Child's Play td-23

  Child's Play

  ( The Destroyer - 23 )

  Warren Murphy

  Richard Sapir

  The government's Witness Protection Program has been hitting a bit of a snag lately. Despite their brand new secret identities, certain loose-lipped mob stoolies are getting blown away by a group of gun-toting adolescents. And in an effort to save face, a big-mouth Army bigwig's been pointing the accusing finger at the wrong assassins - Remo Williams and his mentor, Sinanju master Chiun! There's a new kind of "baby boom" going around. And before he plays dead for a bunch of homicidal half-pints, the Destroyer is going to nip the poisonous peewee pandemonium in the bud!

  ***********************************************

  * Title : #023 : CHILDS PLAY *

  * Series : The Destroyer *

  * Author(s) : Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir *

  * Location : Gillian Archives *

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  CHAPTER ONE

  The left arm came sailing over the schoolyard fence… without a body on it. The left leg skittered into a sandbox, where the blood pumped out of the thigh stump and onto a rubber play shovel. There were no sharp edges on this yellow shovel the size of a large serving spoon because it was guaranteed by the National Parental Council as "child safe." In the playground of the Fairview, Oklahoma, Country Day School there was also no left side of Robert Calder.

  Jimmy Wilkes and Katherine Poffer remembered that was the side on which Mr. Calder had been holding the "froobie."

  "Tell the men what a froobie is, Katherine," said the nurse in the infirmary of the Fairview Country Day School as two men in polished cordovan shoes and neat gray suits with white shirts and striped ties took notes on a small tape recorder. They had told the Fairview County Sheriff's office they wanted to talk to the children first, and afterward the sheriff could get all the information he needed. He had complained that homicide was not a federal crime but a state crime, and if the Justice Department wanted the assistance of the Fairview County Sheriff's Office, they should tell him what the hell was up. Especially since November was four months away and while they had assured jobs, an elected county official sure as hell didn't, and one hand washes the other if the FBI knew what the Fairview County Sheriff's office meant. They did, and they didn't want him talking to the children first.

  So Katherine Poffer, seven, explained to the two FBI agents what a froobie was.

  "It's nice," said Kathy.

  "Tell them what it does, dear," said the nurse.

  "It's like a frisbee. It's plastic, only it squiggles if you get it right," said Jimmy Wilkes, six.

  "She said me. She said I should say what a froobie is," said Katherine Poffer. "It's like a frisbee only it squiggles," Kathy said with righteous triumph.

  "Now when did the bang happen?" asked one of the agents.

  "Me or Jimmy?" said Katherine Poffer.

  "Either one," said the agent.

  "When he threw it, sort of," said Jimmy.

  "Sort of?"

  "Yeah. Like the froobie was up at his ear, like a quarterback ready to throw."

  "Yes," said the agent.

  "He was left-handed," said Jimmy Wilkes.

  "Yes."

  "And then, wow, boom," said Jimmy, his hands going out to show a big explosion.

  "You didn't see half of him at all," said Katherine Poffer.

  "A leg went in the sandbox, and there's no going in the sandbox during afternoon recess," said Jimmy.

  "Did you see who brought the froobie to the schoolyard?"

  "Nobody brought it. It was there," said Jimmy.

  "Somebody must have brought it," said the agent.

  "The new boy maybe brought it," said Katherine.

  "Some grownup," said the agent. "Was any grownup standing near the schoolyard?"

  "The ice cream man for a while," said Jimmy. The two agents went on with the interview. They had talked to the ice cream vendor already, and he had seen nothing. He was also not the kind of person to withhold information. This wasn't Brooklyn, where people stuck their noses behind doors and kept them there for their safety. This was heartland America, where if a strange dog wandered into town, everyone knew and was willing not only to talk about it but to tell you if it was a Communist dog or a Mafia dog. This was pin-clean small-town USA, where everyone not only knew everyone else but talked about everyone else. And no one knew who had killed Mr. Calder and while everyone was downright glad to cooperate with the FBI-"We're on your side, fellas"-no one knew who had planted the bomb. And what was the FBI doing here in Fairview anyway? This wasn't a federal crime, you know. Was Mr. Calder a secret spy?

  No, ma'am.

  Was he a secret scientist?

  No, sir.

  Was he a big Mafia cappucino who split with the family?

  No, sir.

  Was he a hit? He was a real live hit, wasn't he?

  Well, ma'am, we believe that his demise was, so to speak, intentional.

  That's for dang sure. Folks don't blow up by accident.

  Yes, sir.

  So here they were, talking to little children about froobies and bang bangs and sand boxes, while other agents went around picking up pieces of the man called Calder from the schoolyard.

  "Anything else?" said the agent.

  "He went like a ladyfinger. Bang. You know how ladyfingers blow up when you light them," said Jimmy.

  "Ladyfingers are firecrackers. They're against the law. I never used them," said Kathy Poffer. "Jimmy used them a lot though. Jimmy and Johnny Kruse and Irene Blasinips. She showed herself to the boys, too. I know that."

  "And you took extra cookies before nap," said Jimmy, turning in his playmate to the FBI. But the FBI did not seem interested in firecrackers or who showed what to whom, just Mr. Calder who was new to the town and had gone bang like a ladyfinger with some of him left, like those little firecrackers that never quite went all up.

  There was something else, too, Jimmy remembered, but no one would be interested in that. They wanted to know about the bang, not about the new kid who wouldn't let anyone play with the froobie but just hung around sort of, and when Mr. Calder came by, called out to him and seemed to know him because he called him Mr. Calder.

  "Mr. Calder, they say you can throw a football, but I bet you can't throw a froobie," the new kid had said.

  And everyone had watched Mr. Calder take the froobie, while the new kid had backed away to the other side of the schoolyard as Mr. Calder raised the yellow plastic froobie to his ear, just like the football players did when they wanted to throw footballs like grownups. But when the froobie was ready to go, bang.

  And Mr. Calder was only partly left. Outside the infirmary, the strangers were still examining the area for the sprayed pieces of Mr. Calder. Lights came on, and there were television cameras, and everyone was talking about how hard it must have been on Jimmy and Kathy to see such a horrible thing at their ages, so Kathy started to cry, and since Kathy was crying and everyone said it was horrible and since Jimmy's mother was hugging him as if something horrible had happened, Jimmy started to cry, too.

  "The poor babies," said someone, and Jimmy couldn't stop crying. All this over Mr. Calder, who went up like a little firecracker with some of him left.

  The two agents caught the nightly news on television as they went over their day's notes. There were the two children, crying away before the television cameras. The schoolyard. And Calder's home.

  "A modest home on a well-kept street," said the announcer of the local television station.

  "Well kept, you can bet," said the agent who had questioned the children. "We had both sides and the front of the house covered. And the backyard ne
ighbor was a retired Marine." He blew air out of his mouth and went over the notes. Somehow, apparently in the children's toy, a bomb had been smuggled in. But then why did Calder play with it? How had it happened that a child hadn't grabbed it first and blown himself up, instead of Calder?

  How did anyone even know the subject was in Fairview? He had changed his name to Calder when his children were only babies, so they never knew his real name. No one at the factory where he was assistant purchasing agent knew his name. The agent at the plant had kept an eye on that.

  No stranger had entered Fairview. No stranger could have entered Fairview without the whole town knowing about it-that was why Fairview had been chosen. Everyone in this town talked. Gossip was the major industry here. That, and the single manufacturing plant.

  The agent in charge of the investigation had also been in charge of picking the town for Calder. He had been careful about it. As the district director had told him, keeping the man called Calder alive was a career move:

  "If he lives, you have one."

  That blunt. That final.

  Calder was just one of seven hundred government witnesses hidden away each year by the Justice Department. Seven hundred. Not one in the last ten years had been uncovered until he was ready for trial. This was necessary because as the Justice Department closed in on the mobs around the country, the mobs had started to fight back in their traditional way.

  Good lawyers could occasionally discredit a witness in a courtroom, but the mobs had long ago found out that the best way to get rid of a troublesome witness was simply to get rid of him. During the twenties, a government witness against a racketeer signed his death warrant when he signed a statement. A secretary, a witness to a shooting, a thug who wanted to turn state's evidence-the mob would get them, even in jail. And righteously, defense counsel would get the signed statement thrown out of court because the witness's death had denied him his right to cross-examine.

  So about ten years ago, the Justice Department had a good idea. Why not give the witnesses new identities and new lives and keep them absolutely secure until the trial? Then, after the trial, give them another life and watch them a while to make sure they were safe? And it had worked. Because now witnesses knew they could testify and live.

  So the man called Calder had thought.

  The phone in the motel room where the agent was staying rang. It was the district director of the FBI.

  The agent wanted to speak first.

  "As soon as I finish my report, you can have my resignation."

  "Your resignation won't be required."

  "Don't give me the official bullshit. I know I'm going to Anchorage or somewhere I can't live because of this thing."

  "You don't know that. We don't know it. I don't know it. Just continue your work."

  "You can't tell me that the agent who loses the first government witness in ten frigging years isn't going to get canned. C'mon, I'm not Bo Peep."

  "You're also not the first. We lost two others this morning," said the District Director. "This whole thing may be coming apart."

  In a sanitarium called Folcroft on Long Island Sound, giant computers received the details of the Fairview incident and the two others. Because of the designs of these machines, the printouts could only be gotten at one office. It had one-way windows, a large sparse desk, and a terminal which could be operated only through a code. The Fairview incident was the last to clack out of the machine. A gaunt man with a lemony face read all three reports. Unlike the district director in Oklahoma, Dr. Harold W. Smith did not think ten years work might be falling apart. He knew it was.

  CHAPTER TWO

  His name was Remo and the hotel guest wouldn't let him go. Was Remo aware that he and his Oriental friend probably produced an incredible amount of Theta waves and functioned to a great degree at the Alpha level?

  Remo didn't know that. Would the guest please pass the salt?

  The guest was sure that Remo and his elderly Oriental friend functioned at these states, otherwise how could Remo explain yesterday. How?

  The salt.

  Certainly, the salt. There was no other explanation, said Dr. Charlese, Averill N., as in Averill Harriman except he wasn't related to the wealthy and famous railroad family, just a poor parapsychologist trying to let people know of the great powers locked within humanity. He had a card:

  Dr. Averill N. Charlese

  President

  Mind Potential Institute Houston, Texas

  He had come down to Mexico City, where the America Games were now being held, to prove his theory. Not that it really needed proving, because it was a fact. Fact. People producing Theta waves could perform what appeared to be incredible feats.

  Remo suddenly saw a small chart cover his breakfast of white rice and water. There, in blue and red and green and yellow, was an ascending "rainbow!" Yellow, at the top, was the conscious level of the mind, and darkest blue was the deep Theta state.

  Remo looked around for a waiter at the El Conquistador, a large modern hotel built like a simulated Aztec temple, with waiters in Aztec-type print smocks, surrounded by very un-Aztec Muzak.

  "If I'm bothering you, let me know," said Dr. Charlese, a pudgy man in his mid-thirties, with a crown of brownish gold hair gleaming like a helmet fashioned by hot comb and lacquer.

  "You're bothering me," said Remo, who folded the chart and put it in Charlese's gold plaid jacket.

  "Good. Honesty is the basis for a good relationship."

  Remo chewed a few kernels of rice until they were liquid, then he drank it into his stomach. He eyed a roast beef, sliced thick and fatty and red, being served at a neighboring table. It had been a long time since he had had a piece of meat, and his memory hungered for it. Not his body, which now dictated what he would eat. He remembered that the roast beef used to be good. But that was a long time ago.

  "I knew yesterday you were something special," said Dr. Charlese.

  Remo tried to remember an incident the day before that might have inflicted this lacquer-headed sparkler of positive thought on him. He could not. There was nothing special the day before, just resting, getting sun and, of course, the training. But Charlese couldn't have been able to tell the training from a nap. Which was what it appeared to be, because at Remo's level of competence, his body had long ago achieved its maximum. He was now working in the limitless frontiers of his mind. Anything more he would learn to do, he would learn in his mind, not in his body.

  Charlese opened the chart again, and moved the rice away, explaining that this was his only chart and he didn't want to get food on it.

  Remo smiled politely, took the offered chart and, starting at the top left corner, tore it diagonally across. Then he tore the two remaining pieces into four, then the four into eight. He put them in Dr. Charlese's open mouth.

  "Fantastic," said Dr. Charlese, spitting the confetti of his chart. A corner with a blue Theta on it landed in the center of Remo's rice. Enough. He rose from the table. He was a thin man, about six feet tall, give or take an inch, depending on how he used his body that day, with high cheekbones and eyes that had a central darkness of limitless, weightless space. He wore gray slacks and a dark turtleneck shirt. His shoes were loafers. As he left the table, the eyes of several women followed him. One sent back a green and yellow Montezuma parfait when she looked at her husband after looking at Remo.

  Dr. Charlese followed him.

  "You probably don't even remember what you did yesterday," said Dr. Charlese. "You were by the pool."

  "Leave," said Remo.

  Dr. Charlese followed him to the elevator. Remo waited until the door was just closing before he entered. The elevator was a local, making several stops before the fourteenth floor. When it reached the floor, Dr. Charlese was there smiling.

  "Positive thinking. Positive thinking," he said. "I projected the elevator not to make stops."

  "Did you do your projecting while standing in front of the buttons?"

  "Well, as a matter of
fact, yes," said Dr. Charlese. "But it never hurts to help the projection of a positive image. A human being can do whatever he imagines he can do. If you can imagine it, you can do it."

  "I'm imagining that you're leaving me alone," said Remo.

  "But my imagination is stronger, and I'm imagining that you're going to answer my questions."

  "And I'm imagining that you're lying on the carpeting of this hallway with your mouth a mess of broken teeth so you cannot ask questions."

  Dr. Charlese thought this quite humorous, because he was imagining Remo telling him the secrets of his power. Remo smiled slightly and was about to show Dr. Charlese how a snapping right hand could overcome any thought, when Dr. Charlese said something that made Remo stop, made him want to know about this man's theories.

  "Breathing is the key," said Dr. Charlese. "I know that. Breathing is the whole key to control of those vast reaches of your mind. Did you know that the chart I gave you was nylon mesh? No one could tear it with his hands."

  "Would you explain what you're talking about?"

  "I had only one copy of that chart. I carried it with me. I didn't want it destroyed so I had it hand-painted on strong nylon mesh, reinforced with steel strands. Something like a steel-belted tire. And you tore it up like it was paper."

  "I'm trying to piece this thing together. What do you know about breathing?" Remo asked.

  "Yesterday, I saw you by the pool. With the Japanese man."

  "Korean. Never call him Japanese," said Remo.

  "And I saw you do it. I timed it."

  "What? Nobody can tell when I'm exercising."

  "Your diaphragm gave you away."

  "How?"

  "It didn't move. I watched your breathing slow down and then your diaphragm didn't move. Not for twenty-two minutes and fifteen seconds. I have a stopwatch. I time everything."

  "Can we talk somewhere privately?"

  "I've been sort of evicted from my room. But I'm projecting that someone else will pay the bill."

  "No, no. I'm not interested in your projecting. I want to know about breathing," said Remo.

  "I knew you could tear that chart when I saw your breathing control."