Midnight Man

CHAPTER TWO

HIS NAME WAS REMO and he feared nothing.

All men’s fears were based on one thing alone—the fear of dying. It was what terrified an embezzler; afraid he might be found out, and afraid he would have to take his own life. It explained the terror of a child in the dark, or a grown-up hearing the sound of rats inside a wall. Every fear translated into the fear of dying.

And Remo no longer had that fear. He no longer worried about being killed, but only about whom he would kill and when.

He was an assassin, and knowing that he had power over life and death for others had given him a kind of peace he had never known before.

He felt that peace as he slipped into the hospital, strolled with a casual wave past a guard’s desk, and nodded to a middle-aged nurse, who took one look at the slim, thick-wristed, dark-eyed man and wished that he belonged to her.

Remo whistled peacefully as he rode in the elevator up to the intensive care unit on the third floor and found a linen closet. Inside, a simple change of clothes made him an orderly.

He loaded his arms up with a pile of towels, walked into the intensive care ward and said to the young peppermint striper there, “How’s it going tonight?”

The young woman took one look into his intense, dark eyes and felt the same shiver the nurse downstairs had felt.

“Quiet as a mouse,” she said. “You’re new here, aren’t you?”

“Yup,” he said. He leaned over her desk and, as he checked the list of patient names in the ward, breathed into her ear. “Show me around later?”

His hand touched her back and did something to her that made her squirm on the orange plastic seat cushion.

“Sure,” she said, and then in case he had misunderstood her statement or its intensity, said again, “Sure. Sure.”

“Swell,” he said, removing his hand. “Meet you here later.”

Still carrying his towels, he found the orderlies’ lounge down the hall. Inside was a tall, dark-haired man, drinking coffee and studying a typewritten sheet. When Remo entered, he hurriedly put the sheet away, but Remo had already recognized it: it was the patient list from intensive care.

This was number one.

Remo poured himself some unwanted coffee. His nose rebelled at the smell and his brain at the thought of drinking a mud created from boiling burned beans. Then he sat across from the other orderly.

“You the man?” he asked.

“Huh?” the dark-haired man said, his eyes nearly watering behind his wire-rimmed glasses.

“You know what I mean. You running the pool?” Remo asked.

“What pool?”

“C’mon, pal,” Remo said, “I’ve got to get back on duty. Who’s on the list? Mrs. Grayson? What days you got left?”

The thin man blinked several times behind his glasses, then said slowly, “Twenty-first and twenty-fifth.”

“Hell,” Remo said. “She’ll go before that but give me the twenty-first.”

“It’ll cost you fifty,” the orderly said.

“Got it right here,” Remo said, reaching into his pocket. But of course his cash was in the pocket of his black chinos, underneath the white hospital trousers he was wearing. So he drove his fingertips through the bottom of the empty pocket, ripping the fabric, then reached through the hole into his chino pocket and brought out a roll of bills.

As he pretended to count off fifty dollars, Remo said, “I’ve heard that some of you guys are pulling the plugs on these patients. That doesn’t seem fair.”

The thin orderly grinned. “Everybody’s got the same chance. If Mrs. Grayson lives to your day, and you pull the plug on her and nobody notices and she conks, well, then you’re the winner.” He grinned. “It’s simple. Everybody’s got an equal chance to get the pool.”

Remo held fifty dollars toward the man, who extended his hand for it.

“Ever wonder?” Remo said.

“Wonder what?”

“How it feels to get your own plug pulled?” The man looked up, and met Remo’s eyes. Remo smiled, reached out and unplugged the orderly’s windpipe.

Remo tossed the body into a coat closet, took the typewritten sheet from the man’s shirt pocket and went back into the room. He sat at the table with the sheet flattened out before him.

Another orderly entered the room. He was a squat blond, whose bristled haircut made him look like a squared-off stack of hay.

“Where’s Arnie?” he asked Remo.

“Gone,” Remo said. He looked up from the list. “What day you got?”

“Nineteenth.” The man poured himself a cup of coffee. “How much we collect so far?” he asked.

“Look for yourself,” Remo said. He pushed the sheet across the table. The man reached for it and Remo said, “Arnie’s dead.”

“Dead? How…”

“I pulled his plug,” Remo said. “Like this.” The husky blond saw Remo’s hand start to move, but he never saw it reach him, never saw the fingers flip out from the coiled fist, never felt them slap away at his throat, deftly removing his Adam’s apple and windpipe with no more effort than if Remo had been flicking a sandfly from his wrist.

He put the blond in the same closet where he’d put Arnie and sat waiting for the third orderly. These three were the organizers; the rest of the bettors were just having some macabre fun. They were content to lose if the patients lived. So far as Upstairs knew, none of them had anything to do with killing patients.

Arnie was the first. The second had been Billy according to his name tag. That left Jackie. The door opened and an orderly came in wearing the name tag of Jackie.

It was a woman.

Remo hadn’t suspected that. But “Jackie” could be male or female. He should have known that Upstairs would forget to tell him about a minor point like that.

It didn’t bother him. He had killed women before.

“Where’s Arnie and Billy?” she asked.

“Dead,” he said.

She was too busy looking into his eyes and smiling to hear him. She sat in the chair across from him. “When will they be back?”

She was pretty. Green eyes, auburn hair, good breasts, and a clean, well-washed smell.

“What are you doing with that sheet?” she asked, pointing to the paper in front of Remo.

“Arnie gave it to me,” Remo said. “What day do you have?”

“Eighteenth,” she said. “Tomorrow. Guess I’ll have to pull a plug,” she said with a smile. “What’d you say happened to Arnie and Billy?”

“Ask them yourself,” Remo said. Her eyes widened as he unplugged her windpipe. Her eyes really were a pretty green.

He dumped her into the coat closet with the two men, and stood back to savor his handiwork.

“That’s the lottery biz, sweethearts,” he said and slammed the door.

He waved to the peppermint striper on his way out, dumped his whites into a laundry bin, waved to the older nurse at the front desk and left the hospital.

The terminal cases could now terminate on their own. It made Remo feel good.

But not for long.

He had other assignments that night.