Warren Murphy Destroyer 134 Bloody Tourists

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earlobe. "What just happened?" he asked the skinny Caucasian ATF agent.
"We were being rudely interrupted. You're done blathering, right, Sheriff?"
The sheriff had tears rolling down his face, but he managed a terse nod.
"Okay. Now tell me about the witnesses."
The photographer looked questioningly at the sheriff, who gave his permission
with very emphatic head jerks. "Okay," the photographer said. "Well, there was
just one witness. The bartender."
"Yeah. He among the living?"
"Oh, yeah, not a mark on him. He got out. Went into the manager's office and
locked the door behind him, then watched the whole thing through the
peephole."
"What about the manager?"
"He's at a restaurant trade show in Chicago."
"Wait staff?" Remo asked.
"Two beer gals usually, but tonight one of them called in sick, and she's
lucky she did. The only serving girl who was working the place is over
there."
He nodded at a nearby mess of flesh that had erased its own chalk outline with
spreading blood.
The photographer expected a gag or a gasp, but Remo just sighed.
The little old Korean man rolled his eyes. Then he strolled to the long,
L-shaped bar and gingerly lifted a plastic beer mug, sniffing the contents.
Remo, too, had noticed the odd aroma that permeated the place. Even masked by
the stench of spilled beer, the smell was obvious and alien. Chiun looked
puzzled.
They left the sheriff with the photographer and found the bartender still in
the manager's office giving his statement, and the tale came so automatically
it was clear he'd gone through it all several times.
"Relax," Remo told the good-cop trooper and his hulking, silent partner, the
bad-cop trooper. "We're Feds. We'll just listen in."
"Like hell," growled the bad-cop trooper, a colossus who knew he didn't even
have to stand up to be intimidating-so he didn't bother. His shoulders were
powerful, his arms massive under the specially tailored uniform. "This ain't
your jurisdiction until I hear otherwise. Amscray."
"No, thanks." Remo nodded pleasantly, hoping the good-cop trooper would
continue the questioning. The colossus got to his feet. He did it slowly, as
if moving his monstrous frame into a standing position required a mighty
challenge to the forces of gravity. "Don't make me go local on you, U.S. boy,"
he growled.
"Okay, Unincredible Hulk, you made your point. You're big and tall. Ooh. Ahh.
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So what. Sit down." The trooper with the notebook went white. Wrong thing to
say! he communicated to Remo Williams silently.
Remo Williams didn't care. He wasn't here to make friends. In fact, he didn't
know what he was here for. Upstairs had him running around doing all this
lookinto-this stuff and investigate-that stuff. He wasn't experiencing job
satisfaction and he wasn't running into a lot of friendly, cooperative people.
Even the cops were giving him crap.
So when the hand the size of a manhole cover made a grab at his collar, he
broke it.
Even the giant didn't get it at first. He thought the skinny little guy had
simply batted his hand away. Then he felt the sensation of shattering bones
and the pain that traveled up his arm like a flood tide. With a bull-sized
bellow he went for a full body tackle, and stopped midair. The skinny guy from
the federal government caught him in the chest with his palm, and it should
have sent the little guy flying halfway across the state. Somehow it was the
giant state trooper who crashed to the floor.
"The bigger they are, the smarter they are not," Chiun observed.
"But they are louder," Remo added, groping around the back of the giant's neck
and making a small adjustment. The bellow ended.
"Ah, peace and quiet."
"What'd you do?" the good-cop trooper demanded.
"Don't worry, I just hit the mute button. Please carry on."
"But he's wounded! He's paralyzed!"
"Criminy!" Remo opened the door and gave the giant a nudge with the bottom of
one expensive Italian shoe. The paralyzed trooper rocketed out the door and
down the short hall, still moving fast when he hit the messiest of the
corpses. Sliding on blood, he actually seemed to pick up speed. Remo didn't
bother to watch the dramatic end of the wild ride. grabbing the pen and
notebook from the hands of the other trooper and tossing them out the door, as
well. The trooper stared at Remo dumbfounded.
"Well? Go fetch."
The trooper nodded sadly and left.
The bartender was, if anything, mildly amused.
"I hate to do this to you again, but could you tell us what happened here?"
Remo asked.
"Hell, sure. You two are the first law enforcement I seen all night that act
like they could actually do something about it." The bartender quickly related
the events that led up to the violence. "That door saved me," he said. "It's
like a safe door. Solid steel. Anything less they would have got me and killed [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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