“Nothing,” the man answered.
“Nothing?” Elmo said. “How can that be? There’s a mistake.” Please let there be a mistake, he thought.
“I’m sorry, Elmo, but I saw a chance to increase your holdings and made some investments.”
“I didn’t authorize any investments,” Wimpler snapped.
“I know,” said the banker, sounding huffy over the phone. “But I knew you wouldn’t mind. So I put your money in gold.”
“And gold dropped from eight hundred to six hundred an ounce. I should have something left.”
“No,” the banker explained patiently. “I bought on margin. The two-hundred-dollar drop wiped you out. Sorry about that.”
“My house,” said Wimpler. “I can mortgage it. What can I get?”
“Too late. You really should have called me last week. I mortgaged your house.”
“Damn,” snarled Wimpler.
“Well, if you let me know once in a while what’s on your mind…” the banker said. “I can’t read minds, you know. Anyway, if I can be of any more…”
Wimpler hung up.
He was broke.
Ruined.
And hungry.
But there was no food in the house. Nothing but dry cereal and powdered milk, and he gagged just thinking about it.
He fell into a chair, holding his head between his hands. What could he do now? He had no family, no friends to turn to for help. He could starve to death and no one would know. Here he had this great invention worth millions. Imagine all the things that could be made invisible. Tanks. Airplanes. An army. Policemen. Burglars.
Wait a minute.
He sat straight up in the chair and reran everything that had just gone through his head until he found the one he wanted.
Burglars.
Could he do it? Did he have the nerve?
Was anything worse than starving to death?
He began to walk to his bedroom, slowly at first, then with more determination. He tripped over his cat. The cat spat. Elmo Wimpler apologized.
From his closet he took an old shirt and slacks and his only other pair of shoes.
He hung them on the back of a door and began to spray the clothing. He sprayed the shoes black and put them back into the dark closet. As the paint dried, the shoes disappeared.
He began to get excited at the prospect of playing the invisible man. He ran to the kitchen, again tripping over the cat. This time he did not apologize. From a plastic wrap and an old baseball cap, he fashioned a face screen with a thin slit he could see through. He took it back to the bedroom and sprayed the whole apparatus black.
He put on the costume, then drew the blinds and old drapes in the room. He stepped in front of the full length mirror on the back of his bedroom door in the dark room and there he was.
Or wasn’t.
He was invisible.
He felt a thrill like he’d never felt before, not even when he was watching Phyllis’ bottom as she gardened next door. He felt fantastic.
And scared.
CHAPTER TWO
HIS NAME WAS REMO and he feared nothing.
All men’s fears were based on one thing alone—the fear of dying. It was what terrified an embezzler; afraid he might be found out, and afraid he would have to take his own life. It explained the terror of a child in the dark, or a grown-up hearing the sound of rats inside a wall. Every fear translated into the fear of dying.
And Remo no longer had that fear. He no longer worried about being killed, but only about whom he would kill and when.
He was an assassin, and knowing that he had power over life and death for others had given him a kind of peace he had never known before.
He felt that peace as he slipped into the hospital, strolled with a casual wave past a guard’s desk, and nodded to a middle-aged nurse, who took one look at the slim, thick-wristed, dark-eyed man and wished that he belonged to her.
Remo whistled peacefully as he rode in the elevator up to the intensive care unit on the third floor and found a linen closet. Inside, a simple change of clothes made him an orderly.
He loaded his arms up with a pile of towels, walked into the intensive care ward and said to the young peppermint striper there, “How’s it going tonight?”
The young woman took one look into his intense, dark eyes and felt the same shiver the nurse downstairs had felt.
“Quiet as a mouse,” she said. “You’re new here, aren’t you?”
“Yup,” he said. He leaned over her desk and, as he checked the list of patient names in the ward, breathed into her ear. “Show me around later?”
His hand touched her back and did something to her that made her squirm on the orange plastic seat cushion.
“Sure,” she said, and then in case he had misunderstood her statement or its intensity, said again, “Sure. Sure.”
“Swell,” he said, removing his hand. “Meet you here later.”
Still carrying his towels, he found the orderlies’ lounge down the hall. Inside was a tall, dark-haired man, drinking coffee and studying a typewritten sheet. When Remo entered, he hurriedly put the sheet away, but Remo had already recognized it: it was the patient list from intensive care.
This was number one.
Remo poured himself some unwanted coffee. His nose rebelled at the smell and his brain at the thought of drinking a mud created from boiling burned beans. Then he sat across from the other orderly.
“You the man?” he asked.
“Huh?” the dark-haired man said, his eyes nearly watering behind his wire-rimmed glasses.
“You know what I mean. You running the pool?” Remo asked.
“What pool?”
“C’mon, pal,” Remo said, “I’ve got to get back on duty. Who’s on the list? Mrs. Grayson? What days you got left?”
The thin man blinked several times behind his glasses, then said slowly, “Twenty-first and twenty-fifth.”
“Hell,” Remo said. “She’ll go before that but give me the twenty-first.”
“It’ll cost you fifty,” the orderly said.
“Got it right here,” Remo said, reaching into his pocket. But of course his cash was in the pocket of his black chinos, underneath the white hospital trousers he was wearing. So he drove his fingertips through the bottom of the empty pocket, ripping the fabric, then reached through the hole into his chino pocket and brought out a roll of bills.
As he pretended to count off fifty dollars, Remo said, “I’ve heard that some of you guys are pulling the plugs on these patients. That doesn’t seem fair.”
The thin orderly grinned. “Everybody’s got the same chance. If Mrs. Grayson lives to your day, and you pull the plug on her and nobody notices and she conks, well, then you’re the winner.” He grinned. “It’s simple. Everybody’s got an equal chance to get the pool.”
Remo held fifty dollars toward the man, who extended his hand for it.
“Ever wonder?” Remo said.
“Wonder what?”
“How it feels to get your own plug pulled?” The man looked up, and met Remo’s eyes. Remo smiled, reached out and unplugged the orderly’s windpipe.
Remo tossed the body into a coat closet, took the typewritten sheet from the man’s shirt pocket and went back into the room. He sat at the table with the sheet flattened out before him.
Another orderly entered the room. He was a squat blond, whose bristled haircut made him look like a squared-off stack of hay.
“Where’s Arnie?” he asked Remo.
“Gone,” Remo said. He looked up from the list. “What day you got?”
“Nineteenth.” The man poured himself a cup of coffee. “How much we collect so far?” he asked.