Acid Rock

CHAPTER FIVE

«Is he somebody?» shrieked a blotch-faced girl whose bouncing boobs were causing a great commotion underneath her tie-dyed tee shirt.

«He's nobody,» said Remo, fishing for his motel room key. Chiun sat on the other side of his fourteen large, lacquered trunks. His golden morning kimono wafted gently westward with a breeze that blew across the North Adams Experience, or what had been Farmer Tyrus's north forty until he had suddenly discovered it could be used for something even more valuable than not growing corn.

«He looks like somebody.»

«He's a nobody.»

«Can I have a piece of that way-out shirt he's wearing?»

«I wouldn't touch it if I were you,» said Remo.

«He wouldn't mind if I took just a little piece of his dashiki. Oh, he's somebody. He's somebody».

«I know it. Hey, everybody. Somebody. Somebody's here.»

From cars they came and from the backs of trucks they came. From behind rocks they came and around trees they came. First a few and then, when the mass movement from Tyrus's field was noticed, more followed. Someone was here. Someone was here. The high point of every rock event. Somebody to see.

Remo went into the motel room. There were several possible outcomes to this sudden rush, one of them involved the probable need to dispose of bodies.

But why not? Why should anything go right, starting now? It had begun badly at the briefing session with Smith, which had bordered on the absurd. First, there had been the girl, Vickie Stoner. Her photograph taken at her debut, her baby pictures, a picture of her in a crowd, a picture of her with her eyes glazed.

It was Remo's job to protect her from unknown killers. That is, if she was still alive. She might be at the bottom of some lake now, or buried in a cave, or beneath a house, or decomposed in acid-the decomposing kind or the other kind.

But if she was alive, where would she be? Well, no one knew, least of all her father, but there was a pretty good theory that she would be at a rock festival somewhere, because she was a groupie type.

Which rock festival? Chances were she would not miss the North Adams Experience if she were alive. After all, Maggot and the Dead Meat Lice were playing there. How many people would be there? From four hundred to one hundred thousand.

Thanks a lot.

Remo had then posed this question to Smith: Since the open contract had obviously come from one of the people involved in the Russian grain deal, possibly even Vickie's father, why not let Remo do what he did best? Go down the list of suspects, find the one putting up the money, and reason with him.

No good, Smith explained. It would take too much time and it had too many flaws in it. Suppose Remo went after the wrong man. The right man could get Vickie Stoner. No. Protecting her was the answer.

So that was that and here he was.

There was a commotion outside the motel room and then the door opened and Chiun's trunks started coming in with acid freaks yanking at their handles, moaning and straining as if they were in chains. Remo heard yelling. He went to the window. A very fat young man whose belly was exploding over blue jeans and whose shirt had a peace symbol on it was swinging at a girl whose shirt said Love, not War. She was clawing at his testicles.

«I'm gonna carry his trunk. He said I could,» yelled the girl.

«He said I could.»

«He said I could.»

«No, me. You fat pig shit.»

And so it went in many couples until Remo observed that Chiun might become worried about the safety of his trunks. Chiun rose and stood above one trunk, his hands extended, the long nails reaching to the heavens. And he spoke to them, these children, as Remo saw them. And what he said was that their hearts should be in concurrence with the forces of the universe and they should be one with that which was one. They should be all with that which is all.

They should be as one hand and one back and one body. The trunks should rise like swans on gilded lakes. The green one first.

And thus it came to pass that morning that the trunks, one by one, went into the room of the Master of Sinanju. The green one first.

And when all the trunks were in the room, piled one on another, the green one separate by the window, the Master of Sinanju bade them all farewell. And when they did not wish to leave such an illustrious one, insisting he tell them the somebody he was, he no longer spoke. But a strange thing began to happen. The golden swirls of the kimono rustled, and one and another and another of these followers found themselves hurled out, until the last one, he too, was outside the door. With an ugly welt on his cheek.

«He is somebody,» shrieked a girl. «Only somebody would act that way. I've got to have him. I've got to have him. I want him.»

Chiun opened the green trunk. In it, Remo knew, was the special television set that not only showed one channel, but taped two other networks simultaneously, because as Chiun had often said, all the good shows were on at once, the good shows being the soap operas.

Another special feature of the set was that all the Sony marks had been ground, pried, or painted off, and replaced with Made in Korea. Chiun refused to use Japanese because of what he described as a recent treacherous incident committed by the Japanese against the House of Sinanju. By going through a chart of Japanese emperors Remo had deduced that the recent incident had occurred in 1282 A.D.

According to Chiun, the Japanese emperor, hearing of the wisdom and wonder of Sinanju, had sent an emissary to the then Master of Sinanju, requesting guidance in a difficult matter. Little did the Master realize what treachery, what perfidy he was dealing with, for after giving his assistance, he realized something had been stolen. Agents of the emperor had been watching him in his tasks and they had copied his methods, thus stealing the art of Ninji, or silent night attack, from Sinanju.

«So they paid for a hit and copied some techniques,» Remo had said.

«They stole that which lasts longer than rubies,» said Chiun. «They stole wisdom, which I attempt to give to you and which you treat as nothing.»

«How do you figure that, Little Father?»

«You do not appreciate the perfidy of the Japanese. It is good that they do not get their hands on this television set, lest they would copy that too. You cannot trust the Japanese.»

«Yeah, they could rip off the whole great Korean electronics industry if the Koreans aren't careful.»

When As the Planet Revolves came on, Remo went outside to see if he could find a red-headed girl of nineteen who might or might not be alive.

As Remo moved through the crowd outside the door, he heard comments of «That's nobody, he works for somebody … hey, stop pushing … hey, watch your hands … that's nobody .., he's nobody… somebody's still inside.»

He roamed the field of Farmer Tyrus amid the wafting odor of marijuana and hashish. He stepped over couples and knapsacks. At the edge of the field he avoided the tangle of cables pushing toward a raised stage where summer squash once grew. Two tall metal towers flanked the stage. An army of electricians moved with disciplined energy, checking and installing equipment. Only their beards and clothes seemed casual.

Near the stage, Remo spotted violently-red hair flowing over a knapsack. A brown-haired head was pressed to it. Both bodies were under a blanket and moving.

He bypassed two girls, helping a third who was coming out of a bad LSD trip. He went to the moving blanket and waited. And waited. He could not see the face under the red hair, so he waited some more. When he was tired of waiting, he bent down quickly and sent his two forefingers vibrating down the base of the spine of the uppermost body. He did it so quickly it looked as if he were picking a leaf off the blanket.

«Oooooh,» groaned the top body in ecstasy, as Remo had expected, but the movement under the blanket did not cease.

Enough was enough. He pushed aside the short brown hair to see the face that belonged to the long red hair. It was not Vickie Stoner. It was not Vickie anyone. The her was a him and the real her was on top with the short brown hair.

«Do it again like you did before,» she said. Remo went off to look for Vickie Stoner, if she were still alive. He checked the field and he checked the painted buses along the road. Every so often, he asked the question:

«I'm looking for my woman. Nineteen. Red hair. Freckles. Name's Vickie.»

But there was no response. Then a gray Lincoln Continental passed him. A scarfaced man was at the wheel. Sleeping in the back was a red-haired girl with a glory of freckles. It could be. Remo saw the Continental find a parking spot a half mile down the road. Four young people and the man with the scar emerged and walked the rest of the way to the North Adams Experience. The heavyset man with the scar seemed very friendly, gesturing to the tower on the left of the bandstand. He even cleared a place for the group, roughly pushing other young people out of the way. Remo followed.

«I heard somebody is in the motel,» said the redhead excitedly. It was Vickie Stoner.

Now, how could word reach so quickly, Remo wondered. He had heard that in the acid culture rumors traveled faster than light, and with surprising accuracy.

«He's somebody but we don't know who,» said a young blond man with an Indian headband. Remo noticed by the way he stood what no one else had noticed, because they could only recognize a weapon from its outlines, not from the way a body reacted to carrying it. Remo knew the young blond man with the headband was armed and he was watching Vickie Stoner.

The heavyset man with the gray fedora was eyeing the left tower. He did not stand armed. But Remo could feel something strange about the way the man looked at that tower, as if he were examining it for some destructive use.

Remo sat down by Vickie Stoner, not even speaking to her. He just waited. Tyrus's field filled. There were echoes to greetings and calls, the twang of an occasional guitar.

One loud amateur voice wafted over the field, and as Remo watched Vickie Stoner fall asleep, he tried to discern the lyrics the voice was singing.

Remo asked the blond boy with the headband the meaning of the lyrics.

«It is, man. What it is, it is. You don't define it, dig?»

«Certainly,» Remo said.

«It's protest.»

«Against what?»

«Everything, man, dig? This fucked-up environment. The hypocrisy. The oppression.»

«You like electric guitars?» Remo asked.

«The baddest.»

«Do you know where electricity comes from?»

«Good karma, man.»

«Generators,» Remo said. «Generators. Air polluting, high f aluting, generators.»

«I never heard that one, man.»

«Which one?»

«The lyric. That's a freak, man. Bitchen. Generators, air polluting, high faluting, generators. Baddest.»

So Remo, unable to discourse in this language, shut up. He watched the man with the scar fiddle around one tower support and then another, but in such a casual way it looked as if he were just lounging around.

The Dead Meat Lice were to start at seven P.M. At six-thirty, it was announced over the loudspeakers, which could have cut through a swamp, that there would be a forty-five minute delay. At seven P.M., there was an announcement of an hour's delay. At eight-thirty, it was announced any minute now. At nine P.M., as a few harsh floodlights lit the periphery of the area, separating it from the darkness beyond, it was announced: «Here they come.»

There was screaming and groaning but they didn't come until ten P.M. When, under a large spotlight, a gallows was raised on the stage. Out of the blackness behind the spot swung a body on a rope. It twitched as though it were being hanged, if hanging required pelvic action similar to coitus. Then the rope seemed to break, and the body landed on its feet, alive in a skin-tight white jumpsuit cut in a wide V to the pubic hairs. Pieces of meat hung from the white satin suit, and already blood was seeping into the shiny material.

A microphone rose from the stage to man height, and Maggot spoke.

«Hello animals. You're dirt. Dirt waits hi the field,» he yelled. This was greeted by cheers. In the cheering, Remo noticed the blond man with the Indian headband make his move. The weapon he had been carrying was a small-handled ice pick. Only Remo saw it move toward Vickie Stoner, who was slowly awakening next to Remo. Remo moved on the pick. He shattered the driving wrist with his left hand and spun the boy around. The youngster's eyes widened with surprise, first at the numbness in his attacking hand, and then at what was happening at his heart. Nothing was happening. It wasn't beating. It was jelly. He collapsed, spitting internal blood, as the crowd obliviously cheered on.

The Dead Meat Lice crawled and tumbled onto the stage. There was a drummer who doubled as the beater of the gong. In a round enclosure from the right stage rose a piano, organ, and clavichord, with another Dead Meat Louse seated in the middle. A frowzy-headed man with two wind instruments pulled himself up onstage. The crowd cheered the arrival of all three Lice.

Maggot waved his arm and they sang. They sang what Remo made out to be:

«Bedred, mother-racking, tortoise, humpanny, rah, rah, humpanny, mother-racking, bedstead, rackluck.»

«Bitchen,» screamed Vickie Stoner in Remo's ear, and then the tower to their left gave a wiggle with an explosive pop, then another pop, and people were falling from it and it was coming down like a sledgehammer right where Vickie Stoner was jumping up and down, screaming along with everyone else.

The crowd would hamper free movement, so Remo grabbed Vickie like a loaf of bread and drove his way through bodies to what he felt would be the safest place. The tower came whoomphing down, eight tons of it, crushing a ten-yard-wide stretch of people with a heavy, dull splat.

Remo and Vickie were safe. They were at the base of the tower, where it had blown off its foundations head high, just where the big man with the scarred face had been casually moving his hands around.

«Bedred, mother-racking, tortoise humpanny, rah, rah, rah, humpanny, bedstead rackluck.»

«They're going on,» someone shrieked. «They're going on.»

«Dead Meat Lice go on and on. Rule forever, Dead Meat Lice,» yelled Maggot, and this was met by cheers blanketing the moans of the victims of the tower.

«Rule forever, Dead Meat Lice,» yelled Vickie Stoner. Remo grabbed her by the neck and trundled her off the periphery of the field and out through the gate, where people were not taking money anymore.

«Getcha paws off me, pig,» yelled Vickie Stoner, but Remo kept her moving.

«Get offa me,» yelled Vickie. She stopped yelling when she saw where she was being taken. She was going to the motel door where «somebody» was.

«He wants me, right?» she gasped. «He sent for me, right? Somebody sent for me. Who is he? You can't say, right? Oh, you have a key. A key to his room. You have a key to His room.»

Remo no longer had to hold her by the neck. Vickie Stoner jumped up and down excitedly.

«I thought you were going to do a job on me,» she said. «I didn't know. I've had Nels Borson. You know Nels Borson? I had him. I had him good. And I had the Hindenburghs. Right at the airport. They were waiting to leave. I had them all.»

Remo opened the door, and when Vickie Stoner saw the wisp of an imperial-looking Oriental in midnight-blue kimono sitting on a mat, meditating, she emitted a little excited groan.

Remo shut the door.

«Oh, heavy, heavy, heavy. Rule over all. Rule forever,» she said, and knelt before Chiun. Chiun allowed imperious recognition that something was in his presence. Overwhelmed by the slow, arrogant movement, Vickie Stoner pressed her forehead into the mat.

«From the youth of your country, you should learn,» said Chiun to Remo.

«Wait'll you find out what she wants.»

«You're the baddest,» sighed Vickie.

«This little girl already knows more than you, Remo.»

«Rule over all,» said Vickie.

«And she perceives my proper place.»

«Who are you?»

«The Master of Sinanju.»

«Fuh-reak out. Sinanju. Bitchen Sinanju, man.»

«See, Remo?»

«She doesn't know what you're talking about, Little Father. She hasn't heard of Sinanju. Maybe a half-dozen people alive know Sinanju, and they don't talk about it.»

«Diamonds are not more valuable because everyone has them,» said Chiun.

«Good night,» said Remo, and went to the bathroom to see if he could find some cotton for his ears, knowing that would not help because the vibrations of Maggot and the Dead Meat Lice carried through the walls and the floor of the motel.

Outside, Willie the Bomb Bombella sat in his Continental, an artist frustrated, a craftsman who sees pernicious fate destroy his work. The tower went right. It went fine. It went beautifully. But then along the edge of the crowd was the little red-headed broad with the big mouth and the faggy looking guy with the thick wrists. She was alive. A million dollars from Willie. Right out of the mouths of Willie's children, he had stolen it. Right out of Willie's mattress at home, he had stolen it. Like he had broken into Willie's house or rifled his pockets, he had stolen it.

Willie had to get even, despite the fact that they were in a motel with such shoddy structure that the retaining walls hardly retained, and what held it together was sometimes the plaster. There was nothing really good to work against, like brick, or even wood. Wood was good. It gave you splinters like a hand grenade if you did it right. But what was this motel? It was nothing. Might as well blow up an empty field. It gave the creative genius of Willie the Bomb Bombella all the inspiration it needed.

Suppose he handled the motel like an empty field and considered each room a giant gopher hole with gophers as his goal? Perhaps a combination of concussive effect and propelled missiles. He could probably get the girl too. Still make the million.

Willie went to the trunk of his car and started stringing wires, mixing chemicals, and adjusting templates in the small motor device he began to construct. He whistled a tune he had heard in a Walt Disney movie. The tune was «Whistle While you Work.»

From the corner of his eye, he saw the door of the thief's room open. It cast a whitish light into the motel parking area. He saw the thief, the guy with the thick wrists who had saved the redhead, walk out. The guy had the nerve to even walk right up to him.

Willie straightened up. He stood almost six inches taller than the little guy and topped him by almost a hundred pounds.

«Whaddaya want?» asked Willie in a tone that in others usually triggered unplanned release of bowels or bladder.

«To break you,» Remo said gently.

«What are you talking about?»

«I'm going to break you into little pieces until you beg me to kill you. What are you doing?»

Since Willie had no intention of letting this square squirt walk away, he decided to tell him.

«I'm going to blow you, that little broad, and that gook into next week's garbage.»

«Really?» said Remo, honestly interested. «How are you going to do that?»

And Willie explained about his problems with motel construction, his idea about an open field, and how he intended to create a concussive effect to loosen everything, followed by a trio of consecutive explosions that would use the motel debris in a sort of breaking up and burying process.

«That's very tricky,» Remo said. «I hope you have the timing devices worked to a very small tolerance.»

«That's just it. They ain't. No timing device could be sure to hold. These explosions are set off by the concussion from other explosions, kind of like a chain.»

«Nice,» Remo said.

«Too bad you ain't gonna feel anything, thief,» Willie said, and he clubbed, or thought he clubbed, the side of Remo's head with a swat of his right hand, but his right hand felt funny. It felt as if it were in molten lead, and he found himself lying on the asphalt of the parking lot with the tailpipe of the Continental over his head.

He could feel the vibrations of the Dead Meat Lice against his chest and the oil of the lot was in his nostrils. What seemed like burning lead crawled up his right arm. The pain made him scream and he heard the thief tell him he could stop the burning if he talked, so Willie said he would talk.

«Who were you working with?»

«No one.» Something seemed to split the elbow tip into little pieces and Willie screamed again, although nothing had really happened to his elbow. His nerve endings were causing him the awesome pain. Properly manipulated, nerve endings cannot tell the difference between masterful fingers, broken bones, or molten lead.

«I swear, no one.»

«What about the blond kid?»

«I was only told to do the job on the redhead.»

«Then he wasn't working with you?»

«No. He musta been a free-lance.»

«Who gave you the job?»

«Just a voice on the phone. A Chicago number. Oww, stop that. Stop that on my elbow. I'm talking. Jeez, what are you, a pain freak or something? I'm talking. This voice said go to a mailbox.»

«Is that all?»

«No, he said that Vickie Stoner was gonna be here and the million dollars was for real.»

«What about the mailbox?» Remo asked.

«Well, that was to show good faith,» Willie said. «There was fifty thousand there and another assignment for me. The guy I was with. They paid me to do him. Cash. Fifty thousand. Hey, stop it with the elbow.»

Willie the Bomb Bombella felt the pain sear his shoulder, then his chest. He tried to answer how the bomb thing really worked but no one understood, really understood. To make the pain stop, he told this bastard how to set off a simple explosion from the materials in his car, and he told him honestly because he would do anything to stop the pain, even die. That would be better. He felt himself trundled into the trunk and then there was darkness as the car bounced along with the bombs banging around his ears and temples. There was one at his right foot and just a tap would set it off and take care of that thiefbastard pain freak. So Willie tapped his foot.