"Is that how they died?"
"Must of. It was bad."
"In your coroner's report, you will have them ... have them...." Lester Curpwell paused.
"Found in bed with women?"
"No. You'll have them die of ptomaine. Probably from a bad meal back in Washington."
"Shoot, no. I mean, you're a Curpwell and everything but I ain't going to commit no felony for you."
"You're going to do what you're told, Wade Wyatt, and now get out of here."
Sheriff Wade Wyatt stood for a moment in glum protest.
Then he got out of there.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Silas McAndrew and Harris Feinstein had left a gift to America.
The gift was simply a memo to McAndrew's superior in the Department of the Interior. This was the chap who was always interested in anything unusual or in cases of corruption. He was the man who had asked for reports on the peculiarities out in California-specifically the geological ones.
The memo McAndrew wrote said he had corroborating evidence from a Harris Feinstein that indeed someone had found a way to tamper with nature to produce-or prevent-earthquakes. Not a hoax, McAndrew said. Could mean major scale destruction for the state. He was going to California. He meant to discuss the problem with a certain professor out there.
So that was the memo. The superior who had been curious about what was going on out there in California did not file the memo. He sent it along to the people who had told him what in general to look for and recently had expressed great interest in California geology. He didn't mind sending the material to the people who asked for it. They gave him $400 a month non-taxable spending money and arranged for him to be promoted faster than his colleagues.
He thought they were the FBI or the CIA or something.
McAndrew's superior did not know whom the information ultimately reached, for if he knew, that organization's main mission would have failed; a mission that had been given by a young President to an operative of the Central Intelligence Agency who quickly went on the retired list.
The mission was part confession. The United States Constitution did not work. To follow it meant chaos in the future. To abandon it meant a police state. Crime was winning, and so the young president created the new organization-CURE-a name never written on a memo and which only three Americans would ultimately know: The President, the chief of CURE, and the enforcement arm, a young former policeman named Remo Williams, who as the legend grew, came to be known by the Oriental name, Shiva, "The Destroyer."
What the Constitution could not do, CURE did. Quietly. Evidence from bribed witnesses would suddenly and mysteriously be changed. A judge who owed a political debt to a corrupt machine would discover he owed a greater debt to his secret mistress and she demanded a fair verdict. Information on government corruption would accidentally be leaked to a newspaper by a man who had a second salary.
A Mafia don, armoured with money and influence, would hear a curtain rustle but never even see the hand that smashed his skull.
An enforcer for a crime syndicate would suddenly disappear.
The wave of crime, corruption and chaos that seemed ready to engulf the giant young democracy subsided and started to meet setbacks. The Constitution survived.
In Rye, New York, on the third floor of Folcroft Sanatorium, overlooking Long Island Sound, a thin, lemon-faced man looked over McAndrews' last memo. Then he dialed a phone number. It would take four minutes to complete because a route check on that line would disclose that a bakery in Duluth, not Folcroft Sanitarium, was making the call to the Caribbean.
When the call was completed, Dr. Harold Smith, director of Folcroft and director of CURE, heard the line buzz. Then the receiver was lifted.
"Hello," Smith said. "Vacation's over."
On the other end of the phone, fifteen hundred miles away, in a Caribbean hotel room, Remo Williams felt very, very good. Vacations were boring. It would be good to work again.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Harris Feinstein was buried before the Lord God of Israel, King of the Universe and the leading citizens of San Aquino. Most citizens of San Aquino wondered why the casket was not opened.
Presumably, the King of the Universe knew.
So did Sheriff Wade Wyatt and Lester Curpwell IV.
The rabbi, a man of fine sensitive features who had just been graduated from the seminary, somehow or other got the Vietnamese war into Harris Feinstein's death.
Mrs. Feinstein shot him a dirty look. The rabbi ignored her. Sheriff Wyatt shot everyone a dirty look. Everyone ignored him. Les Curpwell stood with his head bowed.
Wyatt kept looking around to see if he could spot anyone he knew, maybe wanted on a charge of something or other. He didn't.
The rabbi defined what a good man meant. He defined what a good life was. He defined what thousands of years of study had decided was a good life and a good death.
Sheriff Wyatt thought that sounded okay, depending on how you interpreted the rabbi's sentiments.
In the last calling to the creator of all that is, was, and ever will be. The Shalom Cemetery into the clear California sky. Its ancient, vibrant cadences were part of the meaning of the Universe.
And the ground everyone stood on most certainly would have done proud the scribes of the Old Testament. The ground they stood on was preparing- unless someone could be stopped-to give up the dead buried therein, and to cast into the Pacific Ocean multitudes upon multitudes of people, to bury cities alive, to crush millions, to lay waste human and animal life as only an earth upheaval could do.
If a scribe with a knowing historical eye had been at the Feinstein funeral, he might have written:
"And thus the elder Feinstein of two score and fourteen years was put to ground. And around him were his friends and family. And they did not know what the earth had stored for them, neither did they know the birds of the trees, or the moles of the ground who knew the tremors of the earth.
"Men slept with women to whom marriage was not given and young women freely of themselves gave. Gluttony was upon the land, and men in leisure would not walk but sat on cushioned chairs, their comfort to bestow.
"Men with men did intercourse conduct and women in all unclean things, then did the people of this land indulge. Brother against brother took up arms, poor against rich, black against white, Gentile and Hebrew alike did nourish these hatreds in their souls.
"And none looked to the Lord God of all mankind whose sweetness had brought such bounty. None looked, for even their cemeteries told them that this world and the next was for their comfort alone.
"Only some voices warned: 'Repent, repent, repent.' But they were scorned and rebuked for their truth and driven from there with oaths and profanities."
"Get those fucking coocoos outa this here funeral. Jesus Christ, can't those dingaling dingbats see there's a fucking funeral going on here."
Thus bespake Sheriff Wyatt.
Thus to the cemetery gate were five young hippies escorted by deputies.
The funeral services stopped. Everyone stared at Sheriff Wyatt.
"Sorry," he said, grinning sheepishly and removing his Stetson. "I guess I talked a bit loud. Oh. Sorry again. The hat stays on. Heh, heh."
It was not announced at the funeral, but a man named Remo something-or-other had purchased, through an agent, the Feinstein Department Store. The Feinstein home also had been sold to him, but what his name was, Mrs. Feinstein didn't remember. Mrs. Feinstein was leaving San Aquino that day, because with her daughters married and now Harris gone, there were just too many good memories to see each day and her heart could not sustain her sweet bitterness.
At about the time the late Harris Feinstein's friends were discovering his store had been sold, its new owner was discovering what he had bought.