Still he might have the heroin. Remo would have to find out.
And there was Mrs. Hansen, an Italian looking woman, a woman of real beauty, but obviously now well along the road to alcoholism. She was immaculately groomed, but there were the few telltale signs. The slight disjunctive trembling of the hands, the shifting of weight from one foot to the other, the trapped look deep behind the eyes. She was deep in a personal grief that her husband either did not understand or did not recognize. But she wept to herself continuously. She had lost something with Verillio's death.
Cynthia was there too. She had been there all day, in grief also, and in grief, drawn near to her mother. She did not look at Remo. Perhaps she did not even see him, but he looked at her, felt the stirrings rising in him and wondered what she was doing afterwards.
Horgan was a sphinx, sitting in the front row, next to the police chief, chatting, smiling often; he and Dugan the only two men civilized enough to have fun at a wake.
There were other people that Remo didn't know. He looked at their faces and could not tell anything about their relationship with Verillio. So he leaned over and asked a man next to him, loudly: "He's a suicide, isn't he? How can they bury him in hallowed ground? What's that priest doing here? Isn't suicide a sin? He's going straight to hell, isn't he? What is this all about?"
He watched carefully-saw shock in Mrs. Hansen's face and stupidity in her husband's, saw hate and anger in Cynthia's face, outrage in the face of the police chief and the editor.
Then there was another face that came into the room and the face coughed. It was Willie the Plumber Palumbo. He stood in the back of the room and looked around. Then his eyes met Remo's and Remo smiled, Willie the Plumber turned away and left rapidly before anyone could see the dark splotch on the front of his pants.
Somebody in that room knew about the heroin. But who? Remo had to find out.
Willie the Plumber Palumbo already had found out. And it did not really surprise him. True, he did not yet know where the heroin actually was, but that would be next. And in the meantime he now knew who the boss was and he knew that it was all clear sailing for Willie Palumbo.
He had already carried out his first assignment, letting the Mafiosi in Atlantic City know that the narcotics were still going to be moved, and by tomorrow the Mafiosi around the country would have to deal with him. He would not be the leader of leaders. He did not delude himself. But he would be the man with the key to the heroin and that was just as good. Millions of dollars would be his. Millions. Women. New cars. Anything he wanted.
But first he must make sure that he had a chance to enjoy it all. That meant something must be done about Remo Barry.
Willie the Plumber stopped at an outside telephone booth near the Conwell Funeral Home and dialled a number. He waited while it rang, cursing the uncomfortable dampness of his trousers, and finally after nine rings the phone was answered.
"Hudson Police," the woman's voice said.
"Give me Extension 235," Willie the Plumber said, thankful he was not calling to report a fire. The whole world could have burned down before the phone at headquarters was answered.
Later Remo waited in the parking lot behind the funeral home, standing next to the car he had rented at Newark Airport and kept an eye out for Cynthia Hansen, whose city Chevrolet, black and dented, was still in the lot.
A green Chevrolet bearing three men pulled in through the narrow driveway into the parking lot and pulled up alongside Remo.
The driver rolled down his window and looked at Remo. If he had worn a neon sign that said cop, he couldn't have been more obvious.
"Your name Remo?" he said.
Remo nodded.
"I've got a message for you," the driver said. He was husky and graying, his face was set in a perpetual grin.
"Oh," Remo said, "what's the message?" and stepped closer to the car, pretending not to notice the man in the back seat reach for the door handle.
And then Remo had a gun stuck into his face by the driver, the man in the back seat was behind him, expertly frisking him, putting his own gun against the back of Remo's neck. He herded Remo into the backseat and kept the gun on him as the driver peeled off and sped away. Through the window, as the car pulled out of the driveway, Remo could see Mayor Hansen and his wife and his daughter walk slowly down the funeral home stairs, but they did not see him.
"What's the message?" Remo said again to the driver's thick neck.
"You'll get it soon enough," the driver said and chuckled. "Ain't that right? He's gonna get the message."
He turned right on the city's main drag, a few blocks later turned left, and then drove straight on, toward the Hudson River, down into the city's decaying dock area where rotted old barges vied for space with burned out pilings.
They drove out on an old poured-cement pier, against which was tied the metal hulk of a ship which had been gutted by a fire months before and was now waiting for the start of salvage work.
The pier was dark and empty and, except for the scurrying of a few rats, they were alone.
The policeman in the back with Remo poked him in the ribs with the gun. "Get out, wise guy."
Remo allowed himself to be herded up a wooden gangplank onto the ship at gunpoint, then into the wheelhouse on the main deck where the cop behind him pushed him hard against the opposite wall.
Remo turned and faced the three policemen. "What's this all about, fellas?" he asked.
"You been causing a lot of trouble," the one who had been driving said.
"I'm just a reporter. Trying to get a story," Remo protested.
"Save that crap for somebody who believes it," the driver said. "We want to know who sent you. A simple question. All it takes is a simple answer."
"I keep trying to tell people. The Intelligentsia Annual. I write for them."
"What are you, their narcotics expert? That's a funny thing for that kind of a magazine."
"It's just my assignment. I do what I'm told."
"So do we," the driver said, "so I want you to know it's nothing personal."
He opened a cabinet inside the room and took out a blowtorch. He pumped it a few times and then lit it with a cigarette lighter. The flame hissed out-blue, weak-he put it on the floor. "All right, boys," he said, "get him."
He drew his own pistol and the other two policemen put theirs away. Then they advanced on Remo who backed up as far in the small room as he could.
They each grabbed one of his arms and they smirked as he struggled to pull himself free. Fat chance, they thought, but he was tenacious and he skittered along the floor a little bit and then they were closer to the man with the gun than they ought to be, but nothing serious, they had him.
Then they didn't have him, and they each felt a sharp crack on the temple and the driver who had held his gun on the three of them found the gun ripped from his hand and tossed through a burned out window opening. Seconds later, it hit water far below with a splash and then Remo had the blowtorch and he was raising the flame.
The other two detectives behind Remo were unconscious or dead. But they were down and still and now Remo blocked the way to the door.
The blowtorch flame hissed louder, yellower as Remo turned it up, then he said, "All right, officer, now we're going to talk."
The policeman looked anxiously around the room. There was no way out. And his men on the floor had not stirred. They might be dead. Could he get to one of them to get a gun?
Remo moved over toward the two men.
"We'll start out easy," Remo said. "What do you know about Ocean Wheel trucks?"