"I didn't hear him say yes," said Dastrow.
"He's emotional, but he'll get over it. He's still attached to the one he works for. You must know how we work by now."
Dastrow said he did. He gave them directions to his Grand Island laboratory. Actually, he did not know for certain how they worked. After he had made the deal with Chiun, he had picked up the return of Remo and Remo going into the shower. He was so shocked at Remo's survival that he thought he'd fouled up his bugging of their hotel room because he stopped hearing anything. But when the sound resumed as they left the room, Dastrow realized that physically they did what countries might do electronically. One of them, probably the Oriental, had sent out countering sound waves so that their voices could not be heard by electronic ears.
He was sure this was so because the first readout of their reactions showed they could by extension have just such powers.
Dastrow made himself another peach milkshake, and when he saw the two assassins arrive he buzzed them into his underground laboratory:
"Greetings, Master of Sinanju and pupil," said Dastrow. "I guess this just about makes me the most powerful man in this country."
He held out a hand, and promptly Remo caressed it into jelly.
Dastrow screamed. It was worse than the bullies back in high school.
"You lied. But Sinanju never lies. There are no records in four thousand, five hundred years," wailed Dastrow.
"We lie all the time, jerk," said Remo. "What do you think? We go around killing people and then recoil at a fib?"
"We don't lie," said the Oriental. "This was a tactic used by a Master We during the later middle kingdom of the Tang Dynasty. It is not a lie."
"We lied to him, little father. We lied through our teeth."
"What about your reputation? What will happen to your reputation?" sobbed Dastrow. His right hand felt as though it were melting. He would do anything to stop the pain.
"It'll be fine. We kill anyone who badmouths us. Reputation is great. You didn't find anything in almost five thousand years. That means no one lived to tell about the double crosses, the sneaky deals, the two-faced lies we've told."
"He lies," said Chiun. "He just likes to embarrass me. This is not lying. It is a legitimate strategy in defense of an embattled employer, turning down even more money than we were paid. And so it will be recorded that despite blandishments of all kinds and threats of death, the House of Sinanju stood by a poor and beleagured client, because Sinanju kept its word. "
"See what I mean?" said Remo. "Nobody else is going to be alive to know different. Actually, Chiun will turn on our organization the minute he knows he can pry me away. He got paid to train me, and he doesn't want to leave me."
"I want to get something back," said Chiun. "For all the years of ingratitude, I deserve something."
"Excuse me," sobbed Dastrow. "But I am in excruciating pain."
"I can end that, but I've come for something. I need evidence against that shyster law firm Palmer, Rizzuto "
"I'll give you evidence. I'll give you money. I'll give you a cyclotron. I'll give you anything. Please stop the pain! I know you two have control over bodies," said Dastrow. He fell to his knees and turned his head away from the throbbing hand. Just as he had figured, Remo could make the pain stop. If the two had control over their own nervous systems, they had to know where all the pressure points were. With enormous relief, numbness came at the end of his wrist. He did not look at what was left of the hand but let it hang by his side.
"Now where were we?"
"I was about to do it to your other hand," said Remo.
"Evidence. Evidence," sang Dastrow. "Glad you asked for evidence. I accumulated enough evidence to put those three away forever, or have them gassed in California, electrocuted in New York State, and garroted in Zaragoza, Spain."
"Gas would be fine," said Remo.
"Gassing is never a good death," said Chiun.
"But they are a California firm."
"Gassing lacks a sense of drama. Beheading has a good drama to it, but it messes the body," said Chiun.
"Well, all we have is gassing and electrocution," said Remo. "Oh, or death by poison injection now, in some places."
"The Greeks used poison. Hemlock has a nice ring . . ." said Chiun. "But use gas if you must."
"He's working on the histories. All of this stuff goes in. We'll take gas."
"Gas it is," sang out Dastrow, still avoiding even a glance at what he knew was no longer a hand. When the printout arrived, spit like a long white tongue from one of the machines against the wall, Remo went over to read the evidence. He had forgotten much about what constituted evidence in court since his early days as a policeman, before Sinanju. But this read like a half-dozen airtight cases. Naturally Dastrow knew how the courts worked.
"Okay, look. I'm painless when I choose to be," said Remo.
"Is there any deal we can make? For my life I'm willing to pay twice what I offered for your services."
"Sinanju is known for mercy, if nothing else," said Chiun.
"No," said Remo. "You gotta pay for Debbie Pattie. You gotta pay for those poor people in the airplanes. You gotta pay for the people of Gupta."
"I'm willing to. In cash. In gold. In machines."
"No good in this market," said Remo.
"My lunatic son," moaned Chiun. "Into these crazy hands have I entrusted Sinanju."
Dastrow did not even see the stroke. He was waiting for one more response when suddenly all the waiting ended forever. He didn't see the darkness. He didn't even know there was darkness. He knew nothing, least of all how anything worked, except one last faint thought gone in an instant. And that thought was that the universe always exacted payment for crimes against it.
Nathan Palmer, Genaro Rizzuto, and Arnold Schwartz were all sentenced to death for conspiring to murder and for being accessories before and after the fact. In the courtroom each turned on the other with a ferocity rarely seen in the annals of jurisprudence. At first the prosecuting attorneys were afraid that these powerful lawyers from the all-powerful Palmer, Rizzuto might escape. But individually none of them could present a powerful case. Palmer had the overall strategy but could not quite get the law together to defend himself. Schwartz knew the tactics of law but came across to the jury as a man not to be trusted. And Genaro Rizzuto gave one of the most touching and heartrending summations ever heard in the courtroom. Unfortunately it had nothing to do with his case.
As the old saying went, a lawyer who represented himself had a fool for a client. On appeal, however, with new attorneys, the three managed to get their sentences commuted to life imprisonment. And then a strange thing happened. Somehow someone, reportedly a thin man with thick wrists, broke into their prison cells and released all three of the defendants. At first it looked like an escape, but it seemed this man brought them all to a little grove outside of Palo Alto where the families of some of the victims of the disasters had gathered, and there with heavy stones they together ended forever the most successful negligence firm in America.
At Folcroft, Harold W. Smith saw the overview of lawsuits in America. Remo had been only partly successful. He slowed them down for a few weeks. The trend had not been reversed.
In Gupta, Debbie Fattie's memory would outlast any statue or Hindu god. Before she died, she had donated a percentage of her income to the people of that city, specifically monies derived from the sale of her final record, the one she had died singing. "Help, I'm Being Electrocuted" sold more single records than any other song ever released in America. The video of her execution did not do quite as well. Viewers said that compared with other rock videos, it was too tame.
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