Kill Or Cure td-11 Read online

  The cameraman surrendered to his instinct and turned the camera off Polaney and swung it to the side. Chiun hopped nimbly back behind the drapes and the camera saw only the bodies of the two bogus cameramen, lying there on the bare wooden floor, unmoving, dead.

  The camera froze there a moment, then began moving back to Polaney. With horror, Remo realized he was standing directly between Polaney and the camera, ready to present his face to the audience for posterity and all he could think of was how Dr. Smith would resent it. Remo turned his back to the camera and said into the overhead microphone:

  ‘Do not be alarmed, ladies and gentlemen. An attempt has just been made on Mr. Polaney’s life, but our security guards have the situation well in hand.’

  Then, still without turning, without showing his face to the camera, Remo sidled off the stage, leaving framed in the center of the camera lens Mac Polaney, holding his saw by the handle, looking off toward the side of the stage where the dead men lay.

  Finally Polaney turned back toward the camera.

  Slowly he said:

  ‘They were trying to silence me. But people have tried to silence me before, and they all have failed. Because only death would silence me.’

  He stopped. A cameraman cheered. In the control booth, an engineer applauded.

  Polaney waited a moment, then said: ‘I hope you will all vote for me tomorrow. Good night.’

  And with his saw under his arm, he moved away, off camera, into the wings where Remo stood, now joined by Chiun. The music of ‘Sunshine is Nicer’ came up and over.

  ‘That was quick thinking,’ Remo said.

  ‘Quick thinking? About what?’ Polaney asked.

  ‘That bit about people trying to silence you. Real good politics.’

  ‘But it’s true,’ Polaney said. ‘Every time I play the saw, someone’s trying to keep me quiet.’

  ‘You were talking about the saw?’

  ‘Well, of course. What else?’

  ‘Where’s Teri?’ Remo bawled.

  Teri Walker was not in the small apartment she kept in the hotel which housed Polaney’s campaign headquarters, but something else was.

  On her desk Remo found a note. It read: ‘Teri. Under no circumstances, go to the studio tonight. This is important. Mother.’ The note was fresh and fragrant and Remo lifted it to his face. It even smelled like Dorothy Walker. It had that clean… and then he realized it. It had the smell of lilacs. The same smell that had been on the ice picks he had found in Willard Farger and City Manager Clyde Moskowitz.

  Dorothy Walker. She had been the leak from the Polaney campaign, taking Remo’s money and playing both sides against the middle. And the night before, she had tried to use him.

  Remo walked to Dorothy Walker’s nearby penthouse apartment, forced the door, and sat on the soft brown arm chair in the living room and waited. He waited through the night and until the sun was high. No Dorothy Walker. And finally the phone rang.

  Remo picked it up.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hello, who’s this? Remo?’ said Teri Walker.

  ‘Right.’

  She giggled. ‘So my mother finally trapped you. I knew she would.’

  ‘Afraid not, Teri. Your mom’s not here. She hasn’t been here all night.’

  ‘Oh. She must be out on Grandpa’s boat. Probably talking about the campaign. He’s very interested.’

  ‘What boat?’ Remo said.

  ‘The Encolpius,’ she said. ‘It’s tied up in the bay.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Remo said. ‘By the way, why didn’t you show up at the studio last night?’

  ‘Momma left me a note and told me not to. When I talked to her on the phone, she said there was a chance of violence, and that you said it was best I stayed away. So I stayed at my friend’s house again. But I watched. I thought it was wonderful.’

  ‘If you think that was good, watch what comes next,’ Remo said.

  He hung up and left the apartment building, walking toward the water.

  ‘You’ve lost, poppa,’ Dorothy Walker was wearing a green cocktail dress in the main sitting room of the yacht, talking to Marshal Dworshansky.

  ‘I know, my dear. I know. But who would have thought our men would miss? And such good men. Sasha and Dmitri. They would have done anything for us.’

  ‘Yes, but miss they did. And now there is no way that Mr. Polaney is not going to win the election. You failed to consider the public reaction if your men missed.’

  ‘That is true.’ Dworshansky smiled sadly. ‘Perhaps I am just growing old. Too old to have my own city. Well. There are other fish in the sea.’

  ‘Maybe now, papa, you’ll retire as you should have years ago. Losing, you always told me, is the only sin.’

  ‘Do I detect a note of exultation? You may have lost something too,’ he said.

  ‘No, papa, I’ve won. Polaney will be the mayor. Teri and I will be his closest advisors. Inside of six months, I will own the city. And then I will give it to you. I owe you that gift.’

  As Dworshansky listened, he understood that Dorothy Walker’s offer of a gift was not made in love, but as full payment of an annoying debt. He looked at her and said, ‘Perhaps we both have lost something.’

  ‘That’s right,’ came a voice. Remo stood in the doorway. ‘You’ve both lost.’

  ‘Who are you?’ Dworshansky demanded. ‘Who is this man?’

  Dorothy stood up and smiled at Remo. ‘This is Remo, my associate from Mr. Polaney’s campaign. The only other person with enough vision to see that Mac Polaney was what Miami Beach needed.’

  ‘Save it for your next dog food commercial,’ Remo said. ‘I finally wised up. When I found out why Teri wasn’t at the studio. Did you do it just to capture the city?’

  Dworshansky nodded. ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘Can you think of a better reason?’ He talked easily, almost happily.

  ‘But why kill Farger?’

  ‘Farger? Oh yes. That was just to remind Mayor Cartwright’s people that we did not look kindly upon defections. Of course, when you disposed of Farger’s body and kept the killing quiet, that eliminated any value we might have gotten from it.’

  ‘And Moskowitz?’

  ‘Moskowitz was weak,’ Dworshansky said. ‘I think he would rather have gone to jail than to play in this high-stakes game. We could not chance somebody on the inside cracking.’

  ‘And you dragged the federal government and the League papers into the campaign because…’

  ‘… Because it was the only way to keep Cartwright and his thieves out of jail and to get Cartwright re-elected. You see, I figured that the government would be afraid to act against Cartwright if it was, itself, under fire from him.’

  ‘Good plan,’ Remo said. ‘It tied my hands for a long time, made me afraid to do what should have been done to Cartwright and to you. Too bad you finally lost.’

  Dworshansky smiled. A deep white smile in his dark tan face. ‘No, my friend. I have not lost. You have lost.’

  He lunged for a small box on top of the sitting room’s piano and answered Remo’s last question.

  When he drew out the ice pick, Remo realized that he not Cartwright, not Dorothy Walker, not any of the hired hands—this muscled old man had been the killer. He had wanted to clear that up.

  Remo grinned.

  Dworshansky charged him. As he got close to Remo, Remo could smell the overpowering aroma of the lilac cologne. Dworshansky wasted no time on preliminaries. He aimed a roundhouse at Remo’s temple, hoping to drive the ice pick in to the hilt. Remo slid back, just out of the pick’s range, then moved forward again, slamming the hell out of his left hand against Dworshansky’s right arm, forcing the pick to continue its giant arc, until it buried itself deep into the left side of Dworshansky’s own throat. The man gurgled, looked at Remo in shock and surprise, then dropped to the floor.

  Dorothy Walker stood. She cast only a fleeting glance at her father, then said: ‘Oh, Remo. We can do it. You and I. First this city and
then the state.’

  ‘Not even one tear to shed for your father?’

  She moved close to Remo, insinuating her body against his. She smiled. ‘Not even one,’ she said. ‘I’ve always been too busy living… and loving… to weep.’

  ‘We’ll see what we can do to correct that,’ Remo said. Before she could move or react, her scream was frozen in her throat as Remo calmly shattered her temple. He let her down softly on the floor, next to her father, and closed the sitting room door behind him.

  Remo found the yacht empty of crew. He moved the big boat down to the southern tip of Miami Beach and anchored it two hundred yards off shore. The crew, who had been given the afternoon off by Dworshansky, was not likely to happen upon it there. Remo swam into the beach. The next stop on his schedule was Mayor Tim Cartwright.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Mayor Timothy Cartwright opened his upper right desk drawer. Where there would be an opening on a normal desk, here there was a metal slide. Cartwright un-dipped his keychain from the back of his belt, and with a thin steel key unlocked the slide.

  He took from the drawer piles of bills, twenties, fifties, hundreds and shoveled them into his briefcase.

  How many times, he thought, had losing candidates delayed their appearance before their supporters at campaign headquarters? And how many times had they been too busy to speak, because they had first had to go to their offices to collect the money and get rid of the evidence?

  Well, it didn’t matter. He had come in honest and poor; he would go out dishonest and rich. The money in safe deposit boxes around the country; the jewellery and bonds overseas. He would never have to worry about the future. The city had chosen Mac Polaney, so that was their problem. Let the voters live with it. He would be far away.

  And when police protection fell apart, when city services became first negligible, then non-existent, when the town was an open city for hoodlums, bums and hippies, and the public clamoured for Tim Cartwright to come back and straighten things out, they could hold their hands on their asses. He would be long gone.

  He visualized his headquarters now, awash with tears. How strange. There were more tears shed by one rabid supporter than by all the losing incumbents in the history of the world. Not strange at all, he then realized. The losing incumbent had already gotten his; what did he have to cry about?

  ‘Going somewhere?’

  The voice broke Cartwright’s reverie.

  ‘How did you get in here?’ he said, knowing that the building was locked and Sheriff Clyde McAdow stood guard at the back entrance of the municipal building.

  ‘The sheriff decided to take a nap. A long nap. Now it’s your turn.’

  ‘You’re that Remo, aren’t you?’ Cartwright said. His hand moved stealthily toward a desk drawer.

  ‘That’s right,’ Remo said. ‘And if your hand reaches that drawer, your hand’ll come off.’

  Cartwright froze, then said casually, ‘Why? What have you got against me?’

  ‘A few things. Farger. Moskowitz. The attempt on Polaney?’

  ‘You know they were all the marshal’s idea, don’t you?’ Cartwright said. ‘Not mine. His.’

  ‘I know,’ Remo said. ‘Everything was his idea. The League papers. Killing poor Bullingsworth. Attacking Folcroft. The federal government.’

  Cartwright shrugged his shoulders and grinned, the kind of grin mastered best by Irish politicians caught with their hands in the till.

  ‘So? It was true, wasn’t it? You’re here.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Remo said. ‘We’re both here.’

  ‘Now what?’

  ‘Here’s what. You sit down at that desk and write what I dictate.’

  Cartwright nodded. ‘Okay. That’s what you get out of it. What do I get out of it?’

  ‘You live. That’s one. That briefcase of money. That’s two. A free ride out of the country. That’s three.’

  ‘Do you mind if I call the marshal?’

  ‘Yes,’ Remo said, ‘I do mind. He told me he would not accept your call.’

  Cartwright measured Remo again with his eyes, then with an almost imperceptible shrug, sat down at the desk, took Mayor’s Office stationery from the center drawer and a pen from the ebony desk set in front of him. He looked up at Remo.

  ‘Address it,’ Remo said, ‘to the people of Miami Beach.’

  Mac Polaney held the paper up in his hands.

  To celebrate his new found eminence as mayor-elect of Miami Beach, he had dressed in a pair of full length blue jeans. His white tennis sneakers had given way to open toed leather thong sandals. In place of a red boat-neck shirt, he was wearing a long sleeved pink silk shirt with Catfish Corners Bowling Team embroidered on the back.

  ‘Copies of this paper are being made ready for you members of the press,’ he said. ‘In it, Mayor Cartwright tells how he tried to confuse the citizenry about the League papers. They were all a fraud, he said. The only purpose was to draw attention away from his shakedowns and extortion, which he freely admits to in the letter.

  ‘He apologizes to the people of Miami Beach and as the next mayor, I accept the apology for the people of Miami Beach and cordially invite soon-to-be former Mayor Cartwright to the annual Catfish-in-June festival, which will award a hundred dollar prize for the catch of the largest catfish, even if I warn him not to think about winning the money, because I am going to be entered and will probably win. In addition, according to Mayor Cartwright’s statement which I have here in my hand, he doesn’t need an extra hundred dollars. He’s got enough money.’

  ‘Where is the mayor now?’ one reporter asked.

  Mac Polaney wiped his brow in the heat of the overhead TV lights. ‘You’re looking at him, bub.’

  ‘To what do you attribute your landslide victory?’

  ‘To clean living and eight hundred international units of Vitamin E each and every day.’

  Remo turned from the television set. ‘All right, let’s go,’ he said. He pushed Cartwright out of the dingy waterfront bar and led him to the end of the dock where they boarded a small outboard motor boat. In two minutes, Remo was at the Encolpius, following Cartwright up the gangplank to the main deck. Cartwright still clutched his money-filled attaché case.

  ‘Where is the marshal?’ Cartwright asked.

  ‘Right in here,’ Remo said, pushing open the door to the main sitting room. Cartwright walked past Remo, saw on the floor the bodies of Dworshansky and his daughter, and turned back to Remo. ‘You promised,’ he said.

  ‘Never trust a politician’s promise,’ Remo said, just before his hard, iron-wedge hand crashed against Cartwright’s skull. As Cartwright dropped, Remo said: ‘You peaked too early.’

  Remo moved to the bow of the boat, started the yacht’s engines, and set the automatic pilot on a low-speed course heading due east. Then he went down below into the engine room, emptied out one of the diesel tanks, and spilled its contents all over the engine room. On top of that, for good measure, he emptied another twenty gallon drum of regular gasoline, setting a small trail of saturated rags and papers out into the passage-way.

  He dropped a match into the rags which lit with a puff, as Remo ran up the stairway to the main deck and slid down the steps into his motor boat which was being pulled along by the powerful yacht. He untied the ropes lashing him to the yacht, let his boat drift away for a hundred yards, then started his own motor and aimed the small outboard back to shore.

  Halfway to the shore, he heard a loud thump behind him. He turned around and saw a flash of fire. He cut his motor and watched. The flames burned brightly, slowly reduced themselves to a glow, and then exploded with a crashing thump that resounded in Remo’s ears. Seconds later, the sea was again still.

  Remo stared at the spot for awhile, then turned his attention and his boat back to shore.

  Later that night, Remo watched the television news.

  It was a tapestry of complicated story after complicated story. Reporters hinted that Mayor Cartwrigh
t had fled after submitting his confession to Polaney. They speculated that Cartwright himself had killed Bullingsworth and Moskowitz because they had unmasked his thefts, and then had killed Sheriff Clyde McAdow, whose body was found in the city hall parking lot, because McAdow had tried to prevent his escape.

  And then of course there was Mac Polaney’s overwhelming election victory, and the television film of his press conference, at which he announced his first appointment, Mrs. Ethel Hirshberg, as city treasurer.

  Mrs. Hirshberg grabbed the microphone from him and said, ‘I vow to watch city money like it was mine and to keep an eye on the mayor and to treat him like my own son, for which I have plenty of time since my son never even calls me.’

  Remo could take no more. He flipped off the television and dialed the 800 area-code number.

  It rang. Once. Twice. Three times. And then it was picked up.

  ‘Yes?’ said the lemony voice.

  ‘Remo here.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dr. Smith. ‘I recognize the voice. Even if it has been a long while.’

  ‘I’ve pulled your irons out of the fire,’ Remo said.

  ‘Oh? I was not aware I had any irons in the fire.’

  ‘Have you seen the news? Polaney’s election. Cartwright’s confession that the League papers were all a fake.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve seen the news, I wonder where Mayor Cartwright has gone, by the way?’

  ‘He’s gone to sea,’ Remo said.

  ‘I see,’ Smith said. ‘I will carry your report to Number One. He returns tonight, you know.’

  ‘I know,’ Remo said. ‘We political types keep on top of the news.’

  ‘Is that all?’ Smith asked.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Good-bye.’

  Smith hung up and Remo replaced the telephone, feeling disgusted. He looked at Chiun.

  ‘Does one expect thanks from an emperor?’ Chiun said.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting to have my feet kissed if that’s what you mean. But maybe, just a thank you. Just saying it wouldn’t have been hard.’

  ‘Emperor’s do not thank,’ Chiun said. ‘They pay for and expect the best. Just consider yourself blessed that you were almost the city treasurer of Miami Beach.’