"No. He did not have to," Chiun said.
"Why not?"
"Because I know that you hired him," Chiun said.
"To kill myself? Are you crazy?"
"Only one stands to gain by the killings of the carriagemakers. That one is you," said Chiun.
"What motive would I have?" Lavallette said. He looked away as his secretary, Miss Blaze, walked into the reception area. She saw him, then quickly looked down at a piece of paper in her hand.
"Your public-relations man called, Mr. Lavallette," she said. "He said he's planted a story that all three auto companies are going to ask you to head them." She smiled and looked up, then saw Chiun standing by Lavallette, and Remo sitting next to the dead body.
"Oh, I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't know you had company. "
"Idiot," Lavallette snarled. He ran to the open elevator, pressed the button, and the doors closed behind him.
"Well, what got into him?" Miss Blaze said. "Can I help?"
"You may leave, bovine one," Chiun said. He walked to where Remo still sat next to the body.
"Remo," he said softly. "The man who is truly responsible for this death has just left."
"What?" Remo said, looking up at Chiun's hazel eyes.
"All the pain you feel, all the hurt, is the fault of the carriagemaker Lavallette. It was he who caused all this trouble. "
Remo looked again at the dead body, then got to his feet.
"I don't know," Remo said. "I don't think I really care. "
"Remo, you are still young. Know this. There are so many times in a man's life when he must do things that later he may think are wrong. All a man can do is act with a spirit of rightness and then he need fear no one, not even himself."
"Rightness? I killed my father."
"As he would have killed you," Chiun said "That is not a father's love, Remo. A father would not do that." And Remo thought back to the battle the previous evening atop the building near American Autos, thought back to how Chiun had done nothing but parry Remo's blows, had done nothing to hurt Remo, and in a brilliant flash, he understood the nature of fatherhood and family. He was not an orphan; he had not been since the first day he had met Chiun, because the old Korean was his true father, a fatherhood based on love.
And Sinanju, the long line of Masters stretching back through the ages, was Remo's family. Thousands strong, all reaching their hands across the centuries to him.
His family.
"You say Lavallette's skipped?" Remo said.
Chiun nodded and Remo said, "Let's go get the bastard, Little Father."
"As you will, my son."
Lavallette sped from the auto plant in the prototype Dynacar.
Let the cops sort it out, he said to himself. I'll deny everything. Who's to know different?
As he turned onto the roadway, he looked into the rearview mirror to see if any cars were following him. All he saw were two joggers. Good. He pressed down on the accelerator and the Dynacar sped ahead. But the two joggers in the mirror did not fall behind in the distance. They were getting closer.
How could that be?
Then Lavallette saw who they were. It was the Oriental and the young man with the dead eyes. They were running after him and they were gaining.
Lavallette checked his speedometer. He was going seventy miles an hour. He pressed the pedal down to the floor, but it did no good. The two men were getting bigger in the rearview mirror, and then they were abreast of the speeding Dynacar.
Lavallette glanced through his open driver's window at Remo, who was now alongside him, "You can't stop me," he snarled. "I don't care how fast you can run."
"Yes, we can," Remo said.
To prove he was wrong, Lavallette pulled the wheel hard left, turning the car into Remo, but the young man, without breaking his stride, dodged away. Lavallette laughed but then Remo's hand floated out and the fender on the driver's side of the car flew away from the tire. The passenger-side door came next. It opened with a screaming wrench and bounced down the street. Lavallette glanced over to see the old man jogging lightly alongside.
"Still think we can't stop you?" Remo said.
Lavallette hunched over the wheel. He was going eighty-five now. It wasn't possible for them to be running alongside him, but even if they were, they would soon tire.
The roof came off next after the pair of runners broke the support posts. Then the trunk lid was ripped off and then the rest of the fenders flew.
The two men grabbed one of the support posts of the car, and Lavallette could feel it slowing down, and in only a few hundred yards it came to a stop, stripped to its chassis.
Lavallette stepped out, still holding the steering wheel, which was no longer attached to anything.
"Don't kill me," he pleaded.
"Give me a reason not to," Remo said coldly.
"Why did you hire the killer?" Chiun asked.
"I wanted to get rid of the competition. With them dead and me with the Dynacar, I would have run all of Detroit."
Remo walked toward the back of the car. "If this damned thing was any good, you wouldn't have had to do that. "
He looked inside the open trunk. "There's batteries back here. What are they for?"
Lavallette was pleading now for his life. He said, "The car's a scam. It doesn't run on refuse. It runs on electrical batteries, nonrechargeable."
"What does that mean?" Remo said.
"It means the car runs for a month or two and then goes dead and you have to buy a new car."
"I had a Studebaker like that once," Remo said.
"It does not turn garbage into energy?" Chiun said.
"No," Lavallette said. "That was just for show."
"The Dynacar doesn't run on garbage," Remo said. "It is garbage."
"You might say that," Lavallette said.
"You know what else you might say?" Remo said.
"What's that?" asked Lavallette.
"You might say good-bye," Remo said. He took the man's elegantly coiffed head between his hands and shook. Contact lenses flew out of his eyes. False teeth popped from his mouth. His corset snapped and ripped through his shirt in an explosion of elastic.
For only a moment it hurt and then Lyle Lavallette felt nothing else. Remo dropped the unmoving body beside the stripped prototype of the Dynacar and walked away.
"It is done. You have avenged yourself and Sinanju," Chiun called after him.
Remo said nothing. The set of his shoulders told the Master of Sinanju that his pupil was hurting very much inside.
Chiun walked in the other direction. Remo needed to be alone now and his teacher respected that need.
Before either man had gotten a hundred feet from the car, a gang of teenagers came out of the weeds along the roadside and began stripping the car's seatcovers and mirrors and chrome.
An hour later, there would be nothing left but Lavallette's body.
One thing had led to another and the President had not been able to call Smith and now, while waiting to greet this week's ambassador from Zimbabwe, the President was handed a note by an aide.
He looked at it, bolted from the room, and ran to his bedroom, where he picked up the special phone.
"Yes, Mr. President," the dry unflappable voice of Harold Smith answered.
"Now Lavallette is dead," the President said.
"I know, sir. My people did it."
"Your people are out of control. I'm ordering you to-"
"No, sir," Smith interrupted. "I just spoke to my people, the older one. He informed me that Lavallette himself was behind all the shootings. The actual killer is dead too. And the Dynacar is a fake."
"The garbage-powered car is a fake?" the President said.
"It's a complicated story, Mr. President, but that's the bottom line. It was a fake through and through. I'll be getting you a full report. Just a few loose ends left."
"Smith, I have just one question for you."
"Yes, sir?"
"Are you in ful
l control of your people?"
"Yes, Mr. President. CURE is fully operational."
"That's all I need to know. You came very close this time, Smith. I want you to know that."
"I know it, Mr. President. Will there be anything else?"
"Not from me. I think I need a nap. Let Zimbabwe wait."
"Very good, sir," Smith said as the President hung up. Smith returned to his computer terminal. There were only a few loose ends, but for CURE to be back to normal, they had to be resolved. It was almost dark before the answers came.
Chapter 29
Smith and Chiun waited in darkness for Remo to arrive. A brisk wind scattered the red and gold leaves in the graveyard like tiny dead things come to elfin life. Somewhere, an owl made a lonely sound. Remo came up the cemetery walk with a padding silence that made him seem more at home in these surroundings than anywhere else, Smith thought grimly.
"You're late," said Smith.
"So what?" Remo said.
"He is still hurting," whispered Chiun to Smith. "Do not heed his rudeness, Emperor. All will be set right when you give Remo the good news."
"What good news?" asked Remo.
Smith extracted a folder from his briefcase.
"I asked you to meet me here because this is where the whole thing began, Remo. At your grave."
For the first time, Remo noticed the gravestone with his name on it.
"So this is what it looks like. It's not much, Smitty. You could have sprung for an angel on the top."
"It served its purpose," Smith said. "A woman was murdered on this spot a few days ago when she was laying flowers on a grave. The flowers fell on your grave, Remo."
"My grave? Who was she?"
"My research has finally pieced the puzzle together. I was thrown off by the fact that the flowers fell on your grave and that the man who killed the woman, according to ballistics reports, was the same man who was doing the killing in Detroit."
"Who was she?" Remo asked again.
Smith pulled out a sheet of paper and a photograph. "Her name was Maria DeFuria. She was the former wife of a Mafia hit man named Gesualdo DeFuria, a professional well-known for his use of a Beretta Olympic target pistol."
"What does this have to do with me?"
"The emperor is explaining," Chiun said.
"Gesualdo DeFuria was the man you thought was your father, Remo. He was not your father."
"Prove it."
"Here is a copy of a note found at Maria DeFuria's house. You may read it but let me summarize. The note explains that the woman had discovered that her ex-husband had trained their son, Angelo, to follow in the father's profession. But during a team hit, the son was caught and convicted of a murder. In fact, the father was the real murderer and the son only an accomplice in training. Because of the Mafia's code of silence, the son kept quiet and was executed for the crime."
He pointed behind Remo. "They buried him here, in the family plot, next to your own grave."
Remo read the name DeFuria on the stone next to his own.
"You mean the guy buried next to me was executed for a crime he didn't commit, just like I was?" Remo asked.
"A strange coincidence but Wildwood isn't exactly Arlington National Cemetery," Smith said. "This is near Newark after all. Let me finish the story. DeFuria attempted to reconcile with his wife and the truth slipped out about the son's innocence. Maria decided to go to the police with her information. We can only assume the rest. On her way, she stopped to put flowers on her son's grave. DeFuria followed her here. They argued and he shot her and the flowers fell onto your grave."
"But he called himself Remo Williams," Remo protested.
"He had killed his ex-wife and had to leave town. Even the Mafia doesn't like that kind of killing. He knew he was going to need a new name so he picked the one off the headstone where his wife fell. Your name, Remo. If the flowers had fallen on the grave on the other side of yours, he probably would have called himself D. Colt."
"He had all kinds of ID," Remo said.
"Nowadays, if you have a few dollars, you can buy any kind of identification," Smith said.
"But there was a family resemblance," Remo said. "Around the eyes."
"A resemblance," Smith admitted, "but not a family one. You were both in essentially the same business. Too many deaths mark a person. I think you could call it a professional resemblance, not a family one." He paused. "Don't let your feelings cloud your judgment, Remo," he said.
"It is the lesson of the Master Shang," Chiun said.
"What are you talking about?"
"Don't tell me you have forgotten, Remo," said Chiun. "Master Shang, he of the moon rock. I told you that legend."
"Yeah, I remember. What about it?"
"The lesson of the Master Shang lies in this stone which Shang believed he took from the mountains of the moon." Chiun produced the grayish stone from the folds of his kimono. "See?"
"I thought you believed that story," Remo said suspiciously.
"Do you take me for an idiot?" Chiun said. "Any fool knows you cannot walk to the moon. Master Shang should have known that too. But he so desired the Chinese tart that he deluded himself into thinking he could walk to the moon to hold her love. That is the real lesson of the Master Shang. Do not desire something too much, for wishful thinking impairs the sight and not all things are as they appear. You, Remo, deluded yourself into believing that wretch was your father, because you wanted a father so badly. It did not matter to you if he was real."
"Are you trying to tell me that you knew all along that he wasn't my father?" Remo demanded.
"I am not trying to tell you anything. I have told you."
"Bulldookey," Remo said.
"It is nevertheless true," Chiun said. "When first I saw him, I saw that he moved like a baboon. He used weapons. He had no finesse. He bore no resemblance to you at all."
"I think you're paying me a compliment," Remo said.
"Then I withdraw my remarks," Chiun said.
"How did you dig all this up, Smitty?" Remo asked.
"My computers. They couldn't find a record of another Remo Williams having lived in the U.S. That made me suspicious of the name. It was too pat. And then the business of the woman being shot. Ballistics then said she was shot with the same gun being used in Detroit so I came here to run a check on these graves."
Smith referred to a notepad. "There was a D. Colt, but he died in 1940 and has no living relatives. That left the DeFuria family plot and once I learned that DeFuria was connected with organized crime, it all sort of came together."
Remo said nothing for a long time.
"They're going to bury him here? In this grave?"
"That's right," Smith said. "But that shouldn't concern you. He's not family."
"You know, Smitty, somewhere I've got family," Remo said.
"I researched your background thoroughly before bringing you into CURE," Smith said. "If you have parents, they would be impossible to trace."
"I want to know for sure," Remo said. "Smitty. Put your computers to work. You find out for me."
"And then what, Remo? You don't exist. You're standing on your own grave as far as the world is concerned. You can't have a family."
"I just want to know," Remo said. "I want to know if I belong to someone."
"You belong to Sinanju," Chiun said.
"I know, Little Father. And I know that I belong to you also. But this is different. It's just a loose end that I want to track down."
"Remo-" Smith started.
"Just find them, Smitty. Find them or I walk."
"I won't be blackmailed, Remo. I can always have Chiun train another person."
"I would not soil my hands with another," Chiun said. "Especially a white. Especially if I don't get Disneyland." Smith locked his briefcase. A stony expression clouded his face.
"All right, Remo. I'll look into it. I'll be in touch."
As he walked away, Remo called, "Smitty?"
"
Yes?"
"Thanks for clearing this one up for me."
"You're welcome, Remo."
After Smith left, Remo said, "Well, Chiun. Another day, another dollar."
"There will not be many more dollars if you do not return to training," Chiun said. "You are getting fat around the middle and your stroke when you dispatched that Mafia person was an abomination to see."
"We'll train tomorrow," Remo said. "I want to thank you too, Chiun."
"For what?"
"For caring."
"Who else would care for you? You are hopeless. And don't think I have forgotten your promise to get Nellie Wilson to sing a concert for me. And don't think that I have forgotten . . ."
Chiun recited a litany of complaints as he walked from the grave, but when he looked back, Remo still stood there, and Chiun was silent and walked away, leaving Remo standing over his own grave with the dead dry autumn leaves swirling around him, alone with his thoughts and his longings.
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Blood Ties td-69 Page 21