Funny Money td-18 Read online

  Like climbing a smooth brick wall that went straight up.

  Remo flattened his face and arms to the wall and moved his lower trunk in close and let his legs be loose and then with the easy grace of a swan pressed into the wall and raised his body by lowering his hands with great pressure on the wall and when his hands were down near his waist, the inside of his large toes touched a brick edge, securing and resting, and the hands went up again.

  He could smell the recent sandblasting of the wall. When they were old and uncleaned, walls absorbed very heavily the auto fumes of the street. But when they were clean, the fumes were very faint. The hands floated up and then down and catch with the insides of the big toes and then up.

  It would be a simple job tonight. In fact, it had almost been cancelled by an urgent message from upstairs about a currency problem and would Remo look at some films of a man being dismembered and tell upstairs if the man was using some hidden weapon or if it were some special technique. Remo had said that his teacher, Chiun, the aged Master of Sinanju, would know, but upstairs had said there was always a communications problem when dealing with Chiun and Remo had responded:

  "He seems very clear to me."

  "Well, frankly, you're getting a little bit fuzzy too, Remo," was the lemony response, and there was nothing to answer. It had been more than a decade now and maybe he was sounding a bit unclear. But to the ordinary man, a rainbow is only the signal that a shower has ended. To the wise, it means other things. There were things Remo knew and his body knew that he could not tell another Westerner.

  His arms floated up and caught a piece of loose brick. He filtered it down through his hands, not thinking of the object falling to the alley below but thinking of himself and the wall as one. He could not fall. He was part of the wall. Down went the arms, catch with the toes, up with the arms, press in and down.

  The training would have changed any man, but when Remo had begun his, he had just come from being electrocuted, one of the last men to die in the New Jersey electric chair in Trenton State Prison. He had been Newark Patrolman Remo Williams, convicted of murder in the first, fast and with no pardons, with everything on the side of harsh law working perfectly, until the electric chair that was fixed not to work, and he awoke and was told a story about an organization that could not exist.

  The organization was called CURE, and to admit it existed would be to admit that America was ungovernable by legal means. An organization set up by a soon-to-die President that made sure that prosecutors got the proper evidence, policemen taking bribes were somehow exposed, and in general retarded the avalanche of crime against which a gentle and humane constitution of liberties had seemed helpless. It was to be for just a little while. An organization that did not exist would use for its enforcer a man who did not exist, a man whose fingerprints had been destroyed when he died in the electric chair.

  But it had not been just a little while. It had been more than a decade and the training had done more than make Remo Williams an effective enforcer. It had made him a different person.

  Toes catch. Not too much pressure. Arms up, down, toes catch.

  "Hey, you," came a young woman's voice. "You there on the frigging wall."

  The voice was to his left, but his left cheek was against the brick, and to turn his head toward the voice could plummet Remo immediately back down to where he came from. Way back down.

  "Hey, you on the wall," the voice repeated.

  "You talking to me?" asked Remo, listening very carefully to hear if that metal in her hand had the hollow barrel of a gun. It would have surprised him if it did. Her voice lacked the vocal tension of one carrying a killing instrument. A circle of light brightened the wall. The metal he had sensed in her hand was a flashlight.

  "Well, of course you. Is there anybody else on the wall?"

  "Please state your business," said Remo.

  "What're ya doing on the wall already at four o'clock in the morning, twelve stories up?"

  "Nothing," said Remo.

  "You coming to rape me?"

  "No," said Remo.

  "Why not?"

  "Because I'm going to rape someone else."

  "Who? Maybe I know her. Maybe you won't like her. Maybe you'll like me better."

  "I love her. Madly. Desperately."

  "Then why don't you take the elevator?"

  "Because she doesn't love me."

  "Naah, I don't believe that. You've got one tremendous kind of body in that black leotard. Thin. But really nice. What's that black stuff you got over your hands? C'mon, turn around. Let me at least see your face. C'mon, Be a sport. Show it."

  "Will you leave me alone then?"

  "Sure. Why not? Show it."

  Remo side-glided with both feet inside gripping and hands pressing to a ledge where his right hand bracketed securely, and he let his body swing out from the wall, turning his face and squinting in the flashlight beam.

  "Here you are," said Remo. "Enjoy, enjoy."

  "You're beautiful. Gorgeous. I can't believe anyone's that beautiful. Look at those cheekbones. And those brown eyes. Sharp lips, even with that black stuff on your face. And look at those wrists. Like baseball bats. Wait there, I'm coming out after you."

  "Stay there, stay there," hissed Remo. "You can't come out here, You'll fall. It's twelve stories."

  "I watched you. It's easy. Like a butterfly."

  "You're no butterfly."

  "If you come here, I won't come there."

  "Later."

  "When?"

  "When I'm through."

  "When you're through, you might not want to."

  "I'm not really here for rape."

  "I didn't think so. Maybe you'd want to date me."

  "Maybe," said Remo. "But the greatest loves are always unfulfilled. With strangers who pass in the night."

  "That's beautiful. Is that for me?"

  "Yes. Go back inside, shut the window, and go to sleep."

  "Good night, honey. If you need me, it's room 1214."

  "Good night," said Remo and saw the light go off and the fat face go inside and the window close. He swung back to the wall. In went the feet and up went the hands. At the thirteenth floor, he sidled right again, this time lifting himself to the ledge and opening the window. The apartment appeared empty as upstairs had told him it would be. He did not have to search all the rooms. He leaned against the wall, slowing his breathing and then his heartbeat, and when he felt tensionless again, he went back to the window and swung up one more ledge to the fourteenth floor. The window to that penthouse apartment was locked. Remo eased the wood by pressure of his thumbs against the lock and then slid up and through the window. He slipped into the room and onto a soft rug. A large mound under a light white blanket snored loud enough to rumble the bowels of a cave. Behind the large mound was a smaller mound with blond hair on top.

  Remo moved quietly to the larger mound and gently lifted the blanket. He rolled up the pajama bottoms, exposing two white fat hairy legs. From his dark waistband, he took a fat roll of heavy packaging tape. With one fast stroke, he had the legs wrapped securely. The legs twitched as the owner of them came awake, but before he could make a sound, Remo glided his right hand under the fat back and jammed up a thumb, pressed a spinal nerve, and the big mound of flesh quivered a bit, then stopped, and Remo smoothly slapped the big body into the air with his right hand, carried it to the window, and slowly let it out on the end of the tape, like a fishing lure on the end of a line. When the fat man had been lowered nine feet, Remo laced the other end of the tape around an in-wall cooling unit, anchoring the body. Silently and quickly.

  Then with his left arm on the sill, he was out the window himself, guiding with his left hand, and catching himself on the sill of the thirteenth floor apartment, one story down. Remo slid into the room, then looked outside at the very large gray-haired head, whose upside down face was turning very red. The man was conscious.

  "Good morning, Judge Mantell," said Remo. "I represe
nt a concerned citizens group that wishes to discuss your approach to jurisprudence."

  "Uhhhh, uhhhh, Thelma," the voice gasped.

  "Thelma is upstairs asleep. You are one flight down, hanging by your feet over thirteen stories of empty space. You are hanging by a tape. I am a tape cutter."

  "Oh. What. Oh. Please. No. Oh. What."

  "Our group wants to congratulate you for the courage of your convictions. Or actually, lack of them. When it was publicly noted that you had presided over 127 narcotics cases in the last two years, finding only two guilty, and you gave those suspended sentences, you declared to the press that you would not let public pressure force you to find the innocent guilty. Is that correct?"

  "Uhhh, yes. Help me out of this." Judge Mantell's two arms reached for the ledge. Remo pushed them away.

  "Don't do that," said Remo. "The tape is slipping."

  "Oh, God, no."

  "Afraid it is. But back to important matters. You have a case coming up, a Joseph Bosco, or Bisco, or something, I'm not too good on names. He faces life because a young Puerto Rican pusher identified him as a main source."

  "Not enough evidence," groaned Mantell.

  "Oh, but there is," said Remo and he pushed down gently on Judge Mantell's chin.

  "It's mandatory life," said Mantell. "Mandatory. I can't convict on just a kid's sayso."

  Remo pushed again, this time harder. From the light blue pajama bottoms, a wet stain began to surge, downward toward the pajama tops and then, liquefied, along Judge Mantell's neck, up to his ears, and then into his hair and then in drops a long way downward.

  "But this Bosco or Bisco already has expressed enough confidence in you to have his lawyer waive a jury trial," said Remo. "Now wouldn't a rich judge, a very rich judge like you living on Park Avenue, seem to have enough stature and self-confidence to know who is guilty and who isn't?"

  "The guinea's guilty as sin," gasped Judge Mantell. "Get me out of here. Please. Guilty, guilty, guilty."

  "All right. Do what I say. I want you to remember a picture. You will remember this picture every time a heroin case comes before you and someone offers you one of those fat envelopes you like so much. I know you'll have many times to remember, because half the major heroin busts in this city are already on your calendar, Judge. Lift up your head."

  Judge Mantell pressed his chin against his chest.

  "No. The other way," said Remo and the judge let his head drop backward.

  "Open your eyes," said Remo.

  "I can't."

  "You will."

  "Oh, God," moaned Judge Mantell.

  "Now, if I were to drop you, your death would be infinitely easier than the death of the white powder," said Remo and he gave the tape a little jerk and saw the judge's arms fall above his head and he knew Mantell had fainted. He yanked the man into the room and snapped the tape free and massaged the flesh-encrusted spinal column to bring the judge back to consciousness.

  Remo steadied the man on his feet.

  "I will remember that alley down there, looking down at it, as long as I live," gasped the judge.

  "That's nice," said Remo.

  "But I may not live too long. My bodyguard, Dom, is not exactly a bodyguard. He's my executioner."

  "I knew you had a bodyguard which was why I didn't come in the front way," Remo said.

  "He's there to make sure I don't make mistakes," Mantell said. "The carrot and the stick. The money's the carrot; Dom is the stick."

  "He has a room in your apartment?"

  "That's right," said Judge Mantell, shaking.

  "Breathe deeply," Remo said. "I'll be back in a minute. Breathe to the base of your spine. I don't want you dying of shock now that you've gotten religion. That's it. To the spine. Imagine your lungs are attached to your spine."

  The portly judge, in urine-soaked pajamas, breathed the way he was told and miraculously he felt the terror ease away. He barely noticed the thin young man leave the empty apartment beneath his own and he was so relieved to feel the terror flood away with each exhale that he did not mark time. It seemed like only an instant and then the young man was back, guiding the huge bulk of Dom who was a good foot taller and a good hundred pounds of raging muscle bigger than the thin man. But the man apparently was more bored than struggling as he guided Dom into the apartment.

  "Is this Dom?" asked Remo, one hand on the back, the other on a shoulder.

  "Yes, that's him," said Judge Mantell. "That's Dom."

  "Goodbye, Dom," said Remo and propelled him to the window where Dom spreadeagled his feet, one on each side of the window, bracing his huge bulk. Unfortunately for Dom, this huge bulk cracked on through his pelvis and out into the open air over the alley with his feet nestled beside his shoulders. He went with a thwack and landed with a whoomph.

  "I know you won't forget who we are and what we want of you," said Remo to the man in the stained pyjamas. Remo waited until he left to walk back upstairs, before going into the bathroom of the empty apartment to wash the black substance from his face and hands. He took off his black shirt, turned it inside out, exposing its white lining, rebuttoned it and left the apartment, a man in white shirt and black pants, who skipped down thirteen floors of stairs whistling, and walked out past the doorman with a cheery good morning.

  He walked back to his hotel, a morning stroll along Park Avenue. When he reached his temporary suite in the Waldorf Astoria, he did his morning exercises with the heavy breathing and hoped that the frail old Oriental figure curled on a mat in the living room portion of the suite was asleep. It was Chiun's ability to place his sleeping mat in such a way as to dominate and interrupt any other activity in the room. No matter how large the room, the wisp of a man with white strands of beard could always dominate it. Even in his sleep.

  Only this morning he was not asleep.

  "If you must do your breathing improperly, why do it where people can hear you?"

  "I thought you were asleep, Little Father."

  "I was. But discord shattered my peace."

  "Well, if you'd sleep in the bedroom like anyone else, you wouldn't be awakened by my breathing."

  "No one can be like anyone else for no one truly knows anyone else. He can be like he thinks someone else is, but not knowing what that person is, he must naturally be less. Now the someone else I am around most of the time is you, and for me to be less than you is clearly impossible. Therefore, I sleep here."

  "Thanks," said Remo, who had not followed that one at all, and then he noticed a torn box on top of the television. Dark film, twisted in matted circles, rose from it like the head on a beer. The box was addressed to Remo's suite and had been hand-delivered, Remo knew, because it had the blue tag on it. The blue tag also meant something else.

  "That box has the blue tag, Little Father," said Remo.

  "Yes, you're correct," said the Master of Sinanju, rising in his yellow sleeping robes. "It is blue."

  "And you know that blue, that color blue with the triangle shape is from upstairs, don't you?"

  "From Emperor Smith," said Chiun, referring to their common boss, Dr. Harold W. Smith, the man with the lemony voice who was head of the secret organization CURE.

  To Chiun, since Smith ran the organization, then he was emperor. It made no difference that Smith's ostensible title was Director of Folcroft Sanitarium. For generation upon generation, Chiun and his predecessors, earlier masters of Sinanju, had rented their services to emperors to support the little village of Sinanju in Korea, just south of the Yalu River. Some of these emperors called themselves kings, ethnarchs, patriarchs, czars, princes, priests, and directors of sanitariums. Or even "upstairs," as Remo called Smith. But an emperor was an emperor, and he who paid the House of Sinanju was an emperor.

  "I know the blue tag is from Smith. It means the box is for me alone. You are not to open it. You know that," said Remo.

  "It rattled," said Chiun.

  "The blue tag doesn't mean that you're not supposed to open it unless it
rattles. It means that you're not supposed to open it. Rattle or no rattle."

  "What difference does it make? It was broken anyway. It was all broken. When it plugged in, there was no picture. Just a light and whirring."

  "It's not a television, Little Father. It's a movie projector with film," snapped Remo.

  "That they forgot to put on the blue tag. But that I shouldn't open it, oh, that is important. Who sees what, that is important; but what it is does not matter. Who can understand the white mind?"

  "That's the film Smitty wanted me to look at."

  "Is it a beautiful story of love and devotion?" asked Chiun, his hands with long delicate fingernails coming to rest upon each other in front of him, like beautiful birds settling in their nests.

  "No. Actually, it's some sort of a personal attack, one on one, with dismembering or something. Smitty wants the technique. He told me he had seen this somewhere and it was important. Something to do with money."

  "Money for us?"

  "No. Counterfeit bills."

  "When you do not deal in gold, it is all counterfeit. I never trusted these pieces of paper and as you know I do not allow my moneys to the village to be given in paper. Gold. All else is a hope or a promise. Remember that, Remo. Sometimes jewels. But you do not know jewels."

  Remo examined the box and began the laborious process of untangling the film and stretching it the length of the room and back until it was all out flat on the floor where he could roll it back onto the spool. Chiun watched, careful to see that none of the film touched his mat or his television set which had the daytime dramas he so loved.

  "Why would anyone want to watch someone at work?" Chiun asked. "I do not understand this, although I sometimes see it on the television and naturally turn it off. Why would not Smith send you beautiful pictures?"