Acid Rock

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The prop plane landed at Pittsburgh Airport in a slight rain and the stewardess decided the man in the fourth aisle seat on the left was just rude. But that was the way it often was with foreigners.

He just sat there. He had ignored her when she asked if he wanted anything. He had ignored her when she brought around the tray of drinks. He had ignored her when she asked if she could bring him a magazine. He just sat there, clutching his black leather doctor's bag to his chest, looking intently through the window.

And when the plane landed, why he had just ignored the sign demanding that seat belts remain fastened, and he was moving toward the exit door before the plane rolled to a stop. She started to tell him to get back to his seat, but he looked at her in such a strange way she decided not to say anything. And then she was too busy keeping the other passengers in their seats to worry about it.

Gunner Nilsson was the first one off. He marched down the ramp of the plane like the god Thor himself, sure of where he was going, sure of what he was doing, sure in a way he had not been sure of his medical work for years.

For thirty-five years, he had in his mind been Doctor Nilsson. But now, he felt only like Gunner Nilsson, the last surviving member of the Nilsson family, and it brought him a new sense of responsibility. Titles come and titles go; stations in life change for better or worse; but tradition is tradition. It is rooted in the blood and while it might be hidden or even suppressed, a day comes and it emerges, stronger for having been rested. He had been a fool to think of building hospitals. As an act of penitence for what? For the fact that his family for six hundred years had been the best at what they did? That required no penitence from anyone. He was glad now that he knew it. It removed the murder of Lhasa's killers from the realm of revenge and made it professional, an act of ritual ceremony.

The rain was falling harder when he hailed a cab in front of the airport and told the driver to take him to the Mosque Theater in the aging heart of the aged city.

He pressed his face against the light-streaked window as the cab plowed along streets whose drainage systems obviously had been designed to handle the runoffs from a heavy spring dew. Pittsburgh was ugly, but then, he reflected, so were all American cities. It was not true, as radicals charged, that America had invented the slum, but it had raised it to the level of an art form.

The rain made it difficult to see well, but not even the rapping of the car's pistons, the tapping of the valves, and the rumbling of the muffler could block out the noise when the taxi pulled up near the Mosque Theater.

The sidewalk and street were almost filled with teenage girls. Grim-faced policemen in dark blue uniforms, yellow rain slickers, and white riot helmets stood in front of the theater, doing ushers' work at taxpayers' expense, trying to keep the frenzied teenagers in the ticket purchase lines. The wet street glistened with the flashing overhead lights from the marquee: «TONIGHT. ONE NIGHT ONLY. MAGGOT AND THE DEAD MEAT LICE.»

«Hey, it's somebody,» one girl shouted as Nilsson's cab stopped in the street, just outside the main horde of teenagers.

Heads turned toward his cab.

«No, it's nobody,» said another girl.

«Sure it is. He's got a cab, ain't he?»

«Anybody can have a cab.»

Nilsson stepped out of the cab after paying the driver and tipping him twenty cents, which he felt was appropriate. He was met by the two girls. He pulled his collar up around his neck.

«You're right,» the first girl said. «It's nobody.» The girls turned away in disgust, the rain water streaming down their shiny, unpainted faces.

Before moving, Nilsson looked around quickly. The police had been too busy to notice him. Good. He turned his back on the theater and walked briskly away. He needed to think. He tucked the doctor's bag under his arm, to protect its precious contents with arm and shoulder, and began to walk along the pavement, his ripplesoled shoes squishing on those rare, level sections of the cracked, torn sidewalk. He must be careful not to step in puddles. Water on the bottom of his shoes could be wiped off; water inside shoes would squish and make it impossible for him to move silently if he had to.

He walked around the entire block, placing his feet carefully. Then, his mind made up, he crossed the street in front of the theater, walked around the groups of girls and toward the alley leading to the theater's side entrance.

«Hold it, Mac. Where you going?» a policeman asked.

«I'm a doctor,» Nilsson said, intentionally thickening his foreign accent and holding his medical bag out for inspection. «Someone called me. Somebody's sick backstage.»

The policeman looked at him suspiciously.

«Come, officer,» Nilsson said. «Do I really look like a fan of Maggot and the Meatballs or whatever they are?»

Under his bushy moustache, the young policeman's mouth relaxed into a grin. «Guess not, Doc. Go ahead. Call if you need anything.»

«Thank you, officer,» Nilsson said.

He slipped into the backstage door and, as he expected, found a scene of total confusion and bedlam, except for one grizzled old watchman, who moved forward toward him.

«Can I help you, mister?» he said.

«I'm Doctor Johnson. I've been asked to stand by during the performance in case there are any injuries or illnesses.»

«Let's hope not,» the old man said.

Nilsson winked at him and leaned forward. He felt good. His socks were dry. «Don't worry,» he said. «We haven't lost an idiot yet.»

He leaned back and shared a generation gap with the watchman.

«Okay, doctor. If you want anything, holler.»

«Thank you.»

Stage hands were moving musical instruments into place behind the curtain, beyond which Nilsson could hear the throaty murmur of audience. But he saw no sign of anything that looked like Maggots or Lice. Then across the stage, in the opposite wing, he saw the redheaded girl. She was tall and pretty, but her face had an absolute blankness that he recognized as narcosis, from either overdose or continuous drug use.

As he peeled off his light trench coat, he looked carefully around. There was no sign of an American who looked like he might be Remo. No sign of the old Oriental. If they were the girl's bodyguards, they should have been there.

But there was someone watching the girl. She stood indolently near a panel from which stage lights were controlled. Two men standing in the center of the stage were watching her. One wore incredibly vulgar sports clothes, almost black eyeglasses, and a black hairpiece that looked no more natural upon his head than a clump of sod would have. He was speaking rapidly to a short squat man, wearing a snap-brim hat. The squat man listened, then turned and looked at the redhead. He turned back and nodded. Instinctively, probably unconsciously, his right hand moved up and touched his jacket near the left armpit. He was carrying a gun.

Nilsson knew that he had just seen a contract issued for the girl's death. And he, Nilsson, had directed that the open contract be closed. The presence of the squat man in the hat was an insuit to the Nilsson family that could not be allowed.

Nilsson unlocked the snap on top of his doctor's bag and reached in with one hand, checking his revolver to make sure it was fully loaded and the safety was off. Satisfied with that, he placed the bag on a small table and shielding it from the view of anyone else in the backstage mob, he attached the silencer to it. Then he closed the bag again and turned back to the girl.

How easy it would be now, if she alone were his target. One bullet. The million-dollar contract would be completed. But it was more complicated than that. That was for the million, but for Gunner, there were the two men who had killed Lhasa. Remo and the old Oriental. He scanned the crowd again. Still no sign of them. So be it. If it was necessary to wait for them to show up, he would wait. And if it was necessary to keep the girl alive for that, then he would keep the girl alive.

And if the world needed a message that the Nilsson family did not take kindly to people interfering with contracts they had taken, well, then he would send the world that message.

Nilsson looked at the girl again. Her eyes still did not focus, and her body was slumped against the light panel. He walked casually across the stage. As he neared, he saw the girl's mouth was moving slightly, forming words to herself, «Gotta ball that Maggot. Gotta ball that Maggot.»

As he stood by the girl, Nilsson saw the man with the hat nod and turn away from the stage. Nilsson's body tensed instinctively. The man came toward him, then brushed past Nilsson without seeing him and headed toward a small stairway that apparently led upstairs to box-seats.

Nilsson waited a few seconds, then followed. At the top of the stairs, away from the protective muffling of the heavy fireproof curtain, the sound of the audience was deafening. The man had entered a small one-person box seat at the left-hand side of the stage, from which he would have an unobstructed view into the right wing backstage. The door to the box had a small glass panel in it and Nilsson could see the man seat himself, take off his hat, then lean forward on the brass rail, as if gauging the distance to the girl, whom Nilsson could see over the man's shoulder.

As Nilsson watched, he saw a flurry of excitement in the wings and then, wearing their satin suits from which hung steaks, chops, beef kidneys, and slices of liver, came what were obviously Maggot and the Dead Meat Lice. Their costumes were white and already the heat of the backstage lights was softening the cuts of meat and blood was beginning to run down the front of their costumes.

Despite his absorption with the man in the hat and Vickie Stoner, Nilsson had time to think to himself: Incredible.

Then there was a fanfare. The houselights dimmed, went up, dimmed again. The front curtains opened and out stepped the fat, wigwearing man with the loud clothes and black eyeglasses. A cheer went up from the audience, now jammed in, over one thousand strong.

«Hi, kiddioes. It's me, the Big Banger here,» he said into the microphone. «You all ready for a little musical banging?»

A cheer went up from the crowd, one thousand voices wailing and screeching. The man at the microphone laughed aloud. «Well, you've come to the right place,» he shouted in an accent that

Nilsson pondered for a moment, then placed as American Southern, not knowing that New York City disc jockeys always sounded as if they had Southern accents. The worse the music, the stronger the accent.

«We're all gonna get a bang out of tonight's show,» the man said, and then glanced up toward the box seat to his right. Nilsson saw the fat man's head nod slightly in the box seat just in front of him.

«We want Maggot,» screamed a voice. «Where's the Lice?» came another.

«They rot-cheer,» said Big Bang Benton. «They just carving up a few little pieces of meat among them. Lucky little pieces of meat,» he leered.

The audience laughed, the girls openly, the boys more self-consciously. Big Bang Benton seemed pleased that he had stopped the catcalls and the demand for Maggot but he did not want to put up with it again. It was demeaning to a star of his caliber. He cleared his throat, raised his hands over his head officiously, and said:

«Kiddioes. It's that time. Let's hear it for … the one … the only … the greatest ever since the world began … Maggot and the Dead Meat Lice.»

The theater erupted in sound. The lights dimmed even further and a giant spot hit the center of the stage curtain. As Nilsson had expected, the heavy man in the theater box leaned forward. Through the window, Nilsson saw the man's hand reach under his coat. Nilsson silently pulled open the door to the box and stepped inside. His shoes were noiseless as he moved down the carpeted steps toward the man. Big Bang Benton still stood framed in the spot of the light; the audience continued its frenzied cheering; the main curtains remained closed. Faint lights illuminated the wings of the stage. To the right, Nilsson could see the red-haired girl, Vickie Stoner, in the same spot. Now Nilsson saw a glint of metal in the fat man's hand.

Nilsson reached into his doctor's bag and pulled out his revolver. He looked past the fat man and saw Big Bang look up toward the box. The heavy man began to raise his pistol. Nilsson stepped behind his chair. In one smooth motion, he dropped his medical bag and slapped his left arm around the fat man's neck. He yanked him backwards away from the rail so that if the gun dropped, it would land on the carpeted floor of the theater box. The man struggled until Nilsson put the barrel of the .38 revolver against the base of his neck and fired down into his torso. The silencerequipped gun coughed faintly; the man shuddered and slumped in the crush of Nilsson's left arm. Dead. The man's gun dropped noiselessly at his own feet. Nilsson's bullet would remain in the man's body until police surgeons removed it but there had been no chance of it exiting and plunging into the audience.

The man was dead but Nilsson held his arm around the corpse's throat, feeling the power the murder had given him. How many years had it been. Twenty-five? Thirty? He had not raised a gun in anger. He had turned his back on a family history and what had it gotten him? A famous tradition with no one to carry it on, and a dead brother. As the man grew heavier in his arm, Gunner Nilsson decided something that he had always felt: he was the greatest assassin in the world. And he was doing now, in vengeance and in the full power of his genius and skill, what God had always meant him to do. The blood pounded in his temples. Viking fury rose in his throat and he tasted the bite of anger because someone had dared to violate the closing of the contract.

And there at center stage in his purple jacket and his black eyeglasses was the imbecile who had ignored Gunner Nilsson's warning to the world: this job is mine, stay away. Big Bang or whatever his name was would need a lesson too. The curtains began to open. There on the stage wearing their charnel-house costumes were Maggot and the Lice. The audience went wild. The musicians just stood there. Girls jumped over seats and began clambering down the aisles. Reluctantly, Big Bang Benton began to move out of the center spot toward the side of the stage away from Vickie Stoner. Nilsson waited until the angle was perfect, then snapped off a shot from his .38 that ripped through the front of the Adam's apple of the disc jockey. Benton clutched his throat and staggered offstage. No one noticed him, and the bullet, after passing through his throat, buried itself quietly in a sand bag near the edge of the curtain.

Nilsson smiled. Big Bang would not use his voice again to offer someone a contract that the Nilsson family had closed.

Then Maggot hit a chord on his guitar, one heavy seventh chord that hung in the air of the theater and whose echo overwhelmed and quieted down the fans' noise. For a moment, the echo competed with the stillness of the audience and then over the silence was heard the plaintive haunting cry of the red-haired woman backstage:

«Gotta ball that Maggot.»

The sound was buried as the music began. Nilsson raised his pistol again, looked down its barrel and planted the tip of it against Vickie

Stoner's closed right eyelid. He held it there momentarily, then smiled and lowered the pistol. The million dollars would come later. First, there must be Remo and the aged Oriental.

Gunner Nilsson walked out of the theater box, back into the hallway and headed for the front of the theater. They would not be here tonight, his two primary targets. He would watch and wait. He went down a long flight of stone stairs to the lobby of the movie house which had, as most movie houses, been elegant once, but was now just wilted.

The red carpet in the lobby was worn, and tan threads showed through it as Gunner Nilsson walked on dry shoes toward the front door. His mind was far away. He would have to call Switzerland again and tell them that anyone else who moved on the Vickie Stoner contract would end up like the man in the hat. He would have to find out where the Maggots, or whatever their names were, would be performing next, because he would follow them until the girl's bodyguards arrived. When he found them, he would extract his revenge. And then… but only then … the girl.

These things went through his mind as he walked toward the front doors of the theater and his mind was not fully on his surroundings and he did not notice the young white man coming through the door until he had bumped into him.

«Excuse me,» Nilsson said.

The white man grunted.

Nor did Gunner Nilsson notice the old Oriental standing off to the side of the lobby, looking at still photographs of movies that were coming Tuesday and Wednesday back in 1953.

The Oriental noticed Gunner Nilsson however.

«Come on,» Remo said to Chiun. «We've got to keep an eye on Vickie if she's here.» He noticed Chiun's eyes following the man who had just bumped Remo. «What are you staring at?» Remo asked.

«That man,» Chiun said. «What about him?»

«He bumped into you but did not blink,» Chiun said.

«So what?» Remo said. «He didn't burp either.»

«Yes, but he should have blinked.» «Maybe his blinker broke,» Remo said, still looking out toward the street, where the man now stepped off into the rain. «What difference does it make?»

«To a fool, nothing makes a difference,» Chiun said. «Just remember, that man did not blink.»

«I'll carry the knowledge with me to the end of my days,» Remo said. «Come on.» He turned and walked rapidly toward the orchestra section of the theater. But Chiun lagged behind, still looking out toward the street, still thinking of the man who did not blink.