Destroyer 025 - Sweet Dreams

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Campus Bloodbath

Remo caught the girl just as she was falling face first onto the asphalt of the parking lot. She sank into his arms

calling his name.

"What happened?" he asked.

"Blood," she answered. "Blood everywhere. I heard noises. I looked up . . . hit me in the

face . . . wet, couldn't see. I wiped it off . . . felt ear, eye .. . blood . . . Doctor Wooley .. .

dead . .."

Remo moved outside, walking past huddled moaning shapes. This wasn't a dream. The

students who saw these murders would never forget them; they wouldn't have to strap

their heads to a television set to conjure up a fantasy of blood and death.

Remo turned to Chiun and asked, "Who did it?"

"I don't know," he replied, "but I'm going to find out. Let's go, we've got work to

do . . ."

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

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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: SWEET DREAMS

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

ISBN: 0-523-40901-X

First printing, October 1976 Second printing, September 1977 Third printing, April 1978

Fourth printing, February 1979 Fifth printing, November 1979

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

PINNACLE BOOKS, INC.

2029 Century Park East

Los Angeles, California 90067

To Roscoe Pound who is as real as anyone to the glorious House of Sinanju, Post Office Box 1149, Pittsfield,

Mass., 01201.

"Many men build dream castles. Only a fool tries to live in one."

-HOUSE OF SINANJU

Sweet Dreams

Ckapter One

Anyone could die, but to die well, my dear, that was what he wanted.

Dr. William Westhead Wooley watched himself say these words on his 19-inch television

screen. A drop of blood formed on the lips of his television image, first fuzzily, then in

red clarity. The body lay across the floor of a well-lit laboratory. The president of the

university was there on television, tears in his eyes. Other faculty members were there too,

heads bowed.

"We never appreciated Dr. Wooley," said Lee (Woody) Woodward, director of college affairs. He choked

back a sob. "We never really comprehended his genius. We treated him like just another physicist in a market

glutted with physics doctorates."

Janet Hawley was there on the screen too, as blonde as ever, as pretty as ever, as

buxom as

ever. In her anguish, she ripped a corner of her pale green blouse and just for a moment, William Westhead

Wooley, dying, saw the rounded edge of a pink nipple above the sloping cloth of the nylon half-bra.

The Edgewood University faculty lost its sharp outlines, the television image faded, and

bedroom walls began to replace suits and faces. The red blood on the lips melted away

and the television image now showed Dr. Wooley on clean white sheets in a smoking

jacket with a pad of paper, hearing a knock on the door.

The bedroom had several similarities to the one in which Dr. Wooley sat, with electrodes

jacket with a pad of paper, hearing a knock on the door.

The bedroom had several similarities to the one in which Dr. Wooley sat, with electrodes

taped to his temples, their wires leading to the back of the 19-inch screen, set like a giant

square eye atop plastic enclosed circuitry.

On the screen there was no frozen turkey dinner crusting in its cheap brown gravy, or

yesterday's blue socks already filmed with dust. The windows were washed, mother's

ferocious picture faced the wall, the floors were clean and the bed in the one-room

apartment overlooking the vast muddy girth of the Mississippi from Richmond Heights,

had, on the television screen, grown to double its size. But the greatest difference

between the television image and Dr. William West-head Wooley's room was Dr. Wooley

himself.

Gone were the rutted remains of the pocked battlefield of juvenile acne. The skin was

smooth, clear, and tanned. The nose was strong, as though crafted by a sculptor's chisel.

Muscles appeared in the arms and the dimply pale puffed skin of the belly became flat

with hidden muscle. Dark hair came upon the chest and the legs had a runner's

spring. On television, Dr. Wooley was thirty-two and was writing his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize

when he heard the knock on the door.

On the TV screen, Janet Hawley came in, crying. What could she do? She had been threatened.

"Threatened?" asked the improved image of Dr. Wooley. He put a hand on her blouse. He unbuttoned the

top button. The hand found the bra. It moved down toward the nipple. The bra came flying off and Dr.

William Westhead Wooley proceeded to make passionate and glorious love to the wanting Janet Hawley.

There was a knock on the door. Dr. Wooley shook his head; he hadn't imagined

that. The knock became louder.

"If you don't answer, I'm going to leave." It was a woman's voice. It was Janet

Hawley.

Dr. Wooley carefully snapped off the electrodes and rolled the wires back to the set. He

started to put on a pair of gray chinos rumpled on the bed. No, not the chinos, he

thought. He threw the chinos into the closet, calling out:

"Coming. Coming. Just a minute."

He snapped a pair of light blue flare bottoms from a hanger. He snuggled into them.

He pulled a yellow turtleneck over his head and began combing his hair even before his

eyes were free of the yellow cloth.

"Willy, if you don't open this door, I'm leaving."

"Coming," he said. He bathed Canoe shave lotion across the splotchy face and dried

the perfumey smell on his hair. Then with a big smile he opened the door.

"Zip up your fly," said Janet Hawley. "Why

aren't you dressed? The room is filthy. Do you expect me to wait here? I thought we were

going out. It's bad enough I have to pick you up."

"Only because you never let me go to your apartment, dearest," said Dr. Wooley.

"The trouble with you, Willy, is that you always turn everything I say against me.

We're talking about you."

Janet Hawley was exactly like her television image, blonde, fleshy, with a healthy lust

about her body. Unlike the television picture, she was clothed up to her neck with a glaring

yellow blouse, and almost to her ankles in a thick scratchy wool skirt.

"Take that yellow thing off," she said. "They'll think we're twins."

"Yes, dear," said Dr. Wooley. He hurled the yellow turtleneck off his body and into the

closet with one smooth swing of his right arm.

"What is that?" yelled Janet Hawley. She pointed to the screen. She poked her head

close to it. She looked at the nude blonde figure.

"That's me," she screamed. "And I'm undressed and I'm six pounds overweight. You've got

dirty pictures of me and you're showing them on a television screen. Fatter than I am." - "No,

dear, I'm not showing them. That's not a television picture. It is, but it isn't a television

picture."

Janet squinted at the screen. It was her bad side, too. But the breasts seemed a little firmer than usual.

Nicer in fact. But the strangest thing was that she was undressed with Willy.

"You made videotapes and did one of those

mechanical things to get you in the picture," she said.

"No, dear," said Dr. Wooley. He nervously rapped his knuckles together like

palsied applause.

"Well, what is it? One of those secret devices for listening in on other people's affairs

that are none of your business?"

William Westhead Wooley grinned, shaking his head.

"I'll give you a hint," he said.

"You'll tell me outright," she said.

"That's sort of hard. It's complicated."

"If you're calling me stupid, you'll never get your hands on one of these again," she

said, poking a finger into the yellow bulge of her blouse, a purple lacquered fingernail that

glistened.

"You're going to let me tonight then?" he asked.

"Not bare," said Janet.

"I wouldn't think of bare. But then again I did," he said and he explained.

The mind worked on signals, electric impulses. But they were different from the impulses of the television

screen. The mind created images which a person saw in his imagination. Television created images taken

from light waves or what was called reality. What his invention was able to do was to translate mental images

into the electronic beams that ran television. Thus the tube was an ordinary television tube but instead of a

station somewhere sending out signals, it was the mind that sent out signals, so you could watch what you

were thinking.

He took her hand to the plastic enclosed cir-

cuitry. He put her hand on the clear plastic case. It felt warm to Janet.

"This is what makes it work. This is the translator."

He took her hand and put it on the electrodes.

"These attach to your head. They pick up the signals. Thus we have the signals from

the mind into these, running along this, into this, which makes them into television

signals and into the picture itself On the set. Dum de dum dum dum."

"You're not allowed to show dirty pictures on television," said Janet Hawley.

"You don't understand. We're not beaming these things through airwaves. It only

goes on the wires in this room."

"They're dirty pictures," said Janet and that night she did not allow him more than a

kiss on the cheek. She was thinking. This was a somewhat difficult exercise for Janet

because it was a relatively new experience, and it so preoccupied her that William

Westhead Wooley did not get to touch her bosom, bare or covered.

Not that her bosom remained untouched for the rest of that night. When she returned

home to her apartment, her bosom was pinched, tweaked, slapped, and bitten by one

Donald (Hooks) Basumo as her punishment for "wasting the night with that faggy

teacher when I been here waiting for you. Whatta you two doing anyway?"

"I told you, dearest," Janet said, bending to pick up the five empty beer cans that

littered the living-room floor. "I stay close to him because I think someday he may have

some money."

"Yeah? How close are you staying is what I want to know?"

"Darling." Janet Hawley smiled. "Nothing. He never even touches me. He never even

tries."

"He better not and you better not let 'im. I don't like my broads being handled by

other people," explained Donald (Hooks) Basumo, displaying a morality based upon the

fact that of twenty-seven arrests upon his record, a full one-third of them had failed to

result in convictions.

Hooks emphasized this with a stinging right hand slap across Janet's bare breasts, then

he sat back in a living-room chair and watched her clean the mess he had made in her

apartment. When she finished sponging up the last of the spilled onion dip, Hooks pulled

her into the bedroom and threw her onto the unmade bed where he raped her, Basumo's

sexual technique bearing the same relationship to making love that the Blitzkrieg did to

backgammon.

Then, still fully clothed, Hooks rolled off Janet onto his side and began to snore, the

peaceful purr of the pure at heart. Janet Hawley undressed herself and lay in bed thinking.

An hour later, she kissed Hooks on the neck. He growled but snored on. A half-hour

later, she tried again and this time, the snoring stopped.

"Honey," she said. "I've been thinking."

later, she tried again and this time, the snoring stopped.

"Honey," she said. "I've been thinking."

Hooks blinked himself into the waking world.

"Whadja say?"

"I've been thinking, honey," said Janet.

"Get outta here," said Hooks and belted her in the ear.

She screamed. She yelled that it was her apartment. That she paid the rent. She

bought the beer. He had no right to hit her.

So he hit her again and now he was fully

awake. The screaming had done it. He told her he would listen to her if she brought him a

beer.

She answered that she wouldn't bring him a beer if his face was on fire. He hit her

in the other ear.

She brought him the beer and told him that all night she had been thinking about a

marvelous device she had just seen. You could get thoughts on a television screen, see

whatever you imagined. All you had to do was think something and you would see it acted

out for you on TV.

"For this you woke me?" he said.

He didn't like the idea. Anything that required thought would not sell to the American

public, he said. Things that sold to the American public were things you didn't have to

think to use.

She said she had seen dirty pictures on the screen.

Hooks Basumo cocked his head.

"You say dirty?" he asked.

"Yeah. You can imagine yourself humping anybody."

"Yeah? Raquel Welch? Sophia Loren?"

"Yeah. Burt Reynolds. Robert Redford," she said.

"Yeah? Charo? Maude's daughter?"

"Yeah," she said. "Clint Eastwood. Paul Newman. Charles Bronson. Anybody."

He belted her again because she seemed able to think of more names than he could, but then he stayed awake

the whole night, making Janet tell him all the details, making sure she didn't forget anything. What he heard

was money, lots of money.

And when he described it to a local fence the

next day, he said he knew where he could get his hands on a new kind of porno machine.

Anything you imagined would appear on the screen.

"I don't know. It would be tough to sell," said the fence. "Does it come with directions?"

Hooks allowed as how he didn't know and the fence turned him down because that

special television would be too easy to trace since apparently it was the only one of its kind.

This outraged Hooks Basumo. If it was only one of a kind it had to be worth more. He

looked menacingly at the little man. He hinted about how little men could get hurt late

at night. He noticed what a fire hazard the fence's home was.

"Hooks," said the fence, "I can get your bones broken for eighteen dollars. Get out of

here."

Hooks raised a finger in obscene contempt and left muttering about the fence's lack of

masculinity because if anyone ever gave Hooks the finger like that, they'd frigging get

their frigging head handed to them.

At a newsstand, he waited for someone to drop a dollar for change, then snatched it and

ran. You could get away with that if the owner really was blind. It was those sneaks who

were only partially blind who could cross you up. They could see the outlines of hands

moving.

But Hooks knew his newsstands. A man of respect was always careful. It was the punks who were careless.

At a Dunkin Donut, he got a jelly filled and a cup of coffee light. He also picked up twenty-three cents in tips

someone had carelessly left under a soggy napkin.

A black Cadillac Seville waited outside with

two men staring at Hooks. They had faces like pavements but with less warmth.

They had bulges in their silk suits. They did not smile.

When Hooks left the doughnut shop, the black car pulled up next to him on the curb.

"Hooks, get in," said the man next to the driver.

"I don't know you," said Hooks. The man in the front seat didn't say anything at all.

"Hooks, get in," said the man next to the driver.

"I don't know you," said Hooks. The man in the front seat didn't say anything at all.

He just stared at Hooks. Hooks got into the back seat.

They drove out of St. Louis proper on a route paralleling the Mississippi, fat with spring

waters, wide as a lake. The car entered a fenced-off marina and Hooks saw a large white

boat moored solid to a pier. The man in the front seat opened the rear door for Hooks.

"I didn't do it, I swear," said Hooks. And the man nodded him toward a gangplank.

At the top of the ramp, a round-faced man, sweating from the effort of keeping his fat

supplied with blood and oxygen, nodded Hooks into a passageway.

"I didn't do it," said Hooks.

Hooks went down steps, his legs weak.

"I didn't do it," said Hooks to a man in a black tuxedo.

"I'm the butler," said the man.

When Hooks entered the room, and when he saw who sat on a large couch, he found

himself unable to deny guilt. This was because the room spun around him and his legs

were not_ beneath him and he was looking up. If he were looking up, he reasoned, his

back must be on the floor. And who was giving him water?

Don Salvatore Massello himself. That's who was pressing a glass of water to his lips and asking if he

were all right.

"Oh, Jesus," said Hooks. For now he was sure this was Massello. He had seen pictures in the newspapers and

on television when Mr. Massello, surrounded by lawyers, had declined to talk to reporter?.

There was the silver hair, the thin haughty nose, the immaculate dark eyebrows and the black eyes.

And they were looking down at him and the lips were asking him if he were all right.

"Yes. Yes. Yes sir," said Hooks.

"Thank you for coming," said Mr. Massello.

"My pleasure and anytime, Mr. Massello, sir. An honor."

"And it is an honor to see you also, Mr. Basumo. May I call you Donald?" said Mr. Massello, helping

Hooks to his feet and sitting him in a stuffed velvet chair pnd personally pouring him a glass of thick, sweet

yellow Strega.

"Donald," said Mr. Massello, "we live in dangerous times."

"I didn't do it, sir. On my mother's sacred heart, I didn't do it."

"Do what, Donald?"

"Whatever, sir. I swear it."

Mr. Massello nodded with a tiredness that suggested the wisdom of the world.

"There are things men of respect must do to survive and I respect you for whatever you

have done. I am proud to call you a friend, a brother."

Hooks offered to knock off any newsstand in the city for Mr. Massello, owned by a sighted person or not.

Don Salvatore Massello expressed gratitude for the most gracious offer but there was

more important business at hand.

And he asked questions about the television set Donald had tried to sell to a fence. Had

Donald seen it? Where was it? How did Donald hear of it? And getting an answer, Don

Salvatore Massello asked about the girl, Janet Hawley, where she lived, where she

worked and all manner of things concerning the girl.

"She don't mean shit to me, sir," said Hooks.

Mr. Massello understood that Donald was too serious a person to let his life be ruined

by a skirt. Mr. Massello said this with a knowing smile. Mr. Massello led him to the door,

assuring young Donald Basumo his future was secure. He would be a rich man.

And to show his good faith, he provided Donald with a room aboard the yacht that night.

And two servants. They followed every instruction Hooks gave them, from bringing in

booze and food and a young girl, except one request. Hooks wanted to take a walk in the

fresh air. That they could not allow.

"You got everything you want right here. You're not leaving."

During the night, they awakened him and told him he could have his fresh air now. He

didn't want it now. They told him he was taking it now.

It was 4:15 a.m. and quite dark. Hooks sat in the back seat of a car again and when

they were well down the road headed toward St. Louis, he saw the marina lights come

back on. He had left in darkness.

The car left the asphalt road and drove to the

yard of a small construction firm. Hooks was surprised to see Janet Hawley waiting for him. She wore a bright

yellow print dress covered from the waist up with mud. She was resting. At the bottom of a ditch, with a very

yard of a small construction firm. Hooks was surprised to see Janet Hawley waiting for him. She wore a bright

yellow print dress covered from the waist up with mud. She was resting. At the bottom of a ditch, with a very

big dent in her head.

Hooks started to question the servants about this when one of them interrupted by

banging a baseball bat into Donald (Hooks) Basumo's auditory cortex in his temporal

lobe. It went crack. And made a very big and final dent in his skull.

Don Salvatore Massello was not around to hear the crack. He was on a plane bound for

New York City where he would have something very important to report at the national

meeting of the crime families.

Chapter Two

His name was Remo and he must have been cheating. James Merrick was praying for strength to complete

his twentieth mile and the skinny bastard in blue had just passed him for the second time.

The next time would be three. Merrick's mind flitted back to the old sea adage of going

down for the third time and he giggled hysterically. Suddenly his mirth turned bitter and

he squeezed out, through clenched teeth:

"Hey, you. You, skinny. You, the guy in the tee shirt."

The man who had "Remo" written on his number card with a red magic marker turned

his head back toward the huffing Merrick and pointed at himself.

"Who, me?" he said.

"Yeah. You. Remo. Wait up."

Remo slowed down and Merrick pulled his anguished legs, back and forth, back and forth, seemingly

faster and faster. But he wasn't catching up; the distance between the two remained the same, no matter

how hard he pushed his aching body.

"Come on. Slow down," yelled Merrick, in pain.

A moment later, Remo was no longer in front of him. He was directly beside Merrick,

smiling distantly, running alongside him stride for stride.

"What do you want?" Remo said lightly.

Merrick stared at him, his eyes fogged with tears of exertion mingling with salty

beads of sweat. The guy isn't even breathing hard, he thought.

"What's your number?" Merrick gasped.

Remo didn't answer. He just kept pace as they passed the Danvers town line.

Dammit, who was this maniac who wasn't even sweating? "You see this?" Merrick asked,

jabbing the blue number six on his chest.

"Yeah," said Remo. "It's nice. That's called an Arabic number. Roman numbers are like

they use for the Super Bowl. You know, x's and i's. Why do they call it an Arabic

number? If Arabs could count real well, why don't their wars last more than a few days?

Of course, maybe they'd rather lose fast than lose slow. I don't know."

The man was a loon, Merrick realized. "This is my number," Merrick puffed. "This

means ... I'm the sixth ... person ... to sign up for ... this marathon. See? Now .. .

what's your number?"

Remo did not answer. Suddenly Merrick felt a light touch across his front and then a

cool breeze ruffling his graying chest hair. He looked down

and saw a hole in his shirt where his number used to be clipped.

He looked back toward Remo but the man was gone. He had lengthened his stride and was pulling away

from Merrick as if Merrick had been standing still. Remo's hands were busy at the front of his shirt and

Merriclc knew he was pinning on number six. James Merrick's number six.

This was all he needed. Four years of work and this bum was walking away with his

race. And his number.

Merrick had wanted to run in the Boston Marathon ever since he was a youth. But four years before he had

decided to plan for the Bicentennial Marathon. If he won that one, he would be remembered. For the better

part of four years, he worked himself into condition. And then, starting in February, he really turned it on.

Every day after work, he would run the seven miles home, briefcase clutched to his well-

tailored chest. He'd arrive to the barely concealed smirk of his wife, Carol, sweat soaking

through his Arrow Pacesetter shirt and Brooks Brothers' suit.

Each evening, he practically had to scrape off his jockey shorts. He ruined his

Florsheim cordovans the second night, but after that began carrying his Adidas track shoes

to work in a paper bag.

Instead of" lunch, he'd run in the men's room, stopping to wash or comb his hair every

to work in a paper bag.

Instead of" lunch, he'd run in the men's room, stopping to wash or comb his hair every

time someone came in. Coffee breaks were used for pushups in the utility room.

Soon his steamy figure became the subject of office chatter and "Merrick" jokes began to

circulate.

When an anonymous caller told Merrick's wife

one night that there was an office pool betting on whether or not Merrick would die of a coronary before his

pungent sweat smell claimed its first victim, she decided to have an intimate discussion with him.

"What the hell are you trying to prove?" she had said. "You're a Sunday athlete. The

most running you should do is from the living room to the kitchen."

She liked the way that came out and laughed twice. James Merrick ignored her and

kept running.

The Sunday before the race, Merrick had leaned over to his twelve-year-old son in

front of the television set and said: "What do you think of your old dad winning the

Marathon tomorrow, David?"

"Not now, Pop. Kojak is moving in. Who loves ya, baby?"

Merrick's head snapped up as if slapped to stare at the fat bald man on the Motorola

television and he felt the bile rise. Kojak didn't have to run any marathon.

"I'm running twenty-six miles tomorrow, David." Merrick tried to smile but it was

wasted on the back of his son's head. "Isn't that pretty good?"

"Yeah, Dad." Merrick felt some relief sweep over him.

"The Six Million Dollar Man did that tonight in an hour," David said.

Merrick saw the tide go out.

"Well, not really an hour, that was what they said it took him, but it was more like

five minutes. In slow motion. Wow."

18As his son ran around the room in slow motion, Merrick pictured himself on a cold beach

and his eyes became as vacant as the horizon.

He'd show them. He'd show them all.

While Merrick had dressed the morning of the race, feeling everything was going to be perfect, Remo had

awakened knowing things were perfect and it disgusted him.

It was wrong. It was wrong to sleep perfectly. To get up perfectly. To always be in

perfect health. Misery, he decided, was the only thing that made life worth living.

Remo looked into his dark eyes in the bathroom mirror, then let them flick over

his tanned face with its high cheekbones. His lean body, even with its extraordinarily

thick wrists, gave no hint of the killing machine Remo had become.

Remo had watched himself shave. No wasted motion, easy smooth strokes.

Perfect.

Disgusting.

Why didn't he ever nick himself? Why didn't he get dragon mouth in the morning like

everyone else?

Once upon a time he had. He remembered the cold stinging touch of the styptic pencil

when he nicked his face shaving. But that had been years before, back in another life, when

Remo Williams was just another patrolman in the Newark Police Department.

That was before he had been framed for a murder he didn't commit, and revived after a

fake electrocution to work for a secret agency as its

enforcer arm-code name Destroyer-in a war against crime.

That had been a long time ago and suddenly he did not want to look anymore at the

plastic hotel room he had been staying in for three days. He did not want to speak to

Chiun, the aged Korean assassin who was now motionless, asleep on a mat in the middle of

the suite's living room floor.

It had been Chiun, the latest Master in centuries of masters from the small Korean

village of Sinanju, who had changed Remo.

There had been ten years of prodding and probing, discipline, guidance, and technique

and while Remo had long since stopped hating it all, he had never taken the time to

determine if it was good.

He had climbed the mountain of his soul but forgotten to check whether he liked the

view.

He had climbed the mountain of his soul but forgotten to check whether he liked the

view.

Remo stared at himself in the mirror. If he wanted right now, he could dilate or

constrict the pupils of his eyes. He could raise the temperature of any part of his body six

degrees. He could slow his heart beat to four a minute or speed it to 108 a minute, all

without moving from this spot.

He wasn't even human anymore. He was just perfect.

Remo kicked open the bathroom door and walked quickly to the front door of the

suite, past the frail-looking pile on the floor that was Chiun. Remo kicked open the front

door too and since it was built to open inwards, most of the wood and plastic flew across

the hall. The knob was later discovered by the manager, lodged in the soda machine three

doors down.

A high squeaky voice stopped Remo halfway into the hall.

"You are troubled," Chiun said. "What is it?"

"I've just decided. I don't like being perfect."

Chiun laughed. "Perfect? Perfect? You? Heh, heh, heh. Do not waken me for any more

jokes."

Remo gave Chiun's back a silent Bronx cheer, then went downstairs, through the red and brown tiled lobby

of the hotel into the crisp April Boston morning.

Remo leaned against the outside front door of the hotel and started searching himself.

"Pardon me, sir," said a bellboy.

"Don't bother me," Remo said. "Can't you see I'm perfect?"

"But, sir..."

"One more word and you'll be blowing your nose from the back."

The bellboy left. Remo thought of the first time he had met Chiun. The old Oriental was shuffling toward

him in a gymnasium at Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York, the secret headquarters of the secret

organization CURE. Chiun had at first looked like a skinny skeleton covered with yellow parchment...

"Pardon me, sir," said the bell captain, who didn't particularly want anyone's pardon. He had been laying

his bet on No Preservatives Added in the fifth at Suffolk Downs when the bellboy had made him aware of the

man standing outside.

"Pardon me, sir," the bell captain repeated, "but what are you doing?"

"What does it look like I'm doing?" Remo asked.

The bell captain thought carefully. You never knew what might show up when you

had a hotel

this close to Huntington Avenue, Boston's answer to Dante's Eighth Circle.

"It looks, sir, like you're leaning against a building with just a towel on."

Remo looked down. The bell captain was right.

"So?"said Remo.

"Well." The bell captain paused. "It's our towel."

"I'm a paying customer," Remo said.

"Do you have a key, sir?"

"I left it in my other towel," Remo said.

"How are you going to get back into your room then?"

"Don't worry, I'll manage," Remo said.

"Aren't you a little bit cold?"

"I'm too perfect to be cold," Remo said and turned away from the man who was

making it difficult for him to think.

The bell captain shrugged and went back to his station. He would give the wierdo five

minutes before calling the hotel detective. In the meantime, he called his bookie to put in

his bet on No Preservatives Added who later broke her foreleg coming around the first

turn. The bell captain's bet at the Wonderland dog races in Revere leaped at the automatic

rabbit and got electrocuted. The Red Sox lost 17 to 1. The bell captain's oldest son was

booked for possession, his wife got another day deeper into the change of life, and his dog

got hit by a car. Looking back on it the next day, he would bet that his run of bad luck

began with the warm-blooded guy leaning against the hotel wall with just a towel on.

Remo was still thinking, trying to remember just when it was that he had become

perfect.

He had met Chiun in the gymnasium, and he

had had a gun in his hand and was ordered to kill the old Oriental for a night off from training. For a night off, he

would have done anything, and he had fired six shots point blank at Chiun and all of them had missed. He certainly

hadn't been perfect that night.

"Pardon me, sir," said a greasy young girl.

"Don't bother me," Remo said.

"Oh, it won't be a bother, sir," the girl said. "Would you like to take a personality test?"

Remo looked at the girl. She was wearing a pasteboard tag that said, "Hello, my name is Margie from the

School of Powerology." Her hair hung down across her shiny pock-marked face like spaghetti in clam sauce.

Through dirty oil-streaked glasses, her eyes were a dull powdery brown.

"Sure," said Remo. "I'm trying to find out why I'm perfect."

"We can help you to know yourself better, that will be fifty cents, please."

"Pardon?" Remo said.

"You are taking the test?"

"Yes."

"Well, it's fifty cents for my time and the cost of the test paper, sir."

"Can I owe it to you?"

"Don't you have it on you?"

"Not so you'd notice," Remo said.

Margie stared him up and down, then licked her lips. "I guess you could give it to me

later," she said. She giggled and blushed, and the sudden flush of color combined with her

natural pallor to make her look purple.

"What is your name, sir?"

"Kay Kyser from the College of Musical Knowledge."

"Very good," Margie said, pulling open a loose-leaf folder she had been holding.

"Question number one. Are you happy?"

"No," said Remo.

"Then, sir, you should get our booklet: A Happier You Through Powerology, which is only $3.98 for the

first copy and $2.50 for each one afterwards."

"I will seriously consider it," Remo said. "Do you have another question."

"Yes, sir. Lots of questions," she said staring at his chest again. "Question number two.

Do you lay, I mean, like your friends?"

"What friends?" Remo asked.

"Yes or no," Margie said. "It has to be yes or no, I can't fit 'what friends' into the

space."

"Can't you write smaller?"

"It'll come out 'wha fri.' "

"Okay," Remo said. "No."

"Oh. Then a must for your library would be the Powerology Guide for Better

Friendships or How to Win People to Your Side through Powerology. Right now, you

could have it for only $2.95, for a limited time, of course."

"I'll keep it in mind."

Margie was staring at his belly button. "Of course, something could be arranged," she

said.

"Question three," Remo said.

"Oh, yes," she said, shaking her head and sending beads of greasy dirt flying. "How do

you rape, I mean, rate your love life on a scale of one to ten?"

"None," said Remo. "Minus six. Minus ninety."

"Oh, that's a shame, but nothing that couldn't be remedied by How to Pick up Girls and Score Through

Powerology for only $4.95 or letting me come up to your room."

"You're losing your scientific dispassion," Remo said.

"Don't tell me that. I can see rape in your eyes."

"That's because your glasses are dirty," Remo said.

"Look, fella, I'll knock up ... I mean, off the fifty-cent service charge."

"Not now."

"This is my last offer. I knock off the service charge, throw in a Powerology book of

massage and pay for dinner afterwards. What more could you want?"

"Your sudden and complete disappearance," Remo said.

"Too bad. I could have helped you find yourself," Margie said.

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CampusBloodbathRemocaughtthegirljustasshewasfallingfacefirstontotheasphaltoftheparkinglot.Shesankintohisarmscallinghisname."Whathappened?"heasked."Blood,"sheanswered."Bloodeverywhere.Iheardnoises.Ilookedup...hitmeintheface...wet,couldn'tsee.Iwipeditoff...feltear,eye...blood...DoctorWooley...dead..."...

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Destroyer 025 - Sweet Dreams

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