“Wouldn't understand? I am the force of the universe, jerk.”
“Please...”
“Forget it. You're not lying.”
Jameson cradled his damaged arm in the other as he leaned forward, crying.
“Are you the agent of darkness?”
“What's this agent-of-darkness stuff?”
“The stronger the forces of good are, the stronger positive forces are, the more they bring out negative forces. If you join Poweressence and people see you are happy, they begin to knock Poweressence. They can't live with your happiness. So they have to call Poweressence a fraud. It takes the form of jealousy. Good things always attract bad.”
“Are you saying I'm bad?”
“No. No. It's just that you're so powerful. And you have turned that power against me, against my positive forces.”
“I'm a good person,” said Remo.
“Yes,” said Jameson immediately. He shielded his face with his good arm. “You are a good person. A good person.”
“Sometimes I have to use methods you might not like,” said Remo.
“Right,” said Jameson.
“But I am a good person.”
“Right,” said Jameson.
“Now, are you going to sit there and tell me you're innocent? You robbed America. You robbed every American farmer. You robbed every citizen in the country who depends on the farmers you robbed. It is not a good thing that you got off scot-free. So why don't you and I work out a deal?”
“Sounds fair,” said Jameson. He sat very rigid in the chair, with his backbone as far away from the young man with the horror-dealing hands as he could.
“You did commit crimes, correct?”
“I did. True.”
“You got off free.”
“I've donated to charity, to religions.”
“That thing with the Mickey Mouse forces of the universe won't do. You don't even understand the forces of the universe. They're not in some cult. They're in the universe. No, I'm thinking of an agreed-upon punishment for you, so you don't quite enjoy your life knowing you escaped. Because that's what you did, Jameson.”
“What do you suggest?”
“How about not walking again?”
“No.”
“One of your arms is damaged already.”
“No, not my arms.”
“Tell you what. One night, maybe sooner, maybe later, I'm going to come back and make you pay for your crimes,” said Remo.
“What are you going to do?”
“I'll just have to decide when I get to it. But wait for me. I'm coming back,” said Remo, and he walked out of the room into the party, thanked Mrs. Jameson for inviting him, and asked her again if he weren't absolutely correct about her age.
Remo thought it was a fitting punishment, tormenting the executive with the fear that Remo would return to inflict damage upon his body. Of course, he wasn't going to come back, but the executive didn't know that. The constant terror would be the best punishment of all. It was enough, and Remo hadn't done it so much for the country as for himself. It was just too wrong for someone that bad to escape so freely to a life that good.
And besides, Remo was in a foul mood.
* * *
The second lucky recipient of an acquittal lived very well also. He had an estate that covered miles of Oklahoma prairie land, a magnificent home more like a castle than a house. He had servants and he had bodyguards, range riders, tough men with carbines and Bronco land cruisers, ten-gallon hats, and weathered faces.
When Remo unweathered a few of the faces, they brought him right to their employer, a man who had swindled thousands of people out of their savings in a diamond-investment scheme. It was as old as fraud itself. He paid the first investors back handsomely with the profits from ensuing investors, and when he had enough people pouring their nest eggs into his bank accounts, he stopped paying everyone and headed toward Brazil, which had no extradition treaty with America. He didn't make it and was charged with fraud. His accountant, whom he had planned on leaving behind, prepared the entire case for the government. In fact, he was glad to help because his employer, Diamond Bill Pollenberg, had arranged it so the accountant signed all the incriminating documents.
It was an airtight case and the accountant, happily anticipating his revenge, could not be reached. Until that day when he forgot everything after his first college course in double ledger entries.
And then Diamond Bill Pollenberg went free. He went back to his vast rangelands to enjoy nature. And he enjoyed it right up until a thin man with thick wrists told him that if he didn't explain some things right now, he was going to embed a horse's hoof in Mr. Pollenberg's rectum, and he was going to leave the horse attached.
Bill Pollenberg knew the time to use reason when he saw it. What he saw this day was two of his toughest range hands with their wrinkles rearranged on their faces, and tears of pain in their eyes.
“Howdy, podner,” said Pollenberg, offering the stranger a pot of coffee off the campfire. Pollenberg wore a ten-gallon hat, Levi's, and boots, which offset his $200,000 diamond pinkie ring perfectly. It was the only real diamond he had ever owned.
“Where'd you pick up this 'podner' stuff? I got you down as having been born on Mosholu Parkway in the Bronx.”
“I am a reasonable man. Let us reason together.”
“How'd you turn the witness?”
“I didn't do anything, friend. Have some coffee. Get with the positive forces. Unleash yourself. Become your real self.”
“What did you do to the witness?”
“The forces of the universe did it for me,” said Bill Pollenberg with a smile. Shortly thereafter, smiling Bill was found minus his diamond ring and serving as a cushion for his favorite horse's right rear hoof. Every time the horse used his hoof, Bill Pollenberg's stomach met part of his vast rangeland. The diamond ring was recovered from a little girl in downtown Oklahoma City who said a nice man gave it to her because she had such a pretty smile.
* * *
On a yacht cruising the Pacific along the California coast, Angelo Muscamente met his underbosses, his oily courtesy coating the ever-present malevolence that made his organization one of the smoothest-running in the country. They all had survived what had been the greatest threat to their freedom in a decade and they had gotten their reprieve when a minor enforcer, a witness, suddenly forgot everything.
No one who knew Mr. Muscamente believed for one moment he had not stretched his long powerful arms out to reach Gennaro “Drums” Drumola. Everyone knew that crossing Mr. Muscamente meant pain at least, and death at most. Those offenses that brought the death penalty were those jobs that cost Mr. Muscamente anything over $5,000. Because the boss was unreasonable and unbendable about the arbitrary line, only petty thievery could flourish in his mob. As his lieutenants boarded his yacht, each kissed his offered hand.
“Mr. Muscamente, it is a pleasure to be here,” said one after another.
“Yeah. Okay,” said Mr. Muscamente, receiving the homage with boredom. There were fourteen, all told, who were finally assembled on the rear deck of his oceangoing yacht
But these were not exactly the words Mr. Muscamente's bodyguards used.
