"What's your name?" Remo asked.
"Spesk. Tony Spesk. I sell appliances."
"What were you doing out here?"
"I was driving along downtown and that man broke into my car, stuck a gun in my neck, and ordered me to drive here. I guess he decided to shoot at you when he saw you. So thanks, pal. Thanks again."
"You're welcome," Remo said. The man was overdressed. His tie was pink. "That your car?"
"Yes," said Spesk. "Who are you? A policeman?"
"No. Not that," Remo said.
"You sound like a policeman."
"I sound like a lot of things. I sell diet gelatin. I sell strawberry and chocolate and cocoa almond cream."
"Oh," said Spesk. "That sounds interesting."
"Not as interesting as tapioca," Remo said. "Tapioca is a thrill." The man was lying of course. He had not come down to the states from Canada-the car had Canadian plates-to sell appliances. The man behind him had left the car a good time after good old Tony Spesk, to provide cover. And this was evident because the man had been more interested in roofs and windows than in the man he was supposed to be threatening.
And then the man had seen Chiun and wheeled for a shot. There was no reason for that shot. He didn't know who Chiun was, or Remo. He just shot, which was strange. But the dead dark-haired man belonged to yellow-haired Tony Spesk. There was no doubt about that.
"Do you need some help?" Remo asked.
"No, no. Do you need some help? Say, fella, I like the way you moved. You a professional athlete?"
"Sort of," Remo said.
"I can pay you double. You're not young. You're at the end of your career."
"In my game," Remo said, "young is fifty. What do you want me for?"
"I just thought a man with your abilities might want to make himself some good money, fella. That's all."
"Look," said Remo. "I really don't believe anything you've said, but I'm too busy to keep an eye on you, so just so I'll recognize you at a distance and maybe slow you up a little…" Remo let his right palm slap down at the man's knee, very gently.
And Spesk, standing there, remembered when a tank had thrown a tread and it had taken off an infantryman's knee. The calf was held to the thigh by a strand. The tank tread had shot off so fast, he had hardly seen it. This man's hand moved faster and there was a searing, emptying pain at his left knee, and even as he dropped, gasping in pain; he knew he wanted this man for Mother Russia. This man would be more valuable than any silly toy created thirty years ago. This man moved in a way Spesk had never seen before. It was not something better than any other man; it was something different.
And at twenty-four, and the youngest colonel in the Soviet, he was probably the only officer of that rank who would dare make the decision he made now, going down to the sidewalk, his left leg useless. He was going to get that man for Russia. The dunderheads in the higher ranks might not understand immediately, but eventually they would see that there was an advantage in this man, offered by no machine or device.
Spesk crawled, crying, to his car and jerkily drove away. He would find compatriots in New York who could arrange for medical care. It was not safe to lie wounded in this area, not without Nathan for protection.
Remo walked back to his car. A young black boy hopped around, clutching his wrist. Apparently he had attempted to pull Chiun's beard and had been immediately disappointed to find out here was not a frail old rabbi.
"What depths your nation has sunk to. What indescribable horrors," said Chiun.
"What's the matter?"
"That thing dared touch the body of the Master of Sinanju. Have they not been taught respect?"
"I'm surprised he's alive," Remo said.
"I have not been paid to clean the streets of your cities. Have you not had enough of this country, a country where children would dare touch the Master of Sinanju?"
"Little Father, there are things that trouble me about my country. But not fear for your person. There are other people out there though, people without your skills, who are not protected as you are by your skills. Smith is worried about some gadget that somebody invented. But I am worried because an old woman has been killed. And it doesn't matter to anyone. It doesn't matter," said Remo and he felt the blood run hot up his neck and his hands trembled and it was as if he had never been taught to breathe properly. "It's wrong. It's unjust. It goddam stinks."
Chiun smiled and looked knowingly at his pupil.
"You have learned much, Remo. You have learned to awaken your body in a world where most people's bodies go from mother's breast to grave without ever the breath of full life. Hardly is there a man to challenge your skills. Yet no master of Sinanju, for century upon century, has had skill enough to do what you wish to do."
"What is that, Little Father?"
"End injustice."
"I don't want to end it, Little Father. I just don't want it to flourish."
"Be it enough that in your own heart and your own village, justice triumphs."
And Remo knew he was about to hear the story of Sinanju again, how the village was so poor that the babies could not be supported during the lean years and had to be put to sleep in the cold waters of the West Korea Bay. Until the first Master of Sinanju many centuries before had begun to rent out his talents to rulers. And thus was born the sun source of all the martial arts, Sinanju. And by serving well the monarchs, each Master saved the babies. This was Remo's justice.
"Each task you perform with perfection feeds the children of Sinanju," Chiun said.
"They're a bunch of ingrates in Sinanju and you know it," said Remo.
"Yes, Remo, but they are our ingrates," said Chiun, and a long fingernail stressed the point in the dark night.
It was dark because the neighborhood's street lamps had been torn down when the people discovered they could sell pieces of the new aluminum poles to junkyards. There had been a television special on the darkness in the slums, comparing it to a form of genocide, whereby the system stole light from the blacks. A sociologist made a detailed study and blamed the city for being in collusion with the junkyards to put up lights that could be torn down without too much effort. "Again, the blacks are victims," the sociologist had said on television, "of white profits." He did not dwell on who did the tearing down or whose taxes paid for the lamp posts in the first place.
Remo looked around the street. Chiun slowly shook his head.
"I'm going to find out who did in Mrs. Mueller," Remo said.
"And then what?"
"Then I am going to see that justice is done," Remo said.
"Aieee," wailed Chiun. "What a waste of a good assassin. My precious work and time squandered in fits of emotion." Ordinarily Chiun would seclude himself in a cloak of silence upon hearing such Western nonsense.
But this time he did not. He asked what sort of justice Remo sought. If it were youngsters who killed the old woman, then they took but a few years of her life. Should he take many years of their lives? That would be unjust.
The body of the man Remo had killed lay on the sidewalk. Police would come in the morning, thought Remo. Just as people had seen him from the windows, there must have been people who had seen the killers or killer come out of Mrs. Mueller's house. Or if it were a gang, one of them must have talked.
Smith had given Remo some details about the gadget he was looking for and about Gerd Mueller's work in Germany. The only thing mentioned about the old woman's death was that it was apparently not done by anyone important.
"You," said Remo to a fat woman leaning out the window, her large black globular breasts pushed up over her fat black arms. "You live there?"
"No. Ah just comes down here to see how the colored lives."
"I'm willing to pay for information."
"Brother," she said. She had a deep throaty voice. "That makes you down home people."
Remo offered a five and that was taken and the woman asked where the rest was. And Remo held up two hundred-dollar bills very close
to her face and she made a goodly snatch at the bills, but Remo lowered them, then raised them, giving her the feeling that she had grabbed at the bills but they had dematerialized for a moment. It was so amazing to her that she tried again. And then again.
"How you do that?" asked the woman.
"I got rhythm," said Remo.
"What you wanna know?"
"There was an old woman, a white woman."
"De Missus Mueller."
"That's right."
"She daid. I know that the woman you want 'cause everybody axes about her."
"I know that. But do you know anyone who went into that house that day? What do you hear on the street?"
"Well, now, I been axed that a lot. And I been real fine at that. I tells them nothing. It funny they axes so much, 'cause it only a killing."
"Did you know her?"
"No. De whites don' usually go out, 'cepting 'bout de ungodly hour."
"When's that? The ungodly hour?" asked Remo.
"Nine o'clock in de morning," said the woman.
"Do you know who operates around here? What sort of gangs? Maybe they know more things. I pay good money."
"You want to know who kill her, white boy?"
"That's what I want."
"De Lawds."
"You know that?"
"Everybody know that. De Lawds, dey got dis street. It theirs. Their turf. Dey gonna get you too, white boy, lessen you come inside, you and that funny-looking yellow friend of yours."
Remo offered up the bills again and this time he let her hand close on them. But he held the bottoms of the two bills.
"How come you can lean out of that window in safety, leaving it open and all that?" Remo asked.
" 'Cause I black."
"No," said Remo. "Punks will do it to anybody weak enough. Your skin doesn't protect you."
" 'Cause I black and I blow they muthafucking heads off," she said, and with the other hand, she brought out a sawed-off shotgun. "I gots my saviour here. I got one of them in the balls four years ago 'bout. He lay on that sidewalk theah and hollered. Than I gives him a bit of de ole Georgia Peach in de eyes."
"That's boiling lye?" asked Remo incredulously.
"The best. I keeps a pot boilin' all the time. Now you take you whites. They don't 'stablish themselves as peoples what got to be respected no more. I black. I speak the street language. Sawed off in the balls and lye in the face and I ain' had no trouble sincet. You and you funny-lookin' friend oughtta come in here for the night. You gonna be like that whitey you killed 'cross the street. They ain't no more white men on this block like they was yesterday. No sir."
"Thank you, granny, but I'll take my chances. The Lords, you say?"
"De Saxon Lawds."
"Thanks again."
"The policemens know about them. They knows who did it. The ones who gets the body. It was real early so I wasn't about yet but they comes out and they did that barbarous thing, over in that alley, 'cept they ain't no alley no more 'cause they takes the building down. But they was an alley then. And some boys, they up real late and they not thinkin' or nuffin' and they think it just a white folks and not a policemans and the policemans does the 'trocity, he shoots the boy in the arm. That the barbarousness of it."
Remo wasn't interested in the barbarousness of some black kid getting shot when he tried to steal a cop's gun.
"Do you know the names of the cops who know who killed the old woman?" he asked.
"Ah doan know de names of policemens. Ah doan truck wif dem. Ah doan have no numbahs, no dope."
"Thank you, ma'am, and have a pleasant evening."
"You cute there, whitey. Watch you ass, y'hear?"
The headquarters of this Bronx Police Precinct was nicknamed Fort Mohican. Sandbags covered the windows. Remo saw a patrol car pull out of an alley with two illegal Russian Kalashnikov assault rifles and hand grenades on the dashboard.
Remo knocked on the closed precinct door.
"Come back in the morning," said a voice.
"FBI," said Remo, juggling through some identification cards he always carried. He found the FBI card with his photograph. He held it up to a small telescopic peephole in the door.
"Yeah, FBI, what do you want?"
"I want to come in and talk," said Remo. Chiun looked around with disdain.
"The mark of a civilization," Chiun said, "is how little its people need to know about defending themselves."
"Shhhh," said Remo.
"Is there someone out there with you?"
"Yes," said Remo.
"Move fifty yards away or we'll start lobbing mortars."
"I want to talk to you."
"This is a New York City police precinct. We don't open till nine a.m. for visitors."
"I'm from the FBI."
"Then tap our phones from Downtown."
"I want to talk to you."
"Did the patrol make it out safely?"
"You mean that police car?"
"Yes."
"It did."
"How did you get here at night?"
"We got here," said Remo.
"You must have had a convoy."
"No convoy. Just us."
"Look around. Is anybody loitering nearby? Anybody watching us?"
Remo turned and looked. "No," he said.
"Okay. Get in here fast." The door opened a crack and Remo eased his way in, followed, by Chiun.
"What is this old guy, a magician? Is that how you got here?" asked the policeman. He had dark black hair but his face was fraught with tension and age. He kept his hand on his pistol. The officer wanted to know who Chiun was in those strange robes. He wanted to see if Chiun had a concealed weapon. He thought Chiun was a magician and that was how the two got through to Fort Mohican. His name was Sergeant Pleskoff. He had been promoted to sergeant because he had never fired at what was called "a Third World person." He knew a lot about crime. He had seen hundreds of muggings and twenty-nine homicides. And he was very close to his first arrest.
He was the new breed of American police officer, no longer a racist, hard-nosed bully but a man who could relate to his community. The other officers liked Sergeant Pleskoff too. He made sure their pay records were always in order and he wasn't one of those narrow-minded, old-fashioned annoying sort of sergeants who, when you were 'on duty, actually expected you to be in the state of New York.
Pleskoff kept Remo and Chiun covered with two machine guns set up on desks surrounding the front door.
Remo showed his identification.
"You probably don't know that the CIA is handling that thing on Walton Avenue," Pleskoff said.
"I'm not here about the thing on Walton Avenue. I'm here about the woman who was killed. The old woman. She was white."
"You have your nerve," said Pleskoff angrily. "You come in here and expect a New York City police precinct to be open at night, just like that, in this kind of neighborhood, and then you ask about the death of some old white lady. Which old white lady?"
"The old white lady who was tied to her bed and tortured to death."
"Which old white lady who was tied to her bed and tortured to death? You think I'm some kind of genius that remembers every white person killed in my precinct? We have computers to do that. We're not some old-fashioned police force that loses its cool just because someone gets mangled to death."
Pleskoff lit a cigarette with a gold lighter.
"Can I ask a question? I used to know a lot of cops," said Remo, "and I never used to hear talk like this. What do you do?"
"Establish a police presence in the community which relates to the needs and aspirations of the inhabitants. And, I guarantee, every officer in this precinct has been sensitized to Third World aspirations and how… don't walk in front of the peephole so much… sometimes they'll come up and put a shot in the peephole…"
"There's no one outside," said Remo.
"How do you know?"
"I know," said Remo.
"That's amazing. T
here are so many things in the world that amaze one. The other day I saw some squiggles on a piece of paper and do you know what they were made from? The human finger pads have oil on them and when you touch something, it makes a pattern, much like a linear Renoir interpretation of Sudanese sculpture. It's oval," said Pleskoff.
"It's called a fingerprint," Remo said.
"I don't read mystery fiction," Pleskoff said. "It's racist."
"I heard you people here know who killed an old white woman, Mrs. Gerd Mueller, on Walton Avenue."
"Walton Avenue, that would be either the Saxon Lords or the Stone Shieks of Allah. We have a wonderful Third World program that relates to indigenous community peoples whereby we are the extension of their aspirations. We have an excellent program that teaches how the white world exploits and oppresses the black world. But we had to postpone it because of the Downstate Medical Center."
"What did they do?" asked Remo.
"With typical white insensitivity, they announced that they were buying human eyes for an eyebank. Did they realize, did they even care about the effect that would have on young indigenous Third World peoples who live here? No. They just let the word out that they would pay for eyes donated. They carelessly didn't specify that the donations should be from dead people. And we lost our program for awhile."
"I don't understand," said Remo.
"Well, the police lieutenant who gave the lecture on how the black person is always robbed by the whites, he came in here with a pair of eyes thrown right in his face by a Third World youth who had been promised so much by the Downstate Medical Center. It destroyed our good rapport with the community."
"What did?" asked Remo.
"The Medical Center ripped off the Third World again by refusing to pay for the eyes. The proud young Afro-American Third World black man, foolishly trusting the whites, brought in a pair of fresh eyes that he had obtained, and the medical center ripped him off by refusing to buy them. Said they wouldn't take a pair of fresh eyes in a Ripple bottle. Can you imagine anything so racist as that? No wonder the community is outraged."
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