Mugger Blood

"Tyrone Walker? Tyrone Walker? Just a moment."

Shockley pressed a panel built into his desk and a television monitor popped up from inside the left edge of the desk. He pressed some buttons on a typewriter keyboard and Remo could see the reflection in his eyes as a flicker of light illuminated the screen.

"Oh yes. Tyrone Walker." Shockley looked toward Remo with a smile of love and beneficence. "You'll be happy to know, Mr… Mister?"

"Sahib," Remo said. "Bwana Sahib."

"Well, Mr. Sahib, you'll be happy to know that Tyrone is doing just fine."

"I beg your pardon," Remo said.

"Tyrone Walker is doing just fine."

"Tyrone Walker is a living time bomb," Remo said. "It is just a matter of when he explodes and hurts someone. He is a functional illiterate, barely housebroken. How can he be doing fine?"

As he spoke, Remo had started to come up out of his chair and Shockley's hand moved slowly toward the Magnum. He relaxed as Remo sat back in the seat.

"It's all right here, Mr. Sahib. And computers never lie. Tyrone is at the top of his class in language arts, near the top in word graphic presentation, and in the top twentieth percentile in basic computational skills."

"Let me guess," Remo said. "That's reading, writing, and arithmetic."

Shockley smiled a small smile. "Well, in the old days, it was called that. Before we moved into new relevant areas of education."

"Name one," Remo said.

"It's all right here in one of my books," Shockley said. He waved his left hand toward a shelf of books directly behind his left shoulder. "Adventures in Education-An Answer to the Question of Racism in the Classroom."

"You wrote that?" Remo asked.

"I've written all these books, Mr. Sahib," Shockley said. "Racism on Trial, Inequality in the Classroom, The Black Cultural Experience and its Effect on Learning, Street English-A Historical Imperative."

"Have you written anything about how to teach kids to read and write?"

"Yes. My masterwork is considered Street English, A Historial Imperative. It tells how the true English was the black man's English and the white power structure changed it into something it was never meant to be, thereby setting ghetto children at a disadvantage."

"That's idiotic," Remo said.

"Is it? Did you know that the word 'algebra' is itself an Arabic word? And the Arabs are, of course, black."

"They'd be interested in hearing that," Remo said. "What's your answer to this disadvantage of ghetto children in learning English?"

"Let us return to the true basic form of English, Street English. Black English, if you will."

"In other words, because these bunnies can't talk right, make their stupidity the standard by which you judge everybody else?"

"That is racist, Mr. Sahib," Shockley said indignantly.

"I notice you don't speak this Street English," Remo said. "If it's so pure, why don't you?"

"I have my educational doctorate from Harvard," Shockley said. His nostrils pinched tighter together as he said it.

"That's no answer. Are you saying you don't speak Street English because you're smart enough not to?"

"Street English is quite capable of being understood on the streets."

"What if they want to get off the streets? What if they need to know something more than 127 different ways to shake hands? What happens when they go into the real world where most people talk real English? They'll sound as stupid and backward as that clerk of yours out there." Remo waved toward the door, outside which he could still imagine the woman sitting at the desk, worrying to death the seven words on the cover of Essential Magazine, the Journal of Black Beauty.

"Clerk?" said Shockley. His eyes raised in a pair of question marks.

"Yes. That woman out there."

Shockley chuckled. "Oh. You must mean Doctor Bengazi."

"No, I don't mean Doctor anybody. I mean that woman out there who can't read."

"Tall woman?"

Remo nodded.

"Big frizzy do?" Shockley surrounded his hair with his hands.

Remo nodded.

Shockley nodded back. "Doctor Bengazi. Our principal."

"God help us all."

Remo and Shockley looked at each other for long seconds without speaking.

Finally Remo said, "Seeing as how nobody wants to teach these kids to read or write, why not teach them trades? To be plumbers or carpenters or truckdrivers or something."

"How quick you all are to consign these children to the scrap heap. Why should they not have a full opportunity to share in the riches of American life?"

"Then why the hell don't you prepare them for that full opportunity?" Remo asked. "Teach them to read, for Christ's sake. You ever leave a kid back?"

"Leave a child back? What does that mean?"

"You know. Fail to promote him because his work isn't good enough."

"We have done away with those vestigial traces of racism. IQ tests, examinations, report cards, promotions. Every child advances with his or her peer group, socially adept, with the basic skills of community interaction attuned to the higher meaning of the ethnic experience."

"But they can't read," Remo yelled.

"I think you overstate the case somewhat," Shockley said, with the satisfied smile of a man trying to impress the drunken stranger on the next bar stool.

"I just saw your salutatorian. He can't even color inside the lines."

"Shabazz is a very bright boy. He has indigenous advancement attitudes."

"He's a frigging armed robber."

"To err is human. To forgive divine," Shockley said.

"Why didn't you forgive him then and change the date of graduation for him?" Remo asked.

"I couldn't. I just changed it to another date and I couldn't make any more changes."

"Why'd you change it the first time?"

"For the valedictorian."

"What's he going up for?" Remo asked.

"It is a she, Mr. Sahib. And no, she is not going to jail. However, she is going to enjoy the meaningful experience of giving birth."

"And you moved up the graduation so she wouldn't foal on the stage?"

"That's crude," Shockley said.

"Did you ever think, Mr. Shockley…"

"Doctor Shockley. Doctor."

"Did you ever think, Doctor Shockley, that perhaps it's your policies that reduce you to this?"

"To what?"

"To sitting here, barricaded in your office behind a metal fence, a gun in your hand. Did it ever occur to you that if you treated your kids as humans, with rights and responsibilities, they might act like humans?"

"And you think I could do this by 'leaving them, back,' as you so quaintly put it?"

"For a start, yeah. Maybe if the others see that they've got to work, they'll work. Demand something from them."

"By leaving them back? Now I'll give you an example. Each September, we take one hundred children into the first grade. Now suppose I was to leave back all one hundred because they were unable to perform satisfactorily on some arbitrary test of learning experience…"

"Like going to the bathroom," Remo interrupted.

"If I were to leave back all hundred, then next September I would have two hundred children in the first grade and the September after that, three hundred children. It would never stop and after a few years I would be running a school in which everyone was in the first grade."

Remo shook his head. "That presupposes that all of them would be left back. You really don't believe that these kids can be taught to read or write, do you?"

"They can be taught the beauty of black culture, the richness of their experience in America, and how they overcame degradation and the white man's slavery, they can be taught…"

"You don't believe that they can be taught to learn anything," Remo said again. He stood up. "Shockley, you're a racist, you know that? You're the worst racist I ever met. You'll accept anything, any garbage, from these kids because you don't think they're capable of doing any better."

"I? A racist?" Shockley chuckled and pointed to the wall. "There is my award for promoting the ideals of brotherhood, equality, and black excellence, presented to me on behalf of a grateful community by the Black Ministry Council. So much for racism."

"Where does that computer say Tyrone is now?"

Shockley checked the small screen, then punched another button on its keyboard. "Room 127, Advanced Communications."

"Good," Remo said. "I can just follow the sound of the grunts."

"I'm not sure you understand the new aims of modern education, Mr. Sahib."

"Forget it, pal," Remo said.

"But you…"

Suddenly it spilled out of Remo. The agonizing discussion with Shockley, the stupidity of the man who had been put in control of hundreds of young lives, the transparent hypocrisy of a man who thought that if children lived in the gutter, the thing to do was to sanctify the gutter with pious words, all of it filled Remo up like a too-rich meal and, he could feel the bile rising in his throat. For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, he lost his temper.

Before Shockley could move, Remo's hand flashed out and ripped a foot-square hole in the steel screen. Shockley's hands groped out, grasping for his .357 Magnum but it wasn't there. It was in the crazy white man's hands, and as Shockley watched in horror, Remo snapped off the barrel just behind the cylinder. He looked at the useless weapon, then tossed both parts onto the desk in front of Shockley.

"There," he said.

Shockley's face was screwed up in anguish as if someone had just squirted ammonia into his nostrils.

"Why you do that?" he whined.

"Just write it off as another indigenous ethnic experience in racist white America," Remo said. "That's a book title. It's yours for free."

Shockley picked up both parts of the pistol and looked at them. Remo thought he was going to cry.

"You shouldna done dat," Shockley said and turned bloodhound eyes on Remo.

Remo shrugged.

"What I go do now?" Shockley asked.

"Write another book. Call it Racism on the Rampage."

"You shouldna done dat ting," Shockley said. "I gots de parents conference all dis appernoon and now whats I gonna do wif no gun?"

"Stop hiding behind that screen like a goddam fireplace log and come out and talk to the parents. Maybe they'll tell you that they'd like their kids to learn to read and write. So long."

Remo walked to the door. He stopped and turned as he heard Shockley mumbling.

"Deys gonna get me. Deys gonna get me. Oh, lawdy, deys gonna get me and me wiffen no gun."

"That's the biz, sweetheart," Remo said.

When Remo went to collect Tyrone Walker, he wasn't sure if he had walked into Room 127 or the sixth annual reunion celebration of the Manson Family.

There were twenty-seven black teenagers in the classroom, a limit set by state law because a larger class would have disrupted the learning experience. A half dozen sat round a windowsill in the far corner, passing a hand-rolled cigarette from hand to hand. The room reeked with the deep bitter smell of marijuana. Three tall youths amused themselves by throwing switchblade knives at a picture of Martin Luther King that was Scotch-taped to one of the pecan-paneled walls of the classroom. Most of the students lounged at and on desks, their feet up on other desks, listening to transistor radios that blared forth the top four songs on the week's hit parade, "Love is Stoned," "Stone in Love," "In Love I'm Stoned," and "Don't Stone My Love." The din in the classroom sounded like a half dozen symphony orchestras warming up at the same time. In a bus.

Three very pregnant girls stood by a side wall, talking to each other, giggling and drinking wine from a small pint bottle of muscatel. Remo looked around for Tyrone and found him sleeping across two desks.

Remo drew a few glances from some of the students who then dismissed him with contempt and disdain by turning away.

At the head of the classroom, seated at a desk, bent over a pile of papers, was an iron-haired woman wearing a small-size version of a man's wrist watch and a severe black dress. There was a little nameplate screwed into the teacher's desk. It read Miss Feldman.

The teacher did not look up and Remo stood alongside her desk, watching what she was doing.

She had a stack of sheets of lined paper in front of her. On the top of each sheet was rubber-stamped the name of a student. Most of the papers she looked at were blank, except for the rubber-stamped name. On the blank papers, Miss Feldman marked a neat 90 percent in the upper right hand corner.

An occasional sheet would have some scratched pencil scrawls on it. Those Miss Feldman marked 99 percent with three lines under the score for emphasis and carefully glued a gold star to the top center of the sheet.

She went through a dozen sheets before she realized someone was standing at her desk. She looked up, startled, then relaxed when she saw Remo. "What are you doing?" he asked. She smiled at him but said nothing. "What are you doing?" Remo repeated. Miss Feldman continued to smile. No wonder, Remo thought. The teacher was simple. Maybe brain damaged. Then he saw the reason. There were tufts of cotton stuck into Miss Feldman's ears.

Remo reached down and yanked them out. She winced as the rock and roar of the classroom assaulted her eardrums.

"I asked what are you doing?"

"Marking test papers."

"A blank is a 90, a scratch is a 99 with a gold star?" Remo said.

"You must reward effort," Miss Feldman said. She ducked as a book came whizzing by her head, thrown from the back of the room.

"What kind of test?" Remo asked.

"Basic tools of language art," said Miss Feldman.

"Which means?"

"The alphabet."

"You tested them on the alphabet. And most of them turned in blank pages? And they get 90s?"

Miss Feldman smiled. She looked over her shoulder as if someone could sneak up behind her in the three inches she had left between her back and the wall.

"How long have you done this kind of work?" Remo said.

"I've been a teacher for thirty years."

"You've never been a teacher," Remo said. And she hadn't. A teacher was Sister Mary Margaret who knew that while the road to hell was paved with good intentions, the road to heaven was paved with good deeds, hard work, discipline, and a demand for excellence from each student. She had worked in the Newark Orphanage where Remo had grown up and whenever he thought of her, he could almost feel the bruises her ruler raps on the knuckles had given him when she felt he was not trying hard enough.

"What do you make here?" Remo asked.

"Twenty-one thousand, three hundred, and twelve dollars," Miss Feldman answered. Sister Mary Margaret had never seen a hundred dollars at one time in her whole life.

"Why don't you try teaching these kids?" Remo asked.

"You're from the community school board?" Miss Feldman said suspiciously.

"No."

"The central school board?"

"No."

"The financial control board?"

"No."

"The state superintendent's office?"

"No."

"The federal office of education?"

"No. I'm not from nobody. I'm just from me. And I'm wondering why you don't teach these kids anything."

"Just from you?"

"Yes."

"Well, Mister Just-from-You, I've been in this school for eight years. The first week I was here, they tried to rape me three times. The first marking period, I failed two-thirds of the class and the tires were slashed on my car. The second marking period, I failed six kids and my car was set on fire. Next marking period, more failures, and my dog's throat was cut in my apartment while I slept. Then the parents picketed the school, protesting my racist, antiblack attitudes.

"The school board, those paragons of backbone, suspended me for three months. When I came back, I brought a bag of gold stars with me. I haven't had any trouble since and I'm retiring next year. What would you have expected me to do?"

"You could teach," Remo said.

"The essential difference between trying to teach this class and trying to teach a gravel pit is that you can't get raped by a gravel pit," Miss Feldman said. "Rocks don't carry knives."

She looked down at the papers in front of her. One paper had five neat rows of five letters each. Twenty-five letters. Miss Feldman marked it 100 percent with four gold stars.

"The valedictorian?" Remo asked.

"Yes. She always has trouble with the W's."

"If you tried to teach, could they learn?" Remo asked.

"Not by the time they reach me," Miss Feldman said. "This is a senior class. If they're illiterate when they get here, they stay illiterate. They could be taught in the early grades though. If everybody would just realize that giving a failing mark to a black kid doesn't mean that you're a racist who wants to go back to slaveholding. But they have to do it in the early grades."

As Remo watched, a small tear formed in the inside corner of Miss Feldman's left eye.

"And they don't," he said.

"They don't. And so I sit here putting gold stars on papers that twenty years ago would have been grounds for expulsion, black student or white student. What we've come to."

"I'm a friend of Tyrone's. How's he doing?"

"As compared to?"

"The rest of the class," Remo said.

"With luck, he'll go to prison before he's eighteen. That way he'll never starve to death."

"If you had it in your power to decide, would you keep him alive? Would you keep any of them alive?"

"I'd kill them all over the age of six. And I'd start fresh with the young ones and make them work. Make them learn. Make them think."

"Almost like a teacher," Remo said.

She looked up at him sadly. "Almost," she agreed.

Remo turned away and clapped Tyrone on the shoulder. He woke with a start that nearly tipped over the desks.

"Come on, clown," Remo said. "Time to go home."

"Quittin' bell ring already?" Tyrone asked.

CHAPTER NINE

The fact that Tyrone Watson had made one of his infrequent appearances in class was quickly noted by one Jamie Rickets, alias Ali Muhammid, alias Ibn Faroudi, alias Aga Akbar, AKA Jimmy the Blade.

Jamie talked briefly to Tyrone, then left Malcolm-King-Lumumba School and jumped the wires on the first car he found with an unlocked door and drove the twelve blocks back to Walton Avenue.

In a pool hall, he found the vice counselor of the Saxon Lords and related that Tyrone had mentioned he spent the night at the Hotel Plaza in Manhattan. The vice counselor of the Saxon Lords went to the corner tavern and told the deputy subregent of the Saxon Lords who repeated the message to the deputy minister of war. Actually, the Saxon Lords had no minister of war who would have a deputy. But the title "deputy minister of war," it was decided, was longer and more impressive sounding than minister of war.

The deputy minister of war repeated it to the sub-counselor of the Saxon Lords, whom he found sleeping in a burned-out laundromat.

Twenty five minutes later, the subcounselor finally found the Saxon Lords' Leader for Life, sleeping on a bare mattress in the first-floor-left apartment of an abandoned building.

The Leader for Life, who had held the job for less than twelve hours since the sudden schoolyard demise of the last Leader for Life, knew what to do. He got up from his mattress, brushed off anything that might be crawling on him, and walked out onto Walton Avenue where he extorted ten cents from the first person he saw, an elderly black man on his way home from the night watchman's job he had held for thirty-seven years.

He used the dime to phone a number in Harlem.

"De Lawd be with you," the phone was answered.

"Yeah, yeah," said the Leader for Life. "Ah jes finds out where dey staying."

"Oh?" said the Reverend Josiah Wadson. "Where's that?"

"De Hotel Plaza down in de city."

"Very good," said Wadson. "You knows what to do?"

"Ah knows."

''Good. Take only yo' best mens."

"All my mens be my best mens. 'Ceppin Big-Big Pickens and he still in Nooick."

"Don't mess things up," Wadson said.

"Ah doan."

The Leader for Life of the Saxon Lords hung up the pay telephone in the little candy store. Then because he was Leader for Life and leaders had to display their power, he yanked the receiver cord from the body of the telephone.

He chuckled as he left the store on his way to round up a few of his very, very best men.

CHAPTER TEN

"Where we goin'?" asked Tyrone.

"Back to the hotel."

"Sheeit. Whyn't yo' jes' leave me go?"

"I'm making up my mind whether to kill you or not."

"Dass not right. Ah never did nuffin' you."

"Tyrone, your presence on this earth is doing something to me. You offend me. Now shut up, I'm trying to think."

"Sheeit, dat silly."

"What is?"

"Try'n-to think. Nobody try to think. Yo' jes' does it. It be natural."

"Close your face before I close it for you," Remo said.

Tyrone did and slumped in the far corner of the cab's left rear seat.

And as the cab driver tooled down toward Manhattan, four young black men walked along the hallway of the sixteenth floor of the Hotel Plaza toward the suite where a blood brother bellboy had told them a white man was staying with an old Oriental.

Tyrone stayed quiet for a full minute, then could stay quiet no more. "Ah doan lahk staying in dat place," he said.

"Why not?"

"Dat bed, it be hard."

"What bed?"

"Dat big bed wiffout de mattress. It be hard and hurt my back and everyfing."

"The bed?" Remo asked.

"Yeah. Sheeit."

"The big hard white bed?"

"Yeah."

"The big hard white bed that curves up at both ends?" Remo asked.

"Yeah. Dat bed."

"That's a bathtub, plungermouth. Close your face."

And while Remo and Tyrone discussed the latest in bathroom furniture, the Leader for Life of the Saxon Lords put his hand on the doorknob of Suite 1621 in the Plaza, turned it slightly, and when he found the door unlocked and open, presented a pearly smile of triumph to his three associates who grinned back and brandished their brass knuckles and lead-filled saps.

The cab came across the bumpy, rutted Willis Avenue bridge into northern Manhattan, and as the cab jounced up and down on the pitted road surface, Remo wondered if anything worked anymore in America.

The road he was riding on felt as if it hadn't been paved since it was built. The bridge looked as if it had never been painted. There was a school system that didn't teach and a police force that didn't enforce the law.

He looked out at the buildings, the geometric row after row of city slum buildings, factories, walkups.

Everything was going to rack and ruin. It sounded like a law firm that America had on a giant retainer. Rack and Ruin.

Nothing worked anymore in America.

Meanwhile, the Leader for Life opened the door of Suite 1621 wide. Sitting on the floor in front of them, scribbling furiously on parchment with a quill pen, was an aged Oriental. Tiny tufts of hair dotted his head. A trace of wispy beard blossomed below his chin. Seen from behind, his neck was thin and scrawny, ready for wringing. His wrists, jutting out of his yellow robe, were delicately thin, like the wrists of a skinny old lady. He must have used a stick the other night in the schoolyard when he hit one of the Lords, the new Leader for Life thought. But they were all little kids anyway. Now he was going to see the real Saxon Lords.

"Come in and close the door," Chiun said without turning. "You are welcome to his place." His voice was soft and friendly.

The Leader for Life motioned his three followers to move into the room, then closed the door and rolled his eyes toward the old man with a smile. This was gonna be easy. Dat chinky mufu was gonna be a piece of cake. A twinkie even.

Inside the cab as it turned south along the Franklin D. Roosevelt East Side drive, Tyrone's mouth began to work as he tried to formulate a sentence. But Remo was close to something. There was a thought gnawing at him and he didn't want it interrupted by Tyrone so he clapped a hand out across Tyrone's mouth and held it there.

It had only been a few years before that a liberal mayor the city's press had loved had left office and soon after one of the city's major elevated highways had fallen down. Even though millions had been spent allegedly keeping the road repaired, nobody was indicted, no one went to jail, no one seemed to care.

A little bit later it turned out that the same administration had been underestimating the cost of the city's pension agreements by using actuarial tables from the early twentieth century when people's average lifespan was a full twelve years shorter. Nobody cared.

In any other city, there would have been grand jury probes, governor's investigations, mayor's task forces looking into the problem. New York City just yawned and went about its business, its politicians even trying to promote the same mayor, the most inept in a long tradition of inept mayors, into the presidency of the United States.

Who could get upset in New York about just a few more indignities? There were so many indignities day after day.

Remo wondered why, and then a thought came to him.

Was it really America that was so bad? That was falling apart? Out there, across a land of three thousand miles, there were politicians and government officials who tried to do a good job. There Were cops more interested in catching muggers than in running classes to teach people to be mugged successfully. There were roads that were paved regularly so that people could drive on them with a good chance of getting to their destination at the same time as their auto's transmission. There were teachers who tried to teach. And often succeeded.

It wasn't America that had failed. That had fallen apart. It was New York, a city of permanently lowered expectations where people lived and surrendered to a lifestyle worse than almost anywhere else in the country. Where people gave up their right to shop in supermarkets at low prices and instead supported neighborhood delicatessens whose prices made the OPEC oil nations look charitable. Where people calmly accepted the fact that it would take forty-five minutes to move five blocks crosstown. Where people surrendered the right to own automobiles because there was no place to park them and no roads fit to drive them on and the streets were unsafe even for automobiles. Where people thought it was a good thing to have block patrols to fight crime, never considering that in most cities, police forces fought crime.

And New Yorkers put up with all of it and smiled to each other at cocktail parties, their shoes still reeking of the scent of dog-doo that covered the entire city to an average depth of seven inches, and clicked their glasses of white wine and said how they just simply wouldn't live anyplace else.

When New York City went bankrupt every eighteen months in one of its regularly scheduled bursts of Faroukian excess, its politicians liked to lecture the country, while begging for handouts, that New York was the heart and soul of America.

But it wasn't, Remo thought. It was the mouth of America, a mouth that never was still, flapping from television stations and networks and radio chains and magazines and newspapers, until even some people living in the Midwest began to believe that if New York City was so bad, well, then, by God, so was the rest of the country.

But it wasn't, Remo realized. America worked. It was New York City that didn't work. And the two of them weren't the same.

It made him feel better about his job.

"You can talk now," Remo said, releasing Tyrone's mouth.

"Ah forgot what ah was gonna say."

"Hold that thought," Remo said.

And as the cab pulled off the FDR drive at Thirty-fourth Street to head west and north again to the Plaza Hotel-its driver figuring to clip his passengers for an extra seventy cents by prolonging the trip-the Leader for Life of the Saxon Lords put his heavy hand on the shoulder of the aged Oriental in Suite 1621 at the Plaza.

"Awright, chinkey Charley," he said. "Yo' comin' wi£ us. Yo' and that honkey mufu you runs 'round wif." He shook the seated man's shoulder for emphasis. Or tried to shake the shoulder. It seemed to him a little odd that the frail, less than one-hundred-pound body did not move when he tried to shake it.

The old Oriental looked up at the Leader for Life, then at the hand on his left shoulder, then up again and smiled.

"You may leave this world happy," he said with a gracious look. "You have touched the person of the Master of Sinanju."

The Leader for Life giggled. The old gook, he talk funny. Like one of dem faggy honkey perfessers that was always on de television, talking, talking, all de time talking.

He giggled again. Showing de old chink a ting or two was gonna be fun. Real fun.

He took the heavy lead sap out of his back pants pocket, just as a cab pulled up in front of the Plaza on Sixtieth Street sixteen floors below.

Remo paid the driver and steered Tyrone Walker up the broad stone staircase into the lobby of the grand hotel.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

There were always sounds in a hotel corridor. There were people with the television on and other people singing as they dressed. Showers ran and toilets flushed and air conditioning hummed. In the Plaza, everything was fudged over with the traffic noise of New York City. The secret in sorting out the different noises was to focus the ears as most people focused their eyes.

When Remo and Tyrone came off the elevator on the sixteenth floor, Remo immediately heard the voices in Suite 1621. He could hear Chiun's voice, and he could hear other voices. Three, perhaps four.

Remo pushed Tyrone into the room first. Chiun was standing near a window, his back toward the street. The afternoon sun silhouetted him dark against the bright light pouring through the thin drapes that ran almost all the way up to the fourteen-foot-high ceiling.

Sitting on the floor facing Chiun were three young men wearing the blue denim jackets of the Saxon Lords. Their hands were neatly in their laps.

Stuffed off in a corner of the room was another young black man and Remo could tell from the awkward splay of his limbs that it was too late for him to worry about holding his hands properly. Sprinkled haphazardly about his body was a collection of blackjacks and brass knuckles.

Chiun nodded to Remo silently and kept speaking.

"Now try this," he said. "I will obey the law."

The three black youths spoke in unison. "Ah will obeys de law."

"No, no, no," Chiun said. "With me. I, not Ah."

"I," the three men said slowly, with difficulty.

"Very good," Chiun said. "Now. I will obey. Not obeys. Obey."

"I will obey."

"That's correct. Now. The law. Not de law. The. Your tongue must protrude slightly from your mouth and be touched by your upper teeth. Like this." He demonstrated. "The. The. The law."

"The law," the men said slowly.

"Fine. And now the whole thing. I will obey the law."

"Ah will obeys de law."

"What?" shrieked Chiun.

Remo laughed. "By George, I think they've got it. Now try them on the rain in Spain."

"Silence… honkey," Chiun spat. He fixed the three youths with hazel eyes that seemed cut from stone. "You. This time, right."

"I. Will. Obey. The. Law." The three men spoke slowly, carefully.

"Again."

"I will obey the law." Faster this time.

"Very good," Chiun said.

"Can we go now, massa?"

"It is not massa. It is Master. Master of Sinanju."

Tyrone said, "Brothers," and the three black men wheeled and stared at him. Their eyes were alive with terror and not even seeing Tyrone standing next to Remo alleviated it.

"Repeat your lessons for the nice gentleman," Chiun said.

As if they were all on one string, the three heads jerked around to face Chiun.

"I will respect the elderly. I will not steal or kill. I will obey the law."

"Very good," Chiun said.

Remo jerked his thumb toward the body in the corner. "Slow learner?"

"I did not have a chance to find out. To teach them, first it was necessary to get their attention. He happened to be the best way to do it, since he had touched my person."

Chiun looked down at the three youths.

"You may stand now."

The three got slowly to their feet. They appeared ill at ease, unsure of what to do with themselves. Tyrone, not having undergone Chiun's good manners school, solved the problem by engaging them in a complicated round robin of hand-slapping greetings, hands apart, hands together, palms up, palms down, palms sliding across other palms. It looked, Remo thought, like pattycake class at a mental institution.

The three young men collected with Tyrone in a corner and whispered to him. Tyrone came back to give the message to Remo as they watched suspiciously.

"De Revin Wadson, he wanna talk to you."

"Who? Oh, yeah. The fence."

"Right. He wanna see you."

"Good. I want to see him too," Remo said.

"Dey say he know somefin' about de Missus Mueller," Tyrone said.

"Where do I find him?" Remo asked.

"He gots de big 'partment up in Harlem. Dey takes you dere."

"Good. You can come too."

"Me? Whuffo?"

"In case I need a translator. And you three, get rid of your garbage," Remo said, pointing to the body of the Saxon Lords' Leader for Life, who, since touching Chiun, no longer led. Or lived.

Ingrid did not like the Reverend Josiah Wadson, so at random moments during the day, she jogged the toggle switch on the little black box controlling the strangulation ring. And she smiled when she was rewarded with a roar of pain from wherever in his apartment Wadson was trying to rest.

Before setting foot in Wadson's apartment the night before, she had guessed what she would find. Loud, grotesque, expensive furniture, paid for with money that should have gone to the poor whose case he was always talking up.

But Wadson's life style was lavish, even for her expectations. And unusual.

He had two live-in maids, both young and white, both paid by the federal government as program coordinators for Affirmative Housing II. They looked as if they had majored in Massage Parlor. They dressed like burlesque queens and they were both holding crystal tumblers of whiskey when Ingrid and Wadson returned to the apartment on the fringes of Harlem.

The main living room of the apartment was crammed full, like a junk drawer in a kitchen sink. Statuary, oil paintings, metal sculptures, gold medallions, jewelry were everywhere.

"Where did you get all this dross?" she asked Wadson, after she dismissed the two maids and told them to take the rest of the week off, a gift for loyal service from a grateful government.

"Deys gifts from faithful followers who join me in de Lawd's woik."

"In other words, from poor people you fleeced."

Wadson tried to engage her with a "that's life" grin, wide enough to show every one of his thirty-two teeth and most of the gold that lined the biting surfaces.

"I thought as much," she said in disgust. To emphasize the point, she pushed the toggle switch on the black box a millimeter forward. The pain in his groin brought Wadson to his knees.

But she was truly surprised when she saw the rest of the apartment. The living room, kitchen, and two bedrooms were in use. But there were six other rooms in the apartment and each was filled, from floor to ceiling, with television sets, radios, pots and pans, stereo record players, hubcaps. As she went from room to room looking at the treasure trove, it dawned on her what Wadson was. He was a fence for the goods stolen by the street gangs.

It was a suspicion and she asked him if it were true.

Lying was out of the question, he knew. He grinned again.

She left him groaning on the floor of the living room and went into the kitchen to make herself coffee. Only when the coffee had been made and cooled and half consumed, did she return and lighten the pressure on the strangulation ring.

It took an hour of rooting around for Wadson to find the device that had been stolen from the Muellers' apartment. He handed it to Ingrid, hoping for some sign of approval.

"You go to bed now," she said.

She stayed in a chair alongside the bed until she was sure Wadson was asleep. Then she telephoned Spesk and described to him the secret device and they shared a laugh.

She spent the night sitting in the chair next to Wadson's bed.

She stood alongside him when he talked to the Saxon Lords about how important it was to find the thin American and the Oriental, and they both learned that the two targets had kidnapped one of the Lords, Tyrone Walker. Wadson was at his unctuous worst in talking to the Lords and it gave her pleasure to toy with the little switch and bring the sweat out on his forehead and cause him to stumble over his own words.

She was still at his side now, as he sat in a chair facing the thin American and the ancient Oriental, and the tall thin black boy who had accompanied them.

"Why he here?" Wadson asked, motioning to Tyrone. "Why is this child here involved in the business of men?" He winced as the pain reminded him of Ingrid standing behind his chair. "And women."

"He's here because I wanted him here," said Remo. "Now what do you want with us?"

"You interested in de Missus Mueller, I hear."

"You hear good," said Remo.

"Well," said Tyrone.

"What?" asked Remo.

"You say he hear good," Tyrone said. "Dat wrong. You sposed say he hear well. Ah learns dat in school."

"Shut up," Remo said. "I'm interested in two things," he said to Waclson. "The person that killed her. And to get some kind of device she may have had."

"Ah gots de dee-vice," said Wadson.

"I wants it," Remo said. "Dammit, Tyrone, now you've got me doing it. I want it."

"Very good," Chiun said to Remo.

"I'll get it for you," Wadson said.

He rose slowly to his feet and walked toward a far corner of the room. Chiun caught Remo's eyes and nodded slightly, calling his attention to Wadson's labored walk and obvious pain.

Ingrid watched Wadson with the shrewd suspicious eyes of a chicken farmer looking in the barnyard for fox tracks. Remo watched Ingrid. He guessed her as the source of Wadson's pain but he could not tell what kind. The black minister walked heavily, planting one foot in front of the other delicately, as if he suspected the floor was land-mined.

Wadson opened the drop front of an antique desk and took from inside it a cardboard box almost a foot square. From the box, he lifted a device that looked like a metronome with four arms. Three wires led out of the machine.

He brought it back and handed it to Remo. Wadson walked back to his chair. Ingrid smiled as he raised his eyes to hers in an unspoken appeal to be allowed to sit. She nodded slightly and, shielded from the view of the others by the backs of the large chair, lightened the pressure on the toggle switch slightly. Wadson's sigh of relief filled the room.

"What's it do?" Remo asked, after turning the metronome over and over in his hand. He had never understood machinery. This looked like just another dippy toy.

"Dunno," Wadson said. "But that's it."

Remo shrugged. "One last thing. Big-Big somebody. He killed Mrs. Mueller. Where is he?"

"I hear he's in Newark."

"Where?" asked Remo.

"Ah'm lookin' for him," Wadson said.

"If he's in Newark, how'd you get this?" asked Remo.

"Somebody left it outside my door with a note dat the government was looking for it," Wadson said.

"I think that's crap, but we'll let it pass," Remo said. "I want this Big-Big."

"What'll you do for me?" Wadson said. "Iffen I find him?"

"Let you live," Remo said. "I don't know what's wrong with you, Reverend, but you look like you're in pain. Whatever it is, it'll be nothing compared to what I've got for you, if you're not straight with me."

Wadson raised his hands in a gesture that might have been protest, or the instinctive movement of a man trying to hold back a brick wall that was ready to fall on him.

"I'm not jivin' you," he said. "I got peoples all over de street. I find out soon."

"You let me know right away."

"Who are you anyway?" asked Wadson.

"Let's just say I'm not a private citizen."

"You got family? Mrs. Mueller you family?"

"No," said Remo. I'm an orphan. The nuns raised me. Chiun here is my only family."

"Adopted," Chiun said, lest anyone get the idea that he had white blood in him.

"Where'd you learn to do what you do?" Wadson asked.

"Just what is it I do?"

"I heard you kinda cuffed around de Lawds de other night. That kind of do."

"Just a trick," Remo said.

Tyrone was walking about the room, looking at the statues and the small pieces of crystal and jewelry on the shelves.

"Don' you go liftin' none of them," Wadson yelled. "Dey mine."

Tyrone looked miffed that anyone might think him capable of theft. He stepped away from the shelf and continued walking around the room. He stopped near Ingrid, saw what she was doing, and with the quick practiced hands of a purse snatcher, reached over and snatched the black box from her hand.

"Look at this," he said, holding it forward to Remo.

"Boy, don' touch that switch," Wadson said. "Please."

"Which switch?" said Tyrone. "Dis one here?" He put his fingers on the toggle switch.

"Please, boy. Let go of it."

"Give it back to me, Tyrone," Ingrid said coolly. "Just hand it back to me."

"What's it do?" Tyrone asked.

"It's a pain-killing device for people with migraine headaches," she said. "The reverend suffers greatly from that feeling of tightness around his head. That relieves it. Please give it back to me." She extended her hand for the little black box.

Tyrone looked at Remo who shrugged. "Give it back to her," he said.

"I do," said Tyrone. He started to extend the little box, but couldn't resist giving the switch a tiny push.

"Aiieee!" screamed Wadson.

Ingrid snatched the box from Tyrone's hands and quickly moved the switch back. Wadson sipped air in relief, so deeply it sounded as if someone had turned on a vacuum cleaner. He was still hissing when they left. Ingrid stood behind him smiling.

In the hallway walking downstairs, Remo asked, "What do you think, Little Father?"

"About what?"

"About Reverend Wadson?"

"There is less there than meets the eye," said Chiun.

"And about this machine of the Muellers?"

"It is a machine. All machines are alike. They break. Send it to Smith. He likes to play with toys."

The device was delivered to Smith's office in Rye, New York at two a.m. by a cabdriver who had been paid with half of a hundred dollar bill and a grinding brief pain in his right kidney. He was told to deliver it fast and he would get the other half of the hundred at the Hotel Plaza desk and would not get the rest of the pain.

It was the middle of the night and Tyrone was asleep in the bathroom when there was a knock on the door.

"Who is it?" Remo called.

"The bellboy, sir. There's a phone call for you. And your phone is out of order."

"I know. I'll take it in the lobby."

"I received the package," Smith told Remo when he picked up the telephone downstairs.

"Oh, Smitty. Nice to hear from you again. You recruit my replacement yet?"

"I only hope that if I do he will be more reasonable to deal with than you are." Remo was surprised. Smith never showed temper. Or any other emotion for that matter. The realization that this was a first chastened Remo.

"What's with the device?" he asked. "Any value?"

"None. It's a lie detector that runs on induction."

"What's that mean?"

"They don't have to attach wires to the subject. So it's useful in questioning a suspect whom you don't want to know he's a suspect. You can ask him questions and hook that device up to the bottom of his chair and it'll register whether he's telling the truth or not."

"Sounds good," Remo said.

"Fair," said Smith. "We've got better stuff now. And with pentothal, nobody in tradework uses devices much anymore."

"Okay, so I'm done here and now I can get about my other business?"

"Which is?"

"Finding the man who killed that old lady to steal a machine that didn't have any value."

"That'll have to wait," Smith said. "You're not done."

"What else?" Remo asked.

"Don't forget. I told you about Colonel Speskaya being in the country and two other weapons he was trying to get his hands on."

"Probably more lie detectors," Remo said.

"I doubt it. He's too good to be fooled. So that's your job. Find out what he's after and get it for us."

"And when I'm done with that?"

"Then you can do anything you want. Really, Remo, I don't know why this is so important to you."

"Because somebody out there put an icepick in an old lady's eye just for fun. Killing for sport cheapens the work I do. I'm going to keep the amateurs out."

"Making the world safe for assassins?" Smith asked.

"Making it unsafe for animals."

"You do it. I just hope you can tell the difference," said Smith before the telephone line clicked in Remo's ear.

Remo put down the telephone with the same faint feeling of unease that conversations with Smith always gave him. It was as if, without saying a word, Smith entered a continuous moral judgment against Remo. But where was the immorality since it had been Smith who virtually kidnaped Remo from his straight middle-America life to make him a killer? Were moral judgments only valid for what other people did, and expediency the only yardstick one used on himself?

Chiun noticed the puzzled look on Remo and was about to speak when they heard the scratching on the bathroom door. Simultaneously, they decided to ignore Tyrone.

"You worry, my son, because you are yet a child."

"Dammit, Chiun, I'm no child. I'm a grown man. And I don't like what's going down. Smith's got me running around looking for two more secret weapons and I just… well, I'm just not interested in it all anymore."

"You will always be a child if you expect men to be more than they are. If you are walking through the woods, you do not get angry at a tree that happened to grow up directly in your path. The tree could not help it. It existed. You do not sit on the ground in front of that tree and lecture it. You ignore it. And if you cannot ignore it, you remove it. So you must act with people. They are, for the most part, like trees. They do what they do because they are what they are."

"And so I should ignore all those that I can and remove those that I can't?"

"Now you are seeing the light of wisdom," Chiun said, folding his hands in front of him with a movement as smooth as that of an underwater plant.

"Chiun, the world you give me is a world without morality. Where nothing counts for anything except keeping your elbow straight and breathing right and attacking correctly. You give me no morality and that makes me happy. Smith gives me a shitpot full of morality and it disgusts me. But I like his world better than yours."

Chiun shrugged. "That is because you do not understand the real meaning of my world. I do not give you a world without morality. I give you a world of total morality but the only morality you totally control is your own. Be moral. You can do no greater thing in your life." He moved his arms around in a large slow circle. "Try to make other people moral and you are trying to ignite ice with a match."

Tyrone stopped scratching. "Hey, when ah gets out of here?" his muffled voice called. Remo looked toward the locked bathroom door.

"And him?"

"He is what he is," Chiun said. "A candy wrapper on the street, an orange peel in the garbage. A man who decides to worry about everyone will have no shortage of things to keep him busy."

"You say I should let him go?"

"I say you should do whatever makes you a better person," Chiun said.

"And what about the man who killed Mrs. Mueller? Let him go too?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because you need that one if you are to be at peace with yourself. So find him and do what it is you wish with him."

"That's a selfish view of life, Little Father. Tell me. Don't you ever wish you could just get rid of all the evil people in the world, all the garbage, all the animals?"

"No," Chiun said.

"Did you ever?" Remo asked.

Chiun smiled. "Of course. I was a child once too, Remo."

CHAPTER TWELVE

When Remo's cab pulled up in front of Reverend Wadson's apartment building, the crowd was pulsating on the street and sidewalk. Some carried signs, others were chanting. "Brutality. Atrocity."

Remo tapped the driver on the shoulder and motioned him to the curb.

"Wait here for me," he said.

The cabbie looked at the two hundred people milling around across the street, then swiveled on his seat to look at Remo.

"I'm not staying here, buddy. Not with that gang over there. They'll use me for chum if they spot me."

"I'd like to stay and discuss it with you," said Remo, "but I don't have the time." His hand slipped forward past the driver, turned the ignition key off, and plucked it from its slot on the steering column, all in one deft movement. "You wait. Lock the doors, but wait. I'll be right back."

"Where you going?"

"Over there." Remo motioned to the apartment house.

"You'll never be back."

Remo dropped the keys into his trouser pocket. As he trotted across the street, he could hear the heavy mechanical click of the four door locks in the cab behind him.

The crowd was being kept at bay by the locked front doors of the apartment building. Inside the lobby, a uniformed doorman kept motioning the people to leave.

"What's going on?" Remo asked the question of a young man with a shaved head and a Fu Manchu mustache who stood on the fringe of the crowd.

The man looked at Remo. His face curled down in disgust and he turned away silently.

"We'll try one more time," Remo said gently. "What's going on?" He punctuated the question, using his right hand to grip the muscles on both sides of the man's lower spine.

The man straightened up from the pain, taller than he had ever stood before in his life.

"They got Reverend Wadson."

"Who's they?"

"I don't know who they is. His enemies. Enemies of the people. The oppressors."

"What do you mean, they got Wadson?"

"He's dead. They killed him. Cut him up and butchered him. Let go, that hurts."

Remo did not let go. "And 'they' did it?"

"That's right."

"And what do these people want? Why are they marching around here?"

"They want justice."

"They think you get it by singing?"

The young man tried to shrug. It felt as if his shoulders were going up and leaving his spinal column behind. He changed his mind.

"Police arrive yet?" asked Remo.

"They just been called."

"Thank you. A pleasure talking with you," Remo said.

He released the young man and moved along the perimeter of the crowd. If he went through the front door, he'd just open a path for this mob. Behind him, the young man tried to marshal his breath to sic the crowd on Remo but every time he tried to fill his lungs to shout, the pain returned to his back. He decided that silence was golden.

Remo surged forward and back with the crowd, moving from spot to spot, being seen, then disappearing, visible, invisible, never in anyone's field of vision for more than a split second, until he had moved to the alley alongside the apartment building. The alley was barred by a locked iron gate eight feet high, with spikes atop it, and barbed wire laced in and out of the spikes.

Remo grabbed the heavy lock and wrenched it with his right hand and the gate gave way smoothly. Remo slipped aside, then punished the lock again until it merged with the metal of the fence and stayed closed. The fire escapes were in the rear of the building and Remo went up the fourteen stories until he got to a window outside Wadson's apartment. He was ready to push open the window when the drapes inside were flung back and the window was opened.

Ingrid stifled a scream when she saw Remo on the fire escape, then said, "Thank God you're here."

"What happened?" Remo asked.

"Josiah's dead." Tears poured from her eyes.

"I know. Who did it?"

"A blond man. With a foreign accent. I was sleeping but he came into the apartment and I heard him talking to Josiah and then I heard screams and when I got up, Josiah was all cut up and dead. The blond man was running out the door. I called the doorman to stop him, but I guess he escaped."

"Why are you running away before the police arrive?"

"This'll cost me my job if I'm found here. I was supposed to be doing a film documentary. I wasn't supposed to fall in love with a black man." She climbed out onto the fire escape. "I loved that man. I really did." She buried her face in Remo's shoulder and wept. "Please get me away from here."

"All right," Remo said.

Remo closed the window again, then hustled her down the fire escape and out another alley behind the building. It exited onto another side street, secured by an identical heavy iron gate. Remo snapped the steel with his hands. He turned to see Ingrid staring at the twisted metal.

"How'd you do that?" she asked.

"Must have been defective," Remo answered, as he steered her around the corner to the cab. The driver was lying on the front seat of the cab, trying to keep out of sight and Remo had to thump loudly on the window to get him to look up. Remo gave him his keys back and the driver peeled rubber leaving the neighborhood. The crowd had already grown larger in front of the apartment building because the word had spread that the television cameramen were coming and no one wanted to miss his chance to be on the tube. Especially the veterans of the civil rights riots who left their liquor stores and their card games to come over and carry signs.

When Ingrid came into the Plaza suite with Remo, Chiun said nothing, but saw the boxy lump hidden inside her purse.

While she was in the bathroom, Remo said, "Wadson's dead. I got her out of there. She's staying with us awhile."

"Good ting," Tyrone said. "She can sleep in my bed. She some hunk of honkey."

"Lacks bulk," Chiun said.

"Hands off," Remo said to Tyrone.

"Sheeit," said Tyrone and went back to watching the rerun of Leave it to Beaver, Chiun changed it to Sesame Street.

While Remo had been at Wadson's apartment, the management had installed a new telephone in the suite. And now, while Ingrid was at the drugstore in the Plaza lobby, the phone rang.

"Yeah," said Remo, expecting to hear Smith's voice.

"This is Speskaya," a voice said. There was something in the voice that Remo remembered. But where? Who? The voice was not accented but sounded as if it should have been. "I killed Wadson."

"What do you want?" Remo asked.

"To offer you work. You and the Oriental gentleman."

"Sure. Let's talk about it," Remo said.

"That is just too easily said for me to believe you."

"Would you believe I want your job if I say I don't want it?" Remo asked.

"Job?" Chiun said. He was sitting on the sofa. He looked toward Remo. "Someone is offering us a job?"

Remo raised his hand to silence Chiun.

Speskaya said, "It is difficult to gauge your motives." The voice was familiar, but Remo could not put it together with a face.

"I can't help that," Remo said.

"What is the offer?" Chiun said.

Remo waved a hand to shush him.

"You work for a country which is breaking down,"

Speskaya said. "People are butchered in their homes. You, who are no stranger to death, find that offensive. Why not come over with us?"

"Look, let's stop mousing around. I've got a secret weapon you want. I'll give it to you. You tell me about the secret weapons you're working on and we'll be square and you can go back to Russia," Remo said.

"Secret weapons? I'm working on?"

"Yeah. Two of them."

There was a long pause, then a boyish laugh over the telephone. "Of course. Two secret weapons."

"What's so funny?" Remo said.

"Never mind," Speskaya said.

"Is it a deal?"

"No. The device you have is nothing but a low-level biofeedback device that works off induction and is virtually without worth."

"And your two secret weapons?" Remo said.

"They are of great worth. Great worth."

"I bet," said Remo.

"There is a club called The Iron Dukes on Walton Avenue. I will meet you there tonight. I will tell you about my weapons and I will expect your answer about working for us. Nine o'clock."

"I'll be there."

"The Oriental too."

"We'll be there," Remo said.

"Good thing, fella. Look forward to seeing you," Speskaya said. And as the telephone clicked, Remo recognized the voice. It was that jovial "fella" that did it. The man he had met at the excavation at the Mueller's apartment, the man whose knee he had banged up. Tony Spesk, alias Speskaya, Russian colonel and spy.

"Tonight," Remo said to Chiun, just as Ingrid came back into the room. "We'll find out what two weapons he's working on."

"And then?"

"Then we get rid of him and that's that," Remo said.

"You have no idea what his special weapons are?" Chiun asked.

Remo shrugged. "Who cares? More machinery."

"You are a fool," said Chiun.

A few moments later, Ingrid remembered something she had forgotten at the drugstore. She went back downstairs and called a number on a pay phone.

"Anthony," she said. "I just overheard. They plan to kill you tonight."

"Too bad," Spesk said. "They would have been most valuable additions to our arsenal."

"What now?" Ingrid asked.

"Use the white ring. And let me know how it works."

On Halsey Street in Newark, the burly black man found what he was looking for. He had passed up two Volkswagens to find an unlocked car big enough for him to sit in comfortably.

He opened the door of the new Buick and hunched over close to the dashboard, bridging the ignition with a pair of alligator clips he carried in his pocket. From his belt, he unhooked a huge ring of keys, dwarfed by his big heavy hand, and sorted through them until he found one that seemed right and put it in the ignition. He turned it, the starter growled, and the motor started smoothly.

Big-Big Pickens drove into traffic with a smile on his face. He was going home and getting those Saxon Lords straightened out.

Just turns his back, and some honkey and little old chink, they been busting up the gang, and two of the leaders dead, and the Reverend Wadson dead, and about time for all this nonsensery to end. He patted the ice pick he carried in his hip pocket, its business end stuck into a cork. On a whim he removed it and slammed it deep into the car seat. And he smiled again.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

In the living room Remo had changed into a black tee shirt and black slacks.

"Remo." Ingrid's voice was a soft call from the bedroom door.

Remo nodded and stood. Chiun was wearing a thin black robe. Tyrone still wore the same denim jacket, jeans, and dirty white tee shirt he had worn for three days.

"We'll be leaving right away," Remo said, looking through the window at nighttime New York. "But there's something to do first."

The old man nodded.

Inside, Ingrid sat on the edge of the bed. She had just come from the shower and wore only a thin blue satin robe.

"Must you go?" she said to Remo. With her faint European accent, her voice sounded wistful and lost.

"Afraid so."

"That man is a bad man. He killed Josiah."

"You mean Spesk? Just another agent. No problem."

She put her hands up to Remo's arms and pulled him closer to her, until his knees touched hers.

"I would be shattered if you were hurt… or…"

"Killed? I don't expect to be."

"But he is a killer."

"That's right, isn't it? And you saw him running away after he killed Wadson."

Ingrid nodded. She trailed her hands around Remo's back until they were at the base of his spine. She pulled him to her and buried her face in his stomach.

"Yes." Her voice seemed choked. "I saw him. I will never forget him."

"Tall, lean man. Thinning blond hair. Little scar over the left eye."

He felt her head nod against his stomach. Then he felt her hands at his waist, fumbling with the belt of his trousers.

"Remo," she said softly, "this may be strange, but in just these few hours… there has come to be… I can't explain it. You'll laugh."

"Never laugh at a woman in love," Remo said.

His trousers were open now and she busied her hands and her face with his body.

Then she fell back onto the bed, her right hand holding his left wrist and pulling him down to her.

"Come, Remo. Make love to me. Now. I can't wait."

The front of her robe fell open and Remo slipped down onto her blond goddess body. Mechanically, he began sex. He felt her right arm leave his wrist and reach up under the pillow at the headboard of the bed. She put her left arm around his neck and pulled his face down to her so he could not see what she was doing.

He felt the slight shift in her body weight as her right hand returned toward her waist. He felt the fingers slide in between their stomachs and then he felt the constriction as the hard white metal ring was placed on his body.

Remo pulled back and looked down at the white ring. Ingrid reached again over her head and had the small black box in her hand, with the red toggle switch in the center.

She smiled at him, a vicious smile that was as foreign to love as it was to warmth.

"And now, the charade ends."

"As all good charades must," Remo said.

"Do you know what that ring is?"

"Some kind of pressure device, I guess," Remo said.

"As effective as a guillotine." She scootched herself up into a sitting position in bed.

"Is this what you used on Wadson?" Remo asked.

"Yes. I used it all over his body. To mutilate him. He was gross. You learn very quickly."

"No," said Remo. "I didn't learn. I knew."

It was time for Ingrid to be surprised. "You knew?"

"When you said you saw Spesk running" away after killing Wadson. I broke Spesk's kneecap three nights ago. He isn't doing much running these days."

"And yet you came in here? Like a lamb to slaughter?"

"I'm not exactly a lamb."

"You will be. A lamb. Or a gelding."

"What is it you want?" Remo asked.

"It is simple. You join Spesk and me. You work with us."

"I don't think so," Remo said.

"The old one would. I have heard him today. He would go wherever the money is best. Why is he so reasonable and you so unreasonable?"

"We're both unreasonable. Just in different ways," Remo said.

"Then your answer is no."

"You got it, sweetheart."

She looked down at the red switch in her hand.

"You know what happens next, don't you?"

"Go ahead," Remo said. "But know this. You die. You can play with your toy there and maybe hurt me but I'll have time to kill you and you know I will. And you will die very slowly. Very painfully."

His deep brown eyes that seemed to have no pupils met hers. They stared at each other. She looked away, and as if backing down from his stare had thrown her into a rage, she slammed her hand onto the red toggle switch, pushing it all the way forward. Baring her teeth and gums with lips twisted open in hatred, she looked up at Remo.

He still knelt in the same place on the bed. His face showed no emotion, no pain. Her eyes met his again and Remo laughed. He reached onto the bed and picked up the two halves of the white ring, split cleanly, like an undersized doughnut cut in two by a very precise knife. He tossed them to her.

"Called muscle control, kid."

He stood up and zipped his trousers and fastened his belt. Ingrid scurried across the bed and reached into her handbag on the end table. She pulled out a small pistol and rolled toward Remo, aiming the gun at him in an easy, unhurried motion.

As her finger began to tighten on the trigger, Remo picked up half of the white ring and tossed it at her, skidding it off the ends of his fingertips with enough force that it whirred as it traveled the four feet to Ingrid.

Her finger squeezed the trigger just as the piece of the ring hit the barrel of the gun with hammer force, driving the muzzle upward under Ingrid's chin. It was too late for her brain to recall the firing signal.

The gun exploded, one muffled shot, which ripped upward through Ingrid's chin, passed through the bottom half of her skull, and buried itself in her brain.

Eyes still open, lips still pulled back in a cat snarl of anger, she dropped the gun and fell onto her side on the bed. The gun clanked to the floor. A thin trail of blood poured from the bullet wound in her chin, slipping down throat and shoulders until it reached the blue satin of her robe which absorbed it and turned almost black.

Remo looked at the dead body, shrugged casually, and left the room.

In the living room, without turning from the window through which he assayed New York City, Chiun said, "I'm glad that's over with."

"Did ah hears a shot?" asked Tyrone.

"You sure do," said Remo. "Time to go."

"Go where?"

"You're going home, Tyrone."

"You lettin' me go?"

"Yeah."

"Good thing," said Tyrone, jumping to his feet. "So long."

"Not so quick. You're going with us," Remo said.

"Whuffo?"

"Just in case this big bear or whatever his name is is around. I want you to point him out to me."

"He a big mean muvver. He kill me if he find out I finger him for you."

"And what will I do?" Remo asked.

"Aw, sheeeit," said Tyrone.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

All the streetlights were out on the block which housed the Iron Dukes' clubrooms.

Remo stood under one of the unworking lights and touched his toe to the broken glass on the street. The block seemed weighted down with summer dampness. All the building lights on the street were out too and Tyrone looked around nervously.

"Ah don' like dis place," he said. "Too dark."

"Somebody made it that way for us," Remo said. "Are they there, Chiun?"

"Yes," Chiun said. "Across the street."

"How many of them?"

"Many bodies," Chiun said. "Perhaps thirty."

"Wha' you talkin' 'bout?" Tyrone asked.

"Tyrone," Remo explained patiently. "Somebody just busted all the streetlights to make this block dark. And now whoever did it is hiding around here, waiting… don't look around like that, you dip… hiding around here waiting for us."

"Ah don' like dat," Tyrone said. "What's we gone do?"

"What we're going to do is Chiun and I are going up to see Spesk. You're going to stay down here and see if you see Big-Big whatsisface. And when I come down, you point him out to me."

"Ah don' wanna."

"You better," Remo said. They left Tyrone standing at the curb and followed a small single light upstairs into a large office that had a desk at the far end of the room.

Behind the desk sat Tony Spesk, good old Tony, appliance salesman, Carbondale, Illinois, AKA Colonel Speskaya, NKVD. His gooseneck lamp was twisted so it shone in his visitors' faces.

"We meet again," Spesk said. "Ingrid is dead, of course."

"Of course," Remo said. He took a few steps forward into the room.

"Before you try anything foolish," Spesk said, "I should advise you that there is an electronic eye in this room. If you attempt to reach me, you will break the beam and set off a crossfire of machine guns. Do not be foolish."

Chiun looked at the walls of the vacant room and nodded. On the left wall, there were electric eye units starting six inches above the floor, and then one each foot higher until they stopped eight feet above the floor, one foot below the ceiling. He nodded to Remo.

"Now, have you considered my offer?" Spesk said.

"Yes. Considered and rejected," Remo said.

"That's a shame," said Spesk. "I would not have thought you were patriots."

"Patriotism has nothing to do with it," said Remo. "We just don't like you people."

"Russians have been worthless since the time of Ivan the Great," said Chiun.

"The Terrible, you mean," Spesk said.

"The Great," Chiun insisted.

"He paid on time," Remo explained.

"Well, then I guess there's nothing more to talk about," Spesk said.

"One thing," said Remo. "These two weapons you're after. What are they?"

"You don't know, do you?" asked Spesk after a pause.

"No," said Remo.

"The old man knows though. Don't you?"

Remo looked over to see Chiun nod.

"Well, if you know so much, Chiun, why didn't you tell me?" Remo asked.

"Sometimes it is easier to talk to Tyrone," Chiun said.

"Tell me now. What two weapons?" Remo said.

"You," said Chiun. "And me."

"Us?" Rerno said.

"We," Chiun said.

"Sheeit. All this for that."

"Enough," said Spesk. "We cannot deal and that is that. You may leave and later I will leave. And perhaps we will meet again someday."

"We're the weapons you wanted?" Remo asked again.

Spesk nodded, his thin blond hair splashing about his face as he did.

"You're a jerk," Remo said.

"Time now for you to leave," Spesk said.

"Not yet," Remo said. "You understand it's nothing personal but, well, Chiun and I don't like too many people to know about what work we do and who we work for. And you know a little too much."

"Remember the electric eyes," Spesk said confidently.

"Remember the Alamo," said Remo. He rocked back onto his left foot, then moved forward toward the invisible strings of light reaching from left wall to right wall. Three feet before reaching the beams, he turned toward the wall, reached up high with his right foot, followed with his left foot and launched his body upward. His stomach came within an eighth of an inch of hitting the ceiling as he turned onto his back, floating over the topmost beam as if it were the bamboo pole at a high-jump event. Then Remo was over the lights, onto Spesk's side of the room. He landed on his feet soundlessly.

The Russian colonel's eyes opened wide in shock and horror. He got heavily to his feet behind the desk, his left knee still defective where Remo had damaged it.

He moved away from Remo.

"Listen," he said. His Chicago middle-America accent had vanished. He spoke now with the thick guttural rasp of a native Russian. "You don't want to kill me. I'm the only one who can get you out of here alive. It's a trap."

"We know that," Remo said. "We'll take our chances."

He moved toward Spesk and Spesk dove for the desk drawer. His hand was into the drawer closing around a gun, when Remo snatched up the gooseneck lamp from the desk and looped it over Spesk's head, around his throat, and yanked him back from the revolver. He tied the gooseneck in one large knot and dropped Spesk's body to the floor. So much for the Russian spies; so much for the secret weapons.

As Remo was vaulting back over the electric eyes, now visible in the pitch-black room, he said, "Why didn't you tell me, Chiun? About the weapons?"

"Who can explain anything to a white man?" Chiun said. He was already at the door and going down the steps.

Except for the sucking of air by people who didn't know how to breathe correctly, the street outside the Iron Dukes' was silent when Remo and Chiun came through the door and stood on the sidewalk.

"Still say thirty?" Remo asked.

Chiun cocked his head to listen. "Thirty-four," he said.

"That's not bad. I hope one of them is the one I want. Where the hell is Tyrone?" Remo said.

"One of the thirty-four," Chiun said, just as they heard a roar. Tyrone's roar.

"There they are. Get dem. Get dem. Dey kidnap me and everyfing."

Like predatory animals whose coats blended in with the grass, the black youths of the Saxon Lords rose up out of their protective coloration of night and with a full-throated roar charged across the street toward Remo and Chiun.

"When I get that Tyrone," Remo said, "I'm going to fix him good."

"Back on that, are you?" Chiun said, just as the first wave of attackers reached them, brandishing clubs and chains, knives and tire irons.

Chiun blended a four-armed lug wrench into the thoracic cavity of one bruiser and drifted to the left, his black robe swirling about him, as Remo went toward the right.

"Damned right," Remo called. "He needs a good lesson. Where are you, Tyrone?"

The air was filled with rocks being thrown by the Saxon Lords, hitting only other Saxon Lords. One thought he saw Remo drifting by him and slashed out wildly with his seven-inch bladed hunting knife, neatly severing the carotid artery of his cousin.

"Where the hell is he?" Remo's voice rang out. "Now I know how Stanley felt looking for Livingstone."

Remo ducked under one flailing tire iron and came up with the tips of his fingers into a throat.

He went around two more of the gang who had started to fight with each other because one had stepped on the other's new platforms and scuffed the leather.

"Tell me if you see Tyrone," Remo said.

"Tyrone, he back dere," said one of the young men, just before his head was laid open by a chain swung by his comrade-in-arms.

"Thank you," Remo said. To the other he said, "Good form."

He was in the heart of the gang now, moving away from the Iron Dukes' building, working slowly across the street.

And on the sidewalk across the street, Big-Big Pickens saw the Saxon Lords disorganized and dropping. He craned his neck to look over the crowd but could see no sign of the white man or the old Oriental. But every few seconds, two more Saxon Lords would drop and he could tell where they had been.

He decided that Newark was really nice this time of year and stuck his icepick back into the protective cork and put it into his rear pocket, then turned and walked away.

"There you are, Tyrone," Remo said. Tyrone was standing alone at the fringe of the crowd. "You've got one helluva nerve."

Tyrone put his hands up to protect himself, just as Chiun arrived.

"Here I thought we were friends and all," Remo said.

"We is. I just findin' Big-Big for you. Dere he goes."

Tyrone pointed to a huge black figure running down the street.

"Thanks, Tyrone. Chiun, you keep an eye on him."

Remo was off then, running after Big-Big Pickens.

The big man heard the roar of the street fight behind him and glanced over his shoulder. He felt a tingle of fear in his shoulders as he saw the thin white man, wearing the black slacks and tee shirt, running after him, gaining on him. Then he stopped.

He nothing but some skinny honkey, he thought. He ducked into an alley, moving back into the shadows, waiting for Remo to enter. He took his pick from his pocket and held it over his head, ready to bring it down into the base of Remo's skull when he entered the alley.

He heard Remo's footsteps approaching on the run. Big-Big coughed, with a smile on his face, just to let the white man know where he was. In case he hadn't seen Pickens enter the alley.

The running stopped. And then there was no sound.

Pickens pressed his back against the brick wall of the building, waiting for Remo to be silhouetted in the dim light at the alley's entrance. But he saw nothing.

He waited a few long seconds that seemed like minutes, and then took a step away from the wall. Remo must be lurking outside the alley waiting for him to come out. Well, they would see who would outwait the other, he thought.

Big-Big Pickens felt a small touch on his shoulder. He wondered what it was. It turned into a tap.

Pickens wheeled around. Remo was standing there, a broad smile on his face.

"Looking for me?" he asked.

Big-Big recoiled in shock, then slashed down with the icepick he remembered holding over his head. Remo moved back slightly, seemingly no more than an inch or two, but the pick missed.

"You're Pickens?" Remo said.

"Yeah, mufu."

"You're the one who did in the old lady? Mrs. Mueller?"

"Yeah. Ah did it."

"Tell me. Was it fun? Did you enjoy it?"

"Nots much fun as giving you dis," said Pickens, running forward like a bull, the pick held close to his stomach, waiting to close on Remo so he could bring one heavy hand up and bury the point deep into Remo's belly.

He looked up and stopped. He could not see the white man. Where was he? He turned. The man was behind him.

"You're really garbage, you know that?" Remo said.

"Ah garbages yo", said Big-Big, charging again.

Remo moved out of his way and tripped the huge man. Pickens sprawled across the alley. The rough concrete surface scratched his cheek.

"You know," Remo said, standing over Pickens. "I don't think I really like you. On your feet."

Big-Big got to his knees and put a hand down to steady himself and lift himself to his feet.

Then he felt a foot smash into his broad nose. He could hear the bones crack and a whoosh of blood come pouring down through his nostrils.

His head snapped backward but he recovered and got to his feet.

"You're the big pick man on the block, huh?" Remo said. "Is your pick as sharp as this?"

And Pickens felt what seemed to be a knifeblade in the left side of his stomach. He looked down for the blood, but he saw nothing. Only the white man's hand slowly pulling away. But the pain. The pain. It felt like a hot poker was lying on his skin, and he knew that hurt, because he had done it to someone one night.

"As sharp as that?" Remo taunted.

Holding his icepick, Pickens turned, flailing about with his right arm, trying to find his tormentor.

But Remo was behind him. And Pickens heard the voice again, mocking him. "As hard as this?"

And there was a blow into Pickens's back. He could feel it stowing in his ribs on the right. And then it was repeated on the left side and more ribs went.

"Did the old lady scream when you killed her, Pig-Pig?" Remo asked. "Did she scream like this?"

He tried not to but the pain in his neck demanded nothing but a scream. There were fingers on his neck and they felt as if they were tearing through his skin and flesh to get to his adam's apple, Pickens screamed. And screamed again.

"Do you think it hurt this bad, Pig-Pig? When you killed her?"

He wheeled around, his hands clutching out in front of him, but they grabbed nothing. His arms closed on empty air. He felt himself being propelled backwards and he crashed into the brick wall like an overripe tomato and slithered to the concrete. His icepick fell from his hand and clattered onto the ground.

There was a terrible pain where his right leg used to be. He tried to move it, but the leg no longer responded. And there was more pain as his left leg gave way with a snap. And then his stomach felt as if it were being torn apart by rats; he could feel what seemed like giant pieces of it being torn away, and he screamed, a long, long, lingering scream that celebrated agony and welcomed death.

And then there was a white face right in front of him and it was leaning close to him, and it said, "You killed her with the pick, animal, and now you're going to learn what it was like."

And then there was a ringing black starshine of pain at his left eye where the icepick was stuck. He could not see left anymore. And then the pain stopped and the big black man fell forward, his head smashing onto the concrete of the alley with a dull empty thud. The last thing he'd seen was that the white man had clean fingernails.

Remo spat down at the body and stepped out of the alley, back onto the sidewalk as a car came roaring down the street past him. It was followed by two more cars.

Remo looked down the street where the Saxon Lords were involved in a massive free-for-all, as it was suddenly illuminated by the onrushing headlights. Coming down the block the other way were three more automobiles.

The cars screeched to a stop and men jumped out. Remo could see they were carrying weapons. And then he heard a familiar voice. It was Sergeant Pleskoff.

"All right. Shoot 'em. Shoot the bastards. Shoot 'em right in the whites of their goddam eyes. We'll show 'em. America's had enough of this goddam violence. Kill 'em all. No survivors."

Remo was able to pick Pleskoff out. He was waving his arm over his head in a passable imitation of Errol Flynn's passable imitation of General Custer. He was wearing civilian clothes. So were the other dozen men who began firing into the mob with Police Specials and, shotguns.

Then Chiun was at Remo's side, with Tyrone in tow. Tyrone was looking back over his shoulder as the streets began to fill up with fallen bodies.

"Did you want him?" Chiun asked Remo.

"No. Not any more," said Remo.

Tyrone turned toward Remo, his eyes wide with fright.

"Ah doan wan' go back there."

"Why not?"

"It gettin' dangerous on de streets aroun' here," Tyrone said. "Can ah hang out wif you?"

Remo shrugged. Down the street the orgy of bulleting was slowing down. The screams were dying away. Few people were left standing. Pleskoff's voice kept roaring: "Shoot 'em all. We'll straighten this town out."

Chiun turned toward the voice also.

"I've created a goddam Wyatt Earp," Remo said.

"It is always the way when a man deals in vengeance," Chiun said. "Always the way."

"Always the way," Remo repeated.

"Allus de way," Tyrone said.

"Shut up," Remo said.

"Shut up," Chiun said.

Back at the Plaza, Chiun fished into one of his large lacquered trunks for a scroll of parchment and a bottle of ink and a large quill pen.

"What are you doing?" Remo asked.

"Writing for the history of Sinanju," Chiun said.

"About what?"

"About how the Master brought wisdom to his disciple by teaching him that vengeance is destructive."

"Be sure to write that it feels good too," Remo said.

He watched as Tyrone peered over Chiun's shoulder and then, behind Chiun's back, looked into the open trunk.

Chiun began writing. "You must see, Remo, that it would have done nothing to act vengefully against Tyrone. He is not responsible. There is nothing he can do about what he is."

Tyrone at that moment was slipping out the front door of the apartment.

"I'm glad you feel that way," Chiun," Remo said.

"Ummmm," the old man said, writing. "Why?"

"Because Tyrone just beat it with one of your diamond rings."

The quill pen flew upwards and stuck in the plaster ceiling. The bottle of ink flew off in another direction. Chiun dropped the the parchment scroll and moved quickly to his feet to the trunk. He bent forward, burying his head inside it, then stood up. His face was pale as he turned to Remo.

"He did. He did."

"He went thataway," Remo said, pointing to the door. But before he finished the sentence, Chiun was already out into the hall.

It was 11:30 p.m. Time to call Smith at the special 800 area code number that was open only twice a day.

"Hello," said Smith's acid-soaked voice.

"Hi, Smitty. How's it going?"

"I presume you have a report to make," Smith said.

"Just a minute." Remo covered the mouthpiece of the telephone. Outside the door, down the hallway near the elevator, he could hear thumping. And groans. And somebody weeping. Remo nodded.

"Yeah," Remo said. "Well, Spesk is dead. The guy who killed Mrs. Mueller is dead. There are at least a dozen New York City cops who are beginning to do something about criminals. All in all, I'd say a fair day's work."

"What about…"

"Just a minute," Remo said as the door to the suite opened. In walked Chiun, polishing his diamond ring on the black sleeve of his kimono, blowing on it, then polishing.

"You got it back," Remo said.

"Obviously."

"No vengeance, I hope," Remo said.

Chiun shook his head. "I suited the punishment to the crime. He stole my diamond; I stole his ability to steal again for a long time?'

"What'd you do?"

"I reduced his finger bones to putty. And warned him that if I ever saw him again, I would not treat him so kindly."

"I'm glad you weren't vengeful, Little Father. Be sure to put that in your history."

Chiun scooped up the parchment scroll and dumped it into the lacquered chest. "I don't feel like writing anymore tonight."

"There's always tomorrow." Remo turned his attention back to the telephone. "You were saying, Smitty?"

"I was asking. What about Spesk's two deadly weapons? Did you find them?"

"Of course. You asked me to, didn't you?"

"Well?"

"Well what?" asked Remo.

"What are they?" Smith asked.

"You can't have them," Remo said.

"Why not?" Smith said.

"Some things just aren't for sale," Remo said. He pulled the telephone cord from the wall and collapsed back on the couch. Laughing.