The gunman said, "Before, up on that roof, you told me you were a professional. Okay. I'm not going to ask you who you worked for or anything like that. I just want to know if you were straight with me when you said that."
"I was straight," Remo said.
"Okay. I believe you. Now listen to your old man. That guy I clipped. Millis. He didn't die."
"No?"
"No. And that means I don't get paid."
"Right," Remo said.
"That means I gotta finish him."
"Why don't we just forget him and leave town?" Remo said. "We can try some other place. Maybe some other country. Get to know each other."
"Look. I gotta finish him. And the way I see it, if you hadn't been screwing around on the roof, I would have gotten a clear shot and he would have been history."
Remo shrugged. "Sorry," he said.
"That doesn't cut it. I've got a reputation to maintain and this is going to hurt it. I'm not a rich guy. I need to work from time to time."
"I said I was sorry."
"I accept that," the gunman said. "But what are you going to do about it, son?"
"Do about what?" Remo said, who was getting an idea of what the older man was hinting at. The thoughts of Chiun fled from his mind.
"I mean that you owe me, Remo. You owe your old man for screwing up his hit and I want you to take care of Millis for me."
"I can't do that," Remo said.
"Can't? Everything I'm hearing from you tonight is can't. I can't drink, Dad. I can't eat, Dad. That one word is seriously going to jeopardize our relationship, son." Remo looked down at the table and the gunman said, "Millis is in a coma. It should be easy. I'll even loan you my best piece."
Remo's answer was a growl. "I don't need a weapon to take somebody out. "
"No, I guess you don't," the older man said and lit a cigarette. "Then it's settled?"
"This isn't right," Remo said.
"I know you've killed for the government. You told me that. I'm just asking for my due. If you can work for them, you can work for me. Do it or take your 'can'ts' and get out of my life." The gunman set himself. If the kid was going to turn on him, it would be now.
"It isn't right," Remo said hollowly, as if he had not heard the other man speak. "I killed for my country in Vietnam. I killed for Chiun and for Smith ... for the government. And now you. It isn't right that we meet and you tell me to go kill somebody for you. That's not what a father's supposed to be."
The older man relaxed and his tone grew sympathetic. "It's the breaks, kid. You've got to go with the flow. For you, the choice is buy or fly. What's it going to be?"
"I don't know," Remo said. "We'll see." He looked up as the waitress brought their food.
"Sure we will, son," said the gunman. "Sure we will. You sure you don't want some of my prime rib?"
Chapter 22
He had never been to Wildwood Cemetery.
More than a decade before, Smith had arranged for a man to be buried in the grave that bore the name of Remo Williams. He had made the funeral arrangements, ordered the headstone, and bought the cemetery plot. He had even arranged for the body that went into the grave. It was not Remo's body but that of some homeless derelict whom no one would ever miss. Smith had known the derelict's name once but he had long since forgotten it. That man had had no family, either. And there was no CURE record of the person.
And during all that he had never visited the cemetery and now, as he stood over the grave marked "Remo Williams," Smith felt the rush of emotion that he had ignored for more than ten years.
Smith did not cry, not outwardly. But what he felt was a wave of strangling feelings. He had picked a policeman, a cop with a clean but undistinguished record, and arranged for his ruin. Overnight, Remo Williams had gone from being a respected policeman to a man on trial for his life. Smith had rigged it all-the drug pusher who had been found beaten to death in an alley, Remo's badge conveniently next to the body. And he had set it up so it took place at a time when Remo would have no alibi.
He had not had to bribe the judge who sentenced Remo to the electric chair in the New Jersey state prison, although he would have done that if necessary.
And finally he had made the necessary arrangements so that the electric chair was rigged and Remo Williams survived it and came into the employ of CURE and into the care of Chiun, the latest Master of Sinanju.
Not once in all the years had Smith allowed himself a moment of remorse over what he had done, but now that Remo was dead, it all flooded into his mind.
Still, no tears came. It was too late for tears just as it was too late for Remo. It was probably too late for CURE too.
Remo's grave stood in the shade of a dying oak tree, half its limbs gray and bare and without leaves. It was the most utilitarian grave Smith had ever seen, a square of granite marked with a cross and Remo's name and no more. Smith had ordered the headstone from a catalog and, to save costs as much as a security measure, had ordered the stonecutter to leave off the dates of birth and death.
Grass grew uncut around the grave. Groundskeeping was not a high priority at Wildwood, which was one of the reasons Smith had chosen it. Wildwood was a small burying ground, tucked away in a seldom-visited area outside Newark, hidden in woods and surrounded on all sides by a wrought-iron fence which was in the final stages of collapse. Wildwood got few visitors.
Remo's grave was not alone. There was one on either side, spaced closely together. On one side, an older stone bore the name D. Colt. On the other, there was a larger stone bearing the family name DeFuria, and the names of several generations of DeFurias who had been interred in the ground around it.
Smith tried to reconstruct the murder of the anonymous woman in his mind. He stood where he knew she must have stood. He imagined the direction from which the bullets had come and tried to calculate the impact. He saw where the flowers she held in her hands had fallen.
It all seemed reasonable enough, but still something did not make sense. Why hadn't she visited the grave before all this? And how had she found Remo after all these years, even in death?
Those bothersome questions, more than anything else, had brought Smith to Wildwood and, standing over Remo's grave, they bothered him even more.
Smith took out a spiral notepad and jotted down the names on the stones on either side of Remo's grave and made a note to ask Chiun where Remo's real body was. Perhaps he could arrange for Remo's burial here at Wildwood. This time for real. He owed Remo that much, at least.
And then he walked out of the cemetery.
He did not look back. It was too late for looking back.
Chapter 23
When the gunman told him that the hospital might be a tough place to penetrate, Remo considered telling him what he knew: that a hospital is not a fortress, not designed to keep people either in or out. It is just a hospital, a place where sick people go to become well, and one could put a thousand guards around a hospital and its security would still leak like a sieve.
But he decided to say nothing; the older man would not understand.
He slipped out of the car as the gunman slowed down along the John C. Lodge Freeway in the center of Detroit. As the door closed behind him, Remo heard the gunman say, "Give 'em hell for your old man, kid."
The car sped off and Remo vaulted the retaining wall along the edge of the freeway and made for the hospital grounds. Remo wore black and in the darkness of the night, he was a silent thing that moved from tree to bush, from bush to car as he worked toward the hospital's parking lot.
The hospital itself was a large complex and in the artificial light of the ground floods, the main building appeared bone white and cold.
Remo slipped past idly patrolling security guards. He had not expected any trouble from them. If there was trouble, it would come on the floor where Hubert Millis, president of American Autos, lay in a coma.