Dark Horse td-89 Page 18

  "Why doesn't that surprise me?" Remo growled, clapping a hand over his free ear to keep out that damn whistling. He couldn't understand it. He was at a phone booth in a completely different part of San Francisco, yet he was hearing it again.

  "I do not know. What did you learn from Barry Black?"

  "He's got a secret plan to win the election."

  "Is it legal?"

  "Oh, I don't know," Remo said. "Is impersonating a Republican against any law that you know of?"

  "Impersonating . . . ?"

  "Barry Black is a donkey in elephant's clothing," Remo said flatly. "He figures he can get elected as a Republican and then revert to being what he is-a horse's ass."

  "This is unsettling," Smith said glumly.

  "No argument there. It's so screwy that it means Black's not behind these political hits."

  "Are you certain of that, Remo?"

  "Barry Black is so flaky he belongs in dandruff commercials," Remo said flatly.

  "I wonder . . ." Smith mused.

  "Wonder what?"

  "This Ripper shooting. Perhaps it is a charade."

  "Could be. I've seen Rona Ripper in the flesh. You could shoot her in the butt all day long and not hit bone."

  "Remo, why don't you look into the Ripper campaign?"

  "Not me. I draw the line there. She's almost as bad as Cheeta Ching."

  "Speaking of Miss Ching, your problems with her may be over."

  Remo brightened. "How so?"

  "It was just announced that she is expecting a child."

  Remo's unhappy expression returned. "I guess that Japanese newscaster outran her."

  "What did you say?"

  "Never mind, Smitty. I wouldn't believe anything Cheeta Ching says, okay? As for Rona the Ripper, count me out."

  "Could you persuade Chiun to handle that end?" Smith asked.

  "I doubt it."

  "Then you have no choice," Smith said crisply. "Join the Ripper campaign, and learn all you can."

  "With my luck," Remo growled, "I'll end up with Cheeta on one side and Rona on the other."

  "In the meantime, we will just have to hope that Barry Black's personal security is enough."

  "No sweat. He's in his attic and refuses to come down. You know, Esperanza is starting to look better every day."

  "We are not taking sides in this," Smith said sternly.

  "Maybe not. But that doesn't mean we can't back the horse we want."

  "Let me know if anything breaks," Smith said, hanging up.

  Remo left the phone booth and almost made it to his rented car unaccosted.

  He ignored a wolf whistle, thinking it was directed at a busty blonde on the other side of the street.

  A second wolf whistle was followed by the comment, "Where'd you get those wrists, tall, dark, and limber?"

  Remo had never heard the word "limber" used to describe a member of the opposite sex, and looked up. There was a construction worker in a hard hat and with a beer belly, three stories up in an under-construction high-rise.

  When he caught Remo's eye, he blew him a kiss.

  Remo gave him half the peace sign in return, and continued on to his car, muttering, "It'll be great to get out of this city. Santa Monica has to be a thousand times better than this."

  Santa Monica, when Remo reached it after a six-hour drive, looked as though a neutron bomb had detonated in the middle of Main Street.

  Main Street was the main drag, just up from the beach. The ocean tang, flavored by salt-water taffy, refreshed the air, and the store windows on either side displayed surfboards and bathing suits.

  So did the undulating bodies strolling up and down the walks.

  But it was the bodies lying in the streets and brightpainted alleys that caught Remo's attention.

  They were everywhere. As Remo drove past Palisades Park, he saw that almost every square inch of greenery was occupied by disheveled, unwashed, and unshaven people of both sexes. There were Hispanics drinking out of paper bag-covered bottles. Asians lying in sleeping bags like caterpillars, and others playing cards. Most of them were asleep under the summer sunshine, however. The snoring was enough to keep the trees free of birds.

  Under a eucalyptus tree, a man was roasting a squirrel.

  A neat hand-carved sign at the park entrance read:

  HOMELESS SHELTER. TAXPAYERS KEEP OFF THE GRASS.

  Remo spotted a cop guarding the entrance and pulled over. He leaned out the window.

  "Where can I find St. John's?"

  The cop gave precise directions, then Remo asked, "How long has it been like this?"

  "Since the city council voted to make Santa Monica a nuclear-free town."

  "That doesn't explain all these homeless people," Remo pointed out.

  "They added a rider that hung a Welcome to the Homeless sign at the town limits, and a statute against arresting them for anything less than a capital crime," explained the cop. "Word got out, and now we're the homeless capital of California."

  "What about the taxpapers?" Remo asked.

  "If they don't like it, they can move. It's a free country."

  "Unless you pay taxes," Remo muttered, sliding back into traffic.

  At the next light, Remo's car was surrounded by three beggars who refused to let him pass unless he paid the toll.

  "What's the toll?" Remo asked.

  "Five bucks. For each of us."

  "I think I'll take the detour, thanks," Remo said.

  "You go down that street and the toll's twenty. Get a better deal from us."

  Remo gunned the motor, saying, "I bet I'd be doing the squirrel population a big favor if I just floored the pedal."

  "You do that and the man will arrest you."

  "I hear bail's pretty cheap out here," Remo countered. The man shrugged. "Don't know. Never been in no jail. You gonna pay, or what?"

  "Or what," Remo said instantly, spinning his rear wheels until they sent up clouds of lung-stinging rubber smoke. He reached for the parking brake.

  The intersection suddenly cleared. The light changed and Remo zoomed through.

  There were homeless sleeping on the grounds of St. John's Hospital and Health Center. They had taken every free patch of lawn and were making inroads into the parking lot.

  Remo found a space in the handicapped zone. No sooner had he slid in than a disreputable man called up from a sterno fire in another space.

  "Hey, you! You can't park in no handicapped zone!"

  "Why not?"

  "That's for Charlie One-leg. He sleep there."

  "Tell Charlie I'm only here for an hour."

  "Squatter!" the man yelled. "I'm gonna call a cop on you! "

  "Scare me some more," Remo growled. He collected abuse all the way to the hospital entrance, where he stepped over a snoring Mexican and entered.

  He walked up to the admissions desk, noticing that every waiting room chair was filled.

  "I'm looking for-"

  "Hush," the admissions nurse hissed. "Do you want to get us closed down?"

  "Huh?"

  The admissions nurse pointed to the patients slumped in chairs. Remo noticed that most were asleep, their mouths hanging open. One slid off his seat and slipped to the floor, where he continued to snore enthusiastically.

  "It's against the law to wake them during the Nap Hour."

  "Nap Hour?"

  "Sir," the admissions nurse said sternly, "I will be forced to have you ejected if you persist in flaunting Santa Monica Public Ordinance 55-Z. '

  Remo sighed and attempted to communicate his needs. First, he showed his Secret Service ID card. The admissions nurse nodded her understanding. Then he took her over to a California map and pointed to the town of Ramona.

  The admissions nurse nodded.

  Finally, Remo tore a sheet of paper in two while pointing at the map.

  "Ramona Tear?" she mouthed.

  "Rip," Remo mouthed back.

  "Rip Ramona?" the admissions nurse mouthed, her face bl
ank.

  "Rona Ripper," Remo snapped in exasperation.

  In a corner a sleeping man made a snuffling sound, and the admissions nurse's eyes went wide in horror.

  "Tell me which room she's in, or I'll wake them all," Remo threatened.

  "Four seventy-eight! Third floor!" the admissions nurse bleated.

  Remo wasted a minute waiting for an elevator. When it arrived, it was occupied by a trio of Chileans playing threecard monte.

  "Do you mind?" one asked.

  "I'm, beginning to," Remo grumbled. He took the stairs.

  On the third floor, he passed the same game in progress in the same elevator.

  "Cause of you I'm losing!" one of the players shouted at him. "Broke my concentration!"

  "Sue me," Remo shot back, working his way to Room 478. He was beginning to look forward to meeting Rona Ripperif only because she probably bathed more than once a month.

  Rona Ripper lay on her stomach like a beached whale, her chin on a fluffy pillow, her intensely black eyes on the TV screen set on a high wall shelf opposite her hospital bed. She looked like the Goodyear version of Elvira.

  The room smelled hospital-clean. But it was not clean enough for Rona Ripper. The window fan was busy sucking out the offending odor of disinfectants. She had ordered the keyhole of the door sealed with wax, so that no disagreeable smell of sickness or blood or pus could find its way into the pristine environment of her room.

  After the physician had changed the dressing on her wound, she had ordered him banished.

  "You can't banish me," the doctor had complained.

  "You're a smoker. I can tell."

  "That's none of your business. Besides, I'm not smoking now."

  "Your clothing reeks of tobacco. You get out, or I'll sue you for every penny."

  "On what grounds?" the doctor asked.

  "Spreading second-hand smoke."

  "Miss Ripper, at best there are trace elements on my smock."

  "Carcinogens are insidious. The smaller they are, the more damage they do. Out!"

  The doctor had withdrawn in a huff. Another sign of a chronic tobacco fiend. They were ill tempered. When Rona Ripper became governor of California, she vowed, no one would smoke. All billboards would be replaced with giant No Smoking signs. Tobacco products would be outlawed. Smoking fines would run to five figures. Per violation.

  "It will be," Rona Ripper had said, when she'd announced her candidacy before a packed meeting of the Southern California branch of the American Civil Rights Collective, "a paradise on earth."

  The ACRC had applauded wildly. They already thought California was a paradise on earth. But they knew it was not a perfect paradise. For one thing, there were too many Republicans.

  "I intend," Rona had shouted, "to run on a strict no-smoking platform. Smoking is at the root of all our troubles in this wonderful progressive state of ours."

  More applause. The fact that Rona Ripper was Executive Director of the Southern California branch of the ACRC had nothing to do with their enthusiasm. They always applauded sentences containing the word "progressive," whether spoken or not. If Rona Ripper had announced that she had contracted progressive throat cancer, they would have begun applauding before she got out the word, "throat."

  "If we stamp out cigarettes, cigars, and pipes, our studies show," Rona added, "the smog levels will drop accordingly."

  That had brought them to their feet. No one thought to ask what "accordingly" meant in terms of cubic volume. Had they learned that tobacco smoke was a negligible contributor to the California pollution problem, they would have denounced the results as a cover-up perpetrated by big business and the tobacco lobby.

  When Rona Ripper added her personal belief that smoking had contributed in not-yet-understood ways to the six-year drought, they carried her through the streets on their shoulders.

  That night, the Southern California ACRC came out in total support of Rona Ripper for Governor. The fact that she had no economic recovery plan, no strategy to deal with the drought, and no interest in the illegal alien crunch other than to note that California had belonged to Mexico before it belonged to the fascist United States, meant nothing. She was against smokers' rights. In a state where local laws already had sent tobacco users slinking and skulking, to exercise their right to smoke freely in woods and back alleys and under freeways, that was enough to mobilize a political organization and get Rona Ripper on the ballot.

  The early weeks of the campaign had been promising. She had been polling even with the traitor, Barry Black, Junior.

  Then Enrique Espiritu Esperanza, having narrowly escaped assassination, had begun moving up.

  It had presented Rona Ripper with an incredible dilemma.

  Esperanza was a Hispanic, and therefore above criticism. There was no way the Executive Director of the ACRC could publicly criticize an Hispanic candidate. They belonged to the underprivileged underclass. To criticize one of them would have been tantamount to heresy.

  "We have to get something on this guy," Rona had complained to her inner circle. "Something that will knock him out of the race, and keep our hands clean."

  "He's a straight arrow. Son of an immigrant. Built a vineyard in the Napa Valley and, made good. He's clean."

  Rona Ripper's black eyes narrowed. She frowned like a thundercloud.

  "Has he ever . . . smoked?"

  "Not that we can prove."

  "But it's possible," Rona pressed.

  "Doubtful."

  "Maybe we can doctor up a photo showing him with a Camel in his mouth. I hear they can do that with computer-enhancement now."

  The campaign director of the Ripper for Governor organization shook his head. "Too risky. Could backfire."

  Rona's frown deepened. "You're right. We can't take the chance. If I lose, this state is doomed."

  Around the conference table, heads nodded in solemn agreement. There was no question: Without Rona Ripper of the ACRC to guide the Golden State, it might as well fall into the Pacific.

  "Then we have no choice," Rona had decided. "We'll have to run on the issue."

  "Issues, you mean."

  "There is only one issue," Rona Ripper said tartly. "Making California's air breathable again. And the only obstacle is the evil weed called tobacco."

  When it was reported that Barry Black, Junior had escaped an assassination attempt, Rona Ripper had greeted the news with wide eyes and a shift in strategy.

  "It's a two-issue race now," she decreed. "Tobacco, and the right to campaign in safety. I want round-the-clock protection."

  "I'll put in a request with the authorities."

  "Are you insane? The way we've been suing them for years? Those Neanderthals are probably behind this campaign violence. I want everybody armed and ready to lay down their lives in the name of Governor Ripper."

  This presented the Ripper for Governor campaign with a new crisis. They were against private ownership of firearms.

  "If we arm now," Rona was told, "the National Rifle Association will throw it back in our faces into the next century."

  Rona stood firm. "My election is more important than mere principle. I want one sacrificial lamb to buy a gun and stand by my side, ready to kill or be killed."

  In the end, they drew straws. One of the press liaisons drew the short straw. He bought a .22 Ruger and showed it to Rona Ripper the same day.

  "Is it loaded?" Rona asked, curious.

  "Good question," said the press liaison. He lifted the shiny weapon to his face and looked down the barrel. He squinted.

  "Well?" Rona demanded.

  "I don't see any bullets."

  Someone suggested that he pull the trigger. The press liaison did just that, neglecting to remove his face from the line of fire.

  Fortunately, the campaign manager for the Ripper campaign understood that pistols sometimes go off even when pointed at unintended targets. He lunged for the press liaison's gun hand and attempted to wrestle it free.

  He was both
just in time and too late, simultaneously.

  He was just in time to keep the press liaison from blowing his head off, and too late to prevent the bullet from snarling out of the barrel.

  It burned past the liaison's head, ricocheted off an overhead pipe, and imbedded itself in the most generous target in the room.

  Rona Ripper suddenly found herself seated in the middle of the floor, with a surprised look on her face and a dull pain in her ample behind.

  "What happened?" she gasped. "Is it an earthquake?"

  No one wanted to tell the probable future governor of California that she had been shot in the ass. They weren't sure, but somehow her rights probably had been violated. And there was an excellent chance she would sue them all into bankruptcy. She had done it to major corporations all over the state after a lot less provocation.

  Rona Ripper had solved the problem for them. She tried to stand up. Her body refused to work. She looked around her and saw the blood.

  Then, with a soft but vicious "I'll sue" issuing from her lips, she fainted.

  Rona Ripper had awoken on her stomach, with her backside swathed in bandages, repeating that same mantra over and over.

  The doctor on staff immediately put her under with an injection, then transferred to another hospital. He knew Rona Ripper had single-handedly raised malpractice insurance rates all over California.

  So it was that, when Rona Ripper finally regained consciousness, she was reduced to describing her symptoms to an anonymous doctor on the other side of the closed hospital room door.

  "How do you think I feel? I have a bullet in my butt!"

  "Is there anything else we can do for you?" the doctor said, smiling inanely, as if at a homicidal maniac.

  Rona Ripper dictated a thirty-seven-item list of demands, and the anonymous doctor went away.

  She knew she was going to get what she wanted when demand number twelve, the sealing of the keyhole against intrusive odors, was carried out. Total obedience. That's the way it always should be, she thought smugly.

  "When I'm in charge of this state," she muttered to herself, "people are going to jump when I bark."

  "Woof-woof," a voice said, as the door opened.

  "Hold it right there," Rona commanded.

  Remo Williams paused on the threshold.

  "Before you enter, do you, or have you ever, smoked in your life?" demanded Rona Ripper.