Lost Yesterday

Chapter 3

Gennaro “Drums” Drumola weighed four hundred and thirty pounds and when he laughed his stomach stayed still and the room shook.

It didn't help that he was in a small wood frame house. But the U.S. attorney wanted him there, wanted him miles away from downtown Los Angeles or any city. He wanted to make sure Drums's friends could not reach him. The best military guards were posted at the edges of the woodlands. Electronic sensors were hidden in a necklace of warning underneath the ground behind the human shield. And above them all, aircraft constantly patrolled. Gennaro Drumola by his testimony alone could bring down most of the narcotics trafficking and protection rackets operating in California.

Drums had been more than willing to do this for his government. Drums had an aversion to gas chambers, and his government had told him he could live, albeit in prison, if he would help them build their case against the people he used to work for.

“You mean break my oath of silence?” asked Drums.

“Mr. Drumola, we have ironclad evidence that will convict you of crushing three people to death for money. Have you ever seen anyone in a gas chamber? Have you ever seen how they die?”

“You ever see how people die who sing against the mob?”

“We'll put you in a camp protected by the military. We'll have planes overhead. Your friends won't be able to reach you where we'll put you.”

“Will I eat good?”

“Like a king, Mr. Drumola. And that's your choice: you can either choke to death in a gas chamber or eat like a king.”

“You make it simple,” said Drums. “Still, you got to get a conviction first.”

“We have video film of you sitting on a little old lady. Do you know what you see on that film? Two little old arms and two little old legs and you on top. You see the legs move a lot, Mr. Drumola. Then you don't see the legs move at all.”

“Ey. She was a deadbeat. A bum. She owed.”

“She owed three thousand dollars on a two-hundred dollar loan, Mr. Drumola. The court is not going to look very favorably on your motives. They're allergic to loansharking.”

“How'd they get the tape?”

“Some kids with a home video camera and a telephoto lens. Not even grainy. Maybe your friends will kill you if you testify against them, but with us there's no maybe. No lawyer is going to get you off when a jury sees this videotape.”

And so Gennaro Drumola began explaining to the U.S. attorney who did what and when in California and where the bodies were. Gennaro's testimony ran three hundred pages. It was so complete that all he had to do was appear in court and testify that he had said all those things he had said to the U.S. attorney, and the mob would be broken from Oregon to Tijuana.

And then one day, Drums looked at the pages and pages of testimony stacked on a table in the center of the cabin, and said:

“What's that?”

“Your ticket out of the gas chamber, Drums,” a guard answered. He refused to call him Mr. Drumola.

“Yeah, what gas chamber?”

“The extra-strength gas chamber they'll build just for you if you forget to testify.”

“Hey, no. I'll testify. What do you want me to say? What do you want me to talk about?”

“Me? Nothing. I just work here,” said the guard. “But the U.S. attorney wants you to talk a lot.”

“Sure,” said Drums. “About what?”

When the U.S. attorney heard about Drums's new attitude, he came to the cabin himself and promised Gennaro Drumola that if it were the last thing he ever did on earth, he would make sure Drumola would die in the gas chamber.

“What are you talkin' about?” asked Drumola.

“You're going to die, Drumola.”

“What for?”

“Murder one.”

“Who?”

“The little old lady we have tapes of you killing.”

“What tapes?”

The U.S. attorney stormed out of the little cabin. His case was over. Somehow, some way, someone had reached the turncoat, and now all they had was volumes of testimony that could not be backed up in court by the witness.

He did not know that others were watching the case or that when he filed his report about the sudden bad turn of events, it automatically would be picked up by computer terminals he was unaware of. He did not know that there was an organization specializing in making sure, among other things, that United States justice remained justice.

Remo arrived outside the holding tank and easily moved past the guards in those moments when their bodies said their minds were wandering. It was not the greatest trick to recognize the moment when attention flagged; the body fairly screamed it. There would be a stillness in the person, and then movement. That stillness was when the mind took over.

Remo could also sense distraction. Most people, at least as children, could sense others, but they had been trained out of it; Sinanju had trained this perception back into Remo.

He moved through the forest, aware that the soil had been disturbed and there were strange things in it. He did not know that they were sensors, just that these alien objects were to be avoided. The land told him that. He spotted the cabin in a dense grove of trees. A guard sat in front of the door with a carbine on his lap and a telephone behind him.

Remo moved to the rear of the cabin and found a window that he could open quietly by forcing the wood evenly upward without the slightest jerk. A large man with a belly that heaved with each breath slept on a cot. Drumola.

Remo moved through the open window and across the wood floor. He sat down next to Drumola.

“Good morning, Drums,” he said. “I hear you have a problem with your memory.”

“Wha?” grunted Drumola.

“I'm here to help you remember,” said Remo.

“Good,” said Drums. “You know I just don't remember nothin' anymore. It's like a page has been ripped out of my life. Whack. Out.”

“I'm going to reinsert it,” said Remo. He took Drumola's large hamlike fists and compressed the fingers so that the nerves felt as though they were being pulled out from his hand. Not to disturb the guard, he pressed shut Drums's lips.

The huge body convulsed. The face reddened. The black eyes grew wide with the scream that could not escape his mouth.

“Well, sweetheart, does this remind you of anything?” asked Remo.

Drums convulsed again.

“You may not know it, sweetheart, but we have this down to a science. First the pain. Now the terror. I'd hang you over the side of a building,” said Remo, “but the ground floor isn't that frightening. What about smothering as an alternative? You into that, Drums?”

Remo released the now reddened fingers and slid his own hand under the sweaty bulk of Drumola's back. Like a nurse with a hospital sheet, he turned Drumola, but unlike a nurse he did it in an instant, sending the man spinning upward and then landing on his face. The cabin shook.

“You all right, Drums?” called out the guard.

“Uh-huh,” said Remo.

“Well, don't go flyin' around or nothin', okay?”

And that was it from the guard. Remo forced Drumola's rib cage up toward his chin, not hard enough to separate the ribs, which could puncture the lungs, but with enough force to make Drumola feel as though he were being crushed under a mountain.

“Just a little bit more, Drums, and you are no more,” said Remo. Then he released everything.

Gennaro Drumola quivered and then began crying.

“Shh,” said Remo. “Do you remember now?”

“Anything,” said Drumola.

“What do you remember?”

“What do you want me to remember?”

“Your testimony.”

“Yeah. Yeah,” said Drums. “I did that. I did whatever. I remember whatever.”

“Good. Because if you forget, I'll be back.”

“I swear by my mother's grave, I remember,” said Drums. His anal sphincter had released, so Remo left before the odor got to him.

But the next day, Smith was reaching out for Remo again.

“It didn't hold,” he said. He had come down in person to the Miami Beach apartment. “Are you all right, Remo?”

“Yeah. I'm fine. I'm great.”

“Chiun says you're not correct yet,” said Smith. Chiun sat in a gray presentation kimono, one worn before emperors, a dull color to show that the assassin was there to glorify the emperor and not himself. Sometimes a presentation kimono was bright gold, and Remo asked why that wouldn't be a detraction. Chiun had said that was for the occasions when the assassin's glory added to that of the emperor. Remo always felt, however, that Sinanju Masters wore what they felt like and made up reasons for it afterward.

Smith wore his usual three-piece gray suit and lemon-faced frown.

“You don't understand. When Chiun says I am not ready, it means that I can't do things that a Master of Sinanju can do. It's got nothing to do with the needs of the organization.”

“What can't you do, Remo?”

“I can't harmonize with cosmic forces on a level that is continuous and smooth.”

Chiun nodded. There. Remo had said it. Openly admitted it. Of course, one should never admit anything in front of an emperor, but in this case it served Sinanju well. Remo needed more rest and more retraining.

Smith heard the answer and looked blank. Chiun was nodding and Remo was shrugging, each indicating that he had won an argument that Smith didn't even understand.

“I'm sorry, I don't understand,” said Smith.

“I can move up and down walls. I can put my hand through solid objects, and I can take any dozen men who need to be taken.”

“Not Masters of Sinanju.”

“There's only one of you in the world, Little Father,” said Remo.

“There was the evil Master. What if you should meet him again?”

“I'll call you.”

“That is not being a Master of Sinanju. Our noble emperor Harold W. Smith has paid tribute for the services of a Master of Sinanju and you must perform as a Master. Otherwise you are robbing him. I will not allow it.”

“How am I robbing him if I am working for him, for us, for the organization, instead of resting?”

“By giving insufficient measure.”

“He doesn't even know what I'm talking about when I mention the cosmos.”

“Well, it certainly has affected your performance, Remo, I am sorry to say,” said Smith.

“How can it? When you harmonize with the cosmic forces it only means enhancing your source of energy and balance. If you have enough energy to move up and down buildings, you don't generally need more.”

“Well, you certainly needed something more with that witness, Drumola.”

“I turned him back.”

“Well, he didn't remember a thing last night,” said Smith, taking a sheet of paper out of a thin briefcase he had on his lap. It was a memo from a U.S. attorney regarding one Gennaro Drumola.

It read:

“This afternoon, subject had a sudden change of heart. As in so many of those cases where witnesses have turned against their testimony and then suddenly turn back, it was mysterious. We have been having many of these mysterious reversions in the last few years, and I saw no need to press an investigation of it at this time. But in the case of this subject, his reversion didn't seem to take hold. He seemed willing enough to cooperate, but when I pressed him for details he didn't remember anything about the testimony he now suddenly said he remembered. Moreover, a medical examination showed he was in a state of high anxiety.”

Remo returned the copy of the memo.

“I don't know what happened to him. I know I had him. I know when I have someone.”

“You see, little mistakes always lead to big ones. I am glad that you have decided to wait until Remo can glorify you instead of fail,” said Chiun.

“I didn't fail. I know when someone has been turned. You, Little Father, know that I know.”

“I understand. I, too, would be reluctant to admit that I failed before such a gracious emperor,” said Chiun. He of course said this in English. Remo knew this was only for Smith's benefit. In Korean, Remo told Chiun he was full of the droppings of a diarrhetic duck.

Chiun, hearing this insult from Remo, took the injury to his heart, where he could nurture it and make it grow. One day he would use it profitably against the man who had become his child.

Smith only waited. More and more now, these two would drift into Korean that he didn't understand.

“I want another crack at that guy,” said Remo.

“They've moved him,” said Smith.

“I don't care where he is. I want him,” said Remo.

* * *

Gennaro Drumola was eating a triple order of spare ribs in the penthouse suite of the San Francisco Forty-Niner Hotel when the thin man with the thick wrists dropped in on him again, this time through the window.

Drums did not know how he could have gotten through the guards, much less to the window. The guy had to climb walls.

Drums cleaned his dripping hands on his great mound of belly covered by a white T-shirt. Thick black hair sprouted from the shirt's every opening. Even his knuckles had hair. This time Drumola would be ready for him. He would not be caught napping. Drumola picked up a chair, cracked it in two with his bare hands, and was ready to put a sharp splinter into the skinny guy's face when he felt himself being dragged by an awesome force right through the window. Drums would have screamed but his lips were pressed together just like back at the camp when he felt a mountain had collapsed on him.

His lips were closed and he was being swung thirty stories above San Francisco by something that felt like a vise. Upside down, looking down at the street as he moved like a pendulum, he wished it were even tighter.

“Okay, sweetheart. What happened?”

Drums felt the man release his lips. He was supposed to talk. He talked.

“Nothin' happened. I did what you said. I said I remembered.”

“But then you forgot.”

“For Chrissakes. I wish I could remember. I don't remember.”

“Well, try,” said the man, and dropped him a story. It felt like it was going to be twenty-nine more of them, but something caught him again.

“Are we getting any better?”

“I don't know nothin'.”

Drumola felt warm liquid run up his ears. He knew what it was. It was running from his pants, down his stomach and chest, and dripping out his shirt around his ears. His bladder had released in fear.

Remo swung Drumola back up to his penthouse suite. The man wasn't lying. He was tempted to let him drop all the way, but that would have let the world think the mob had killed him. Remo stuffed Drumola's face back into the spare ribs and left him there.

Remo had failed. It was the first time he had failed to persuade a witness. There was an instant before death, he had been taught by Chiun, when fear takes over the body. In that instant, the will to live became so strong that it grew into an overpowering fear of death. And at that moment, nothing else mattered— not greed, or love, or hate. All that mattered was the will to live.

Drumola had been in that state of fear. He could not lie. And yet Remo had failed to turn him back to his testimony.

“I am not losing it,” he told Smith.

“I'm asking because we have what seems to be a sudden rash of forgetful witnesses.”

“Then let's get 'em. I need the practice.”

“I never heard you say that before.”

“Well, I said it. But it doesn't mean I'm losing anything,” said Remo into the telephone. He wondered if he should visit Smith and perhaps shred the steel gates of Folcroft over Smith's head. He hadn't been to the sanitarium headquarters of the organization for a long while now.

“All right,” said Smith. The voice was weak.

“If you don't want me to do it, just say so. And I won't.”

“Of course we need you, Remo. But I was wondering about Chiun.”

“You don't even know Chiun,” said Remo. He was at a telephone at the Portland, Oregon, airport. A woman at the phone next to him asked him to be quiet. He told her he wasn't yelling. She said he was. He said if she wanted to hear yelling, he could yell. She said he was yelling right now.

“No,” said Remo, collecting power in his lungs, and then setting a high pitch to his voice. “This,” he sang so that the very lights quivered in the ceiling, “is yelling.”

The three floor-to-ceiling windows at gates seven, eight, and nine collapsed like a commercial for sound tape.

“Well,” said the woman. “That certainly is yelling to me.” And she hung up and walked away.

Smith was still on the phone saying shocks had somehow altered the scrambler system and he was getting warning signals that this might be an open line very soon. No protection for secrecy.

“I'm all right,” said Remo. “I know I had my target in panic. That's what does it. Making the life force take over.”

“Does that life force have anything to do with the cosmic relationship?”

“No. That's timing. That's me. Life force is them. No. The answer to your question is no.”

“All right, Remo. All right.”

“The life force is not me,” he said.

“All right,” said Smith.

“All right,” said Remo.

“The name is Gladys Smith. She is twenty-nine years old, a secretary to one of the largest grain-trading companies in the world. She is testifying against her entire firm, which has been making secret deals with the Russians undercutting our entire agricultural policy. The government is keeping her in a Chicago apartment. She is not that heavily defended, but she is defended.”

“So she's defended. Defenses aren't a problem for me,” said Remo.

“I didn't say they were. Remo, you are more important to us than these cases. We've got to know we have you. America needs you. You're upset now.”

“I'm always upset,” said Remo. “Just give me her address.”

When he left the little phone area, he saw workmen were cleaning up the barrier glass at the gates and people were staring at him. Someone was mumbling that Remo was the one whose voice had shattered the windows. But an airport maintenance director said that was impossible. A car could drive into that glass and it would not shatter.

Remo grabbed the next flight to Chicago and dozed in first class. Before they landed he did his breathing and felt the good leveling force of all power move through him, calming him. He realized then he had done what he should never do, let his mind take over, the mind where doubts lived and thrived on selected pieces of negative information culled from the universe of information. He knew he had done his job right. The witness had somehow truly forgotten. He decided not to use fear this time.

* * *

Gladys Smith had finished her fourteenth romance novel of the week and was wondering if she would ever get to have a man's arms around her again, when the finest romantic experience of her life walked through the door she thought had been locked.

He was thin, with thick wrists and a sharp handsome face with dark eyes that told her he knew her. Not from an earlier meeting, but in some other, deeper way.

He moved silently with a grace she had never seen in a man.

“Gladys?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Gladys Smith?”

“Yes.”

“I'm here for you.”

“I know,” she heard herself saying. He did not grab her like one of the boyfriends that haunted her past. He did not even caress her. His touch was gentler than that, as though his fingerpads were an extension of her own flesh.

She never knew her arms could feel so good. She sat down on the bed. She never knew she could feel so good about her body. It was becoming alive in ways she had never known. It was welcoming him, it was wanting him, and finally it was demanding him.

Her mind was like a passenger on a trip her body was taking. And just when she hovered at the edge of a climax that would satisfy every longing she had had as a woman, he asked for something so minor and trivial all she could do was sob, “Yes. Yes. Yes.” And that sob became a scream of satisfaction and joy.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “Yes, darling, anything. Of course I'll remember. What should I remember?”

“Your testimony,” he said.

“Oh, that,” she said. “Of course. What do you want me to remember?”

“Whatever your testimony was,” he said. She put his hand back on her neck. She never wanted his hands away from her again.

“Sure. But I don't remember it. I don't remember anything that happened at the company. It's like almost everything after my twenty-first birthday never happened.”

“Of course it happened.”

“I know it happened. But I don't remember it, darling. I don't. When I look at the pages of testimony I gave, it's as though some stranger had said it. I don't even remember giving the testimony. I don't remember anything past four weeks ago.”

“What happened four weeks ago?”

“Put your hand back where it was. Okay. There. Right where you had it before. People were looking at me. And they were asking me things, strange things about grain transfers. And I didn't know what they were talking about. They told me I had worked for a grain-trading company. They got very angry. I don't know why they got angry. They asked me who bought me off. I would never lie for money. I'm not that sort of person.”

“You really didn't lie,” said the man with the dark eyes that knew her.

“Of course not, darling. I never lie.”

“I was afraid of that. Good-bye.”

“Wait. Where are you going? Take your clothes back off. Get back here. Wait. Wait!”

Gladys ran after him to the door.

“I'll lie. If you want me to lie, I'll lie. I'll memorize everything in the transcript. I'll remember it. I'll say it word for word. Just don't leave me. You can't leave me.”

“Sorry. I've got work.”

“When will I ever find someone else like you?”

“Not in this century,” said Remo.

* * *

This time he did not phone in his failure. He insisted on a meeting with Smith.

“That won't be necessary, Remo. I know you didn't fail. As a test, one of our government agencies damned worried about this thing ran lie-detector tests on two witnesses who claimed to have forgotten their own stories. Both of them passed. They weren't lying. They really did forget their own testimony.”

“Wonderful,” said Remo.

“Wonderful? This is a disaster,” said Smith. “Someone out there knows how to dismantle our entire justice system. This country is going to fall apart pretty soon.”

“Pretty soon? When was the last time you made a phone call, Smitty? You want to watch falling apart in action, call a repairman.”

“I mean there will be no way we can enforce any law if someone knows how to make witnesses forget. No law. Think about it. If you can make people forget, there will never be another witness. Never.”

Remo thought about it. He thought about forgetting things, forgetting his early life in the orphanage. If he could only forget selectively, he thought, it might be the best thing that ever happened.

“Remo, are you there?”

“I'm thinking about it, Smitty,” he said.