“You've got to understand Poweressence. A force so good has to attract evil. The evil the Dolomos attract keeps it away from the followers. They are really suffering for us, so to speak. That's the way it was explained to me, and dammit if it didn't work out that way.”
“Maybe you had a good lawyer.”
“I had the best, but he couldn't shake my secretary's testimony. They had me. I was gonzo. And then I believed.”
“What did it cost you?”
“He who has, does,” said Jameson with a knowing smile.
“A half-million?”
Jameson laughed again. “That's the initiation fee. But look, they said they would give it back if my life didn't improve. If I weren't found innocent. You don't knock success.”
“I do,” said the young man in his early thirties with dark eyes and high cheekbones. “I knock it a lot.”
“Who are you?”
“The success knocker, Jameson. I want to talk to you,” said Remo.
“I am busy talking to friends.”
The young man put a friendly arm around his shoulder but the shoulder didn't feel a friendly arm. The shoulder felt like it had been connected to a wall outlet. He couldn't even scream. He could only nod. He would go wherever that hand wanted him to go, in this case a study off the main ballroom. The door shut behind them and the tinkling noise of his freedom party was shut out.
The room was filled with rich dark wood shelves and warm yellow lighting and solid polished wood chairs. It smelled faintly of rich cigars and old brandy.
“Excuse me, I don't know many important corporate executives so I've got to use my own humble working-class ways to speak with you,” said Remo.
“What did you do to me?” Jameson gasped, trying to shake life back into the shoulder the young man had seemed to electrify with just a touch.
“That's nothing. Will you listen?”
“There isn't much else I can do.”
“Good,” said Remo. Then he slapped the president of international Grains, Carbides, and Chemicals on the cheek hard enough to move him two feet to the side. Then he slapped him again.
“That's hello,” said Remo.
Jameson emitted a pitiful grunt, then quickly emptied his pockets of cash, took off his watch and held it toward Remo.
“I'm not the crook. You are.”
“The court found me innocent,” said Jameson.
“Bring your lawyer in. I'll work him over too,” said Remo.
“What do you want?”
“Now we're talking. Who turned the witness for you? Remember Gladys? Your secretary. Told the world all the nasty things you were doing, and you thought because you paid her so much she would keep quiet. Who's the one who made her forget?”
“What do you mean?”
“This party isn't for your birthday,” said Remo.
“It was the positive forces of the universe which were unlocked for me. That's what got me freed.”
Remo slapped him again. “That's my positive force.”
“I didn't bribe anyone. I didn't reach anyone. I just joined Poweressence when everything else seemed to fail. And then my life became positive again. It became good again.”
Remo put Jameson's right wrist between his fingers and turned so that the arm would turn at the socket. It was not like turning a solid iron knob. The wrist and elbows were weak joints and they could snap at any moment.
Jameson wept in pain.
“Tell me how good your life is, Jameson,” said Remo. “I want to hear about the good forces of the universe.”
“You wouldn't understand.”
“Wouldn't understand? I am the force of the universe, jerk.”
“Please...”
“Forget it. You're not lying.”
Jameson cradled his damaged arm in the other as he leaned forward, crying.
“Are you the agent of darkness?”
“What's this agent-of-darkness stuff?”
“The stronger the forces of good are, the stronger positive forces are, the more they bring out negative forces. If you join Poweressence and people see you are happy, they begin to knock Poweressence. They can't live with your happiness. So they have to call Poweressence a fraud. It takes the form of jealousy. Good things always attract bad.”
“Are you saying I'm bad?”
“No. No. It's just that you're so powerful. And you have turned that power against me, against my positive forces.”
“I'm a good person,” said Remo.
“Yes,” said Jameson immediately. He shielded his face with his good arm. “You are a good person. A good person.”
“Sometimes I have to use methods you might not like,” said Remo.
“Right,” said Jameson.
“But I am a good person.”
“Right,” said Jameson.
“Now, are you going to sit there and tell me you're innocent? You robbed America. You robbed every American farmer. You robbed every citizen in the country who depends on the farmers you robbed. It is not a good thing that you got off scot-free. So why don't you and I work out a deal?”
“Sounds fair,” said Jameson. He sat very rigid in the chair, with his backbone as far away from the young man with the horror-dealing hands as he could.
“You did commit crimes, correct?”
“I did. True.”
“You got off free.”
“I've donated to charity, to religions.”
“That thing with the Mickey Mouse forces of the universe won't do. You don't even understand the forces of the universe. They're not in some cult. They're in the universe. No, I'm thinking of an agreed-upon punishment for you, so you don't quite enjoy your life knowing you escaped. Because that's what you did, Jameson.”
“What do you suggest?”
“How about not walking again?”
“No.”
“One of your arms is damaged already.”
“No, not my arms.”
“Tell you what. One night, maybe sooner, maybe later, I'm going to come back and make you pay for your crimes,” said Remo.
“What are you going to do?”
“I'll just have to decide when I get to it. But wait for me. I'm coming back,” said Remo, and he walked out of the room into the party, thanked Mrs. Jameson for inviting him, and asked her again if he weren't absolutely correct about her age.
Remo thought it was a fitting punishment, tormenting the executive with the fear that Remo would return to inflict damage upon his body. Of course, he wasn't going to come back, but the executive didn't know that. The constant terror would be the best punishment of all. It was enough, and Remo hadn't done it so much for the country as for himself. It was just too wrong for someone that bad to escape so freely to a life that good.
And besides, Remo was in a foul mood.
* * *
The second lucky recipient of an acquittal lived very well also. He had an estate that covered miles of Oklahoma prairie land, a magnificent home more like a castle than a house. He had servants and he had bodyguards, range riders, tough men with carbines and Bronco land cruisers, ten-gallon hats, and weathered faces.
When Remo unweathered a few of the faces, they brought him right to their employer, a man who had swindled thousands of people out of their savings in a diamond-investment scheme. It was as old as fraud itself. He paid the first investors back handsomely with the profits from ensuing investors, and when he had enough people pouring their nest eggs into his bank accounts, he stopped paying everyone and headed toward Brazil, which had no extradition treaty with America. He didn't make it and was charged with fraud. His accountant, whom he had planned on leaving behind, prepared the entire case for the government. In fact, he was glad to help because his employer, Diamond Bill Pollenberg, had arranged it so the accountant signed all the incriminating documents.