"My God!" Harold Smith muttered. "This is product tampering on a scale never before seen!"
And the two men most able to stop the menace were nowhere to be found.
Smith glanced down. On his blotter, the container of cold chicken soup and the metal spoon still sat. Allowing himself a rare "damn," Smith picked up both objects and dropped them into his wastebasket.
The loss of the spoon brought fret marks to his tired ashen face.
Chapter 8
"Look," Henry Cackleberry Poulette began reasonably, "if there's a problem with my birds-and I'm not saying there is-it didn't necessarily start here. I ship my babies out to restaurants, supermarkets-even to the Asian market."
"We got ours in a Japanese supermarket in New Jersey," Remo said.
Poulette snorted. "Those crazy Japs. I gotta ship my ducks to Tokyo just so they can claim they're Japanese exports. Their customers won't eat homegrown."
"Maybe the problem started in Tokyo," Remo said to Chiun.
"Had to!" Poulette assented instantly. "My birds are number one USDA approved!"
"It is certain that the ducks were poisoned," Chiun said stiffly, eyeing Remo suspiciously. "We are here to learn at what point."
Remo only rolled his eyes heavenward. They continued their purposeful walk along the corridors of Poulette Farms Poultry orporated toward the abattoir.
"So am I to understand you eat a lot of duck?" Poulette asked Remo.
"Between Chiun and me," Remo said sincerely, "we probably keep your duck wing flying."
"But you don't eat chicken?"
"No."
"May I ask why not?"
Remo hesitated. His brow bunched up, casting a puzzled shadow over his dark eyes. "Little Father, why can't we eat chicken?" Remo asked.
"Because chickens do not urinate," Chiun replied.
"A foul lie!" Poulette interjected.
Chiun stopped. Slowly he turned, his eyes going cold. "You would dispute me, Chicken King?" he demanded slowly.
Poulette cringed at the term. "Well, technically it is true," he explained. Vindicated, Chiun began marching along the corridor once more, Poulette hurrying to keep pace. "Chickens don't urinate, per se," he confided to Remo. "They have no bladders, so their urine enters their bowels and is released with their manure. But they're just as clean as any other bird."
"We can't eat chicken 'cause they piss out their butt?" Remo whispered to Chiun.
"Remo, do not be gross," Chiun sniffed.
"Did you know that chicken has supplanted beef as the meat of preference in the United States?" Poulette began to rattle off statistics with growing pride. "Americans now eat roughly seventy-eighty pounds of poultry per year. That's thirty-four percent of the American diet right there, my friends. They only eat seventy-three pounds of beef, and that percentage is shrinking every year."
"Doesn't it go in cycles?" Remo asked. "Chicken this year, pork next year? People will be back to beef by the end of the decade."
"Oh, no!" said Poulette, assuming an injured tone, like that of a priest whose faith has been called into question. "The era of beef is over. Cattle are filthy creatures. Stomping around in their own feces. And pigs? I think the name says it all, don't you? Rooters in their own filth."
"What do chickens do out in your barnyard-float?"
Poulette allowed himself a condescending smirk. "Barnyard? Really, Mr. MacLeavy, you must be new with the Department of Agriculture if you think Poulette Farms is a barnyard operation."
They had come to a door marked OBSERVATION DECK 1.
"Let me show you how a modern poultry farm operates," Poulette said, an odd gleam coming into his gimlet eyes.
The door opened onto another, longer corridor. One entire wall was made of Plexiglas, broken up only by large steel doors placed every twenty-five feet along its length.
Poulette's step became more lively. "As you can see, this walkway takes us through every phase of poultry-processing." He pointed to a large door below. "The conveyor belt brings the chickens into the plant from our fattening and feeding rooms." Remo and Chiun watched as the belt slid a steady stream of live chickens, hung upside down by their feet, into the Processing Wing.
"They are then moved through the electrically charged solution that you can see below, which"-Poulette suppressed a sigh-"stuns them senseless." He swallowed convulsively, and his turkey-wattle skin danced over his jittery Adam's apple. "It is remarkably humane."
"They say the same about the electric chair," Remo said dryly. "All the same, I'd just as soon go in my sleep."
Poulette's eyes narrowed. "Are you certain you're with the USDA?"
"Let's see the killing room," Remo said quickly.
"Very well," Poulette said. He had long since given up hope that his security roosters would come to his aid. "There is no individual who performs any of the more . . . ah . . . distressing duties. Nearly everything in the system is automated," he added, stepping to a bank of controls. His fingers took hold of a trak-ball mouse and joystick.
"From here they are carried into the Kill Room, where their naked, helpless throats are expertly slit by mechanized knives," he went on. Tears began to course down his cheeks. "Oh, the poor, poor creatures." At the same time some sort of craving came into his rapidly blinking eyes, and Poulette began to spin the trak-ball and stab blinking buttons.
A limp line of jiggling fryers began to march through a forest of glittering blades. The blades went whisk-whisk as they sliced open wattled throats. Spittle began to drip from the corner of Henry Cackleberry Poulette's mouth. His eyes shone.
Chiun drew his pupil to one side.
"Look at him, Remo," the Master of Sinanju whispered. "He feigns grief for his charges, while secretly reveling in their slaughter."
"Hey, Poulette!" Remo called.
Henry Poulette continued his frantic manipulations. Blood spurted. Snapping knives severed chicken heads.
Remo yanked the Chicken King away from the control board, saying, "What happened to automated?"
Poulette turned sharply to Remo. "And let someone else have all the-" He caught himself, swallowed twice. "This is the backup," he said meekly, the blood-lust draining from his eyes. "Just in case." He paused, smiling sheepishly. "I see that my birds are treated more humanely than by any poultry man in history."
Indicating the blood-spattered Kill Room, Remo growled, "It shows."
"Better me than someone without my love for them," Henry Poulette said in an injured tone. He straightened his tie. "Please follow me."
When they reached the next area, Remo and Chiun were forced to breathe through their mouths. The glass and doors were thick, but still the stench from below poured up into the narrow walkway.
"As you can see, the bleed tunnel is below." Poulette's eyes had become glassy and distant once again. "The red, red blood drains from their gutted throats in a vat of scalding water, which loosens their festering quills. Those clawlike instruments there automatically pluck the plumage from the unfortunate birds. What is left is then singed off by the hell-bath."
Remo and Chiun watched as the naked bird carcasses paraded past in a gruesome line, being drained, plucked, and flame-denuded all at once.
"Yours is a depraved society," Chiun sniffed.
"This setup is pretty sick," Remo agreed.
"Sick? Every time a chicken dies, a part of me dies with it," Poulette said. "No matter what those misguided protestors say." He made a noise that started off as a giggle but became a cough. He balled his fist before his face and hacked several times. To Remo, it sounded for all the world as if Poulette were cackling.
When he had composed himself, the tour continued. Remo shot Chiun a confused glance, but the Master of Sinanju seemed to be regarding Henry Poulette more intently than ever. As if he could read the man's innermost thoughts through the back of his eggshell skull.
"Coming up is my pride and joy, Mr. MacLeavy," Poulette announced. The words were followed by another cackle, which Poulette th
en tried to pass off as a cough with some more throat-clearing noises. "The Eviscerating Room!" he said in triumph. "Here the dead birds are gutted and disemboweled by our machines before being graded by government inspectors."
"And the ducks?" Chiun demanded.
"They pass through here as well," Poulette explained, pressing his nose against the glass like a five-year-old at an aquarium. As he stared below at the images of slaughtered chickens spilling their internal organs from their bloody body cavities, his bald pate began to perspire and his breath came in short, orgasmic gasps.
"Where?" Chiun commanded.
Henry Poulette was drawing the tip of his pointed tongue delicately across his nub-like teeth. "Huh?" He pulled himself away with difficulty. "Oh, over there." He pointed to the far wall, where a much smaller conveyor belt carried freshly gutted carcasses into the inspection area. "The duck wing isn't very big, so every bird passes through this common area."
Chiun peered intently through the thick glass. Remo joined him at his side. "What are you looking for?" he asked.
"Your accomplice," Chiun replied.
Before Remo could reiterate his innocence in any scheme to do away with the Master of Sinanju, he was silenced by Chiun's gasp of triumph.
"There!" he pointed, his voice rising to a victorious pitch.
"Where?" Remo and Henry Poulette asked in unison. Both followed the direction of Chiun's delicately aimed finger.
The line of USDA inspectors was busily scanning and stamping what remained of the birds as they streamed past. At the very end, a burly inspector was glancing guiltily from side to side. On the work area before him he, like the other inspectors, had a cloth which could be used to wipe his hands. Except he was wiping the cloth onto his hands.
A subtle difference many would have failed to detect.
As the carcasses paraded past, he would draw his hand across the cloth and then stick his index finger into the yellow breasts of several of the birds. After each cycle, he would drag his hand across the cloth once more and begin anew.
"Behold, the fiend!" Chiun proclaimed loudly.
"Allow me," Remo said, moving forward.
They were next to one of the metal doors that rested in the Plexiglas wall, and the force Remo exerted against its handle nearly exploded it off of its hinges. Hooking his heels along the sides of the metal ladder that extended from the opening, he slid the thirty feet to the main floor and hit the ground running.
Oblivious, the fiendish inspector continued his work. Rag, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, rag. He looked like an automaton. He continued to glance from side to side, but there was something odd about his movements, as if he were an animatronic construct rather than a living human being.
When Remo grabbed the man's powerful shoulder and spun him around, there was nothing in the inspector's eyes to indicate that he was frightened in the least.
The man had a dark complexion, five-o'clock shadow two hours early, and coarse hair sprouting from his ears and nostrils. His nose looked like it had been broken at least a dozen times. His hands were thick and callused. Their backs and knuckles were covered with thick black fur. He kept his right hand clutched oddly in at his chest.
"Time to crow, pal," Remo said.
The inspector only smiled vacantly. The eyes continued to scan the room. Something about this bothered Remo. The look should have been that of a cornered animal-indeed, there was something not human in the man's face-but fear was not mirrored in the eyes. The eyes were . . .
"Gweilo." The word sounded even stranger emanating from those rubbery lips.
"That anything like paisan?" Remo asked.
A hand flashed toward Remo's exposed neck, the guillotine-shaped nail of the index finger glimmering in the light.
It was traveling in a flawless arc, and Remo had not yet registered the move. According to all of Remo's experience, this thug who reeked of garlic and onions could not possibly be moving that quickly. Only one trained in Sinanju could.
The nail was a hair away from slicing into Remo's throat when another hand shot into view. Remo was propelled backward through the slimy procession of duck carcasses as the Master of Sinanju descended on the poisoner like a typhoon.
Chiun clutched the thug's wrist in his hand. The man continued to thrust with his sharpened fingernail, but Chiun's vise-like grip held it at bay. The nail made futile circles in the air.
"I release you from your walking death," Chiun whispered into the man's cauliflower ear, and drew his own sharp nail across the bogus inspector's throat.
A puff of Halloween-orange smoke shot from the man's nose, as if from an angry bull, and still more escaped in a dryice film from the bleeding neck wound. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but before he could his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed to the floor of the plant.
"Dammit, Chiun, what the hell'd you do that for?" Remo complained, as he got to his feet and brushed beads of water and blood from his shoulders.
"He was the poisoner," Chiun explained, quickly dispelling the saffron smoke with his kimono sleeves. A fleeting cloud passed across his stony countenance.
"I'll buy that, but we never found out who put him up to it," Remo pointed out.
Henry Poulette drew up, panting. He stopped, stared down at the body on the floor, and collapsed for support against the partition that separated them from the other inspectors. "Oh, my God," he moaned, "You killed Sal."
Remo stood the Chicken King upright. "Sal?" he demanded.
Poulette's head snapped up. "Uh, Sal Mondello. He was one of our best in-house inspectors. Been with us for years." His face was ashen. He weaved on his feet like a roupy hen.
"He a relative?" Remo asked.
"I wish it was only that. Without Sal, Poulette Farms might as well be a chemical waste dump." His tiny eyes refocused, and he lost another shade of coloring. "And when the big man finds out, we're all going to be chicken feed."
"That's it," Remo said. "Interrogation time." He propelled Henry Poulette past the body on the floor and toward the access ladder.
Chiun followed slowly, a determined frown etched across his wizened features. His hazel eyes were reflective, as if not seeing the world around him, but one within. A world of horror.
A single sibilant word escaped his parchment lips.
"Gyonshi!" he hissed.
Chapter 9
The secretary who had played Mother Hen for Henry Cackleberry Poulette met the trio as they entered the poultry producer's outer office. She had picked the kernel of corn from her teeth, which she now showed off proudly. The flock of young blond secretaries looked up in unison from behind their desks.
"We found the security team, Mr. Poulette!" the girl said urgently. "They were hanging upside down by their feet in a utility closet!"
"Not now!" Poulette hissed.
Remo propelled the office door open with the flat of his palm and tossed the Chicken King inside.
"Start crowing," he ordered.
"You know, I really take offense at all of this," Poulette said. He indicated Chiun, who stood by the door in uncharacteristic silence. "My God, he just killed a man!"
"Which usually means I take the next turn," Remo pointed out.
Poulette's head shifted back, nearly forcing his Adam's apple through the wrinkled skin of his throat.
"Mr. MacLeavy," he said, "the USDA doesn't ordinarily send its agents out into the field to murder and threaten murder." He seemed to have been emboldened by the continued silence of the old Oriental with the deadly hands. His pugnacious mood lasted only until Remo used the same technique Chiun had used earlier. Poulette's neck muscles felt as if they were being shredded by rabid dogs. His mouth dropped open, and his pointed tongue shot out and wiggled in the open air in front of his face. He howled in pain.
"The truth!" Remo said tightly.
"I hate chickens!" screamed Henry Cackleberry Poulette. "Always have! Always will! They ruined my childhood! I couldn't date! I had no friends! Everyo
ne called me 'Hank the Cluck.' It was unfair!" he sobbed. "I don't even look like a chicken!"
Remo and Chiun exchanged glances.
"Then why get into this business?" Remo asked, releasing the pressure of his fingers.
"You know how my ads say 'a Poulette chicken in every pot'?" Henry Poulette said conspiratorially.
"Yeah?"
"If they're all eaten into extinction, no one will ever compare me to a chicken again! Never! Ever! Again!"
Remo looked into the fevered eyes of the Chicken King and said in a calm voice, "The truth I was looking for is a little different." Remo squeezed even harder this time. "Who was Sal working for?"
"Don Pietro!" Poulette shouted. "Don Pietro Scubisci!"
At the door, Chiun's head snapped around.
Remo, his attention trained on Poulette, failed to notice the reaction.
Remo blinked. "Scubisci? The Mafioso?"
"Don't know!" Poulette howled. "Don't know!"
"Do better, or join your dearly departed flock," Remo warned.
"I swear-I don't know if it was Scubisci! Mondello could've been working alone."
From the, door Chiun remarked, "He speaks the truth."
Reluctantly, Remo released Poulette's neck.
Poulette caressed his injured muscles. His wattle jittered with the agitation. "Sal was a plant." He shook his head to clear his thoughts. His head pecked at the air, and he took a deep breath. "You see," he added, expelling the air, "years ago, when I was starting this place up, I was having trouble with the union help. They were causing me so many headaches that I threatened to fire the lot of them and hire all nonunion. Then stuff started happening. Trucks overturning while delivering my birds. Mysterious fires on my loading docks. And there were picketers everywhere. I was going to go under. If Don Pietro hadn't stepped in, I wouldn't have made it."
"Nice of him," Remo said dryly.
"Hey, my problems were solved!" Henry Poulette said. "He arranged a sit-down with the union, and everything went back to normal. In return, I gave one of the Scubisci subsidiaries the hauling and carting contract on all Poulette Farms refuse."
"Nice way to do business," Remo commented.
"It is better than some others," Chiun muttered.
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