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  Mugger Blood

  ( The Destroyer - 30 )

  Warren Murphy

  Richard Sapir

  Word on the streets is don't mess with the Lords. The Saxon Lords kill for cigarette money and rule the New York ghettos with fear. Even the cops stay off their turf. But one man can't stay away when he reads about the brutal beating of an old woman in broad daylight. Remo Williams, the Destroyer, goes hunting for punks. Stalking the slums with Chiun, master Sinanju assassin, Remo starts his own program of urban renewal. The Big Apple will never be the same.

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  * Title : #030 : MUGGER BLOOD *

  * Series : The Destroyer *

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

  * Location : Gillian Archives *

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  CHAPTER ONE

  At first she thought she was back in Nazi Germany. A ringing black starshine of pain was at her left eye where the boy had stuck the ice pick. She could not see left anymore. She remembered the Gestapo. But this could not be the Gestapo. The Gestapo had clean fingernails and asked clear questions and let you know that if you told them what they wanted, they would stop the pain.

  The Gestapo wanted to know where Gerd was and she did not know where Gerd was. She kept saying it. But these tormenters kept saying "tawk Murican." They meant talk American.

  They smelled different, these boys. You could smell them. She had told this to Mrs. Rosenbloom at the high school auditorium where the New York City Police Department had sent over someone for a morning talk. It was safe sometimes in the morning.

  The police, who thought they should get more money from a near-bankrupt city, were now teaching the elderly how to get mugged. You didn't resist, they told you. You gave up your purse. There was a police lieutenant showing how to loosely fasten the straps so that the mugger would not think you were trying to hold onto your purse.

  "I can smell them too," Mrs. Rosenbloom had said that morning. But she cautioned Mrs. Mueller not to mention anything. "They'll say that's racist and it is bad. You're not allowed to be racist in this country."

  Mrs. Mueller nodded. She did not want to be a racist because that was a bad thing. The Nazis were that way and they were bad. She had seen what they had done and as a good Christian she could not support them. Nor could her husband Gerd.

  They had wanted to reach Gerd. But Gerd was dead. A long time ago, Gerd was dead. Mrs. Mueller felt a kick in her chest. The Nazis were gone. These were blacks.

  She wanted to beg the black boys not to kick her anymore. Not in the breasts. Was that what was taught in the auditorium by the New York City police? She tried to remember. Her hands were tied behind her with the electric cord. No. The police did not tell you what to do when they tied you up and put out your eye with an ice pick.

  The New York City police told you how to get mugged. They never gave old people lectures on how to get killed. Maybe if they got more money, they would teach you how to be murdered as well as mugged. Mrs. Mueller thought these things in a pain-crazed mind that blended Nazi Germany and her slum apartment.

  She wanted to tell the laughing black boys to kick her somewhere else. Not in the breasts because that hurt too much. Would it be racist to ask blacks to kick you somewhere else? She did not want to be a racist. She saw what racism had done.

  But Jews never beat her up. You never had to fear for your life in a Jewish neighborhood. This had been a Jewish neighborhood when she and Gerd had moved in. They were German and thought there might be some trouble because of what the Nazis had done. There was no trouble. There was no trouble with the Irish who had lived two blocks over. Or the Poles. Or the Italians on the other side of the Grand Concourse.

  But then a law was passed. And. the law said it was bad to keep people out of neighborhoods. Black people. And everyone was to be taught to do the right thing. This was America. Everyone had to do the right thing.

  A woman had come to talk. She taught at a university. She had told everyone in the community center about George Washington Carver, a black man, and all the other nice black people and how good blacks were and how bad people who hated them were and it was a bad thing to hate blacks. Gerd, who was alive then, had translated for Mrs. Mueller. He was so smart. He knew so much and learned so quickly. He had been an engineer. If he were alive, maybe he could make the boys understand not to kick her in the breasts but somewhere else. No, they didn't want anything. They were just having fun with her old body.

  The woman who had told everyone how nice blacks were, was the woman from the university. It was a progressive and good thing to welcome blacks to the neighborhood. The whites and blacks were all going to be culturally enriched. When the blacks started moving in and you could not walk the streets at night anymore, the people from the university who said how nice it was to live with blacks did not come around. At first, they did not come around at night. Then when more blacks moved in, they did not come around during the day either. They went off somewhere else, Gerd said, to tell other people how nice it was to live with blacks.

  They never came to Walton Avenue anymore to tell people how culturally enriched they were to have blacks around them because now it was almost all blacks.

  The ones who had money could run. But Gerd did not have enough money anymore and they did not want to bother their daughter who had come to them late in life. Born in America she was. So pretty. She could speak English so well. Maybe she could ask these boys not to kick her mother in the breasts where it hurt so much. Would that be racist? She didn't want to be. a racist. That was a bad thing. But she didn't want to be kicked in the breasts.

  She wished the black policeman were here. He would make them stop. There were nice blacks. But you were not allowed to say there were nice blacks, because that would mean there were blacks who weren't nice. And that would be racist.

  It used to be such a nice neighborhood where you could walk out in the street. Now you trembled when you had to walk past a window that was not boarded up.

  She felt the warm blood of her ripped breast come down her belly and she tasted the blood come up her throat and she moaned and heard them laugh at her frail struggle to live. She felt as if her back had nails in it. Time had passed. There was no one kicking or stabbing her anymore and that meant they might be gone.

  But what did they want? They must have gotten it but there was nothing left in the apartment to steal. There wasn't even a television set any more. You couldn't keep a television set because they would find out and steal it. No white person in the neighborhood-there were three left-had televisions anymore.

  Maybe they had stolen Gerd's silly machine that he had brought with him from Germany. Maybe that was it. What else could they have come for? They said Heil Hitler a lot, these young black boys. They must have thought she was Jewish. Blacks liked to say that to Jews. Mrs. Rosenbloom said once they would come to Jewish funerals to say that and laugh.

  They did not know Hitler. Hitler thought blacks were monkeys. Didn't they read? He did not think they were dangerous either, just funny monkeys.

  When she was young it was her responsibility to learn how to read in school. Now that she was old, the smart people from the university who did not come around anymore said she was still responsible for other people reading. Somehow she was responsible because they could not learn to read or write.

  But she could understand that. She had trouble herself learning English and Gerd always had to translate for her. Maybe these blacks spoke another language well and, like she did, they just had trouble with English. Did they speak African?

  She could not feel her arms anymore and the left side of her h
ead was numbed from pain in a faraway place and she knew she was dying, tied here to her bed. She could not see from her right eye whether it was dark yet because you had to board up your windows if you wanted to walk from room to room. Otherwise you had to crawl below the level of the windowsill so they would not see you. Mrs. Rosenbloom could remember when old people would sit in the sun in the park and young boys and girls would actually help you across a street.

  But Mrs. Rosenbloom had gone in the spring. She had said she wanted to smell a fresh flower at noon again and she had remembered that before blacks had moved into the neighborhood there were daffodils in St. James Park in the spring and she was going to try to smell one in the bright sun. She knew they had to be up by now. So she had phoned and said goodbye in case something should happen. Gerd had warned her not to go but she had said she was tired of living without sunshine and even though she had the misfortune to live in a now dangerous place, she wanted to walk in the sun again. It was not her fault her skin was white and she was too poor to move away from blacks and she was too old to run or to fight them off. Maybe if she just walked out on the street, as if she had a right to, maybe she could get to the park and back.

  And so Mrs. Rosenbloom had headed for the park that noon and the next day when Gerd had phoned one of the other whites who could not leave the neighborhood, he found out that Mrs. Rosenbloom had not contacted them either. Her phone did not answer.

  Gerd reasoned that since there was nothing on the radio-he had a small silent earphone put in because that way you could keep a radio because they wouldn't know you had one and come to steal it-then Mrs. Rosenbloom was dead cleanly. The radio and the newspapers only had stories when they poured gasoline over you and burned you alive as in Boston or when whites committed suicide because the fear of blacks was too great as in Manhattan. The normal everyday deaths were not on the radio, so perhaps Mrs. Rosenbloom had died quickly and easily.

  And later they saw someone who had known someone who had seen her body picked up, so she was dead definitely. It was not a wise move to go to the park. She should have waited for the New York City police to give a lecture on how to be mugged in the park, or gone in the very early hours when the only blacks out were the ones who worked and they left you alone. But she had wanted to smell the flowers under the noonday sun. There were worse things to die for than to smell a daffodil in the full sun. Mrs. Rosenbloom must have died cleanly. That was good in a neighborhood like this.

  Was it a month ago that Mrs. Rosenbloom died? Two months? No, it was last year. When did Gerd die? When did they leave Germany? This was not Germany. No. This was America. And she was dying. It felt all right as if this was the way it should be. She wanted to die to go into that night where her husband waited. She knew she would see him again and was glad he had not lived to observe how horribly she was dying because she could never explain to him that it was all right. That it looked worse than it was and already, Gerd darling, she could feel the senses of the body leave, there being no more need for pain when the body dies.

  And she gave God her last thanks on earth and felt good leaving her body.

  When the life went from the frail old whitened form and the heat went and the blood stopped moving in the veins, the ninety-two pounds of human flesh that had been Mrs. Gerd Mueller did what flesh always did unless frozen or dried. It decomposed. And it smelled so frightfully that the New York City police finally came to collect it. Two large men with unholstered guns provided protection for the coroner's office. They made comments about the neighborhood and when the body was leaving on the stretcher, a gang of black youths cornered one of the policemen who fired off a shot, catching underarm flesh from one of the young men. The gang fled and the body went to the morgue untroubled and the detectives filed their reports and went home to the suburbs where they could raise their families sanely, in relative safety.

  A boozy old reporter who had once worked for the many newspapers in New York City and now worked for a television station leafed through the homicide reports. It was just another old white person killed by blacks and he put it back in a pile of such reports. It offended him that human life would be so insignificant now, as if the city were at war. And it reminded him of another time, when deaths were also unimportant. It was thirty years before when blacks shooting other blacks just was not news.

  He put down the reports and answered a call from the newsroom. A detective in the Bronx, trapped by a gang of black youths, had fired and wounded one. The Black Ministry Council of Greater New York was calling the shooting "barbarism." They were picketing the house of the policeman's lawyer, demanding an end to legal defense of policemen accused of shooting blacks.

  The reporter was told by his assignment editor to link up with a camera and do an interview in front of the lawyer's home.

  The pickets were lounging in cars when the reporter got there. He had to wait for his cameraman. When the camera arrived, it was as if everyone had suddenly been injected with adrenalin. Out of cars and off car hoods they came. They joined the circle and the cameraman got precisely the right angle to make it look as if an entire community was marching in front of this lawyer's house.

  They chanted and marched. The reporter put the microphone in front of a very black man with a very white collar under his rutted face.

  The reverend talked of maniacal policemen shooting down innocent black youths, the victims of "the worst racism ever seen by man."

  The black man identified himself as Reverend Josiah Wadson, chairman of the Black Ministry Council, co-chairman of the World Church Group, executive director of Affirmative Housing Action I, soon to be followed by Affirmative Housing Action II. His voice rolled like mountains in Tennessee. He invoked the righteous wrath of the Almighty. He bemoaned white barbarism.

  The reporter wished fervently that Reverend Wadson, a massive man, would talk upward instead of downward at the reporter, and, if possible, hold his breath.

  Reverend Wadson reeked gin and his breath could have peeled epoxy off a battleship turret. The reporter tried to hide how painful it was to stand near Reverend Wadson's breath.

  Wadson called for an end to police brutality against blacks. He talked of oppression. The reporter tried to hold his own breath so he would not have to inhale so close to the reverend.

  He also had to hide the bulge under the reverend's black mohair jacket. The reverend packed a pearl-handled revolver and the assignment editor would never allow this film to appear showing that the reverend went around armed. The assignment editor didn't want to appear racist; therefore all blacks had to appear good. And unarmed, of course.

  When the film appeared and was grabbed up by the network, there was the sonorous weeping voice of the reverend describing the awful plight of black youths and there were the outraged citizenry behind him, marching in protest, and there was the reporter hunched up, blocking the view of the reverend's gun, and the reporter was turning away every so often and when his face came back close to the reverend's, there were tears in his eyes. It looked as if the story the reverend told was so sad that the veteran reporter could not refrain from sobbing on camera.

  When it was showed overseas, this was just what the foreign news announcers said. So terrible was the police oppression of black youths that a hardened white reporter broke down in tears. This little news clip became famous within days.

  Professors sat around discussing police brutality, which became oppression, which became naturally enough "New York City police-planned genocide."

  When someone brought up the incredibly high crime rate of blacks, the learned response was what could one expect after such attempted police genocide? It was asked on tests in universities. And those who did not know this answer failed.

  Meanwhile, Mrs. Gerd Mueller was buried with a closed casket. The funeral home had attempted to resurrect the left side of the old face but the wax rebuilding where her eye had been proved too difficult with old flesh. They couldn't turn in the folds in wax to build up her old cheek. I
t looked too young for the immigrant from Germany.

  So they shielded everyone's eyes from what the muggers had done, and when the casket was brought from the church to Our Lady of Angels cemetery there was a large cortege. And this surprised Mrs. Mueller's daughter because she did not know that her parents knew that many people, especially men in their thirties and forties. And a few of them who asked questions.

  No, her parents had left nothing. Oh, there was a safe deposit box that held only a few bonds. Trinkets. That's what one mourner said he was looking for. Trinkets. Old German trinkets.

  And the daughter thought this was shocking. But what was really shocking in today's world? So a buyer wanted to do business at graveside? Maybe that was his thing? And she longed for the days when some things had been shocking, because her heart hurt fiercely and she thought of the old woman dying alone and how frightening it had been to visit her parents after the neighborhood had changed.

  "No bloody trinkets, damn you," she yelled.

  And that day, wreckers began taking down the apartment building where the Muellers had lived.

  They moved in with an armed escort of federal marshals, each over six feet tall and karate trained. They sealed off the street. They built armor-plated barricades. They carried truncheons. The old walk-up building was taken down with surgical precision brick by brick, and the debris left the area, not by truckloads, but in large white trunks. With padlocks.

  CHAPTER TWO

  His name was Remo and he was taking the elevator up from beneath. He smelled the heavy buildup of engine fumes embedded in the caked grease, and felt long cables tremble ever so slightly when the elevator came to a floor and that fifteen-story ripple started with a halt of the elevator and shimmied down to the basement and then back up past the fifteenth floor to the penthouse, five stories overhead.

  He had a good forearm hold on a bolt that he kept just above his lean frame. People who held onto things for their lives usually tired quickly, precisely because they held on for their lives. Fear gave speed and power to the muscles, not endurance.