Remo beckoned to her.
"Yes sir," she said, leaning over him, smiling.
Remo smiled back. "That loudmouth. With the cigarette before. What's his name?"
She started to protest, to protect the good name of her passengers, and then Remo's smile made her think better of it.
"Oh, that's Mr. Johnson," she said.
"Johnson? He have a first name?"
She looked at the clipboard in her hands.
"As a matter of fact, he doesn't," she said. "Just initials. P.K. Johnson."
"Oh," Remo said. "Too bad. I thought he was someone I knew. Thank you."
"You're welcome, sir." She kept leaning forward, close now to the man with the wonderful smile. "Is there anything I can do? Anything at all to make you comfortable?"
"Yes. Join me in prayer that the wings don't fall off."
She stood straight up, not sure if he was joking or not, but he smiled again, deliciously warm, she thought, and she walked away contentedly. Remo sat back deep into the cushion.
P.K. Johnson. It meant nothing. Now what had CURE taught him? When people adopted fake names, they generally kept their own initials? All right. P.K.J. John P. something. P.K. Remo detested intellectual exercise. P.J.K.
PJ! PJ Kenny.
Of course. He had seen that cigarette-holding number once before, when he was arresting P. J. Kenny on a gambling charge.
Remo had been a rookie patrolman, walking a beat in the Ironbound section of Newark. He was walking past the store-front headquarters of somebody's Social and Athletic Club-the kind that proliferated every mayoral election year-and when he glanced inside the brightly lighted room, he saw men, sitting at a table, playing cards, with mounds of bills and silver stacked on the table.
Gambling was against the law in New Jersey, even though no one seemed to notice. Remo did what he thought was best.
He stepped inside the clubrooms, and waited until he was noticed.
"Sorry, fellas," he said with a smile, "you'll have to close down the game. Or move to a back-room where people can't see you from the street."
There were six players at the table. All had large stacks of money in front of them, except one. He was a tall, lean man; his nose was squashed over his face and he had scars over both eyes. He had only a few singles on the table in front of him.
The others at the table turned to look at him. He carefully inspected his cards, then looked up at Remo, slowly, contemptuously.
"Fuck off, kid," he said. There was no humour in his voice. It was thick, guttural, New Jersey street-talk.
Remo decided to ignore it. "You'll have to end the game, men," he said again.
"And I said, fuck off."
"You've got a big mouth, mister," Remo said.
"I got more than that," the man said. He stood up, pulled his cigarette from the ashtray, and came toward Remo.
He stood in front of him and said again, "Fuck off."
"You're under arrest."
"Yeah? What's the charge?"
"Gambling. And interfering with an officer."
"Sonny, do you know who I am?"
"No," Remo said, "and I don't care."
"My name's Kenny. And in forty-eight hours, I'm going to have you dragging ass on some miserable beat in Niggertown."
"You do that," Remo said. "But do it from jail. You're under arrest."
Then the cigarette pointed toward his face, held that way between thumb, index and middle fingers, and it punctuated Kenny's words.
"You're going to be sorry."
He booked Kenny that night for gambling and interfering with an officer. Forty-eight hours later, Remo was walking a beat in the heart of the black ghetto. PJ Kenny's attorney waived a hearing in municipal court and the case was sent to the grand jury. It was never heard of again.
Remo never forgot the incident. It was one of the first of a series of disappointments he encountered, when he tried to act as if the law were on the level.
From his beat in the ghetto, Remo was framed for murder and brought to work for CURE, after having been "executed" in the state prison in an electric chair that didn't work.
PJ Kenny moved on to better things, too.
He became well-known in gangland as a professional killer who hired out to all sides. He was the top contract man, the man who never missed.
He had a reputation a department store would envy. He was all business and he gave top value for the dollar.
Because he was so good, he was feared, and thus he never became a target for one side or the other in the gang wars that periodically infected the country.
It was known that there was no animosity in his work, no personal enmity. He was just a professional. And a side that knew it had lost a man to PJ Kenny seemed not to take it personally. If they came up with the right price, they could hire him themselves to even the score.
He turned down dozens of offers to join forces with different families. He was probably wise, because it was his reputation for even-handedness that kept him alive. He was not a partisan and therefore not a man partisans should go after.
One man had tried it once, after PJ had carried off a contract against the son of a mob-leader. The hood was trying to impress his boss. The hood wound up dead, along with his father, two brothers, wife and daughter. All carved with a knife like Thanksgiving turkeys.
That was the last time anyone took personal umbrage at any contract PJ Kenny carried out. Now he was considered the Tiffany of the trade, and he had more work than he could handle.
Then a few months ago, there had been a Senate investigation into racketeering. A subpoena was issued for PJ Kenny to testify. He vanished. Remo had read it in the papers and hoped that CURE would be involved, that he would have a chance to go after PJ Kenny.
But CURE wasn't, he didn't, the Senate hearing died out, and P. J. Kenny remained out of sight.