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"Well, we know where to find them."
"No longer," said Smith. "The Salem Street Social Club has been vacated
completely. The Boston Mafia has gone underground. We have no leads at
present. It's as if it had ceased to operate."
"Maybe they had a power surge and their disk crashed again."
"Criminal activity in Boston has actually increased. We think they're up
there. Somewhere. Maybe a lead can be developed at IDC."
"I'll give it a shot," said Remo, again looking at his face.
"These eyes are fine," he said doubtfully, as if trying to convince himself.
"I agree," said Chiun, sniffing a peony as if it were the most beautiful
flower in creation.
Which caused Remo's eyes to fly back to the mirror. They were wide and round
as they looked back at him. He realized that fright was making them that way.
He squeezed his eyelids tight. Suddenly they looked definitely oblique.
Remo spent the next ten minutes trying to work his eyes into a natural shape,
neither too round nor too narrow.
His face began to hurt again.
Chapter 20
Wendy Wilkerson was living in fear.
To be more precise, she was working in fear.
Ever since the disappearance of Vice-President in Charge of Systems Outreach
Antony Tollini she had wondered if she would be next. She took the week
following Tony Tollini's disappearance off.
No one had complained, which was not surprising. As director of product
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placement, she was even less important than the VP in charge of systems
outreach-a position so new that no one at IDC knew what the person holding the
job was supposed to do.
Since no one knew what Tony Tollini was supposed to be doing for Bold Blue, he
had not yet been missed either.
After a week and a half, Wendy Wilkerson decided it was safe to return to
work. She needed her check.
It was strange, thought Wendy, lunching on a peeled apple and plain yogurt in
the relative security of her dimly lit office, how the higher-ups seemed
oblivious to the entire mad mess.
She could understand how Tony's absence could go virtually unnoticed, his
biweekly salary checks piling up on his secretary's desk. This was the south
wing, where upper management never ventured.
But why, after two fruitless police visits, had the absence of the missing
programmers and customer-service engineers not been questioned? It was as if
as long as the bottom line remained relatively constant, the board of
directors didn't care.
Wendy shivered inside her immaculately tailored business suit, wondering if
Tony were alive or dead. She was sure he was dead. There was no other
explanation for why they hadn't come for her too. Tony was a corporate weasel.
He would have handed her up to the Mafia to save his own skin in no time
flat.
As she pared a wedge out of a Granny Smith apple, there came a timid knock at
her inner office door.
"Yes?" said Wendy.
"Miss Wilkerson, there is a man here who would like to speak with you."
"About what?" Wendy asked, her heart stopping. It was Tony's personal
secretary.
"About . . . about Mr. Tollini."
The precise wedge of Granny Smith apple poised on the point of being
swallowed, Wendy's mouth was suddenly dry. She tried to swallow the apple, her
mind racing.
They were here!
Just as the apple wedge went sliding down her slippery esophagus, Wendy's
throat constricted. The apple wedge wandered off-course, producing a
sputtering paroxysm of coughing.
Wendy began hacking.
"Miss Wilkerson! Miss Wilkerson! Are you all right in there?" demanded the
secretary.
"What's going on?" a hard male voice demanded.
"I think she's choking," cried the secretary, rattling the doorknob, which
Wendy had taken the precaution of locking.
The door exploded inward, propelled by a cruel-faced man with dark recessed
eyes and wearing an expensive silk suit.
His hard face tight and grim, he came toward Wendy with such ferocity of
purpose that she tried to scamper into the safety of the desk well.
A hand got the shoulder of her tailored business outfit and pulled her back
into her seat.
Wendy would have pleaded for her life, but she couldn't get anything past her
spasming windpipe.
She wondered for a wild minute what would kill her first, the blocked airway
or the terrible Mafia executioner who had come to rub her out.
With undeniable strength, the man lifted her up onto the desk and laid her
across the blue blotter, upsetting her yogurt. He pulled her head straight
back by her red-gold hair while his other hand reached for her midriff.
She closed her eyes, hoping the apple would kill her before she was violated.
After she was dead, he could do anything he wanted. Just please, not before.
The sound was like a gentle slap. But it made Wendy's abdomen convulse so hard
she saw stars. All the air spewed out of her lungs.
The apple wedge jumped from her yawning mouth and came down to splatter on her
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forehead.
"Okay," said the Mafia enforcer. "You can sit up now."
Wendy declined. The fact that she could breathe again only meant she was going
to suffer at the mafioso's hands.
"I said, you can get up now."
"Perhaps she needs a drink of water," suggested the secretary helplessly.
"Go get some," said the Mafia enforcer, his voice less harsh now.
Wendy opened her green eyes. The face that looked down at her had the deep-set
eyes of a skull. They were flat and dead, with no trace of warmth.
"What are you going to do to me?" she asked.
"Ask you some questions."
Wendy sat up. His voice was direct but nonthreatening. "Who are you?" she
asked.
"Call me Remo."
Wendy leaned back again, shutting her eyes. Remo. Her worst fears were true.
She shuddered.
A firm hand forced her upward again. Hard-as-punch-press fingers pried one of
her eyes open.
"Why are you acting this way?" asked the killer called Remo.
"Because I don't know what else to do," replied Wendy truthfully.
High heels clicked near. "Here's your water."
The one called Remo accepted the water from the secretary and brought it up to
Wendy's lips. Wendy took the paper cup in her hands and greedily gobbled down
the cold spring water. It had never tasted so good, she decided.
"Will you leave us alone now, please?" said the man who called himself Remo.
"Of course."
"No!" said Wendy.
"Yes," said Remo.
The secretary hesitated. Remo plucked a yellow pencil from a Lucite holder and
jammed it into an electric pencil sharpener. The motor whined. The pencil
disappeared into the orifice. Complete.
As he reached for another, Remo said casually, "When I run out of pencils, I
might start thinking about using fingers."
The secretary hid her hands behind her back and raced for the door, which she
drew quietly closed.
Remo turned to Wendy and said, "Guess no one told her they make the pencil
holes too small for fingers." He smiled. No lights of humor lit his flat
deadly eyes, Wendy saw.
"Heimlich?" Wendy asked, touching her throat. Her esophagus felt like a
balloon that had been stretched too tight.
"Call it what you want. I hear you were tight with Tony Tollini. "
"We were in the same boat together, if that's what you mean."
"Same boat?"
Remo eased Wendy off the desk and into her chair. She looked up at him. He
looked exactly like she pictured the real Frank Nitti would look. She wondered
if he was an enforcer.
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