"Do you expect us to steal from a benefit? That's low. "
"That and other things. Your man's job, as I outlined it to him, is to use the concert as a platform to get the case transferred to an American court, where you can clean up on human lives."
"Wonderful," said Schwartz. "I don't know how to thank you. I guess you have good reasons to keep us solvent. "
"Not in the least," said Dastrow.
"But why have you ohly worked for us?"
"That is the secret of making things work. What works, works."
"And so you would see a danger in working for someone else, because there would be something new involved. Right? I thought so," said Schwartz.
"Not quite right. I don't have to work for anyone anymore. I have everything I need."
"Then why are you doing all this?"
"Because I want to find out how something works."
"I can't imagine anything you don't understand."
"Neither can I," came the twangy voice with the sunshine bounce. "That's why I'm so delighted to discover this mystery. And by the way, I'm going to save you to boot. It's good to have a challenge again."
"The new force you were talking about?"
"Yes. "
"Are you going to do away with it?"
"Of course. That's why we're having the big benefit in America. That's why I told Rizzuto to be there, to use it. I'm not doing this for you, Mr. Schwartz. I never have. I need that benefit concert as much as you do."
It was called Save Humanity. Fifty rock stars joined together on one album and in one concert, which was to take place simultaneously in five cities around the globe. They were going to save humanity by saving the people of Gupta, who had been ravaged by modern technology.
The theme song was "Save," and the singers simply intoned the word over and over again. It went to number one on the pop charts the day it was released. Rock songs usually were inane, but this one was totally meaningless.
Many columnists were calling the Save Humanity effort the most meaningful movement in history. For once, Remo and Chiun agreed.
"What does it mean?" they both asked.
Debbie Pattie had introduced them to her hangers-on as friends. When Debbie moved, she moved in caravans. She dressed like a beggar and moved like a king. She had five bodyguards, each of whom had attempted to keep Remo and Chiun at a distance. Now she had five hospital bills. No one had seen exactly how her bodyguards had received so many broken bones, but her accountant, who said he saw the whole thing, could have sworn that one of them tried to guide the old Oriental away from a doorway and the next thing anyone knew, he was on the floor screaming and they were calling for ambulances.
Remo and Chiun had taken over Debbie's guard duties. Remo had also offered to do the same for a good-looking lawyer named Genara Rizzuto. He had been very friendly with Rizzuto, offering to help secure him a telephone whenever he wanted to phone his home office, wanting to know everything about him. He had made sure Rizzuto had gotten a room on the same floor that Debbie had rented in the Ritz Hotel of Chicago where the main concert was to be held.
Debbie had complained about this, since she liked to have a floor to herself, but she said she always had trouble denying anything to Remo. She usually said this while slumped in a chair with her legs spread. Remo would have thought this was a sexual offer except she always slumped in a chair with her legs spread, even as she was doing now, explaining the popularity of the song "Save."
"What does it mean?" she repeated. "It means everything. It means who we are and what we are."
"I don't understand," said Remo. The door to her suite was open, and he could see Rizzuto's door. Rizzuto had gone in there supposedly for an afternoon nap, along with four men and three decks of cards. The big benefit concert was to be that evening, and he was supposed to appear in it for some reason. How he had insinuated himself into a bunch of rock stars, Remo did not know. But it was worth finding out. He did not have anything on the trio of shysters in California, but this had to be the closest thing to a slipup they were going to make.
"We have to save ourselves, or who else will do it?" asked Debbie. "Right?"
"How?"
"By raising more money in one night than was ever raised before. Raising it for goodness instead of evil. Do you know that one fighter plane costs twenty million dollars? If that money were used for good instead of evil, think how nice the world would be." When Debbie Pattie was at her most earnest, a large part of her Brooklyn accent disappeared. The transformation was remarkable.
"I think Remo is asking how this money will do good," said Chiun.
"It's going to the people who need it instead of the people who already have it," said Debbie. She was repeating what she had heard. And she was annoyed that someone would dare bother her with such stupid questions. After all, if reporters never asked them what was going to happen to the money, why should friends like Remo and Chiun?
"Are they going to hand them dollar bills or what?"
"No, dammit. It's for a charity, you know. Like charity. Who knows what happens when you give for any charity? It does good, right? Better than paying taxes," said Debbie. She was sure that would get a positive response. All the reporters always laughed when she said that, and many said it showed she had a deep understanding of politics which she hid behind her simple songs.
"No," said Remo.
"Whadya mean, 'no'? No one says no. You don't say no, just no, like that," said Debbie. She was snarling.
"I'm saying no. Taxes are good. They pay to defend your country, keep your roads up, feed your people, support your allies. They're good. Who's getting the money from Save Humanity?"
"Humanity, asshole," yelled Debbie. "Tell him who humanity is. It's all of us. It's every one of us regardless of race, creed, or national origin. It's the babies and the mothers. It's the fathers and the brothers, it's you, man, and it's me, man."
"Anytime you want to really answer my question, feel free," said Remo.
"Tell him. You tell him," Debbie said to Chiun. Chiun was busy pondering the selection of robes he might wear. Though he was not allowed onstage, Debbie had assured him he could stand in the wings.
"Listen to her, she makes sense," said Chiun, imagining how the pure black kimono would look with a single silver lotus blossom. He wondered if it would clash with the costumes of the rock stars. And then he gave up, realizing that everything clashed with what rock stars wore.
In Korean, Remo told Chiun he was not going to humor her like Chiun preferred to do.
And in Korean Chiun answered: "He who reasons with fools dresses in warm aspic."
"I stand for things, little father."
"The wrong things, Remo. Be nice to the girl. Then we can get on with this idiotic degradation of assassins' calling, this occupation termed detective work. "
Remo glanced back at Rizzuto's door. He could hear laughter in the room. He could also hear Rizzuto curse. The big concert was only a few hours away. He had to find out what Rizzuto's plans were for the concert before then. Why, he was not sure. But he was fairly certain that if he knew what Rizzuto was going to pull, he could be there to make sure some evidence for a court case could be unearthed.
Remo found the door to Rizzuto's room locked. With a careful pressure of the handle against the lock, he cracked the lock. Unfortunately he cracked it too hard. It shattered with the force of a grenade. The door flew open and three men ducked behind couches grabbing for shoulder holsters. The only one who didn't have a pistol was Rizzuto. He was playing cards for big stakes with three strangers who carried guns.
The piles of bills were naturally not in front of him, and his checkbook was open with a leaking fountain pen beside it. Remo thought it looked like it was bleeding.
Remo shut what was left of the door behind him. "Hi, it was open, so I thought I'd just pop in."
"Who're you?"
"Friend of Rizzuto's."
"We're leavin'," said one of the men. "He can't bring in
some backup."
"Get out of here, Remo. I gotta recover. They can't leave."
"Don't worry, they're not leaving," said Remo.
"We're leavin'," said the one who did not put his gun away.
"Well then, if you must, but don't take any money with you."
"We're leavin' with our dough, sweetheart," said the man with the gun.
"Because you have a gun?"
"Because we won it and yeah, because we got guns. "
"Genaro, do you always play with strangers who have guns?"
"I didn't know they had guns until you crashed in," said Rizzuto.
Remo caught the thug's attention with a smile, which was enough distraction for him to slap the gun free. He also got the other guns as they reappeared from their holsters and put them in the middle of the table. Then he said they could all leave with their guns and money but he wanted to play a few hands of poker.
The three men looked at each other, stunned. They hadn't seen the hand that had disarmed them. They had moved for their guns, held out their guns, and then found them missing.
One of them couldn't believe it. He lunged for his gun in the middle of the table. Something sharp like barbed wire brushed the back of his palm, causing incredible pain. And yet there was no bleeding. There was just the stranger who had burst through the door, who had taken the guns so quickly they didn't see his hand move. And he was smiling. The gambler cradled the throbbing hand that the stranger had barely touched.
"I think we're going to play some cards," said Remo.
"I didn't know you gambled," said Rizzuto. If he had known that, he wouldn't have ignored the man all this time since Gupta, the man with too many questions Genaro Rizzuto did not want to answer.
"All the time," said Remo.
"What do you like to play? Stud? Five-card draw? What?"
"Poker," said Remo.
"They're all poker," said Rizzuto.
"The one with full houses and flushes," said Remo.
"They all have that. How much poker have you played?"
"Enough," said Remo. Actually he hadn't played cards for years. When he was a policeman, before he went through the phony execution to make him the man who didn't exist, before his training and new life with Chiun, he had played, for pennies and nickels, poker that had so many different wild cards and payoffs that the big hands wouldn't end in winners and losers but in heated arguments over the rules.
These men played a hard tight game for big money. They would never play a game with so many cards wild that there could be three straight flushes in one hand, the highest grouping of cards. And the only gambling game Chiun had taught him wasn't really a gambling game, but a Korean mental exercise originated by the Masters of Sinanju called Ka, or game of stones, from which the far cruder Japanese game of Go emerged.
"Sure I can play poker. Let's play the kind where you get five cards and nothing is wild."
"Five-card draw," said Rizzuto. The gamblers returned to the tables, exchanging quick glances. What the glances said was that they were soon going to win back their guns and anything else that was on the table from this lunatic who broke doors and moved so quickly no one saw him.
Before they began Remo had one question. "Among the four suits, the highest suit is spades, right?"
They all nodded.
"You sure you know poker?" asked Rizzuto.
"Sure," said Remo. "Just one more question. Spades is black, right? But so is clubs. Clubs is the one with the bumps, not smooth rounded like spades. Spades are more heart-shaped. Right?"
"Right," said everyone.
"No limit with a C-note ante," said one of the gamblers.
"That's a hundred dollars," said Remo.
"Right," said everyone.
One of the reasons Remo lost his liking of money was that upstairs supplied all his needs, and there was no reason for him to accumulate anything. He moved around so much it was silly to buy a home. He never cared about cars, so the walking-around cash upstairs gave him tended to stay in his pocket for a long time.
He had twenty hundred-dollar bills almost as fresh as the day they were issued to him years ago. He put one into the middle of the table. Everyone else tossed in money, except Rizzuto, who put down an IOU, asking Remo if it were all right.
"These guys are my friends. They take my IOU's," said Rizzuto. As soon as one of the men began to deal, Remo could tell why they were so generous.
Someone else might simply have seen cards being shuffled, but Remo clearly saw each individual card, and he saw the aces move up the deck like a ladder with exactly three rungs-the other cards-between each ace.
Remo smiled and folded on the first hand. Rizzuto bet heavily. He had kings. He lost.
When it came time for Remo's turn to deal, the hard part was reminding himself what were second-, third-, and fourth-highest hands.
He spread the cards out faceup in one sweep of his hand to see where each was, and then quickly collected the deck. With one hand moving several cards so rapidly it looked like shuffling, he moved the other hand, careful not to use so much speed that he burned the cards from friction; feeling the weight of each, the balance of each, the very power of the stability of the roam, he got the cards in order, careful to give each man the right hand.
There was the formality of the cut, whereby one of the players, to avoid cheating and assure honesty, took half the deck from the top and put it on the bottom. As Remo picked up the deck to deal, he simply reversed the weighting of the cards, so that the deck went back to the way he arranged it. All three of the gamblers watched him closely. None of them saw him work the deck.
Strangely, none of them bet heavily. Only Rizzuto, who had the winning hand.
Rizzuto cursed his luck that the first time he got spades straight flush, no one else had anything to bet into him. And then Remo gave them all a little demonstration. He made them turn up their cards, something players never had to do, but encouraged to be honest by the promise of getting their wrists snapped if they didn't go along, they all complied.
When Rizzuto saw that one had a straight flush in clubs, one in hearts, and the third in diamonds, he realized something was wrong.
"They were waiting until they dealt so that they could be sure of winning. Genaro," said Remo, "these guys have been robbing you. They're con men. They're thieves. You haven't been gambling. You've been taken."
"They were the only action around," said Genaro.
"What action? It's losing," said Remo.
The three gamblers began easing their way away from the table, trying to get in position to make a lunge for the door.
"You forgot something," said Remo. "His money." Quickly the gamblers pulled out wads of bills and laid them on the table along with a blizzard of white IOU's. Rizzuto collected them all.
"One more thing," said Remo. "Your money. The money he didn't have a chance to win. C'mon. It's a friendly game."
"Friendly, how? That's robbing," said one gambler.
"It's friendly because I'm not pulling your spinal cord out through your mouth," said Remo. "That's friendly, don't you think, Genaro?"
"I'd say so," said Rizzuto.
With a good two hours until showtime, Genaro suggested that since they were alone and still had a deck of cards, they play a little stud.
"You just saw how I fixed the damned deck," said Remo. "Do you really think you have a chance to win?"
"You wouldn't cheat me."
"Of course I would. Look, buddy. I may be the only friend you have across a table."
"Why are you doing this? Friends don't come across gambling tables."
"Because I see someone who wants to help. You're not just another shyster ambulance chaser. You're someone who cares. You wouldn't be joining this Save Humanity spectacular if you weren't."
"Two hands," said Genaro.
"I want to talk about saving people."
"I'll deal and then we know it will be fair. I never cheat. "
"How did you h
ear about the Gupta disaster so quickly? And how did you know what was wrong so quickly?"
"Blackjack. One hand of blackjack. You can deal. The odds are with you. What's a hand of blackjack?" asked Rizzuto. His dark eyes were begging. "Ten seconds. Then I'll tell you. Anything you want to know. My love life. The inner workings of Palmer, Rizzuto You name it. One simple hand. Do you know how to play blackjack? You deal one card down to me, one card down to you. Then I bet. I call for another card. Two simple cards. I keep calling for cards to get as close to twenty-one as possible. If I go over, that's it. I lose. What's the most cards you can possibly deal, seven, right? Seven cards, and then I tell you anything you want to know. "
Rizzuto shot out the words like a machine gun and was shoving the cards into Remo's hands.
Remo dealt out a hand of blackjack, not expecting all that was promised. Rizzuto lost.
"Okay, I just want to know what you attribute your success at your firm to. You're probably the most successful negligence lawyers in the country. The reason I ask is I have an aunt who's really . . . "
"What're you doing with the cards?" asked Genaro, as horrified as if Remo had just thrown a baby out of a window.
"We played a hand. Now we talk," said Remo.
"What hand?" said Genaro with such vehemence that his gold jewelry tinkled on his dark hairy chest. "You don't play a hand of blackjack. You play a deck. How can I have a chance to win if I don't see what cards come up?"
"You said a hand. You didn't say a deck."
"I didn't say a deck," said Rizzuto, imitating Remo. "What's the big problem? Deal. We'll talk as you deal. "
"You seem to have the best technical assistance in the business," said Remo as he dealt another hand. "I mean you really know what causes accidents. How do you know so quickly and so well? Is it you? Is it Schwartz? Is it Palmer?"
"Hit me," said Rizzuto, signaling for another card. Remo would have loved to. He could have gotten everything he needed in thirty seconds by simply taking one ankle of one negligence lawyer and hanging the party of the first part out of the hotel window by the ankle of said party of the first part, until in maximum fear, party of the first part would divulge to Remo, the party of the second part, exactly how his law firm was raping America, immobilizing industries, and generally turning the protection of the law into an unbearable burden for the people.
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