Created, the Destroyer

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

It was the first tune Remo had ever ridden across the George Washington Bridge in a taxi cab. When he was a youngster in St. Mary's Orphanage in Newark, he had never had the money. When he was a cop, he had never had the desire.

But just twelve minutes before on Fifth Avenue in New York City, he had hailed a cab and said «East Hudson, New Jersey.»

The driver refused at first until he had seen the $50 bill. Then he shut up and drove crosstown to the West Side Drive and directly onto the bridge's new lower deck, which wags called the Martha Washington.

Cynthia kept staring at her 2.5 karat square-cut engagement ring, moving her taut long fingers back and forth like a slow, horizontal yo-yo, giving her eyes the reassurance at multiple ranges that she had fulfilled her prime objective in life-she had gotten her man.

Her normally scraggly hair was coiffured into a sweeping crest that rose slightly above her head, framing her finely chiseled features.

A hint of mascara hid her lack of sleep and seemed to give her a seductive maturity. She wore lipstick in a dark enough shade to be modest, yet feminine.

A ruffled blouse set off her long, graceful swan's neck. She wore a sophisticated brown tweed suit. Her legs, only adequate when bare, were made beautiful by dark nylons. She was dressed to the teeth, and she was beautiful.

She let her ring hand find Remo's palm and leaned against him, whispering in his ear. A delicate fragrance teased Remo's nostrils, as Cynthia said: «I love you. I lost my maidenness, but I won my man.»

Then she glanced back at her diamond ring. Remo continued to stare at the approaching Palisades through the bridge's guide wires. A dull, ominous dusk without a hint of sun settled on the Jersey side of the Hudson.

«If you look hard, you can see it when it's sunny sometimes,» Cynthia said.

«What?»

«Lamonica Towers. It's only twelve stories, but you can see it from the bridge sometimes.» She clutched his hand like a possession.

«Darling?»

«Yes,» Remo said.

«Why are your hands so rough? I mean that's a funny place to have callouses.» She turned his hand over. «And on the fingertips too.»

«I haven't always been a writer. I've had to work with my hands.» He changed the subject quickly into small talk, but his mind wasn't on it. His thoughts were of three men under a tarpaulin in the back of a parked Cadillac in Pennsylvania. They were Felton's men, and if Felton knew they were dead, he would know that Remo had done it. Remo's best hope lay in the possibility that the bodies had not yet been found. His thoughts were interrupted by Cynthia exclaiming, «Isn't it beautiful?»

They were driving around a bumpy winding boulevard that rode the top edge of the Jersey Palisades. About a half-mile before them rose the twelve-story white Lamonica Towers.

«Well, isn't it?» Cynthia insisted.

Remo grunted. Beautiful? He had been operating less than a week and had already made enough mistakes to blow the whole operation. That beautiful building would probably be his tomb.

He had killed three men, impulsively, foolishly. Killed like a child with a new set of toys he had to use. Surprise, his most vital weapon, he had squandered. After MacCleary, Felton must have suspected someone would try to reach him through his daughter. He sent those three to protect against it. And Remo had killed them. Even if the bodies had not yet been found, the failure of the three men to report back to Felton might have already triggered his nervous warning system.

Remo should have taken the money from the three men and gone directly to Lamonica Towers with it, professing love for Cynthia and asking Felton if he had sent the three men. That would have been his entrance and Felton would not have been ready for an attack.

Remo looked left, into the dark mist settling over New York Harbor. Felton must have his defenses set now. The minute Remo left Felton's daughter, even for a package of cigarettes in a store, Felton would be on him. A man who would so strenuously protect his daughter's hymen would not scar her memory with her suitor's blood. As long as he was with Cynthia, Remo was safe. But when he left…

«I love you too,» Cynthia said.

«What?»

«You just squeezed my hand. And I said I love you too.»

«Yes. Of course. I love you.» Remo squeezed her soft hand again. If he could use Cynthia as a shield, right up until he got Felton alone, got him where he could get a lead to Maxwell, maybe he had a chance.

«Darling,» Cynthia interrupted his thoughts.

«Yes.»

«My hand. You're hurting it.»

«Oh. Sorry, honey.» Remo crossed his arms in front of his chest as he had seen Chiun do many times. He felt a thin smile capture his lips. Chiun had a saying for this situation, in his sing-song Oriental manner: «Poor situation is a situation of the mind. There are two sides and until the encounter is terminated, there is no such thing as a poor position to a man who can think for both sides.»

It had seemed foolish when Chiun, his parchment face wrinkling slightly, had repeated it over and over. But now it made sense. If Felton could not kill him with Cynthia present, it was Felton who would be helpless, Remo who had the first move. And if he found it impossible to get Felton alone without henchmen protecting him, he could always ask for a father and son chat with Cynthia present. Remo could do it away from the Towers where the walls moved and no one could really be sure he was alone. And Cynthia might be able to support his request to keep Felton's servants and henchmen out of it.

Remo could suggest a dinner at a restaurant. Cynthia had a wild liking for eating out. Of course, as a witness, she would have to be eliminated. CURE disapproved of witnesses.

Remo suddenly noticed Cynthia was staring hard at him as if sensing something. He blanked his mind with metered breathing lest an emotional answer to a question he was sure would come would ruin everything. Chiun had once said: «Women and cows both sense rain and danger.»

«You look so strange, darling,» Cynthia said. Her voice had a chill edge to it. Her head was cocked as if seeing a new stroke in an old painting.

«Just nervous about meeting your father, I guess,» Remo said, softly brushing her shoulder with his as he moved, dominating, close to her, keeping her blue eyes trapped in his stare. He kissed her and whispered, «No matter how it goes, I love you.»

«Don't be silly,» Cynthia said. «Daddy will just love you. He'll have to, when he sees how happy I am. I am happy. I feel beautiful and lovely and wanted. I never thought I'd feel this way ever.»

Cynthia was wiping the lipstick smears from his lips when the cab stopped at Lamonica Towers.

«Well, honey, let's meet your father,» Remo said.

«You'll love Daddy,» Cynthia said. «He's really very understanding. Why, when I phoned from Philadelphia and told him he was going to meet his future son-in-law, he was really pleased. 'Bring him right over,' he said. 'I want to meet him very badly.' »

«Did he really say that?»

«His exact words.» She mimicked her father's voice. «I want to meet him very badly.»

An alarm bell rang in Remo's mind. Felton sounded just a bit too eager. He chuckled.

«Why are you laughing?»

«Nothing. It's kind of an inside joke, between myself and me.»

«I hate inside jokes when I'm not inside.»

«It's not a very nice inside to be on,» he said.

They left the cab, Remo escorting Cynthia onto the sidewalk.

The doorman did not recognize her and was startled when she said, «Hi, Charlie.»

He blinked and said, «Oh, Miss Cynthia. I thought you were still at school.»

«No, I'm not,» Cynthia said pleasantly and unnecessarily. The foyer was spacious and striking, with light and free-flowing modern designs interplaying in a harmony of colors and motion.

The foyer rug was soft but not too pliant and Remo felt as if he were walking over densely packed fresh-cut grass. The air was pure, too, as invisible air conditioners pumped in their charcoal-filtered product.

«No, not those elevators,» Cynthia said. «We have a special one. It's in back.»

«Oh, I should have guessed,» Remo said.

«You're mad at something.»

«No,» he said. «Not at all.»

«You are.»

«I'm not.»

«You didn't think we had this much money and you're mad because you've suddenly found out I'm stinking rich.»

«Why should I be mad at that?»

«Because you think it compromises you, makes you look like a fortune-hunter.»

Remo would settle for her explanation. «Well…» he said.

«Let's not discuss it,» Cynthia said, reaching into her purse for keys. As women often do, she had argued both sides and was angry because one of them had lost.

«Now, listen,» Remo said, his voice rising. «You started…»

«See, I told you you were mad.»

«I'm not mad, dammit, but I'm going to be,» Remo yelled.

Softly Cynthia said, «Then why are you yelling?»

She didn't expect an answer. She fumbled in her purse and came out with a special key on a silver chain. The key, instead of being stamped from flat metal, ended with a round tube which she inserted in a round hole on the side of the highly-burnished steel elevator door. Remo had seen the key before. He had taken one like it among the others from the ignition of a Cadillac in which three men were killed.

Cynthia held the key to the right for about ten seconds, then turned it to the left for another ten, then removed it. The elevator door opened like none Remo had ever seen before. It didn't pull to the side. It lifted up into the wall.

«You're probably thinking there's something strange about this elevator,» she said.

«Sort of,» Remo admitted.

«Well, Daddy goes to these weird extremes to keep undesirable elements out of the building and especially our apartment. If he's not expecting you, you have to use the key. This elevator goes only to our floor. By using this one, we don't have to wait in the room.»

«Room?» Remo asked.

«Yes. A special room you have to wait in while Jimmy, the butler, looks through a one-way mirror to see who you are. I watched him once when I was little.»

She placed her ringed finger on Remo's broad chest. He felt the soft, urgent pressure. «Please don't think Daddy eccentric. He's had such a hard time since mother.»

«What happened?»

«Well, you'll have to know sooner or later.» The elevator door shut behind them and they rose, slowly at first, then quickly, silently, cables and gears immaculately meshing in a smooth concert of action.

«Mother,» Cynthia said, «carried on with another man. I was about eight. We were never close, Mother and I. She worried more about how she looked than how she acted. Anyhow, Daddy found her one day with a man. I was in the living room. He told both of them to leave and they left. And we never saw them again. Since then, he hasn't been the same. I think that's why he's so protective where I'm concerned.»

«You mean, he installed all these special safety gadgets after that?»

Cynthia paused. «Well, no, not exactly. He had all that as long as I could remember. But, well, he was always sensitive, and that just made him more so. Don't think badly of him. I love him.»

«I have the greatest respect for him,» Remo said, and then very casually added in an even tone, a very even tone: «Maxwell.»

«What?»

«Maxwell.»

«What?» Cynthia looked puzzled.

«I thought you said Maxwell,» Remo said. «Didn't you say that?»

«No. I thought you said it.»

«Said what?» Remo asked.

«Maxwell.»

«I never heard of any Maxwell, have you?»

Cynthia shook her head and smiled. «Just a coffee and a car. I don't know how we got started on this.»

«Neither do I,» said Remo with a shrug of his shoulders. The gambit had worked but it had produced nothing.

In Folcroft classes, an instructor had made him practice dropping a name or a test word at the end of a sentence. Remo had told the instructor it was the stupidest thing he had ever heard of next to asking a man if he were a spy.

And the instructor had answered that he should try asking that very thing sometime, very casually, as if requesting a match and see what happened. «Watch the eyes,» the instructor had intoned.

Remo had watched Cynthia's eyes and they had remained blue, clear, beautiful and guileless.

The elevator door opened, this time from the bottom, sinking out of sight. Cynthia gave a «What-can-you-do-with-Daddy?» shrug and walked into a large library, magnificently furnished in fine oak with a view of New York from a large white-tiled patio with a mended palm pot in the corner.

«This is it,» Cynthia beamed, «Isn't it beautiful?»

Remo examined the walls, his eyes searching for cracks, a change in shade of paint, a bookcase out of line, a hint, any hint to where the walls moved. Nothing.

«Yes,» he said, «very beautiful.»

«Daddy,» she yelled, «I'm home and he's with me.»

Remo walked to the center of the room, keeping his back equi distant from the three walls. He suddenly wished he had brought a revolver.

The elevator door rose silently to the top, sealing off the lift. It blended almost perfectly with the white wall, the only one free of books. If he hadn't known the elevator was there, Remo never would have seen the seam. That's what MacCleary had meant by moving walls. Near the invisible elevator door was a real door, probably the one leading to the main elevator. It was arranged so a man hiding behind that door would be duck soup for someone coming off the hidden elevator.

So the walls moved.

«In the library, Daddy. We used the special elevator,» Cynthia called out.

«Coming, dear.» The voice was heavy.

Felton came into the room through the obvious door. Remo sized him up. Medium sized, but heavy set, with a massive neck. He wore a gray suit and he was carrying a side arm under the jacket. It was probably one of the finest jobs of concealing a shoulder holster Remo had ever seen. The suit's shoulders were padded heavily to leave a drape over the chest. Concealed under this drape on the left side was a revolver.

Remo was looking so intently for the gun that he didn't see Felton's mouth open in astonishment.

«What?» Felton yelled.

Startled, Remo spun quickly, moving into a defensive position on the balls of his feet. But Felton had not yelled at Remo. He was yelling at Cynthia, his bull neck turning red.

«What have you done to yourself? What have you done?»

«But, Daddy,» Cynthia whined, running to the large man and throwing her arms over his powerful shoulders, «I look beautiful this way.»

«You look like a street walker. You look beautiful without lipstick.»

«I don't look like a street walker. I know what street walkers look like.»

«You what?» Felton boomed. He raised an arm.

Cynthia covered her face with her hands. Remo fought back an instinct to intervene. He just watched, carefully judging Felton. This was a good moment to examine his opponent's moves and search for the «precede», the tell-tale indication that all men had that gave away their intentions.

And Felton had one. The moment before he had raised his voice the second time, his right hand had nervously shot to the back of his head to pat down an invisible cowlick. It might have been just nervousness, but it had all the earmarks of a giveaway. Remo would watch for it.

Felton waited, his large hand poised above his head. Cynthia was trembling. More than she had to, Remo sensed.

Felton lowered the hand. «I wasn't going to hit you, dearest,» he said in a pleading voice.

Cynthia trembled some more, and Remo knew she was rubbing it in; knew she had her father right where she wanted him and she wasn't going to let him off the hook until she got what she wanted.

«I wasn't going to hit you,» Felton said again. «I haven't hit you since you were eight and ran away once.»

«Go ahead, hit me. Hit me if it will make you feel better. Hit your only daughter.»

«Dear, I wasn't.»

She straightened up and lowered her hands to her hips. «And making a scene in front of my fiance, the first time you meet him. He must think we're just grand.»

«I'm sorry,» Felton said. He turned to Remo with a glare that escalated into pure hate-the hate of a man who not only feared an enemy, but had been embarrassed before him as well.

Remo took one look into his eyes and he knew that the bodies in the Cadillac had been found. Felton knew.

«So good to see you,» Felton said, his voice suppressing his hate. «My daughter tells me your name is Remo Cabell.»

«Yes it is, sir. I'm glad to meet you. I've heard a great deal about you.» Remo did not move to shake hands.

«Yes, I imagine you have,» Felton said. «You'll have to excuse this little scene, but I have an aversion to lipstick. I've known too many women who use that lip paint.»

«Oh, Daddy, you're such a prude.»

«If you would, my dear, take off the lipstick, I would appreciate it.» Felton's tone was a hard-forced moderation of a great desire to scream.

«Remo likes it that way, Daddy.»

«I'm sure it makes no difference to Mr. Cabell and his presence here whether you wear face paint or not. I'm sure he'd like you better without it, wouldn't you, Mr. Cabell?»

Remo had a strong urge to needle, to demand even heavier lipstick, more mascara, beauty marks over both eyes. But he fought it down.

«I think Cynthia is beautiful with or without lipstick.»

Cynthia flushed. She beamed and radiated like any woman who has been charged up with a compliment.

«I'd love to take off the lipstick, Daddy, if you take off that.»

Felton lowered his gaze. He stepped back and like an innocent lamb, said «What?»

«You're wearing it again.»

«Please, dear.»

«There's no need to wear one in the house.» She looked back at Remo, her beautiful neck white and smooth, catching and molding, it seemed, the light from the ceiling.

«Daddy carries a lot of money sometimes and that allows him a permit for a gun. But that isn't the real reason he carries a gun.»

«No?» Remo said.

«No,» Cynthia said. «He carries one… I hate to say it… because he reads so many of those trashy mystery books.» She turned back to her father. «I mean it.»

«I haven't worn this for ten years, dear.»

«And now you must have read another one of those books that used to intrigue you so. And I thought you had changed your reading taste.» She spoke with mock anger but with warmth as she snaked her hand into her father's jacket and removed a gun metal blue pistol which she held at arm's length like a smelly dead mouse.

«I'll give this to Jimmy and have him put it away where he'll know it will be safe,» she said with authority.

She brushed past the hulk of the man at the doorway and left as Remo called, «Don't go now.»

But she was gone and Remo was alone with Felton, a disarmed Felton to be sure, but one who could count on reinforcements from the wall that moved.

Remo felt the evening air, cold and chill, blowing from the patio onto his back. He smiled politely at Felton who now had Remo in a position where he could kill him, out of Cynthia's sight.

Felton nodded gruffly. He began to speak when, from the back of the apartment, Cynthia's voice rang out: «Uncle Marvin. Uncle Marvin, what are you doing here?»

«Just got to tell your father something, that's all. Got to tell him something and run.»

Felton, his big shoulders hunching near his ears, his large hands finding the side of the oaken desk behind him, his backside leaning on the polished desk top, looked at Remo.

«That's Marvin Moesher, not really an uncle, but he works for me. He's close to Cynthia.» Felton's tone to Remo was almost conspiratorial.

«What sort of work are you in?» Remo asked.

«I have many interests. I guess you must too.» Felton did not remove his eyes from Remo as a fat, thick-featured, balding man waddled into the room.

«A new employee?» Moesher asked.

Felton shook his head, but the eyes remained fixed.

«I got something private I should tell.»

«Oh, I think we can talk fairly freely in front of this young man. He's very interested in our business. He might like to see our Jersey City operation.» Felton brushed back an imaginary cowlick.

That was the indicator, Remo thought.

«Would you like to see it?» Felton asked.

«Not really now,» Remo said, «We were all going to have dinner soon. That's what Cynthia was planning.»

«You could be back in a half hour.»

Moesher agreed. «A half hour, what's a half hour?» he said, with a shrug of his shoulders and a tone of voice indicating that a half hour was the most worthless unit of time imaginable. «A half hour,» he repeated.

«I'd rather have dinner first,» Remo said.

Felton's steely eyes fixed Remo's again. «Mr. Moesher has been on vacation. He's just come back from Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York.»

Don't move. Control breath. Blank mind. No show of emotion. Remo made a great display of concern for a place to sit.

He chose one of the chairs near where Felton leaned on the desk.

«He found it interesting, right, Marvin?»

«Oh,» Remo said, «Is it a rest home or something?»

«No,» Moesher said.

«What is it?» Remo asked.

«I think it may be what I thought it was,» Moesher said and Felton nodded.

«What did you think it was?» Remo said.

«A sanitarium,» Moesher said. «And I got some very interesting things to say about it.»

Remo rose from the chair. «Good,» he said. «Maybe I will take that trip to your Jersey City operation, Mr. Felton. Cynthia will probably be all night, anyway. And we can talk about this sanitarium.»

Felton said to Moesher. «I can't go just now, Marvin. You take him. I'll hear from you later about your wonderful rest at Folcroft.»

Felton's right hand raced along underneath the ledge of the desk and pressed a hidden button. The secret elevator door silently lowered. Felton yelled quickly: «Good to see you here, James. We wondered when you would get back from the store.» It was an obvious signal to the man dressed in butler's uniform who stepped from the secret elevator. He had been listening to Felton and Remo and Moesher, just waiting to be called on. The butler said «Very good, sir,» and walked to the other end of the room, trying to look busy.

«Marv. Take Mr. Cabell down on this elevator. It goes right to the underground garage.»

As Remo moved toward the elevator with Moesher, he sized up the rawboned butler who had passed him. He was tall and rangy and also wore a concealed pistol. His was under the armpit of the waistcoat.

Remo was glad to enter the elevator first. His back was to the elevator wall, a wall that he hoped did not also move.

There were only three buttons on the main panel, PH for penthouse, one marked M, probably for the main floor, and another marked B, apparently for basement. Or was there a special basement for people like Remo? Moesher nodded to Felton and the elevator door closed upward. Moesher was a good four inches shorter than Remo, his neck flowed in layers to his gaudy, shiny, brown suit.

He pressed one of his fat fingers against the button marked B, then turned around. «The car is in the special garage in the basement,» he said.

«What kind of car is it?» Remo asked. «A Maxwell?»

The fat man slid a hand toward his gaudy jacket in one of the sloppiest giveaways Remo had ever seen. Remo could see the tension creep into the thick skull at the mention of Maxwell.

The tub turned around slowly, moving the hand from his jacket. The hand was empty. He smiled, a thick-lipped smile.

«No,» he said flatly, «It's a Cadillac.»

Remo nodded. «Nice car. I was riding in one last night.»

The squat man nodded, but said nothing. He showed all the characteristics of a man about to kill, almost like a text book.

He could have been used as a demonstration model. He avoided the eyes of his victim, shuffled nervously, had difficulty carrying on a conversation. Remo knew what would happen. A gun brought out, aimed and silently fired. It would be soon. Beads of perspiration held a convention on the folds of the tub's forehead.

And Remo had to go with him, at least until they got off this damned elevator that might be wired for sound or television or poison gas. He had to go with Moesher until they were alone and he could try to get a lead on Maxwell from him.

Remo took an up-and-down look at Moesher. This tub of chicken fat, he thought, will be easy. Remo couldn't envision the little blob with the downcast eyes doing anything competently.

He couldn't envision it until the elevator door had opened and they had both stepped out into an underground parking garage. There were no windows and Remo could not see where the door was. The sole light in the area cast more of a gray pall than brightness over a pearl gray Rolls Royce and a black Cadillac.

By the time Remo could envision Moesher doing anything right, it was too late and Remo realized he had made the cardinal mistake. He had violated the first rule beaten into him at Folcroft: pride. Never think you're so good that you can't be beaten.

Proverbs were of little use to him now as he stared down the silencer-encased muzzle of a luger held at arm's length in the pudgy fingers of Moesher. And now the brown eyes were staring at him and the feet were no longer shuffling.

The hand was steady, too. And Moesher had chosen the proper distance. Twelve feet-close enough for extreme accuracy, far enough to prevent lunges.

The little tub had moved so silently and smoothly and Remo had been so confident, that now Remo was just a squeeze away from a muzzle flash, then death.

The only picture Remo's mind could conjure up was one of Chiun, moving sideways, crabwise, skittering to escape Remo's deadly hail of bullets in the gymnasium that first day. They had discussed the technique but Remo's training was cut too short to give him mastery of it.

Moesher spoke: «Okay, booby. Where you from? Who sent you?»

Remo could have answered smart, could have fired off a sharp remark. He could have done that and been dead. But as the heavy dank basement air seemed to freeze his lungs and his hands grew damp and his eyes clouded with a film that only pressured terror could bring, he decided to play it by the book. Do what he had been instructed to do.

«What's the gun for?» he said, surprised. He moved forward, slowly, a half shuffle as the action of his hands rising over his head hid his move.

«I'm going to tell Mr. Felton about this,» Remo said, still conveying fear. He waved his hands again over his head, this time taking a full step.

«Another step and you die,» Moesher said. The gun didn't wobble.

«I come from Maxwell,» Remo said.

«Who's Maxwell?» Moesher smiled.

«Kill me and you're never going to find out. Not until he comes for you himself.»

It was a bluff and Moesher wasn't buying. Remo saw the brown eyes squint and knew a shot, a silent dead missile, would explode from the barrel. Now. Complete collapse of the muscles was the fastest way.

Zap went the gun and Remo's sturdy frame crumbled to the garage's cement floor. The body lay there not moving and Moesher, not quite sure whether Remo started to fall before he was hit, came closer to put a bullet in the brain. He came forward two waddling steps, raised the gun slowly and aimed at the young man's left ear. He came one step too close.

He squeezed the trigger but the ear was no longer there. One moment the body had been still, the next moment it was in the air. Remo's foot kicked Moesher's gun arm away. He fired twice but the bullets thudded against the ceiling, chipping cement like an explosion of gravel.

Remo was on Moesher's back, his left arm hooked under the fat man's armpit for leverage against the thick neck. His right arm pressed his opponent's right arm upwards until the luger dropped.

Remo concentrated the pressure, then whispered into the nearest ear: «Maxwell. Who's Maxwell?»

The tub grunted a curse. He struggled to twist his neck free. Remo was surprised how easy it was. When he was a policeman, he had never been able to use the hold competently. But the police had never taught about sustained pressures in their cursory six-week training course.

«Maxwell. Where is he?»

«Aaaah.»

The tub struggled. Remo increased pressure from his left hand, down, down, down. Crack! The spinal column gave. Moesher went limp. Remo gave a final thrust. The head merely went further down in a ghastly limp compliance.

So Moesher wouldn't talk either. Remo stood up and let the body fall. It had been too close. Overconfidence could kill.

Moesher's thick lips opened as a trickle of blood flowed down his left cheek. His open brown eyes were dazed, clouded by death, seeing nothing.

He couldn't be left there.

Remo looked around and saw only the cars in which to hide a body. They wouldn't do. It might be embarrassing later to have to explain what happened to dear old Uncle Marvin, if he and Cynthia got into that car.

He saw a door in the corner of the garage enclosure. He walked to it. Inside was a large commercial washer and dryer, apparently for the use of Lamonica Towers' residents. Remo glanced at the dryer, white and spotless in the corner. A cruel smile formed on his lips.

He dragged Moesher's heavy body across the garage floor to the dryer and with one hand flipped open the door. The body was big but the opening for clothes was twenty-four inches in diameter, big enough for even a big body. Remo stuffed Moesher's head and shoulders into the dryer compartment, twisted them until they turned sideways, making room for the rest of the body. He pushed Moesher's legs in. He noticed he wore argyle socks. With a snap of his fingernails, he opened an artery on Moesher's neck. Then he dried his hands on Moesher's trousers.

He snapped shut the glass-fronted round door and looked for the starter button. «That cheap bastard, Felton,» he murmured. «A coin machine. For people who live in his apartment building.»

He reached for his pocket, then said to hell with it. He wasn't going to feed his own money into Felton's goddam laundry.

Remo opened the round door again and reached far into the machine until he felt pockets. He reached in and yanked out all Moesher's change. Good. He had a lot of dimes.

Remo clicked the door shut again, then placed six dimes in the coin slot. The machine groaned into operation, the cylinder spinning, the heat increasing. Remo pocketed the remaining quarter and three pennies, then stepped back and watched the accelerating swirl of clothes and flesh.

A pink film clouded the round window. That was the blood. The centrifugal force of the spinning cylinder would force the blood from Moesher's body through the cut artery. The heat would dry him out and for sixty cents, Moesher was well on his way to becoming a mummy.

«Oh, Remo, you're a bastard,» Remo said softly to himself. He whistled as he walked back toward the elevator. Now to get back to the twelfth floor.