A knife, thought Remo, closing in.
He spoke because he wasn’t quite there yet, and he wanted to distract the killer now, while there was still at least some chance of saving Jasper Frayne.
“Back off!” he snapped, still moving toward the executioner, his legs almost a blur.
The killer turned to face him, and the sight made Remo hesitate for something like a quarter of a second. He had seen that face before, in photographs displayed by Dr. Smith. It was Tom Hardy, minus thirty years or so, the same face worn by hit men lately buried in Miami and upstate Wisconsin.
“Want some?”
It was strange to hear the voice. To him, Hardy was a photograph. A man long dead. Somehow, the killer’s voice—so normal it was almost pleasant— was more worrisome to Remo than the bloody knife he held in front of him or the too familiar face he wore.
Behind him, Jasper Frayne was thrashing weakly on the chaise, blood streaming from the stab wounds in his chest and abdomen. A slash across the throat would have been quicker, more efficient. Maybe the killer liked his work enough to drag it out by torturing his victims.
“What’s your name?” he asked the killer, circling to his right, toward Jasper Frayne.
“Fuck you!”
“That’s funny, you don’t look Chinese.”
The killer blinked, uncertain what to make of that, and sneered in lieu of a rejoinder.
“Well, Fuck, I have to tell you that the best thing you can do right now is drop the knife and give it up. No reason you should die, if you cooperate.”
“Fuck you!”
“I see. Name, rank and number, is it? Fair enough. We’ll play it your way.”
Remo feinted to the right, saw the hit man shift his weight to meet the charge, and went straight up the middle in a rush that left his enemy with no time to correct or compensate. The blade flashed red and silver, Remo blocking with his left hand, striking with his right, a straight jab to the chest that slammed his adversary over backward. Remo planned to take the guy alive, for questioning. But down and out appeared to be two very different things. The assassin’s shoulders barely hit the turf before he rolled over, grimacing in pain, and scrambled to his feet once more, the knife still in his hand. His first few steps were shaky, but he came back, straight at Remo, cursing underneath his breath.
A roundhouse kick disarmed him and set him up for Remo’s backhand punch. The killer staggered backward, bleeding from the nose and mouth, but still not beaten. Remo saw his free hand rummage underneath the baggy shirt and come out with a shiny automatic pistol, muzzle-heavy with a silencer.
Remo kept his eyes fixed on the weapon, saw his adversary’s finger tighten on the trigger, heard his flexor tendons creak as he prepared to make the killing shot. The trick to dodging bullets was anticipation, readiness, and Remo sidestepped as the first round whispered past his face, bare inches to his right. The shooter tried correcting but overdid it, and the next round went to Remo’s left, his forward motion barely interrupted by the revolution of his torso as he turned to let another round zip by.
The hitter used up four of his nine shots before a hand shot out and took the gun away from him with such force that he spun about, then slammed his temple into the unforgiving corner of a square standing flower urn. When he landed on the grass, he didn’t rise again.
Three steps to the chaise longue, and Remo knelt beside the dying man who must be Jasper Frayne. The quantity of blood around his nose and mouth told Remo that at least one lung was punctured, maybe both. The heart was beating, but it would soon be running out of blood to pump. No ambulance could get there fast enough to make a difference, and the time he wasted on a phone call would remove whatever hope remained of getting any information from the dying man.
Frayne’s lips were moving, blowing slow crimson bubbles. Remo bent down low enough to try to hear what Frayne was saying.
One word, repeated in a weak whisper, twice.
Radcliff.
Remo was about to try a question, when the light went out behind Frayne’s eyes, his muscles going slack in death.
Too late. He’d have to fit the name, be it a person, place or institution.
He spent another twenty seconds with the killer, turning empty pockets inside out. Besides the knife and gun, his adversary carried nothing on his person. No ID, no money, credit cards, no Kleenex—nothing.
A professional, thought Remo, who just happened to have someone else’s face. The fingerprints and DNA analysis would fall to someone else.
A twenty-something fox was just emerging from a taxi when he hit the driveway, reaching in her purse to pay the driver. Glancing up at Remo with green eyes that had-seen an awful lot of living, she hesitated.
“You for Jasper Frayne?” he asked.
“So what?”
“He’s indisposed. You’d better go on home.”
“Did he say that?”
“He isn’t saying much of anything.”
She got the drift then, wise enough to know that life was cheap in southern Florida. She muttered something to the cabbie, closed her door and glared at Remo as the taxi pulled away. He watched it out of sight, then followed in his rental, heading back toward Lauderdale. The name, two syllables, kept playing through his mind.
It wasn’t much, but he would have to check it out. And if he came up empty, then presumably the game was over. He would be the loser, no place left to turn.
But Remo wasn’t ready to concede defeat.
Not yet.
The game still had at least one inning left to play, and he was hanging in until the bitter end.
Chapter 8
“It may take some time,” the head of CURE had warned him. “Even if you are sure of what you heard—”
“I’m sure,” said Remo, interrupting.
“Yes. Well, you will agree it is not the most uncommon name. With spelling variants—Ratcliff, and so on—it could run to several hundred thousand names, you understand. Town-wise, my atlas shows two Radcliffs at a glance—one in Kentucky, and the other up in Iowa, the latter with an e. I would venture there must be schools, libraries, hospitals…”
“Just do the best you can, Smitty.”
“Of course. You are staying in Fort Lauderdale?”
“Until I hear from you.”
“Do you think that its wise?”
“The cops have got their man. I’m clear here.”
“Very well. I will be in touch.”
May take some time, he thought, disgustedly, as he replaced the phone. Smith had been right on that score, anyway. Two wasted days in Lauderdale, at the motel. Chiun didn’t seem to mind. To the Master of Sinanju, this was just the logical continuation of Smith’s lunacy. But it was making Remo nervous.
He already had the bad news, a return call from the CURE director no more than thirty minutes after he had hung up. Devona Price was missing from her home in Illinois, the house ransacked, though nothing on the surface indicated she was dead. The word from Carson City had been more decisive—Yuli Cristobal shot twice and stuffed into a casket at his place of business. No apparent witnesses, no clues.
Leak-plugging time.
Someone had been concerned enough by Remo’s questions to react with violence. Who had spilled the beans? Not Frayne, since Remo didn’t have a chance to question him before his killer paid a call. That narrowed it to Price or Cristobal, but Remo knew it made no difference. Both of them were gone, beyond his reach. It might have helped to grill the squealer, find out whom he called, but there would be no hope of that now. If Price was still among the living, it could only mean that she had found herself a hidey-hole, and chasing her would be a waste of energy.