"That's correct," Curpwell said, and Remo saw his back stiffen.
"So why don't you pay it?"
"I don't think it's fair that one man should pay."
"Then why should four pay? Why don't you collect the whole thing in taxes?"
"'Cause it has to be secret," interrupted Wyatt.
"Why? Is it some kind of fraternity? A masonic lodge?," asked Remo.
" 'Cause the insurance people want it that way, that's why," said Wyatt haughtily. "You ain't even in this town one day and you're telling us how to survive. That's brass. That's real brass. Only one kind of people have that kind of brass."
"Please," said Curpwell to Sheriff Wyatt, and to Remo: "We've been warned to let no one in authority know. Feinstein talked and last night seven died in an earthquake, Mr. Blomberg."
"Call me Remo."
"Mr. Blomberg," repeated Curpwell. "Feinstein, Harris Feinstein did not die of food poisoning. He was murdered. He told authorities in Washington and he was murdered. Along with a man from the Interior Department."
Remo smiled. "Beautiful," he said. He saw Rucker's eyebrows raise. Boydenhousen leaned forward. Only Sheriff Wyatt seemed oblivious to what was going on. Curpwell's eyes became cold.
"Beautiful," Remo repeated. Then he turned to Rucker and Boydenhousen. "Are you people really paying or are you with Curpwell?"
Rucker blinked. Boydenhousen said: "I don't understand."
"Yes," said Rucker. Boydenhousen nodded.
"All right," said Remo. "I'm going to save you some money right now. Don't pay. There's your earthquake insurance man. More like a blackmailer, I'd say." He pointed, a limp-wristed upward-curving finger at the mouth of Lester Curpwell IV. The pinky played at the verge of a digression. Remo went on:
"He's the man who chose you. He's the man who threatened me with death. I mean, if you listened to him as I did, he was telling me just now I'd get killed like Feinstein if I didn't pay up."
Rucker and Boydenhousen looked at each other.
"No," they said in unison. "We don't believe you."
But Remo smiled to himself, because he had won. So much for the next payment. Now it was up to the earthquake people to move. And when they did, Remo would offer their remnants to the seven who had died the night before, but especially to a baby, who, someone had told him, cried all night.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It was not a hard decision. One did not have to register it on a seismograph or run it through one of the large computers at Richter Institute.
Remo whatever-his-name-was had to die. It had to be done. Why did Sheriff Wade Wyatt find this so objectionable? The young bubbling female voices waited for an answer.
Wade Wyatt sat on a hard wooden chair and looked out the trailer window at the late summer moon. He didn't like to look at them.
He changed the subject. "You were with Feinstein, weren't you?" he said. "He wasn't queer or anything. You killed him, right?"
"Yes," came the sweet, gentle voice. The other voice added, "and the government man too."
"I thought that they was both queers."
"You would, pig."
"Hey, now," Wyatt protested.
"Hey, now, shut up, pig, or you'll go the same way. And you'll go the same way if you don't take care of this Remo. We're not going to let anybody stop us."
"I can't do that," Wyatt said. "I can't kill him."
"But you will. You will, just like you phoned Washington to report Feinstein. You will, just like you've collected the money for us. You'll do it, because you're afraid not to. We can't have somebody screwing up this whole thing."
"I don't want to."
"Dammit. You've got notches on your gun, pig. Live up to them."
"I can't. I can't"
"But you will."
Wade Wyatt closed his eyes. He waited. Then he opened his eyes. He turned his head. They were gone. They weren't going to kill him.
He got up and left the trailer quickly. He'd call it a standoff. He never agreed to kill that Remo Blomberg. So they couldn't say he backed off.
But they were tough for broads. When push came to shove, they'd do Remo Blomberg. And he did not let his mind dwell on what fagola queerio Blomberg would look like when they were done with him.
Man, what tough broads.
CHAPTER TWELVE
It was two days after the earthquake that killed seven Mexicans that Don Fiavorante Pubescio, sunning his large body by his very blue and very big swimming pool, heard something very interesting from a paisan.
The man was a grape grower. He lived in San Aquino. The man's father was a friend of Pubescio's father. Yes, Don Fiavorante knew of the man's father very well.
Don Fiavorante courteously extended a seat to his guest and just as courteously accepted the man's kiss on his hand.
"We are friends," said Don Fiavorante. "My father was your father's friend. Our friendship precedes the womb, Robert Gromucci. May I offer you a drink?"
Robert Gromucci, in a very light summer suit, nervously accepted the seat in a red-webbed chair by the pool.
"Do not believe all the bad things you hear about me, friend," said Don Fiavorante in a soft, gentle manner, almost pleading except that Don Fiavorante never pleaded. "There is no need to be nervous. Do you think I do not know that your workers are planning to leave? Do you think I do not know that this is your most important harvest? That if it fails, you fail? Do you think that every year? Do you think I forget you when I drink the wine? Do not be nervous, my friend."
Robert Gromucci grinned. Like a little boy, he grinned; like a little boy whose father has told him everything will be all right.
The noon-baked pool smelled of chlorine but Robert Gromucci did not smell it. Nor did he notice the butler bringing a fresh lemon drink, dripping beads of cold moisture on the frosted glass.
Robert Gromucci talked and noticed nothing, because at last he was with someone who understood him. He talked about his money needs and his labor problems. He told about the earthquake-how he and his wife did not even notice the tremors. He told about the grape pickers. He told about the sheriff and about Sonny Boydenhousen, who handled insurance as well as real estate and with whom Gromucci had talked that morning. Boydenhousen, an old boyhood chum, had looked shocked and so Robert Gromucci asked. He wanted to know why. But Sonny Boydenhousen didn't want to say. He did not want Robert Gromucci to lose faith in Les Curpwell.