AH she could do was wait for whichever guard was fool enough to give her a gun.
She didn't like waiting, doing nothing. So while she sat on the floor of the jail cell she began planning how she was going to expand her wig store. Financing would be no trouble. That problem had been resolved two years ago.
When she had first wanted to start her business, she had gone to the bank for a loan and the banker had
112
laughed at her. The idea of a woman, twenty-one years old, black to boot, asking for a business loan without any collateral, well, it was just ridiculous and they weren't in the business of throwing away depositors' money, after all.
His high humor had lasted four hours after Ruby had left. Then the first pickets showed up in front of his bank, carrying signs advising black depositors that a new black-owned and operated bank was opening soon that would value their business and treat them like people. The sandwich boards they were carrying had a telephone number to call for information. The banker called the number.
Ruby answered.
The next day, she had her loan.
She had paid off the five-year note in two years, and her credit was now solid gold. She scratched numbers in the dust on the concrete floor of her cell. Twenty thousand dollars, that's what it would take to expand her buying system, so she had something more reliable than sailors carrying bags of smuggled hair. It would be easy.
They did not look like much. The American was skinny and had only thick wrists to indicate that he might have some power in his body. Corazon had thought the Oriental to be old. But he was more than old. He was aged and so frail that Corazon knew women from his mountain village who could fall on him and crush him.
But there was the evidence of the past two days. The dead British, the dead Russians. Corazon would be cautious.
"The people of Baqia welcome you visitors to our
113
beautiful island," he said. "We have always loved Americans."
Chiun waved away the small talk with a bony hand that protruded from the sleeve, of his orange kimono.
Corazon would not be discouraged.
"If there is anything-"
"Towels," Chiun said, "dean towels. Clean sheets. Anything else, Remo?"
"For openers, that's all right," Remo said.
"Done," said Corazon, although he could not understand why someone would want clean sheets and towels. "You will be happy to know that we have reinstituted the relations with your country."
Chiun turned to Remo. "What is he talking about?"
"Who knows?" Remo said.
"Does he think I'm an American?" asked Chiun.
"Probably. AH you patriots look alike," Remo said.
"Generalissimo Corazon was talking about the bonds stronger than blood, the bonds of friendship and love that traditionally united Baqia and America.
"Enough," said Chiun. "We do not care about that. We care about towels and sheets."
Very strange, thought Corazon. "All right," he said. "Is there anything else?"
"That will do for now," said Chiun.
Remo pulled on the sleeve of his robe.
"Chiun, you forgot the woman. Ruby what's her name."
"And one thing more," Chiun told Corazon. "In one of your prisons, you have a woman."
"Lot of times, we have the woman in the prisons," said Corazon.
"This is an American woman named Ruby. She must be set free."
"You got it. Anything else?"
114
"Remo, anything else?" "The machine, Chiun," Remo reminded him. "And one thing more," said Chiun. "We want your machine. Our President said this was very important, to get your machine."
''Wonderful," Corazon said, beaming. His magic machine was kept at the prison under guard. To show his good will and his honesty and his loyalty to America and all the things it meant to him, he would meet Remo and Chiun at the prison. He would free the woman. And he would give them the machine. He was tired of it, anyway. He explained this loudly to an aide whom he ordered, "Get a car for these two wonderful Americans and do it quick or your ass be in the frying pan, boy."
"It be in front soon," Corazon told Remo and Chiun after the aide had left. He looked at the two men shrewdly. "I like you two."
"It is allowed," Chiun said. Remo sniffed. "You two pretty hot stuff, too," said Corazon. "You do some job on Russians and like that. I never saw anything like that." Chiun nodded.
"I think now that I got relations again with the United States I gonna ask your President, let you two stay here. You help me train my men and they be best anticommunist fighters in all the Caribbean and those enslavers of the human mind never gain no foothold here in Baqia."
"We work only for the President of the United States," said Chiun. "Actually, this one . . ." He pointed to Remo. "He takes his orders from some underling, but I work directly for the President and it is
115
well-known that we of Sinanju find loyalty more important than mere wealth. So we must refuse your offer."
Corazon nodded sadly. He understood loyalty and morality and honesty. He had heard about them once.
Remo leaned toward Chiun. "Since when, Little Father? Since when all this loyalty to the United States? Since when have you stopped -trying to promote side jobs?"
"Shhh," said Chiun. "I just told him that. There is no point in working for this one. He won't pay. I can tell. Look at the cheap furniture in this room."
The aide returned to announce, "The car is ready, Generalissimo."
Corazon rose from his gilt throne chair. "You two go ahead. The driver will know where to take you. I will meet you there, just to make sure that this Ruby is freed and that my men give you the machine, the way you want the machine. Because I want only the friendship and the relations between our countries."
Wordlessly, Chiun turned and walked toward the door. He said to Remo, "I don't trust this one."
"Neither do I," Remo said. "I've heard these love-America speeches before."
"I don't think we're ever going to get clean towels," said Chiun.
Corazon stood near the corner of the window, peering through the crack between the drape and the window frame. As soon as he saw Remo and Chiun's car pull away for the drive to the prison, he hollered for his aide to get his helicopter ready in the palace courtyard. Then he rolled the mung machine out from behind a curtain and toward the door to the elevator which would take it to the helicopter pad.
116
A half hour later, Remo and Chiun's car parked outside the open prison gates. They walked up to where Corazon stood by his helicopter.
"My men are getting the machine," he said. "The prisoner is in there." He pointed to a door in, the corner of U-shaped central courtyard. "Here is the key to the cell."
Remo took the key. "I'll go get her," he told Chiun.
"I will go with you. For some reason, this Ruby person is important to my employer and so I want everything to go smoothly, to show them that if they give their assignments to someone who knows how to perform them competently, they will get satisfaction and full worth for their gold. That is the way of Sinanju."
"It's also the way of Sears Roebuck," Remo said testily. "Come along if you want to."
They went through the wooden door and were in a dark dank hallway. At the bottom of a flight of steps, a cell door, with bars set into it at eye level, faced them.
"I will wait here," said Chiun.
"You trust me to go down that flight of steps all by myself?" Remo asked.
"Just barely," Chiun said.
Inside her cell, Ruby Jackson Gonzalez tucked into her waistband the gun the sergeant of guards had given her. She heard the footsteps on the stairs. That would probably be the lieutenant on his way down for his promised assault on her.
When the sergeant had given her the gun, Ruby had told him what to do.
"Tell that lieutenant I wouldn't have any of you," she said. "Tell him like I got the hots for him."
/> "He never believe," the sergeant said. "He is a most
117
ugly man. How could he believe you reject me for him?
"Here," Ruby said. She flicked out a sharp index fingernail and dug a furrow down the sergeant's cheek. The little gap first filled up with blood and then a red trickle curled down his cheek.
The sergeant slapped his hand to his cheek. He looked at it when it came away red, then glared at Ruby.
"Bitch," he snarled.
He took a step toward her but Ruby smiled, a wide white smile that knew everything in the world.
"Hey, my honey," she said. "Now he believe you. That little scratch prove it. And when I get him, then you gonna be the lieutenant. New uniform, more money, you gonna be dashing. You have all the women you want. With that seventy-three million, you be bad."
He wanned to her smile.
"You, too?" he asked.
"I be the first and the best. And I see you messing with any other women, I take your head off," she said.
The smile wrung all the threat out of Ruby's words and forced a return smile from the guard.
"I bet you would," he said.
"You better bet," she said. "You too good-looking to let out loose." She stepped forward and blotted the guard's face with a handkerchief from his shirt pocket. She left a faint dried trail of blood on his cheek.
"There. Now you tell him and he believe you."
The sergeant nodded and left. Now Ruby heard the steps coming down the worn stone stairs. It should be the lieutenant but these didn't sound like the lieu-
118
tenant's feet. He wore heavy boots and liked to clomp around, trying to frighten people. But these footsteps were light and even, almost like a cat's pads.
She thought maybe the lieutenant already had taken his boots off, preparatory to spending the rest of the day in Ruby's bed.
"Sheeit," she said to herself.
She stood behind the door as the key opened it and the heavy door slowly swung open. She put her hand on the butt of the revolver, underneath her long white man-tailored shirt.
The door creaked to a stop. She heard a voice, distinctly an American's voice.
"Ruby?" the voice called.
It wasn't the lieutenant.
Ruby took her hand off the revolver and stepped out from behind the door. Her eyes met Remo's.
"Who you?" she asked.
"I've come to get you out."
"You from the CIA?" she asked.
"Well, something like that."
"Go 'way, dodo. You gonna mess me up around here," Ruby said.
"Hey, have I got the right place?" Remo said. "This is a jail and you're a prisoner and I've come to get you out."
"And if you from the CIA, you gonna mess everything up and we all get killed. If I get outa here on my own, I know I'm gonna get outa here. I let you take me outa here, I figure we all be shot before we goes twenty feet."
Remo reached over and chucked her under the chin.
"You're cute," he said.
119
"And you're country. Why you wearing them white socks with them black shoes?"
"I can't believe this is really happening," Remo said. "I come to rescue a woman from jail and she's bitching about the color of my socks."
"You couldn't rescue me from a tub of warm water," Ruby said. "Man don't care 'nough to dress right, don't know 'nough to do right."
"Hell with it. Stay," said Remo. "We'll go back in our jeep by ourselves."
Ruby shook her head. "Oh, I might as well go with you, make sure we gets out all right. How long you been gone from Newark?"
"Newark?" Remo said.
"Yeah. Say, you hard o' hearin' or you just dopey? Newark. It in New Jersey. How long you been gone from there?"
"How do you know that?"
"We all know how people talk in Newark 'cause we all gots relatives that lives there." .
"I had expensive speech teachers help me get rid of my accent," Remo said.
"They took you, dodo. Get your money back."
"The government paid for it."
"No wonder," Ruby said. "Government always gets taken."
She was following Remo up the stone steps. Chiun stood inside the closed door, looking down at them.
"You think I dress funny, wait till you see this," Remo said to Ruby. "Chiun, you've finally met your match. This is Ruby."
Chiun looked at the young woman with disdain.
Ruby bowed to him, low from the waist.
"At least she knows how to greet someone," Chiun told Remo.
120
''Tour robe is beautiful," she said. "What you pay for it?"
"This is a replacement of a very ancient robe that was unfortunately spoiled for me by a slug of a laun-dryman," Chiun said.
"Yeah, it was made in America. I see that. What you pay for it?"
"Remo," said Chiun. "The amount." "I think it was two hundred dollars." "You was taken," said Ruby. "They makes these robes in a little place near Valdosta, Georgia. I know the owner. He lots them out for forty dollars. So a hundred percent for wholesale and a hundred percent for retail and you shouldna paid no more than one-sixty."
"See, Remo, how you allowed us to be cheated again?" Chiun's voice was indignant.
"What do you care?" Remo said. "You didn't pay for it."
Ruby waved a hand at Chiun. "Listen up," she said. "Next time you needs a robe, talk to me. I get you something really good and the right price. Don't listen to this turkey no more. He wearin' white socks." She leaned close to Chiun and whispered. "He might be getting a rake-off for himself. Watch him."
Chiun nodded. "How true. Selfishness and greed are so often what one gets in return for dedication and love."
"Let's get out of here," Remo said in disgust. He moved toward the door behind Chiun.
"Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait," Ruby said, the words strung together so quickly that they sounded like a railroad conductor spitting out the name of a single lake in Wales.
"Who out there knows you in here?" she asked.
121
"Everybody," Remo said.
"Who everybody?"
"The warden. The guards. El Presidente himself," Remo said. "He came down to free you too."
"The big ugly dude with the medals?"
"Yeah. Generalissimo Corazon."
"You think he don' have no guns trained on this door right now?" Ruby asked.
"Why should he?"
" 'Cause he a jerk. That man liable to do anything. Come on, we go upstairs and over the roof."
"We go out the front door," Remo said stubbornly.
Chiun put a hand on his arm. "Wait, Remo," he said. "There is wisdom in what this one speaks."
"You're just trying to con her into cutting the price of a robe," Remo said.
"Bunk it," Ruby said. "You go out the front door. The old gentlemans and I go upstairs. We mail your body wherever you want it sent."
She touched Chiun's elbow. "Come on. We go," she said.
Chiun allowed himself to be led up the stone steps. Remo watched them for a moment, glanced at the front door, then shook his head in disgust, and went up the steps, too. He slid by them to lead the way. "Glad you finally coming around," Ruby said. "If you want to walk with us, why don't you put that .38 you're carrying in the middle of your belt?" Remo said.
Ruby felt her shirt. The .38 was in the left side of her belt, covered by her long blouse.
"How you do that?" she said to Remo. "How you know I got a gun? How he do that?" she asked Chiun. Her voice rose into a coloratura squawk.
No one answered.
122
"You was looking and you saw the piece," Ruby said. She made it sound like an indictment for a capital crime.
"I didn't see it," Remo said.
"He didn't see it," Chiun agreed. "He hardly keeps his eyes open at all to see anything."
"How you do that?" Ruby insisted, her voice still a screech. "How you know it be a .38?"
This she had to know. Ruby saw instantly that there was real value in learning how to tell when someone was armed. She could copyright the method or patent it, if it was mechanical, then sell it to storekeepers in cities around America. They'd pay top dollar for a foolproof way of knowing that someone coming through their front door was carrying a gun.
"How you do that, I say?" she shrieked. Her voice, when she chose to use it that way, was high-pitched and abrasive. It sounded like it should be giving a locker-room critique to a high school football team losing 48-0 at half time.
"Anything if you stop screaming," Remo said. He was still leading the way up the steps. "You have the gun near your left hip. It throws off your balance when you walk. I can hear the heavier pressure on your left foot. The amount of pressure tells the weight of the gun. Yours weighs out as a .38."
"He really do that?" Ruby asked Chiun. "That dodo, he don't seem smart enough to do like that."
"Yes, that is what he did," Chiun said. "Sloppy, sloppy work."
"What?" asked Ruby.
"He did not tell you that your pistol has in it only three cartridges. If he were as alert as he should be, lie would be able to tell that."
123
"He really did that? You really do that?" Ruby demanded.
"Yes," said Chiun.
"Pipe down," Remo told Ruby. "Your voice is like ice cubes cracking."
"How you learn to do that?" Ruby asked him.
"He taught me," Remo said.
"I taught him," Chiun said. "Of course, he does not leam as he should. Still, even a chipped pitcher is better than none at all."
"I want to leam how to do that," Ruby said. She was calculating. A half million storekeepers at a thousand dollars each. No, cut the price. Five hundred dollars each. Two hundred and fifty million dollars. Overseas rights. Around the world sales. Military application.
"I give you twenty percent of everything," she said to Chiun, softly so Remo would not hear.
"Forty percent," said Chiun who did not know what Ruby was talking about.
"Thirty," Ruby said. "I don' go no higher. And you take care of the turkey." She pointed at Remo.
"Done. A deal," said Chiun, who would have taken twenty percent if he knew what it was all about. He felt he had the better of it because he was stuck with taking care of Remo anyway.
Voodoo Die td-33 Page 10