The Destroyer - 44 - The Destroyer 044 - Balance of Power by Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir

Author:Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir [Murphy, Warren & Sapir, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Pulp Action
Publisher: PINNACLE BOOKS
Published: 1983-09-19T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

When Glo­ria X en­tered her house in East Harlem, Mal­colm was not at the door to greet her. He was in­side, at the base of the stair­well, his neck bro­ken so that Ms head joined his mas­sive body at a per­fect right an­gle. Sur­round­ing him and lead­ing up the stairs were the corpses of six oth­er Peach­es of Mec­ca, their arms and legs splayed over the steps like bro­ken dolls, their blue-​edged knives glint­ing be­side them.

Silent­ly, she pulled a small re­volver out of her pur­sue and fol­lowed the trail of bod­ies up to her bed­room.

The door was open. She lis­tened. Noth­ing. Slow­ly she stepped in­side, her re­volver steady in her out­stretched hand, po­si­tioned low for fir­ing.

There was no one in the room. She cir­cled it once, care­ful to keep one eye on the door­way. No one. Not a sound.

Then he came through the win­dow as sud­den­ly as a breeze, and the gun left her hand and soared out of reach as Re­mo clasped her wrists to­geth­er be­hind her with one hand and held her throat with the oth­er.

“Where is he,” he said qui­et­ly. “I haven’t got much time.”

She closed her eyes with a shud­der. Re­mo squeezed. “Bar­ney Daniels,” he said, press­ing the veins in her. neck. “I know you’ve sent him out to kill Calder Raisin. Where are they?”

“I don’t know who you’re talk­ing about,” she said lev­el­ly. “I nev­er heard of him. And I don’t know any­thing about Cald-“

Re­mo’s grip tight­ened un­til her eyes bulged. “You have three sec­onds,” he said. Her tongue be­gan to ease out of her mouth, en­cir­cled by white foam.

“One,” Re­mo said. “If you faint first, I’ll kill you any­way. “Two.”

“At the pier,” she croaked. Re­mo soft­ened the pres­sure slight­ly. “The aban­doned pier at Bat­tery Park, near the Stat­en Is­land Fer­ry.”

“Good girl.” Re­mo took his hand away and threw her in­to a cor­ner of the room as if he were toss­ing a wet washrag.

She spun around on her knees. Crouched on all fours, she raised her head and laughed like a mad dog, her hate-​filled eyes glis­ten­ing. “You’ll be too late,” she spat, her voice still grav­el­ly. “Raisin’s dead by now. And so’s your friend.”

“Then I’ll be back,” Re­mo said cold­ly.

He found Raisin first, crum­pled in a heap with his head bashed in­to bloody mush. On the pier, the sil­hou­ette of Daniels’s body, dou­bled over, stood out stark­ly against the hori­zon.

There was an odd smell about him as Re­mo rolled him over to look at the knife wounds in his back. A fa­mil­iar smell, but faint in the musky night air of the wa­ter­front.

Re­mo held two fin­gers to Bar­ney’s tem­ple. The weak­est trace of a pulse re­mained.

Then he spot­ted the knife. Still hold­ing Bar­ney, he picked it up. To­ward the base of the blade a blue stain shone in the moon­light. Re­mo lift­ed it near his face.

Cu­rare. That was the blue on the knives of the well-​dressed black men around Glo­ria’s house. This was the scent they car­ried.

The pulse was fad­ing fast. Too late for a doc­tor.

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