The Destroyer - 88 - The Destroyer 088 - The Ultimate Death by Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir

Author:Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir [Murphy, Warren & Sapir, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Pulp Action
ISBN: 9780451171153
Publisher: PINNACLE BOOKS
Published: 1992-04-15T23:00:00+00:00

Chiun's dry, papery lips thinned. He said nothing. His gaze darted into the building interior warily.

The room was shrouded in semidarkness. Remo trained his senses on the far end, and a black-walnut alcove. Only one person was there. The breathing was coming shallow and labored, laced with a loose-larynxed rattle. Whoever was in there had to be extremely old, sick, or both.

Remo creaked the door open carefully.

"What family you from?" someone in the back of the darkened alcove called.

Remo glanced at Chiun, who shrugged. "Sinanju!" he called out.

"The Jews ain't got no business in Scubisci territory," the voice answered. It was a pained, phlegmy rasp.

A light snapped on in the black-walnut alcove at the rear of the room. The light was the banker's variety, with a green shade and old-fashioned pull chain, and it illuminated walls plastered with sepia saints. A withered hand drew back from the ivory cone of light, to settle in the lap of the figure seated behind the bullet-scarred walnut table. The other hand was rooting around inside a grease-spotted paper bag. The thick smell of fried peppers wafted up from the greasy sack.

"What do you want from me?" Don Pietro Scubisci croaked.

"Answers," Remo said, advancing toward the alcove.

Don Pietro waved his free hand in a casual gesture. The other hand remained firmly inside the pepper bag. "A man my age, he has more questions than answers, I am afraid," he said. His eyes remained downcast, and he seemed to be absorbed in the spectacle of a cockroach that was crawling across his scarred tabletop.

"That's too bad," Remo said. "Because questions I got, answers you're going to give. Starting with Sal Mondello and Poulette Farms."

Chiun had drawn near to Remo, protectively.

"Remo, do not harm him," Chiun hissed.

"What?" Remo asked, surprised.

"Your friend, he is a wise man," Don Pietro Scubisci said. He reached his other hand inside the bag and pulled out a wedge of fried pepper. As if it had plans of its own, the first hand continued to search the bottom of the bag. Don Pietro placed the pepper delicately on his slug-white tongue and chewed it with deliberate calm. "You should be like him-maybe you'll live longer."

"My friend doesn't speak for me," Remo said. He rounded the table.

"A shame," Don Pietro said, shaking his head. "He sounds to me a very reasonable man." He still had not looked up at Remo.

"You and your dead-end kids have been behind the duck poisonings upstate at Poulette Farms, right?" Remo demanded.

"Remo!" Chiun called, sternly. "Have a care."

"Ducks?" a smile spread across the old man's features.

Don Pietro Scubisci looked up. Under the soft spread of light cast by the banker's lamp, his watery yellow eyes seemed to be swimming in a sea of mucus. But there was something else about those eyes.

Remo had seen that look before. He was wondering just where, when the hand slashed out of the greasy bag. It slit the paper in a perfect vertical line and went for Remo's throat like a switchblade snapping out.

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