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  Yet, although negative feedback was not the best training device in the world, it most certainly was a training device. Either the person adjusted to the abuse or he adjusted himself so that there was no more abuse. If Skorich had adjusted himself, he was about to be a dead man.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Remo saw Skorich take a step to the front. He was examining the side of Remo’s face. He took another step dragging the prisoner a step forward with him, and the detective on the other end moved a half step.

  Remo couldn’t hide his face and then run for it, not in police headquarters. It would be a great way to get your picture circulated, especially after the conversation with the chief.

  So Remo turned slowly to Bill Skorich and hoped that the plastic surgery on his cheekbones and nose would do the trick, and he looked Skorich in the eye and then appeared confused. As he did this, he silently prayed: “Bill, be a foul-up. C’mon, baby. Don’t do it right. Not now.”

  Skorich’s drawn face twisted in confusion and Remo’s heart suddenly became light. “Attaway to go, Billy baby,” he thought. That’s it. Beautiful. Nobody remembers a dead man’s face. Especially after plastic surgery.”

  Then Skorich’s face lighted up, a smile with it, that quickly turned into shock at seeing a dead man alive. And Remo knew that Skorich knew.

  The last word Detective William Skorich of the Newark Police Department said was not a word. It was the beginning of a name.

  The sound was “Re… ”

  Using Skorich’s body as a shield, out of view of the prisoner and the other bull, Remo shot a finger into Skorich’s solar plexus, driving the finger in deep, up into the heart, rupturing muscles and valves. All in just the time it took to say “Re… ”

  It was the floater stroke where the hand floated free of the momentum of the body and moved itself. It had the advantage of stopping talk immediately.

  Skorich’s eyes widened and before he slumped, Remo’s hands were in his own pockets with the note pad tucked under an arm. Skorich collapsed into Remo and Remo let himself be knocked to the far side of the elevator, saying, “Watch yourself, buddy.”

  Skorich brought the prisoner down on him as he fell. The fedora plopped over and the other detective, spinning like the far end of a whipping chain, stumbled onto it and then down onto the prisoner on top of the dead man on the floor of the elevator.

  The doors opened on the main floor. Remo regained his balance, brushing himself off and stormed out of the elevator, yelling loudly, “I’ve been assaulted by a police officer. I’ve been assaulted right here in headquarters. Is that how you treat the press?”

  Remo stood at the entrance of the elevator, pointing to the pile of bodies. The living detective was trying to raise himself and the prisoner both.

  There,” yelled Remo. “That’s him on the bottom. I want to press charges, right now. He pushed me.”

  It took the desk lieutenant three minutes to ascertain the situation, ten seconds to yell for an ambulance and three minutes with the faggy, pinko magazine writer to convince the writer that he had not been assaulted, but that the detective had fallen into him because he was dead, probably with a heart attack.

  “Dead?” said Remo, his mouth open, his eyes wide with terror.

  “Yeah. Dead. You know. What happens to us pigs when we try to protect you. Another pig dead, buddy.”

  “I… I don’t know what to say,” Remo said.

  “Just try looking before you jump to conclusions. That’s all. Just try looking. Just a little, fair look.”

  “I… I’m sorry,” said Remo and there was no act to his sadness. It was very real and when he left the station, he felt very much like a drink, but you do not take a drink when you are on peak, you do not take it even when you come off peak. You treat yourself like an alcoholic because that’s the business.

  And when you pass a bar and see yourself in the reflection of the window, you’re glad you can deny yourself something you want very much. And you hate the face looking back at you and moving along with you.

  Because, Remo Williams, you’re lower than an animal. You’re a machine. An animal kills to eat and live. A man kills because he’s frightened or sick or he’s told to and he’s afraid not to. But you, Remo Williams, you kill because that’s what the machine was designed to do.

  Remo crossed the street, where the redheaded cop directed traffic with a sure hand born of experience, and walked past a donut store where youngsters jammed around the counter in their after-school gluttony ritual. He would have liked, at that moment, to have Smith in his hands and to break Smith’s arms and to say to Smith, “That’s what pain feels like, Smitty. That’s where it’s at, little adding machine.” Now he knew why he sometimes hated Smith. Because they were alike. Twin peas in a sick pod. And they did their jobs right.

  The youngsters inside the doughnut store jostled playfully. A young black girl and a young white girl, their books clasped firmly to their budding breasts, giggled and looked at a young black man in floppy hat, white twill shirt and flared pants who held something out to them in his fist. He was laughing too, taunting them.

  He wiggled his clenched fist and threw back his head laughing. The two girls exchanged glances, then giggled again. The glance said: “Should we?”

  The white girl reached out to the black hand holding something. The hand withdrew. She shrugged. The hand went forward again, and opened up. It held a small glassine envelope. The black boy laughed. The white girl snatched the envelope and laughed.

  And Remo thought of the picture of the OD that Smith had shown him on the cruise ship. And suddenly, he didn’t feel so bad about being a machine.

  The mayor and the editor were next.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  WILLIE THE PLUMBER PALUMBO HAD BEEN told not to worry. He had been told not to worry by Don Dominic Verillio. He had been told that twice that afternoon.

  So Willie the Plumber went to the Oyster Cove Bar and drank three old-fashioneds to buck up his courage.

  When Willie the Plumber was told not to worry by anyone, he worried. When he was told not to worry by Don Dominic Verillio, he often had trouble containing his bladder.

  So he spent much of the afternoon helping himself not to worry with the old-fashioneds. And by 3 p.m., he was not worrying all that much. He knew that he would not have a care by midnight if he kept at it, but he also knew that by dawn he would be burdened with an overabundance of troubles if he did not put down the last old-fashioned and do what he had to do.

  Since Willie the Plumber was a man of understanding and compromise, a man who knew that others had to live also—his philosophy behind bribes—he was not too overly harsh on himself. He ordered one more old-fashioned and drank half of it, leaving a dollar tip for the bartender.

  He went outside where his blue Cadillac Eldorado occupied the previously empty space in front of the fire hydrant and removed the parking ticket from the windshield. He could get it discounted to $5 from $25, and a parking lot four blocks away would have cost him $4. Besides, getting a ticket fixed reaffirmed his status to his compatriots and himself.

  Willie the Plumber opened the unlocked door of his car, dropped the ticket in the glove compartment on top of a small pile of tickets. He got them cleared once a month when he paid all his monthly bills. Willie the Plumber did not have to lock his car. Only nobodies locked their cars.

  The blue Eldorado gleamed with a just polished shine. He had the car polished every day by a car wash near his house, the engine checked every month by the Cadillac dealer, and had it tuned up every six weeks. His cars never failed him.

  He was a thin man with a racking cough that, no matter how violent, failed to even jar the ash on the end of the eternal cigarette he held in his mouth. He saw the dentist when the pain was so bad he couldn’t sleep and the doctor twice—once when he thought he was going blind and another time when he thought he was dying. From time to time he would pass out.

  For this condition he would consult a druggist
who would tell him to consult a doctor. Willie always said he would, and got in return some powder or pills, or some drops.

  “Passing out,” he once explained, “is just nature’s way of telling you to slow down.”

  He put the key in the ignition, blanked out momentarily, then started the car. It purred. It moved with graceful ease into the traffic.

  He drove through the commercial district and then turned, going past tree-shaded private homes, two stories and two families. He hit the main boulevard and turned left, down toward the southern end of the county. Five blocks past the brick and aluminum buildings of St. Luke’s College, a Jesuit school done in twentieth century garden-apartment architecture, he turned right down a block of elegant homes with old oak and maple trees in front, wide, strong and rich. The homes were Tudor and colonial, with a natural manicure to the lawns, and a cleanliness and brightness that came only with expensive maintenance.

  Willie the Plumber pulled to the curb and stopped the car. He lit another cigarette from the one in his mouth, then carefully put the dwindling butt out in the car ashtray next to the radio-stereo-tape system.

  He swung his $85 Florsheims out onto the street, and got up by throwing himself after them. He breathed deeply. He did not pass out. That little triumph behind him, he shut the door of his blue Eldorado.

  He walked purposefully around the front grille inspecting it as he passed. There was a smudge near the left headlight. Willie took his blue handkerchief out of his coat pocket and bent down, wiping at the smudge. It came off, thank goodness. He coughed up some brownish-red substance which lodged deep in the grille. Willie kneeled down and pushed the handkerchief into the grille to get at whatever it was he had coughed out. The grille cleaned, he rose, and feeling dizzy for a moment, waited.

  Then he walked again, past a lawn sign that said “Rosenberg” to the steps of a Tudor-style house with wood beams lacing off dappled white cement.

  He rang the doorbell. A stocky woman in a knit suit answered the bell.

  “Oh, it’s you,” she said. “Just a minute. I’ll see if he’s home.”

  Willie the Plumber heard Mrs. Edith Rosenberg walk up a flight of steps to the second floor. She had left the door open.

  He heard her knock. “Gaetano?” came her voice.

  “Yes, Mrs. Rosenberg,” said a deep muffled voice.

  “That awful man is here to see you again. The skinny one who coughs.”

  “Oh. Okay, send him up. Thank you, Mrs. Rosenberg.”

  “You really shouldn’t associate with such people, a nice boy like yourself.”

  The nice boy Mrs. Rosenberg referred to was the quiet man who rented the second floor, who shared Friday night dinners with the Rosenbergs, who would listen to how her family wasn’t worthy of her and how Mr. Rosenberg thought of nothing but the business.

  The nice boy, Willie the Plumber knew, was Gaetano Gasso, Verillio’s enforcer, whom everyone called Mr. Gasso, who did not have a name like Ducks or Bananas or the Plumber, because no one would venture testing one out, even when Mr. Gasso were not present.

  Mr. Gasso could freeze people by looking at them. Mr. Gasso did not like putting guns in people’s faces and then pulling the trigger, although he would do that if there were no other avenue available to him. Mr. Gasso liked to pull off arms and legs. Mr. Gasso liked to blend other people’s skulls with chairs and tables, with sides of walls when appropriate.

  Mr. Gasso liked to crack ribs. Mr. Gasso liked people to fight back. He liked them to fight back with fists or clubs or guns. For guns, he used guns. But sometimes he used cars. Cars were good against guns. When cars drove into people standing against walls who used guns, they made cracking sounds from the chest down. Then Mr. Gasso would finish what was left, and pull the glass splinters from his own face.

  One time he pulled a bullet out of his face. But Mr. Gasso didn’t stop using cars. One time, while ameliorating a Teamster dispute, Mr. Gasso was hit in the face by a truck driver with a sledge hammer. The truck driver was put back together with wires and through great perseverance became one of the really great wheelchair basketball players, although his left-hand dribble was never much good, because he had no nerves left in that hand. Mr. Gasso knew his jaw was broken a week later, when he bit into a Tootsie Roll.

  People did not tend to joke with Mr. Gasso or make disparaging remarks. Even people who did not know who he was. There was always a table open for Mr. Gasso at nightclubs and restaurants, although he never tipped.

  Willie the Plumber did not allow himself to believe, not even to suspect, that he did not like Mr. Gasso very much. He loved Mr. Gasso. But every time he had to deliver a message to Mr. Gasso, he would fortify himself first with old-fashioneds. One time it took three-and-a-half days for Willie to take a message to Mr. Gasso because Don Dominic had said do this thing when you have time. Today, however, he had told Willie it was urgent and that Willie should not worry.

  Mrs. Rosenberg clomped downstairs.

  “He’ll see you,” she said with disgust, and let Willie enter.

  Willie was polite to Mrs. Rosenberg. He thanked her profusely. He was not exactly sure how Mr. Gasso felt about his landlady. Willie the Plumber was not about to experiment.

  He walked up the gray carpeted flight of steps to the second floor and knocked on the white painted door.

  “Come in,” said Mr. Gasso.

  Willie entered, closing the door behind him. It was a well-lit room with wide bay windows, soft plush furniture, a 27-inch color television set, and doilies over everything. Even a bedspread made of white doilies. Mr. Gasso made the doilies with little hooked needles and some sort of thread or string. Needless to say, his strange hobby failed to draw ridicule.

  Mr. Gasso occasionally gave doilies to people he knew. When you got a doily from Mr. Gasso you put it on the most noticeable thing closest to your door lest Mr. Gasso should happen to visit you and happen to ask you what you did with his doily. Or worse, not ask.

  Mr. Gasso sat on the edge of his doily covered bed, in his underwear. He had shoulders like cement drums used to anchor bridge supports. These shoulders extended to arms like steel beams. The arms ended at table sized fists. There were no wrists, just the giant arms ending in giant hands. All of this was covered with thick black hair from the top of his bulky head down to his ankles. His ankles and his palms and the soles of his feet were the only parts of Mr. Gasso’s body not covered with hair—if you didn’t count eyeballs and tongue. Mr. Gasso had hair on his lips.

  His ankles looked as if someone had massaged them with a depilatory. Or maybe he could pull off his hair like long underwear, and it was a bad fit at the ankles.

  Mr. Gasso apparently felt no embarrassment about his body hair. At least his peer group had never ostracized him for it.

  “It’s so good to see you, Mr. Gasso,” said Willie the Plumber.

  Mr. Gasso concentrated on his stitching. “What do you want?” he said.

  “Don Dominic needs your help.”

  “Why didn’t he come himself?”

  “That’s the problem, Mr. Gasso. He thinks someone is on to the big thing.”

  “He doesn’t want to see me.”

  “Oh no, Mr. Gasso. He’d love to see you. Really. He has great respect for you, like we all do, Mr. Gasso. But there’s this magazine writer who he wants to play it smart with. Like we keep a tail on him, and we get you to size him up and then if we need you, you know.”

  “I know,” said Mr. Gasso.

  Willie the Plumber smiled a very sincere and honest smile of true joy.

  “Did he say anything about this guy?”

  And it was here that Willie fought for control of his bladder. From time to time, certain people were sent to Mr. Gasso with messages. Sometimes the message meant for Mr. Gasso to kill the hit, but sometimes it meant for Mr. Gasso to hit the messenger. Willie the Plumber had to be very careful with the words lest he say a wrong one and suffer for it. Then again, he might get everything right and still
suffer for it.

  Willie said very slowly:

  “He said this guy was a butterfly so be careful of the wings. That’s what he said.”

  Mr. Gasso cast his dull brown eyes on Willie. Willie was smiling very broadly.

  “He said that?”

  “Yes sir,” said Willie as if the tidings could have nothing to do with his personal safety.

  “Okay. This is what you do. You set up the sizing and you get Johnny the Duck, and Vinnie O’Boyle. They’ll be the tail. And get Pops Smith, the colored guy. I like him real good.”

  “You really want a nigger on this?” asked Willie the Plumber.

  “A lot of niggers is better than you. A lot of niggers is good people. I trust Pops Smith. I don’t trust you, Willie the Plumber. We’ll meet at the Monarch Bar in half an hour.”

  “I like Pops Smith. I like him. I like him real good. I’ll get Pops Smith.”

  “Shut the door on your way out, Willie the Plumber.”

  “Awfully nice seeing you again, Mr. Gasso.”

  “Yeah,” said Mr. Gasso and Willie was out the door in an instant. He shut it quietly, but quickly, and bounced down the steps, thanking Mrs. Rosenberg and saying how nice it was to meet her again; what a lovely home she had and weren’t those splendid doilies she had on her sofa, why Willie had one just like it at home.

  “I use them because it makes Gaetano feel needed,” said Mrs. Rosenberg sharply. “Good day.”

  “Good day, Mrs. Rosenberg,” said Willie the Plumber. Then it was into his beautiful Eldorado and thence to the Monarch bar and an old-fashioned which he brought into the telephone booth.

  “Hello, O’Boyle. Willie the Plumber. I want you at the Monarch now. Don’t give me that shit about you being in the saddle. If you don’t pull out now, you may never be able to use it again.”

  Willie the Plumber hung up, waited for the disconnect, deposited a dime, then dialed again.

  “Pops Smith… oh, it’s you. This is Willie the Plumber. Get your black ass over to the Monarch now. I can go what? Are you coming over now? You want me to tell that to Gaetano? You want I should let him know you told him to go fuck himself? Yeah, he wants you. And make it snappy.”