Kill or Cure Read online

  Kill or Cure

  The Destroyer #11

  Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir

  For Neil Bagozzi.

  Friends don’t get any better.

  CHAPTER ONE

  JAMES BULLINGSWORTH HAD ENTERTAINED few original thoughts in his life, but his last one was good enough to get him an ice pick in his brain, send a multitude of government agents fleeing to obscure outposts, and leave the president of the United States gasping:

  “Why do these things always have to happen to me?”

  This particular doozy of an idea came to James Bullingsworth one morning in late spring while doing volunteer work for the Greater Florida Betterment League where he had been volunteering nine to five, Monday through Friday, for the last two years. That Bullingsworth tended not to probe too deeply into the reasons of things was why he got the job, and before he started thinking new things, he should have remembered how he had volunteered.

  The volunteer ceremony had been brief. The president of the bank where Bullingsworth worked had called him into his office.

  “Bullingsworth, what do you think of improving the government of the greater Miami area?” the president had asked.

  Bullingsworth had thought improvement was a good idea.

  “Bullingsworth, how would you like to volunteer your time and effort to the Greater Florida Betterment League?”

  Bullingsworth would like to do that, but it might interfere with his career at the bank.

  “Bullingsworth, that is your career at the bank.”

  So James Bullingsworth, who was known to mind his own business, went to work for the League while he drew his paychecks from the bank. He should have remembered the strangeness of his appointment that spring morning when he noticed a computer printout was incomplete.

  He said to his secretary, a young Cuban woman with very high breasts: “Miss Carbonal, this computer printout is incomplete. There are great gaps in it. It’s just a bunch of random letters. We can’t forward it in this condition.”

  Miss Carbonal picked up the greenish printout and stared at it. Bullingsworth stared at her left breast. She was wearing the see-through bra again.

  “We always send it out like this,” said Miss Carbonal.

  “What?” said Bullingsworth.

  “We been sending out printouts like this for two years now. When we mail to the Kansas City office, it’s always like this. I speak to the other girls at other Betterment League offices all around the country and they say the same. At Kansas City, they must be some crazy people, yes?”

  “Let me see that breast,” said Bullingsworth, with authority.

  “Wha?” said Miss Carbonal.

  “The printout,” said Bullingsworth, covering up his slip quickly. “Let me see it.” He busied himself in the random letters with the big gaps. “Hmmmmm,” said James Bullingsworth, former assistant vice-president of one of the larger banks in the greater Miami area. The idea was born.

  “Miss Carbonal, I want you to get me all the printouts shipped from our office to Kansas City.”

  “What you want that for?”

  “Miss Carbonal, I gave you an instruction.”

  “You be in plenty trouble, asking questions. You want to look at those printouts, you go yourself.”

  “Are you refusing a direct order, Miss Carbonal?”

  “You betcha, Mr. Bullingsworth.”

  “That’s all I wanted to hear,” said Bullingsworth menacingly. “You may leave.”

  Miss Carbonal fluffed out undisturbed. A half-hour later as Bullingsworth left for lunch, she called to him:

  “Mr. Bullingsworth, don’t go rocking the boat. You got good money. I got good money. We don’t ask questions. What do you want?”

  Bullingsworth approached her desk with great gravity.

  “Miss Carbonal,” he said. “There are ways to do things. Proper, businesslike, thorough ways to do things. There are American ways to do things and that means knowing what you’re doing and not just dumbly animal-like sending off garbled printouts for two years. It means, Miss Carbonal, understanding what you are doing.”

  “You’re a nice man, Mr. Bullingsworth. Take my word for it. Don’t go rocking the boat. Okay?”

  “No,” said Bullingsworth.

  “You can’t get those other printouts anyway. Henrietta Alvarez is the girl who does them. She feeds them into the computer, checks the printout to make sure it’s accurate and then destroys it. That’s what she was told to do. And she was told to report anyone asking questions about the printouts.”

  “You don’t understand Yankee pluck, Miss Carbonal.”

  James Bullingsworth exercised Yankee pluck that night after all the other League employees had left the office. He broke into the locked desk of Henrietta Alvarez and, as he had suspected, found inside a foot-high compression of light-green printouts.

  Amused at his secretary’s apprehension, Bullingsworth took the thick pile of printouts into his office for inspection. His confidence soared as he read the first line of each printout.

  They obviously were in code and he, James Bullingsworth, would break that code for his amusement. He needed a diversion, in a job that occupied only two hours of each working day. Incredible that anyone could think such a thing could escape his notice for long, he thought. Were they fools at the National Betterment League’s headquarters in Kansas City?

  The code proved to be quite simple, almost like a crossword puzzle. Putting a week’s printouts together at once, the gaps on the lines were filled. The only question was which order the letters must be read in.

  “Tragf pu,” scribbled Bullingsworth, and with that he rearranged the sheets again. “Fargt up,” and he rearranged them again.

  “Graft up,” wrote Bullingsworth. Without rearranging the computer printouts again, he began to copy down the contents of the sheets. He worked all night long. When he was finished, he scrambled the sheets and read his handiwork.

  “Jeeezus H. Christ,” he whistled. He looked through the glass door connecting his office with outside, saw Miss Carbonal arriving for work, and waved her to come inside.

  “Carmen, Carmen. Look at this. Look at what I figured out.”

  Carmen Carbonal stuck her fingers in her ears and rushed from the office. “Don’t tell me nothing,” she yelled.

  He followed her to her desk. “Hey, don’t be afraid,” he said.

  “You muy stupido,” she said. “You big, stupid man. Burn that stuff. Burn that stuff.”

  “Aren’t you interested in what we’re really doing?”

  “No,” she cried, sobbing. “I don’t want to know. And you shouldn’t want to know either. You so dumb. Dumb.”

  “Oh, Carmen,” said Bullingsworth, placing a comforting arm around her heaving shoulder. “I’m sorry. If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll burn everything.”

  “Too late,” she said. “Too late.”

  “It’s not too late,” he said. “To burn it now.”

  “Too late.”

  With great fanfare, Bullingsworth brought all the copies of the printouts to the private bathroom in his office and burned them, creating lung-choking smoke.

  “Now are you happy?” he asked Miss Carbonal.

  “Too late,” she said, still weeping.

  “I burned everything,” he smiled.

  But Bullingsworth had not burned everything. He had saved his notes, which, among other things, told him why his bank was willing to pay him a salary for volunteer work with the Greater Florida Betterment League. It also told him why so many Florida officials had suddenly been so successfully indicted for kickbacks and extortion. It even gave him a hint as to how the upcoming local elections would come out, and why.

  Bullingsworth
suddenly felt very proud of his country, secure knowing that America was doing more to fight the disintegration of the nation than met the eye. Much more.

  Only one thing in the notes bothered him. That was the section on proposed pay raises for approval by “Folcroft,” whatever or whoever “Folcroft” was.

  Everyone at his level in the League was getting a 14 percent raise and his was a non-inflationary 2.5 percent. He decided he wasn’t going to let it bother him, because he shouldn’t have been aware of the injustice anyway. He would put it out of his mind. And if had had done this thing as he had planned, he would have lived to collect his non-inflationary 2.5 percent pay raise.

  But his resolve disappeared later that day when he met the President of the Greater Miami Trust and Investment Company and wondered why he had received only a 2.5 percent raise. The president, who considered himself an expert in industrial and human relations, told Bullingsworth he was sorry but no one on loan to the Betterment League was getting more than 2.5 percent.

  “Are you sure?” said Bullingsworth.

  “I give you my word as a banker. Have I ever lied to you?”

  The first thing James Bullingsworth did was have a drink. A martini. Double. Then he had another martini. And another after that. And when he arrived home, he told his wife that if she mentioned he had been drinking, he would punch her heart out, noted that she had been right all along about how the bank was using him, put on a fresh jacket—carefully transferring his notebook to the inside pocket—and flailed out of the house yelling how he was “going to show those sons of bitches who James Bullingsworth was.”

  At first he played with the idea of exposing the Betterment League in the Miami Dispatch. But that could get him fired. Then he thought of confronting the president of the bank. That would get him the increased money, but somewhere along the road the bank president would make him suffer.

  The proper course of action came to him when he switched to bourbon. Bourbon focused the mind, elevated it to awarenesses of human relationships not understood in mere gin and vermouth.

  Bourbon told him that it was every man for himself. It was the law of the jungle. And he, James Bullingsworth, had been a fool to think he lived in a civilized society. A fool. Did the bartender know that?

  “We’re cutting you off, mister,” said the bartender.

  “Then you’re the fool,” Bullingsworth said. “Beware the king of the jungle,” he said, and remembering a Miami Beach official who once spoke at a church picnic and said he was glad to see young men like James Bullingsworth get involved in civic affairs, he phoned that official.

  “Why don’t we talk this over in the morning, huh, fella?” said the official.

  “Because, baby, you may not be around in the morning. They’re going to indict your ass next. Parking meter receipts.”

  “Maybe we’d better not talk about this on the phone. Where can we meet?”

  “I want a million dollars for what I have. A cool million, buddy, because this is the law of the jungle.”

  “Do you know the Mall in Miami Beach, the end of the Mall?”

  “Do I know the Mall? Do you know what you people are planning for construction on Key Biscayne? Do I know the Mall?”

  “Look, fella, at the end of the Mall, on the beach near the Ritz Hotel. Can you get there in an hour?”

  “I can get there in fifteen minutes.”

  “No, don’t get in any accidents. I think you’ve got something very valuable.”

  “A million dollars valuable,” said Bullingsworth, drunkenly slurring the words. “A million dollars.”

  He hung up and, while passing the bar, informed the bartender that he just might come back, buy the bar and fire his Irish ass the hell out of there. He waved the notebook with the scribbles in front of the bartender’s face.

  “It’s all here, sweetheart. Gonna fire your Irish ass the hell out of here. Gonna be the biggest political cat in the political jungle. You’ll think another think before you cut off James Bullingsworth. Where’s the door?”

  “You’re leaning on it,” said the bartender.

  “Right,” said Bullingsworth and sailed out into the muggy Miami night. The air had a bit of a sobering effect on him and by the time he reached the beach he was only drunk. He kicked the sand and breathed the fresh salt-air. Maybe he had been a bit precipitous? He looked at his watch. He could use another drink. He could really use another drink. Maybe if he went to the president of the bank, explained what he did, maybe everything could be worked out.

  He heard the strains of Bette Midler from an open hotel room window. He heard a small power-boat approaching. The beach was supposed to be lit at this hour. All the other sections were indeed well-lighted, but this section was dark. The Atlantic was black out there, with a lone ship blinking like an island afloat.

  Then came a whisper.

  “Bullingsworth. Bullingsworth. Is that you?”

  “Yeah. Is that you?” said Bullingsworth.

  “Yes.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Never mind. Did you bring the information?”

  “Yes, I have it.”

  “You tell anyone else?”

  Sobering up all too quickly, Bullingsworth thought about an answer. If he told them someone else knew about it, then they might think he was blackmailing them. Then again, that was what he was doing.

  “Look, never mind,” said Bullingsworth. “We’ll talk about this some other day. I’m not going to tell anyone else. Let’s meet tomorrow.”

  “What do you have?”

  “Nothing. I didn’t bring it.”

  “What’s that notebook?”

  “Oh, this. Jeez. Just to take notes. I always carry one.”

  “Let me see it.”

  “No,” said Bullingsworth.

  “You don’t want me to take it, do you?”

  “Just notes. Notes I have.”

  “Bring it here.”

  “They’re nothing, really. I mean, nothing. Look, my friends are going to pick me up here any minute. I’ll be seeing you. Tomorrow is fine,” said Bullingsworth. “I’m really sorry to have bothered an important man like you tonight anyway.”

  “Bring the notebook over here, James,” came the voice, soft and ominous and tinged, Bullingsworth realized for the first time, with a touch of Europe. “You’ll be sorry if I have to go over there and get it.”

  The voice was so threatening that Bullingsworth, like a little boy, meekly entered the darkness.

  “Just notes,” he said.

  “Tell me about them.”

  Bullingsworth smelled the lilac cologne very heavy. The man was shorter than he, by about an inch, but broader, and there was something in his tone—something in the way he spoke—that was commanding. He was, of course, not the politician that Bullingsworth had expected to meet.

  “They’re just notes,” Bullingsworth said. “From a computer printout in the Betterment League.”

  “Who else knows you made the notes?”

  “No one,” said Bullingsworth, knowing he was saving his secretary’s life, just as he knew his own life would be soon over. It was as if he were a spectator to the event. He knew what would happen, there was nothing he could do, and now he was watching himself about to be killed. It didn’t seem horrible at all. There was something beyond horror, like the acceptance of it.

  “Not even your secretary, Miss Carbonal?”

  “Miss Carbonal is a hear-no-evil, see-no-evil, nine-to-five, pick-up-your-check-and-go-home type. You know, Cuban.”

  “Yes, I know. These printouts. What do they say?”

  “They show that the National Betterment League is a fake. A secret government organization that’s investigating and infiltrating local governments in cities all across the country.”

  “And what about Miami Beach?”

  “The Greater Florida Betterment League is a cover, too. It’s been digging into political crime in Miami Beach. Shakedowns, gambling, extortion. It’s b
een setting up a case against all the city officials, getting evidence ready for indictments.”

  “I see. Anything else?”

  “No. No. That’s about it.”

  “Would you like to work for us?”

  “Sure,” said Bullingsworth, as sober as he had ever drawn a sober breath.

  “Would you like your money now?”

  “Now. Anytime.”

  “I see. Look at that boat behind you. Out there, in the Atlantic. Look.”

  Bullingsworth saw the boat, placid and blinking in the vast darkness.

  “I don’t believe you,” said the man with the heavy lilac cologne and the foreign accent, and then Bullingsworth felt a sharp sting in his right ear, and saw nothing else. But, in the vast nothing that is death is often infinite wisdom, and in his last thought he knew that his killer would face an awesome force that would grind him and his cohorts into waste material, a force that was at the very center of the universe. Of course, all of this meant very little to James Bullingsworth, former assistant vice-president of the Greater Miami Trust and Investment Company. He was dead.

  In the course of normal morning beach-cleaning operations, Bullingsworth’s body was discovered with what appeared to be a wooden tool handle in his ear.

  “Oh, no,” said the sweeper and decided immediately he would not act like some hysterical woman. He would walk calmly to the nearest telephone and call the police, giving them exact details and other useful information.

  This resolve to discipline lasted three steps on the sandy beach, whereupon it was discarded for an alternate course of action.

  “Help. Arggghh. Dead. Help. Body. Help. Someone. Police. Help.”

  The sweeper might have stayed rooted, screaming until he was hoarse, but an elderly vacationer spotted him and the body from her hotel window and phoned the police.

  “Better bring an ambulance too,” she said. “There’s a hysterical man down there.”

  The police brought more than an ambulance. They brought photographers and reporters and television crews. For something had happened during the night to make the death of this man a very important matter, important enough to call a press conference where James Bullingsworth’s doozy of an idea—his belief in a federal government plot to infiltrate local governments and jail key officials—got a public airing.