Mob Psychology

"You play pretty hard ball, Smitty."

" I play to win," said Smith, hanging up. He reached for his Zantac, hoping there was enough left to quell his sour stomach.

Chapter 30

In his black walnut alcove in Little Italy, Don Fiavorante Pubescio waited for word from his soldier.

"He should have called back by now," he said worriedly. "This thing should have been done by this time." He took a sip of lukewarm ginseng tea. It tasted bitter.

But not as bitter as the taste of betrayal, he reflected.

Don Fiavorante would not have believed it, but the proof lay before his eyes. Computer printouts. Unmistakable computer printouts. They had been laid on the walnut table by a soldier from Boston who called himself Remo Mercurio.

"Check 'em out," had said the soldier, of whom Don Fiavorante had not heard.

He had only to glance over the bottom-line figures to see the truth. Don Fiavorante looked up, his placid gentlemanly expression unchanged.

"You have done me a good turn, my friend," said the don, meeting the hard gaze of Remo Mercurio with his own frank regard.

"Skip it," said Remo casually.

"The contract is yours, if you want it."

"I don't. "

Don Fiavorante's manicured hands had lifted questioningly. "That is it? You want nothing in return?"

"You have Don Carmine clipped," Remo had replied, "and I'll have all I want."

"Perhaps you would like to take his place, eh?"

"I'm available," said Remo coolly.

"Ah, now I understand. I will consider this. Once the irritant has been removed from the scene. Go now. With my blessing."

And so Don Fiavorante had sent one of his own soldiers to do the necessary but regrettable.

The plan was perfect. Don Carmine was moving heroin through commercial courier delivery services. The soldier would appear in the guise of a UPS deliveryman, the better to enter the LCN building without difficulty.

But there had been no call. What could have happened? wondered Don Fiavorante in the coolness of his walnut alcove.

Chapter 31

When Carmine Imbruglia read of the fate of Nicky Kix and his fellow soldiers in the Boston Herald, he threw the paper across the room and howled, "They were ready for us. Someone tipped them off?"

"But who?" asked Bruno the Chef, his face characteristically blank.

"I dunno. I dunno. Let me think."

Carmine Imbruglia screwed up his face into a homely knot. He chewed on one knuckle.

"I see two possibilities here," he said, swallowing a fragment of dry skin. "One, it was that Tony. He was the only one who knew we were makin' a move, except you and me."

"What's two?" said the Chef quickly, hoping to steer his don away from the delicate subject of personal loyalty.

"Two is if we can't make more money to pay off Don Fiavorante, we gotta figure out a way that Don Fiavorante gets less."

"Don Fiavorante don't think that way."

"Maybe," said Don Carmine slowly, "Don Fiavorante shouldn't think at all."

Bruno (The Chef) Boyardi's dull eyes grew very, very worried as Don Carmine got to his feet and strode over to a bank of windows along one side of the LCN conference room.

His knotted expression melted into one of open surprise as his gaze went through the dark windows.

"Look what we got here!" he said.

"What?" asked Bruno the Chef, peering out.

He saw a step van the color of dried mud.

"It ain't got no markin's," growled Don Carmine.

"Sure, it has. See the little gold shield on the side?"

"Looks like a fuggin' badge," muttered Don Carmine. "Can you make out the letters?"

"U . . . P . . S."

"The military! They sent the fuggin' army after us," howled Don Carmine, lunging for his tommy gun. He yanked back the charging bolt and waited.

When a man in a drab uniform identical in color to the step van's paint job emerged from the driver's side, Don Carmine opened up through the windows.

The racket was calamitous. Glass shards cascaded like glacial ice letting go. Smoking brass shell casings sprinkled and rolled about the floor.

Struggling to hold the bucking muzzle on his target, Don Carmine Imbruglia laughed with whooping joy.

"Take that, army cogsugger! You ain't takin' Cadillac Carmine, the Kingpin of Boston!"

"I think he's dead," said the Chef when the drum ran empty.

"Sure, he's dead," Carmine said, smacking the smoking weapon lustily. "This is a tommy. A good American weapon. It kills better than anythin'."

"Maybe we should get rid of the body," suggested Bruno the Chef, watching it bleed with vague interest.

"Get rid of the truck too. Dump it in the river. That's why I picked this joint. The river's a great way to get rid of dead guys. "

"Okay, boss," the Chef said amiably, starting for the door.

"But make fuggin' sure you dump it on the Boston side of the river," Carmine called after him. "Let the Westies catch the blame."

"They don't call them Westies up here, boss. They're Southies. "

"Westies. Southies. Irish is Irish. Hop to it. And when you're done, get that Tony in here."

"Right, boss."

Chapter 32

The Master of Sinanju examined the patient in the bed.

He was old. His bone structure whispered of the Rome of Caesar's day. His skin was waxy and yellow as old cheese.

"What is his illness?" Chiun asked Harold Smith.

"Poison. "

"Ah, the stomach," intoned Chiun, who in deference to his antiseptic surroundings wore ivory white. He looked about him. A doctor in Harold Smiths employ stood off to one side, looking concerned and even puzzled. They were in the hospital wing of Folcroft Sanitarium.

"He is in an irreversible coma," the physician said defensively. "There is nothing you can do for him. I told Dr. Smith that."

The Master of Sinanju ignored the quack's obvious ravings and examined the machine that forced the comatose unfortunate's lungs to pump, and touched lightly the clear tubes that provided unhealthy potions.

Without a word, he began ripping these free.

This brought the expected reaction from the physician. Seeing his barbaric machines desecrated, he made protest.

"You'll kill him! The patient must have his intravenous liquids. "

The Master of Sinanju allowed the lunatic to approach, and with a deft movement snatched up one of his waving forearms and inserted a clear tube into it.

The doctor's face acquired a perplexed dreamy expression and, made docile by the poisons that were supposed to cure the sick, he allowed himself to be seated in a nearby chair.

"Are you certain that this will work?" asked Harold Smith anxiously.

"No," said Chiun gravely.

"Then why are you-?"

"There is nothing to lose," said Chiun, shaking his hands clear of his white sleeves. "This man has been pampered by machines until his will to function has been lulled into a lazy sleep. If he dies, he dies. But if he is to recover, his body must be convinced that this will happen only if it struggles for life."

And before Harold Smith could protest, the Master of Sinanju abruptly plunged his long fingernails into the exposed wrinkled pot belly of the patient.

The man's emaciated body jerked as its spine squirmed and twisted like an electric arc sizzling between contact posts.

Using both hands, Chiun plunged his nails deeper into the sickly greenish flesh.

And into the patient's ear, he whispered a delicate warning.

"Fight for your life, lazy one. Or I will take it from you."

Harold Smith turned away, his teeth set, his eyes closed. In his mind's eye he saw ten eruptions of blood. One for each of the Master of Sinanju's remorseless fingernails.

The next phase of Smith's plan depended upon bringing his patient back to health.

Chapter 33

"In onore della famiglia, la famiglia a abbraccio," intoned Don Carmine Imbruglia in a corner office at LNG headquarters, lit by sullen candlelight.

"I don't know what the fug it means," he said ruefully, "but they always talk that kinda crap at one of these things."

"What things?" asked Tony Tollini, looking at the dagger and pistol that lay crossed on the table before him. For some reason, the windows were obscured with black crepe.

"Baptisms," said Don Carmine.

"Oh. Is someone being baptized?"

"Good question. You are."

Tony Tollini's eyes bugged out. "Me?"

"Don't be modest. You done good for LCN. We're gonna make you one of us."

Tony started to rise, saying, "I don't-"

Bruno the Chefs meaty hand pushed Tony Tollini back into his seat.

"Show some respect," he growled.

"What . . . what do I do?" Tony asked, weak-voiced.

"Almost nothin'," Don Carmine said casually. "Here, gimme your hand."

Tony Tollini allowed Don Carmine to take up his shaking hand. Don Carmine lifted the silver dagger off the table with the other.

"Okay," said Don Carmine. "Repeat after me, 'I want to enter into this organization to protect my family and to protect all my friends.' "

" 'I want to enter into this organization to protect my family and to protect all my friends,' " Tony repeated in a dull voice.

" 'I swear not to divulge this secret and to obey, with love and omerta.' "

" 'I swear not to divulge this secret and to obey, with love and omerta,' " Tony added, wondering what an omerta was. It sounded like a weapon. Maybe a Sicilian dagger, like the one Don Carmine was waving before his eyes.

A quick pass of the glittering blade, and the tip of Tony's index finger ran red with blood.

"Okay, I cut your trigger finger," said Don Carmine. "Now I cut me." Don Carmine sliced the tip of his trigger finger and joined it to Tony's. Only then did it begin to sting.

"Somebody gimme me a saint," called Don Carmine.

"Here," said Bruno the Chef, pulling a laminated card from his suit pocket.

Don Carmine looked at the face. "I don't know this one," he muttered.

"Saint Pantaleone. He's good for toothaches."

"Toothaches! What are we, dentists now?"

"I got a busted biscuspid, boss."

Don Carmine shrugged like a small bear with an itchy back. "What the fug. A saint is a saint, right? You, Tony, repeat after me," he said, touching a corner of the laminated card to the sickly yellow candle flame.

" 'As burns this saint . ' "

" 'As burns this saint,' " said Tony, watching Saint Pantaleone begin to darken.

" 'So burns my soul. I enter alive into this organization and I leave it dead.' "

"Do I have to say that last part?" asked Tony, watching the card blacken and shrivel, giving off a pungent stink.

"Not unless you wanna enter the organization dead," said Don Carmine blandly. "In which case that's how you will leave it. The river runs only one way. Get me?"

Gulping, Tony Tollini finished the oath of allegiance.

Beaming, Don Carmine dropped the card into a green glass ashtray, where it curled up like a grasshopper in its death throes.

"Congrats!" he said. "You are now one of us! With all the rights and privileges of bein' a made guy."

"Thank you," said Tony Tollini miserably. When he had entered the corridors of IDC a decade ago, he had never imagined it would come to this.

Don Carmine spanked the table hard. "Bruno, get us some wine. Red. While I think up a new name for Tony, here."

"I have a name," protested Tony, looking at his Tissot watch.

"What, you in a rush? This is a sentimental moment. Me, when I think back on my baptism, I get all choked up. You, you look at your fuggin' no-numbers watch. That's it!"

"What is?"

"No Numbers! That's what we're gonna call you. No Numbers Tollini."

"Hey, I like that, boss," said Bruno the Chef, setting down several glasses and beginning to pour blood-colored wine from an oblong green bottle.

"No Numbers?" said Tony (No Numbers) Tollini.

"You'll get used to it. Now, drink up."

They drank a toast. Tony thought the wine tasted a little salty until he realized he was bleeding into the glass. He switched hands and started sucking on his trigger finger, which really tasted salty.

It was then that Don Carmine grew serious.

"No Numbers, on account of your quick rise in our organization, we're gonna give you a very important job to do."

"Yes?"

"One that's gonna help you make your bones."

"Please don't break my bones!" No Numbers Tollini said tearfully.

"I said make. That means you gotta kill somebody."

"Oh, God. Who?"

Don Carmine Imbruglia leaned into No Numbers Tollini's melted-by-fear features and exhaled sweet wine fumes.

"Don Fiavorante Pubescio, the rat," he whispered.

"My uncle?"

"He's screwin' us. He's gotta go."

"I can't kill-"

"What 'can't'? You took the oath, same as me. Same as Bruno there. If a made guy don't do like he's told, other made guys have to discipline him. It ain't pretty, either. It usually means expulsion from the organization."

"Does that mean . . . ?" Tony gulped.

Running a finger across his throat, Don Carmine nodded sagely. "This ain't IDC, kid. Remember that oath."

Tony swallowed. He tasted the blood on his trigger finger. His blood. He decided too much of it had been spilled already.

"Whatever you want, Don Carmine," Tony (No Numbers) Tollini said hollowly.

Chapter 34

Antony (No Numbers) Tollini parked his red Miata on Canal Street in lower Manhattan, where the scent of tomato sauce from Little Italy and soy-sauce aroma wafting up from Chinatown commingled into a breathable cholestoral-MSG mix.

He got out, buttoning the lower button of his Brooks Brothers suit to conceal the silenced .22 Beretta that Don Carmine had presented to him with words of fatherly advice.

"It's very simple, kid," Don Carmine had said. "You walk up to the hit, tell a few jokes, make him feel good, and whack him out while he's laughin' with you. He'll never know what hit him."

All during the ride down from Boston, Tony Tollini rehearsed how it would be. He would meet his Uncle Fiavorante in the walnut alcove where he held court. He would surreptitiously pull the Beretta from his belt and fire from under the table. He had seen it done that way in dozens of movies. Uncle Fiavorante would never know what hit him. The threat of the deadly weapon would be enough to get him out of the building alive.

Tony Tollini turned onto Mott Street, nervously wiping his sweaty palms on his gray trouser legs. He had never killed a man before. At IDC he had stabbed a few in the back, corporately speaking. But that was different. It was business. There wasn't any blood.

Tony Tollini decided that he would approach the task before him in true IDC fashion, forthright and unflinching. It would be no different than an employee termination. Besides, how much blood could there be? The bullets were .22's.

Resolutely Tony knocked on the blank panel that served as the door to the Neighborhood Improvement Association. It opened quickly and the blue-jawed tower of bone and muscle asked, "Yeah?"

"I'm here to see the don."

"Who're you?"

"His nephew, Tony."

"One sec." The guard called back. "Boss, you gotta nephew named Tony?"

A distant voice croaked back, "Sure, sure. Show him in."

Tony was practically hauled inside and marched between two men into the dim black walnut alcove. A figure sat hunched in the gloom. Tony squinted in an attempt to make him out. The figure looked up querulously.

He frowned, "You ain't my nephew, Tony."

"You aren't Don Fiavorante," Tony blurted, staring at the waxy yellow face before him.

No Numbers Tollini realized he had said the wrong thing when the two guards threw him to the floor and pulled his clothes apart. One came up with the Beretta. The other hauled him back to his feet and sat him down so hard in the chair facing the strange old man that Tony felt a bone break somewhere. He thought it was his coccyx.

The old man-he looked like an anorexic corpse-dug a pale shriveled talon into a stained paper bag and extracted a single greasy fried pepper, which he began to chew methodically.

"I don't know you," he said, his voice a dry rattle.

"Cadillac sent me."

"I don't know that name."

"Cadillac Carmine, the don of Boston."

The old man stopped chewing. One eye narrowed in slow thought. The other fixed Tony with watery wariness.

"We ain't talkin' about Fuggin Imbruglia, are we?"

"He calls himself Cadillac."

"He would. How'd that assassino get to be in charge of Boston?"

"Uncle Fiavorante gave him the territory," said Tony, figuring only the truth would save him now.

The old man resumed his chewing. "Fiavorante, he is your uncle?"

"Yes. "

The old man waved a well-chewed pepper in the direction of the Beretta, held loosely in a guard's hand. "You come to see your uncle with a cold piece in your belt?" he asked.

Tony said nothing. The other watery eye opened to match its mate. "I see things very clearly now. Can you handle a shovel?"

"Why?" asked Tony.

"Because somebody's got to dig the grave."

"Not Uncle Fiavorante?" Tony asked in horror, momentarily forgetting his mission.

"Naw, we already planted him. I was thinking of giving you the adjoining plot. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

No Numbers Tollini leaned forward across the scarred walnut table, not noticing the fresh gouge that was the rusty brown of dried blood.

He decided to play his trump card. "Listen. I'm a very, very good friend of Don Carmine's," he confided, trying to sound like Robert De Niro.

"And I got a very, very big vendetta against that rotten Fuggin," returned the old man.

"I'm a made guy, I'll have you know," Tony added, lowering his voice to a sinister growl. "They call me No Numbers. No Numbers Tollini. Maybe you heard of me."

"If I ain't made you, you ain't made. I wouldn't have a guy in my outfit calling himself No Numbers. What kind of name is that?"

"I can get you computers," Tony said quickly. "All you want. I can make your operation as successful as Carmine's. More successful. I swear."

"Fuggin' Carmine couldn't operate a laundry."

"He's getting rich up in Boston," Tony pleaded. "I can make you rich too. Give me a chance to show you, and I'll have you interfacing with every node of your heirarchy. You'll be completely on-line, networked, integrated and paperless. That means no incriminating backup disks."

"What is this you're talkin'? I've been out of action a few years, yeah, but people don't talk like this now, do they?"

"Not that I heard, Don Pietro," said a guard from behind Tony.

Don Pietro Scubisci reached for another fried pepper. His watery eyes narrowed.

"Tell you what I'm gonna do for you," he offered.

"Anything," Tony said, wiping sweat off his mustache.

"I give you back your gun, and I let you shoot yourself in the mouth."

Tony paled. He gripped the table edge. "Why?"

"On account of you talk too much."

Tony blinked. "Why would I do that?"

"Because you do it this way, I don't make you dig your own grave first," explained Don Pietro. "None of my guys gotta take the rap for whacking you out, and you don't die all sweaty and out of breath. Get me?"

"That's an absurd offer!" Tony Tollini said in protest.

Don Pietro shrugged. "It's the best one you're gonna get."

Tony Tollini stared at the old don as a fried pepper like a bright green grasshopper disappeared into his mouth. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. He couldn't comprehend how a simple pilot program, the most brilliant in IDC history, could bring him to this terrible crossroads in his life.

"I ain't gonna wait for your answer till I grow old," Don Pietro warned through his careful chewing.

It was then that Tony Tollini, a former rising star of International Data Corporation, realized that he had been made an offer he could not refuse.

Tremblingly he accepted the offered Beretta. It was cold to his touch. His eyes began to mist over.

Across the battle-scarred walnut tale, the don of Little Italy watched him with vague interest as Tony brought the muzzle of the Beretta into his mouth.

Tony tasted the bitter tang of machined steel on his tongue.

Closing his eyes, he pulled the trigger.

The trigger refused to budge. Tony's eyes popped open.

"Someone help this poor guy. He forgot to release the safety," said Don Pietro in a bored voice, reaching into the greasy paper bag.

And while that cold fact was sinking into Tony Tollini's mind, someone placed the muzzle of a larger weapon to his right temple and splashed the organized receptacle of his thoughts across a dozen hung saints.

Dispassionately Don Pietro watched Tony Tollini slump forward. A dollop of curdlike brain matter oozed out of his shattered forehead. A gleam entered the old don's tired eyes.

Slowly Don Pietro Scubisci dipped the chewed edge of a fried pepper into the matter and tasted it carefully.

While his guards urgently covered their mouths with their hands to keep the vomit in, Don Pietro dipped a fresh pepper into the oozing mass while smacking his lips with relish.

"Needs more garlic," he decided.

Chapter 35

Harold W. Smith was saying, "If my plan has worked, both Don Carmine and Don Fiavorante are dead by now, victims of their own distrust and greed."

Smith was logging onto the LANSCII files as Remo and Chiun gathered around the CURE terminal.

"Explain it to me again," said Remo, reading the LANSCII sign-on screen.

"You, Remo, have set Don Fiavorante against Don Carmine. Meanwhile, Chiun and I have revived Don Pietro and installed him in Little Italy."

"What happened to Don Fiavorante?"

"Master Chiun eliminated him after you delivered your friendly warning. In the resulting power vacuum, it was a simple matter for Don Pietro to install himself "

Remo frowned back at the Master of Sinanju's tiny beaming face.

"Since when are we in the business of putting Mafia dons back in business?"

"When they are old, weak, and senile," explained Harold Smith, "they are preferable to the likes of innovators such as Don Fiavorante and Don Carmine. It is certain that Don Pietro will not see any advantage to computerization of illicit-"

Smith stopped, frowning.

"What is it?" Remo asked.

"It appears that Don Carmine is still in business," Smith said unhappily. "Even as we speak, he is maintaining his usury file."

"I guess Don Fiavorante's hit didn't go down," Remo said.

"No doubt he employed amateurs," Chiun sniffed.

"Great," Remo said sourly. "We have a direct line to his computer, but no clue to where it is. Usually your computers are more on the ball than this, Smitty. Maybe you need fresh batteries. "

"It is obvious that we are dealing with a criminal genius," said Smith unhappily. "He has set up his operation perfectly. Every move we make against him, he counters with the brilliance of a chess player. He may well be the most brilliant criminal mind of our time."

"So we're checkmated?" Remo asked, watching the numbers on the screen change, actuated by unseen fingers hundreds of miles away.

Smith leaned back in his chair. "We know that he is headquartered in Quincy, Massachusetts. But we do not know where. Thus far, the key to thwarting him lies in an understanding of the psychology of the mob. We need to lure him out into the open."

"Any ideas?" asked Remo.

"None," admitted Smith. "I am stymied."

"I have a suggestion, O Emperor," put in Chiun.

Both men regarded the Master of Sinanju in surprise.

"What have you to add, Master Chiun?" Smith asked, his glum voice lifting.

"Merely wisdom," said Chiun smugly, eyeing Remo. Remo frowned but said nothing.

"Go ahead," said Smith.

"Offer this moneylender the thing that most appeals to him."

"And that is?"

"Money," said Chiun, raising a wise finger.

"Do you mean to bribe him?" asked Smith.

"No," said Chiun. "I mean offer this man a generous amount of money, but insist that he accept it in person. Tell him it is in repayment of an old debt that troubles your conscience."

"Never work," said Remo.

"It cannot hurt to try," countered Smith, logging off LANSCII and quickly pecking out a fax message.

He programmed his computer to dial the fax number of LCN. When he was satisfied with the text, he pressed the Send key.

The system hummed.

"What's happening?" Remo asked.

"Emperor Smith is following my wise and brilliant counsel," said the Master of Sinanju in a smug tone.

"I have just faxed my offer to Don Carmine," explained Smith.

"Can you fax straight from a computer like that?" Remo wanted to know.

Smith nodded absently. "It is a common application."

"News to me."

"You have much to learn, round eyes," sniffed Chiun. "Such as how to penetrate so-called secure rooms."

"I'd like to be a fly on the wall watching you get through one of those," Remo said, stealing a worried glance at the reflection of his eyes in the terminal screen.

"You would undoubtedly repeat your earlier error, even as an insignificant fly." The Master of Sinanju beamed. "Heh-heh. Even as an insignificant round-eyed fly. Heh-heh."

When Remo refused to join in the Master of Sinanju's amused laughter, Chiun went on.

"Emperor Smith has explained how the alert machines work. They are very simple. Like you."

"I'm all ears," said Remo.

"One moment," Smith said as his desk fax began to ring.

Out of the port streamed a long sheet a slick paper. Smith tore it off.

"What's he say?" Remo asked.

"He's very anxious to receive the sixty thousand dollars offered him."

"No surprise there. Did he ask what it was for?"

"He did not. I simply said it was an old debt."

"And he didn't question it?"

"No," said Smith, worrying his lower lip in a puzzled way. "But he made a strange request. He asked me to fax him a check." Harold Smith turned to the Master of Sinanju.

"Tell him no," instructed Chiun. "Inform him you wish to tender personal apologies for your slight."

Smith pecked out an answer, transmitted it, and received a prompt reply.

"He has agreed," Smith said after reading the return fax. He looked up. "I do not understand. Why would so brilliant a criminal fall for such an obvious ruse?"

"It is very simple," said the Master of Sinanju.

They looked at him expectantly. "First, he is greedy." "What's second?" asked Remo. "He is no more brilliant than Remo."

Chapter 36

Bruno the Chef was cooking a simple ravioli when Don Carmine Imbruglia barged into the LCN conference room, waving the morning edition of the Boston Herald.

"It's fuggin' on page three!" he chortled, spreading the paper on the conference table.

"What is?" asked Bruno.

"The dope on Fiavorante's gettin' whacked. They found his body last night."

"Guess that Tony pulled it off. So why ain't he back yet?"

"Don't be a mook. He clipped Fiavorante. Fiavorante's guys clipped him back. End of story. Listen, see what it says here." Don Carmine read along. "This ain't right," he muttered.

"What?"

"This can't be."

"What?"

"They say when they found Fiavorante there wasn't a mark on him. What happened to the slugs No Numbers pumped into him?"

"It say who's takin' over?"

"Hold your horses. I'm gettin' to that. Oh, Mother of God," said Don Carmine. "Something is very, very wrong. I smell a rat here. This is wrong. This is very wrong."

"What?"

"Says here that Don Pietro Scubisci has taken over."

"I heard he was in a coma."

"He's out. Maybe he got time off for good behavior. Fug! Now we gotta whack him out too."

"Why?"

"On account of he and I got history together. It's gonna be him or it's gonna be me."

"Who you gonna send? All your guys are dead."

"I'll worry about that later. We gotta protect ourselves first. Lock all the doors. Turn on all the alarms. Nobody comes in. Nobody goes out. We lay low for a while."

"Sure, boss, but what about that sixty G's you was supposed to pick up today?"

Don Carmine looked up from his newspaper.

"That's right. I almost forgot about that." His eyes narrowed craftily. "Okay, so you make the pickup instead. I'll hide out in the computertry room with all the motion alarms running. No one will touch me. I'll be safer than the fuggin' First Lady."

"What if it's a hit?"

"If it's a hit, they won't touch you. It's me they're after."

"If you say so, boss," Bruno the Chef said without enthusiasm.

" I say so," growled Don Carmine Imbruglia, wadding up the newspaper and bouncing it off the wall in frustration. "And on the way back I want you to pick up the oldest, most rotten-looking cod you can scrounge up."

"Why?"

"I'm gonna Fedex it to Don Pietro in the hope that when he gets a whiff of it, he's gonna fuggin' relapse."

Chapter 37

Bruno the Chef pulled into the Bartilucci Construction yard just after noon.

Getting out of the black Cadillac, he looked around. No one was in sight. He ambled over to the idle nibbler and climbed in. If there was trouble, he wanted to be ready for it.

When they showed up, they were driving a blue Buick. It coasted to a stop beside Bruno's Cadillac. Bruno started the nibbler engine, just in case.

The front doors of the Buick popped out like wings, and two figures emerged with the perfect timing of matched reflections.

Except that the duo bore no resemblance to one another.

Bruno recognized the passenger as the Jap computer expert, Chiun. The other seemed familiar, but the face was not.

They approached with calm assurance.

"How's tricks, Bruno?" asked the man in the silk suit.

"Do I know you?"

"You don't remember your old buddy Remo?"

"Remo!" That was all Bruno the Chef had to hear. It was a hit. He sent the nibbler rumbling forward, engaging the pneumatic chisel, which unfolded like an articulated stinger.

"Let me handle this," said Remo to the Jap. The Jap glowered. "I owe him," Remo added.

Nodding his head, the old Jap stayed by the cars. Remo advanced with an easy fearless walk that was unnerving.

Bruno the Chef maneuvered the chattering blunt chisel until it hovered before Remo's advancing chest. Then he floored the gas.

With seeming ease Remo faded back before the nibbler's angry lunge, the vibrating nib a constant inch away. Bruno sent the nibbler careening until he had Remo retreating in the direction Bruno wanted him to go. When he slammed into the brick wall behind him, he would get it.

Except that Remo didn't get it. He ducked under the nibbler a spit second before it should have turned his rib cage to blood pudding. Bricks cracked and flew. One nearly brained Bruno.

Weaving, Remo stayed one step ahead of the deadly blunt fang as Bruno worked the control levers that kept the nibbler angling from side to side like a noisy scorpion.

He could see Remo's face clearly now. It was different. Like the guy had had his face fixed. And he was smiling a cold smile that made Bruno feel a chill settle in his marrow.

The smile said that Remo could dance with the nibbler all day long without fear. Bruno cut the pneumatic power so he could hear himself talk. The jackhammer sound died.

"What do you want from me?" Bruno demanded hotly.

"Your boss."

"He couldn't make it."

"I'll settle for his mailing address."

"I don't squeal for anybody."

"Suit yourself," said Remo, his back to the well-punctured brick wall.

Bruno saw his chance. He sent the nibbler lurching ahead. The blunt point touched the man's shirt front, pinning him to the wall.

Bruno's hand swept for the on switch. It clicked. Bruno grinned with relief. He had him.

And as the electricity flowed to the jackhammer arm, Bruno the Chef felt the nibbler cab vibrate in sympathy. He closed his eyes because he wasn't interested in seeing all the blood and guts that were about to be spattered in all directions.

Because he closed his eyes, he missed the whole thing.

The pneumatic chisel started to hammer. Bruno found himself holding on to the cab for dear life. The nibbler chassis was really vibrating, like it was going to shake itself apart.

Hearing no screams, Bruno opened one eye.

He saw Remo standing there, his arms lifted, his hands actually clamped around the nibbler point, as if trying to ward it off. He looked like he was being shaken apart.

The trouble was, Remo was still grinning that cold confident grin.

Bruno the Chef experienced a moment of unreality. The nibbler began to buck and twist. Suddenly he was pitched out of the cab and onto the concrete.

After he had air in his lungs again, Bruno looked up.

His eyes no longer vibrating, he saw clearly again.

Somehow, impossible as it seemed, Remo was holding the nibbler off the ground by its wildly hammering point. He wasn't fazed by this in the least, Bruno saw. He wasn't even vibrating. It was the nibbler that was shaking like a cocktail shaker. It was shaking because Remo was holding the bit perfectly still in his two seemingly irresistible hands.

"Oh, my God," said Bruno, making the sign of the cross as Remo let the bit go. The nibbler bounced on its four fat tires and continued to chatter and smoke impotently.

Casually Remo sauntered up and dropped to one knee.

"Now, that wasn't nice, Bruno," Remo said. "I thought we were buddies."

"The money was just a story, huh?"

"And you fell for it."

"As I knew he would," added a squeaky voice. The Jap, Bruno saw. He had padded up curiously.

"You two were in it together, huh?" Bruno asked.

"All the time. Now, where can we find Carmine?"

"No offense, but I swore an oath never to rat on my don."

"I understand perfectly," Remo said in a reasonable voice.

"You in the life?"

"You might say that."

"What family you with?"

"The Milli Vanilli Mob. Ever heard of them?"

"Yeah," Bruno said vaguely. "I think so. Somewheres."

"When we talk, people really listen. Now, point us to LCN. "

Bruno the Chef started to protest again, but a long-nailed finger simply reached down and seemed to impale his left earlobe.

The pain was instant, extreme, and unendurable. Bruno's eyeballs exploded like hot flashbulbs. At least, that was how it looked to Bruno's brain. He grabbed up a hunk of concrete and shattered several front teeth while biting hard in a vain attempt to control the excruciating pain.

When the seemingly white-hot fingernail withdrew, Bruno was surprised that his fingers came away from his earlobe entirely free of blood.

"That was just your earlobe," Remo said. "I'll bet you have more sensitive parts."

Tears in his eyes, Bruno the Chef violated omerta, giving up his don, his familiy, and his honor. After he had answered every question put to him, Bruno the Chef looked up sadly.

"I guess you're gonna kill me, huh?"

"That's the biz, sweetheart," said the one called Remo, grabbing him by the hair and literally dragging him in front of the idle nibbler.

Bruno the Chef, feeling no strength in his still-spasming muscles, and no steel in his bones, simply lay there and begged, "Please don't turn that thing on me. Be a pal."

" I can do that," said Remo, reaching up to take the articulated arm. "After all, what are friends for?" He brought the arm down with cold suddenness.

When the blunt nib silently flattened Bruno (The Chef) Boyardi's throat like a garden hose, his arms and legs flew up and crashed down again. Then he lay still.

"Not bad, huh, Little Father?" Remo asked, walking the Master of Sinanju to their car.

"Not good," said Chiun coolly. "Not anything. It was adequate. But you are young and relatively unschooled. You will learn."

"Bruno said Don Carmine's surrounded by motion-sensitive alarms like the one that ambushed me at his old headquarters. This is your chance to show me how it's done."

"No," returned Chiun. "This is my opportunity to show you up. Heh-heh-heh."

Chapter 38

Cadillac Carmine Imbruglia was the most secure kingpin in the history of organized crime.

He sat in a windowless room on the fifth floor of LCN headquarters in Quincy, Massachusetts, a fully loaded Thompson submachine gun at his elbow. There was only one exit, a veneer door with a chilled steel core. Beyond the armored door the many terminals of the LCN network glowed in the darkness, their screens like amber jack-o'-lanterns.

Nothing moved in the LCN computer room. Nothing could move because in each corner of the ceiling, boxy devices resembling security cameras looked down. Instead of lenses, tiny wafers of supersensitive quartz silently scanned the room, ready to trigger an alarm at the slightest breeze or change in air pressure.

And in his armored room, Carmine Imbruglia blinked at his personal terminal and stabbed at the keyboard with two stubby fingers, pausing often to correct mistakes, confident that he was as untouchable as Eliot Ness.

It was while updating his ever-burgeoning sports book that he experienced his first brush with computer trouble.

For some reason, the words and numbers on the screen began to duplicate themselves, repeating endlessly until they filled the screen like a million tiny amber spiders swarming behind the glareproof glass.

When the black screen had turned a solid amber, large black letters appeared against the warm brilliant glow.

"What the fug is happenin' now?" snarled Don Carmine Imbruglia, pounding the suddenly dead keys.

Chapter 39

Remo pulled into the deserted parking lot of the Manet Building and remarked, "Bruno said the don's holed up on the fifth floor with an old tommy gun, no less. There's only one way in or out. So tell me how we're going to sneak up on him? Zip through the motion-sensitive field really fast?"

"That would be too easy," said the Master of Sinanju, arranging the skirts of his sable-and-gold kimono. "For you require a lesson that will stick in your white mind."

"You're too kind," Remo said dryly, looking at the silverblue building facade and thinking that it looked like it had been faced with old mirrored sunglasses. "How?"

"It is simple, Remo. Instead of blundering in, we will take our time."

"Okay," Remo said good-naturedly. "Lead and I will follow. "

They popped a window on the ground floor. It was held in place by a black aluminum frame. No studs or fasteners.

As Remo watched, the Master of Sinanju simply laid one flat hand against the center of the pane. It began to bulge inward.

Just when it looked like it was about to shatter from the strain, the Master of Sinanju spoke a single word and stepped back.

The word was "Catch."

Remo saw the mirrored pane explode toward him like an abstract arrow released from a bow. He faded back, bringing both hands up and held flat before his face.

When the raised surfaces of his palms made contact with the slickness of the glass, Remo pivoted in place.

Surface tension, acting as a glue, brought the glass around with him. When it was at the apogee of its turn, momentum transferred in the opposite direction and the pane let go and knifed into a patch of salt marsh like a square blade.

The Master of Sinanju bowed mischievously and gestured for Remo to precede him.

"Youth before excellence," said Chiun, beaming.

"You made your point," Remo said, hoisting himself in through the opening.

"Perhaps," said Chiun, floating in after him. "Perhaps not. "

They found themselves in a room that might have been transplanted intact from Atlantic City. There were roulette wheels and black jack tables and other gambling fixtures. They passed through this into the deserted lobby.

"Okay," Remo undertoned. "Now we hit the fifth floor. So how do we do it?"

The Master of Sinanju stabbed the up button beside the gleaming steel elevator door.

"By taking the elevator," said Chiun.

Remo frowned. He didn't like the cavalier attitude the Master of Sinanju had been taking to a dangerous situation. He decided to play along, and take control if necessary.

They stepped off on the fifth floor into a nondescript curving corridor, except for the undersmell of garlic.

The room they wanted was clearly marked. It said

"COMPUTERTRY. "

"Okay, tell me the trick," Remo hissed.

Instead of replying, the Master of Sinanju took hold of the doorknob. He turned to his pupil.

"You must be very, very patient. And quiet. Can you be both?"

"Sure. "

"Then we will begin. You will do as I do. Nothing more. And nothing less."

Remo watched the Master of Sinanju. But Chiun did not move, or appear to move. His eyes on Remo, his hand on the doorknob, he simply stood there. Several minutes passed. Five. Then ten. Remo frowned. He opened his lips to speak.

Chiun's free hand came up to his dry lips so fast it seemed there was no intervening motion. The hand was at his side. Then it was before his lips, admonishing Remo to silence.

Remo held his tongue. His dark eyes darted to the door. To his surprise, he saw that it was open a crack. He kept watching, interest dawning on his face.

Five more minutes passed. The door was slowly being drawn open-so slowly that even Remo could not detect motion. Only a slow elapsed-time result.

When finally the door was open enough to admit them, Chiun beckoned with a quiet gesture. Beckoned for Remo to follow.

It was twenty minutes later before the Master of Sinanju had eased himself through the door. Remo matched his movements, pacing himself to the extreme slow motion of his teacher's body language.

For Remo it was excruciatingly, agonizingly, painstakingly boring. It was so boring, his back started to itch.

But it worked. He found himself inside the room in a little less than ninety minutes. He took no steps. His feet simply crept along the carpet, a micro-inch at a time, neither lifting nor stepping, but achieving a kind of flat-footed sliding locomotion that the ceiling-mounted quartz motion detectors could not detect because although Remo and Chiun were displacing the still air in the computer room, they were not disturbing it.

Remo was glad Chiun had made him remove his silk suit and shirt at the construction yard. The fine hairs along his bare arms acted as sensory receptors, enabling him to pace himself so he didn't trigger warning eddies of air.

Since it was taking them literally hours to cross the room, Remo had plenty of time to take in the computer screens arrayed in work stations on either side of the corridor leading to the blank door behind which Don Carmine labored under a false sense of security.

He noticed that one by one the screens began to fill up with symbols that crowded and overlapped themselves like wire-frame jigsaw puzzles. Like amber cataracts forming on cyclopean eyes, the screens turned a uniform blind amber.

Then big black cut-out like letters appeared.

Remo wondered what a "hard dynamic abort" was.

He had a lot of time to think about it. They had entered the Manet Building just after one o'clock in the afternoon. It was approaching six-thirty now and there remained a good twenty feet between them and the blank door. It was dark. The sun had set.

It was like walking underwater, except without the water. So as to keep his metabolism cycled down, Remo had to keep breathing in a shallow way that was almost suffocating. He wanted to scream, to unleash the frustrated pent-up energy that was coursing through his body.

But Remo knew the Master of Sinanju was testing his patience as well as demonstrating his own superior skills. Remo would not allow himself to fall short. Even if he did strongly suspect Chiun of moving even more slowly than neccessary to prolong Remo's ordeal.

As they made their slow way through the computer room, Remo spent most of his time staring at the translucent skin of the back of Chiun's bald head. He thought about all the difficult times that lay behind them. The long months of separation. The terrible battle Remo had fought in the Middle East without the Master of Sinanju by his side. And how badly he had botched his mission, without Chiun there to guide him. And he remembered why he had been so concerned about his mentor. Chiun was a century old. And he looked it, even if he did not act it.

Remo expressed a thought.

I love you, Little Father.

And in the dimness of his mind, he seemed to hear a reply.

You should.

Remo would have grinned, but the mere act of smiling was apt to trigger air currents. He held the warm feeling inside him for the remainder of the passage it seemed as endless as Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe-across the room.

The door was inching closer. A mere dozen feet away, or less than an hour at their current pace.

Don Carmine Imbruglia would never know what hit him.

They would have made it except that the blank panel abruptly acquired a dozen black eyes created by .45-caliber slugs punching out through the veneer and steel.

Alarm bells began to ring.

Remo lunged forward to pluck Chiun out of the myriad bullet tracks.

He was hopelessly late. The Master of Sinanju dropped in place, as if a trapdoor had opened under his feet. The bullets snarled over his aged head. Coming at Remo.

Remo slipped off to one side, just in time to evade the outer edge of the spreading spray of slugs.

All over the room, computer screens shattered and gave up smoke and hissing blue-white sparks. Then the long room went completely dark as, in unison, the rows of amber screens winked out.

As his eyes adjusted to the utter lack of light, Remo detected the shadowy form of the Master of Sinanju coming to his feet and sweeping purposefully toward the bullet-riddled door.

He barely paused at the door. His fingers went into convenient bullet holes. Then the Master of Sinanju turned. The door was suddenly wrenched off its hinges and hurled backward, where it flattened a dead terminal to a mass of plastic and mangled circuit boards.

Chiun stepped into the room.

Remo moved in, hard and fast.

And stopped dead at the threshold. Inside, Don Carmine Imbruglia had reared up from his chair, the smoking tommy gun dangling in the crook of one muscular arm. His tiny eyes glared at the ruin of a terminal on the Formica card table before him.

It had been the target of Don Carmine's violent outburst, Remo realized.

"I was robbed!" he was howling. "The fuggin' computer's completely busted."

"Nice shot," Remo said in the darkness.

"Who's that? Who's there?"

"Call me Remo."

"I call you dead, cogsugger," said Don Carmine, yanking back on the charging bolt of his weapon.

"And what do you call me, Roman?" came the squeaky voice of the Master of Sinanju.

In the act of bringing his tommy gun up to bear, Don Carmine turned toward the unexpected sound.

"I know that voice. You're the fuggin' Jap thief "

"Don't call him-" Remo started to say.

Don Carmine Imbruglia never completed his turn. A sandaled foot grazed his kneecaps, turning them to powder. A long-nailed hand took hold of the muzzle of his weapon.

When Don Carmine collapsed, his hands were empty.

The Master of Sinanju made short work of the tommy. The barrel came loose like a pipe being separated from an elbow joint. The drum broke open, raining bullets. Various pieces of the breech and stock were reduced to wood shavings and metal filings under the friction of Chiun's high-speed manipulations.

"What the fug happened?" came the dull voice of Don Carmine, looking at his stung, empty hands.

"You called him a Jap," Remo pointed out.

"Well, he is, ain't he?"

"Oops! You did it again."

Don Carmine felt something like steel darning needles take up his wrist. They squeezed inexorably. Don Carmine screamed. The pain was frightening, like being injected with dozens of acid-filled hypodermics.

"You can't do this to me!" howled Don Carmine through his agony. "I know my rights. You got nothing on me without my computers, and they just took a dive. So there. Go peddle your papers elsewhere. I'm the fuggin' Kingpin of Boston. "

"And here's your fuggin' crown," said Remo, picking up the bullet-riddled IDC terminal and jamming it over Don Carmine's head like an astronaut's helmet.

A muffled cursing came from within the terminal.

The Master of Sinanju took hold of the terminal to steady it, Don Carmine's head with it. He separated his hands, then brought them together.

Runkk!

Don Carmine's futuristic head was suddenly two feet narrower and half afoot higher. It hovered in the darkness, balanced on the mafioso's thick neck for long moments.

With a last guttering spark and hiss, it fell across the table legs. Don Carmine's limbs twitched a little, as if feeding off the electricity in the terminal. Then he lay still.

In the darkness, Remo looked up at Chiun.

"We were supposed to find out if anyone else knew how to run the LANSCII program," Remo pointed out.

Chiun shrugged shadowy shoulders. "He called me an unforgivable name." His smile came dimly. "Also, he was the last to labor under that misconception. I could not allow him to slander the Master of Sinanju further. What would my ancestors think?"

Remo searched his mind for an appropriate comeback. He never found it. Instead, he said quietly, "They would be proud of you, Little Father. As I am."

And in the darkness, the two Masters of Sinanju bowed to one another in mutual respect.

From a pay phone in the foyer of a nearby Chinese restaurant, Remo was explaining what had happened to Harold W. Smith.

"Just to make sure, we shattered every computer in the place," Remo was saying. "Believe me, there were a lot of them."

Thorough but unnecessary," said Smith approvingly. "But they were already useless. I had programmed the LANSCII disk Chiun stole with a computer virus called a time bomb. Once Don Carmine had it reinstalled, it has been silently replicating itself over and over until it filled all available memory in every system in the LCN network, literally paralyzing it."

"Was that the hard dynamic abort I saw?" Remo asked.

"It was."

"Well, it set Don Carmine off. He shot up his own system when he couldn't get it working. He nearly nailed Chiun and me while we were moving in on him."

"Without knowing how much memory we were dealing with," said Smith, "there was no way to predict when system-wide paralysis would be achieved. Besides, you and Chiun are too quick to be stopped by mere bullets."

"Not at that particular moment, we weren't," said Remo, noticing the Master of Sinanju through the glass doors. "Okay, that's a wrap. I've gotta get Chiun back to civilization fast. "

"Why do you say that, Remo?" Smith wondered.

"He's found out how cheap real estate is up here. If I don't get him across the state line soon, he's going to have us living here. "

"It is not a bad idea, Remo."

"It is a terrible idea, Smitty. Put it out of your mind."

"We have several important matters to address," Smith said levelly. "Your new face. The disposition of your home. The-"

Remo hung up, saying, "The sheer pleasure of our wonderful working relationship."

He joined the Master of Sinanju outside the restaurant. Chiun was gazing across a busy artery, his eyes fixed on a tall condominium complex with unlighted windows.

" I am given to understand that that entire building is for sale at a reasonable price," Chiun said.

"It must be practically free for you to call it reasonable," Remo said dryly. "It's ugly, too."

"But cheap," Chiun pointed out.

"More ugly than cheap," Remo countered.

"You have not heard the price."

"Tell you what, Little Father. I'll agree to take a look at it if you come clean with me."

The Master of Sinanju lifted his wrinkled little face up to his pupil's own, his expression quizzical.

"Tell me what you had the plastic surgeon do to my face," Remo said.

The Master of Sinanju passed a pale hand the color of a pecan down his wispy beard, his hazel eyes thoughtful.

"You are right, Remo," said the old Korean flatly. "It is ugly."

Remo blinked. "The building or my face?"

"Both."