Destroyer 029 - The Final Death

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CHOP, CHOP

The man executed a perfect straight arm karate thrust toward Remo's exposed neck.

Perfect, except Remo drove his own fingers like a wedge between the Oriental's fingers

and through his radius and ulna, cracking the man's arm like a piece of kindling.

The shattering concussion exploded the Oriental back through the office window out onto the stone below,

which he hit with a thump. Remo turned just as the second man fell on his own upraised fingernail. His torso

sank to the floor and began to leak blood onto the carpet.

It was only then that Remo noticed the length and sharpness of the Oriental's fingernails,

and then he noticed a paper-thin cut across the top of his right hand. Remo clenched his

fist and watched a thin red line grow between his second and third finger. A tiny bead of

blood crossed his wrist and disappeared into his shirt.

It had been so long since he had seen his own blood....

THE DESTROYER SERIES!

#1 CREATED, #20 ASSASSIN'S PLAY-OFF

THE DESTROYER #21 DEADLY SEEDS

#2 DEATH CHECK #22' BRAIN DRAIN

#3 CHINESE PUZZLE #23 CHILD'S PLAY

#4 MAFIA FIX #24 KING'S CURSE

#5 DR. QUAKE #25 SWEET DREAMS

#6 DEATH THERAPY #26 IN ENEMY HANDS

#7 UNION BUST #27 THE LAST TEMPLE

#8 SUMMIT CHASE #28 SHIP OF DEATH

#9 MURDER'S SHIELD #29 THE FINAL DEATH

#10 TERROR SQUAD #30 MUGGER BLOOD

#11 KILL OR CURE #31 THE HEAD MEN

#12 SLAVE SAFARI #32 KILLER

#13 ACID ROCK CHROMOSOMES

#14 JUDGMENT DAY #33 VOODOO DIE

#15 MURDER WARD #34 CHAINED REACTION

#16 OIL SLICK #35 LAST CALL

#17 LAST WAR DANCE #36 POWER PLAY

#18 FUNNY MONEY #37 BOTTOM LINE

#19 HOLY TERROR #38 BAY CITY BLAST

WRITE FOR OUR FREE CATALOG

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PINNACLE BOOKS

LOS ANGELES

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to

real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

THE DESTROYER #29: THE FINAL DEATH

An original Pinnacle Books edition, published for the first time anywhere.

ISBN: 0-523-40905-2

First printing, July 1977 Second printing, November 1977 Third printing, November 1978

Fourth printing, December 1979

Cover illustration by Hector Oarrido Printed in the United States of America

PINNACLE BOOKS, INC.

2029 Century Park East

Los Angeles, California 90067

For R. S., one of a kind.

The Final Death

Chapter One

The last piece of meat Vinnie Angus ever ate was cut from the shoulder section of a steer that had been taken

from the fields of a rancher near Wyoming and driven in a tractor-trailer slat truck to a train that took him and

thousands just like him to an auction. The steer was stuck in a Midwestern bin, then paraded before fat

cowboys wearing Stetson hats, Gant shirts, and Izod three-button V-neck sweaters with little green alligators

over the left breast, cowboys who had not seen hard work in 20 years, give or take a year.

The steer was bought, with 300 others, by Texas Solly Weinstein who put him into another truck for the

drive to the slaughterhouse.

Cold bored men in flannel shirts and heavy corduroy pants prodded him out in the early

Houston morning with electric-shock sticks, moving him first into the ear-marking bin,

then the milk-wash canal, then into the feeding yard where he was fattened up to 1,200

pounds, give or take a pound.

Texas Solly, who spoke Hebrew with a twang every Saturday at the synagogue, had

cooed and primped as Vinnie Angus' steer, now all fattened up, had been herded into

another truck, telling him how good he looked and how big he was and what nice skin and

good legs he had.

As the truck had moved off, Texas Solly had gone inside and sold him. He sat down

at his desk with its beige phone with 12 lines and sold the whole lot of beef to

Meatamation, an East Coast meat distributor, and its Connecticut salesman, Peter

Matthew O'Donnell.

O'Donnell was on the phone to Vinnie Angus as the steer stepped from the truck into

Matthew O'Donnell.

O'Donnell was on the phone to Vinnie Angus as the steer stepped from the truck into

the tight steel coffin with the trapdoor floor.

A man wearing a white lab coat and dark plastic glasses reached down quickly and

pressed a long tube against the steer's forehead and the animal was dead before the

trapdoor dropped out and he rolled down to the big boys.

The big boys were the men who stood next to the conveyor belts. They could have been laying bricks or

shoveling coal or making steel or spending eight hours a day, five days a week screwing one nut onto one

bolt in some automobile factory, but instead, because of geography or family or desperation or dumb luck,

they had wound up at the slaughterhouse,

steeling themselves every day so they could go home and tell their friends, "Ahhh, it ain't

so bad."

And after awhile, they started believing it themselves, so every day they could come

in and stick a dead cow's back legs into a harness to be lifted up a shaft so that they,

wrapped around in plastic and apron cocoons, could stick a knife in the cow's

throat and rip it open up to the stomach so the steaming blood could pour out onto

the floor, pushed by gravity and convulsing dying blood vessels.

Then they cut slowly around the head until it rocked easily and a final cut took it off.

They stuck the head on another hook so a machine could rip off the skin with as little

effort as a person pulling the plastic off an individually wrapped slice of cheese.

Then the skull would be steamed until the eyes cataracted and the exposed mess

turned milky white. Meanwhile, the cow's body moved down to a man with hydraulic

scissors who cut off the four hooves and dropped them into a hole in the floor. The

carcass then gave up its final few drops of blood.

Further down the line, another big boy reached into the steer's belly and started

hauling out the entrails, pulling them toward him like a large pot in a poker game,

with both hands, then hurling them down a nearby chute.

Another machine peeled back the body skin until the meat-laden carcass was exposed. The trail then led

into the freezer.

O'Donnell was talking to Vinnie.

"Big Vin, this is Pete."

"Yo, what have you got?" Vinnie's voice was a deep rumble, a vocal coal mine. He was only five feet eight

inches tall, but everybody called him Big Vin because of his voice.

"I got what you want."

O'Donnell's home life was not all it could be. He was divorced, his kids did not like to

talk to him, his ex-wife did not like to talk to him, so he enjoyed stretching out

conversations before coming to the point. Which made everyone else not like to talk to

him.

"What do I want?" asked Angus, noisily nursing his second beer of the morning.

"What do you need?"

"Two tons of rib, two of shoulder, two of flank, two of shank. Thin skin, no dirt

under the skirt."

"Can deliver, except the shank. Can do one of shank."

"I need two."

"Don't do it. Shank is dying. I can get you one of shank."

"Two," said Angus.

"Shank is looking up a dead cow's heinie, for God's sake. Nada. One ton."

Big Vin barked out a laugh which sounded like an ax rebounding off a petrified tree.

"Never mind, skip the shank," he said. "I'll take the rest."

"Two rib, two shoulder, two flank," said O'Donnell, writing it down.

Vinnie Angus hung up without any further discussion of shank.

By the time he hung up, his last piece of meat had already been sectioned in the

Hous-

ton freezer by a man so used to seeing his breath form a white cloud in front of him that driving home at

night, it took him a few minutes to get over the fear that maybe he was dying because he couldn't see his

breath.

The man made six uniform cuts into the body of the steer, then passed it down to a

sallow-looking man who poked at it, peeled back an occasional layer of fat, felt along

The man made six uniform cuts into the body of the steer, then passed it down to a

sallow-looking man who poked at it, peeled back an occasional layer of fat, felt along

the rib cage, all the while moving quickly from foot to foot.

Finally satisfied with the quality of the cuts, he took a roller stamp and smacked

purple United States Department of Agriculture in-signias all over the cut-up carcass.

Two weeks later, Vinnie Angus left his wood-paneled, windowless office in the basement

of his split-level home in Woodbridge, Connecticut, and got into his Monte Carlo

sedan, the one he hoped he still had the good taste to hate.

His wife had harangued him into buying it to show their neighbors the higher status

they had achieved by opening the second Vinnie's Steak House in Milford, just before the

West Haven town line.

Before the Monte Carlo, there had been the swimming pool and the split-rail fencing

all around their home and a gigantic station wagon and professional landscaping. All

for status.

"What is this status thing that keeps eating at you?" Vinnie asked his wife.

"Status? I sell steaks and hamburgers."

"Stop it, Vincent," his wife said. Her mouth puckered up. "You make it sound as if you were running

McDonald's."

"If I was really making it, I'd be McDonald's. I'm not that good, so I run Vinnie's

Steak House. So come off all this status thing, will you. I'm not made out of money."

"Is it that you don't have it, or you just don't wish to spend it on me and the girls?

You always seem to have enough money for what you want, though. Those hunting

trips. I've never heard you put one oif because you didn't have the money."

"It costs me a tank of gas to go hunting, for Christ's sakes. What do you spend

hunting?" asked Vinnie.

"Not much more than you spend around here on us, I guess," his wife said, her voice

biting.

"Ah, stuff it. Buy what you want," Vinnie said. And she had. And the latest was

this pussy car Monte Carlo that he hated.

His mood improved as he drove away from the house. He could mock his wife's

insistence on status, but Vinnie Angus had come a long way from dishwasher in a

greasy spoon in South Boston, where success meant not getting killed by getting in

between the blacks and the Irish who kept trying to murder each other.

He had watched and learned and saved his money, then made the jump to his own

restaurant in New Haven. Everyone said that a good steakhouse could not be successful

in a college town. Vinnie had made it work. He got the restaurant rolling and married

the cute,

leggy Jewish chick behind the cash register and moved into the suburbs.

His good mood went as fast as it had come.

What had it all gotten him? A too-big house with a too-big mortgage. A wife who covered her age with so

much makeup that he had not seen the skin of her face in 10 years. A pair of daughters who were God's gifts

to the orthodontics profession. And this gas-guzzling pussy car that he hated.

He had two restaurants, both successful, but the government and rising prices took out

the money faster than his customers could put it in. Yet what else could he do but keep

doing what he had always done? A failure, it occurred to him, could stop anywhere

and start over, but a success was doomed to ride on the back of the tiger forever.

Vinnie Angus turned onto the Post Road and moved north, past the garbage antique

shops, the railroad salvage stores, the tacky shoe stores, all the colored lights, the

sparkling signs, the neon, the plastic, and turned left into his parking lot.

The warm gray-brown of his exterior wood visually softened the area. The muted

lights glowing through the thick dark-yellow drapes gave the restaurant a glow even in

the daytime.

When Vinnie Angus entered the restaurant, he forgot his problems. He was in

another world, a world of his own creating.

Sitting on a crate in the simple cement block kitchen was his cook.

"It in yet?" Vinnie asked.

"Yeah," the cook said. "Just this morning."

The man got up and moved past Vinnie to the floor-to-ceiling refrigerator. He pulled out a

slab of flank steak, sliced away at the outlying fat, poked it professionally a few times with

a large two-pronged fork, then slapped it on the grill.

"Easy, you sucker," the cook said. He always talked to his meat.

"I'll be at the bar," Vinnie said.

Vinnie sat at the bar telling the bartender how he kept trying to teach grill jockeys that a good piece of meat

was like a good whore. Slap her around a little and she'll get nice and soft for you. But beat the hell out of her

and she'll be tough as nails.

"I hear you talking," said the bartender and poured another beer.

Twelve minutes later, the cook was out of the kitchen with a brown stoneware plate

with beige trim clutched in a towel in his hand. Sitting in the middle of the dish was a

dark, sparkling hunk of prime steak.

Vinnie cut into it, exposing a grey-orange plateau that seemed to suck at the blade of the

knife.

"Nice," Vinnie commented. "Texture's good."

He sliced crossways with the serrated edge of the knife, then harpooned a piece with a

thick silver fork the bartender laid in front of him. Vinnie plopped it into his mouth, ran

his tongue across the outside for any sign of charcoal, then bit down.

The meat seemed to make way for his teeth until he got to the other side where, along

the

edge, it became tough and tinny for a microsecond, then seemed to melt and dissolve

down his throat.

Except for that split second, it was the best flank steak Vinnie Angus had ever tasted.

He finished it in seven big bites.

"There you go, sucker," said the cook to the empty plate on the way back to the

kitchen. And Vinnie Angus went to his office to complain to Peter Matthew O'Donnell

about the tinny taste around the government's USDA insignia.

"It's like eating goddam solder," Vinnie roared into the telephone.

"Easy, Big Vin. Easy. I'll light a fire under the ass of those Texas bastards. It won't happen again."

"Okay," said Vinnie Angus.

The Anguses has tuna casserole that night. Vinnie poked at three noodles, excused

himself, then went upstairs to pack for his hunting trip the next day.

"Can hardly wait, can you?" said his wife in a tone somewhere between snide and

shrill, from the other end of the table.

"Now, now," said Vinnie with practiced patience. He winked at his daughters as he disappeared out of the

room.

Behind him he heard Rebecca, his younger daughter, say: "Do I have to? Daddy

didn't."

"You want to look like him when you grow up ? Eat," said Mrs. Angus.

And his older daughter, Victoria, said

sharply, "Stop it, mother." He could hear her chair push back from the table.

Vinnie, Angus sat down on the hard, thick wooden chair in his stuffy study. The chair creaked

uncomfortably under the 20 pounds he had put on in the last five years.

He looked at his trophies and guns and looked forward to tomorrow. His throat

would be scraped raw by the cold morning air. His breath would come in huge noisy

gasps. His arms would grow tired from holding his twelve-gauge shotgun. His legs would

ache by mid-morning. And he would love it. When he hunted, he was alone with

himself, young again.

All he had to do now was to saddle soap his Timberline boots, make a lunch, pack his

equipment, set his alarm clock for 4 a.m. and. . . .

He remembered one more thing he had to do. His monthly call.

He had been making them for eleven years, back since the time when the first

Vinnie's Steak House had just opened and was floundering. The rich college kids had not

yet discovered it and the visiting businessmen had not known it was there. Angus was

desperate for money and the banks were not listening.

Then a Massachusetts friend had told him about a number he could call just to give

desperate for money and the banks were not listening.

Then a Massachusetts friend had told him about a number he could call just to give

information on the latest developments in the American meat industry. And Vinnie

would get money for it.

By then, Vinnie would have separated his mother into cold cuts for cash, so he called.

A recorded voice told him to talk so he did,

rambling on for 10 minutes on prices, stock, supply, preparation, control, and service. The recording asked

him if he was finished, after a 10-second silence, then thanked him. Three days later in his mailbox, Vinnie

found a postal money order for $500. With no return address.

When he tried calling back, the recording told him to return his call on the first of

the month. And for 11 years, on the first of every month, Vinnie Angus called the

number and rambled for cash.

He wasn't sure that he liked it but the 66,000 tax free dollars he was sure he

liked. And what law could he be breaking?

Vinnie picked up the telephone, dialed the area code and seven-digit number, stuck the receiver between

his jaw and shoulder, then started picking apart and cleaning his .9 mm sharpshooter's rifle.

The line rang twice before Vinnie heard a series of tonal clicks and then a monotone female voice said:

"State name, address, zip code, and information please."

Vinnie was so anxious to get it over with that he did not recognize one more soft click

as the upstairs extension phone was lifted.

"Supply has been steady," he said, "but it tapers off in different areas each month. This month it's shank.

The quality of the meat itself is the best in years, so I'm expecting a price rise pretty soon.

"I've bitched to my distributor about the USDA markings being darker and deeper than usual. Today I bit

into one and it was like eat-

ing tinfoil. We have to cut a little more of the fat to insure it all coming out."

Vinnie kept talking until he began to hear another conversation going on dimly in the

background. At first he thought it was just a telephone echo, but then he was able to

distinguish what was being said.

"Spock. This is no time for logic."

"Doctor. There is always time for logic."

"Are you saying, Mr. Spock, that Jim is lost out there somewhere and we are powerless to do anything about

it?"

"It is a big galaxy, doctor."

Vinnie Angus quickly finished up. The recording thanked him, there were another series

of clicks and the extension was broken.

"Viki?" he exploded. "Is that you?"

Far in the distance, he heard Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise

answer: "Warp Factor Eight. Now!"

"Viki? Are you there?"

His oldest daughter answered over the extension from upstairs. "Yes, Daddy. Who you talking to?"

"That's really none of your business, young lady," Vinnie said.

"Really, Daddy. I should think you would be much more respectful to this quadrant's

representative from the United Federation of Planets. You're not doing much for

intergalac-tie cooperation."

Vinnie Angus shook his head, despite the fact that he could almost see the smile

on his daughter's face over the telephone. She was obsessed. Her room was filled with

posters of

the Star Trek crew, models of the Starship Enterprise, the Star Trek technical manual

at $6.95, the Star Trek Concordance at $6.95, the Star Trek Reader, $10 in hardcover,

six dolls of the Star Trek crew and one Klingon and cheap plastic replicas of the phaser,

tricorder, and communicator.

"Try cooperating with this, Viki," Angus said, "I pay five thousand a semester to Yale

so you can become a Trekkie?"

Victoria's voice lowered, conspiratorially. "You a spy, Daddy?"

"No. I've been doing this for years. For . . . for the Bureau of Agriculture."

"I never knew they had spies."

"Forget spies, will you. Here you are, 19 years old. . . ."

"Almost 20."

"Almost 20 and you still play with Star Trek dolls. Stop it already. The show's been off

for eight years."

"Nine," said Viki. "Do you know what those clicks were at the beginning and end of

your call?"

"So they were taping the conversation. So what?"

"Not they, daddy. It."

"What?"

"You were talking to a computer, Daddy."

"So?"

"You don't get it, do you?"

"No," Vinnie shouted. "And I want you to forget it. You didn't hear that phone call, you don't remember it,

and you won't mention it to

anybody. Even your mother. Especially -your mother. You understand?" "I'm not a child, Daddy." "As long as

you love a man with pointed ears and green skin, you're a child."

Viki giggled. "Whatever you say, Daddy." She hung up.

Vinnie Angus smiled in spite of himself, thinking of the big luscious girl in tight jeans and

sweater and harboring the strong suspicion that she had outgrown Star Trek a year earlier

but still played at it just to annoy him. Why not? Daughters had done stranger things.

Vinnie finished cleaning his weapons and after his wife had left the kitchen made two

bologna-and-cheese sandwiches with pickles. He packed them in a bag with four cans of

Uptown Soda, left out his red-and-black woolen hunting cap, and went to bed at 10.

The alarm buzzed at 3:58 a.m. His wife snored on as Vinnie slapped the buzzer off and

got up quickly. He dressed rapidly, got his gear together, walked down the hall past

Rebecca's room, the sewing room, Victoria's room, picked up his bag in the kitchen, went

down the front steps, opened the garage door, started the Monte Carlo, drove off on

his hunting trip, and never came back.

Parker Morgan, an old retired architect, was walking his dog, an old retired bloodhound,

in the woods around his home.

He loved the trees in the winter, standing out starkly in the cold clear air. Morgan broke

off a dead branch from a fallen limb and threw it with all his strength.

The dog puffed laboriously after the stick, up over a small rise and out of sight.

Parker Morgan watched his own breath condense and soon the dog came back, the twig in

his teeth, two white splashes of carbon dioxide puffing out his nostrils.

Morgan kneeled down and the dog planted his paws on the man's knee and stomach,

waiting for the branch to be taken and thrown again. Morgan took the stick, stood up,

and then frowned.

On his knee and stomach were two bright red pawprints. He looked at the dog who

quivered with anticipation. The dog's four paws were red. The old architect examined the

dog but could find no cut or injury.

"C'mon, boy, show me where the stick was." He started moving up the hill, the dog dancing around his side.

Morgan stopped when the hard frozen ground gave way to a patch of cold, moist

earth. He touched the ground. His fingertips came up red. He smelled, then touched his

tongue to his fingers, hoping desperately for the taste of berries. It was blood.

Parker Morgan stared at his hand. A small red drop splattered onto the bridge of his nose from above. He

looked up in surprise, and saw trouser legs hanging down from the tree branch over his head. His eyes

continued rising, until he stared into the empty sockets of the skeleton in bloody hunter's clothing.

America's quadrennial exercise in civility had just ended and the country had a new President.

All around Washington, D.C., the last few moments of the inaugural ceremonies were like a starter's pistol,

marking the beginning of a string of parties that would culminate later that evening in a dozen or more formal

balls.

But the new President of the United States was not yet party-bound. Instead, he sat in one of the private offices

of the White House, facing the former President across a large wooden coffee table, sipping lukewarm coffee

from a pair of white paper cups.

The new President was on the edge of his chair, uncomfortable because there were no

aides or Secret Service men in the room. But the former President slouched back on the

sofa, his feet crossed under the coffee table, his balding, moose-jawed head looking in

repose for the first time the new President could remember.

"This office is yours now," the balding man said, bitterly munching a canned macaroon.

"The world is yours now and you have to learn to use it."

The new President shifted a little bit, coughed, and said dully, "I'm gonna try my

best." He had taken speech lessons once to get rid of the Southern accent but they hadn't

taken and his speech still was marked by the soft slurred vowels of the South.

"I'm sure you will," the former President said. "We all do." He nonchalantly pulled his

feet out from under the table to rest them on

top of the wooden surface, but he caught the rim and overturned his container of coffee.

Some of the liquid splattered onto the rug from the table and the balding man knelt down

by the couch and with his pocket handkerchief sopped up the coffee from the rug and

then blotted the table dry. He threw the handkerchief in a wastepaper basket.

"You know what's going to be the nicest thing about not being President any more?

It's moving into a different house where we're going to have linoleum on the floor and

washable indoor-outdoor carpeting, so when I spill a frigging cup of coffee, it can be

wiped up with a paper towel, and I don't have to worry about some commission

telling me 10 years later that I destroyed a national rug treasure."

"I guess you didn't ask me here to talk about rugs," the new President said.

"Very perceptive," the older man said drily. "No, I didn't. You remember, in one of our debates, I said the

President had to keep options open. Because he was the only one with all the information available to him?"

"What debate?" asked the new President.

"What the hell difference does it make? I don't know. The one where I made the stupid mistake and you spent

all your time not answering questions. Anyway it doesn't matter. I asked to meet with you now to give you

some of that inside information that only the President knows. Some of the duties of the job that you won't find

out about listening to Congress or the New York Times, the bastards."

The new President sank back into the soft chair. He nodded. "Yes sir, I'm listening."

"Do you remember that convention that had all those people killed in Pennsylvania?" The

former President waited for a nod. "Well, there was never any question about what

killed them. They were poisoned."

"Poisoned? By whom?" asked the new President.

"I'll get to that. They weren't the first cases-either, but they were the most serious ones.

Before that, for months, we were picking up reports of big groups of people getting

sick. A party here. A wedding reception there. A church outing. Well, we put the medical

boys on it right away, and they nailed it down quickly. It was poison. But the problem was

that they didn't know what kind of poison or how it was administered."

"Why was nothing ever said about this?" asked the new President. "I don't remember

ever reading. . . ."

"Because you can't run the government of 220 million people out on Page One. Not unless you're willing to risk

wild panic that you can't control. What do you do? Tell millions of people that someone out there's trying to

poison all of you but we don't know who or how or why, now go to sleep and don't worry about it? You can't do

that. Not and try to find any answers to those questions. Just listen, will you please? So there were all those

poisonings but nobody died and it didn't seem like the end of the world when our guys couldn't find out the

cause of the poison. And then came that business in

Philly and all those people dead. And that made it something else. More serious."

"I'm surprised at you. I was briefed by the FBI and the CIA and all the federal agencies and departments

and I was never told a word of this," the new President sniffed. "I'm surprised they withheld it from me."

"They didn't withhold anything. They just didn't know about it was all. Now let me finish. So after all the

deaths in Pennsylvania, we had scientists come up with a vaccine that could offset the poison."

"They didn't withhold anything. They just didn't know about it was all. Now let me finish. So after all the

deaths in Pennsylvania, we had scientists come up with a vaccine that could offset the poison."

"Well, why haven't you given it to the American people? I can't understand any of this. This delay.

This deception."

"We tried to give it to all the American people. Remember the swine-flu program?"

The new President nodded.

"Well, there's no such thing as swine flu. We invented that just to have a reason to

inoculate the whole country against this poison. And then the goddam press shot down

the swine-flu program with their harping about a few meaningless statistical deaths. So

our asses are back in the sling." The big balding man rubbed his hand over the top of his

head and scratched himself behind the right ear.

"Well, then make it mandatory that everyone gets a shot," the new President said.

"Put it into law."

The ex-President smiled thinly. "Can you imagine the roar about trampled rights? After

Watergate? The lawyers would break down our doors and string us all up as fascists.

And I just don't think you can go ahead and tell

the American people that there's a deadly poison somewhere in their food chain and

we don't know where it is. Especially since there haven't been any more deaths since that

convention. Maybe whatever it was passed off, and it's over now."

The smaller Southerner looked trapped in his chair, as if the full responsibility of his

job was weighing on him for the very first time.

"What do we do?" he asked.

"What do you do?" answered the ex-President. "You're the President now."

"One thing I don't understand. A minute ago, you said the FBI, nobody, knew

anything about this. How'd you manage that?"

"I was just coming to that. Take a tight grip on your cup and let me fill you in."

The balding politician sat back and began to tell the new President about a secret

government organization named CURE, begun back in the early 1960s to fight

corruption and crime, outside of the constitution, before corruption and crime

destroyed the constitution.

Only the Presidents of the United States knew of the organization that was so set up that it did not even

take orders from the President. The President could suggest assignments but CURE did its own thing.

"You've got no controls on it then," said the new President.

"You've got the ultimate hammer," the balding man said. "Tell it to disband and it

disbands. Gone, forgotten and no one ever knows it was there." And the ex-President

continued, telling how the organization had always been

headed by a Dr. Harold W. Smith, and only Smith and one other man, their

enforcement arm, knew what the organization did.

"Who's this enforcement arm?"

"I don't know," the President said. "I met him once. A surly looking thing. I don't

know his name. His code's The Destroyer."

The new President had begun shaking his head as if grieving over what the older

man had told him.

"What's all that cluck-clucking for?" asked the ex-President.

"It's true. I always knew it was true. There's a secret damned government in this

country, secret intelligence people running around, trampling civil rights, abusing law-

abiding Americans, and I'm just not going to have it. I wasn't elected to tolerate that

kind of thing."

"You weren't elected either to tell the American people that someone is trying to poison them but you don't

know who or why but tune in tomorrow and you'll keep them posted. When 30 of our best European spies get

killed by the Russians inside four days and we're left defenseless in Europe, well, maybe you'll just want to

tell the American people all about it. My decision was to respond in kind. I called this organization CURE

and let them handle it." He stood up and smiled down at the smaller man. "You know, it's not really a

matter of integrity. It's a matter of intelligence. Of running the country the best way you can for the

largest number of people. CURE can help you. But you do what you want to do. If you want them to get

off this poisoning busi-

ness, that's up to you. All you've got to do is tell them to disband. Of course, if the deaths start up again next

week, I don't know who you'll turn to then." He smiled sadly. "Because that's the first thing you're going to

learn in this job. When the shit hits the fan, you're alone. Your cabinet, your family, your friends. Forget

'em. You're alone. CURE helps. But it's all up to you."

learn in this job. When the shit hits the fan, you're alone. Your cabinet, your family, your friends. Forget

'em. You're alone. CURE helps. But it's all up to you."

The ex-President walked to the door.

"I don't like it," the new President said. "I just don't like secrets."

"Do what you want. There's a red phone in the bottom right hand drawer of that

cabinet. Just pick it up. They'll answer."

He opened the door to the hallway, then turned around and let his gaze run around

the room.

"This is your office now. Enjoy it. And do the best job you can."

Then he turned his back and walked out into the hall, closing the door behind him.

The Southerner stood up and walked around the room nervously rubbing his hands

together. But each circuit of the office brought him closer and closer to the cabinet that

held the phone and finally he stopped, opened the bottom right-hand drawer, reached

in, and lifted the red telephone without a dial.

As the telephone reached his ear, he heard a clear voice which he immediately

categorized as lemony, say "Yes, Mr. President?" No hello, no question, no welcome. Just

"Yes, Mr. President?"

The new President paused.

"About this poison thing," he said.

"Yes?"

The new President paused again. Then quickly, as if it could not be a mistake if

spoken quickly, he said: "Keep on it."

"Yes, Mr. President."

The man with the lemony voice hung up. The new President looked at the telephone

for a moment, then replaced the receiver on the cradle, and closed the drawer.

He looked around the office, then through the windows, out toward Pennsylvania

Avenue.

As he walked toward the door, he allowed himself a comment on his newfound knowledge:

"Sheee-it."

Chapter Two

His name was Remo and the drunk tank smelled. The stench of vomit and booze-breath and whisky-soaked

clothing would have been enough to asphyxiate any normal man. So Remo closed down his nasal passages

and breathed thinly and waited for his case to be called.

The cops in Tucston, North Dakota, had found him wandering down the middle of the street wearing a black

T shirt and black slacks, ripping the hubcaps off cars, and singing "Blowing in the Wind." When they

shoved him into the back of the squad car, they failed to notice that he wasn't shivering, even though he was

only lightly clothed and the temperature was fourteen below zero, Fahrenheit.

And Remo hadn't said anything. He had

presented his New York identification listing him as Remo Boffer, former cab driver,

and been booked and waited in his cell.

And waited.

And waited for Judge Dexter T. Ambrose Jr. "Hanging Dexter," they called him. And they were right,

just so long as the defendants before him weren't part of organized crime or well connected or had a buck.

Because those people somehow found a softer, more gentle side of Dexter T. Ambrose Jr., whose steel and

acid was reserved for the poor, the unrepresented, the flotsam that floated through his courtroom. .

It was 9 a.m. Remo knew without looking at a watch, and his plane would be leaving in two hours, and

he hated time pressure and he hated hurrying. He had spent most of the early part of last night trying to

find Judge Ambrose, but had had no luck. The man wasn't home and wasn't at his mistress' house, and wasn't

at any of his regular haunts, and Remo realized that the fastest way to find him was to present himself at

Ambrose's regular court session in the morning.

He had been standing now for six hours, leaning against the cinderblock wall of the

cell, ignoring the grunts, the belches, the attempts at conversation of the nine other

drunks in the tank.

Most of them had slept it off by now and they were a contrite, dirty band as they

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Destroyer 029 - The Final Death

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