Remo's employer had not given up, however. That was why Upstairs had sent him to Harlem.
As he approached the blue blade of a building, Remo's mind hearkened back to the time more than a year ago, where many of his troubles had been hatched in this building.
An artificial intelligence had assembled the building as a gigantic mainframe designed to house the single computer chip on which its programming had been encoded. The chip was called Friend. Friend was programmed to maximize profits. Its own. Since the organization Remo worked for had several times interfered with Friend's cold-blooded attempts to maximize profits, Friend had decided to attack the organization first.
It had been a nearly perfect preemptive strike.
One prong of the attack involved tricking Remo's employer into sending Remo out into the field to kill an organized-crime figure. Remo had. Only afterward did the truth come out. Upstairs's computers had been sabotaged, and Remo had targeted an innocent man.
The knowledge had turned Remo away from the organization and initiated a year-long ordeal in which he had come to the brink of quitting the organization-which was called CURE-forever.
All that was in the past. Remo had come to the realization that he was an instrument. If he was used badly or in error, that was someone else's fault. Not his. He was only as good as his orders.
The man who had innocently given those orders was named Dr. Harold W Smith. Smith had ultimately brought Friend down with help from Remo and his trainer.
More recently Smith had returned to the XL Building to repair the sabotaged telephone line that connected his office to the Oval Office. The dedicated line ran underground next to the XL Building. Smith worked for the President. Remo worked for Smith. But Remo didn't work for the President. The broken chain was called deniability.
Smith had been chased off by some of the crack dealers who had taken over the XL Building in violation of every statute on the books. His car had been stripped in the process.
Since Harold Smith lost sleep whenever a nickel fell out of his pocket and rolled into a storm drain, he had not forgotten the insult.
And since Remo was going to be in the neighborhood, Smith had asked him to tie up the second loose end: make certain the Friend chip was off line for good.
At the main entrance door, Remo stopped and bent his well-trained body. The two absolutely vertical trash-can stacks touched solid concrete. Without bothering to remove the lids from his head, he unstacked them, making an orderly row of cans. Then he walked back up the line, taking the lids off his head one at a time. They floated into place, making a series of six rattly clangs.
Even the clangs were perfect in their way. None was louder than the other and, for clangs, they weren't particularly discordant.
The clanging brought someone to the door. It opened, and a dark, suspicious face poked out.
"Who you?" he asked. His head was all but swallowed by the gray hood of his sweatshirt.
"It's just me," Remo said casually.
"Yeah? Who you?"
"I told you. Me."
"Which me is that, is what I'm asking," the man snapped. "I don't know you!'
"I'm here to take out the trash."
"What trash?"
"The trash inside. What do you think?"
The black man cracked a sloppy grin.
"You planning to empty out the trash inside of here, you gonna need a lot more than them six cans you got."
"Depends on how you define trash," said Remo.
"Why don't you keep on stepping before you got problems? You ain't coming in here."
"Sorry. I have business in there."
"Yeah? You buying or selling?"
"Depends. You buying or selling?"
"Selling. You looking to smoke or inject?"
"I gave up smoking years ago."
The man waved Remo in. "Okay, c'mon in. Quick."
"What's the rush? Everybody knows this is a crack house. The police know it's a crack-house. Even the governor knows."
"Yeah. But the police be afraid to come inside and bust us. I do my business on the damn street, they might get brave and grab my ass. Now, come on in, you want to deal."
"Sure," said Remo, picking up one of the shiny new trash cans.
"What you need that for?"
"Trash."
"You talking trash, but come on, fool."
The door shut behind Remo, and he found himself in what had once been an impressive marble foyer. Trash had accumulated in the corners. The walls were now tagged with spray paint graffiti. It was rat heaven.
"Nice," said Remo. "Whoever has to clean this up will be at it till 2000."
"Nobody's gonna clean this place up. Now, pick up your feet."
Shrugging, Remo followed. He carried the can with him. He whistled a happy air.
This drew a sharp rebuke from the hooded man.
"You already high on something?"
"Every breath I take gets me higher."
The black man made an unhappy face, shook his head and kept going.
Beyond the foyer was a stairwell, and Remo followed him up. As soon as the fire door was open, the pungent smell of crack assaulted his nostrils. Remo cycled his breathing down to filter out the deadly smoke.
"This place smell like formaldehyde all the time?" Remo asked.
"You know it. Man can get high just by climbing the stairs. Only don't you try copping any freebies off the air. You want to smoke crack, you smoke the crack I sell you, not the crack hanging in the air. You hear me?"
"Loud and clear," said Remo, who abruptly decided he didn't want to carry this particular trash down more than one flight. He set the can down with a bang.
The black man whirled jumpily at the sound.
"What's the damn holdup?"
"My trash can is empty."
"Of course it's empty. You brought it in empty."
"That's not the problem. The problem is I'm carrying it out full. Those are my orders."
"Orders? Who gave you them orders?"
"That would be telling," said Remo, lifting the lid. He peered inside, frowning with his strong, angular face.
He did this long enough to draw the crack dealer to the lip of the can. He looked in, too.
"What do you see?" Remo asked casually.
"Bottom of an empty damn can."
"Look closer. What else?"
"My own damn reflection."
"Bingo," said Remo, reaching out and stuffing the crack dealer into the can. He went in face first, angry expressions colliding at the bottom. His feet stuck up. They kicked like frog legs.
Remo tapped a spot at the small of the man's back, and both legs wilted like weeds. Then Remo jammed the lid in place.
"Can you breathe?" he asked.
"Lemme out, fool! Lemme out now!"
"I asked if you can breathe?"
"Yeah. I can breathe."
"That's why they're called air holes."
"What?"
"Never mind," said Remo, lifting the can by one handle and marching up the stairs.
The crack smoke came in two flavors-fresh and stale.
Trying not to inhale, Remo followed the thin river of fresh smoke. It led to the third floor, where he found a closed door and an assortment of people sprawled in a corner amid the wreckage of office furniture, passing around a bent and flattened Coke can that emitted thin white smoke.
They were taking turns inhaling from the Coke can's poptop mouth.
"Trashman," Remo sang out.
"Go 'way," some of the smokers said. The others didn't look up. They were so thin from not eating, they might have lacked the strength.
"I've come for the trash," Remo said. "Let's start with that Coke can."