"That's it. He's gone. Nurse, prep him for removal." And still without noticing Remo, the doctors left the room.
The nurse still stood by the bedside and Remo took her arm.
"What happened?" he asked urgently.
"He flatlined."
"That means he's dead, right?"
"That's right. Heart failure. You were in the room with him. Who are you?"
"Never mind that. What killed him? I have to know."
"His heart just gave out. We half-expected it."
"It wasn't the excitement, was it?" Remo asked. "Excitement didn't kill him?"
"Excitement? He was in a coma. He wouldn't have got excited in a car bombing."
"Thanks," Remo said.
"Don't mention it. What were you doing here anyway?"
"Wrestling with my conscience," Remo called back.
"Who won?"
"It was a draw."
Chapter 24
When Remo returned from the hospital, he found the older man slouched in a chair, watching an episode of The Honeymooners.
"How'd it go?" the gunman asked, without taking his eyes from the screen.
"Millis is dead," Remo said.
"Good. You do good work, kid. Sit down and watch some TV."
"I think I'll go to sleep," Remo said.
"Sure, son. Whatever you want, you do it."
"We going to be leaving town soon?" Remo asked.
"Hold your horses. I got some things to do yet," the gunman said.
"Like what?" Remo said.
"Business. I got business. You gonna pester me? I want to watch this. Ed Norton just knocks me out."
"I thought Millis was your business."
"He was," the gunman said.
"Well, Millis is dead."
"What do you want? A freaking medal? You owed me that hit 'cause you screwed it up on me before. Now we're even and get off my case. I got other things to do."
Remo had gone into the bedroom and lain down, but he had been unable to sleep. His entire adult life had been spent yearning for a family, but maybe having a family was not all it was supposed to be.
He meant nothing to his father, out in the other room, laughing uproariously at the rerun he had probably seen a dozen times. And that was family.
Chiun, on the other hand, for all his carping and complaining, cared about Remo. And Chiun wasn't family, not real blood family anyway.
Was "family" just a label, meaningless unless there was sharing and trust and love involved? Remo didn't know. He lay on the bed groping for something to say to his father. But all the important questions-who Remo was, where he was born, all the rest-had been answered and now there were no more questions to ask and Remo felt empty.
He heard the telephone ring in the other room and focused his hearing on the gunman's voice when he heard him say hello. Most people could not hear properly because untrained ears were not able to filter out all the background noise and concentrate on what a person wanted to hear. Most people lived in a world of static, but Remo could direct his hearing in a narrow range so he was able, without real effort, to hear both sides of a telephone conversation.
He heard his father say, "When are you going to pay for the Millis hit?"
"As soon as you get Lavallette," a voice answered.
"Wait a minute. This is supposed to be pay as you go, remember?"
"Millis isn't even cold yet and this is an emergency. I can't explain it now. I want Lavallette hit and I want him hit right away."
"That's not our agreement," the gunman said.
"I'll pay double for Lavallette," the voice responded.
"Double? You really do want Lavallette hit, don't you?"
"Was there any doubt?"
"I guess not. Okay, I'll do it."
"He'll be at his office at eight o'clock this morning. One last thing. No head shots. You get him in the face or head and you don't get paid."
"I remember."
"But this time it's especially important. I have my reasons. "
The gunman hung up the telephone and in the empty room, Remo heard him say, "I guess you do. Damned if I can figure out what they are, though."
At his apartment, Lyle Lavallette hung up the telephone and laughed nervously.
The game was almost over. This was the last risk and when he got through this one, he was the big winner. Who would have thought it over the last twenty years? Who would have thought it when all three of those ungrateful bastards had fired him from their auto companies? Well, now, it was payback time and the Dynacar was the way to do it. Within a month, Lavallette expected that he would be the head of all three of America's major car manufacturers. He would control the industry as no man before him, not even Henry Ford, had ever done.
And who knew what was next? Maybe Washington.
Maybe the White House itself.
Why not? Everything else had worked perfectly so far. It was a master stroke to have hired a killer and then to have named himself, Lyle Lavallette, as the first target. That way, when the other car moguls were removed, no one would think of pointing a finger at Lavallette.
And it had worked. He had panicked the other car companies and they were all coming around.
The only loose end left was the killer. He didn't want that man around, maybe to be arrested, maybe to talk. Even though he didn't know who had hired him, it was possible that some smart investigator might be able to get him singing and put two and two together.
The assassin had to go, so Lavallette had called him and told him when the target would be vulnerable.
The killer would come in the morning.
And be met by Colonel Brock Savage and his mercenaries. End of the gunman. End of the problem.
It was perfect.
Lavallette put a hairnet over his sprayed hair and got carefully into bed. He wanted a few hours' sleep. He wanted to look good when he went before the TV cameras tomorrow and told the world that the crazed Detroit assassin had been killed.
Chapter 25
"So that's the Dynacar. When do you go into production?"
Lyle Lavallette looked at the new public-relations counsel he had hired and said, "Don't worry about that now. More important things take precedence."
They were standing inside the large garage of the Dynacar Industries building. The public-relations man was confused because he had gotten the impression from watching the news broadcasts that Lavallette was ready to begin construction of the revolutionary car immediately. But the inside of the Dynacar plant was as barren as a baseball stadium in December. There were no workers, there was no assembly line, there were no parts or equipment. It was just a big empty warehouse.
"I'm not sure I follow you, Mr. Lavallette," the public-relations man said. He had been a newspaperman for fifteen years before getting into public relations "to make some real money," but his newspaper background gave him the uneasy feeling that he was involved in some kind of scam.
Even looking at the sleek black Dynacar which stood in solitude in the middle of the plant's floor did not dispel that feeling.
"Listen and I'll make it simple for you," Lavallette said. "I've been planning to go into production, but now with that crazy killer running around loose, things have changed."
"How?" the public-relations man said.
"First of all, when Mangan got shot, the directors of his company started reaching out for me to take over their company and consolidate it with the Dynacar production. Right?"
"Right."
"And that story you planted yesterday about American Autos reaching out for me to do the same thing is going to work. They'll be on the telephone before the morning's over. "
"How does that explain why you're not building Dynacars?" the P.R. man said.
"Wait. I'm not done. Now we all know that Revell from General Autos has gone on vacation because he's scared for his life. What we want to do is to plant some stories; get General Autos to ask for me too."