Chinese Puzzle

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Remo was not followed back to the hotel. When he went into his room, Chiun was sitting on a sofa, watching a late night talk show host who was trying to probe the hidden significance of a woman with a face like a footprint, who had raised yelling and shouting to an art form.

"Where's Mei Soong?" Remo asked.

Chiun pointed over his shoulder toward her room.

"Anybody follow you?"

"No."

"By the way, how'd you do that down at the restaurant? Disappear, I mean?"

Chiun smirked. "If I tell you, then you will go tell all your friends, and soon everyone will be able to do it."

"I'll ask the girl," Remo said, walking toward her room.

Chiun shrugged. "We ran up a flight of stairs and hid in a doorway. No one thought of looking up."

Remo snorted. "Big deal. Magic. Hah."

He walked into the next room and Mei Soong purred at him. She walked toward him, wearing only a thin dressing gown.

"Your Chinatown is very nice. We must go back."

"Sure, sure. Anything you want. Has anyone tried to contact you since you got back here?"

"Ask your running dog. He allows me no freedom or no privacy. Can we go back to Chinatown tomorrow? I have heard that there is a marvelous school of karate that no visitor should miss."

"Sure, sure," Remo said. "Someone should try to contact you again. They'll probably be able to lead us to the general, so make sure I handle it."

"Of course."

"Remo turned to go and she ran around to stand in front of him.

"You are angry? You do not like what you see?" She held her arms out and proudly thrust forth her young breasts.

"Some other time, kid."

"You look troubled. What are you thinking?"

"Mei Soong, I'm thinking that you are making it difficult for me to leave now," Remo said. Which was not what he was thinking. What he was thinking was that she had already been contaeted because there was a new copy of Mao's Red Book on the end table near her bed, and she had not had a chance to buy one herself. Someone must have smuggled it to her. And suddenly, she was interested in going back to Chinatown, and seeing that wonderful karate school.

He said, "Let us sleep now, so we can go to Chinatown very early and look for the general."

"I am sure that tomorrow you will find him," she said happily, and threw her arms around Reino, burying her face against his chest.

Remo spent the night dozing in a chair against the door to her room, alert enough to detect any attempt by Mei Soong to leave. In the morning, he woke her roughly and said:

"Come on, we're going to buy you some clothes. You can't walk round this country in that damned greatcoat."

"It is a product of the People's Republic of China. It is a wellmade greatcoat."

"But your beauty should not be hidden under it. You are depriving the masses of the sight of the new healthy China."

"Do you really think so?"

"Yes."

"But I do not wish to wear goods produced from the exploitation of suffering workers. The stitches made of their blood. The fabric made of their sweat. The buttons of their bones."

"Well, just some inexpensive clothes. A few garments. We're already too obvious to people as it is."

"All right. But just a few." Mei Soong held up a fingei in lecture. "I will not profit from the capitalistic exploitation of slave labor."

"Okay," said Remo.

At Lord and Taylor's, Mei Soong discovered that Pucci workers were well paid. She adhered largely to Italian goods, because Italy had a large Communist party. This fealty to the working class became two print dresses, a gown, four pairs of shoes, six bras, six lacey lace panties, earrings because they were gold and thus undermined the monetary system of the west, Paris perfumes, and to show that China did not hate the people of America, just- its government, a checkered coat that was made on 33rd Street.

The bill came to $875.25. Remo took nine $100 bills from his wallet.

"Cash?" said the sales girl.

"Yes. This is what it looks like. It's green."

She called the floor manager.

"Cash?" said the floor manager.

"Yeah. Money."

Mr. Pelfred, the floor manager, lifted one of the bills to the light, then signalled for another by holding out a hand. He lifted that one to the light also. Then he shrugged.

"What's the matter?" Mei Soong asked Remo.

"I'm paying for something in cash."

"Isn't that what you're supposed to pay in?"

"Well, most purchases are worked through credit cards. You buy whatever you want and they make an impression of your card and send you a bill at the end of the month."

"Oh, yes. Credit cards. The economical exploitation of people through subterfuge, giving them the illusion of purchasing power but making them merely wage slaves to the corporations that issue the cards." Her voice lifted to the ceiling of Lord and Taylor's. "Credit cards should be burned on a fire, along with the people who make them."

"Right on," came from a man in a double breasted suit. A policeman clapped. A woman draped in mink kissed Mei Soong on her cheeks. A businessman raised a clenched fist.

"Well, we'll take your money," said Mr. Pelfred.

"Cash," he yelled out.

"What's that," said one of the clerks.

"It's something they used to use all over. Like what you put in telephones on the street and things."

"Like for buying cigarettes, only more of it, right?"

"Yeah," said the clerk.

Mei Soong wore one of the pink print dresses and the department store packed her greatcoat, her sandals and her gray uniform. She clung to Remo's arm, leaning on him and resting a cheek against his strong shoulders. She watched the clerk fold the coat.

"This is a funny kind of coat. Where's it made?" asked the young girl with fried straw hair and a plastic label that read: "Miss P. Walsh."

"China," said Mei Soong.

"I thought they made nice things in China like silk and stuff."

"The People's Republic of China," said Mei Soong.

"Yeah. Chankee Check. The people's republic of China."

"If you are a servant, then be a servant," said Mei Soong. "Wrap the package and keep your tongue tethered to your mouth."

"You'll want a throne next," Remo whispered to her.

She turned to Remo looking up. "If we are living in a feudal system, then we who are doing secret work should appear to be part of it, correct?"

"I suppose."

Mei Soong smiled a smile of rectification. "Then why should I suffer insolence from a serf?"

"Listen," said Miss P. Walsh. "I don't have to take that crap from you or anyone. You want this package wrapped, then mind your manners. I've never been insulted like this before."

Mei Soong braced herself and in her most imperious manner, said to Miss P. Walsh: "You are a servant and you will serve."

"Listen, Dinko," said Miss P. Walsh. "We got a union around here and we don't have to take that kind of crap from anyone. Now you talk nice or you're getting this coat in your face."

Mr. Pelfred was telling his assistant manager about the cash purchases when he heard the commotion. Up running he came, hippity, hippity, his black shiny shoes pattering along the gray marble floors, his breath puffing from his fatty, shiny face, his hands atwitter.

"Will you please?" he said to Miss P. Walsh.

"Watcher mouth," yelled Miss P. Walsh. "Steward," she screamed. A gaunt hard woman in iron tweed stomped to the cluster around the packing of the greatcoat. "What's going on here?" she said.

"It's not a grievance, please," said Mr. Pelfred.

"I don't have to take this crap from customers or anyone. We got a union," said Miss P. Walsh.

"What's going on?" repeated the gaunt woman.

"There's been a minor disagreement," said Mr. Pelfred.

"I been crapped on by this customer," said Miss P. Walsh, pointing to Mei Soong who stood erect and serene, as if witnessing a squabble between her upstairs and downstairs maids.

"What happened honey?" said the gaunt woman. "Exactly what happened?"

"I was wrapping this funny coat for her and then she told me to tie my tongue or something. She was real aristocratic and she crapped on me. Just plain crapped on me."

The gaunt woman stared hatefully at Mr. Pelfred. "We don't have to put up with this, Mr. Pelfred. She does not have to wait on this customer and if you order her to, this whole store is gonna shut down. Tight."

Mr. Pelfred's hands fluttered. "All right. All right. I'll do the wrapping myself."

"You can't," said the gaunt woman. "You're not in the union."

"Fascist pig," said Mei Soong coolly. "The masses have seen their exploitation and are breaking their chains of oppression."

"And you, lotus blossom," said the gaunt woman, "button your lip and get your friggin' coat out the friggin' door or you're going out the friggin' window, along with your sexy looking boyfriend. And if he doesn't like it, he's going out with you."

Remo raised his hands. "I'm a lover, not a fighter."

"You look like it, gigolo," the gaunt woman said.

Mei Soong slowly looked to Remo. "Are you going to allow these insults to be heaped upon me?"

"Yes," said Remo. Her golden face flushed pink and with great chill, she said: "All right. Let's go. Pick up the coat and dresses."

"You take half of them," said Remo., "You take the coat."

"All right," said Remo. He looked mournfully at Miss P. Walsh. "I wonder if you could do me a big favor. We have a long way to go and if you'd put the coat in a box of some sort, I'd really appreciate it. Anything would do."

"Oh, sure," said Miss P. Walsh. "Hey, look, it might rain. I'll double wrap it. We got a special kind of paper in the back room that's impregnant with chemicals. It'll keep it dry."

When lie sales girl had left for the special paper wrapping and Pelfred had, as prissily as possible, marched back toward the elevator, and the gaunt woman had swaggered back to the stock room, Mei Soong said to Remo: "You need not have groveled before her."

And on their way back to the hotel, she added: "You are a nation without virtue." But she warmed in the lobby and by the time they had returned to their rooms where Chiun sat atop his luggage, she was bubbling over with enthusiasm about her upcoming visit to the karate school she had heard of and what great fun it would be.

Over her shoulder, Remo winked at Chiun, and told him, "Come on, we're going back to Chinatown. To see a karate demonstration."

Then Remo asked the girl, "Do you want to eat now?"

"No," she said quickly. "After the karate school, then I'll eat."

She did not say "we", Remo noticed. Perhaps she expected that he would not be around for dinner.