56
"Yes."
"Check him out. He couldn't find his foot inside his shoe. He wasn't even around when we were discussing the security with Pakir."
"How is the big man?" Smith said.
Remo knew who he meant. "Impressive, but not long for this world. He'll die in bed."
"If he has to die, that's the way I'd prefer it," Smith said.
"Did you find out anything about the men on the dock?"
"They were shopping for an assassin to take out Romeo," Smith said. "It appears they found one."
"Any idea who?" Remo asked Smith.
"No," said Smith. "It might even have been an amateur. All the professionals seemed to have been frightened off. See what you can find."
"Okay, Smitty."
They were almost at their destination when Remo broke off the connection, and a few minutes later they were prowling the smelly, dirty pier.
"This looks like the spot, Chiun," said Remo.
"Look with more than your eyes, meat-eater," Chiun said. There were dark stains in the wood of the dock, apparently blood stains. Remo crouched down to look at them.
"I don't even know what we're looking for," Remo complained.
Chiun squatted next to him, looking over the area. He reached out with his hand and ran it over the stains.
"Something is stuck in the wood," he said.
Remo watched as Chiun's skillful fingers dug at the wood of the dock and lifted it free.
57
"There," said Chiun, holding his hand open to Remo.
"There what?" said Remo. All he could see was a black speck, a chip of something in Chiun's hand.
"Have you ever seen anything that black?" Chiun asked.
"Only the inside of a Chinaman's heart," Remo said.
"A worthy sentiment, but mistimed. Pay attention. Look at that chip of paint carefully."
"So it's very black," Remo said. He looked again. "Very, very black. And again, so what?"
"I have never seen anything so black," Chiun said. "This reflects no light at all."
"I really don't get what this is all about."
"Something that black would be invisible in the dark," Chiun said. "It would reflect nothing back to the eye. Does that answer your question?"
"You mean to tell me that we're dealing with a guy who has an invisible kind of paint? Somebody's painting himself invisible?"
"It is possible," Chiun said.
"Jesus," said Remo. "Smitty's going to love this one."
He had spent his life afraid of the dark, but now Elmo Wimpler knew that the light was his enemy. In the dark, in blackness, he was God, a King, ruler of all he surveyed. But in the light, he would be just another small man in a dark cloth suit. He would be a wimp again.
Never. Never again.
incredible feeling of power beyond anything he had ever felt before.
He would not give up that power. The power to do anything. To buy anything. To have any woman. To decide life and death for others.
His only enemy was the light.
In the garage attached to his small home, Wimpler inspected his black, invisibility outfit and found a small piece of paint had chipped off. He would have to work on that. Perhaps he could make the paint with a rubber or latex base so it would be flexible and would not crack or chip. He sprayed the flaked spot again.
The outfit was as good as new.
He wanted to use it again.
He couldn't wait to use it again.
And he knew just who to use it on.
He had a couple of debts to pay back.
While the outfit was drying, he looked on his shelves for an invention he had been working on several years before. It was an electronic oscillator. Aimed at a power source, it would jam the electrical current, changing its frequency, and the surge of power would blow out lights all along the line of the circuit. It had worked but it had no commercial value. Who would want to blow out lights?
So Wimpler had put it on a shelf and forgotten it. Until now. He found the small box and inserted a fresh, nine-volt battery. Then he aimed it at a small, night light he kept burning in the garage. There was no sound, but suddenly the light went off.
Elmo Wimpler laughed aloud. He sprayed the unit with his black invisibility paint, and then began
He had tasted power, killing those three men—an I to put on his special suit.
58 I 59
It was time to visit his neighbors, Curt and Phyl- I "Curt " he said softly.
lis. He planned to spend a little more time with Phyllis than with Curt, though. He figured to be done with Curt very quickly. Very quickly.
Getting into the house was easy. The storm door to the rear hallway was unlocked. He walked in and stood in the dark hallway, watching Phyllis doing the dinner dishes. He enjoyed the view. She was wearing a backless halter top and he admired the arch of her spine as it sloped down to her behind which was clad only in a pair of pink panties. Her long legs were covered by a thin sheen of perspiration on the hot night. Her feet were bare, her ankles trim and lovely, and she was humming a tune as she worked. Even with the teased hair and loud mouth, she was quite a woman. She had always been Elmo's one main sexual fantasy. He had imagined himself doing unimaginable things to her and tonight, after he was done with Curt, he would do all of them.
To his left were the basement steps and Elmo could hear Curt down there grunting, doing his usual nightly weight-lifts. He took a last lingering look at Phyllis's back and then went quietly down the steps to the basement.
Curt was on his back doing bench presses with a 150-pound barbell. As Wimpler watched, Curt pushed the bar up overhead, locked his elbows, then let the bar down to rest on his chest. When the barbell was over his head, Elmo aimed his power oscillator at the single overhead light. Instantly, the cellar plunged into darkness.
"Shit," Curt growled. "Freaking light blew." Wimpler was already standing behind him, his skull-crusher out and open.
60
"What? Who's there?" The fear in his voice gave Wimpler almost an electric thrill down his spine.
"Just visiting like a good neighbor," Wimpler said. He had the skull-crusher around Curt's head. "Good-bye, neighbor," he said, as he pressed the button. He heard the phhhhht of the compressor and then the cracking sound of Curt's skull.
Curt did not even have time to yell.
Wimpler stood at the bottom of the steps.
He held his hand over his mouth and called loudly, "Phyllis," trying to imitate Curt's loud roar.
From the shadows he could see the woman standing at the top of the cellar stairs.
"Curt? Why's it dark down there?"
Again muffling his voice, Wimpler yelled, "Come on down."
Gamely, she came down the steps to the cellar. Wimpler let her pass him, then ran noiselessly up the steps to close the top cellar door, to keep out all light.
Then he was back downstairs, invisible in the blackness, standing behind her.
"Curt?" she called softly. This time there was a little question in her voice.
Elmo put his arms around her. She thought it was Curt. She purred.
Wimpler hit her alongside the head, just before putting the gag in her mouth, just before he went to work to make all his fantasies come true.
61
i
CHAPTER EIGHT
"Another one?" Remo asked.
"Just like the others. Skull crushed," Smith said. He gave Remo the Brooklyn address.
"Anything on that paint chip?" Remo asked.
"Not yet. It's still in the laboratory. I'll let you know what we find out."
Remo hung up and looked out the window at Manhattan. He had moved into this midtown hotel to be close to Princess Sarra, and now he was off again to Brooklyn.
And he didn't like Brooklyn. He had never liked Brooklyn. When he was a boy in the orphanage, the nuns had made them read a short story titled "Only the Dead Know Brooklyn."
In a test, they had asked for the name of the story, and he had written, "Only the Dumb Like Brooklyn." For that smart-ass answer, he had gotten himself rapped on the knuckles with a ruler. He had resented Brooklyn ever since.