Never Say Die

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.

Instead, he swam by day—innumerable laps around the motel’s swimming pool—and worked the beach at night. No showing off in front of tourists during daylight hours. Remo backed off the Sinanju dives that he had learned from Chiun and simply swam to work off nervous energy.

The nights were something else.

He went out late, allowing youthful drunks and lovers ample time to finish up their business on the beach. A brooding fear of crime helped clear the water’s edge, and Remo rarely saw another living soul. If there were muggers lurking in the shadows, watching him, they had enough sense left in wasted brains to let him be.

Too bad. He would have welcomed company, if they came armed and looking for an easy touch.

Instead, he worked the sand. Ran miles along the beach without a footprint to betray his passing, up the coast from Lauderdale as far as Pompano, or south to Hollywood. It felt like floating when he ran, barefoot, left nothing for the naked eye to follow. Hunting dogs could have picked up his scent, perhaps, but he was not concerned with hounds just now.

His enemies were human beings.

Once each night, when he was sure he had the beach all to himself, he stripped his clothes off, dashed into the surf and swam as Chiun had taught him, the Sinanju way. He didn’t struggle with the current, but rather used it, let it help him as he swam for a protracted distance underwater. An observer could have been forgiven for assuming he had drowned, his body carried out to sea or maybe savaged by a shark. When Remo surfaced, better than a hundred yards from shore, he felt no weariness or pain. Instead, it was as if the worries of the day had sloughed off, like a reptile’s skin, to leave him fresh, renewed.

He carried no towel with him, but the warm air dried him as he ran back toward the motel. A mile or so before he reached his destination, Remo stopped again, this time to dress. He wondered what the police would make of the reports if someone saw him running naked on the beach, and finally decided it would not make news in Florida—unless, of course, he was a politician, televangelist or host of some insipid children’s TV show.

Chiun was sleeping when he left the room at night and made no sound when he returned, but Remo knew the old Korean was aware of every move he made.

The Master of Sinanju didn’t sleep with one eye open, but he very likely could have if he wanted to. Instead, he was so perfectly attuned to his environment—wherever and whatever it might be—that he could sense a change, regardless of his waking state. He was Chiun. That said it all.

On Day Three, when they came back from a long walk, the message light was flashing on the bedside telephone. Remo’s Aunt Mildred had called, the operator told him, asking Remo to return the call as soon as possible. Smith’s code.

The blue contact telephone rang only once before Smith picked it up.

“I have some information for you, Remo.” No amenities or salutations. The CURE director ran true to form, got straight to business, as if every wasted moment was a personal affront.

“I love to talk to you first thing in the morning, Smitty. You’re like a sparkling ray of sunshine. What have you got?”

“First I should tell you the bad news—or I suppose I should say the non-news. The police and FBI came up with nothing on the killer in Coral Springs except his fingerprints. Another perfect match with Thomas Allen Hardy. DNA analysis will take a while, but my guess is that it will be another match.”

“So, now it’s triplets,” Remo said, seriously.

“He drove a rented car,” Smith said. “They found it two doors up the street. Hardy’s fingerprints all over it. He had to show a driver’s license for the rental, but it was bogus. A patrolman found it in the glove compartment along with a street map. Maybe we can trace the artist, maybe not. It is doubtful he or she would know our Mr. X, in any case.”

“That’s it? No airline tickets? Nothing that will help us. backtrack?”

“Nothing,” Smith replied. “Right now I could not even prove he flew to Florida. I am going to check airline registers against the driver’s license, but I have a hunch he would not use the same name twice. If there is a round-trip ticket sitting in a locker. or a motel room somewhere, it is likely we will never hear about it”

“Damn! These guys drop out of nowhere, like they beamed down from the freaking starship Enterprise or something.”

“Perhaps not,” said Smith. “I began with the bad, but there is some good news.”

“I could use some,” Remo told him.

“I got lucky with a hit on Radcliff. Working from the logical assumption that the move on Jasper Frayne was probably related to Eugenix Corporation, I made cross-checks on the personnel my first priority.”

“I thought you said the records were destroyed.”

“Correct.” Smith sounded smug, and Remo wondered if his lemon face would be showing just the bare hint of a smile. “I had to do it backward, which was no small task, I can assure you.”

“Backward?”

“You recall the stated goals on the Eugenix corporate charter?”

“Education and genetic research,” Remo said.

“Correct. I think it is safe to say the education part of it was fraudulent, but I pursued both angles just in case.”

“I still don’t follow you.”

“Education calls for teachers, and genetic research calls for scientists—geneticists and biochemists at the helm, with all kinds of supporting staff.”

“Makes sense.”

“With that in mind,” Smith said, “I programmed the computer to select all secondary-level educators, medical researchers and physicians by the name of Radcliff who were practicing from 1961 to 1984, inclusive.”

“You can do that?” Remo never ceased to marvel at the ways in which advanced technology invaded private lives.

“It is not foolproof,” Smith admitted. “Someone always tumbles through the cracks, of course, but the computer threw up nineteen thousand names. Approximately half of those were teachers, anywhere from junior-high-school English to the dean of girls at a Midwestern university, but none of them had any visible connection to Eugenix.”

“Wow. Surprise.”

“The medics were a different story, but it still took time. Of the 8,295 subjects, I scored a hit on number—let me see—3,014. Naturally I finished off the run, but this is it. The one and only.”

“Do I have to guess, or what?”

“His name is Dr. Quentin Bishop Radcliff— He is an M.D., not a Ph.D. He specializes in—”

“Genetics?”

“Correct. Anyway, he did.”

“And now?”

“Let me begin at the beginning. Quentin Bishop Radcliff, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on March 7, 1931. His father was a Harvard-educated surgeon. The son followed the father into the medical field. However, his preoccupation was with research. Interned at Boston Memorial and passed his boards in 1961. Apparently, he went directly into theoretical research.”

“The same year Jasper Frayne set up Eugenix Corporation.”

“That is correct. It would seem that Radcliff made Eugenix his career for almost twenty years. He left in 1981, three years before it finally collapsed, and opened up a private practice in Raytown, Missouri, east of Kansas City.”

Remo frowned. “What kind of private practice?”

“Obstetrics and gynecology,” said Smith.

“A baby-delivery doctor?”

“So it would appear.”

“How long was he in Raytown?”

“Five or six years,” Smith replied. “It is hazy. There is a gap of several months before his name turns up again, affiliated, with an institution in the southern part of Indiana. A small town called Dogwood.”

“What kind of institution?” Remo prodded.

“It looks like a tie-in with his late-life redirection of careers,” Smith said; “Some kind of live-in clinic Radcliff calls the Ideal Maternity Home.”

“A maternity home? You mean for unwed mothers? I thought those kind of homes went out with free love and the pill a hundred years ago.”

“You would be surprised,” Smith said. “I grant you, illegitimacy does not have the stigma that it carried thirty years ago but for some it is still a deep ‘concern. Some families do not like the reminder staring them in their face. These will oftentimes go the adoption route. A maternity home is not so unusual in the latter stages of pregnancy.”

The conversation struck a chord in Remo. He had been abandoned as an infant on the steps of a Newark orphanage and tried off and on for years to track his parents down. He had found his father at last: Sunny Joe on the reservation, but saw his mother only in dreams of the beyond. But he had made a kind of peace, and how Sunny Joe helped him maintain his own generational connections.

Old business, Remo thought, and concentrated on the mystery at hand.

“So, Radcliff starts out with Eugenix, fresh from internship. He puts his twenty in, presumably genetic research, then he sees the writing on the wall and takes a hike before the creditors move in. Do we know anything about his rank within the; corporation?”

“The notation on his c.v. says he was chief researcher, which could mean anything. It does not say a word about what he was working on.”

“Okay. And when he bails out from Eugenix in—where was it?”

“Belding, Michigan,” said Dr. Smith.

“In Michigan, right, he moves to Raytown. Wasn’t there a TV show about that place?”

“I would not know,” Smith answered rather stiffly.

“Never mind. I’ll ask Chiun. He moves to Raytown, close by Kansas City, and hangs out his shingle as an OB-GYN.”

“Correct.”

“A baby doctor,” Remo said again, still grappling with the concept.

“We have established that,” said Smith.

“Another six or seven years go by, he moves to Indiana and sets up a home for unwed mothers.”

“Right again. What are you getting at?”

“I’m not sure yet,” said Remo. “He was absolutely with Eugenix when they picked up Hardy’s stiff in Carson City?”

“On the payroll, yes. There is nothing so far to connect Radcliff directly with the buy.”

“He was their chief of research,” Remo said, “unless you think he doctored up his credentials to make himself look more important, giving Pap smears out in Raytown.”

“What is your point?” A subtle undercurrent of suspicion was apparent in the CURE director’s tone. “Are you suggesting—?”

“Where do babies come from, Smitty?”

Smith’s delivery became more formal. “If you need a refresher course on sex education, perhaps Chiun can fill you in. Right now, we have a more important—”

“Sperm and eggs,” said Remo, interrupting him. “They come from sperm and eggs.”

“Yes,” Smith told him, “that is correct.”

“And what’s inside the sperm? Inside the eggs? DNA,” said Remo, answering himself. “Genetic building blocks.”

“You are suggesting—”

“I don’t know what I’m suggesting,” said Remo. “At the moment, I’m just talking to myself.”

“Please do so on your time. What you have in. mind is physically impossible with present-day technology.”

“Tell that to Dolly the sheep. We still don’t have a clue what the Eugenix crowd was working on from 1961 through ’84, correct?”

“That is true, but—”

“They were using private funds exclusively, no federal grants, no applications to the FDA or Patent Office, nothing in the media or scientific journals. Someone strikes a match in Michigan, and there’s no paper trail at all. Is that about the size of it, so far?”

“Even given the current advances in this field, remember we are talking about the 1960s. Back then it was science fiction, Remo.”

“Maybe, but it’s all we have. Ideal Maternity, in Dogwood, Indiana, correct?”

“Yes.” Smith’s voice had taken on a note of caution. “Dr. Radcliff lives across the river, in Kentucky—Brandenburg, to be precise. He also runs a clinic there. It specializes in fertility research and treatment.”

“Getting better all the time,” Remo commented.

“Be advised, Remo,” Smith said, “small-town Indiana and Kentucky might not be what you are used to. Ideas and customs that went out of vogue in mainstream culture years ago still thrive there.”

“Maybe you should FedEx my zoot suit.”

“I am serious,” Smith said, his voice turning lemony.

“No kidding,” Remo replied. “I don’t know why you’re so worried about such a stupid nothing assignment.”

Smith sighed. “Will Chiun be going with you?” he asked.

“Are you kidding? An opportunity to fly halfway across the country and sit in yet another hotel doing nothing? He wouldn’t miss it.”

Smith was silent for a long, reflective moment.

“Maybe I should hand this over to the FBI,”, he said at last, “and let them carry it from here.”

“Your call.” said Remo. “But lately that’s a virtual guarantee of a screwup.”

“Yes.” The CURE director was still thinking.

“Is there something wrong with bringing Chiun?”

“Other than the fact that he’s done virtually nothing on this, assignment so far.”

“It is known that in the hinterlands sixty years ago, the KKK ran politics in Indiana. Kentucky was riot far behind.”

“Are you trying to tell me to bring along some clean sheets just in case?”

“I am trying to be delicate about this, Remo.”

“You’re telling me an old Korean may look out of place?”

“Precisely,” Smith sounded relieved, that it was Remo who said it.

Remo felt Chiun’s venomous glare from across the room. ‘I’ll fill him in on your concerns,” he told the CURE director, “but I think the Asian Anti-Defamation League is already in business.”

“My point is that you need to be discreet. There are times when Chiun is not up to that particular challenge.”

“If there’s been a time when he was, I haven’t been around to see it.”

Remo cradled the receiver, turning to face Chiun. “We’ve got a lead,” he said.

“I heard,” Chiun said flatly. “The baby doctor.” Despite his age and seeming frailty, Chiun still had a falcon’s eyesight and the hearing of a bat. Combine that with a cheetah’s speed, the striking power of a Bengal tiger, plus a cobra’s lethal bite, thought Remo, and you could have based a wildlife video around the aging Oriental.

“We traipse off now to this Indiana,” said Chiun, not asking.

“Smith’s given us the green light.”

“Yes, Smith,” Chiun said. “Chaser of hobgoblins. This doctor he mentioned is engaged in something evil?”

“Maybe,” said Remo. “Guess we’ll know when we get there.”

“Then kill him and let us be done with this fool mission.”

“I’m going to investigate him,” Remo said. “It’s no good dropping him before I find out what he’s up to.”

“Wonderful. Now you are not content to just be a Ghostbuster. You are Remo Williams, P.I. Do you believe this doctor brings assassins back to life?” Chiun inquired.

The question made him hesitate. As an assassin who had “died” and then been resurrected with a new identity, he of all people could not automatically dismiss the notion as preposterous. Still…

“No, it’s not that simple,” Remo answered, almost smiling at the notion of reanimating corpses as a simple project. “Bringing Hardy back somehow would give him one assassin maybe, but it wouldn’t give him three. On top of that, they’re so much younger. Hardy would be pushing seventy by now.”

“Age does not preclude a man from living an active life,” the ancient Master of Sinanju said.

“It does if he was pumped full of cyanide in ’65.”

“So the answer to this riddle is something else. Something to which you know the answer already,” said Chiun. “I see it written on your face.”

Remo smiled. “Let’s say I have a hunch, okay? If it proves out, we’ve got a major problem on our hands.”

“You have a problem. I am merely a tagger-along. You admitted as much to Smith. I will sit by and wait for your shrewd detective’s brain to solve this fiendish puzzle.”

“Your confidence is overwhelming,” Remo said aridly.

“I am confident only in your ability to make a nincompoop of yourself when you indulge Smith’s idiotic whims. He even expressed worry over me. Me. Do not deny it.”

“Smith was concerned—” Remo began.

“About everything and anything.” Chiun filled in the blanks. “He is a nitwit. What is this cluck-cluck clan?”

“It’s like a social club for the discriminating psychopath. They dress up like refugees from a linen closet and run around terrorizing people who don’t pass their color test. We’ve met their kind a couple of times before.”

“I tend to forget the most distasteful elements of this land,” Chiun said.

“Selective amnesia,” Remo said. “Anyway, I think Smith would appreciate it if you kept a low profile.”

“I will eliminate no more of them than absolutely necessary,” Chiun assured him with a frosty smile.

“Seems fair.” Remo could almost find it in his heart to pity any skinhead, redneck, Ku Klux clown who tried to push the wizened old Korean around. Almost.

“We’d better pack,” he said.

“I am done already,” Chiun informed him, marching for the door. “Take care not to scratch my trunk or I will remand you to the custody of the backward cluck-clucks.”

“Maybe I should have just left him home,” Remo sighed to the empty room.