Created, the Destroyer

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The local newspaper had it in detail. «Man Kills Self on Second Try; Jump Fails, Hook Works.» They didn't leave out anything.

The man, a mental patient from a New York sanitarium which thought him sufficiently cured for outpatient treatment, had jumped yesterday from a twelve-story building on Avenue East, police said.

They said he was guarded round the clock with no one allowed in the room. «Miraculous,» said doctors about the way he allegedly ripped open his own throat with the hook that replaced an amputated hand.

«It's amazing he could do that,» a hospital spokesman said. «He was in traction and it must have taken tremendous effort for him to get that much pressure behind the hook. Where there's a will, there's a way,» the spokesman alleged.

Detectives Grover and Reed said flatly, «It was suicide.»

Meanwhile, another suicide victim was recovering in the Jersey City Medical Center. Mildred Roncasi, 34, of 1862 Manuel Street…

Renio dropped the damned paper in a trash can. Then he hailed a cab. That nut, MacCleary. That idiot That fool. That damned fool.

«What's holding you up now?» Remo asked the driver. The cabbie leaned over the back seat. «Red light» he said.

«Oh,» Remo answered. And he was quiet as the cab let him off at St. Paul's Church, where he completed an errand, then hailed another cab that took him to New York.

Remo didn't sleep that night. He didn't rest in the morning. He just wandered until he reached the telephone booth at 232nd Street and Broadway in the Bronx. A stiff, chill, autumn wind blew across Van Cortland Park. Children played in the drying grass. The sun was orange and setting. It was three p.m. He stepped into the telephone booth and shut out the wind. A group of Negro boys were scrimmaging in motley uniforms. They banged away at each other and piled on. Remo's attention rested on a small boy with no helmet but his kinky hair. Blood ran from beneath his left eye. An apparent knee injury forced him to hobble when he jogged to the line from the defensive huddle.

He saw one of the big backs on the opposing team yell something and point to the boy. The boy yelled back and waved his arms in an obscene gesture. The quarterback handed the ball to the big back who followed his interference into the center of the line. Miraculously, the offense stopped, right at the small boy's slot. When the pileup peeled off, there was the little boy with no helmet, a big cut and a bigger grin. An idiot grin by a dumb black kid who didn't know enough to get out of the way. CURE should've gotten that kid. He and MacCleary. Go, team, go.

Remo slowly dialed the special number. Between five to three and five after, he had been told, it would ring on a local line in Folcroft. Smith would pick up with a 7-4-4 code signal.

Remo heard the buzzing and casually watched the little Negro return another challenge with another obscene gesture. Again the plunge. Again the pileup. And the boy got up with a tooth missing, but the grin was there.

Pretty soon, no more teeth. Remo wanted to yell out: «Kid, you stupid kid. All you'll get is brass teeth and a broken head.»

«7-4-4,» Smith's voice interrupted Remo's thoughts.

«Oh. Hello, sir. Williams. I mean 9-1.»

The voice was steady. «That was a good job at the hospital. All ends sewed up. Very neat.»

«You really liked that, didn't you?»

«Yes and no. I would rather it had been me, I knew the man… but that's beside the point. We only have three minutes. Anything?»

The plunge was on once more this time with the big buck in the new uniform and shiny helmet driving straight at the kid, who didn't blanch. He crashed toward him, but the squirt ducked under to hip height, rammed his feet behind him and drove. Beautiful tackle.

«Anything?» Smith repeated. The kid slapped his knee and tried to make light of his hobble back to the huddle. But this time it was an offensive huddle. He had held. The little dumb kid, bloody-faced, with no helmet, nothing but a strand of guts somewhere, had held. No one had passed. They weren't able to move over his hole.

They couldn't break him and somewhere there was something worthwhile and if the whole damned world and its rotten judges and slimy politicians, its crooks and emperors had tried to go through that slot, they would have hit a wall that wasn't going to move for anybody. Not an inch. And that was worth something even if nothing else was. Not for the rest of his life would that kid forget that he had done something and no matter what curves the world threw at him, he would have that.

And MacCleary had had it. He had had it in spades. And if he wasn't there now, he didn't have to be. Because MacCleary had held. And that little nigger kid had held. And that's what it was all about, this whole rotten stinking world.

And Chiun was wrong. Vietnam was wrong. You didn't let someone crash your home and if you died at the doorstep, then you were dead. But you had stood there and no one passed and it didn't matter a sneeze in a windstorm if no one wrote it down or paid you. You had done it. You. You were alive. You lived, you died, and that was it.

«Anything? Any lead?» Smith's voice was loud «We'll be cut off soon,»

«Yeah. I have a lead. You'll have Maxwell's head in a bucket within five days.»

«What? You sound violent.»

«You heard what I said. You'll have his head or mine.»

«I don't want yours. Be careful. That was an excessive amount of money you took. Frankly, I didn't expect…»

The line went dead.

Remo left the telephone booth. The kid was sitting on the sidelines, holding his head.

«Hurt?» Remo asked.

«No, just a little.»

«Then why's it bleeding?»

«Ah got hit.»

«Why don't you wear a helmet?»

«Helmet?» the boy laughed. «They cost money.»

Remo reached into his pocket and handed the kid a twenty dollar bill. «You're a dumb bastard,» Remo said, and then he walked away. He needed a shave.