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  McGurk raised his hands for silence. The babbling drifted off into a stillness that hung over the room.

  "Men of the Shield," McGurk said deeply, "welcome to New York."

  He looked slowly around the room.

  "This is a proud moment for me, but a deeply sorrowful one too. I'm proud because I am meeting with you men, the finest policemen-no, let me say cops because the word doesn't embarrass me-the finest cops in our nation…men who have put their lives on the line many times in the never ending struggle for law and order in our land. And men… I don't have to remind you… who have made that extra special commitment that few others have the courage to make.

  "In a little more than an hour, the press is going to be in here and I'm going to tell the nation about the formation of the Men of the Shield. I'm going to tell them how we will become a national clearing house to solve the crimes that plague our cities and make our streets unsafe. Already I have information"-he paused and chuckled slightly-"on several of the more dastardly crimes that have been committed in the current wave of violence that has hit the country."

  He chuckled again and this time several policemen joined in.

  "And let me tell you this," McGurk said. "The criminals responsible for those crimes will be punished. And that will show that the Men of the Shield mean business. And from that moment on, our goal will be to bring every policeman and every law enforcement officer in the country under our banner; so that together we can get on with the job of stamping out crime. When the politicians won't act, when the prosecutors turn their heads, when the bleeding hearts try to stop the law, the Men of the Shield will be there, investigating, finding the truth and forcing society to bring to bear its full weight against the evil-doers in our land."

  Remo smiled to himself. So that's what it was all about. Planting clues at the scene of a crime, then planting the evidence on someone they wanted to hang. A quick, easy way to get a national reputation and, in the process, get rid of a couple of baddies. Well planned, McGurk.

  "The first phase of our work is, I believe, now behind us." McGurk paused and cleared his throat significantly. "Let's call it our planning and preparation phase." He grinned, showing long yellow teeth. Remo saw the policemen in the room grin and turn toward each other. There was a hum of words, and McGurk spoke over them.

  "So it is with pride that I meet with you tonight, as we embark on this long journey forward into a day when our nation will be free again from the chains of crime, when our wives and children will be safe in their beds, when every street in every city in every corner of our country will be safe to walk at any hour of the day or night. And if, to accomplish that takes more than police investigation, if it takes political power, then I say the Men of the Shield will pursue that political power and we will use it with all our united strength."

  "Right on."

  "You said it."

  There were scattered shouts of approval around the room.

  McGurk let the noise continue for a moment, then began to speak softly.

  "That is why I stand here with pride. But as I said, I come in sadness too. I have been delivered a blow of such sadness that I honestly thought of cancelling this meeting.

  "I have just been informed that the police commissioner of this city, Commissioner O'Toole… the man, more than any other who was responsible for the formation of the Men of the Shield… the man who has been at my side during these long hours … I have just learned that Commissioner O'Toole has been murdered in his home."

  He paused to let his words sink in. There was a quick-lived buzz of words, and then all heads turned toward McGurk for more information.

  "But I decided to go on with the meeting anyway because I think the tragic death of the commissioner underscores the need for our organization."

  "How'd he get it?" one man shouted.

  "He was killed in his home," McGurk said, "by an infamous Mafia thug in this city… a paid killer for organized crime… a man who even tried to infiltrate our own police department… a sewer of evil named Remo Bednick. But fortunately, Bednick is dead from the bullets of our city's finest.

  "As I said, I thought of shutting down this meeting because of this terrible tragedy, but then I realized that Commissioner O'Toole would have wanted it to be held, to show to you men the terrible risks we must take as an organization if you men are brave enough to accept the challenge of standing up to the forces of organized crime."

  McGurk pulled his wallet from his pocket, and opened it, showing the badge Remo had first seen in Captain Milken's wallet.

  "This is the badge of the Men of the Shield," McGurk said. "It was designed personally by Commissioner O'Toole. I hope and pray that each of us will carry it with honor and pride as we set off now on our long crusade to insure that never again will a policeman die from a gangster's gun."

  He stood there, holding the badge up over his head. The gold glinted almost dark brown in the overhead fluorescent lights, and McGurk rotated the badge slowly, letting it flash, milking the drama of the moment, as the policemen watched him silently, and finally Remo stood up in the last row quietly, his hat still pulled down over his eyes, and he called out briskly into the silence:

  "McGurk. You're a yellow-bellied lying bastard."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  There was a startled rumble in the room as Remo moved down the aisle toward McGurk.

  He still wore the hat and he walked heavily on his feet so McGurk would not recognize the smooth glide with which Remo usually moved.

  Remo stood at the bottom of the small stage, looking down, and then he raised his head slowly and met McGurk's eyes. McGurk's expression had been one of mystified interest, but now it turned to shock when he saw and recognized the man he knew as Remo Bednick.

  Remo stared at him coldly, then turned and faced the crowd of police officers who were still buzzing, watching the strange confrontation.

  Remo silenced them by raising a hand.

  "I want to read you something Commissioner O'Toole wrote," he said.

  He pulled the papers from his pocket and shuffled through them, finally pulling out the sheet that O'Toole had written.

  "O'Toole was a sick man," Remo said. "He had started something and then seen it get away from him. He had seen it turned into something designed to promote the interests, not of law and order, but of one man, and one man only.

  "He planned suicide, and this note was to be his last will and testament. He told everything in it. How he had started the Men of the Shield to fight crime, and how he had tried to stop it from being turned into a political organization. And then he failed. And so he wrote: 'And so I am putting down these notes so that the authorities, properly alerted, can take the steps that will guarantee that our nation will continue as a nation of law, working as free men, together, under the Constitution.

  "'And even more, I am addressing these words to the policemen of this country, that thin blue line that represents all that stands between us and the jungle. I do this secure in the knowledge that when the facts are presented to them, they will do as policemen have done since time immemorial-they will face and meet their responsibilities; they will act as free men and not as political pawns in a huckster's evil shell game; they will stand tall as Americans.

  "'To achieve that end, my death may give to me a worth that the last acts of my life have denied me.'"

  Remo stopped and looked into the stillness around the room, meeting the eyes of the policemen sitting there. Behind him, on the stage, McGurk began to shout: "Liar! Liar! Forgery! Don't believe him, men."

  Remo turned and leaped up onto the stage, tossing his hat onto the small table behind McGurk.

  He turned again toward the crowd. "No, it's true," he shouted, "and I'll tell you how I know. I know because I killed O'Toole. I killed him because I was sent to kill him. And who sent me? Why, that noble friend of policemen everywhere. Inspector William McGurk. Because O'Toole wouldn't let him use you men to become a political power."

&
nbsp; "You're a liar," McGurk roared.

  Remo turned toward him. McGurk reached in under his jacket and pulled out a revolver.

  Remo looked at him and smiled. "Is there anything worse than a cop-killer?" he shouted. "Yes," he answered himself. "A cop who's a cop-killer, and that's what McGurk is."

  He turned toward McGurk. The revolver was levelled now at Remo's chest. McGurk's eyes were as cold as jagged glass.

  "Remember those men on my front porch, McGurk?" Remo asked. "If you want to try pulling that trigger, go ahead."

  "Tell them the truth, Bednick," McGurk said. "Tell them that you're a Mafia button man who was assigned to kill our commissioner."

  "I would," Remo said, "but you and I know that it's not true. I worked for you. And I killed Commissioner O'Toole for you. Come on, McGurk. You've made a reputation by how tough and hard you are. That's all these men have heard about for years. Show them now. Pull that trigger."

  He was three feet from McGurk and his eyes burned into McGurk's with the kind of heat that could melt glass. McGurk saw in his mind the ambush he had set for Remo and the dead men in the yard; he thought now of the six dead men who must be lying in O'Toole's yard; he thought of the smell of death that Remo seemed to carry with him.

  "Pull that trigger, McGurk," Remo said. "And when you're dying, very slowly, these men are going to take the badges of the Men of the Shield and drop them on your body. You made a real mistake, McGurk. You took them for fools, because they were cops. But they're smarter than you are. Sure, one of every two slobs they catch gets off. But you've been selling them short. They know the rules are tough because they have to be. If the rules weren't tough, McGurk, a slob like you might be running this country-a cop-killing slob who isn't worth an honest cop's spit. Go ahead, McGurk. Try to pull that trigger."

  Through it all, Remo smiled at McGurk and McGurk finally recognized where he had seen that hard smile before, a smile that looked like a rip in a piece of silk. It had been on Remo's face when he killed that last cop in his front yard, a cruel painful smile that spoke volumes about pain and torture.

  The gun barrel wavered momentarily, and then in a flash McGurk raised the revolver to his temple and squeezed. The report was muffled by flesh and bone and McGurk's scream. He dropped heavily to the stage. The gun clattered loose from his fingertips as they opened. It bounced once and came to a rest a few feet from his body. As he fell, the pages of his speech slipped from his jacket pocket and slowly fluttered down onto his body.

  Remo picked up the gun, looked at it, then tossed it on the table. He turned again to the policemen who sat in their seats as if cemented there, trying to absorb the incredible events of the last few minutes.

  "Men," Remo said, "go home. Forget McGurk and forget me and forget the Men of the Shield. Just remember, when you get to thinking that your job is tough, that, of course, it is. That's why America picked its best men to be cops. That's why so many people are proud of you. Go home."

  He started to speak again, but Chiun had stepped quietly inside the door and now raised an index finger to his mouth, as if to shush Remo.

  Softly, Remo said again, his voice slowly trailing off, "Go home."

  And then he jumped from the stage and strode purposefully up the aisle, past the rows of men on each side. He paused with Chiun at the door and looked back.

  From the audience, men were tossing badges toward the stage, where they hit, or bounced near, McGurk's body.

  Remo turned and walked through the doors.

  "You did well, my son," Chiun said.

  "Yeah. And I make me sick."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  When Remo telephoned in, he gave Smith the full report. O'Toole's death. The cops who had been sent to ambush Remo and had died. McGurk's suicide.

  "How the hell are we going to explain all that?" Smith asked.

  "Look," Remo said angrily. "You wanted this thing broken up. It's broken up. How you pick up the loose ends is your business. Send a special team from the Attorney General's office to investigate and later bring in a whitewash of the whole thing."

  "And what about the members of the Men of the Shield? The assassination teams?"

  "Forget them," Remo said. "They're just cops who made a mistake."

  "I want their names," Smith said. "They're killers."

  "So am I. You can have them the day after you come for me."

  "That day may come," Smith said.

  "Que sera, sera," Remo said and hung up.

  End of report.

  But he still had not told Smith everything, and an hour later he was on a plane to Miami, to see if there was one last loose end he had personally failed to tie up.

  Smith had triggered it when he had talked about the computer efficiency of a nationwide killing operation manned by only forty people. O'Toole had mentioned it when he talked of his reasons for launching the Men of the Shield. McGurk had lent weight to it once when he described Janet O'Toole as "the brains of the operation."

  Remo had to find out if it was true. Had Janet O'Toole, the computer expert, been part and parcel of the plan to kill, because of her insane hatred of all men? He had to find out because if she was, neatness demanded that she be taken care of.

  He found her at the Inca Motel, a dismaying straggle of buildings and pools with varying pollution counts. She was sipping a tall drink at midnight near an outside pool when Remo arrived.

  He stood outside the glare of the ring of lights and watched her, sprawled languorously in a beach chair.

  The busboy brought a drink up to her and while he stood there with it in his hand, she stretched like a cat, arching her back, thrusting her breasts upward toward the boy.

  Finally, she took the drink, but as the boy was walking away, she froze him in midstride by calling imperiously:

  "Boy!"

  "Yes, ma'm?"

  "Come here," she said. The boy was in his early twenties, blond and tan and good-looking. He stopped at her feet looking down at her, and she pulled up her knees, spreading her legs slightly, and asked him softly, "Why have you been staring at me?"

  She wore a tiny two-piece bikini and the youth stammered and said, "Well… I… I didn't… I…"

  "Don't lie," she said. "You did. Is there something I have that other women don't have?" Before he could answer, she said, "I'm tired of your insolence. I'm going to my room. I want you there in five minutes and you'd better be prepared to explain your behaviour."

  She set her glass on the pool deck, stood up and walked away gracefully on high spiked heels.

  Remo waved the boy to him.

  "What's with her?" he asked.

  The youth grinned. "She's a sex fiend, Mister. It's how she gets her kicks. She's been here only a couple of hours and she's balled half the staff. First she chews them out, and then drags us to the room and… well, you know."

  "Yeah, I know," Remo said, then leaned forward and gave the youth a hundred-dollar bill.

  Janet O'Toole was naked when the knock on the door came a few minutes later. She turned off her light and pulled the door open slightly.

  A male figure stood there. He said softly, "I've come to apologize."

  "Come in, you evil-minded child, you. I'm going to have to punish you, you know."

  She took the man's hand and pulled him into the room. A moment later, their bodies were locked together.

  But in her brief career as courtesan, it had never been like this. The man brought her to heights, higher and higher, until she felt like skin-covered jelly.

  She reached a peak and the voice whispered in her ear, "Your father's dead."

  "Who cares? Don't stop."

  "So's McGurk."

  "Keep going. The hell with McGurk."

  "The Men of the Shield are disbanded."

  "So what? Just another bullshit organization anyway. Keep it coming."

  He did.

  When Remo got up later, she was sleeping, her mouth opened slightly, her breath still coming fast and shallow.
>
  He flipped on the dresser light and looked at her. No, he decided, she wasn't a killer, just a computer operator. The only way she'd ever try to kill a man was in bed, in a fashion allowed by law.

  Remo stood at the small dresser, took paper and pen from the center drawer, and wrote a quick note.

  "Dear Janet.

  "Sorry, but you're too much woman for me.

  "Remo."

  He left the note on her bare breasts, and went out into the Miami heat.

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