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everybody knows I'm connected."
"That is true," Nuihc said, nodding. "The man who hired me will be pleased
with this outcome."
"The man who hired you?" Viaselli asked. "I'm the man who hired you! I've paid
you a fortune this past year."
"As has he," Nuihc replied. "A tidy sum for which I should thank you both.
Unfortunately, you could not be told about my other employer, since the
arrangement I made with him involved your being directly tied to the
assassination attempt on your President."
"What!" Viaselli exclaimed.
A few rooms away there came a pounding at the apartment door. The sound of
shattering wood was followed by the panicked shout of a maid. Don Viaselli
wheeled on the sound.
"The cost of doing business," Nuihc was saying. As the voices closed in, he
was already fading back into the shadows.
"You son of a bitch!" Viaselli screamed.
The Mafia Don jumped for an end-table drawer. When the FBI agents burst into
the living room ten seconds later they found a wide-eyed Carmine Viaselli
screaming in Italian and shooting at shadows. They didn't bother to ask the
New York Don what he thought he was shooting at. Instead, they returned fire.
And in the ensuing, brief gun battle, merry little bits of Don Carmine
Viaselli splattered against the tidy walls of the apartment like hurled
tomatoes.
THE VISITOR WAS politely ushered back to the private office on the first floor
of the Neighborhood Improvement Association building in Little Italy.
The building was old and solid enough to withstand a mortar blast from the
street. The wallpaper was purple and fuzzy. The crazy floral pattern was
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interwoven with vines that looked like coiling serpents. An aroma of tomato
sauce clung to the old wood paneling.
In the office a thin man who looked older than his sixty years sat behind a
broad desk. At his elbow a brown paper bag stained with grease sat on a
newspaper. The grease had melted into the front page, bleeding across the
banner headline announcing the attempt on the President's life.
When the door was closed and his visitor stood before the desk, Pietro
Scubisci smiled a row of yellow teeth.
"You done good work," Scubisci said. "Me and my Family been waiting for a
chance. But that Carmine, he's stubborn, you know? I been in this game longer
than him. He's just a kid, but I have to play second fiddle. That kind of
thing eats at you after a while."
He pulled an ancient ledger out of his top drawer and began carefully writing
out a check.
"You don't know what that's like, do you?" Scubisci asked as he wrote. "Always
coming in second. Always having to smile and nod when in your heart you know
you're better. Sometimes you gotta make your own changes. A push here and
there to see things finally go your way."
He tore the check out and slid it across the desk. "A good year's work, I'd
say," Pietro Scubisci said. "You thinned out Carmine's soldiers. Can't believe
he let you do that. Musta felt safe with you around, you know? The Viaselli
Family's dead. I try to take over from Carmine, we woulda had a war. This way
it's bloodless." He smiled. "Well, my blood's where it's supposed to be,
anyhow."
On the opposite side of the desk, Nuihc said nothing. He picked up the check
without looking at it, slipping it into the pocket of his suit coat.
"I added a little to what we agreed on," Pietro Scubisci said, clicking his
pen and setting it neatly into a drawer along with the ledger. "You earned it.
I just got off the phone with a friend in the police. They said Carmine tried
to shoot it out with the Feds. They'll be sponging brains off the ceiling for
a month. Don't know how you worked that, but good job.
"Now we cool off for a while. That was Carmine's problem. No patience. I sat
behind him long enough to develop plenty of patience. A Senate committee
coming to town and he goes all to pieces. Let 'em come now. We'll be quiet
while they're here. They find nothing, they go back to Washington. They go,
we're back in business."
He looked up with rheumy eyes for a hint of agreement from his guest. Without
a word Nuihc turned for the door.
"Hey," called Don Pietro Scubisci, the new head of the New York Mafia. "You
innerested in a fulltime job?"
But the Oriental hit man was already gone.
Chapter 29
"So it would seem Alphonso Ravello was the second Viaselli Family enforcer,"
Smith explained.
The CURE director had come down to Chiun's quarters to meet with Remo. He
wasn't comfortable with using his office. While Miss Purvish seemed to have
accepted the cover story of Remo and Chiun as Folcroft nurse and patient, she
remained too inquisitive. Smith was thinking it was time to replace her. He
was leaning toward Miss Hazlitt or the Mikulka woman, both of whom seemed
competent in the job.
"The FBI found three watches smuggled into the Capitol inside the coffin with
Ravello," Smith continued. "He had apparently gathered them as souvenirs from
the three senators he murdered. His record indicated that he was a low-level
functionary in the Viaselli organization. But obviously he was operating under
everyone's radar, for clearly the data gathered on him was incorrect. It took
a particular sort of genius to come up with such a diabolical assassination
plot. "
"You say genius, I say lunatic," Remo said. He was sitting cross-legged on the
floor. It wasn't as easy as Chiun made it look, but his knees were starting to
get the hang of it.
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"In the white world the two are indistinguishable," the Master of Sinanju
mumbled in Korean. The old Oriental was across the common room, busying
himself at the small stove, seemingly uninterested in Smith's words.
Chiun wasn't about to tell Smith the truth about who had been the mastermind
behind the presidential assassination plot. Internal Sinanju matters were not
open to prying eyes.
"Excuse me, Master Chiun?" Smith asked.
"Nothing, Emperor Smith," Chiun replied. "Words of praise from an unworthy.
Please continue."
"What about the other coffin?" Remo asked. "Just another minor Viaselli Family
player. Our records indicate he was mostly a numbers runner."
"And we all know what a bang-up job your records did finding out about the
maniac-in-a-box," Remo said.
"Yes," Smith said unhappily. "I will have to look into our method of gathering
data. In any case, apparently Carmine Viaselli had been growing increasingly
paranoid of late. Possibly a result of the agents I had placed in the field
over the past few months. His maid even heard him make a threat against the
President. She said that he was talking out loud a great deal lately. Having
whole conversations with an empty room."
"So in a way you're the one who drove him to it," Remo observed. "Maybe if
you'd left him alone instead of dogging him like you were doing, he wouldn't
have snapped and sent that Ravioli guy after the President at all."
Smith fidgeted in his hard-backed chair. Leaning forward, he pitched his voice
low enough that he assumed the Master of Sinanju could not hear. "Remo, it was
suggested from on high for CURE to clean up the Viaselli organization before
the Senate got here and, if possible, to remove its enforcer."
"Ever been to Nuremberg, Smith?" Remo asked dully.
"As a matter of fact, yes," the CURE director replied. He forged ahead. "As
for the Viaselli matter, it worked out better than I could have hoped,
considering the difficulty we encountered. Not only have we put an end to the
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