The children screamed. They screamed even louder when Remo gave them each a hefty slap across the hindquarters and sent them racing down the street.
"You're wrecking my trade," Hector said reasonably.
"That's not all I'm going to wreck." Remo picked the man up by the belt and tossed him effortlessly over the fence into the playground. The pusher landed on one of the spring-based ducks. The fat steel coils contracted under the big man's weight, then sprang upward, pulling him through the air.
"This I don't have to watch," Pappy said from his position on the fence. "I seen it all before."
"He's not going to die," Remo said equably. "But he's never going to be in business again, either."
The splat told Pappy it was all over. Glancing behind him, he caught sight of the man in the granny outfit, who had landed headfirst on the roof of P.S. 109.
"That's what I thought I'd see," said Pappy, wincing.
"He's not dead," Remo insisted, brushing the coffee residue off his hands. "If I'd thrown him two or three degrees further in either direction, I'd have killed him, but..."
Pappy was staring at him with terrified eyes.
Remo cleared his throat. "Well, that doesn't matter," he said. "I thought you were going straight, Pappy. You promised me."
"Yeah, I will. I owe you one."
"You still owe me one from the last time I let you live. Ten years ago, remember?"
Pappy remembered Remo, all right. As if he could ever forget a killer like that. The biggest collection of drug dealers ever assembled, and Remo had gone through them like a hot knife through butter. Fifteen guys dead in eight seconds. And the guys had had guns. Remo and the old Chinese guy with him had used only their hands.
Pappy had been no more than a messenger then, a harmless old rummy whom the bosses allowed to be present at the big meetings to go out for ice or broads. And so when the holocaust had come, Remo let Pappy go to warn others in the profession.
"I tried to get a real job," Pappy pleaded. "But I can't do nothing else. To tell the truth, I ain't even much good at this."
"Save the sob story."
"All right, already," Pappy said, giving up. "So poke out my eyeballs. You want dope, you got the wrong guy."
"I don't want dope. I want a connection to Colombia," Remo said. "Pot smugglers do business in Colombia, I hear."
"You still got the wrong guy. Me, I'm a marijuana dealer. The last of a dying breed. Nobody's flying to Colombia for pot anymore. You want to get into Colombia without a passport, that's who you see." He pointed to Gomez on the school roof. "Only he's in no condition to talk now, smartass." Pappy straightened out his threadbare coat.
"What's he go to Colombia for?" Remo asked.
Pappy rolled his eyes. "For coffee, man. You blind or something? The kids all are stoned on heroin au lait. It's in the coffee. Don't ask me how it gets there, I don't know heroin from hamhocks, but that's what the smart pushers are running these days. Coffee."
"But coffee was just recalled today," Remo said. "Up to now, it was legal."
"You think these guys are idiots? The big dealers, the fat men with their Lincolns, the Mafia types with the warehouses full of horse— they're losing their shirts, just like me. We're out in the cold because we didn't see what was coming. Thought somebody would always be buying pot or straight heroin. But the smart guys, the independents, they see everybody getting zoned out on coffee, and what do they think?" Pappy tapped his forehead, "I'll tell you what they think. They think, hey, this stuffs too good to be legal. So naturally, it ain't going to be legal for long, get it?"
Remo nodded.
"So last week they start making their own runs into Colombia for the coffee. Hector and his men was going to take off tonight, only you screwed that up good. Unless you want to take his place."
"Maybe," Remo said. "How'd you know about Hector's operation?"
Pappy shrugged. "I found out things here and there. They work out of a DC-3 from Endley Airport. Hector's job is to bribe the Colombian government official at the other end. Ten thousand bucks. I was going to put it to Hector that he should cut me in, and I was going to spill the beans on him to Johnny Arcadi, only I guess you wrecked that angle, too."
"What are you talking about?"
Pappy gave him a withering look. "Oh, you haven't heard? Well, excuse me, but Johnny Arcadi's dead."
"What?"
"Surprise, surprise."
"When?"
"Yesterday sometime. You ought to know. You killed him. Along with Amfat Hassam."
Remo was stunned. "Hassam, too?" he said softly.
"Yeah," Pappy said, his face grim. "Hassam. And his wife. And all them dancing girls he had hanging around. It was on the news. Listen," he said, putting his arm around Remo's shoulder. "I know it's none of my business how you get your rocks off, but maybe you been working too hard, you know? I mean, all them dames..."
"I didn't kill them," Remo said in a daze. Then he looked up into Pappy's face, realized he'd already said too much, and pushed him away.
Pappy held up his hands. "Okay, okay, I'm not saying nothing." He sounded scared. "I only told you about Hector so's you'd know I was on your side." His upheld hands were shaking violently. "I thought then maybe you wouldn't kill me, too. Huh? Whaddya say, pal?"
Remo stared at him. Dead. All dead. All the targets he'd spared, and a lot more besides. How? Who?
Pappy Eisenstein was trembling. In his eyes was the look of a man who'd been cornered by a beast. "Get out of here," Remo said.
Pappy backed shakily down the sidewalk.
At a pay phone near the school, Remo punched through the long routing code to Folcroft Sanitarium. He hit the buttons so hard the whole unit threatened to come off the wall.
"Yes?" Smith's voice at the other end of the line was grim.
"What's going on?" Remo said.
The reply was agitated and sharp. "I'd like to ask you the same question. There was simply no reason ... Well, what's done is done. I'll expect a full accounting for this after the assignment is over."
Remo hardly heard him. He kept seeing Pappy Eisenstein's eyes in front of him, frightened eyes that regarded him as a killer who couldn't help killing.
But he didn't kill them, he couldn't have...
He heard his own voice speaking, sounding hollow and faraway. "How'd they die?"
"The police reports list cause of death as single gunshot wounds to the head in all cases."
"All of them? Arcadi, Hassam?" He gritted his teeth. "The women, too?"