"Want some tea? Biscuits? Sausages?"
"I wouldn't feed that to a cockroach," said Remo.
"A bit cheeky, aren't you? It's my apartment."
"It's my stomach," said Remo. He was impressed by the apartment, its modern rugs and good view across the East River. He didn't think computer salespeople made so much money from sales. There were three pictures on Pamela's dresser. Her mother, her father, and a young man in uniform. There was also a.25-caliber Beretta hidden inside her scrapbook of home in Liverpool.
"Oh, that?" she said when Remo showed it to her. "I just keep that for protection here. America is so dangerous, you know. Do you think I'm being paranoid?"
"No, not at all. Especially considering that there are four very big men on your windowsill, very big, with strange-colored hair," Remo said.
The window came in like an explosion. The men lumbered through, one reaching Pamela, while the other three leapt on Remo. He tossed the gun away because guns always got in the way. The three men on him smelled of perfume and their hair shone in neon colors. Their faces were painted and they wore black leather jackets and one of them had a chain through his ear. Another used a chain as a belt. Another was swinging an ax wildly.
The first thing Remo tried to do was to avoid catching germs. The second was keeping the dye these people covered themselves with off his body. He did that by wrapping them in the quilted bedspread and then squeezing firmly. The last living one told him where he had gotten his orders. Remo rewrapped the quilt and heard the chains on the bodies jingle. Suddenly, he had an awful thought. He reopened the quilt and their bodies tumbled out but it was too late. Their hair had stained the quilt.
"I'm sorry," he told Pamela, who was having a grand old time beating up on the remaining muscled young man. He had his hair shaved so it looked as if his head were pointed. The point was a deep purple with green beads woven through it.
"Don't touch the hair," Remo called to Pamela. "It comes off."
"Why don't you help me then?" she said, as she swung a metal picture frame at the shaved part of the skull. It made a dent.
"You seem to be doing all right without me," said Remo.
Pamela threw a karate blow at his neck and stunned her attacker for a while. She grabbed an arm, threw the man over her shoulder, and then began kicking his face.
"What are you doing?" Remo asked.
"I'm finishing him, dammit."
"You're getting the stain on your bedroom slippers. Those colors come off, I told you."
"If you were a gentleman, you would help me."
"I never said I was a gentleman. Stay away from the hair. Kick him in the chest."
"He's got chains there."
"Well, kick his groin."
"He's got needles or something there," Pamela said.
"Well then, break his ankles. I don't know."
"What did you do?"
"I wrapped them up before I killed them," Remo said.
"What did you wrap them with?"
"A quilt."
"My good quilt?"
"It was the one on the bed," Remo said.
"If that's stained, I'll kill you, Remo."
"I couldn't help it," Remo said, and to make amends he finished off the multicolored brute by sending a chest bone firmly and eternally into a pumping heart which therupon stopped. Aortas did not function with bones sticking into them.
"It's about time," Pamela said. "You could have helped earlier. Good job on those three." She sighed. "Now I guess it's the police and explanations. Paperwork and such. Drat."
"See you around," Remo said.
"You're leaving me with this?"
"Somebody always picks up the bodies," Remo said. "I used to worry about that but I never saw a body left around long enough to cause pollution. I don't know about these four though. They may be the first."
"They're punkers. They think it's attractive, I guess," said Pamela. "Let's go. We'll leave them."
"I go alone," Remo said.
"You're not leaving me. I'm not responsible for your bodies," she said.
"I saved your life," Remo said.
"I would have had them," she said. "Besides, you need me. I know computers. You don't even know what a mode is."
"I don't care what a mode is."
"Well, you've got to know that if you're going to track down these people. You've got to know a lot of things you don't know. Or else have someone who does. I am that someone," said Pamela, pointing to a large left breast.
"What's it to you anyway?" Remo asked.
"I beg your pardon. These four lunatics come in here to kill me. I saw our office manager have her eardrums shattered. I have been subjected to abuse, teasing, and general mistreatment by a voice on a phone. I want whoever it is. I want that person real bad."
She had already slipped out of her robe and pulled a dress over her head. She picked up the pistol from the floor and tucked it into the waistband of her dress and did it so expertly that it did not show.
"What are you going to do with that?" said Remo, pointed to the gun.
"When I find them I am going to shoot off their gonads. Now you know. Are you happy?"
"Suppose they're women?" Remo said.
"There are other places to shoot them," said Pamela Thrushwell.
But when they got to the address that the dying punker had given Remo, Pamela uttered a little moan.