"Oh, that," Sweet said. Reluctantly, he took his hand off the phone, grabbing again at his burning chest. "Mr. Scubisci has opened up the business opportunities of organized crime to the masses."
Remo looked to Chiun. The old man was interested only in the scrap of paper in his hand. He turned back to Sweet.
"You're doing what with the what now?" he asked.
Sweet leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes weakly. "Lot of people have a lot of money to invest these days. More regular folks are building portfolios. Scubisci is giving the common man the opportunity to invest in what's historically been a very lucrative field."
Remo blinked. He didn't like the sound of where this was heading. Evidently, Smith had been right.
Sweet had his eyes closed tightly now. His face was ashen and his lips were turning blue. Hands pressed over his heart in a mockery of penitence, he panted out the words in labored spurts.
"Raffair exists as a public cover for the Scubisci crime Family, as well as several others. Money generated by stock purchases goes to developing company infrastructure. Raffair expands, investors reap dividends, company grows, new investors come aboard, Raffair expands more." Sweet's too-white tongue brushed his cold lips. "Is this room spinning?"
"No," Remo answered.
"Oh," the lawyer whimpered. "Anyway, with the money we've made already, we've been able to invest in better methods for narcotics distribution, which feeds a host of other ventures, like gambling, prostitution and bribery. Our great success has been passed on to our stockholders."
Remo couldn't believe what he was hearing. "You're telling me ordinary people are buying stock in the Mob?"
"An archaic term," Sweet said weakly. He opened his eyes. "Is someone gonna shut off that damn alarm?"
"How do people even know about all this?" Remo asked. "It's not like you could take out an ad in the Wall Street Journal."
"When the stock's hot enough, word gets around," Sweet said. His ears pricked up as he strained to listen to a sound only he could hear.
"Ah," he sighed, relieved. "They finally shut it off." Eyes rolling back in his head, he collapsed face first on his desk.
"Are you done?" Chiun asked impatiently. He stood near the door, anxious to leave.
"Yeah." Remo nodded. He was turning from Sweet's twitching body when a sudden thought occurred to him. "Oh, crud," he groused.
Quickly flipping the lawyer onto his back, he drummed his fingertips hard on his chest just above the heart. Catching the rhythm of the fluttering attack, he established a counterrhythm that he forced the muscle to follow. The arrhythmia caught, slowed and tripped to a normal pace.
Sol Sweet's eyes rolled open.
"Sorry to interrupt," Remo said, "but I forgot to ask. They said in Boston you got a copy of that tape with us on it."
Sweet nodded numbly. "There." He pointed to a corner closet.
As Remo went over and popped the door, the attorney sat up. The pain was gone in his chest and arm. Even the light-headedness had vanished. His face was flushed as his color returned.
Remo found but one videotape in the closet. Turning, he held it out to Sweet. "This it?" he asked. Sitting on the edge of his desk, the lawyer nodded. "It's the only copy," he promised. "I took it from the direct satellite feed."
"Great," Remo said. "Off you go."
The hard look in the intruder's eyes told Sweet precisely what Remo meant.
"Wait!" he begged. He leaped from desk to chair, away from Remo. "Where's Anselmo getting the cash for all this?" He waved an index finger all around. "The Scubisci Family's been broke for years. Anselmo's been spending it like water these past few months. Believe me, I don't come cheap, either. I think there's someone behind-" He stopped in midsentence.
An odd sensation had just flitted under his rib cage. Different from anything he'd ever experienced before.
"Oh, my," Sweet said, inhaling sharply.
"Someone other than the Dippy Don's behind this?" Remo asked. He was thinking of the men who'd attacked him. If Anselmo Scubisci wasn't responsible, maybe this other individual was.
Still squatting on his chair, Sweet fumbled in his pocket, producing a small business card. He flung it at Remo. "Scubisci...24A...answer ...questions..." His voice grew more labored as he looked down in utter confusion at his own chest. The pain was back, worse than ever. "What's happening?" he gasped.
"Hmm?" Remo asked, glancing at the card. "Oh, that," he said as he pocketed it. "'That's just your heart exploding."
Sweet looked up in abject horror. At that precise moment, the struggling muscle in his chest swelled and burst, flooding his thoracic cavity.
Face contorting in a rictus of excruciating death, he fell backward. His chair rolled into the wall, and his head smashed into the heavy Monet print that hung over the desk. Lawyer, picture and chair crashed to the floor. The glass shattered, and the frame settled about the rounded shoulders of Sol Sweet.
Remo tipped his head as he examined the attorney, conjoined in death with the French countryside, "I don't know much about art, but I know what I like," he said dully.
"Can we go now?" the Master of Sinanju complained.
"Yes. No, wait." Remo glanced around the room. "A fire for a fire," he said in a low voice.
Remo found a wastebasket next to the desk. He filled it with computer paper from an idle printer. Pushing the wooden desk against a wall, he sat the wastebasket on the floor in the desk's foot well. He lit the paper with a lighter collected from one of the dead bodyguards. Once the fire had started, he smashed the lighter on the desk's surface.
As an afterthought, he tossed the incriminating video into the burning basket.
"Now I'm ready," he said coldly.
When they left the office, the surface of the desk had already flashed to life, igniting the wall behind it.
Smoke and flames were spitting out the door as they crossed the foyer. The young men in starched white shirts continued to race around the open room, oblivious to the fire that was rapidly engulfing the small back office.
"Let's get them out of here," Remo said.
"Why?" Chiun sniffed. "If they are in league with the villains who burned our home, let them also blister on the pyre that will consume those malefactors."
"If we can get them out of here, maybe they'll jam the street enough that this place'll burn to the ground before the fire trucks can get through." Bracketing his mouth with his hands, he took a deep breath. "Fire!" he yelled into the bustling room.
Although he was certain many of the men had heard, there was no reaction. They continued to switch from computer to phone, lost in the electronic roller coaster of day trading.
Remo tried yelling again, louder this time. Still no reaction. By now, the flames were licking out of Don Pietro's old office and up the hallway.
"I have been through one inferno already," Chiun said, peeved. "If you want this one, you may have it." The old man spun and darted out the front door.
Smoke was pouring in from the hall, hovering in ominous clouds beneath the fluorescent lights of the big room. Obviously, the men knew now that something was wrong, yet their adrenaline-fueled greed held them in place. Remo decided that he needed to find something that would motivate them even more than fear for their lives.
Fishing in his pocket, he pulled out a fat roll of hundred-dollar bills. He flapped the cash in the rolling clouds of smoke.
At first, there was no reaction. But all at once, a face turned his way. It was followed by another, then another.