Firing Line td-41 Read online

54

  have to come down there and deliver something to you, it's not going to be twenty dollars, pal."

  "All right," the clerk said disgustedly. "What's the message?"

  "Go up and tell Chiun that Remo is on the phone."

  "Remo?"

  "Yes. Remo. Tell him I'm on the telephone and then when you ring, he'll pick the telephone up without ripping it out of the wall."

  "All right," the clerk said. "Hold on."

  Three minutes later, he was back on the phone.

  "I told him," he said.

  "What'd he say?"

  "He said something about that he's not no secretary. He's not going to be spending all day talking to people on the telephone. He said Remo who. He said you should write him a letter. He doesn't want to talk to you. He said something about a piece of pig's ear. Stuff like that."

  "All right," said Remo. "Now you go upstairs again . . ."

  "Wait a minute. How many trips you want for twenty dollars?"

  "It's up to fifty dollars," Remo said. "Go back upstairs and tell him that Remo said it's important It's about Ruby."

  "I don't know. He didn't look happy."

  "He never looks happy. Fifty dollars."

  "Oh, all right." The clerk put down the phone again at the desk."

  When he returned, he said, "He says he will make an exception to a long-standing rule and talk to you."

  "Good."

  55

  "How do I get my fifty dollars?"

  "I'll tell Chiun to give it to you."

  "I knew it was going to be something like that," the clerk said.

  "What's the matter?" Remo asked.

  "I saw this Chiun in action yestersay. He came in here for lunch. He ordered water. He wouldn't let anybody sit at the tables next to him. When he left, he walked around all the tables and he picked up the change people left for tips for the waitress. He ain't giving me no fifty dollars."

  "Trust me," Remo said. "I'll see that he does."

  "All right, but I don't believe it," the clerk said. "Hold on, I'll put you through."

  Remo heard the telephone click and then buzz as the room was being called.

  The telephone rang a dozen times before Chiun picked it up. As usual he did not speak into the phone, not even to identify himself. He lifted it off the receiver and waited.

  "Chiun, this is Remo."

  "Remo who?"

  "C'mon, Chiun, stop fooling around. Remo."

  "I once knew a Remo," said Chiun. "He was an ungrateful wretch. As a matter of fact, his voice even sounded a little like yours. That screeching nasal whine that white people have. Especially Americans."

  "Listen, Chiun, 111 wait while you work off your snot, because I've got something important to tell you."

  "This other Remo person always said he had important things to tell me also, but when I listened, he told me nonsense."

  "Chiun, it's about Ruby."

  56

  Chuin was silent, waiting for Remo to say more.

  "Did you give her a Sinanju medal?"

  "No," said Chiun.

  "Oh ..."

  "But she had one," Chiun said. "She won it from me in a game of cards. She cheated. I never will forgive that woman."

  "A gold medal with the Sinanju emblem on it?"

  "Yes."

  Remo groaned, a long,, anguished oooooohhh..

  "What has happened to my medal?" Chiun asked.

  "It's not your medal, it's Ruby. I think she might be dead."

  "With my medal?" Chiun said.

  "Will you stop worrying about your damned medal?" Remo said. "I told you I think Ruby is dead. They found a body in a fire, a woman's body, and she had a Sinanju medal."

  "That's terrible," said Chiun.

  "Give the desk clerk fifty dollars," Remo said.

  "Certainly. Medals here, fifty dollars there. You must think I'm made of wealth."

  "Just do what I say. Give him fifty dollars and hang around there for a while. When I find out more, I'll let you know."

  Chiun hung up without answering. Remo looked at the dead phone for a moment, started to dial another number, then put the telephone down and went back to the breakfast table, where he again read the Post-Observer's story. Arson suspected, but a peculiar kind of arson. Fires started in four different locations, but no sign of tinder or incendiary devices used to torch the blaze. Remo thought about the location of the fires. It

  57

  wasn't vandals. Vandals started one fire and ran. Starting four fires meant a professional job, but who would want to burn down an old-tenement? It wasn't like a business, where the owner, after a fire, could claim insurance losses on equipment and goods he had already stolen from the building and sold. But insurance on a Newark tenement fire wouldn't even cover the cost of replacing the doorknobs.

  But who? And why?

  He went back to the telephone and dialed an 800 area code number. It hooked into a commercial number that advertised a swingers' sex club.

  A breathy woman's voice came onto the phone.'

  "Hi, lover," it said.

  "Hello," said Remo to the tape recording. "I'd like to buy a plow."

  "If you're as horny as I am," the recorded voice said, "You're probably just throbbing for some company."

  "Actually, I was going to watch the Tartridge Family' reruns," Remo said.

  "Listen to this," the recording said. Her voice faded, and there was the sound of a woman breathing hard and a man grunting and the woman hissing, "Don't stop. More, more, more," and as the orgiastic dialogue went on, Remo said clearly into the telephone: "Five, four, three, two, one."

  The tape died. Remo heard a buzz and then Dr. Harold W. Smith came onto the line.

  "Yes?" he said.

  "Smitty, I've got to tell you, I like your new message better than the Dial-a-Prayer I used to have to call."

  58

  "Oh, it's Remo. What is it?" Smith said. His normally cool voice was chillier than usual.

  "Where's Ruby?" asked Remo.

  "Don't you know?" Smith said.

  "If I knew, would I ask?"

  "She's gone. When I got back here yesterday, she wasn't here. I thought you had something to do with it."

  "Ruby didn't need me to tell her to split because a place was getting too warm," Remo said. "You haven't heard from her?"

  "No"

  "Any ideas where she went?"

  "She didn't go home to Norfolk," Smith said. "I already checked that."

  "Where else would she have gone?" Remo said.

  He could almost hear Smith shrug over the telephone. "She could have gone anywhere. She has relatives in Newark. I don't know. Why? Have you decided to come back to work?"

  "Not yet," Remo said. There was a sinking feeling in his stomach. More and more he knew that the body found in the fire ruins, charred beyond recognition, was that of Ruby, young and beautiful and vibrant Ruby who wanted nothing more out of life than to live it. For the second time in less than twelve hours, he felt sorrow saturate his body, all the sadder now for being a remembered emotion. The night before, his sorrow had been for himself, for realizing his childhood was gone. But this sorrow was deeper, built on the terrible knowledge that for Ruby all of life was gone. And for the second time in twelve hours, the sorrow gave way to another emotion—anger.

  59

  "Smitty," said Remo, "this is important. Do you have anything in your computers about arson?"

  "Can I take this to mean you're coming back to work?"

  "Please, Smitty, don't bargain with me. What about arson?"

  There was a quality in Remo's voice that prompted Smith to say, "What kind of arson? Anything special? Any characteristics?"

  "I don't know," Remo said. "Maybe multiple fires started in one building. No signs of fuel or incendiary devices."

  Smith said, "Wait." He put Remo on hold. Remo could picture him putting down the telephone and pressing the button that raised the television console and computer keyboard
on his desk. He could see Smith carefully punching into the machine the information he wanted, then sitting back to wait for CURE's giant memory banks to strip themselves, to try to match up what they knew with what Smith requested.

  Smith was back on the telephone ninety seconds later.

  "There have been five fires like that in the last two months," he said. "First two up in Westchester County. Near here. Then three in North Jersey."

  "Make it four now," Remo said. "Any idea who's doing it?"

  "No. No witnesses. No clues. Nothing. Why? Why is this so important to you?"

  "Because I owe it to somebody," Remo said coldly. "Thanks, Smitty. I'll be in touch."

  "Is there anything else you want to tell me?" Smith asked.

  60

  "Yeah. Don't worry about Ruby anymore. You can call off your bloodhounds."

  "I don't understand," Smith said. "What is this all about?"

  "Don't worry about it," Remo said. "We're just doing a favor for a friend."

  "Remo," said Smith.

  "Yeah?"

  "We have no friends," the CURE director said.

  "Now we've got one less than that," Remo said.

  61

  CHAPTER FIVE

  "How long, Lord, how long?"

  "How long?" the congregation shouted back.

  "How long, Lord, you going to visit this oppression upon us poor black people? Say how long?"

  "How long?" the congregation complied.

  The Reverend Dr. Horatius Q. Witherspool stood high up in the pulpit overlooking the congregation of 120 persons, 100 women and 20 men past the age of 65. His arms were raised dramatically over his head, his bright white cuffs shooting out from under the sleeves of his black mohair jacket, his gold and diamond cufflinks glittering in the Sunday morning sunlight like day-old junk jewelry.

  "We have lost another," he said.

  "Amen," said the congregation.

  "Fire has again struck and taken one of us away," the Reverend Dr. Witherspool said.

  "Taken away," the congregation chanted.

  "We do not know who." He paused. "We do not know how. And we have to ask ourselves, was this person ready to meet her maker? Was she ready?"

  "Was she ready?" the congregation echoed.

  "When they find out who she was, will they find out that she thought of those she left behind?" He

  63

  looked around and folded his hands together on the edge of the rostrum. He looked over his congregation with his sincere look, which involved tilting his head to the right and slightly squinting his eyes.

  "Or will they find that this poor woman left this mortal coil to be with the Great Lord and all she-left behind for those who loved her were debts and bills and the eternal footsteps of the creditor? Is that what we will find?" He looked around.

  "We must always remember. When God calls, we want to be ready to meet Him. But we leave others behind. We want to go and meet that Lord, and we want to be able to smile and look that great Lord right in that great Lord's eye, and say, 'Oh, Lord, I has done right by those I left behind. I has left them with the things they need to get on. I has left them with money from the insurance, and when they goes to bury me, they aren't gonna have to sell the furniture or like that, but they will just cash in that insurance policy and they will find the means . . .'" He paused. "The means," his congregation said. "'And the wherewithall,'" Witherspool said. He pronounced each syllable very precisely. "Wherewith-all."

  "Wherewithall," his congregation said. " 'To bury me. And even the church I love, the First Evangelical Abyssinian Apostolic Church of the Good Deal, the Reverend Doctor Horatius Q. Witherspool, Pastor, was remembered in my insurance policy, and they will be able to go right on doing your work, Lord.' "

  He looked around again. "And the good Lord is going to say, "Why, bless you, Sister, and come on

  64

  right in, because truly you has done my work and shown your kindness and your goodness, and I only wish that everyone would do that, so we could all live together up here in eternity. . . .'"

  "In eternity," the congregation chanted.

  "In happiness," Witherspool said.

  "In happiness," came the echo.

  "And with paid-up premiums, to protect our family and our church,' " said Witherspool.

  "To protect us, Lord," said the congregation.

  "Amen," said Witherspool.

  He met his congregation at the back door of the church as they left, pumping their hands with his right hand, and with bis left, slipping into their pocket or purse a flyer from the Safety-First Grandslam Insurance Company, explaining how, for a mere seventy cents a day, without medical examination, they could buy $5,000 worth of term insurance on their lives. The flyer also included an application blank, already partially filled out, earmarking $2,500 of the insurance proceeds to the Reverend Dr. Horatius Q. Witherspool, pastor of the First Evangelical Abyssinian Apostolic Church of the Good Deal.

  When the last parishioner had left, Witherspool closed the doors and walked back down the aisle of the small church, whistling "We Are Family."

  He stopped short in the doorway of tie small room behind the altar of the church. There was a white man sitting at the table, looking at the sports section of the New York News, where the Reverend Dr. Witherspool had circled the baseball teams he was betting on that day.

  The white man looked up. "I wouldn't take the Red Sox," he said. "They're about ready to start

  65

  their mid-year fold, and laying nine to win five doesn't sound very good."

  "Who are you?" Witherspool demanded. He wondered if the white man was from the city's anti-gambling police squad.

  "I know how interested you are in insurance," the white man said.

  '"I don't know what you mean," Witherspool said. He leaned back slightly in the doorway.

  The white man stood up and continued talking as if he had not even heard the minister.

  "And I represent the 'This Is Your Last Chance, Sucker Insurance Company,' and I have an amazing policy that, for no cash premium at all, guarantees you're going to live."

  Witherspool squinted his eyes. He had never heard of an insurance policy like that. "Live?" he asked. "For how long?"

  "Long enough to see if those cufflinks tarnish," Remo said. "And the only premium you've got to pay is to tell me who you paid to torch that building down the street."

  He smiled. Witherspool did not.

  "I don't know what you're talking about," he said. The man was an insurance investigator. He was sure of it.

  He insisted he didn't know what the man was talking about. He was still insisting it when he was stuffed into the trunk of a rented car, and even though he was sure the driver could not hear him, he kept shouting that he knew nothing about it for a twenty-minute car ride, until he heard the car pull off the main highway and pass onto a gravel road.

  He didn't know what this lunatic was up to, but

  for God's sakes, didn't he know that mohair wrinkled? And if he got grease on this suit, it was ruined. Five hundred dollars shot to hell. He was going to kick this honkey's ass as soon as he got out of this trunk.

  When the lid opened, he blinked once at the noon sun, crawled out of the trunk, and threw an overhand right at the thin white man's head. It missed and he felt himself yanked around and dragged by the collar of his suit, along the ground behind the man.

  "You've got no respect at all for clothing," Witherspool said.

  "Where you're going," Remo said, "You won't need any."

  Witherspool could not move his head, but rolling his eyes right and left, he saw that he was on the grounds of one of the big refineries that bordered the northern part of the New Jersey Turnpike near Newark Airport.

  The crazy white man was dragging him toward one of the two-hundred-foot-high stacks that burned off gas waste from the refining process. Up ahead, craning his neck, the minister could see the top of the stack and, high up above, the ever-present f
lames spitting out the top as they did twenty-four hours a day. Then the white man was at the base of the yellow brick stack, and Witherspool wondered what he was doing. He had little time to wonder because suddenly he was off the ground, and the white man, holding Witherspool in his left hand and using just his right hand and feet, was climbing up the smooth brick sides of the stack.

  Witherspool was so frightened, he did not even

  67

  bother to wonder how the white man was climbing up the smooth, sloping sides of the stack, but he felt the rough bricks against his back, and when he peeked downward, he saw he was already a hundred feet off the ground. And he prayed, really prayed for the first time in years, and he prayed, "Oh, Lord, I don't know what this lunatic wants, but let's make sure, Lord, that he don't lose his climbing skill in no hurry, right now."

  A few moments later, Witherspool was at the top of the stack. He could feel the heat from the burning gas fumes. He felt the white man sling him upward and then let go. Witherspool reached out with his hands and caught the edge of the top bricks and was hanging there, his feet kicking into the air below him.

  "Don't kick," Remo said. "It makes it harder to hang on."

  Witherspool looked up. Remo was sitting on the ledge of the top bricks, as unconcerned as if he were on a park bench.

  "I don't like being up here," the minister said. "Take me down."

  "Just let go. You'll get down quick enough," Remo said.

  Witherspool clutched harder with his fingers. "What do you want?" he said.

  "Now, as I was saying, who did you hire as a torch to burn that building?"

  "I don't ..."

  "Let me warn you, Reverend Doctor," Remo said. "One more lie from you, and I'm dropping you down the middle of this smokestack. I may do that anyway. Now, who?"

  "You bring me down if I tell your"

  68

  He looked imploringly at Remo, who shrugged and said, "I don't know."

  "You let me live if I tell you?"

  "I don't know," Remo repeated. 1"You not drop me down that smokestack?" Witherspool asked.

  "I don't know," Remo said.

  Witherspool swallowed. His fingers were getting sore and weak, and his stomach was feeling the heat of the stack. "Okay," he said and tried to smile at Remo. "Then we got a deal."

  Remo didn't smile back.

  "Who?" he repeated.