Destroyer 95 - Priestess by Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir

Author:Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

It was the end of the month and time to pay the bills that had piled up on Dr. Harold W Smith's Spartan desk.

The Folcroft bills were in the low five figures. It was possible to dispose of them with only a cursory glance at the various invoices, bills and utility notices.

That done, he took a deep breath and two Alka-Seltzer washed down by spring water from his office dispenser before looking into the CURE-related bills.

These-principally credit-card bills and other incidentals-were sent to a blind post-office box to which only Smith had the key. It was not an ideal situation, but he could not trust Remo, and certainly not Chiun, to remember to pay their own bills on time.

And regardless of how high these bills were, Harold W. Smith always paid them promptly. It rankled his frugal New England soul to spend taxpayer dollars on what often seemed frivolous items, such as Remo's quarterly car trade-in. But in the end it was a small price to pay to keep Remo and Chiun, if not happy, at least not disposed to complain often.

And he never, ever paid credit-card interest. Not in the days when it was a modest six percent and certainly not now that the credit-card companies had begun charging usurious interest rates.

The bills this month amounted to a surprisingly small sum, Smith was relieved to see. Less than fifty thousand dollars. This was down from the last quarter after Chiun had discovered the Home Shopping Network and splurged, seemingly, on one of every item offered over a two-week period, including two cases of a product inexplicably called Hair in a Can.

Smith took another gulp of Alka-Seltzer and examined the charges line by line.

In the card that was issued to Remo Buttafuoco, he noticed a round-trip airlines ticket for two. He wondered where Remo and Chiun had gone. Then he saw on the very next line a two-day car rental from a Los Angeles franchise of a well-known agency. The next item indicated the car had been serviced in Malibu.

Smith frowned. Malibu. Malibu. Why did Malibu ring a warning bell in his memory?

And then he remembered. The attempt on Squirrelly Chicane three days before in Malibu, and the waves of suspicious dead Chinese bodies that had been washing up on the beach ever since.

"What on earth..."

Face slack with concern, Smith went to his computer and checked the Bunji file.

Six bodies now. As he read the latest reports, he realized that the dead men had been killed in ways that were consistent with both Remo and Chiun's methods of operation. The disemboweled man might as easily have been eviscerated by a superhard fingernail as a knife. And those who had been found with crushed larynxes and faces jellied beyond recognition bore Remo's hallmarks. He should have recognized the signs before, Smith realized grimly.

Harold Smith picked up the phone and dialed Remo's contact number.

A sleepy voice answered, "I'm not home. Go away."

"Remo. This is Smith."

"Smitty, what's the good word? Or in

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