Dark Horse td-89 Page 9

  "Aren't you going to say it?" Remo asked.

  "I did."

  "Huh?"

  Chiun cleared his throat again. More clearly, he said, "Is that not sufficient?"

  "No. I want to hear the vowels caress my ears."

  Chiun parted his dry lips. A word emerged-long, drawn-out, a sibilant hiss.

  It sounded like "please." Although it might have been "sneeze" or "bees" or "freeze."

  "Close enough for government work," Remo said lightly. "I got the body."

  "Then begone, callow one."

  On his way to the elevator, Remo called back, "Whatever you do, don't let Esperanza out of your sight!"

  "He is safe, never fear."

  Remo grinned. "What, me worry?"

  Remo took the elevator to the lobby. When the doors opened, he was immediately confronted by a trio of LAPD cops and a flock of press. Since this was the private penthouse elevator, there was no disguising where Remo had come from.

  "I don't remember letting you pass," the head cop said.

  "Funny, I don't remember passing you," Remo said, offering an ID that identified him as Remo Custer of the Secret Service.

  The cop lost his attitude. "Everything all right up there?"

  "Shouldn't it be?"

  "Guess so."

  From that, Remo figured the gunshots hadn't been heard down here. He moved toward the door. The waiting media, smelling a quote, tried to follow him through the lobby.

  "Have you any statement?" he was asked.

  "Get a life."

  Remo foiled them at the revolving door. As soon as he was out on the sidewalk, he gave the door a reverse shove. The door was not meant to go in reverse and it jammed, trapping three reporters in the glass pie-slice sections, and the remainder in the building itself.

  Remo slipped across the street and into the office building on the other side. He grabbed the elevator and pressed the highest number, hoping the cage would take him to the top without his having to transfer.

  It got as far as the sixth floor. The door opened, and a long-necked mailroom clerk rolled a dirty, canvas-sided mail hamper into the cage, practically squeezing Remo into a corner.

  "This going down?" the mail room clerk asked, as the cage resumed its climb.

  "This feel like down to you?"

  "It feels like up."

  "Must be that we're going up."

  The mail clerk frowned. "I want down."

  "You got up. Tough."

  The boy shut his mouth, and started stabbing buttons at random, trying to get the car to stop.

  It finally stopped at fifteen. The clerk got out and reached in to pull the hamper out of the cage. The hamper refused to budge.

  "I haven't got all day," Remo pointed out.

  "It's stuck!"

  "This is what happens when you get on the wrong elevator."

  "I can't leave it," the clerk said frantically.

  "Tell you what," Remo said, "you get off, catch the next elevator to the first floor, and when I get to my floor I'll send this thing down. You can reclaim it in the lobby. How's that?"

  "I can't leave this. It's full of important mail."

  "I never heard of mail that wasn't important," Remo pointed out, "but you can't tie up this elevator until you grow muscles."

  The mail clerk was reluctant. Finally he said, "I guess it'll be all right. Promise to send it right down?"

  "Scout's honor," said Remo, lifting four fingers ceilingward.

  The mail room clerk got off. The doors closed, and Remo removed an inhibiting toe from the metal frame that held the wheels to the hamper.

  The rest of the ride was pleasantly uneventful.

  On the top floor, Remo pushed the hamper off the elevator, pushed it into a gloomy corner, and went in search of a way to the roof.

  It was a drop-down ladder. Remo pulled it down and popped the hatch.

  The body of the sniper had almost finished twitching when Remo reached it.

  "Chiun musta been nervous," he muttered, gathering up the body. "They almost never twitch this long."

  The head wobbled as Remo carted it back to the ladder. That was because the sniper scope, rifle still attached to it, kept swinging with each step.

  Down on the top floor, Remo scooped out a bed for the corpse and laid it in the hamper. He covered it with assorted envelopes and packages. The rifle stuck up, so Remo simply snapped it off the scope mount and tossed it away, along with a long mailing tube that kept getting in the way.

  That solved the problem.

  Whistling, Remo rode the elevator down to the lobby.

  The long-necked mailroom clerk was, as Remo had expected, waiting for him impatiently. His eyes were coals of fear. The worried look on his moist, twitchy face turned to one of relief when Remo stepped off, pushing the squeakywheeled hamper.

  "What took you so long?" the clerk demanded.

  Remo pulled his wallet from his chinos and displayed an official-looking ID card.

  It read: REMO DRAKE, POSTAL INSPECTOR.

  "I'm confiscating this mail hamper," Remo said crisply.

  "Why?"

  "Random inspection. Washington is looking for reused stamps."

  "Reused?"

  "Don't play coy with me!" Remo growled. "You know, when they don't get canceled and people peel them off and reuse them."

  "I'm sure nobody in this building would-"

  "We have machines that can detect postage that has gone through the system once," Remo said solemnly.

  "But . . . what about the legal pieces?"

  "Don't sweat it. Every piece that passes through the Elmer's sniffer machine without tripping a red light will reach its destination."

  "Truth?"

  Remo placed his hand over his heart and said, "Son, if I'm lying, may God cancel my soul."

  The clerk's eyes widened. "I believe you," he gulped.

  "Good for you," Remo said, pushing the hamper out to the sidewalk.

  Remo pushed the hamper across the street to the hotel and registered under the name "Remo Ward."

  A bellboy came up to him and said, "Luggage, sir?"

  Remo pointed out the hamper.

  The bellboy went over, peered inside, and said, "This is a mail cart."

  "And five bucks says it's my luggage," Remo retorted.

  Five bucks was five bucks, so the bellhop obligingly pushed it to one of the regular guest elevators. The police guard and the media got out of his way.

  Once they were in the room, Remo paid the bellboy the five dollars and, after he had gone, got on the phone.

  "Smitty?" he said. "I have in my possession the sniper who took a shot at Esperanza yesterday."

  "Who is he?"

  "Good question. There's no ID on him."

  "Make him talk. Find out all you can."

  "That would be a trick. He's dead."

  Smith sighed. "What does he look like, then?"

  "Oh, about five-foot-seven, brown complexion, black eyes, and hair you could use for a dry mop."

  Remo heard the clicking of rapid keystrokes coming over the phone.

  "Distinguishing features?"

  "He's got a sniper scope sticking out of his right eye socket. "

  The keying stopped. The pause on the line was long.

  "What about the other one?" Smith asked, his voice like lemonade.

  "What other one?" Remo countered.

  "Yesterday's attack was the work of two assailants. You say you have only one."

  "Good point," Remo said. "I found only one. Maybe he had an accomplice waiting in a getaway car."

  "Please investigate further. We need answers."

  "Right away," Remo said.

  Down on the boulevard Remo circled the neighborhood, checking out parked cars for suspicious people. The only cars parked near the office tower were empty.

  Remo pushed into the office building through a revolving door. The minute he started through, he picked up the faint smell of burned gunpowder. Remo
kept pushing, following the scent and ending up back in the street.

  It was identical to the aroma that still clung to the sniper rifle Remo had left on the top floor of the building.

  Out in the open smells were almost indistinguishable, given the metallic residues in the smog-ridden air. But now that he knew what to smell for, Remo picked up the scent.

  He did not sniff. That would have abraded his sensitive olfactory nerves. He simply walked in a careful circle, drawing in a long inhalation through his nose.

  The odor seemed to be trailing west, so Remo went west. It grew more bitter. Remo's lungs, taking in the acrid smog, began to burn. He hoped the second killer hadn't gotten far. This was murder on his system.

  Around the corner came the sound of a car engine starting. Remo picked up the pace, following the cordite stink around the corner.

  He was in time to spot the brown-skinned man pulling away from the curb. In the backseat of his red convertible, a thick mailing tube shifted. It looked like the same one Remo had removed from the mail cart. It was big enough to contain the pieces of the rifle, if it had been disassembled first.

  Remo took off after the red convertible, pacing it from the sidewalk. It was easier that way. Less traffic on the sidewalk. Although the roller-blade artists were a problem. Remo sent one into a traffic light and another whipping around a corner, and out of his way.

  The typical L.A. traffic helped to slow the red car. Remo came abreast of it before it had cleared the block.

  "Pull over!" Remo called, flashing an ID badge. It didn't matter which. The guy wouldn't be able to read it from this distance anyway.

  The driver refused to stop. He floored the pedal, and shot out in front of a cab as it came around the corner. The cab driver hit the brakes, spun out of control, and bounced up on the sidewalk.

  Remo got out of his way just in time. The driver banged his face on the inside of his windshield. When he took his face out of his hands, Remo saw it was as red as a candied apple.

  Angrily, the driver threw the cab into reverse, spun around, and raced off after the red convertible. Remo raced after the taxi. He drew up behind it, his feet seeming to float along the street. When he was in perfect sync with the cab, Remo gave a graceful leap.

  The leap looked weak. To a bystander, the cab should have outdistanced Remo easily. Instead, Remo's right foot touched the cab's trunk. His left kept going and found the roof. The other joined it.

  Arms wide, bending at the waist like a surfer, Remo kept his balance as the taxi accelerated. He called down, "Don't lose him!"

  "Who the fuck are you?" the cabby yelled up.

  "A creative passenger," Remo shot back.

  "What's your beef with that guy?"

  "Tell you when we catch up."

  "Well, I want that guy's ass!"

  "I won't need that part," Remo said. "It's yours."

  The red convertible screeched through an intersection. The cab driver took the right-hand turn before it. Remo leaned into the turn, keeping his balance.

  The cabby called up. "You still there, buddy?"

  "So far."

  The taxi driver knew his streets. He ran the cab up a side street and across, getting in front of the convertible. He slammed on the brakes so hard Remo's body was thrown forward. But his feet stuck to the taxi roof as if Krazy-glued.

  There was almost a collision. The red convertible J-turned, burned rubber backing up, and sped back the way it had come. In reverse.

  The cabby screeched after him.

  "This is a one-way street," Remo warned.

  "Tell that to the other guy," the cabby snarled.

  "You pull this off, and there's twenty bucks in it."

  "Don't worry. The meter's running."

  Squinting into the airstream, Remo saw the convertible closing in on the oncoming traffic. It would have to slow down soon, or dart up a side street. If the driver could stop in time, which Remo doubted. The maniac was doing sixty, the wrong way on a busy downtown street.

  Whether the convertible would have braked in time to cut down a side street will never be known. As it passed one intersection, it ran a red light.

  Coming in from the north was a Backgammon Pizza delivery truck, running a yellow.

  The person who had ordered the pizza collected a free Pepperoni Supreme later that day. The next of kin of the deliveryman received a sixty-thousand-dollar death benefit, and collected one-point-three million in a wrongful-death suit from the company.

  The driver of the red convertible got a pauper's grave, because he was mangled beyond recognition at the moment of impact, then incinerated to a blackened twist of meat when his gas tank ignited.

  The smell of burning pizza and human flesh was not long in coming.

  The taxi slowed to a stop and Remo hopped off the cab roof. The cabby came out from behind the wheel, his mouth slack in horror and his eyes sick.

  Remo reached the twisted, burning mass of metal, and saw the flames shrivel and blacken the driver of the red convertible. When the flames reached the backseat, and the mailing tube, it began jumping and making popcorn sounds. A bullet whined up through the bubbling paint of the roof and knocked out an overhead streetlight.

  Remo pulled the cab driver back. "Bullets," he warned.

  "You a cop?" the shaken driver croaked.

  Remo ignored the question. "So, what's the fare?" he asked.

  "How can you think of money at a time like this?"

  "Good point," Remo said cheerfully. "Can I keep the tip, too?"

  The cabby picked that moment to vomit up his lunch. While he was filling the gutter, Remo slipped away.

  He was not having a good day. But there's one consolation, he thought to himself. If there were only two people out to snuff Enrique Espiritu Esperanza, both are now out of the picture.

  Even Harold Smith couldn't find fault with that.

  Chapter 11

  When Remo reached him by phone, Harold W. Smith's reaction was typically Smith.

  "You say the second gunman was burned to death?"

  "To a crisp," Remo said sourly. "If you're going to quote me, do it right."

  "Remo, this is serious."

  "The way I see it, Smitty," Remo said absently, lifting the covers of his bed to check on the first gunman, "this is a happy ending. We have our killers."

  "But we do not know who hired them," Smith pointed out.

  "No, but we can put on our little thinking caps and guess. General Nogeira. Since he's dead and they're dead, Chiun and I should be outta here by sundown. And not a moment too soon."

  "I would rather you remained in Los Angeles, Remo."

  "Sure you don't want what's behind Door Number Two?" Remo asked airily.

  "Er, what do you mean?"

  "I mean even as we speak, several floors over my head, Chiun is mooning over a certain hatchet-faced Korean anchorwitch."

  Harold Smith sucked in a dry breath that seemed forceful enough to dislodge Remo's right eardrum. "Not Cheeta Ching?"

  "Funny," Remo said dryly, "that was my exact thought when I first spotted her."

  "Ah, do you think this represents a security threat?"

  "If by 'threat,' you mean do I think Chiun is on the verge of making a major conquest, no."

  "Good."

  "On the other hand," Remo added, "she has the hots for me."

  "Cheeta Ching?"

  "Wants me to be her partner in procreation," Remo said lightly.

  "Remo, under no circumstance are you to appear on camera with Cheeta Ching," Harold Smith said tightly.

  "Smitty, where Cheeta Ching is concerned, I'm strictly behind the camera. I was running her minicam when her interview was interrupted by the sniper." "Is there a chance your camera picked up anything important?"

  "Search me. I dropped it when the ruckus started. It could have picked up anything, from the sniper to Chiun. "

  "Remo," Smith said, urgency coming into the lemon-flavored voice, "obtain that tape. I do not care
how you do it."

  Remo sighed resignedly. So much for heading east. "Anything else?"

  "Yes. I would like a photograph of the dead man. He is still with you?"

  "Decomposing peacefully," Remo said lightly, dropping the bedding on the dead sniper's waxy gray face. "What do I do with the body afterward?"

  "I do not care. But before you dispose of it, I would like fingerprint samples as well."

  "Anything else? Blood type? Nose hair clippings? Earwax samples?"

  "Remo, this is serious."

  "Tell you what, Smitty. Looks like I'm going to have a busy day. Why don't I just ship the guy to Folcroft?"

  "Absolutely not!"

  "Oh, don't thank me," Remo said sweetly. "I'll even include return correct postage."

  "Remo!"

  Laughing, Remo hung up. Things were getting better. He had Smith's goat, and Chiun owed him peace of mind for an unspecified period of time and a boon to be named at a later date. No sense squandering that one too soon.

  As he took the stairs to the penthouse, Remo thought that he might hold that boon over Chiun's head for a good long time.

  When Remo came over the parapet-the only way to the penthouse that didn't involve returning to the lobby and catching the penthouse elevator--Cheeta Ching was interviewing herself.

  She stood in a corner of the living room, the minicam in her hands. She was pointing it at her own face and speaking into the directional mike. Her thumb was holding down the trigger.

  "For the first time in the history of television, an attempt has been made on the life of a network anchor," she said shrilly. "Only moments ago, in this very room, this reporter narrowly escaped a sniper's bullet. Obviously, the killer had been aiming at my head, and-"

  Remo sidled up to the Master of Sinanju, who stood off to one side with Enrique Espiritu Esperanza and Harmon Cashman, watching the spectacle with varying degrees of disbelief written on their faces.

  "How long has this been going on?" Remo asked.

  "Since you left," Harmon Cashman murmured. "She actually believes she was the target."

  "Maybe that's good. You don't want this kind of bad publicity for the campaign."

  "Of course we do," Cashman said instantly.

  Remo blinked. "You do?"

  "This is better than an endorsement from the President."

  Remo looked at Harmon Cashman. Then at Chiun. Chiun shrugged as if to say, "All whites are mad. Did you not know?"