Child's Play td-23 Page 9

  "How quickly you learn when you wish to," said Chiun. "Yes, Korea is a good one. The ancient land of the pharaohs, that was another. They knew how to treat children and surround them with beauty."

  "Egypt kept slaves, for crying out loud. They were always at war."

  "Yes. See. A child will remember a good example. A bad example will make a bad child." Chiun folded his arms, as if resting his case on a monumental base of logic.

  Remo shook his head. So much for Chiun as Dr. Spock. "The drainpipe or the wall?" he asked.

  "That is what I mean by bad example," Chiun said. "Look for hard where there is easy. It is the nature of your kind."

  Chiun walked away and Remo mumbled, "Carp, carp, carp," before following the old man across the street, glistening from the late night Chicago rain. How unlike New York, Remo thought-New York, where the streets never glistened in the rain because the clumps of garbage in the streets broke up the reflections from the street lights.

  "This is a nice city," said Chiun, walking up the steps of the old building.

  "I read all about it. It's run by a tyrant."

  "I knew there was something about it I liked," Chiun said. "The tyrants were very good to work for. Greece never amounted to anything when it fell into democracy."

  The uniformed guard at the desk inside the front door listened politely when Chiun said that he wanted to see… "What is his name, Remo?"

  "Alvin Dewar."

  "Alvin Dewar," Chiun said to the guard. "He is a very close relative of mine."

  Chiun turned and winked at Remo broadly.

  "That's strange," said the guard. "He's white, and you're Oriental."

  "I know. Everyone is not lucky."

  "He's a relative by marriage," Remo explained.

  "That is right. Alvin is married to my daughter. He is my nephew."

  "Son-in-law," Remo corrected, with an uncomfortable smile.

  "He's just a kid. He can't be married to anybody," said the guard.

  "Why are you being difficult?" Chiun asked. "I come here to see my close relative… what is his name again, Remo?"

  "Alvin."

  "I come here to see my very close relative, Alvin, the husband of my daughter, and you give me difficulty."

  "Yeah? Well, let me tell you something. You'd be amazed at the perverts we get hanging around here, because of these little kids. Now I think you better get out of here before I call the cops. You want to see Alvin, you come tomorrow."

  "Remo. Reason with him."

  When the guard was asleep, Remo took his keys and Chiun led the way to the elevator.

  "Perhaps it is your haircut," Chiun said.

  "Perhaps what is my haircut?"

  "The reason that person thought you might be a pervert. Perhaps you should see about getting a haircut."

  The elevator opened onto a long corridor at the end of which sat another uniformed guard.

  "Now let me handle this," Chiun said.

  "Fine," said Remo. "But clean up your own bodies."

  "There will be no bodies. I will trick him."

  Chiun walked gently up to the desk, with Remo behind him. In back of the desk, the guard rolled away slightly in his swivel chair to free his gun hand. He was reading a copy of Amazing Detective stories.

  "Hi, fella," said Chiun with a smile. "I gave up my Monday night football to come here to visit with my close relative, Alvin something."

  "This is Wednesday," said the guard. "Who let you up here?"

  "The kindly gentleman downstairs," Chiun said.

  "Rocco? Rocco let you up here?"

  "He did not tell me his name. Did he tell you his name, Remo?"

  "No. But he looked like Rocco."

  "Where's your pass?" said the guard.

  "Remo, give him our pass."

  "Yeah. Right. The pass."

  When the second guard had joined Rocco in repose, Remo asked Chiun if he had any other clever schemes in mind.

  "No. Everything seems to have gone along nicely. As I told you, there is no need to difficultize problems,"

  "There's no such word as 'difficultize.' "

  "There should be."

  On the wall next to the sleeping guard were long rows of shelves with papers, forms, office supplies, towels, sheets, pillowcases, and light blue uniforms. Remo took two of the sheets.

  Alvin Dewar had had no trouble falling asleep. He slept the blissful sleep of a guiltless child, flat on his back, arms up over his head, sipping air through his slightly opened mouth.

  "Alvinnnn. Oooooooh."

  Alvin sat up on the hard-mattressed cot in the large single cell at the far end of the building, and looked toward the bars of his cell.

  There were two figures there, two white swirls standing outside the bars, barely visible in the dim light from the end of the corridor.

  "Alvinnnnn. Oooooohhhhh," came the call again.

  Alvin rubbed the sleepers from the corners of his eyes and looked again at the bars. The two figures were still there, stark white on the side near the light, black on the shadowed side away from the light.

  "Who are you?" asked Alvin uncertainly.

  "We are the ghosts of the men you have killed."

  "How come two ghosts when I only killed one guy?" asked Alvin.

  "Errrr, the spirit is divided into two parts. We are both parts."

  "That's crazy," said Alvin. "Look. You want to talk to me, see my lawyer. I've got to get some sleep. There's a shrink coming tomorrow to look me over, and I want to be at the top of my form."

  "We are here to give you a chance to repent of your sins."

  "Hey, buddy," said Alvin. "Why don't you take your sheet and go back to the laundry? Leave me alone or I'll call a guard. I'm tired." Alvin Dewar lay back down and rolled onto his right side so he was facing the wall. He had been warned. The cops might resort to anything to get him to talk.

  "Last chance, Alvin," came the voice.

  "Piss off, will you?"

  Alvin shook his head in disgust. Now the two dopes outside the cell were arguing.

  "No such thing as a bad kid, huh?"

  "He is not bad. Merely misguided." That was a funny voice, a sing-song like the Kung-fu show he used to like to watch.

  Then there was a sound that Alvin didn't like, the sound of a train shrieking to a stop, metal intimidating metal. Alvin spun on his cot. His eyes were now more accustomed to the semi-dark.

  There was a hole in the cell door, where one bar had been ripped loose. He saw the smaller cop in the sheet put his hands on another bar. There was that terrible metal sound again, and then the bar snapped. The little cop dropped it on the floor. The bigger cop in the sheet grabbed the cross piece that connected the upper and lower sections of bars and gave it a twist and bent it away from the door, as if it were a paper-covered wire tie for a Hefty trash bag.

  Alvin Dewar suddenly came to the decision that these two were not cops. They entered his cell. Alvin sat up and pressed back toward the junction of the two walls, his back against the cold cinder block.

  "You two leave me alone," he said. "I'll yell."

  "Repent. Repent."

  "Go away. Go away."

  "Does he sound repentant to you?" the big one asked the small one.

  "I am sorry to say that he does not."

  "Now what are we going to do?"

  "What we should have done in the first place. What everyone should have done in the first place."

  And then the smaller figure in the sheet was through the ripped bars and swirling across the floor toward Alvin who pressed back harder against the wall. Rough lumps from the cinder block pressed through his thin night shirt into his back. He ignored the hurt. His mouth tasted dry. He would have liked a cigarette.

  He cringed in the corner as the small figure loomed over him. Then, as if Alvin had no more weight than a feather pillow, the figure lifted him and Alvin found himself lying across the sheet-clad bony knees of the apparition and being spanked.

  Span
ked hard.

  It hurt.

  "Stop. That hurts."

  "It is meant to hurt, you rude and thoughtless calf," came the voice, but the sing-song no longer sang. It was a high-pitched screech.

  The bigger one stood in front of Alvin as the spanking went on.

  "Who told you to put the hit on Warner Pell?"

  "I'm not supposed to talk," cried Alvin.

  "No?" said the figure holding him. "See how you like this, calf." The spanking increased, faster and harder, like nothing Alvin had ever experienced before. If anyone had warned him there would be nights like this, he would never had gotten into the business.

  "Stop it. I'll talk."

  The spanking continued.

  "Talk is not enough," the smaller one said. "You will go to church ?"

  "Yes, yes. Every Sunday, I promise."

  "You will work hard in school?"

  "I will. I will. I really think I like school. Stop."

  "You will honor your family? Your government? Your chosen leaders?"

  "Honest I will. I'm going to run for class secretary."

  "Good. If you need help in convincing voters, you have only to call on me." The spanking stopped.

  The bigger one said to the smaller one: "You finished?"

  "I am done," said the smaller man, who still held Alvin across his knees.

  "All right. Who told you to put the hit on Warner Pell?"

  "Ms. Kaufperson. She told me to. And she made me do it. I wouldna done it any other how."

  "All right," said the big one. "Alvin, if you're screwing us around, we'll be back for you. You understand that, don't you?"

  "Yes, sir. I understand it. Yes, sir. Both of you, sirs. I understand. I surely do."

  "Good."

  Then Alvin felt himself lifted and put back on his cot and he felt a light pressure behind his ear and fell instantly asleep. In the morning, when he looked at the bars of the cell and saw them intact, he would feel that he had had a very unusual bad dream. Until he looked at the bars closely and saw rough edges on some of them where they had been ripped loose and later rejoined.

  And it would ruin Alvin's taste for Maypo.

  On the street outside the correctional institute, Remo walked thoughtfully along beside Chiun, kicking a can.

  "One thing I don't understand, Little Father."

  "One thing? If you had asked me to guess, I would have said everything. What is it, this most unusual one thing?"

  "Today, I couldn't attack that kid when he was shooting at me. I couldn't lift a hand. You told me that was normal, some rigamarole about showing children only love."

  "Yes? So?"

  "So tonight you smacked Alvin around in that cell pretty good. How come you can do it and I can't?"

  "You truly wonder why there are things the Master can do and you cannot? Oh, how vainglorious are your pretensions."

  "No lectures, Chiun. Why?"

  "To strike a child, one must be sure that one is an adult."

  "You mean I'm a child? Me? At my age?"

  "In the ways of Sinanju, you are yet young."

  "A child?" said Remo. "Me? Is that what you mean?"

  "I mean what I mean. I do not continue explanations interminably. If I told you more, I would be carping. And I do not carp."

  CHAPTER NINE

  From the hallway came the sound of someone whistling. The whistler's lack of talent and the Doppler effect made the melody unrecognizable.

  The whistling stopped moving. It was outside their door, and it was possible to pick out a tuneless rendition of "I Am Woman."

  The key clicked in the lock, the door opened and Sashur Kaufperson entered her apartment.

  Her whistling stopped somewhere in the vicinity of lifting her weary hands up to the sky, when she saw Remo and Chiun standing in the center of her living room.

  She paused, then held the door open wide behind her.

  "You. What do you want?"

  "Talky talk," said Remo. "Close the door."

  She looked at him and Remo nodded and she closed the door.

  "We can start," said Remo, "with Alvin Dewar. Why did you tell him to kill Warner Pell?"

  "Who told you that?"

  "Alvin Dewar. Now I answered your question. You answer mine. Why did you tell the kid to kill Pell?"

  Sashur glanced at her watch before walking into the living room where she sank into a chrome and velvet sofa.

  "I guess I'd better tell you."

  "I would recommend that," Remo said. Chiun paid no attention to the conversation. He busily scanned the walls, packed frame to frame with paintings which he thought a waste of both canvas and pigment. On the far wall, he saw a set of gold coins in a frame and walked across the room to examine them.

  "I don't know," Sashur said. "Pell was in some kind of trouble. He had been doing some things with the kids. The children were becoming, well, antisocial."

  "Get on with it," said Remo.

  "Well, I reported Pell to the school system administration and he threatened me and…"

  "Hold it," said Remo. "That dog won't hunt. I know you and Pell were in this killer-kid operation. I know there was a lot of money involved. So don't give me any school-system crap. Start telling the truth."

  "All right," Sashur said with a sigh. "I was in love with Pell. That's why I split from my husband. He tricked me into working with the kids for him. Then when my husband was killed, I met Pell and he said there was trouble, but that he had no worries. Then he said he was going to hand me up as my husband's killer. Who else had a better motive? I was still in the twerp's will. I'd wind up frying."

  "That's absurd," Remo said.

  "Not if you know your husband and you know all those mob people he was working for back in Detroit. I panicked, and I told Alvin to shoot Pell."

  "Who was the boss of the operation?" Remo asked.

  "Pell, of course."

  "How was he getting the locations of the victims?"

  Sashur shrugged. "I don't know. He handled all that. He just gave me the names to pass onto the kids… Look," she said suddenly. "It's over now. Pell is dead. Maybe I did wrong, but I did some right too, in finishing him off. Now can't you just let me be? You won't gain anything by turning me in."

  Remo shook his head and noticed Sashur look at her watch, which she wore on her left wrist in a heavy leather band that would have been at home on a longshoreman.

  "But you won't gain anything by putting me away," said Sashur. "I'll give you anything. Anything I have."

  Chiun turned from the wall and smiled at Remo.

  "How like the Western mind to think that all things and all people are for sale," he said.

  "My paintings," Sashur said. She looked toward Chiun. "My collection of gold coins."

  Remo shook his head.

  "Just a minute, my son," said Chiun. "Some things certainly deserve consideration. The gold coins are a pleasant offering to our house."

  "No," said Remo to Chiun. "We're not dealing."

  "These are good coins," said Chiun. "Of course they are behind glass and I cannot examine them closely but they are worth much if they are authentic."

  "No deals."

  "But surely nothing is served by turning in this gracious young lady. Is that helping the Constitution to survive?"

  Sashur looked at her watch again.

  "I've got to talk to Smitty," said Remo. "From you," he told Sashur, "I want a list of the names of all Pell's kids."

  "I'll get it, I'll get it." Sashur stood up. "It's in the bedroom."

  "Just a minute," Remo said. He walked to the door of the bedroom and looked in. The only doors belonged to closets. The only windows opened up onto thirteen stories of empty space.

  "Okay, get it for me."

  He left her in the bedroom and went back to the living room, where Chiun was fingering the frame of the coin collection.

  "I believe there is real gold leaf used on this frame," Chiun said.

  "Now listen, Chiun
. We can't go around letting everybody go who offers a bribe to Sinanju."

  Chiun recoiled from the frame as if it were electrically charged. "A bribe? Is that what you call an offering? A bribe?" He clapped his hand to his forehead. "My own son. Adopted, of course. A bribe."

  "A bribe," said Remo. "Now no more of it. We're going to get the list and then talk to Smitty before we decide what to do. He might want to handle this himself." He looked toward the bedroom. "She's taking long enough to get a list."

  He approached the door just as Sashur emerged. "Here it is." She handed Remo a piece of paper with a dozen names on it. As she handed over the paper, she glanced again at her gold watch.

  "These are all of them?" Remo asked.

  "All I know about."

  "How did they get moved around the country? Your husband was hit in North Carolina."

  "Warner Pell called them class trips. Special rewards for outstanding students. He took the kids out of town himself."

  "They must have been gone for days at a time. Didn't their parents ever complain?"

  "Complain? Why should they complain? First of all, they are not the best of people. Second, they knew what their kids were doing, and they were getting well paid for it."

  "How much?"

  "Warner never told me."

  "Make a guess," Remo said.

  "I think the kids were getting fifty thousand dollars for each job."

  "The Mafia only pays five," Remo said.

  "Yeah, but Warner worked for the school system. He thought big."

  "Hear that, Little Father. Fifty thousand dollars for a kid. And think of the work we do."

  Chiun refused to turn away from the coin collection. "Money is paper," he said. "It is not value, just a promise of value. Gold is real."

  "Don't mind him," Remo told Sashur. "He's pouting."

  "Are you going to turn me in ?"

  "Not just yet," Remo said. "Come here, I want to show you something."

  He walked toward the bedroom. As Sashur followed, she said with a smile, "I'd like to show you something too."

  But before she could show Remo her something, he showed her his something, which was the inside of a closet which he locked with the key.

  "Why are you doing this?" she yelled through the wood-painted steel door.

  "I just want you to stay put while I check this all out."

  "You're a prick," she said.