“We are on the same side, aren’t we?” Remo asked.
“I know what side I am on, Remo. Is that your side?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Then let us go to my apartment and talk,” she offered.
“All right. But we have a stop to make first,” Remo said as he took her arm and walked her back down the stairs.
“Where?”
He told her what Riggs had just told him.
“We are going to warn his partner?”
“No. He’s in advertising,” Remo said. “But I want to see if Wimpler’s been there yet. If not, maybe we’ll just hang around for a while.”
A taxi brought them to an apartment building almost identical to the one they had just left, except it was on New York’s West Side, on the other side of Central Park. Remo checked the mailboxes, forced the door and they rode the elevator to the ninth floor.
The door was open.
“Stay behind me,” Remo told the Princess.
“How gallant,” she said, but Remo could hear the tension in her voice. She was frightened. Somehow it made her seem warmer and even more desirable.
The apartment did not appear to be ransacked. There was no sign of a struggle. Remo left her in the living room with orders to stay put while he looked around.
The bedroom was dark as Remo pushed open the door. Heavy drapes sealed out all light from outdoors. Remo remembered how close he had been to death last night, and he paused, heightening his senses, listening to hear if an invisible Wimpler was still in the room, ready to smack him over the skull with an invisible baseball bat.
But there was no sound from the room.
Remo went in.
The body of Riggs’ partner was on the floor. He had apparently been undressing when Wimpler struck. He was wearing socks and underwear. His shirt and suit were tossed over the back of a chair. Next to him was a portable TV set with a cracked screen.
Remo heard a sharp intake of breath behind him. Sarra had followed him into the bedroom and seen the body. The back of her right hand was pressed up against her mouth; her eyes were opened wide; her left hand against her breasts completed the classic pose.
“Don’t scream,” he ordered.
“I do not scream,” she told him as she dropped her hands to her side.
Remo bent over the body to examine it. His head had been crushed, but not with any special device. Apparently Wimpler had knocked the man unconscious, then dropped the television set on his head to make sure of death.
Advertising had scored again. Riggs’ partner was dead. The death was just a little more direct and quick than that usually inflicted on Americans by advertising.
“Let’s go,” Remo told Sarra, touching her elbow and turning her around. “Don’t touch anything.”
“Shouldn’t you call the police?” she asked.
“No.”
They rode the elevator down and found a cab cruising past on the corner.
Sarra gave the driver the address of her apartment.
At her penthouse, overlooking the East River, she offered Remo a drink which he declined. It had been years since he had tasted liquor and the thought of drinking alcohol, a substance used to dilute lacquer, made him feel sick.
She did not make one for herself. She sat on the couch next to him, drew her long legs up beneath her and asked, “What did that all mean to you?”
“That dead guy?”
“Yes.”
“Only that I missed a chance at Wimpler.”
“That’s all?”
He shrugged. “I’m sorry if that disappoints you, Sarra, but he didn’t mean anything to me.”
He could see that his viewpoint didn’t disappoint her. It might even have excited her because she moved closer to Remo on the sofa.
“Do you think this man Wimpler will try to kill my brother?”
“Yes.”
“Why? Who would he work for? What has he to gain?”
“You’re right there. He doesn’t have a contract. He didn’t get one from us and he didn’t get one from you. The other advertisement was a phony. But the fact is that your brother is a wanted man and the price on his head is very high. It won’t be hard for a man, especially an invisible man, to make contact with somebody who’ll pay him a lot of money to kill your brother.”
She nodded. “I don’t know why,” she said, “but I have a feeling that he would do it even if there were no money involved.”
Remo agreed. “We’re talking about a man who was a pussycat all his life. Now he’s got power, and last night Chiun and I challenged that power. I don’t think he can ignore the Emir. Otherwise it tears down all he’s tried to do with himself. I don’t think he can resist the challenge.”
“And you?”
“What about me?” he asked.
She touched his arm, then his cheek and finally his lips. Her fingers were cool and smooth as they traced the outline of his mouth.
“Can you resist a challenge?”
“Only when I want to, Princess,” said Remo.
And this time he didn’t want to.
It was almost midnight when Remo left Princess Sarra’s penthouse apartment and her bed.
As he rode down in the elevator, he felt oddly satisfied with himself and began to analyze the feeling. For a long time, he had been able to satisfy any woman. He was like a machine, not getting personally involved, just doing a job. All the result of 37 steps taught to him by Chiun.
Usually, Remo went down those steps with clinical detachment, stopping at whatever step was the most the woman could stand. The best was usually around step 13.
All neat and precise and mechanical. And boring.
While technique flowered, desire had shriveled to nothing.
But not this time.
It was not just Sarra who had enjoyed their marathon, he had, too. It had nothing to do with love either. Love was an emotion of weakness, an emotion he tried to restrict in himself, for he could afford no weaknesses. Falling in love would make him vulnerable, and a vulnerable man in this business was a dead man.
This had just been sheer rollicking physical joy. If he had been able to tell Chiun about it, Chiun would have thought it disgusting because it was sex without procreation as a goal. But there had been nothing disgusting about it. It had just been a celebration of life by two people who appreciated life. It had been happy. There was no other word for it.
Preoccupied by these thoughts, Remo strolled out of Sarra’s building at precisely midnight.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
SLITS WILSON LIKED MIDNIGHT in Manhattan. It was the time he usually did his best work.
He had earned his nickname with a knife, cutting slits in other people’s bellies, and he was proud of it. He also earned his living with that knife and didn’t live too badly, when he wasn’t vacationing as a guest of the state.
But this was a chance to end those trips to jail forever. It was his big score, and if it came off all right, he would have enough money to set himself up with a couple of women. A couple of foxes working the street for him could really start pulling in the green. Then he could branch out. A little numbers business. Eventually, a little high class drug dealing.
But first this job. The dude wanted some other dude taken out, and there were five big ones in it for Slits. The dude told Slits to make sure he had enough help. Now, how many brothers would it take to ice one honkey?
But the man was paying and the man insisted, so Slits got hold of three others, and now they were waiting across from the big apartment house for one white dude to come marching out into their arms.
Willie the Whip was Slits’ main backup man. He was the first one Slits thought of bringing in on this job. Willie wasn’t bad with a knife, either, although Slits thought his slambang technique lacked style. Willie was Slits’ age, 26, but where Slits was short and stocky, Willie was tall and reed-thin.