Power Play

Chapter ten

The Reverend Higbe Muckley had not gotten where he was by being insensitive to how television worked.

Morning press conferences were no good. First, reporters liked to sleep late. Second, from a morning press conference, they would be reassigned to an afternoon story too, and they would get to thinking they were overworked, so they were grouchy, bad audiences in the morning.

Afternoon press conferences usually got cut short because TV men had to get their film back to the studio and hustle to write their story in time for it to get on the six o-clock evening news. If their piece was late, they might get squeezed out of the program by some story that was filmed earlier.

Muckley had learned this by watching television and figuring. The optimum time for a press conference was noon, give or take a half-hour, based on the following indisputable rules:

1. A reporter had a chance to get up and sober up.

2. It gave him a free lunch and he could still bill his station for a lunch cost.

3. It gave him plenty of time to complete and file his story.

4. If the invitation came from a sexy-voiced woman, the lure was irresistible.

So Muckley got his secretary, Sister Corinne, on the telephone right away, alerting the television people that he would hold a press conference at noon and he had proof of "a conspiratorial plot by Wesley Pruiss, a plot so cruel and evil that it would stagger their minds." The secretary read this from a card that Muckley had printed out for her. Then, also at Muckley's directions, she dropped a hint that a former employee of Pruiss's, a one-time Grossie Girl, would be at the press conference. And there would be plenty to eat and drink.

While she was making the calls, the secretary glanced frequently at the office door, worried because she had heard it being locked to keep her out. What were they doing in there?

Inside the office, Muckley and Flamma were discussing the costume she would wear to the press conference. She had a model's hatbox with costumes in it.

"How about this one?" she asked, holding up two flimsy pieces of nylon.

"I don't know," Muckley said. "Better try it on."

"Where can I change?" she said.

"You can change here," he said. "I'll turn my back."

He turned away from Flamma and watched her in the window as she peeled off her raincoat and put on the costume. She smiled at his reflection as she dressed.

"Done," she said.

Muckley turned and gulped. The nylon costume was transparent, her breasts totally visible. The rest of the outfit was a pair of brief panties covered over with thin nylon pantaloons that showed every pore, every rippling smooth muscle of her long legs.

"What do you think?" Flamma asked.

Muckley came close to inspect her. He walked around her as she stood in the middle of the room. He gulped several times as he eyed her milky body.

"I don't think there's anything wrong with the human body, you understand," he said. "Under the proper circumstances, I think it is the most beautiful of God's creations," He cleared his throat. "And, of course, your body is exceptional. From a purely esthetic viewpoint, that is."

"Of course," said Flamma. She had heard that many times before.

"But I'm afraid, for television, this won't quite work. With lights, it might turn out a little too transparent and then they might not be able to use their film. What else you got in there?"

She reached in and brought out a red satin bra.

"How's this?"

"That might do. Try it on."

"Okay," she said, purposely forgetting to tell him to turn his back again. She reached behind her for the bra clip of the transparent top but pretended she couldn't reach it.

"Can you help me?" she asked.

"Of course, girl," he said. He fumbled with the clip. The palms of his hands were wet with perspiration.

"How long have you been a dancer?" he asked.

"Well," Flamma said, "I'm not really much of a dancer. I can do a turn or two, I guess. But really what I'm good at is tricks. Straight, half-and-half, around the world."

Muckley gulped as the bra clip opened. He let his fingers linger on the bare flesh of her back.

"Of course, you're not going to say that at the press conference," he said.

"Why not?"

"We don't want to harm your credibility. You and me, we're people of the world. We'd understand how some forces could push a young woman into such a life."

Flamma shook her head as she removed her bra. "Nothing forced me. I like it. I always liked it. I still like it. I'd rather do it than anything."

"I can understand that," Muckley said solemnly. "After all, people have needs, desires." He tried to chuckle but it came out like a chicken squawking as its neck was being wrung. "Even us men of the cloth have needs," he said, "although most people would try to deny us. They don't understand the heavy burden we bear, trying to be an example for other people and still having to live with the fires that rage within us." His hands were still on her back.

"You got fires raging in you?" she asked.

"All the time. But I suppress them," Muckley said. He slid his hands toward both sides of her back. Only eight inches more each and he would have those beautiful breasts in his hands.

She leaned forward suddenly, pulling away, lowering her breasts' into the red satin top. "You shouldn't suppress them," she said casually. "It'll give you pimples." She straightened up, her hands behind her on the two bra straps. "Clip that, Rev, will you?" He clipped the bra closed.

She stepped away from him and turned around, her breasts jutting toward him, two mounds of pleasure and beauty. He had not thought of his bible in a long time, but the Song of Solomon forced its way into his head. Something about breasts.

"How's that?" she said.

"Beautiful," he said, staring at her bosom. "Excruciatingly beautiful."

"Me or it?" she asked. She put her hands under her breasts and lifted them, arranging them inside the bra top.

"You forget, I'm just a man," he said.

"There," she said as she finished adjusting herself. "Now what do you think?"

He looked at her bosom through the red satin. "Just a moment," he said. "There's a wrinkle there." He reached forward and touched the underside of her right breast with his fingers as he adjusted the thin piece of satin.

He let his fingers stay there.

"Okay now?" she asked.

"Fine," he said, still not moving his fingers.

"All right," she said. "I'll slip on the bottoms and then I'll get some breakfast before the press conference."

Muckley looked glum.

"And then," she said.

"And then?" he asked.

She leaned forward and whispered in his ear. He let his hands slide down her back to the round mounds of her buttocks. He kneaded them as Flamma told him in detail, full, glorious colorful detail exactly what she had in mind for the two of them after the press conference was over.

"Praise God," said Rev. Higbe Muckley.

The reporters were bored when Muckley appeared.

They had been assigned to the Pruiss story for two days, most of them, and with the exception of the small picketing at the country club, which ended before they got there, there had been nothing. No groundswell of opinion in the farm country against the porn publisher; no sense of impending violence, no bomb threats, no death threats, no sign of the person or persons who had put the knife in Pruiss's back.

They were prepared to let Muckley die on his feet so they could get to the booze. Furlong County was the dullest place in the world anyway.

But they came to attention when Flamma arrived, stepping out on the small stage next to Muckley and wearing her belly dancer costume. She told them that Pruiss had planned to make Furlong County into the porn movie capital of the world. She told them that she had been going to star in his first movie, but that the Reverend Muckley had saved her by giving her religion.

They wanted to know about that first motion picture.

"It's called Animal Instincts," she said.

"What's it about?"

"About a man and his wife who find happiness in nature. She has her collie. He has her, a goat, three girlfriends and me. I'm the lead, because I bring them together again. All at once."

"Goats and dogs?" one reporter asked.

"Yes," she said haltingly. She covered her face with her hands as if crying. "There is no limit to the degradation of Wesley Pruiss and the perverts who are close to him and how he gets people to do his dirty work for him. Thank heavens I have been spared."

Some reporters tried to get her to dance for them, but Flamma demurely said no. Near the end of the press meeting, one reporter asked her for her future plans. They don't include anything with you, Flamma thought, when she found out that the man represented a small Indiana paper.

She took a deep breath, which never failed to draw the reporters' attention, "I plan to pick up the pieces of my life," she said slowly. "Perhaps go back to dancing school. Unless, of course, something else comes up. I think I can entertain people and bring them happiness in a good clean way and that is God's work too." She winked at the reporter for the National Star. A two-page color spread in the Star and she'd be on her way.

Higbe Muckley finished the press conference by announcing it was now a fight between God-fearing good people and the forces of evil represented by Wesley Pruiss. He ranted and raved some and was going to announce a full schedule of meetings and protests but cut it short when he saw Flamma talking to the reporter from the Star, who got up from his seat and headed toward the door with her.

"We march on Pruiss this afternoon," Muckley yelled and jumped from the platform to follow Flamma before anybody else got his hooks into her.

The local television stations rushed the interview onto the tube and Theodosia saw it with Remo and Chiun inside Pruiss's room. He was awake and he growled when he saw Flamma telling of his iniquities.

"That bitch," he said.

"She always was," Theodosia said. "And now those oil people have their hooks in her, she's liable to say or do anything."

"If you see her, you tell her," said Pruiss, "that she's through. I'm getting somebody else to pose with the Mako shark."

"Good," said Chiun. "The best revenge is living well."

"Try that when you're a cripple," Pruiss said.

"You live well," Chiun said, "by doing those things you are able to do. You can still print things. You can print great work. You can bring beautiful art to thousands of people. Have you ever heard Ung poetry?"

"I don't like much poetry," Pruiss said.

"You will like this," Chiun promised. He began to talk in Korean, a clacking series of throbs and gutturals that only occasionally rhymed.

Pruiss looked in desperation at Remo who shrugged. Chiun was gently waving his hands in front of his body now, one hand opening and closing, the other fluttering back and forth.

"This is the good part," Remo said. "A report on weather conditions in Korea, day by day, for two centuries."

Chiun kept chattering. There was a swelling noise from downstairs and Remo went to the window to watch. The Reverend Muckley was back, but this time leading a mob of more than two hundred people, chanting and carrying signs.

"What's that?" Pruiss said nervously. "What's that?"

Theodosia stood alongside Remo at the window, looking down as the crowd swerved off the main road and advanced on the country club. There were a dozen newsmen and TV cameramen with them.

"What is it?" Pruiss shouted.

"Pickets," Theodosia said. "I'm going to call our police to make sure they don't cause any trouble."

"Are you listening to this?" Chiun asked Pruiss.

Chiun turned to Remo.

"Will you please see that they keep things quiet down there?" he asked.

"Yes, Little Father," Remo said.

Higbe Muckley took up a position in front of the main door. The crowd swelled around him. He waited until the cameramen had positioned themselves on the steps of the house and then he raised a bullhorn at his side and invoked God's blessing on Wesley Pruiss.

"Damn you, evil one," he called. "Damn you. Are you listening, evil one?"

The house was silent.

"'Are you listening?" Muckley shouted into the amplifier.

Chiun went to the window and called out, "He's trying to listen to me. Will you be quiet, fat person?" He turned to Remo. "Remo, will you take care of them, please, before I have to go do it myself." Chiun went back and sat alongside Pruiss's bed and said, "I'll start over, so you don't miss any of it."

Pruiss's eyes flashed from side to side, the eyes of a trapped animal. They grew even more desperate as Remo walked toward the door of the room.

Downstairs, Muckley shouted into the bullhorn. "We know, Pruiss. Thanks to one good woman, we know your evil plan to ruin our community. Do you hear that, evil one? We know.

"We know something else, Pruiss. We know that sometimes we have to be God's instruments ourselves, and we're going to do it, Pruiss. You're not turning this town into a cesspool like the kind you're used to, Pruiss."

Remo slipped out the back door of the building and came around to stand in the crowd.

"We're going to stop you, Pruiss," Muckley bellowed. His amplified voice echoed off the house and rebounded out over the valley of the golf course. "Whatever it takes to stop you, evil one, we're going to stop you. The right will triumph."

From inside the house, Remo could hear Chiun's anguished cry, and he knew that if he didn't want the country club surrounded by two hundred dead bodies, he had better move.

Remo selected the best looking housewife he could find in the crowd, stroked her left buttock and before she could turn moved into another spot in the crowd. She looked around wildly. "Hey," she said. "Who did that? Stop that." She glared at the man behind her, a man who looked as if he would take offense at someone squeezing toilet tissue. "Why'd you do that?" she demanded.

"I didn't..." the man started.

Muckley turned and glared at the crowd, waiting for silence. Remo lifted a man's wallet from his back pocket. He did it too smoothly and the man did not feel it, so Remo clumsily jammed his hand into the man's hip pocket and rummaged around for a while until the man's attention went to his wallet. Remo dropped the billfold on the ground and moved into the crowd.

The man turned around and looked at the man behind him. "Thief," he yelled. "Damned pickpocket thief."

"What?" said the second man, a burly man with a crew cut and a green plaid shirt.

"You heard me. Keep your dirty hands out of my pockets."

The woman was still shouting, working herself up. "You heard me, you pervert," she yelled at the delicate looking man behind her who tried to shrink away.

Muckley tried shouting over the noise. "We are sending you back to the Sodom and Gomorrah you came from, Pruiss," he intoned.

A scuffle started in the crowd. Remo helped it along by goosing two women and jabbing elbows into the ribs of two men, then disappearing from between them.

The first woman slapped the man behind her. The two men were on the ground battling over the wallet. A flurry of fistfights broke out. Wesley Pruiss was forgotten. So was Higbe Muckley. The cameramen came off the porch and toward the crowd to film the fights. Remo reached from behind one man, grabbed one of the TV cameras, and threw it to the ground.

"Press brutality," the cameraman shouted, "Reactionary," he yelled. The man he was yelling at threw a punch.

"Fascist," screamed the other reporters as they retreated back to the relative safety of the porch.

Remo moved away out of the crowd and back upstairs through a rear door of the building.

Chiun glared at him when he came into Pruiss's room.

"Remo, really," he said. "I ask you to keep it quiet. This is how you do it?" He gestured toward the window, through which could be heard the sounds of the police arriving and wading into the mob, breaking up the fights.

"Now I'll have to start all over again," he said.

Pruiss looked at Remo as if inviting pity.

Remo nodded to him. "Pruiss, you've never been safer than you are now."

"Why?" Pruiss asked.

"Chiun never lets an audience get killed."

Remo met Theodosia in the hall.

"Good work," she said.

"Not done yet," Remo said.

"What else?"

"I'm going to go talk to that Muckley. I want to find out if someone put him up to coming here."