Deadly Seeds Page 8

  Very hard, agreed Balunta. He conceded that they might even get to him first. In fact, probably. Which was what kept most people in line.

  “Now tell me,” said Deussio, “what does the horizon look like now. You said it yourself. Clear.”

  “You’re the guy coming home with the bacon,” he said, lapsing into English. “You’re the guy who’s due a bigger cut. You’re the fucking hero.”

  “So what you saying, Johnny Deuce?” asked Balunta.

  “We hit the top now.”

  “Mi Dio,” said Balunta. “This is a big thing. Too big.”

  “It’s either you hit them now while you got the advantage or they get you when they have it. I admit, it’s a hard choice. But you do the hard thing today when it’s easy or you take the hard thing in the face tomorrow. When it’s tough. Frigging tough. You know I’m right.”

  Balunta was quiet as the car went through the countryside. And Johnny Deuce further showed his genius, a genius that would give most of the midwest mob quiet for more than a decade.

  He began by telling Balunta he knew what Balunta was thinking. If this young man is willing to have me go against my boss now, wouldn’t he, at the moment of success, do the same thing to me?

  Balunta said he was thinking no such thing.

  “But I would be foolish,” continued Johnny Deuce. “If I go against you, then my number two would see this and go against me. Now if I do not go against you, my number two will worry what you will do if he succeeds with me. I am the only one who can stop what I have started and I have a vested interest in doing so. You are going to give me a very big piece of the action from the outset. A very big piece. Together we have no worries. We will work things out for both our safeties.”

  But everyone, Balunta pointed out, wants it all.

  “Everyone who doesn’t know that all of it is a oneway ticket to the marble orchard,” said Johnny Deuce. “You’ll see. It’ll work if we share. If we share, we’re strong.”

  “Mi Dio,” said Balunta and Deussio knew that this was a “yes.” For ten days, bodies turned up downstream in the Missouri, shotguns bloomed from the front windows of cars, brains were blown into dinner linguine. Deussio struck so fast and so quickly it was only when the St. Louis wars, as they were later called, were over that those who mattered knew where the killing had come from. And by that time, it was Don Guglielmo Balunta.

  Johnny Deuce’s talents and his proven loyalty created a new order from St. Louis to Omaha. Such was Don Guglielmo’s trust in his young genius that when others would come to him with stories of the crazy things that Johnny Deuce did, Don Guglielmo would say:

  “My Johnny does crazy things today that come out smart tomorrow.” When he hired the electronics experts, people hinted he was crazy. When he hired the funny Orientals, people whispered he was crazy. When he hired computer programmers, people said he was crazy. And each time, Don Guglielmo Balunta would answer that his Johnny would be proven smart tomorrow. Even when the word got around about his strange dream and how he had young athletes try to climb up to an impossible–to–reach window in his home, even then Don Guglielmo told everyone his Johnny would be proven smart tomorrow.

  But when Johnny started ordering everyone to go to the mattresses when there was no enemy in sight, Don Guglielmo was instantly worried. He did not even have to send for Johnny Deuce. Johnny came himself, with no bodyguard and a very fat briefcase.

  Johnny was paunchier now than in those early years when first the two had assumed control. His hair surrendered to shiny scalp along a thinning line of resistance. His face had lost the hard lines to a smothering layer of flesh but the dark eyes still shone with sharp fury.

  Don Guglielmo, in a ruby smoking jacket, lounged on the edge of a plush green couch set on what appeared to be acres of marble flooring. Johnny Deuce sat on the edge of his chair, his feet planted forward, his knees together, refusing a glass of strega, a piece of fruit, talk of weather and family. He told his don he was worried.

  Over the years Don Guglielmo would listen very carefully but this time his hands raised and he said he would hear none of it.

  “This time,” said Balunta, “you listen to me. I am more worried than you. You listen. I talk. You go to the Miami Beach. You get the sun. You get the rest. You get yourself a girl with those nice titties that go up. You have wine. You eat the good food. You get sun. Then we talk.”

  “Patron, we face the most deadly enemy. Deadliest ever.”

  “Where?” said Balunta, his hands rising to the heavens. “Show me this enemy. Where is he?”

  “He is on the horizon. I’ve done a lot of thinking. There’s something going on in this country that eventually means the end of us all. All of us. The organization. Everything. Not just here but all over. It’s not just that bad night I had. That was just the tip of an iceberg that’s going to destroy us all.”

  Don Guglielmo leaped from the sofa and grabbed Johnny Deuce’s head in his hands. Palms to ears, he raised Deussio’s head so their eyes must meet.

  “You get the rest. You get the rest now. No more talk. You listen to your don. You get the rest. No more talk. After you rest, we talk. Okay? Okay?”

  “As you say,” said Johnny Deuce.

  “Atsa good. I worry for you,” said Balunta.

  And Johnny Deuce told his don he could use a drink but not the bought stuff. Good red wine made especially for the don. And wine was brought in in a large green gallon jug and placed on the slate-gray table top. Deussio placed a hand over his glass and did not raise it.

  “You won’t take the drink with your don?”

  Johnny Deuce removed his hand from the cut crystal glass.

  “The worries are in your head. You think your don would poison his right arm?” said Balunta. “Would I poison my heart? My brains? You are the legs of my throne. Never. Never.” And to show his good faith, Balunta took the glass sitting before his Johnny and drank it all. Then he threw the glass toward the wall but it fell short, cracking on the marble floor.

  “I knew you wouldn’t poison me, Don Guglielmo,” said Deussio.

  “Then why you no drink the wine with your don?”

  Guglielmo Balunta wanted to express himself with his hands. Wanted to throw them out wide to express his confusion. But they did not move very well. They felt icy and they stung gently as if immersed in fresh Vichy water. He felt giddy and light. When he stepped back to the couch the legs did not step with him. So he went back anyway and almost reached the couch. The fall seemed far away, not hurting as a collapse on marble usually did but rather a gentle laying down so that he was looking up at his beautiful ceiling. His Johnny was saying something. He kept talking about inevitabilities and rolled from his briefcase that funny long paper with the holes in it. Guglielmo Balunta did not care. He thought of a very white little rock he once had near Messina where he was born. He had thrown it down into the narrow straits that separated Sicily from Italy and told his friends: “I will live until the sea gives up that rock.” He thought about his youth and then saw a vision of the straits of Messina. Something white was coming up through the waves. A speck. No. His rock.

  Johnny Deuce did not know for sure if Don Guglielmo could hear him. Sally and the other men were already coming through the outside gate of the Balunta estate. Balunta’s household men would be sent to a small regime in Detroit. They would not fight if the don were dead because there was no one left to fight for. However, if Johnny were alone and standing over the corpse, they might take out their rage of their own failure on him. So it would be quick. And in case his don could still hear him, he wanted him to know why he had to kill him.

  “This sheet is the figuring of several years. Things are happening in this country that have no reason to happen. I saw it several years ago when Scubisci had his troubles in the east. We called this ‘no reason’ the X–factor. And we said this “no reason” is a reason. So all of a sudden a tight city becomes untight and politicians and police are going to jail all of a su
dden with prosecutors having evidence they shouldn’t have. Judges we’ve owned for years suddenly terrorized by some other force. That force is the X–factor, and if you look at it, you’ll realize we’re through. In ten or fifteen years, we’re not going to be able to do business.”

  Sally was past the front doors with his own men and their weapons came out. There was murmuring in the hallway outside the vast marble-flooring living room and Johnny Deuce called everyone inside.

  “Heart attack,” he said, keeping the computer printouts concealed against his side, even though he knew the bodyguards would no more understand them than Balunta did.

  “Yeah. Heart attack,” said one of the house bodyguards and Johnny Deuce nodded for Sally to take them out of the room. On the way out, one of the guards whispered to Sally: “What is he, talking to a stiff?” And Sally cuffed him in the back of the head and the bodyguard understood that.

  Deussio continued in the empty room. He told his dead don that the X–factor was a force that was making government work, not for those who tried to buy it but for those who voted for it. And this X–factor was growing stronger. Therefore every day an attack was delayed, the chances of overcoming X–factor grew smaller. By the time someone with Balunta’s mentality had been ready to move, it would be too late.

  The enforcer unit of this X–factor had brushed through St. Louis a few days before, just an edge of the iceberg. It was after something else at the time.

  “We have one small advantage and I’m going to use it,” said Deussio. “The X–factor does not know we understand it. See here. Look.”

  And he unfolded the long computer printout listing probabilities. Even if Don Guglielmo had been breathing, he would have understood it no better. Which was why he had to die. The strategist, John Vincent Deussio, knew he had to move now, even if others didn’t. Which made him what he was. Which made him very dangerous. Unlike the others, he knew he was in a war for survival. So he felt very free to kill anyone who would not aid the cause. He drank the unpoisoned wine Balunta had poured for himself, the wine into which Johnny had not dropped the poison pellet, and sat back on the sofa to prepare his attack.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE FIRST REMO SAW the rough sketch of himself was at the Ohio demonstration. The surrounding fields were green with corn and Fielding had explained that he also had to show the process worked in good, moderate climate soil as well as bad. The field was raised on a little hill surrounded by a chain-link fence.

  Maria Gonzales, carrying a Russian passport because her country did not have relations with the United States, spoke with a French agronomist who noted his country had large farming sections with climate and soil like Ohio.

  Chiun engaged several cameramen from television networks, asking why there was so much violence and filth in daytime dramas nowadays. Obviously one had replied with a sharp answer because Remo saw ambulance attendants lifting the portable TV camera from a man’s shoulder and placing him on a stretcher.

  Newsmen worked in shirt sleeves. The Miami County Sheriff’s office wore open-necked short-sleeved shirts and carried heavy sidearms, the sheriff having vowed that there would be no Mojave-type incident here in Piqua, Ohio.

  “We’re not like those people out there,” said the sheriff.

  “Out where?” asked a reporter.

  “Out anywhere,” said the sheriff. Sweat ran down his face like glycerin beads over packaged lard. Remo scanned the crowd looking for any possible attack on Fielding. He caught Maria’s eye. She smiled. He smiled back. Chiun walked between them.

  A soft breeze caught the corn in a neighboring field and made the lazy summer day smell like life itself. Remo caught an exchange of glances between a man in a Palm Beach hat and another in a gray light summer suit. They were across the field from each other. And both looked at a paunchy man with large shoulders who glanced at something in his hands, then looked at Remo. When Remo looked back, the man tucked the object into his trousers pocket and became very interested in what was happening in the field. The three men had the field triangulated. Remo sidled to the paunchy man in the white suit.

  “Hi,” said Remo. “I’m a pickpocket.”

  The man stared straight ahead.

  “I said hello,” said Remo. The man’s alligator shoes pressed into the newly turned Ohio soil under the weight of 280 pounds of muscles and flesh and a two-day growth. He had a face that had been banged here and there by fist and club and a whitish lumpy line which was the completed healing process of a long-ago blade. He was slightly taller than Remo and had shoulders and wide fists that had obviously done some banging themselves. His body oozed the odor of yesterday’s scotch and today’s sirloin.

  “I said hello,” said Remo again.

  “Uh, hello,” said the man.

  “I’m a pickpocket,” Remo repeated. The man’s hairy heavy hand moved down to his right trouser pocket.

  “Thank you for showing me which pocket I should pick,” said Remo.

  “What?” said the man and Remo cut two fingers down between fatty palm and hefty hip, making a neat tearing slice down the right side of the man’s trousers.

  “What?” grunted the man who suddenly felt his undershorts under his right palm. He grabbed for the skinny guy but when his huge hands closed on the shoulders, the shoulders were not there and the skinny guy kept on walking and looking through the trouser pocket as if strolling through a garden reading a book.

  “Hey, you. Gimme back my pocket,” said the man. “That’s my pocket.” He swung at the back of the head but the skinny guy’s head was just not there. It didn’t jerk or duck, it was just not there as the swing went through where it was. The two other men in the triangle moved toward the commotion. The Miami County sheriff’s office moved toward the commotion.

  “Anything wrong?” said the sheriff, surrounded by deputies with their hands on their sidearms.

  “No,” said the big man with the tear in his trouser. “Nothing wrong. Nothing.” He said this by instinct. He could not remember ever telling a policeman the truth.

  “Anything wrong?” the sheriff asked Remo.

  “No,” said Remo, examining the pocket he had picked.

  “All right, then,” said the sheriff. “Break it up.” Seeing that all his deputies were clustered around him, he yelled for them to get back to their positions. There wasn’t, he said, going to be another Mojave Desert incident in this county.

  Remo threw away car keys and some bills from the pocket. He held onto a small square paper that looked printed. It was a sketch of two men, the stiff expressionless lines of what might have been a police composite. An old Oriental with wispy hair and a younger Caucasian with sharp features and high cheekbones. The Caucasian had hair similar to Remo’s. The Oriental’s eyes were deeper than Chiun’s and then Remo realized it was a composite sketch of himself and Chiun. The deeper eyes told him and told him who had stood over the artist telling him ‘yes’ and ‘no’ as eyes and mouths appeared on paper. All eyes looked deeper when there was direct above light, as over a pool table in a pool hall.

  Pete’s Pool Parlour in East St. Louis. The Caucasian’s eyes weren’t so deep set because Remo had not stood at the table. He waved to Chiun.

  Chiun came in behind the two other men of the triangle.

  “Look,” said Remo, showing the card to Chiun. “Now I know you won that money playing pool. You were at the pool table. Look at the eyes.”

  The man in the Palm Beach hat whispered something about having somebody. The big man trotted to a white Eldorado at the edge of the crowd.

  “The shading of the eyes. Yes, I see,” said Chiun. “The light from above.”

  “Right,” said Remo.

  The big man without the trouser pocket eased the Eldorado over the soft ground to Chiun and Remo. He threw open the driver’s door, disclosing a shotgun in his lap. The door hid the gun from the sheriff’s men. It pointed at Remo and Chiun.

  “That could not be me,” said Chiun. “It is a very
close likeness of you considering it was obviously painted from memory. It lacks the character I put into your face. The other person is a stranger to me.”

  “Looks just like the gook,” said the man in the Palm Beach hat, coming up behind them. “We got ’em. You two, get in that car and move quietly.”

  “This could not be my face,” said Chiun. “This is the face of an old man. It could not be me. It lacks warmth and joy and beauty. It lacks the grace of character. It lacks the countenance of majesty. This is just the face of an old man.” He looked up to the man in the Palm Beach hat. “However, if you could give me a large size of the white man, I would like to have it framed.”

  “Sure, old man,” said the man in the Palm Beach hat. “How big? Eight by ten?”

  “No. Not that big. My picture of Rad Rex is an eight-by-ten. Something smaller. To stand near my picture of Rad Rex, but slightly behind it. Do you know that Rad Rex, the famous television actor, called me gracious and humble?”

  His face sparkled with pride.

  “All right,” said the man with a tight-lipped smile. “You got an eight-by-ten of a fag, I’ll print you one of these but smaller.”

  “What is it, this fag?” Chiun asked Remo.

  Remo sighed. “It is a boy who likes boys.”

  “A pervert?” asked Chiun.

  “He thinks so,” said Remo.

  “A dirty disgusting thing?” asked Chiun.

  “Depends on how you look at it.”

  “The way this creature—” Chiun jerked his head toward the man in the Palm Beach hat—“looks at it.”

  “The way he looks at it,” Remo said. “Right, dirty and disgusting.”

  “I thought as much,” said Chiun. He turned to the man in the hat who had begun to wonder why Johnny Deussio was sending all the way to Ohio to collect a couple of half–decks where there was no shortage of the mentally ill back home in St. Louis.

  “You. Come here,” said Chiun.