A young man grinned at how that seventy-year-old man tried to fight.
"You were there?" Remo said.
"Ah was. He were funny, dat old man."
"Try a younger one," Remo said and wiped the grin out onto the sidewalk in little white pellets of teeth and with his right hand cupped like the top of a juicer, pushed the face into the schoolyard fence like potatoes through a masher. The head stuck. The body dangled. The fence quivered and it was established at this point on 180th Street off Walton Avenue in the Bronx that frail old white people struggling for life were not humorous matters.
"All right, now we'll try again. Who killed Mrs. Mueller?"
"Idi Amin," said one young man.
"I thought I warned you about joking," Remo said.
"I not joking. Idi Amin, he our leader, he de one you kills ober dere." He pointed to where the gang's leader lay on the schoolyard pavement like a closed-up jacknife.
"He did it? Mrs. Mueller?" asked Remo.
"Dat right, boss. He do it."
"Alone? Don't tell me alone. None of you could find your way down a flight of stairs alone."
"Not alone, mistuh. Big-Big. He do it too."
"Who's Big-Big?" Remo asked.
"Big-Big Pickens. He do it."
"Which one of you is Big-Big Pickens?"
"He not here, suh. He away."
"Away where?"
"He go to Newark. When all de mens comes and starts looking around de old people's building, Big-Big, he decide go Newark till it safe to com? back."
"Where in Newark?" Remo said.
"Nobody know. Nobody find no one single nigger in Newark."
Remo nodded to that. He would wait for Big-Big. Sergeant Pleskoff shined a small penlight on the cement sidewalk. It looked as if someone had thrown a drugstore at the feet of the teenagers leaning against the schoolyard fence. Pill bottles, envelopes with white powder, doodads, and a small shriveled gray lump.
"What's that?" asked Pleskoff.
"A human ear," said Chiun, who had seen what they looked like in China where bandit kidnapers sent first a finger asking for ransom, and if the ransom was not paid, sent an ear signifying the captive's death.
"Whose?" asked Remo.
"Mine," said a boy who could not be over fourteen years old.
"Yours?" asked Remo.
"Yeah. I got it. Offen de subway. It mine." Remo looked at one side of the boy's head, then the other. Both his ears were there.
"Ah cuts de ears. Dey mine."
"Enough," yelled Remo, rage surging through him, and he struck dead center into the black face. But Sinanju was not a way of rage, but of perfection.
The hand went with the speed of a nerve transmission but the precision and the rhythm was jarred by the hate. The hand crushed the skull and dug into the warm wet unused brain, but in piercing the bone at such speed without the usual rhythm, a bone snapped and the return of the hand slowed and it came back with blood and pain.
"Enough," said Chiun. "You have misused Sinanju and now look. Look at the hand I trained. Look at the body I trained. Look at the angry furious wounded animal you have become. Like any other white man."
Hearing that, one of the young blacks yelled, out of reflex: "Right on."
Chiun, the Master of Sinanju, silenced this rude interruption of a private conversation. It looked as if the long delicate fingernails floated ever so slowly at the wide nose but when the yellow hand touched the black face, it was as if the head had met a baseball bat at full swing. He dropped and spattered like a fresh egg being cracked into a hot frying pan.
And Chiun spoke to Remo. "Take one of these boys and I will show you how futile and childish is your justice. Justice is beyond any man and but an illusion. Justice? Have you done justice by wasting awesome talents on these things, obviously of no use to anyone else and even less use to themselves? What justice? Come."
"The hand doesn't hurt," said Remo. He held his shoulder so that not even the resonance of his breathing should reach past his wrist into that most delicate area of explosive pain. He knew his lie was useless because he himself had been taught where a man pained. It was visible in the body trying to protect it and his shoulder was hunched over his right hand so that it hung vertical and still. Oh, still, please, still, thought Remo, who had believed he had forgotten pain like this.
"Pick one," said Chiun, and Remo pointed to a form in the darkness.
So it was here that they left with Tyrone Walker, sixteen, also known as Alik Al Shaboor, the Hammer, Sweet Tye, and three other names, none of which, Remo would find out later, Tyrone could spell the same way twice. Chiun and Remo also parted with Sergeant Pleskoff who, carried away with his zeal for ending violence on the streets, at 3:55 a.m. stopped a very tough-looking black man with a bullet head and shoulders like walls. He was accompanied in a gold Cadillac by four other blacks. The man made a sudden movement, and Sergeant Pleskoff unloaded his .38 Special into the head of a Teaneck orthodontist and the rest of the cars two accountants, a rustproofmg representative, and the deputy superintendent of the Weequahic Waterways Commission.
When Pleskoff heard about it on television the next day, he worried about being discovered. Ballistics might be checked, just like in Chicago. For shooting five innocent men in a car, a New York City police officer could be suspended for weeks. But these were black men. Pleskoff might lose his job entirely.
Tyrone left with the two white men. The yellow man was light enough to be white anyhow. Tyrone didn't know. He threatened to do harm to the two, so the white one with the hurt hand slapped him with the other.
Tyrone stopped threatening. They took him to a hotel room. Oh, that was the action these two queers wanted. Tyrone was not about to be raped.
"Fifty dollar," said Tyrone. Otherwise it would be male rape.
"The old man wants you and he doesn't want you for that," said the younger white man who had done the 'trocity on the Saxon Lords.
They asked Tyrone if he were hungry. He sure was. This big hotel was right off the park in Downtown. It was called the Plaza. It had big old fancy rooms. It had a real nice-looking eating room downstairs. Like a Colonel Sanders except people brought the food. It real good.
Alik Al Shaboor, ne Tyrone Walker, ordered a Pepsi and a Twinkie.
The white man ordered Tyrone a steak and vegetables. He ordered plain rice for himself. Why the white man order them things that Tyrone he doan want?
"Because sugar does you no good," said the white man.
Tyrone, he watch de yellow man run dem long funny fingers over the hurt finger ob de white man. It sure look funny but de white man, he just settle down and de finger, it hurt him no moah. Lahk magic.
The food came. Tyrone ate the bread and the crackers. The white man, he tell Tyrone to eat everyfin on de plate. Tyrone let de white man know what he can do wif de plate. De white man, he grab Tyrone's ear. It hurt, real bad it hurt. Ooooweee. It hurt.
Tyrone real hungry. Tyrone eat it all. But all. Including the white stringy, thing, that hard to cut.
In a stroke of reason, it dawned on Tyrone that if he rolled the white stringy thing into balls after cutting it into strips, he could swallow the white thing more easily.
"Don't eat the napkin, stupid," Remo said.
"Ah," said Chiun. "He does not know your Western ways. And that is part of my proof that you cannot do justice. Even if he had killed the old woman whom you did not know, but have taken such cause for, his death could not bring her back to her life."
"I can make sure the killer doesn't enjoy his."
"But is that justice?" asked Chiun. "I cannot do justice, but you Remo, many years away from even fifty years, you will do justice." He nodded to the youth. "I give you this as typical. Its name is Tyrone. Could you give this justice?"
Tyrone spat out the last strand of napkin. He sure wished the white man had told him not to eat it right off.
"You," said Chiun. "Talk about yourself, for we must know who you are."
&
nbsp; Since the two men could hurt him physically and they weren't teachers or cops who didn't mean anything to anyone, Tyrone answered.
"Ah wants to go find my great ancestor kings, kings of Africa, Muslim kings."
"You want to trace it back like Heritage?" asked Remo, referring to a popular book of invention, how a black supposedly had found the village of his ancestors. If a novel had had that many factual errors, it would have been questioned, even for fiction. This one sold as nonfiction, even though it had cotton being grown in America before it was a crop, it had slaves being brought directly to America instead of being shipped to the islands first as was the real manner, and most laughably, it had a black slave being shipped back to England for training, during a time when any such slave would have been freed under English law. It was now a textbook in colleges. Remo had read the book and admired the writer's persistence. He himself did not know his heritage, who had been left at an orphanage at birth.
This was one of the reasons that CURE had selected him as its enforcement arm. No one would miss him. And in truth, he had no one but Chiun. And yet in Chiun, he had everyone, his own heritage which now joined with Sinanju, stretched back over thousands of years. Remo didn't care whether Heritage was true or not. He wanted it to be true. What harm could it do anyone if the book were really nonsense? Maybe people needed it.
"Ah knows ah can find the great Muslim king whats my heritage if ah gets the most difficult part of it. Ah can do it. Ah sho can do it."
"What's the difficult part?" asked Remo.
"All de Saxon Lawds, we got that first hard part in going back a hundred years. A thousand years."
"What hard part?" Remo asked again.
"We can get back to the great Muslim kings of Africa, oncet we gets our fathers. Piggy, he got it closest of all. He know his father got to be one outta three men. He real close."
Chiun raised a finger. "You will use your mind, creature. And you will see before you an old white woman. There are two pictures you will see. One, she closes the door and walks away. The other, she lies dead at your feet. Still and dead. Now, which is a bad picture?"
"Closin' de door, dat be bad."
"Why?" said Chiun.
"Cause she gots her money. Other way, she be daid and ah gots her money."
"Is it not wrong to kill old people?" Chiun asked. He smiled.
"No. Dey de best. You gets de young men, and dey can kill you. Ole people, dey de best. No trouble, specially iffen dey white."
"Thank you," said Chiun. "And you, Remo, would kill this one and call it justice?"
"You're damned right," said Remo.
"This is not a person talking," said Chiun pointing to the young black man in the blue denim jacket with Saxon Lords on the back. "Justice is for persons. But this is not a person. Not even a bad person. A bad person would do what this one has done, but even a bad person would know it was wrong to do it. This thing has no idea that it is wrong to hurt the weak. You cannot do justice to something less than human. Justice is a human concept."
"I don't know," Remo said.
"He right," said Tyrone, sensing impending release. He had been through family court thirteen times and he knew freedom when he saw it.
"Would you kill a giraffe for eating a leaf?" asked Chiun.
"If I were a farmer, I'd sure as hell keep giraffes away from my trees. I'd probably shoot them," Remo said.
"Perhaps. But do not call it justice. Not justice. You cannot punish a leaf for reaching to the light and you cannot do justice to a pear that ripens and falls off a tree. Justice is done to men who have choices."
"I don't think this thing here should live," said Remo.
"And why not?" Chiun asked.
"Because he's a disaster waiting to happen."
"Perhaps," said Chiun, smiling. "But as I said, you are an assassin, the strong deadly arm of emperors. You are not the man who keeps the sewers flowing. That is not your job."
"No suh. You ain' de sewer man. De sewer man. De sewer man. No suh, you ain' de sewer man." Tyrone popped his fingers to his little jingle. His body bounced on the expensive gold and white chair.
Remo looked at the young man. There were many like him. What difference would one more make?
His right hand was numbed but he knew it had been set with more skill than any bone surgeon, and he knew it was healing with the speed of a baby's bone. When your body lived to its maximum, it used itself more efficiently. The hand would heal but would he anger again during work? He looked at his hand and at Tyrone.
"Do you understand what we're talking about?" Remo asked Tyrone.
"Ah doan unnerstan' all dat jive talk."
"Well, jive on this, pal. I think I ought to kill you in return for the crimes you've committed against the world, the worst of which was being born. I think that's justice. Now Chiun here thinks you should live because you're an animal, not a human, and justice has nothing to do with animals. What do you think?"
"Ah thinks ah better get outta heah."
"Hold that thought, Tyrone," Remo said. "You're going to stay alive for awhile, while I decide whether I'm right or Chiun's right."
"Take yo' time. No sense hurrying."
Remo nodded. "Now, some questions. If something was stolen from an apartment during a killing, where would it wind up?"
Tyrone hesitated.
"You're getting ready to lie, Tyrone," said Remo. "That's what people do, not animals. Lie and you're people. Be people, and you're dead, because I'll do justice on you. Understand?"
"Anything what gets stole, it goes to de Revin Wadson."
"What's D. Revin Wadson?" Remo asked.
"Not D. Revin," Tyrone said. "De revin."
"He means the reverend," Chiun said. "I have learned a great deal about this dialect in the last hour."
"Who is he?" asked Remo.
"He a preacher, a big mucky-muck wit housing and like dat."
"And he's a fence?"
"Evybody gots make a libbin'."
"Chiun, who should be responsible for him?" Remo asked. "Who's supposed to teach him that thieving and killing and rape and robbery are wrong?"
"Your society should. All civilized societies do that. They set standards that people should live up to."
"Like schools, parents, churches?" Remo asked.
Chiun nodded.
"You go to school, Tyrone?" Remo asked.
" 'Course ah goes to school."
"To read and things like that?"
"Ah doan read. Ah ain' gone be no brain surgeon. De brain surgeons, dey read. You watch dey lips in de subways. Dey readin' de get-outta-dem signs."
"You know anybody who reads without moving his lips?" Remo asked.
"Not at Malcolm-King-Lumumba High School. You wants some smartass honkey, dey reads up at Bronx High."
"There are other people in the world who read without moving their lips. In fact, most readers don't."
"De Tom blacks. Uncle Tom, Aun' Jemima, dey apin' de whites. Ah can count to a thousand, wanna hear me?"
"No," said Remo.
"One hundred, two hundred, three hundred, four…"
Remo thought about welding Tyrone's two lips together. Tyrone stopped counting to a thousand by hundreds. He saw the glint in Remo's eyes and he wasn't looking for pain.
When the phone rang in their suite upstairs, Remo answered. Chiun watched Tyrone for here was something new. A creature that looked human in form but had no humanity in its soul. He would have to study this one and pass on his wisdom to the next Masters of Sinanju so those Masters would have one less thing new to encounter. It was the new things that could destroy you. There was no greater advantage than familiarity.
"Smitty," said Remo. "I'm close to finding your gadget, I think."
"Good," came the acid voice. "But there's something bigger out there. One of our foreign operating agencies picked up something in Moscow communications. At first we thought Russia was ignorant of all this, and then we found out they were a bit too c
ute. They sent a man, A Colonel Speskaya."
"I don't know every spitting Russian ding dong," said Remo.
"Well, he's a colonel at age twenty-four and they just don't make people colonels at that age. If that's any help."
"I got enough with my job without keeping up with Russian administration," Remo said.
Chiun nodded sagely. The most American thing about Americans was that they tried to change everything, especially when it worked well enough already. Thus, seeing the beautiful handiwork of the Master of Sinanju in transforming Remo, they constantly tried to make Remo, the assassin, into something else. Not that the other things were unworthy. But anyone with enough effort could become a detective or a spy. It took special qualities to be an assassin. It was good to see Remo resisting the obscene blandishments of Smith. Chiun nodded at Remo, letting him know he was doing the right thing in resisting Smith's nonsense.
"They sent the colonel," Smith said, "and they did it beautifully. We thought they weren't interested in the Mueller device at all, but they were. But now, our intercepts tell us they found something better. Two instruments that are better and more important than the Mueller thing."
"So now I'm not just looking for the device that the Mueller family had, but I'm looking for a Colonel Speskaya and two new weapons he's got his hands on?"
"Yes. Precisely," said Smith.
"Smitty. This job isn't worth spit." Remo happily hung up the phone. When it rang again, he tore it out of the socket. When a bellboy came up to check the phone out of order, Remo gave him fifty dollars and told him to leave the suite of rooms alone. When the assistant manager came up and insisted a phone be reinstalled, Remo allowed as how life was hard and he wanted to get some sleep and if he were bothered again, he would install the phone in the assistant manager's face.
The suite was not bothered again that night. Remo locked Tyrone Walker in the bathroom. With some newspapers on the floor.
CHAPTER SIX
The Reverend Josiah Wadson let his booming voice resonate out over the auditorium in the Bronx. Outside long lines of moving vans were parked, their engines stilled, their carriers locked. They had distant license plates, from Delaware, Ohio, Minnesota, Wyoming, but each had fresh canvas signs: "Affirmative Housing II, Rev. J. Wadson, Executive Director."
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