Created, the Destroyer Read online

  “It was terrible,” she sobbed.

  “There, there,” Remo said.

  “I never thought it would be like this. You took advantage of me.” Cynthia sucked in air over trembling lips on the verge of another tearful breakdown.

  “I’m sorry, dear. I just love you so much,” Remo said, keeping the timbre of his voice low and reassuring.

  “All you ever wanted from me was sex.”

  “No. I want you. The whole metaphysical, cosmological you.”

  “Sex. That’s all you wanted.”

  “No. I want to marry you.”

  “You’ll have to,” Cynthia said firmly, the flow of tears subsiding.

  “I want to.”

  “Will I get pregnant?”

  “Don’t you know?” Remo asked incredulously. “I thought you knew so much about this sort of thing.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “But the talk at lunch.”

  “Everyone at school talks like that and now…” Her body trembled, the lower lip shook, her eyes closed, tears flowed, and Cynthia Felton, exponent of sex, pure, clean and basic, bawled: “I’m not a virgin anymore.”

  Until dawn, Remo kept telling her how he loved her. Until dawn, she kept demanding reassurance. Finally as the sun rose and the steak bones on the bed dried a lacquer brown and red, Remo said: “All right. I’ve had enough.”

  Cynthia blinked. “I’ve had it,” Remo snarled. “This morning I am getting you an engagement ring. You will get dressed and we will go to New Jersey where I will ask your father for your hand. Tonight. Tonight.”

  Cynthia shook her head. The wicker basket hair bobbed like the rear springs on a Volkswagen. “No, I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t have anything to wear.” She lowered her head and stared at the rug.

  “I thought you didn’t care for clothes.”

  “Not around campus.”

  “We’ll go to any store you like.”

  The philosophy major pondered a moment as though contemplating the verities of true love, the meaning of it all, then said: “Let’s get the ring first.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  “What do you mean, three thousand dollars?” It was Smith’s voice, sharp and angry.

  Remo rested the phone between his shoulder and chin, as he rubbed his hands for circulation in the cold telephone booth at Pennsylvania Station in New York.

  “That’s right, three grand. I need it for a ring. I’m in New York. We made a side trip. She insisted on Tiffany’s.”

  “She insisted on Tiffany’s?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why does it have to be Tiffany’s?”

  “Because she wants it that way.”

  “Three thousand…” Smith mused.

  “Look,” Remo said, trying to keep his voice from carrying outside the booth. “We’ve spent thousands and haven’t penetrated that place yet. With just a crummy ring, I’m going to waltz in and you’re bitching over a measly three grand?”

  “Three grand isn’t measly. Just a second, I want to check something. Tiffany’s. Tiffany’s. Tiffany’s. Hmmmm. Yes, we can.”

  “What?”

  “You’ll have a charge account there when you arrive.”

  “No cash?”

  “Do you want to get the ring today?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do it by charge.”

  “And remember,” Smith continued. “You’ve only got a couple of days left.”

  “Right,” Remo said.

  “And another thing. When engagements are broken, girls often give the ring back if they’re…”

  Remo hung up the phone and leaned back against the glass wall. He felt as if someone had drained his intestines.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  It was the first time Remo had ever ridden across the George Washington Bridge in a taxi cab. When he was a youngster in St. Mary’s Orphanage in Newark, he had never had the money. When he was a cop, he had never had the desire.

  But just twelve minutes before on Fifth Avenue in New York City, he had hailed a cab and said “East Hudson, New Jersey.”

  The driver refused at first until he had seen the $50 bill. Then he shut up and drove crosstown to the West Side Drive and directly onto the bridge’s new lower deck, which wags called the Martha Washington.

  Cynthia kept staring at her 2.5 karat square-cut engagement ring, moving her taut long fingers back and forth like a slow, horizontal yo-yo, giving her eyes the reassurance at multiple ranges that she had fulfilled her prime objective in life — she had gotten her man.

  Her normally scraggly hair was coiffured into a sweeping crest that rose slightly above her head, framing her finely chiseled features.

  A hint of mascara hid her lack of sleep and seemed to give her a seductive maturity. She wore lipstick in a dark enough shade to be modest, yet feminine.

  A ruffled blouse set off her long, graceful swan’s neck. She wore a sophisticated brown tweed suit. Her legs, only adequate when bare, were made beautiful by dark nylons. She was dressed to the teeth, and she was beautiful.

  She let her ring hand find Remo’s palm and leaned against him, whispering in his ear. A delicate fragrance teased Remo’s nostrils, as Cynthia said: “I love you. I lost my maidenness, but I won my man.”

  Then she glanced back at her diamond ring. Remo continued to stare at the approaching Palisades through the bridge’s guide wires. A dull, ominous dusk without a hint of sun settled on the Jersey side of the Hudson.

  “If you look hard, you can see it when it’s sunny sometimes,” Cynthia said.

  “What?”

  “Lamonica Towers. It’s only twelve stories, but you can see it from the bridge sometimes.” She clutched his hand like a possession.

  “Darling?”

  “Yes,” Remo said.

  “Why are your hands so rough? I mean that’s a funny place to have calluses.” She turned his hand over. “And on the fingertips too.”

  “I haven’t always been a writer. I’ve had to work with my hands.” He changed the subject quickly into small talk, but his mind wasn’t on it. His thoughts were of three men under a tarpaulin in the back of a parked Cadillac in Pennsylvania. They were Felton’s men, and if Felton knew they were dead, he would know that Remo had done it. Remo’s best hope lay in the possibility that the bodies had not yet been found. His thoughts were interrupted by Cynthia exclaiming, “Isn’t it beautiful?”

  They were driving around a bumpy winding boulevard that rode the top edge of the Jersey Palisades. About a half-mile before them rose the twelve-story, white Lamonica Towers.

  “Well, isn’t it?” Cynthia insisted.

  Remo grunted. Beautiful? He had been operating less than a week and had already made enough mistakes to blow the whole operation. That beautiful building would probably be his tomb.

  He had killed three men, impulsively, foolishly. Killed like a child with a new set of toys he had to use. Surprise, his most vital weapon, he had squandered. After MacCleary, Felton must have suspected someone would try to reach him through his daughter. He sent those three to protect against it. And Remo had killed them. Even if the bodies had not yet been found, the failure of the three men to report back to Felton might have already triggered his nervous warning system.

  Remo should have taken the money from the three men and gone directly to Lamonica Towers with it, professing love for Cynthia and asking Felton if he had sent the three men. That would have been his entrance and Felton would not have been ready for an attack.

  Remo looked left, into the dark mist settling over New York Harbor. Felton must have his defenses set now. The minute Remo left Felton’s daughter, even for a package of cigarettes in a store, Felton would be on him. A man who would so strenuously protect his daughter’s hymen would not scar her memory with her suitor’s blood. As long as he was with Cynthia, Remo was safe. But when he left…

  “I love you too,” Cynthia said.

  “What?”


  “You just squeezed my hand. And I said I love you too.”

  “Yes. Of course. I love you.” Remo squeezed her soft hand again. If he could use Cynthia as a shield, right up until he got Felton alone, got him where he could get a lead to Maxwell, maybe he had a chance.

  “Darling,” Cynthia interrupted his thoughts.

  “Yes.”

  “My hand. You’re hurting it.”

  “Oh. Sorry, honey.” Remo crossed his arms in front of his chest as he had seen Chiun do many times. He felt a thin smile capture his lips. Chiun had a saying for this situation, in his sing-song Oriental manner: “Poor situation is a situation of the mind. There are two sides and until the encounter is terminated, there is no such thing as a poor position to a man who can think for both sides.”

  It had seemed foolish when Chiun, his parchment face wrinkling slightly, had repeated it over and over. But now it made sense. If Felton could not kill him with Cynthia present, it was Felton who would be helpless, Remo who had the first move. And if he found it impossible to get Felton alone without henchmen protecting him, he could always ask for a father and son chat with Cynthia present. Remo could do it away from the Towers where the walls moved and no one could really be sure he was alone. And Cynthia might be able to support his request to keep Felton’s servants and henchmen out of it.

  Remo could suggest a dinner at a restaurant. Cynthia had a wild liking for eating out. Of course, as a witness, she would have to be eliminated. CURE disapproved of witnesses.

  Remo suddenly noticed Cynthia was staring hard at him as if sensing something. He blanked his mind with metered breathing lest an emotional answer to a question he was sure would come would ruin everything. Chiun had once said: “Women and cows both sense rain and danger.”

  “You look so strange, darling,” Cynthia said. Her voice had a chill edge to it. Her head was cocked as if seeing a new stroke in an old painting.

  “Just nervous about meeting your father, I guess,” Remo said, softly brushing her shoulder with his as he moved, dominating, close to her, keeping her blue eyes trapped in his stare. He kissed her and whispered, “No matter how it goes, I love you.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Cynthia said. “Daddy will just love you. He’ll have to, when he sees how happy I am. I am happy. I feel beautiful and lovely and wanted. I never thought I’d feel this way ever.”

  Cynthia was wiping the lipstick smears from his lips when the cab stopped at Lamonica Towers.

  “Well, honey, let’s meet your father,” Remo said.

  “You’ll love Daddy,” Cynthia said. “He’s really very understanding. Why, when I phoned from Philadelphia and told him he was going to meet his future son-in-law, he was really pleased. ‘Bring him right over,’ he said. ‘I want to meet him very badly.’”

  “Did he really say that?”

  “His exact words.” She mimicked her father’s voice. “I want to meet him very badly.”

  An alarm bell rang in Remo’s mind. Felton sounded just a bit too eager. He chuckled.

  “Why are you laughing?”

  “Nothing. It’s kind of an inside joke, between myself and me.”

  “I hate inside jokes when I’m not inside.”

  “It’s not a very nice inside to be on,” he said.

  They left the cab, Remo escorting Cynthia onto the sidewalk.

  The doorman did not recognize her and was startled when she said, “Hi, Charlie.”

  He blinked and said, “Oh, Miss Cynthia. I thought you were still at school.”

  “No, I’m not,” Cynthia said pleasantly and unnecessarily. The foyer was spacious and striking, with light and free-flowing modern designs interplaying in a harmony of colors and motion.

  The foyer rug was soft but not too pliant and Remo felt as if he were walking over densely packed fresh-cut grass. The air was pure, too, as invisible air conditioners pumped in their charcoal-filtered product.

  “No, not those elevators,” Cynthia said. “We have a special one. It’s in back.”

  “Oh, I should have guessed,” Remo said.

  “You’re mad at something.”

  “No,” he said. “Not at all.”

  “You are.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You didn’t think we had this much money and you’re mad because you’ve suddenly found out I’m stinking rich.”

  “Why should I be mad at that?”

  “Because you think it compromises you, makes you look like a fortune-hunter.”

  Remo would settle for her explanation. “Well…” he said.

  “Let’s not discuss it,” Cynthia said, reaching into her purse for keys. As women often do, she had argued both sides and was angry because one of them had lost.

  “Now, listen,” Remo said, his voice rising. “You started…”

  “See, I told you you were mad.”

  “I’m not mad, dammit, but I’m going to be,” Remo yelled.

  Softly Cynthia said, “Then why are you yelling?”

  She didn’t expect an answer. She fumbled in her purse and came out with a special key on a silver chain. The key, instead of being stamped from flat metal, ended with a round tube which she inserted in a round hole on the side of the highly burnished steel elevator door. Remo had seen the key before. He had taken one like it among the others from the ignition of a Cadillac in which three men were killed.

  Cynthia held the key to the right for about ten seconds, then turned it to the left for another ten, then removed it. The elevator door opened like none Remo had ever seen before. It didn’t pull to the side. It lifted up into the wall.

  “You’re probably thinking there’s something strange about this elevator,” she said.

  “Sort of,” Remo admitted.

  “Well, Daddy goes to these weird extremes to keep undesirable elements out of the building and especially our apartment. If he’s not expecting you, you have to use the key. This elevator goes only to our floor. By using this one, we don’t have to wait in the room.”

  “Room?” Remo asked.

  “Yes. A special room you have to wait in while Jimmy, the butler, looks through a one-way mirror to see who you are. I watched him once when I was little.”

  She placed her ringed finger on Remo’s broad chest. He felt the soft, urgent pressure. “Please don’t think Daddy eccentric. He’s had such a hard time since mother.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, you’ll have to know sooner or later.” The elevator door shut behind them and they rose, slowly at first, then quickly, silently, cables and gears immaculately meshing in a smooth concert of action.

  “Mother,” Cynthia said, “carried on with another man. I was about eight. We were never close, Mother and I. She worried more about how she looked than how she acted. Anyhow, Daddy found her one day with a man. I was in the living room. He told both of them to leave and they left. And we never saw them again. Since then, he hasn’t been the same. I think that’s why he’s so protective where I’m concerned.”

  “You mean, he installed all these special safety gadgets after that?”

  Cynthia paused. “Well, no, not exactly. He had all that as long as I could remember. But, well, he was always sensitive, and that just made him more so. Don’t think badly of him. I love him.”

  “I have the greatest respect for him,” Remo said, and then very casually added in an even tone, a very even tone: “Maxwell.”

  “What?”

  “Maxwell.”

  “What?” Cynthia looked puzzled.

  “I thought you said Maxwell,” Remo said. “Didn’t you say that?”

  “No. I thought you said it.”

  “Said what?” Remo asked.

  “Maxwell.”

  “I never heard of any Maxwell, have you?”

  Cynthia shook her head and smiled. “Just a coffee and a car. I don’t know how we got started on this.”

  “Neither do I,” said Remo with a shrug of his shoulders. The gambit had w
orked but it had produced nothing.

  In Folcroft classes, an instructor had made him practice dropping a name or a test word at the end of a sentence. Remo had told the instructor it was the stupidest thing he had ever heard of next to asking a man if he were a spy.

  And the instructor had answered that he should try asking that very thing sometime, very casually, as if requesting a match and see what happened. “Watch the eyes,” the instructor had intoned.

  Remo had watched Cynthia’s eyes and they had remained blue, clear, beautiful and guileless.

  The elevator door opened, this time from the bottom, sinking out of sight. Cynthia gave a “What-can-you-do-with-Daddy?” shrug and walked into a large library, magnificently furnished in fine oak with a view of New York from a large white-tiled patio with a mended palm pot in the corner.

  “This is it,” Cynthia beamed. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

  Remo examined the walls, his eyes searching for cracks, a change in shade of paint, a bookcase out of line, a hint, any hint to where the walls moved. Nothing.

  “Yes,” he said, “very beautiful.”

  “Daddy,” she yelled, “I’m home and he’s with me.”

  Remo walked to the center of the room, keeping his back equidistant from the three walls. He suddenly wished he had brought a revolver.

  The elevator door rose silently to the top, sealing off the lift. It blended almost perfectly with the white wall, the only one free of books. If he hadn’t known the elevator was there, Remo never would have seen the seam. That’s what MacCleary had meant by moving walls. Near the invisible elevator door was a real door, probably the one leading to the main elevator. It was arranged so a man hiding behind that door would be duck soup for someone coming off the hidden elevator.

  So the walls moved.

  “In the library, Daddy. We used the special elevator,” Cynthia called out.

  “Coming, dear.” The voice was heavy.

  Felton came into the room through the obvious door. Remo sized him up. Medium sized, but heavyset, with a massive neck. He wore a gray suit and he was carrying a side arm under the jacket. It was probably one of the finest jobs of concealing a shoulder holster Remo had ever seen. The suit’s shoulders were padded heavily to leave a drape over the chest. Concealed under this drape on the left side was a revolver.