When he phoned in to headquarters, he knew he had to be slipping somehow, because Smith was now conciliatory, telling him it was not his fault.
“I would say go at the Poweressence people because that's the only common thread we have here. But if they were behind this, why didn't they use this power to turn witnesses for themselves? It doesn't make sense. The only thing we know is that the whole justice system seems to be coming apart in California.”
“Yeah, and if it happens in California, the whole nation catches it soon thereafter,” said Remo.
“Are you trying to make me feel good?” asked Smith.
“I don't feel so hot myself.”
“Why don't you take a look at that organization? Take Chiun.”
“You don't think I can handle things anymore.”
“Take Chiun.”
“Are you telling me I can't do the job?” asked Remo.
“I am telling you I don't understand how you and Chiun work, and if he tells me you are out of synch with the cosmos, then that means there is something wrong. And you are for some reason not coming up with results.”
“You just told me it wasn't my fault.”
“I just told you I had no reason to believe it was your fault. I can't be sure.”
Remo pulverized the receiver of the pay telephone. It was so much more satisfying than hanging up.
Chapter 6
Lawyer Barry Glidden sent his children off to Switzerland, telling them to use another name for a while. He would contact them when the situation improved.
“Have you done something wrong, Daddy?” asked his daughter.
“No,” said Glidden. “I have a very difficult client who is very mad now.”
“They won't pay you?”
“No. That's the least of my worries. There is a client I have who thinks the only wrong thing in the world is if something bad happens to her. And she does bad things.”
“Like what, Daddy?”
“Like anything, honey. Absolutely anything. Anything, sweetheart. Do you understand?” Barry held the girl's head in his hands. He shuddered. “There is nothing beyond this sick, sick lady's imagination. Nothing that she won't do. To anyone. So that is why you have to leave. She is mad at me now.”
“Couldn't you get policemen to protect you?”
“Doesn't work like that, sweetheart. Not with those two.”
“Then why do you defend them?”
“Well, she paid a lot of money. Lots. And I didn't... couldn't believe they were as bad as they turned out.”
“Oh, Daddy. You have had some absolutely horrid clients.”
“She puts alligators in swimming pools of people she doesn't like. She threatens the President. And she promised to boil someone alive in oil if she lost a lawsuit. If I lost a lawsuit. Get on the plane, honey.”
“Did you lose the lawsuit?”
“Not yet, just the first round. But we don't stand a chance.”
“She's going to boil you alive in oil, Daddy?”
“No, honey, someone I love.”
“Good-bye, Daddy. Don't phone until it's over. They can trace phone calls.”
“Good-bye, honey,” said Barry Glidden, who despite his sense of terror was not too terrified to do some good business before he saw the Dolomos. He brought two more investors into the city complex he had planned for the Dolomo estate. Then he went out to see Beatrice and her husband. Gingerly he drove over one of her moats. He wondered if there were alligators in there. He wondered if she would throw him in before he got the chance to fit two hundred duplex units on the south lawn.
Glidden knew Beatrice was on a rampage because Rubin was hiding. He stood in the middle of the pink marble foyer and looked for clues as to Rubin's whereabouts. From the rear of the house echoed a sound— a gurgling, happy sound. He knew that couldn't be Rubin, but the sounds intrigued him. Glidden would investigate. He walked past a few of the bodyguards the Dolomos had stationed strategically around the estate since the parents of a Powie attempted to kill them for stealing their daughter.
Of course, they hadn't really stolen the daughter. They had only sold her some courses. She was working in Australia for the rest of her life to pay them off.
Glidden saw a row of doors with glass windows. The gurgling came from one of them. He peeked in. What he saw was grown people in diapers. First he wondered if it were a new form of California sex, but no one was touching except for occasional hair pulls. He looked into the next door. There were grown-ups playing with trains. Well, some grown-ups played with trains. But he had never seen them make the sounds of the whistles, at least, not with such abandon. In the next room a woman with grotesquely dyed hair pummeled a video machine. And in the final room was a bar with an available lady hanging around.
Barry let her give him a drink. Barry let her put a hand on his neck. Barry removed his own hands from his lap in case there was something she wanted to get to. She did.
He did not resist. He wondered if there was a little room around, some private place.
“Nobody comes in here,” said the woman. He could smell her perfume, a foul cheap nostril-wrenching odor. However, when it came with an absolutely bare body, a beautiful body, a full body, a body waiting for him, Barry Glidden couldn't care less about the welfare of his nostrils.
A moment later, a roller-coaster would have been private enough for Barry Glidden.
Just before his moment of glory, Barry Glidden felt a shoe heel in his back.
“Barry. Where's Rubin? I'm looking for Rubin.”
“In a moment, Beatrice,” said her lawyer. “Just a moment.”
“I don't have a moment,” said Beatrice.
“Just one. Just one.”
“Do you have to do that in here?”
“Yes. Oh, yes. I have to do it and I'm doing it.”
“Well, where's Rubin? I want Rubin. Do you hear? I want Rubin. You two stop that.”
Barry didn't want to stop. If a gun were pointed at his head at this moment he would have wondered if he could finish before he was dead.
He heard Beatrice doing something at the bar, and then with an earthquake size shock he felt the splash of a pail of cold water on his back.
“C'mon upstairs,” said Beatrice. “We have work to do.”
“Rubin says she's very forceful,” said the woman.
“Yeah,” said Barry. Sometimes a thousand condo units wasn't worth the price of working for the Dolomos.
In the large south meeting room where the Dolomos often planned strategy with franchise owners, Beatrice seemed almost happy.
Barry blotted himself with paper towels.
“I want the truth now. On a scale of one to ten, what are our chances of winning an appeal?”
“We can still cop a plea on the charges of mail fraud.”
“I didn't ask for that.”
“No chance.”
“Then,” said Beatrice Dolomo, “we are going to start playing dirty.”
“What are alligators in pools and threats to the President? Playing clean?”
