Sweet Dreams Page 7

  “Well, what is it?” Remo said.

  “I thought you might want to look at a house,” Smith said.

  “At this hour? What real estate agent is showing houses at this hour?” Remo asked.

  It wasn’t really being shown by a real estate agent, Smith explained. Actually, the house wasn’t even on the market yet. But it probably would be soon. And anyway, Smith just kind of wanted to get an idea of the type of house Remo wanted.

  There were a lot of etceteras and Smith’s car was rolling toward the guardhouse outside the main entrance to Edgewood University when Remo began to suspect he had been euchred.

  The guard stepped out from the booth and waved the salmon-colored Volkswagen to a halt.

  “We want to see Professor Wooley,” Smith said.

  “Sorry. I’ve got orders to admit no one but students until tomorrow.”

  Remo leaned out the window. “It’s all right, officer,” he said. “He’s the head of a super-secret organization that safeguards our country’s freedom from domestic insurrection.”

  “Remo. Please,” Smith said.

  “Hah?” the guard said.

  “And I’m a secret assassin with more deaths on my hands that I can count. Deaths, that is, not hands,” Remo said.

  “Remo, stop,” Smith said.

  “Yeah, sure, buddy,” the guard said, taking a step back toward the booth to be able to reach the phone.

  “Wait, don’t go,” Remo said. “I’d like you to meet Chiun, reigning Master of Sinanju, and a man who could be a household word, if you could find a household interested in talking about kvetches.”

  “I think you all better just turn around and get out of here,” the guard said. “I don’t want any trouble.”

  He was about fifty years old with a beer belly so big it looked as if his wide leather belt would cut him in half if he exhaled suddenly. Remo suspected that the last “trouble” the man had dealt with had been an argument about overtime with the campus police union shop steward.

  “You’re not going to let us in? A master spy, a master assassin, and a master kvetch?” Remo said.

  “G’wan, get outta here,” the guard said.

  “Too bad.”

  When he woke up the next day, the guard wouldn’t really remember much of the conversation; he’d just remember that the man in back didn’t really seem to lean through the window, but the guard caught a flash of fingers and then felt a pinching sensation in his throat, and then he went to sleep.

  Smith got out of the car, pulled the guard into the booth, and turned out the overhead light. Remo settled into the back seat of the car, and then felt a pain in his right leg, as if it had been pierced with a dull stick.

  “Owww,” he said. “What’d you do that for, Chiun?”

  “A kvetch is a scold,” Chiun said. “A complainer. A whiner. A sniveler. I am not those things.”

  “Right, Chiun, right,” Remo said. “Take the pain away.”

  Chiun tapped on Remo’s right knee and the pain vanished as quickly as it had come.

  “If I were a kvetch,” Chiun said, “I would not treat you so lightly. I would complain and carp about your name-calling. I would remind you of all the years I have wasted on you, years spent trying to make something worthwhile out of a pale piece of pig’s ear. I would scold you for frittering away what I have taught you in parlor tricks for fat men who stand in guard boxes. These things I would do if I were a kvetch. I would tell you about…”

  Smith had slid back into the car and turned from the front seat and looked at the two men.

  “What’s the matter?” he said.

  “Chiun is explaining how he’s not a kvetch,” Remo said. “He’s certainly not complaining or carping.”

  “It is a minor thing, Emperor,” Chiun said. “Drive on.”

  Before leaving the campus after the Dreamocizer demonstration, Smith had taken the precaution of driving by Wooley’s house and now he was able to find the small brick and frame, ivy-covered building, nestled in a back corner of the large sprawling school grounds.

  “Smitty,” Remo said as they parked the car across a gravel-paved road from the house, “I know this is a put-on, so why don’t you just tell us what you want?”

  “This is Dr. Wooley’s house,” Smith said. “Tonight I saw his television invention. So did other people and I suspect he’s going to be a target. I want you to make sure he stays alive until I can talk to him.”

  “Let’s just go in and talk to him now,” Remo said. “Then we can go home and let him die.”

  Smith shook his head. “Procedures,” he said. “This may wind up costing a great deal of money. I can’t do it until Folcroft’s computers are opened by phone in the morning.”

  “All right,” Remo said.

  The three men crossed the street to Wooley’s front door. Chiun paused on the top step, leaned his hands against the door, then turned to Smith and said: “He is not here. There is no one here.”

  “How can you tell?” Smith said.

  “Vibrations,” Remo said. “He’s not here. Let’s go home. To our hotel.”

  “No. We have to look inside. He may have been taken away by somebody. Or maybe he just isn’t home yet.”

  Remo snapped the front door lock with a twisting push of his wrist.

  There was no one in the house and there were no signs of a struggle. The beds had not been slept in.

  “There has been no battle here,” Chiun said. “Even the dust of the windowsills is at peace.”

  “Good,” Smith said, and directed Remo and Chiun to wait in the house for Dr. Wooley and to protect him and his daughter until Smith could speak to them.

  As Smith went out the door, Remo called to him:

  “Smitty, when you’re checking your computers for money in the morning, make sure they’ve got enough left over to buy a house.”

  · · ·

  When Patti Shea had run from the cafeteria and found a telephone, her instructions from the top network brass had been simple:

  “Get that machine and get that professor. We don’t care how.”

  She had spent the rest of the night at the house she had commandeered from Norman Belliveau, calling Dr. Wooley’s home, but there was never an answer.

  After midnight, her own phone rang. It was New York calling. She turned the volume down on the television movie she was watching before answering.

  Again her instructions from the network brass were simple and did not invite discussion.

  “Promise him anything; we’re sending somebody out there to help you.”

  When she hung up, Patti Shea shuddered. She knew what that meant. But why was the network so interested in Dr. Wooley’s Dreamocizer?

  She looked back at the flickering television picture. Even without sound, she recognized a Canadian who had made a fortune portraying American cowboys extolling the virtues of a dog food he fed his own dog Luke. And then she realized.

  Commercial revenues in television were in the billions of dollars a year. And who would spend ten seconds watching a dog food commercial when they could own their own Dreamocizer, and romp in their own fantasy world?

  In living color.

  With stereophonic sound an optional extra.

  Who would be left to watch “Patti Shea Under Cover” when their imagination could put her between the sheets.

  She knew whom the network would send “to help” her and now, for the first time since she had been aware that television did those kinds of things, she looked forward to the help.

  · · ·

  The cafeteria where the conference had been held was an anthill of scurrying people when Big Vince Marino and Edward Leung returned to the table at which Grassione and Massello sat, and shook their heads.

  “He got away,” Marino told Grassione.

  “Assholes,” Grassione snarled. “An old man and a young girl and you can’t catch them. What the hell do I pay you for?”

  “They vanished,” Marino said, “into
thin air. Remember…like that quarterback on that Banacek show where he ran around end and…”

  Grassione’s glare silenced him. “I saw the show. Maybe what I need is a Polack detective and not you two.” He started to say more, then remembered Don Salvatore Massello was still at the table, and he shrugged toward the Don who smiled, and then rose to his feet.

  “I think I will leave you now,” Massello said. “Professor Wooley said he would be at home tomorrow morning. I will meet with him then, and then…well, we will see what we will see.”

  Grassione rose, waited until the Don extended his hand, then shook Massello’s hand warmly.

  “I understand, Don Salvatore,” he said. “Nothing will be done until you approve.”

  Massello nodded, turned and left.

  Grassione waited until the silver-haired man was out the door before he said to Marino, “Find out where that professor’s house is and see if he’s there. I’ll be back at the room and you let me know.”

  When they returned to the room with another negative report, Grassione was no longer alone. Two men from St. Louis, who were not part of Massello’s crime family, had joined him.

  Grassione did not bother to introduce them to Marino and Leung.

  “I want you two to go over to this Wooley’s house and if you see anybody going in, you call me here and I’ll tell you what to do.”

  He dismissed them with a wave of his hand and turned back to the television set, as if Marino and Leung were not even in the room.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “A MAN SHOULD NOT have to live like this.” Don Salvatore Massello’s voice was concerned and gracious, and the movement of his hand indicating Dr. Wooley’s littered living room was the embodiment of all-encompassing pity.

  “How did you find me here, Mr. Massello?” Wooley asked.

  “I know a great deal about this city. What I do not know, I can find out.”

  Wooley stared at Massello, then turned to look at Leen Forth who stifled a yawn.

  “Excuse me a moment,” Wooley said and led Leen Forth into the equally cluttered bedroom.

  “Is this your pad, Pop?” she asked.

  Wooley nodded. “I’ve been using it to do research that I was afraid to leave around the house. Why don’t you get some sleep?”

  “Okay. Hey, we really blew their minds tonight, didn’t we?”

  Wooley put an arm around the shoulders of the girl who was almost as tall as he was.

  “We sure did. Woodward’s never going to be the same,” he said.

  “Yeah, that too,” she said.

  “And tomorrow we’ll be rich.”

  A small frown crossed Leen Forth’s face. “Even when we’re rich, Pop, things are going to be the same, aren’t they? I mean, it’s you and me against the world?”

  “It always was.”

  “Good,” she said. “Good night. He looks like a nice man.” She nodded her head toward the bedroom door.

  “Yes, he does.” Wooley kissed her good night, and went back into the living room.

  Massello was still standing where Wooley had left him but when the professor returned Massello sank back into his seat on the couch.

  “You don’t remember me, Professor, do you?” he said.

  Wooley looked hopelessly lost.

  “We met, perhaps two years ago, at a dinner for Indochina refugees. I wouldn’t expect you to remember just another businessman. There were many people there that night.”

  “Of course. Now I remember,” Wooley lied.

  “At any rate, I am a businessman and I’ll get down to business. I was at the university tonight and I saw the demonstration of your…”

  “Dreamocizer,” Wooley filled in.

  “Yes, of course. I want to buy all rights from you to manufacture and sell it-and of course you would be paid a generous percentage on the sale of each unit.”

  “I really don’t think I’m up to talking business tonight,” Wooley started.

  “I understand. I’m sure it’s been a long day for you. And before that, long years, perfecting your device. It is patented, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. A string of patents.”

  “Good,” said Massello, making a mental note to have a search done the next day for all patents in Wooley’s name. “Just so that you are not, as your daughter might say, ripped off.”

  “Not much chance of that. But as I said, I really didn’t want to talk business tonight.”

  “There’s just one problem, Professor. As I said, I’m in many businesses around the area and consequently hear many things. I understand that men have come here from out of state, whose only interest is in stealing your invention.”

  “They’d have to find it first,” said Wooley.

  “Of course. You would put it away safely.” Massello shook his head. “But these are the kind of men who would not stop at anything to get from you your invention. From you…or from your daughter. They would stop at nothing.”

  “I’ll just have to be careful.”

  “One cannot be careful enough. I hope this won’t offend you, Professor, but I know that at times you entertained a visitor in this place. A Miss Hawley?”

  “Yes?”

  “You have not seen her in some time?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “You will not ever again.”

  Wooley sank back into the chair.

  “I’m sorry, Professor. But I wanted you to know the type of men you are dealing with. These men from New York will stop at nothing.”

  Massello saw the pained look on Wooley’s face and rose from the couch. He came to Wooley’s seat and clapped a strong hand on the man’s shoulders.

  “Come, Professor. It is not as bad as all that. Forewarned is forearmed.”

  “But I know nothing of violence. I can’t expose Leen Forth to those kinds of…”

  “You won’t have to,” Massello said. “I have friends. They will know how to protect you and yours.”

  The warming clasp of Massello’s hand on Wooley’s shoulder gave the professor a surge of confidence, a feeling of power.

  “You really think so?” he said.

  “I swear it. On my mother’s sacred heart,” Massello said.

  · · ·

  The two men Grassione had sent to stake out Professor Wooley’s house had only started to phone in their report about the middle-aged man and the Oriental and…

  “That’s them,” Grassione interrupted. “That’s them. Now look, the old guy’s invented some kind of a television gadget. I want you to get it.”

  “And what about him?”

  “Do anything you want with him,” Grassione said.

  While the two men were in the telephone booth around the corner from Wooley’s house, Doctor Smith had gone, leaving Remo and Chiun behind.

  The two men walked back toward Wooley’s small house.

  “What kind of a television gadget?” the bigger man said.

  “Who knows? We’ll find out from this professor, before we pop him.”

  The two men were surprised to find the front door to Wooley’s house open and even more surprised to find two men lying on the living-room floor.

  The bigger man nicked on the light switch inside the door.

  “All right, which one of you is Wooley?”

  Remo rolled over and looked toward the two men. “Actually,” he said, “Chiun’s more woolly. I’m kind of wash-and-wear myself.” He turned over again.

  The men looked at Remo and at the tiny Oriental whose back was to them, then at each other.

  “Where’s the other guy who was here?” the big man said, taking a snub-nosed .38 caliber revolver from a shoulder holster. “Hey. I’m talking to you.”

  “The other guy isn’t woolly either,” Remo said, still without turning. “He’s more like green twill, the kind you get in work pants. Go away.”

  The big man walked to Remo and put his toe into Remo’s shoulder. “A joker, hah?”

  He pushed with his toe, bu
t the shoulder didn’t move. He pushed harder. The shoulder still didn’t move, but the toe did. Toe, foot, leg, and man went toppling backwards, hitting heavily on the living-room floor.

  Chiun rose as the man got up to a sitting position. The man aimed the revolver at Remo’s back.

  “What do you want, fella?” Remo asked.

  “The television thing. Where is it?”

  “It’s over there,” Remo said pointing to a 19-inch Silvertone console. “But don’t bother turning it on. All the good shows are off.”

  “That’s enough,” the man said, as Chiun brushed by him. He began to squeeze on the trigger, and then he felt the gun being turned in his hand. The metal of the trigger was cold under his index finger, and there was nothing he could do to stop the finger from squeezing and the gun went off with a muffled thump, muffled by the gunman’s head which Remo had jammed down into the muzzle.

  The smaller man at the door had taken out a revolver too. He aimed it at Remo, then felt a stinging pain in the left side of his chest. He turned to his left and saw Chiun there, his face contorted in sorrow, and the man started to say something but no words would come out.

  And Chiun pushed him with a long index finger and the man stumbled forward, then went headlong into the picture tube of the television set which broke with a loud crack and a swift sucking hiss of air.

  “You broke the TV, Chiun,” Remo said.

  “No. He broke the television set,” Chiun said.

  “Now how are you going to watch As the Planet Revolves tomorrow?”

  “I am always prepared. I brought my own set. It is in a trunk in my room. Please do something about these bodies.”

  Remo started to protest, realized it would be unavailing, and got lightly to his feet with a heavy sigh.

  · · ·

  The sky was just beginning to brighten when Professor William Westhead Wooley and his daughter arrived back at their home on the Edgewood U. campus.

  The two gunmen’s bodies were stuffed into garbage pails behind the house when Wooley put his key into the unlocked door, turned and stepped into the living room with his daughter behind him, still rubbing sleep from her eyes.