Acid Rock

CHAPTER TWO

His name was Remo and he didn't care when Aunt Mildred was arriving or what room she wanted, and why didn't Western Union go back to the singing telegram, he wondered aloud.

Instead of returning the receiver to the cradle, he placed thumb and forefinger over the telephone cord and with a gentle snap yanked it out of the wall. It was 4:30 A.M.

His suite in Atlanta's Hyatt Regency was air conditioned to a just bearable chill, only slightly more pleasant than the oppressive heat that was building up for the coming day. His mouth tasted of salt, but Chiun had said it would taste of salt. He went to the bathroom and let the water run and when it was cold stuck his mouth to the faucet and filled it.

Sloshing the water around his mouth, he went to the darkened living room of the hotel suite. On a bare portion of the floor slept a frail figure on a mat, a black kimono reaching from the toes to the wisps of white hair. Chiun, the latest Master of Sinanju.

One did not wake the Master of Sinanju, especially not his pupil, even though Remo was never quite sure when Chiun was asleep or in one of his fifty-nine stages of relaxation, sleep being the fiftysecond. Someday, Chiun had said, Remo would achieve these same stages, even though he had started his enlightenment late and even though he was only a white man.

Why was Remo so lucky that he would learn all those stages, Remo had wondered. Because the Master of Sinanju could do wonders with nothing, the nothing being Remo.

«Thanks for your confidence, Little Father,» Remo had said and then Chiun had warned him of the coming night of the salt. On that night, Chiun had said, Remo would doubt himself and his abilities and would do something foolish to prove to himself that his skills and training were valid. «But in your case, there will be a problem.»

«What problem, Little Father?»

«How will you be able to tell when you do something foolish, since it is so much like everything else you do,» Chiun had said, and thought that this was amazingly funny, so funny he repeated it for days and attributed the fact that Remo did not appreciate the witticism to Remo's typical white man's lack of humor.

Sinanju was a village in North Korea, whose poor and young were supported by the labors of the Master of Sinanju, plying the trade of the professional assassin. Chiun, even though eighty years old, was the reigning master of Sinanju. He had himself experienced the night of the salt when he was twelve years old, almost as a rite of puberty. It was another sign of the body becoming something else, he explained.

«What else?» Remo asked.

But Chiun did not answer his pupil, for as he pointed out, a man who lacked a sense of humor also surely lacked wisdom.

«But you don't think it's funny when someone mistakes you for Chinese or Japanese, instead of Korean.»

«He who does not distinguish between insult and witticism certainly cannot understand the deeper meanings of Sinanju.»

«Why is it that when you insult me, it's humor, but when someone passes a harmless remark about you, it's an insult?» Remo asked.

«Perhaps you will never achieve the night of the salt,» Chiun had said.

But Remo had and here it was, and although his mouth was still filled with water, he tasted the salt as if someone had emptied a shaker of it into his mouth. Remo went back to the bathroom and spat out the water. He was in his thirties and for more than a decade he had been changing, first his mind, and then his very nervous system.

So he had become what Chiun had said he would become. An assassin was not something one did, but something one was. From time to time, of course, Chiun had warned, Remo's early improper training would crop up like poisons in the blood becoming boils on the skin. But with each boil his body would be cleansed.

«Of things like decency, right?» Remo had said.

But why should Remo care? He was a dead man anyhow, according to his fingerprints, which had been retired the night he was electrocuted for a murder he didn't commit. Of course, the electrocution hadn't quite worked and Remo had found himself pressed into service as the super-secret killer arm of a super-secret government agency, empowered by the President to fight crime outside the law. The whole thing had been supposed to take only a few years, and now Remo was in his thirties and he had neither home, nor family, nor even last name, and there was salt in his mouth. The first white man ever to achieve that stage. Remo gulped another mouthful of water from the still running faucet and sloshed it around. To hell with it. He was going outside.

He spat the water into the bathroom light switch, hoping to cause an electrical short circuit to see if he could really create the sort of pressure Chiun had talked about. All he got was a wet light switch. He left the door open under the assumption that if a team of burglars should wander in and attack the eighty-year-old Chiun in his sleep, it was their fault and they had it coming.

The revitalized Downtown Atlanta was suspiciously like the old unrevitalized Downtown Atlanta. Heavy oppressive air and a general feeling of discomfort. Remo walked to the bus station. Bus stations in every town across America were always open.

Why was it people at bus stations at this hour always appeared to be without hope? Remo bought a newspaper. The Atlanta Eagles had begun summer training and the rookies were reporting. This year, according to the coach, their rookie crop was the best and they had a good shot at the National Football League title, even though their schedule was rougher and some of the stars were a mite slow getting into shape.

A column caught Remo's eye. The writer was berating the Eagles' annual open tryout, scheduled for today as a publicity farce.

«The Eagles will have the cameras and the newsmen, the fanfare and the fans, but they won't have any football players. They are preying on the secret fantasy of many American men, who imagine themselves running for a touchdown before thousands of screaming fans, when the hard fact is that professional football players are reared from high school to be professional athletes of abnormal size, and speed, and if a search were made across the entire country, probably not one person could be found who could make the Eagles' taxi squad. Today's open tryouts are a cruel farce and this reporter, for one, will not cover them.

If the television stations and other news media, such as my own newspaper, would do the same, we would see an end to this free agent hoax. The only thing the Eagles are really trying out is our gullibility. So far, they seem to be successful.»

Remo looked around the almost empty bus station. It reeked of disinfectant as all bus stations in the wee hours reek of disinfectant. He stuffed the paper into a trash can. It would be foolish for him to go to the Eagles' training camp at Pell College, just outside the city limits. For one thing, he was supposed to go to great lengths to avoid publicity and second, what would he prove? He was in an entirely different business from professional athletes. And for three, Smith would be phoning him that morning for a meeting in Atlanta. That had been the point of the telegram about Aunt Mildred. And for four, Chiun frowned upon unnecessary displays. Those were four excellent reasons not to take a look at the Eagle training camp. Besides, he had gotten rid of his football lusts in high school. Middle guards simply didn't weigh less than two hundred pounds, not even in college. Remo went to the water cooler and filled his mouth again. They were four excellent reasons not to go.

The fare to Pell College was $7.35 and Remo gave the cab driver a ten and told him to keep the change. It was just 6:30 A.M. and already a line had begun to form outside the field house. At just shy of six feet, Remo was one of the shortest men in line. He was also one of the lightest.

Remo stood in line behind a garage mechanic who played semipro and said he knew he didn't have a chance but he just wanted to butt heads once or twice with real pros. He had played against the Eagles' third string linebacker once hi high school and had gotten by him once. Of course, he had been hit so hard he had fumbled four other times during the game.

On Remo's other side was a college dropout of six-feet-seven, 280 pounds, who had never played football but thought he might show enough talent, considering his size. The men gathered and the line grew. All of the men but one cherished fantasies most men had surrendered in childhood. That one's mouth tasted of salt and he was experiencing a body and mind change hundreds upon hundreds of years old, a transformation never experienced before by anyone outside the little Korean village of Sinanju.

The assistant coaches avoided the eyes of the free agents as they broke them down into groups. The only thing the coaches seemed concerned with were the release forms. Seven for each man, freeing the Eagles from responsibility for any possible injuries.

The hopefuls were herded to the sidelines of the Pell playing field and told to wait. The Eagles went through their morning workout. They did not exchange any words with the amateurs. When a television crew arrived, five applicants were called from the sidelines. Remo was not one of them. He was too small, according to an assistant coach.

«They're putting them in with the regulars,» said a man sitting next to Remo. «I was here last year.»

«Why don't they give them a chance and put them in with the rookies,» asked Remo.

«Rookies would kill 'em. A rookie will hit anything that moves, just to show they can hit. Rookies are dangerous. The regulars will take it easy on us.»

For each television crew and reporter, another group of free agents was trotted out. Remo waited through the morning workout, but was not called. At lunch they all ate with Eagles but at separate tables. Every now and then, one of the applicants was called to sit near an Eagle. One photographer had an Eagle feed an applicant, holding the fork near his mouth and smiling at the camera. When the photographer said, «Got it,» the offensive tackle dropped the forkful of coleslaw in the other man's lap. The man tried to laugh it off.

One of the reporters tried to get Lerone Marion Bettee, aka «The Animal,» to pose with an applicant's head in his hands. Bettee refused, saying he did not use his hands like that without toilet paper.

Remo made a mental note that a man like Bettee didn't really know what to do with his hands and therefore had no use for them.

The middle linebacker of the Eagles, who was known as one of the toughest in the business and had been quoted as saying «anyone who doesn't like to hit and be hit shouldn't play pro ball,» came over to the applicants' table and asked them how they liked their lunch. He volunteered that pro football was really hard work and sometimes he wished he could make his living at something else. This broke the ice and other players came over to chat but the head coach broke it up, saying the players were there for work, not socializing.

Lerone Marion Bettee, six-foot-six, 267 pounds, and built like a clothes hamper, complained loudly that the players should never have spoken to the applicants because the applicants belonged in the stands, not on the playing field or in the players' dining room.

By mid-afternoon when all the newsmen had gone, Remo and another man had still not played. An assistant coach told them to come back next year and that they would now be given an Eagle pennant as a souvenir.

«I came to play and I'm going to play,» said Remo.

«Tryout day is over.»

«Not for me,» said Remo. «I'm not going until I get a chance.»

«It's over.»

«Not for me.»

The assistant coach trotted to the head coach, who shrugged, mumbled a few words, and sent the assistant coach back to Remo.

«Okay. Get out there at cornerback. We'll run an off-tackle play and you can stand on the field. Don't get in the way of the runner if he should get by Bettee, because you'll get hurt.»

«I play middle guard,» said Remo. «I played it in high school.»

«You can't go into the pit. You won't get out in one piece.»

«I want to play middle guard,» said Remo.

«Look. So far, no one has gotten hurt real bad. Don't spoil our record.»

«I'm playing middle guard,» said Remo and trotted out to the scrimmage line. For the first time in football history a real killer was on a football field. If the coach had known what was really entering the scrimmage, he would have locked his team up in Fort Knox to protect them. But all he saw was a little nuisance, so he waved to his offensive center and right guard to gently box in the intruder on the next play so everyone could get back to work.

Remo got down in the four-point stance he had learned in high school, but it now felt unnatural for his body. It was a bad placement of the centrality of his being, so he stood up. His shoulders barely topped the crouching center and guard, who were just an arm's height from the playing surface.

The cleats felt unnatural on the hard-packed summer grass so Remo kicked them off. He could smell the sharp sweat of bodies before him and even the meat on their breath. The quarterback who looked so small on television was a good four inches taller than Remo. The center snapped the ball, the quarterback rammed it into the stomach of Bobby Joe Hooker, whose bulk churned to right tackle. Center Raymond Wolsczak and guard Herman Doffman rose to gently box in the little man in stocking feet, lest he get between the runner Hooker and the defensive tackle, Bettee, and wind up in the hospital. Or the morgue.

But as they moved, the little man was not there. Doffman felt something brush by him and so did the quarterback. Hooker felt the ball hit his stomach as the quarterback handed off, and then felt what he later described as a sledgehammer in the stomach and somehow the intruder was casually trotting toward the goal line with the football tucked under his arm, straight-arming imaginary opponents. Remo Williams, Weequahic High School middle guard, who had never even made all-Newark,

«He slugged me,» gasped Hooker, pointing at the quarterback from his kneeling position. «He slugged me.»

«All right. You with the football,» yelled the head coach. «Give it back and get your pennant.»

«This is a tryout,» said Remo, returning for scrimmage. «I'm not going until you prove to me I haven't made the team. Just once, prove it,» said the former Weequahic mediocre.

«Okay,» said the head coach, a tall man whose paunch filled out a white sweat shirt at girth. «Wolsczak and Doffman, move the little guy already. Same play. Off tackle. Hooker, get off your damned knees.»

«I can't move, coach,» said Hooker.

«Well then, run it out, Hooker,» yelled the coach and the trainer and water boy helped him from the field. «You there. Bettee. What are you doing lining up behind the middle guard? You're the left tackle, dummy.»

With a grunt, and a malicious smile, Lerone Marion Bettee sidestepped to the left but kept his eye on the frail, shoeless middle guard.

«Leave him alone,» the all-pro middle linebacker whispered to Bettee and when the ball was snapped, he blocked Bettee, his own defensive teammate, to stop him from pulverising the little guy without shoes.

The caution was not needed.

There was the amateur, wiggling down the field again and second-string fullback Bull Throck was on his face, three yards behind the line of scrimmage. Doffman was holding his shoulder and wincing in pain and the center was still looking for his blocking assignment.

«What is the matter with you?» yelled the head coach. This time he called for a right side sweep and Lerone Marion Bettee couldn't wait for the little man without shoes to get in his way. But all he saw was the flash of white socks and Willie Jeeter scurrying around the right side of the line was dumped precisely two yards behind the line of scrimmage. Jeeter did better than the fullbacks. He held on to the ball.

By the fourth play, five men had been injured and the little fellow in white socks had made four tackles in a row, two of them stealing the ball.

The head coach, known for his shrewdness in judging talent, began to suspect he might have something here. He promptly bawled out an assistant coach for not spotting the guy earlier.

«You,» he yelled at Remo. «What's your name?»

«Doesn't matter,» said Remo, whose mouth was again deliciously free of salt. «I'll take my pennant now and go.»

Remo walked toward the sidelines and the coach yelled out, «Stop that man,» which was all Lerone Marion Bettee had to hear. With awesome speed for his overpowering bulk, Bettee was charging across the field to clip the little fellow from behind. But what Bettee did not realize was that every man, and especially someone of his size, creates air pressure when he runs and while most people, especially those with eyesight, are not sensitive to those pressures, the frail little guard was sensitive even unto his muscle fibers. Bettee plowed down into the man and kept on plowing into the ground. The man kept walking away. Bettee's right forearm, which had been a weapon of war in the National Football League, was numb. It would remain that way for eighteen months. Bettee lay on the ground paralyzed. In a week, he would be able to move his head, and in a month, he would begin to walk again.

«You there, Bettee,» yelled the coach. «Run it out.»

He turned to one of the assistant coaches. «Well, we got that little fellow signed anyhow.»

«All we have are liability releases, coach. You said we shouldn't waste the other forms on the tryouts.»

«You're fired,» said the coach. He scrambled across the field after Remo. He said the young man showed promise and since the coach liked him and he seemed to be a real team player and the team could go all the way this year, he was offering Remo a chance to get in on the ground floor. The minimum contract, which left him all that wonderful room for salary growth.

Remo shook his head. He shook his head as he put on his street clothes, all the way through three final offers, the last two of which the coach assured him priced him out of the National Football League.

«We can always draft you and then you go nowhere.»

«Draft away,» said Remo. «You don't even know my name.»

«Yes, we do,» said the coach, looking at a release form. «We have your signature, Abraham, and you're ours. You really are. Now be reasonable, Mr. Lincoln. You've eaten our food, soiled our uniforms, you owe us something.»

Back at the hotel, Smith was furious. He sat stone-faced as Remo entered. Chiun was watching his daytime serials. Remo and Smith went into the bedroom, so as not to disturb the Master of Sinanju.

«Chiun seems to think your disappearance when you were supposed to be here is some sort of a progression,» said Smith. «I consider it undependable.»

«Have an Eagle pennant,» Remo said.

«I hope you're happy,» Smith said. «Because you are going to bodyguard someone whom we are not even sure is alive, whose whereabouts we do not know, and who has to be guarded against assassins we do not know.»

«Your unparalleled intelligence service is up to par, Smitty,» said Remo.

«We have one lead,» Smith said. «One possibility. What do you know about acid rock?» «It's loud,» Remo said.