Snap went the belt. Swish went Sashur's right hand down on Remo's strapped midsection. Owwww went Sashur's mouth when she met a knuckle coming up.
"Animal," she said and gunned the Mercedes up the ramp to the fading sunlight of a Chicago evening, the evening spread in rich red colors, largely the reflection from tiny pollution particles in the air.
At a red traffic light, she moaned.
"Lights bother you?" Remo asked.
"No. He's going to get us now."
Behind him, Remo saw a balding man in a gray suit dash from Sashur's building like he was going over hot coal barefoot. He skittered around an oncoming taxi whose tires squealed, burning asphalt and rubber in an effort not to put him away, midsection.
"It's nothing, George," yelled Sashur as the man's reddened twisted face intruded itself into the driver's window. "It's strictly a platonic relationship. You're so damned jealous it's sickening, George. George, meet Remo. Remo, meet George, who thinks I sleep with every man I meet."
"You can't do this to me," said George.
"You're incredible. The male psyche is not to be believed."
"Why did you try to avoid me?"
"Why? Why? Because of just this kind of scene. Just think of this kind of suspicious jealous scene."
"I'm sorry."
"You're always sorry, and you do it just the same."
"You know how difficult Justice is sometimes."
"Go away," Sashur said. Bang. George's head knocked against the oncoming window. Sashur gunned the Mercedes through the red light.
"Creep. He drives me up a wall. The male mind is so suspicious."
Remo flicked her right hand off his thigh.
"I wasn't going to hit."
"I know that," Remo said. "What'd he mean about justice being difficult?"
"Who knows ? Who cares ?"
In a plush white twenty-two-story building, set like white marble in a field of ghetto mud, the doorman halted Ms. Kaufperson and Remo. They had to be announced.
"Alvin is not here," came the fuzzy voice through the little speaker.
"Tell her it's all right. Ms. Kaufperson is here," she said to the doorman.
"It's a Miss Kaufperson," the doorman said.
"Wait a minute, doorperson," said Sashur. "It's not Miss Kaufperson, it's Miz Kaufperson."
"It's Mizzzz Kaufperson," the doorman said.
"Alvin still isn't home," came the voice.
"Tell her we want to speak to her anyway," said Remo.
"Well, all right. If you want to," came the voice over the speaker. "Alvin isn't in trouble again, is he?"
"No, no," said Sashur Kaufperson. "It's all right."
In the elevator Remo asked her why she hadn't just changed her name to Smith or Jones.
"I wanted to liberate the Kauf from the Mann. Give a new perspective to the horizons in which women may see themselves."
No, Remo didn't want to do it in the elevator, even though they had all of twenty floors to go and had wasted two of them already.
"That's the penthouse," said Remo. "What's a public school kid doing living in a penthouse? With all that money, you'd think his folks would send him to a private school."
"Some parents will spend money on all sorts of material things. But never on the important things."
At the penthouse, Alvin Dewar greeted them himself with a lovely material thing. He held a silver-plated .25 caliber Beretta, and it was pointed up at Remo's throat.
Remo felt Ms. Kaufperson pressing to leave, pushing behind him, pushing him out into the barrel of the gun. She had insisted that the old formality of the woman leaving the elevator first be abandoned as the patronizing vestige of sexism it was. So Remo was in the elevator door, facing this peer-alienated functioner with a pistol.
And it should have been no trouble at all, except Remo could not strike, could not injure the boy. His muscles would not move on this four-foot-seven-inch ninety-pound alienated functioner. The kid was going to kill him.
CHAPTER SIX
Remo saw the little pink index finger tighten on the trigger, and while his own body could not advance on an attack, it could move away. Remo's left hand snaked behind him to Sashur Kaufperson's waist, and using the weight of her body and his, he split them both so, like two pendulums colliding, they each bounced to opposite sides of the elevator and the .25 caliber slug plinked into the new polished wood of the wall. It dug a neat dark hole. So did the next. And three others. The elevator door closed. The last shot hit the outside with the sound of a dish breaking on one sharp rock.
Remo was up and helping Sashur to her feet.
"He has hostile tendencies," she said. "I guess he has difficulties relating to extracurricular visits."
"He's a killer," said Remo, pressing the "open" button. He was shaken. His body had never failed to respond before, taut unless the gun had a seventh bullet, he was in no danger. The door opened. Another little dark hole appeared in the polished wood of the elevator wall. Seven bullets.
"Fucking kid is a killer," said Ms. Kaufperson, noticing a hole through her Gucci blouse.
Alvin was fast in his sneakers. He threw the gun wildly away as he turned a corner. Remo was around the corner with him in a loping shuffle. Alvin tried to run behind a man built like a wide landslide, a mountain of a landslide. His forearms were almost as big as Remo's neck.
"Hey, you, leave my kid alone."
His massive weight balanced evenly on size fourteen shoes. He stuck out an arm confidently as if it were a wall against this thin fellow following his son. His eyes teared just slightly as his rib cage collapsed into his lower intestines. His sphincters released his digested breakfast into his pants. He decided standing was too much for what was left of his body so he collapsed to the light maroon carpeting of the hallway.
Remo was into the apartment proper after Alvin. A bleached blonde, with hair in silver curlers, tried to shut the door. The door bounced back into her face.
Alvin made it to the bathroom, locking it behind him. He saw the lock pop out in a halo of splinters onto the white tile floor.
"Hello, Alvin," said Remo, cornering him in the bathtub. He wanted, at least, just to slap the kid but the hand that could become a shatterer of molecule chains could not move. So Remo looked menacing. In all his training, he had never learned to look fearsome. Everything was aimed at appearing harmless, even through the hit. He even stood with great quiet. His body was quiet. He menaced with his voice. It worked, and the shattered lock on the floor didn't hurt any either.
"You're in trouble."
"Dad!" yelled Alvin.
"He's not going to help."
"Mom," yelled Alvin.
"She's not going to help."
"Ms. Kaufperson."
"Coming, Alvin. Don't be afraid," yelled Sashur.
"Be afraid," said Remo.
"You can't hurt me," said Alvin.
"What makes you think so?"
"There are laws," said Alvin.
"Alvin, you have two seconds to tell me who gave you the order to hit Pell. Or your head goes like this." Remo put his hand on a round polished edge of an aquamarine sink and squeezed off a piece like a chunk of bread.
"There, Alvin, imagine it's your head," said Remo, bluffing.
"Ms. Kaufperson," cried Alvin, terror widening his eyes as Sashur came into the bathroom.
"Ms. Kaufperson isn't going to help you," said Remo.
"Alvin, you're in big legal trouble," said Ms. Kaufperson.
"Let me handle this," said Remo.
"No comment," said Alvin.
"I'm going to bring him to the police station," said Ms. Kaufperson.
"Who gave you the gun, Alvin?" .
"We ought to let the police do this, Remo. So they'll have a case."
Ms. Kaufperson took Alvin firmly by the wrist, reaching in past Remo, who blocked the doorway. She yanked Alvin with her. Remo followed them out of the apartment and out of the building, and when he saw her enter the police station, with the surly tyke, he let them go. Fine. She would tell the police to check him out in the killing of Warner Pell, the youngster would put the police onto who had trained him and paid him so well, the cops would round up the other kids-there had to be others with simultaneous killings-and with the new killers gone, Smitty's program of protected witnesses would pick up again.