Chinese Puzzle

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Remo drove off the New York Thruway on the same route General Liu's car had taken. It was a typical modern American highway junction with a confusion of signs stretched like meaningless miniature billboards 25 feet above the highway, so that to find a particular sign, one had to read them all.

It was a tribute to the thoughtlessness of highway planners that if Remo had not been the recipient of extensive training in mind and body control, he would have missed the turnoff.

The noon traffic seemed alive on the sunny fall day, perhaps a pre-lunch rush or just the normal clogging of an artery feeding a major city of the world.

Chiun had been making small, gasping sounds since the New York City air, a fume-laden, lung-corroding poison, had first seeped into the car's air conditioning.

"Slow death," Chiun said.

"Because of the insensitivity of the exploitative ruling class to the people's welfare. In China, we would not allow air like this."

"In China," Chiun said, "people do not have cars. They eat excrement."

"You allow your slave much freedom," Mei Soong said to Remo. The trio sat in the front seat, Mei Soong between the two men, and Chiun pressed as far against the passenger's door as he could get. Remo had not bothered to switch cars, and frankly hoped he was being followed. Time was getting short in the search for General Liu and he wanted contact made as soon as possible.

Remo did not like Chiun sitting near the window in his present mood, although for most of the trip Remo had been careful to avoid cars with peace emblems. Remo had been concentrating on Liu's disappearance, hoping for a flash of inspiration.

Then he had heard Chum humming happily, and snapped to full consciousness, looking around carefully. Nothing wrong. Then he saw what unleashed the joy in Chiun's heart. A small foreign car with a peace emblem was passing on their right.

As the car moved by, Chiun, staring straight ahead, shot an arm through the open window, flicking at something. Remo caught sight of it in the rearview mirror. A clinketing sideview mirror going back up the road, shattering in shards of glass, bouncing as it disappeared out of sight.

It had happened so fast, of course, the driver of the other car never saw Chiun's wraithlike hand snap out, picking off the mirror. Up ahead, Remo had seen the driver look around in a little confusion and shake his head. Chiun hummed even louder, in joyous contentment.

So Remo had watched for the peace banner cars all the way back to New York. Once, he had tried to foil Chiun. He came close while passing a car with a peace sign, then turned away at the last moment, seeing how close he could come to fooling Chiun.

Remo wound up with a sideview mirror in his lap. Chiun loved that, especially when it bounced off Remo and landed on Mei Soong's hands.

"Heh, heh," Chiun had said, his victory complete.

"Bet you feel proud of yourself," Remo had said.

"Only feel proud when you defeat worthy opponent. Not proud at all. Heh, heh. Not proud at all."

This putdown had lasted Chiun all the way to the rurnoff in New York City, with only an occasional "heh, heh, not proud at all."

Remo followed the route he knew General Liu had taken. Under the Jerome Avenue elevated train he drove, past the Mosholu Golf Course, to a crowded business district, shaded in the sunlight of day by the black grimy elevated traintracks, darkening the whole street. Hardware shops, delicatessens, supermarkets, more restaurants, two dry cleaners, laundries, candy and toy stores. Then Remo turned off the avenue two blocks beyond where General Liu had disappeared and prowled the neighborhood with the car. They were clean neat buildings, six stories high at the most, all brick, and all surprisingly quiet for New York City.

Yet Remo knew that New York City was not really one city but a geographical conglomeration of thousands of provincial neighborhoods, each as far away spiritually from the glamor of New York City as Sante Fe, New Mexico.

These neighborhoods-and sometimes just one apartment building consituted a neighborhood-enjoyed their own ethnic composition, Italian, Irish, Jewish, Polish; proof that the melting pot didn't really melt anything, but instead allowed the unmixed particles to go floating around happily in a common stew.

The houses on both sides of Jerome Avenue, between the Grand Concourse, the main thoroughfare of the Bronx, and the beginning of the elevated train, were the same. Neat, none more than six stories. All brick. Yet there were small differences.

"Chiun," Remo said, "do you know what I'm looking for?"

"Not sure."

"Do you see what I see?" Remo asked. "No."

"What do you think?" "This is an outskirt of a larger city." "Notice anything different from one block to another?" "No. This is one place all over the place. Heh, heh." Chiun knew when he created a phrase in English and would punctuate it with a laugh that was not a laugh. "We'll see," Remo said.

Mei Soong piped up. "It is obvious that the middle level of your rulers lives here. Your secret police and army. Your nuclear bomber pilots."

"The lower proletariat," Remo said.

"A lie," she insisted. "I do not believe the masses live in buildings like these with street lights on corners and shops nearby under that train in the air."

Remo parked the car in front of a brown brick building with a tudor entrance and two rows of green hedges cut very thin, bordering the steps that led to the entrance. "Wait here," he told Mei Soong and motioned Chiun to follow.

"I'm pretty sure I know how General Liu disappeared," Remo whispered to Chiun as they walked away from the car.

"Who do you think you are, Charley Chan?" asked Chiun. "You are not trained in this sort of thing."

"Quiet," Remo said. "I want you to observe."

"Right on, Sherlock, heh, heh."

"Where'd you pick that up?"

"I watch television at Folcroft."

"Oh, I didn't know they had TV there."

"Yes," said Chiun. "My favorite shows are Edge of Night and As the World Turns. They are so beautiful and lovely."

On Jerome Avenue, it became clear to Chiun also. As they strolled through the busy shopping district, they drew curious glances from passersby, the fruit peddler, students with DeWitt Clinton High School jackets, a policeman collecting his weekly tithe from a bookie.

They stopped in front of a lot clustered with unmarked gravestones, and an incredibly ornate white marble angel, undoubtedly ordered by a family that had come to its senses too late after the first shock of loss.

The fresh smell of grass from the municipal golf course came as a blessed gift, telling them that grass was alive and well and living in some sections of New York City.

The afternoon heat, surprising for September, bore down heavily on the now gummy asphalt.

A train clattered overhead spraying metal sparks where its wheels met the tracks.

"Chiun, General Liu never left Jerome Avenue at this point. There were no reports on his being seen, but in this neighborhood there's no way that a couple of men, one of them an Oriental in uniform, could just walk away. He must have been plopped into another car a couple of blocks from here and taken somewhere."

Remo scanned the street. "And you don't make any turnoff up there," he said, nodding north, "without meaning to. Not from a caravan of cars. His driver must have turned off, General Liu realized it and shot him. And perhaps the other man too. But whoever they were working with got the general before the rest of the caravan could catch up."

"Maybe he forced his driver to turn off," Chiun said.

"No, he wouldn't have to. They were his own men. He's a general, you know."

"And you know as much about Chinese internal politics as a roach knows about nuclear engineering."

"I know a general's man is a general's man."

"Do you also know why a general in an armored car can shoot two of his own men, and then not fire a shot at somebody who forces him from the car?"

"Maybe it all happened too fast. Anyway, Chiun…" Remo stopped. "I've got it. That train overhead, you know where it goes? To Chinatown! That's it. They herded him on a train to Chinatown."

"Did no one notice the gang of men boarding the train? Did no one think it was odd to see a Chinese general struggling on a subway?"

Remo shrugged. "Just details."

"Everything seems clear to you because you do not know what you are doing, my son," said Chiun. "Perhaps General Liu is already dead."

"I don't think so. Why the big effort then to kill us?"

"A diversion."

Remo smiled. "Then they better up the price."

"They will," Chiun said. "Particularly now when the world learns that you are also a famous all-knowing detective."

"No more of your snot," Remo said. "You're just jealous because I figured it out and you couldn't. We're going to Chinatown. And find General Liu."

Chiun bowed from the waist. "As you desire, most worthy number one son."