shook her head and turned away but Chiun spoke up.

  “I can teach you to never twice error,” he said, looking disdainfully at Remo. For, as he had often said, “To tell the truth to a fool is to be more the fool yourself.”

  “Double fault,” corrected Bobbi Delpheen.

  “Yes, that,” said Chiun.

  “You don’t even know how to say it,” she said.

  “I did not say I would teach you to talk the game, but to play the game. All games of physical skill are the same.”

  “Tennis isn’t like any other game.”

  “It is like all games. The winners are those who do not let their ignorance defeat them:”

  “I’ve been through twenty-eight professional instructors. I don’t need some gook philosophy,” said Bobbi.

  “That instrument hits something, yes,” said Chiun, motioning to her steel-framed racket.

  “Get these two out of here,” said Bobbi Delpheen to the butler.

  Chiun’s long fingers flickered in the shimmering light of the chandelier. The racket was out of Bobbi’s hands and in his, leaving her groping at air. With no more than a gentle slow wrist action, Chiun waved the racket, and then gliding upward in a small leap, knocked crystal pieces from the chandelier above, like harvesting shiny berries from a tree. He was on the floor before the shiny glass pieces reached his open hand. Then, one by one, with a stinging whip of the racket, he hit each crystal down the long hall into the back of a chair. Seven crystals made a single hole the diameter of an espresso cup in the back of a brocaded chair. A tuft of white down sprouted from the small hole.

  “I notice you didn’t shift weight, didn’t drive into the shot,” said Bobbi.

  “I’ve come to help,” said Remo.

  “Shut up,” said Bobbi.

  “I’ll remove them now,” said the butler.

  “Shut up,” said Bobbi.

  “Forget the nonsense you have learned,” said Chiun. “Your feet do not hit. This instrument hits. I will teach you all, but first you must help me.”

  “Name it.”

  “Do as my pupil asks,” said Chiun.

  “What does he want?” Bobbi asked.

  “I could not explain,” Chiun said, “for I do not think he knows.”

  The first place Remo examined was Mrs. Delpheen’s study. Chiun watched Remo. Bobbi slumped in a chair, drumming her fingers, bored.

  “This is where your mother was killed then?” Remo asked.

  “Yes, yes,” said Bobbi and blew some air from her puffing cheeks. “The cops say nothing should be touched for a while.”

  The blood on the desk and floor had dried. And Remo noticed a clot covering a small pointed-up object. He lifted it up, breaking the brownish film around it. A pyramid paperweight. And an outline of its base had been pressed into the hard wood desk. Perhaps someone had leaned on it or had been held down on it. He noticed a bright yellow quill in an inkwell behind the desk. The room was sedate in brown polished wood, dark frames, and dark upholstery, yet the feather of this quill was bright yellow. He lifted it and saw it had no point.

  “Was this feather here before your mother was killed?” Remo asked.

  “I don’t know. This was her study. I never went in,” said Bobbi. She made a tennis stroking motion with her right arm, looking at Chiun.

  “Later,” he said.

  “I want to talk to the police and see the body,” Remo said.

  A homicide lieutenant met the grieving daughter, Bobbi Delpheen, and her two friends at the city morgue, which looked like a gigantic white hospital room with large stainless steel files along one side.

  “Look,” said the homicide lieutenant, a cigar pegged in the center of his teeth, unlit and oozy. “I’m going out of my way for you people. But I need some cooperation, too. Now, miss, I hope you’re sufficiently recovered to answer some of my questions.”

  Bobbi looked to Remo, who nodded.

  “We don’t think this was personally motivated, Miss Delpheen, but could you think of anyone who had any ill feeling toward your mother? Who just might want to kill her?” asked the lieutenant.

  “Anyone who knew her intimately,” said Bobbi. She made another tennis motion with her right hand. Chiun signaled…“later.”

  “Would that include you?” asked the detective.

  “No. I say anyone who knew her intimately. That would leave me out, and Mother’s five husbands, too.”

  “She was a cold person then?”

  “Only to relatives. To everyone else she was hostile and haughty.”

  “Was your mother engaged in any special activities that you know of?”

  “Pick any six. She was a joiner. She was on more committees than that congressman who got it.”

  “We’ve already found one that overlapped,” said the detective. “They were both on the monuments committee at the museum. Does that mean anything to you?”

  “No,” said Bobbi, and Ch
iun had to signal her again that tennis would be later.

  “Do you think you’re strong enough to view the remains? We’re going to have an autopsy tomorrow.”

  “I thought her heart was ripped out,” said Bobbi. “Who needs an autopsy? That probably killed her.”

  “It was a homicide. This is routine.”

  The lieutenant pulled back a stainless steel square that looked like a file. It was a morgue slab. A white sheet, dotted with drops of brown, covered a series of rises like miniature Wyoming foothills.

  “Brace yourselves,” said the lieutenant, then he pulled back the sheet. Mrs. Delpheen’s face was a frozen, waxy twist of flesh. The mouth was locked open, but the wrinkles, well hidden in life, now streaked down her face, obvious. Her aging breasts hung like melted marshmallows in loose cellophane sacks. And where the middle of her chest had been was now a dark coagulated hole.

  “We believe some sort of dull knife and forceps were used,” said the detective. “That’s what careful scientific analysis told us about the congressman. And the FBI spared no avenue of investigation. Even brought in heart specialists and surgeons.”

  “What are forceps?” asked Chiun softly. “They’re things you grab with, like pliers,” said the detective. Chiun shook his head precisely. Once. The wisp of beard created a floating wave within itself, then quieted.

  “No,” said Chiun. “They are wrong. This wound was made by a stone knife.”

  “How the hell can you tell that?” said the detective disbelievingly.

  “Because I look,” said Chiun. “If you look, you will see no long tear of murder, which is what happens when the body is torn apart in anger. No. There are small horizontal tears across the arteries, and these are made by a stone knife. Have you ever made a stone knife?”

  The detective allowed as he had not.

  “A stone knife,” said Chiun, “is made by chipping to sharp edges, not grinding straight like metal. And these sorts of knives are sharp at some points and not sharp at others. They are used more like saws after they go into something. Do you see?”