Murder Ward td-15 Read online

  Stace was not prepared, however, for what he found in the Robler Clinic's Office of Development. He was not prepared for Ms. Kathleen Hahl. His mouth opened in surprise when he saw her sitting behind a large glass-topped desk with the capital campaign arrow behind her head. She didn't belong there. She belonged in Hollywood. She was beautiful.

  Rich chestnut hair gave the exquisite fine soft features a halo of loveliness. The lips were full and moist; the smile a jewel of grace. Her eyes were brown and soft, soft as her body which was tantalizingly full, just short of plump. A thin white blouse with the top two buttons unfastened gave a hint of rising breasts.

  Stace reminded himself he was there for business.

  "I'm here to talk about a contribution," he said. He sat down in front of the desk.

  "Your hat. Can I do something with your hat?" She reached across the desk and Stace smelled a teasing perfume, not quite rich but definitely strong, like a hint of the old Jamaica rum combined with the freshness of the sea.

  His hands became moist. He did not rise to hand her his hat because rising might disclose what would be an embarrassment at this point. At other times, he was quite proud of his instant ability to achieve this state of arousal, but now he wanted to talk business.

  "No, no. I'll hold my hat. Thanks. I'd like to talk about money."

  "Why, Mr. Stacio. Or Stace, whichever you wish. You know in fund raising, we never mention money. We have leadership support, advancement support, we have chairmanships and vice chairmanships, we have goals and even special funds, but the word we never use is money."

  "How much?" asked Stace.

  "How much for what, Mr. Stacio?"

  "For Nathan David Wilberforce, assistant director of Internal Revenue, Scranton. How much?"

  "You're creating support leadership in his name?"

  "Is that what you call it?"

  "That's what we call money. What you want we call murder."

  "Whatever, lady, how much?"

  "You give us no warning, you pop in without references so we had to check you ourselves and then you right out ask us to kill someone. Now is that any way to do business, Mr. Stacio?" She unbuttoned the next button and eased a hand under her blouse. Her tongue touched her upper lip.

  Stace, for all his fifty-five years, felt charged as he had not since he was a teenager. The heat hung in his throat. He cleared his throat but the heat was still there.

  "Don't play games. How much?"

  "One million dollars."

  "What kind of shit is that? I wouldn't pay one million to kill the pope."

  "This is a volunteer program, Mr. Stacio. We're not asking you for one million. You came to us. You came here. Feel free to leave and never return."

  Stace watched the hand move inside the bra, and then lower the strap off her shoulder. Through the blouse, he could see the rising red cone of her breast, like an aroused tower.

  "Am I distracting you, Mr. Stacio?"

  "You know damn well you are."

  "Then hop in. C'mon."

  "How much?"

  "No charge, Mr. Stacio. I'm just looking for a man to satisfy me. I've never found one. C'mon. You won't last more than twenty seconds anyhow."

  "Bitch," snarled Stace. Without taking off coat or vest or even pants, he unzipped, ready and full, and charged around the desk.

  Kathy Hahl raised her legs, laughing. He saw she wore no panties and then they were joined, her legs around his back, his knees against the seat of the chair. She was moist and ready and she felt warm, incredibly warm around him.

  "One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, four one thousand, five one thousand," she said. She was laughing and looking at her watch.

  Stace steeled his will. He steeled it to think of billiard balls and baseball bats, but that didn't help at all. Then he thought of ceiling lights, funerals, of construction plans and plumbing fixtures, of the most frightening moment of his life. He was fifty-five years old. He wasn't a kid anymore. He shouldn't be worrying about this sort of thing anymore. He was a respected businessman.

  And then he felt her muscles close around him briefly and release and there was that tickle. And p'doom, he was spent.

  "Eighteen one thousand," said Kathy Hahl. She locked her legs closed around his waist. "Now let's talk. We can offer you a leadership program where your support level can be geared to your need. But the plan is one million dollars. If you want to participate."

  "That's a hell of a lot of money," said Stace, who now felt the pain in his back from leaning over. His head was flushed and his heart was beating rapidly. He thought Kathy Hahl had a beautiful nose. He saw it very close.

  "Is it really? We know you are in that income bracket. It's not an unreasonable package." She patted the side of his head tenderly, straightening a strand of hair.

  "That's a hell of a lot for a hit," he said.

  "Yes."

  "I want to try something else first."

  "You've tried something else. If it had worked, you wouldn't be here." She looked at him coolly.

  "Suppose I said yes. How do you know I'd give you the money?"

  "We would see that you did."

  "Suppose I just take care of you? You do the job, I owe you a million, and I settle with someone for a reasonable five or six grand, which is the going rate. Let's say you're super-super difficult. Twenty-five grand tops, outside. Twenty-five grand. You're gone, and there's no one I owe a million to."

  "It sounds like you may have done something like that before," said Kathy Hahl, reaching behind Stace and, with her left hand, twirling a ring she wore on her right.

  "Maybe," he said. He shook his head. "A million's too much. I'd like to try something else first."

  She shrugged.

  "My back hurts, let go," said Stace.

  Kathy Hahl smiled at him and snaked her hands inside the back of his trousers, reached down to his bare buttocks and pulled him in closer to her body. He felt a small stinging in his left rump. She squeezed him once more with her legs, and then he felt the legs unlock and he straightened up and rubbed his back. He put everything in order, then zipped and felt relieved that there were no stains. His composure was not only restored; he felt it enhanced. She had given him her body and he had taken it, but he had stuck to his guns and refused to go for the million dollars. To hell with it. Don Pietro might be right. Fire might be better.

  With a brush of her skirt, Kathleen Hahl was sitting straight again behind the desk like a businesswoman. She was smiling at him. He felt sorry for her.

  "Look," he said, "I'm sorry we can't deal. But I would like to give the hospital something anyway. What would be fair?"

  She looked at her watch. "Eighteen thousand dollars. For eighteen seconds."

  "Agreed. Make it out to the hospital?"

  "No. To me."

  "I'd pay that for a good lay," said Stace haughtily.

  "So would I," said Ms. Kathleen Hahl. "If I ever found one."

  He wrote her a check. She took it, checked the amount, put it in her desk drawer and asked him, "Do you ever have headaches?"

  "Never."

  "A first time for everything," she said.

  Later that night in Scranton, Anselmo Stacio made arrangements for Marvin (The Torch), but he cut short the discussion with his top layer of middlemen. He had a severe headache. Just before he went to bed, the butler inquired if Mr. Stace would like a sedative.

  "No thank you," said Stace,

  "Perhaps I should call a doctor, sir?"

  "No, no, not a doctor," said Stace, remembering the hospital. "Definitely not a doctor."

  CHAPTER FIVE

  "Tonight's the night, Little Father," said Remo, dissolving the last grains of rice in his mouth to liquid, and then swallowing. He took his plate to the bathroom and flushed into the sewer system of the Holiday Inn the trout almandine and asparagus blanketed by rich golden Hollandaise sauce. He had learned long ago that one does not order a bowl of rice and a piece of raw fish or
steamed duck at a mass-market restaurant. That had been a complication in itself. How much easier it was to order a meal with rice and then eat some of the rice, disposing of the meal. He never ordered beef because sometimes the juices spilled into the rice and in beef, as in much other food, the flavor was often enhanced with monosodium glutamate.

  Some people got numb and sick when they ate monosodium glutamate. With his nervous system, Remo had once gone into shock. The chemical was a strong poison to him, one of the few his body was unable to reject.

  Chiun, on the other hand, decried the waste of food, saying that if there had been plentiful food there never would have been a House of Sinanju.

  "Well then, aren't you lucky," Remo had answered.

  "No," said Chiun. "For all the wonder of the House of Sinanju, nevertheless it comes from pain and fear and hunger. The House of Sinanju was born in the crops that failed."

  "You left out greed, Little Father. You know your ancestors did pretty well in Persia, and with all your fourteen steamer trunks we have to take everywhere, you're pretty rich by Korean standards."

  "Greed comes from the memory of hunger. It is another form of fear. My richness, my true richness, is as yours—our discipline. You have nothing but that."

  "I can get all the cash I want from Upstairs."

  "And what have you bought with all this cash from Upstairs?"

  "I don't need anything. If I want something, I get it. We move around a lot."

  "You will always be rich from a rich country because you never hunger for things."

  "I was raised in a frigging orphanage. By nuns. I had nothing. Nothing."

  "You ate?"

  "Yes."

  "And slept in a bed?"

  "Yes."

  "Then, like others in your country, you do not know the rest of the world. You create crisis from inconvenience and never know real crisis. Yours is a rich and blessed country with sharing that has never been known before. Though priests and shamans and kings declare it as a goal, nowhere—nowhere—has there ever been so much for so many. Nowhere and never."

  "Yeah, we're pretty good, Little Father."

  "Pretty good? What have you done for it, other than appear from the right womb in the right country during the right century? You have done nothing."

  "All this over a frigging lamb chop," Remo said.

  "I have seen men kill for smaller pieces of meat," Chiun said and righteously turned on his special television receiver which stored on tape concurrently running daytime serials, an art form that Chiun called "the only expression of beauty in a gross land" and that Remo called "those stupid soaps."

  It had not seemed right to the Master of Sinanju that those dramas should be shown simultaneously so that a person would be denied one if he watched another. Upstairs fixed it so that while Chiun watched one, all the others were taped, and he alone in all the land was able to watch an uninterrupted four hours daily starting with "As the Planet Revolves" at noon and ending with "The Young and the Drastic" at 4 P.M.

  Occasionally, there would be accidental interruptions by people crossing before the television screen and sometimes even turning off the set. [*Destroyer #4, Mafia Fix] These interruptions lasted only that millisecond that it took the long-nailed hands of Chiun to strike. Then Remo would have to dispose of the bodies. As Chiun explained it—he could explain everything so that he was free of guilt—all that had happened was that a frail, gentle, wise old man had been restored his brief moments of pleasure.

  "In America, we call it murder," Remo said.

  "In America, you have many strange names for things," Chiun had said. He also always refused to help clean up the bodies, under the supposition that Remo was the pupil and the little tidying up needed around their domiciles was his responsibility. Besides, had Remo ever once heard him ask one of the victims to interrupt the meagre pleasures of his television dramas? It was an unprovoked assault upon a peaceful old man which was met in kind.

  One did not interrupt Churn's shows and one did not throw away food. Therefore, Remo prudently avoided even talking during the soaps and never threw food away in front of Chiun. He shut the bathroom door when he flushed it down the toilet.

  "Tonight's the night. I feel it," said Remo again. He was testing to see if Chiun had gotten over the Christmas tree-Barbra Streisand incident or, as Chiun had referred to it once on the way from San Francisco to Pennsylvania, "the heart-rending insult." Remo was not quite sure how Chiun had translated the facts into his own thinking but somehow the feeding of ducks had gotten into it and there were, between the long periods of silence, comments about corn, something being fit for ducks, and the quackings of the American way of life, with Remo being the repository of its most grievous flaws.

  Now Chiun said, "Remember, you represent the teaching of Sinanju. Sloppiness and careless technique do not enhance Sinanju."

  Remo felt good. There would be comments somewhere down the line establishing that Chiun was the injured party, but to all intents and purposes the incident was over. The criticism about technique was a sign that all was forgiven. Forgotten, never, but forgiven.

  "Little Father, I was wondering the other day," Remo said. "I was thinking back to those early days and the balls twirling over the table as a demonstration of the Western and Eastern attacks and while I see now how foolish I was in looking at the spinning of the balls instead of what you were trying to show, another idea came to me."

  "Better than the first, I hope."

  "Perhaps. What I was thinking was that if we have mastery like that and if your ancestors had mastery like that, then why couldn't your ancestors have supported Sinanju by magic tricks or even the playing of games of chance, which in their hands would not be games of chance at all?"

  "I too wondered that once," Chiun said, "and the Master who trained me showed me dice. He told me he would first slap me and then teach me how to make whatever numbers I wished appear on top. For that is how dice are scored, not by the numbers that appear on the sides or on the bottom, but…"

  "I know. I know. I know," said Remo impatiently.

  "I do not know what you do not know. Your ignorance never fails to astound me so I must be cautious in teaching you."

  "I know about craps, Little Father."

  "Very well. The master made a slapping motion and I lowered my head beneath it. The slap would appear fast to those untrained, but for the trained, it was slow. Then he taught me about the balance of the dice, which are really squares. And I became proficient—for they are just squares with dots, which are usually common in balance except when cheaters rearrange their balance."

  Remo nodded politely.

  "One day, he prepared a feast and gave me half. But before I ate, he said, 'I will game you for the whole feast. You may throw the dice,' he said. I was delighted."

  "Didn't you think he might have something up his sleeve? Some sort of angle?"

  "A child thinks that the world is arranged as his own personal gift. Look to your own mind, for example."

  "Yes, Little Father," said Remo, almost longing for a return to the long moments of silence.

  "Anyway, I threw the dice and won. But when I moved to gather the feast the master struck me.

  "'You did not win,' he said. 'Why do you gather the food?'

  "'But I won,' I said.

  "'And I say you did not win,' he said, and he slapped me again. 'I won,' I responded but he cuffed me cross the room. And he said that with the slap that I had easily avoided when he first showed me the dice, he could now hurtle me across the room. And what he told me I will never forget: 'He who cannot defend himself owns nothing, not even good fortune or his life.' And so that I would never forget, he made me watch hungry while he ate. In Sinanju, we did not waste food."

  "He screwed you out of a meal, huh?" said Remo.

  "He gave me many meals that night. He gave the village many meals that night. And that night, he gave you many meals too, for in my not eating, I learned how to make sure that I would
always eat and that others would always eat."

  "Seems like a hell of a way to make a point. Cheating a kid out of his supper."

  "When a Master has someone worthwhile to teach, he teaches. When a Master must struggle with a pale piece of a pig's ear, he must tell stories."

  "If tonight's the night, Little Father, and I think it is, I should be back by sunrise."

  "For a fool, the sun never rises."

  "I understand. I understand. I understand already. Jeez. Enough."

  "More than enough for someone who does not appreciate gifts and denies little nothings in return."

  At the door, Remo asked if there was anything other than America's leading singer that Chiun would want Remo to bring him. Remo regretted asking the very minute he spoke.

  "Just bring back someone who will listen."

  "I thought so."

  "Work on the balance tonight. Work balance into what you do. It is always good to work on balance."

  "Yes, Little Father," said Remo glumly, as if he were responding to Sister Mary Francis back at the orphanage school. The motel hallway was strung with brightly colored lights, and a real Christmas tree sat on a coffee table in the lobby. Remo went out into the cold alone, hearing the twinkle of Muzak Christmas carols. It was the yuletide season. He was going to work.

  The Wilberforce house was lit, but without the bright Christmas bulbs. Remo could see the tree through the living-room window, a small artificial cone of green strung with what appeared to be popcorn. Well, it was better than a bush with tennis balls. Down the street, Remo saw a house with an eight-light candelabra. Even the Jews had Hannukah. They adapted. They made a minor holiday into a major one to get into the spirit of the season and they had five thousand years, which even Chiun had to admit was something. What did Remo have? The Feast of the Pig? The Feast of the Pig and a bush with tennis balls.

  A car skittered down the slushy street and the cold gray slush spattering at him reminded him who he was. He put away his anger, for a man could not work with anger, not this work and not properly. He would be angry later.

  Maybe later he would kick someone's tires and wish them merry Feast of the Pig or something, but right now, while midnight approached and the carols died away as people went warm to bed, he had the only thing the Master of Sinanju told him he would ever really have. His discipline.