"That feels wonderful," she said, shivering.
"The guy who got killed was the Secretary of the Navy. Did you know that?" He moved slowly toward the inside of her elbows. In the teachings of Sinanju, the rigid sequence of steps had to be followed pre-
41
cisely. Each step slowly aroused the woman to the heights of physical pleasure, until she was broken and consumed and satisfied.
Remo had pleasured many women for many purposes. Not all of the women had been desirable, and his purposes were rarely spurred by his own desire. But women always performed the way he expected them to under the guidance of his skillful hands. They took the pleasure he gave them, and in return they offered him whatever he needed-information, time, complicity.
He hated it. Love was never a question. Neither was pleasure, for Remo. He had ceased deriving pleasure from the act long ago. It was just part of his job, along with watching women like Cecilia Spangler-hurt, long forgotten, ugly girls who were never touched with sincerity or affection and knew it and didn't care any more. Remo felt dirty.
"Of course I knew who he was. I was the one who called the FBI. Everybody else was too drunk. What are you doing to my elbow?"
"Tell me what you know about him. Ives. The Secretary of the Navy." Get it over with, he thought.
"Thornton Ives," she said quietly. "He was a nice man. ... He was old. He let himself get old. I liked that." A tear welled up in one eye and rolled down the side of her face. "Please," she said. "Please stop that."
Remo was genuinely surprised. "Why? Don't you like it?"
"Oh, I like it all right," she said. "But sooner or later you'll find out that I don't know anything, and then you'll get mad and call me a fat pig. That's what reporters usually do with me."
42
"I told you, I'm not a reporter," Remo said, exasperated. He took her hand. "And I wouldn't do that to you."
She squeezed her eyes shut. "I don't Know anything about the murder. I don't know who, I don't know why, I don't know anything except where, because it was in my front yard, and I wanted to keep things quiet because Admiral lves was the only one of Mother's and Daddy's friends who didn't treat me like I was an embarrassment to the family." She stood up and paced around the room, looking like a miserable, shaggy farm animal.
"I was never even invited to their parties, here in my own house. Mother was so afraid somebody would take a look at me and figure out that she's fifty-eight years old. But Admiral !ves didn't care. He could have stayed young. He had the money. But he didn't. He was normal He was the only normal person who ever came to this zoo."
She turned to Remo in a rage. "So don't waste your time seducing me. It won't be worth it."
"You're pretty sharp, aren't you?"
She sat down next to him, her red-rimmed eyes sullen. Slowly they kindled with the beginnings of a smile. "It was a pretty ridiculous pretense, acting like you wanted me." , "I'm sorry, Cecilia," Remo said.
"it's all right. It's been done before. And my pride isn't holding me back or anything." She laughed softly. "What pride? I'll take anything I can get, usually. But not over this. Thornton Ives was worth more to me than a quick feel. Although I must say you're awfully good at it."
Remo smiled.
"You think I'm crazy, don't you?"
43
"No," he said softly. "I don't. I think you're less crazy than your mother, for what that's worth. And I think you have more pride than you give yourself credit for."
Cecilia blew her nose into a used Kleenex from her pocket. "You're all right, too. Too bad you're a reporter."
"Once and for all, I'm not a reporter. I can't tell you who I work for. All I can say is that there are no police on this case, so if you don't help me out, we're all going to lose a lot of time. It's too bad that Ives is dead, but we're dealing with more than just one murder."
"Two," Cecilia said. "The Secretary of the Air Force bought the farm yesterday."
"Okay. And you didn't call the FBI instead of the cops just because you forgot the precinct phone number."
She looked at Remo for a long moment. "You really on our side?" she asked.
"I am. Will you help me?"
She shrugged. "If I can. What do you want?"
"A guest list. From the party last night."
"There's one in the library. I'll get it for you."
The list contained more than a hundred names. "Any idea where I should start?"
"It won't take long. Most of the people on that list won't be at home, anyway. They're all over at the fat farm with Mother and Daddy."
"Where's that?"
"I couldn't tell you. I was never invited there. It's not important, anyway. Just some clinic in Pennsylvania, like the ones in Switzerland, only closer. Mud baths, tonic, carrots for dinner, that kind of thing. That's what Mother tells me, anyway."
44
"And the others? Would anyone especially want to kill Admiral Ives?"
"Sure," Cecilia said. "The Russians, the Libyans, the PLO, the Red Brigades, the Baader Meinhof, the Red Chinese, you name it. He was the secretary of the navy, you know."
"You can drop the sarcasm," Remo said. "I get enough of that at home."
"Oh? You got a mother, too?"
"You might say that."
She showed him to the door and swung it open with a grunt. "Thanks," Remo said. "If 1 kissed you goodbye, would you get upset?"
She smiled. "Try me."
He touched her lips lightly. She blushed. "I don't suppose you'd like to start with the left earlobe again," she said.
Chapter Four
The first eighteen names on the Spangler's guest list were out of town. Since he'd exhausted the Washington, Virginia, and Maryland numbers, Remo went on to the New York City addresses.
Number nineteen was Bobby Jay, a name Remo recalled from years of listening to Chiun's television blasting while Remo was doing his exercises. Bobby Jay, according to his TV commercials, was one of the world's outstanding voices, kriown so far only to the discerning tastes of Europeans, but now available to Americans through a special TV offer. His records, according to the announcer, were not sold in stores, a fact gratefully acknowledged by millions, since Bobby Jay was, to all intents and purposes, tone deaf.
Back from a recent engagement at Phil's Steak House in Atlantic City, Bobby Jay himself answered the door in the Manhattan penthouse apartment. He was around thirty, with coiffed hair and the kind of boyish, unlined face that bespoke a lifetime of fighting off anything resembling intelligent thought.