The End of the Game td-60

  The End of the Game

  ( The Destroyer - 60 )

  Warren Murphy

  Richard Sapir

  Peril Points

  With voluptuous Pamela Thrushwell at his side, Remo punched out 242 on the machine, and saw the numbers replaced by letters "PLEASE TELL ME HOW WELL YOU DID." "We killed the man and the woman," said Remo. "YOU LIE. I CAN SEE YOU. YOU AND THE BIG-BREASTED BRIT TROUBLEMAKER," said the machine. "Take a hike," Remo said.

  Suddenly the machine's cash drawer opened. A stack of hundred dollar bills appeared. "What's this for?" "FOR YOU. WHO ARE YOU? WHAT DO YOU WANT?" "To destroy you," Remo said. " I am coming to kill you." The machine blinked as if in some sort of insane joy. Then it flashed out:

  "CONGRATULATIONS, WHOEVER YOU ARE. YOU ARE WORTH 50,000 POINTS."

  The game was on-until death turned it off...

  THE END OF THE GAME.

  The End of the Game

  The Destroyer #60

  by Richard Sapir & Warren Murphy

  ISBN 0-7408-0853-2

  First Peanut Press Edition

  This edition published by

  arrangement with

  DOOMGAME

  Abner Buell was world video game champion. He could annihilate anyone at any electronic contest ever devised-- including all the ones he had invented to reap billions in profit while reveling in bright bursts of perverse pleasure. Now there was only one game left for Abner to create and then conquer all opposition: a game that turned men into killer pawns, women into wantons, and the great powers of the world into dead-certain nuclear suicides.

  Remo Williams, the Destroyer, and his Oriental mentor Chiun, had to pull Buell's plug before Buell punched the ultimate key to catastrophe. But how could they win out over this fiendish wizard when Buell crossed enough circuits to program Chiun to destroy the Destroyer--?

  BChapter One

  Waldo Hammersmith believed that none of the good things in life was free. Everything in the world cost. You paid for what you got and sometimes you paid double and sometimes you didn't get anything to begin with and still paid double.

  That was what he always said. But if Waldo Hammersmith had really believed his good advice instead of using it just to cry about his misfortunes, he might one day not be looking very closely at a 38 Police Special. It would be held by a detective.

  The detective would be telling him to do something illegal. Waldo Hammersmith would not believe him.

  "Aw, c'mon. This has got to be a game," Waldo would say.

  He would see a bright flash coming out of the barrel. He would have no time to disbelieve that he was being shot because that portion of the human anatomy that was in charge of disbelieving was covering the wall behind his blown-open head.

  It was too late for Waldo. Everything was too late for Waldo because he had been played to perfection, as if someone somewhere had a schematic diagram of his soul and had pressed all the right buttons to make him do what he was supposed to do.

  It had all started one wintry morning, when Waldo Hammersmith had begun to believe that he was getting something for nothing.

  It came in the mail. Ordinarily, Waldo opened the bills last. But this day, he opened those envelopes first. The credit card for gas had hit almost a hundred dollars that month. He had driven his wife, Millicent, to her mother's twice. Her mother lived far out on Long Island and the Hammersmiths lived in the Bronx. Waldo grumbled over the bill, then decided there might be a small benefit in it. When he showed it to his wife, they might decide not to visit her mother that often.

  There were other bills. There was heating that was too high. A general charge bill that he had thought he had held down but which had come booming back with an old charge he had forgotten. There was the rent and the partial payment on the medical insurance and the totals came to roughly twenty-five dollars more that month than he brought home in legal salary.

  Waldo Hammersmith lived in terror of the Internal Revenue Service computers somehow putting those two things together. He drove a cab and while he reported most of his normal tips, he did not report what kept his nostrils barely above sea level-- those five- and ten-dollar bills he got when he would drive a passenger to any sexual delight he might want.

  That was the real reason he worked the International Terminal at Kennedy. He would get both a tip from the passenger and a small cut from the brothel, and thus he did, by daily crime, barely make it. If Millicent didn't lose her job.

  Waldo went through his bills like someone suspecting a cancer in his personal economy, something that eventually must be fatal but had so far been kept miraculously under control by the sudden strange lusts of Pakistanis or Nigerians waving hundred-dollar bills and looking for a good time.

  He saved his Insta-Charge bill for last. It allowed him what he called his no bounce security. He could write a check for more than he had in his account and the bank treated the overdraft as a loan.

  When he took it out, he was assured by the bank that it was a security blanket. But the security blanket lasted only two months before Waldo Hammersmith was at his credit limit, and he went back to bouncing checks again every so often.

  In the long run, it had just been a loan, just another one that Waldo Hammersmith, forty-two, kept servicing. It seemed that out of his little cab he was servicing the entire financial world. And not quite making it.

  Then he opened the Insta-Charge statement to see how much that security blanket which was no longer there was costing him to service. The number was right. More than fourteen hundred dollars. But they had the symbol wrong. They had a plus where a minus should be.

  "They'll catch it," he told himself. Mistakes this good just did not happen to Waldo Hammersmith. He wondered if he should report it or let them catch it themselves.

  He would ignore it. He would pretend it just did not happen, because you always paid for what you got.

  But the next day he was driving his cab past the bank branch and he thought that perhaps the bank had made an error that no one would ever catch. It happened sometimes, so he parked and went into the bank.

  Nervously, he presented his Insta-Charge card to the teller and asked her for his balance. And he was told that he had $1,485 in his account. Adding in his security margin, he could write a check for almost three thousand dollars.

  He was sweating when he left the bank. He immediately drove to another branch of the same bank and a different teller gave him the same good news. He had almost three thousand dollars of available cash.

  The bank had made a mistake. Maybe they would catch it, but it certainly wasn't his fault and he wasn't going to go to jail over it. So he paid his bills. He took Millicent out to dinner. With the three thousand dollars of available cash, he got through the month whistling.

  Then came the new bank statement. Waldo Hammersmith couldn't believe the computer numbers. He had almost three thousand dollars cash in his account and a total of forty-five hundred available, counting the security blanket.

  He wrote a check for four thousand dollars. He stood at the teller's window as she checked his identity, went up to the branch manager, and then returned. She had that cold face behind the window, the kind of face that had said "no" to him all his life.

  "How do you want it, sir?" she asked.

  "Any way you want to give it."

  "Tens, twenties, fifties, hundreds?" she asked.

  "Hundreds," said Waldo. The words almost choked him. He tried to look calm. He tried to look like a man who ordinarily took four thousand dollars from his bank account.

  He bought himself three new suits, cleaned up every last bill, got a new television and tape deck and one of those video games that kids were supposed
to enjoy.

  "Waldo, where are you getting the money from?" asked Millicent. She was a dumpy fireplug of a woman who wore print dresses and hats with fruit on them. Millicent had what Waldo felt was an insatiable sexual appetite. Once a month, without fail.

  Waldo performed for Millicent because she would become unbearable when denied access to manly services. He had hoped she would consider cheating on him but decided that the only man who might want her was a drunk seventeen-year-old laced with aphrodisiacs. Blind wouldn't help all that much because even hands could feel the multitude of cellulite lumps on Millicent's body.

  On the street Waldo could tell where Millicent's head was because it had the ugly hat on it. In the bedroom, he never found it that easy.

  "I asked you where you got the money, Waldo."

  "None of your business."

  "Is it illegal, Waldo? Tell me that. Are you doing something illegal?"

  "You're damned right," he said.

  Millicent turned back to the new color television set. "Keep it up. It's wonderful," she said.

  The next month Waldo Hammersmith bought himself a new car with a check. The month after that he purchased his own taxicab with the medallion license worth five times the price of the cab itself. The month after that, he purchased two more cabs and hired other drivers for them.

  The following month he sold the two cabs because the only way he wanted to deal with taxi drivers was from the back seat, giving them directions. That is, when his chauffeur was ill. Waldo had so much money from his growing Insta-Charge account, he moved from the Bronx to Park Avenue.

  Millicent settled for a lump-sum divorce. She took the kids, and Waldo lived alone with closets full of clothes and new video games and television sets which he bought like he used to buy cigarettes. There had obviously been a computer error which was not going to be changed because only the computer knew. He didn't care whether the money was being taken out of someone else's account or out of some computer calculation somewhere or whatever. It was just there, some sort of grand welfare.

  By year's end, it was no longer a gift or an error but his natural right. He found it very normal that every time he spent all the money in his account, it came back doubled and tripled.

  And then it stopped growing. He almost phoned the bank to complain. The following month, it shrank. And then he got the first phone call.

  It was a woman's voice, soft and massaging.

  "We're so sorry that your funds have shrunk. Would you come in and pay us a visit?"

  "My funds haven't shrunk. Everything is fine," he said. "What's wrong?"

  "Nothing. We just want to talk to you. Maybe you can use more money?"

  "No, I'm fine," Waldo said. "Who is this?" His heart fell. They had found out. It was inevitable and now it had happened. Now they knew and Waldo Hammersmith was done for.

  "Waldo," said the voice as beautiful as silver chimes. "Please don't play games. If there is one thing I hate, it is a person who plays games. Waldo, come in and we will get you some more money."

  "Who are you?"

  "Waldo, you have taken $1.47 million that is not yours."

  "That much?" said Waldo. He could have sworn it was only a few hundred thousand but he had stopped counting. Why continue to count when you had all the money you wanted?

  "That much, Waldo." The woman's voice was creamy smooth. Almost too smooth, Waldo thought. Almost mechanical.

  "I didn't know it was that much," Waldo said. "I swear I didn't know it was that much."

  The time had come to answer for the funds. The address the woman had given him was a bare office. The door was unlocked. Inside was one chair which faced a blank wall. It felt like a prison already.

  "Hello, Waldo," came that beautiful voice. But she wasn't in the room.

  "Stop looking for a loudspeaker, Waldo, and listen to me. You have had a good life recently, haven't you?"

  "Not bad," Waldo said. It had been glorious. He felt his hands grow wet with sweat and wondered how long hacking would take to pay back the $1.47 million.

  "It doesn't have to end, Waldo."

  "Good. Good. It wasn't my fault. I didn't really know how big the overdraft was, you know. You go from fourteen hundred dollars to say a million and you sort of lose track. Kind of. Know what I mean? It gets away from you. For God's sake, have mercy on me. Please. I confess. I did it. Please."

  Waldo was crying. He was on his knees.

  "I'll do anything. Anything. I'll hack in Harlem. I'll pick up blacks on street corners at three A.M. Anything."

  "Very good, Waldo," said the sinuous voice. "Although to be truthful, I wish you had shown some more resistance."

  "Sure. I'll resist. What should I do? Don't send me to jail."

  "Just reach under the chair," the voice said.

  "With my hand?"

  "With your hand."

  He couldn't get his hand underneath the wooden chair fast enough. He picked up a splinter under his thumbnail, he reached so hard. There was a picture taped under the chair and he tore it out so quickly he ripped a small corner of it.

  The picture was of a pretty young woman with a blond perky face, perhaps in her early twenties.

  "That is Pamela Thrushwell. She is twenty-four, over here from England. She works at the International Computer Advancement Center of New York. You can call it the computer center."

  "I've never killed anybody," Waldo said.

  "Please don't jump to conclusions."

  "Don't worry. Whatever it is, I'll do it," Waldo said.

  "Good, because you'll like it. Do you think she's beautiful?"

  "Yes."

  "Listen carefully then. You will go to the computer center in downtown Manhattan and find Pamela Thrushwell and walk up to her and cop a feel."

  "Excuse me. I thought you said I should cop a feel."

  "I did," the voice said.

  "Hey, c'mon," Waldo said. "What is this? What kind of game is this?" Waldo felt he could be outraged now that the voice had asked for such a thing.

  "You don't have to do it, Waldo. No one is forcing you."

  "I want to cooperate."

  "I would hope so; $1.47 million is an awful lot of money."

  "Do you have something reasonable?" Waldo said.

  "I would say that a million and a half smackers for a feel is more than reasonable, Waldo. I don't have time. Do what you're told or the police get called in."

  "Which breast?" asked Waldo.

  "Either."

  Waldo put the photo in his pocket. He wasn't sure if he should go into the computer center, reach out and do the job, or if he should take her out to dinner, soft lights, perhaps a necklace, maybe some kissing first, and then let his hand slide down ever so gently until he had breast in hand, duty done, back home to the Park Avenue penthouse and the good life.

  Pamela Thrushwell decided the method for him. If he wished assistance on the complexities of the new mega-frame, mini-byte work analyzer and reach-space mode, Pamela Thrushwell would be happy to oblige. But she was not, thank you, there for dates, pleasantries, or to be picked up by perfect strangers.

  Thank you again, Mr. Hammersmith. No, and no, thank you very much.

  "You won't go out with me?"

  "No."

  "Then can I just cop a feel?"

  "I beg your pardon."

  "Just a little feel. I'll give you a thousand dollars."

  "The nerve. Bugger off, Jack. That's cheek for you," said Ms. Thrushwell with a British accent so hard it could sharpen knives.

  "Five thousand."

  "I'm calling the police."

  Waldo Hammersmith shut his eyes, reached out blindly until he had something soft in his hand, gave a squeeze, then ran out of the center with people yelling after him.

  His coat flapped in the breeze behind him. His legs, unused to much more than climbing into bed or walking to his limousine, strained to keep the body moving. It was like a dream. His legs felt as if they were running but his body didn't see
m to be moving.

  Waldo was collared on a busy New York street in front of a crowd of people whose dreary days were always improved by the humiliation of another. He was really collared. The detective grabbed him by his expensive suit jacket and marched him back into the center like a child being forcibly returned home for dinner. Pamela Thrushwell's pale Britannic features were flushed red with shock.

  "Is this the man?" the detective asked her.

  Waldo tried to look at the ceiling. The floor. Anywhere but at Ms. Thrushwell. If he could have, he would have pretended that he didn't know himself.

  "Is this the man who tried to cop a feel?" the policeman repeated.

  Waldo would gladly have faced death instead of this humiliation. Why hadn't the voice asked him to rob a store? He could be arrested for armed robbery without too much shame. But copping a feel? Even the phrase was humiliating. Waldo Hammersmith committing a crime to finagle a fondle. His soul was shredded there in front of the growing crowd. He looked up to the ceiling, feeling unworthy even to pray. He saw television monitor cameras focusing on Pamela Thrushwell's desk. Even the monitors were hanging around. They didn't move to other parts of the center. Their unblinking eyes stayed focused on Waldo and he wanted to yell at them to do their job and cover the entire floor space.

  "I really do wish you would just get him out of here," Pamela said.

  'It's not that easy," the detective said. "Are you charging him or do I let him go?"

  "Can't you just get him out of here?" She glanced at all the people clustered around her desk. "This is so embarrassing."

  "Listen, lady, the guy copped a feel. Which tit did he grab?"

  Waldo looked down. Pamela covered her eyes with her hands. "Will you get out of here?" she gasped.

  "Did he grab this one?" the detective said. Like testing a tomato for ripeness, he put his large hairy hand on Miss Thrushwell's left breast.

  She slapped it away and demanded to see his badge.

  "If you are a policeman, I have a right to ask you to remove a customer from our premises."

  "On what grounds?" the detective asked.

  "Disturbing the peace."