The Destroyer - 60 - The Destroyer 060 - The End of the Game by Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir

Author:Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir [Murphy, Warren & Sapir, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Pulp Action
ISBN: 0-7408-0853-2
Publisher: PINNACLE BOOKS
Published: 2010-03-19T14:52:46+00:00

Chapter Eight

His name was Hamu­ta and he sold guns, but not to ev­ery­one. He had a small shop in Padding­ton, a sec­tion of Lon­don with neat gar­dens in front of neat brick homes. It was a qui­et neigh­bor­hood where no one both­ered to ask Mr. Hamu­ta who his vis­itors were, even though they were sure they rec­og­nized some of them.

Gen­er­als and dukes and earls and mem­bers of the roy­al house­hold gen­er­al­ly had fa­mil­iar faces, but while many were cu­ri­ous if that was re­al­ly so-​and-​so leav­ing Mr. Hamu­ta’s shop, no one asked.

One did not buy a ri­fle or a pis­tol from Mr. Hamu­ta by or­der­ing one. First one had tea with Mr. Hamu­ta, if one could wan­gle an in­vi­ta­tion. If one was of prop­er birth and prop­er con­nec­tions, he might let a few re­tired of­fi­cers know he was not averse to an af­ter­noon tea with Mr. Hamu­ta. Then he would be checked far more thor­ough­ly than can­di­dates for the British Se­cret Ser­vice. Of course that was not say­ing much. There were stiffer re­quire­ments for get­ting a gas com­pa­ny cred­it card than for be­com­ing a spy for British in­tel­li­gence. But for Mr. Hamu­ta, one had to be ab­so­lute­ly able to keep one’s mouth closed, no mat­ter what one saw. No mat­ter how re­volt­ing it was. No mat­ter how much one want­ed to cry out: “Mer­cy. Where is mer­cy in this world?”

And if one was found ac­cept­able, he would be told a day and a time and then he had to be on time to the sec­ond. At the pre­scribed hour, the door of Mr. Hamu­ta’s shop would be open for ex­act­ly fif­teen sec­onds. If one was even a sec­ond lat­er than that, he would find the door locked and no one would an­swer.

In the win­dow of Mr. Hamu­ta’s shop was one white vase which held a fresh white chrysan­the­mum ev­ery day. It sat on black vel­vet. The shop had no sign and some­times peo­ple want­ing to buy flow­ers would try to en­ter but they too found the door locked.

Once, some bur­glars who were sure valu­able jew­els were in­side the shop had bro­ken in. Their bod­ies were found a month lat­er, de­com­posed in a garbage dump. Scot­land Yard as­sumed they were the refuse of just an­oth­er gang rub-​out un­til a foren­sic sci­en­tist ex­am­ined the skulls. They had been fur­rowed with small marks like worm­holes.

“Say, Ralph,” said the sci­en­tist to his part­ner in the morgue. “Do these look like worm­holes to you?”

The oth­er pathol­ogist took a mag­ni­fy­ing glass to the rear of the skull and peered close­ly. He wore a breath­ing mask be­cause the stench of a de­com­pos­ing hu­man body was per­haps the most nox­ious smell an­oth­er hu­man could be ex­posed to. Com­ing near a dead body on the rot would leave the stench in one’s clothes. It was why pathol­ogists al­ways wore wash­able polyester suits. Death nev­er came out of wool.

“Too straight,” Ralph fi­nal­ly said. “A worm­hole gets in­to a bone by a bur­row­ing pro­cess. It turns. These are more like small nicks.”

“Let me see, Ralph.

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