Chiun tried to frown, but he was too excited. What he pulled from the sleeves of his kimono was an inch-thick stack of glossy travel brochures. His eyes sparkled with boyish glee. He felt inclined to share his enthusiasm as they retook their rooftop seats and continued their drive.
"The town of Pigeon Fudge is a veritable country music paradise."
"Who says?" Remo demanded.
"I do, after reading the words in this handbill."
"I wouldn't believe everything I read."
"Remo, it is as if they transformed an entire Southern town into a wonderful magic kingdom. Mollywood is only one corner of this city of delights-there are hundreds of attractions, each more exciting than the next."
"Chiun, you've already got a lifetime pass to Disney World, and when's the last time you used it?"
"Ah, but this is different, Remo. I have learned to love the heartfelt ballads of the South."
"Wylander Jugg's, anyway."
"Jugg. And my tastes are not so limited as you would believe. Look!"
Remo turned to face into the wind and found the bus coming up on the exit for Pigeon Fudge, Tennessee, where the sign promised Mollywood Is Just the Beginning of the Wonders You'll See.
Next to the sign was Molly Pardon herself, re-created as a forty-foot fiberglass automaton. Her upper torso moved from side to side, allowing the nylon ropes of hair to flop this way, then that. Some developer's marketing inspiration had resulted in the Molly-bot getting a genuine red flannel shirt, which was tucked into her disproportionately narrow waist and left entirely unbuttoned. Remo happened to glance over at the exact moment the giant robotic country music star tipped to one side in a strategically programmed manner that allowed her shirt to flap open and provide arriving vacationers a voyeuristic glimpse inside.
"Well, you sure wouldn't get to see nipples as big as beer kegs at the Magic Kingdom," Remo observed.
Chiun sniffed. "It is a cheap display. Perhaps Molly Pardon does not possess the same sincerity as the beauteous Wylander Jugg."
"Yeah, but Wylander doesn't have jugs nearly as bodacious as Molly Pardon."
"We can only hope this monstrosity does not represent what we will find throughout Pigeon Fudge." Remo didn't have time to answer when they merged from the exit ramp onto the thoroughfare that headed directly into the heart of town.
Chapter 22
Remo Williams had seen it all-or thought he had. The long years as the chief enforcement arm of CURE had exposed him to things too bizarre to be explained by science, too incredible to be chalked up to the supernatural. Now, with that wealth of experience under his belt, the Reigning Master of Sinanju was a tough guy to amaze.
But right at that minute he was pretty much stupefied. Even his mentor and trainer, the illustrious Chiun, with his decades of life experience and a breadth of wisdom handed down from all the past Masters, had never seen anything quite like Pigeon Fudge, Tennessee.
Remo observed, "Like it or not, I've heard every Wylander Jugg song that ever was, and not one of them is about dinosaurs."
"For once your feeble mind remembers truthfully. The soulful Wylander does not sing about dinosaurs," Chiun replied.
"Does Molly Pardon?"
"No. She has no dinosaur songs."
The bus stopped at a traffic light near a strip mall with a cigarette store, a pizza place and a purple velociraptor. "So how come that's the fourth dinosaur we've seen so far?"
The next block was dominated by a miniature golf center crowded with people who putted fluorescent orange and pink golf balls through a tropical rain forest. The trees and rocks were plastic. The robotic hippos, elephants and monkeys guffawed, trumpeted and screeched at the players. On the final hole they watched a young boy putt his ball into the hole, which brought an automatronic tyrannosaurus out from the plastic green ferns. The thunder lizard bent at the waist, made a roar like an air horn, stood erect again and slid back into the ferns.
There was a stegosaurus in an enclosed playground at the fast-food restaurant next door. Then came a candy shop with a triceratops holding a giant lollipop in its beaklike mouth.
"I thought this place was about country music," Remo said.
"I, too," Chiun replied. "And what sort of a dinosaur is that?"
Remo blinked and craned his neck at the eight-story pink monstrosity that loomed up out in front of a sprawling hotel. "Flamingosaurus, I guess."
From the beak of the flamingo dangled a twenty-foot sign made to look like driftwood with artificially fading white paint that read Jimmy Jack Jordan's Theater And Water Park.
"Hey, that's one of the guys you listen to," Remo said.
"Absolutely not," Chiun responded as the bus carried them past Jimmy Jack Jordan's complex of low-rise hotel wings with fake thatched roofs.
"Yeah, that one Wylander duet. 'Where the Bayou Meets the Gulf' or something like that."
"You are mistaken," Chiun announced. The water slides were painted brown to simulate logs, and the swimming pools were surrounded with aluminum palm trees.
"No way I'm wrong about this one, Chiun. Thanks to you I know that ugly croaker's repertoire backward and forward."
"And yet you are wrong," Chiun insisted.
Remo wasn't listening. "Holy crap-look at that!" It was a Paul Bunyan figure, complete with blue ox, standing knee-deep in a forest of trees. The entire construction was made of steel-reinforced concrete, and Paul himself was more than fifty feet high. Remo watched a glass elevator rise up and disappear into Paul's gigantic crotch. "It's a hotel."
"It is unsightly."
"Hey, Chiun, look at that! Wailing Mining's Paul Bunyan Resort and Showplace. You listen to Wailing Mining, don't you? Boy, all your favorites are here."
"Wailing Mining never performed with Wylander." Chiun was on the defensive.
"Yeah, he was on that special on pay-per-view-Wylander's Winter Wonderland or something:"
"I never heard of it."
"You tried to get me to watch the damn thing last December. You said it would snap me out of my Christmas depression."
"But you did not watch it-"
"I saw enough of it to get more depressed. And that's the guy who sang the chestnuts-roasting song with Wylander."
"Remo, you are speaking nonsense. You have never paid attention to the music I enjoy and you do not know what you're talking about."
"Hey, I'd be in denial, too, Little Father. This place is sleazier than Las Vegas."
"I am not in denial! The powers behind these monstrosities are not in the same league as the beauteous Wylander. This is trash!"
"White trash?" Remo clarified.
"Exactly!" Chiun exclaimed. "More precisely, American trash."
"Does it get any trashier than that?" Remo asked hypothetically, then answered his own question. "Oh. French trash."
Chiun nodded seriously. "Although that phrase is redundant."
It seemed as if every block contained a resort more extravagant and tasteless than the next. A rotating icecream sundae with picture windows turned out to be the revolving restaurant atop Clarabelle Escalande's Candy Castle and Performing Arts Center, Theatrical Home to the Reigning Queen of Country. All Our Rooms Are Sweets! exclaimed the signboard, which wasn't garish enough to compete with the oddly shaped mass of neon across the street.
The neon lit up one letter at a time until it had spelled the word "Arkansas." The billboard below it exhorted them to stay at the Arkansas Hotel, home to the million-selling band State of Arkansas. Experience All the Thrills of Arkansas-Right Here in Tennessee.
Between every resort were gift shops, T-shirt shops, candy shops, refreshment stands and fast-food restaurants. They all had some extravagant sculpture representing them. Purple elephants and flashing aliens. Even the local dive bar sported a human-sized neon bottle tilting to pour neon beer into a neon mug. When they couldn't think of anything better, they resorted to dinosaurs.
"This place is a joke. Or a nightmare," Remo commented. "I'm not exactly s
ure which."
"Molly Pardon's Magic Country Kingdom will be a welcome relief to this excess," Chiun remarked. "I am surprised that you are not enamored by it all, Remo. There are many bright colors."
"I get my fill from your wardrobe," Remo said. "Don't set your hopes too high for Mollywood, Little Father. Somehow I doubt her standards are head-and-boobs above the rest of this place. And I was hoping you'd give me a hand with the Caribbean king."
"You need help persecuting the freedom fighter?"
Remo sighed. "You know I'm on the right track this time."
"I know no such thing."
"You're full of it. You know the stuff is on board this bus. You know I'm the one who figured it out. Me. Remo the Pale Piece of Pigs Ear Piece of Crap Reigning Lazy Ass Master of Sinanju. But your friggin' ego is so friggin' huge because you're Chiun, Chiun the Wise, Chiun the Patient, Chiun the I'm Never Wrong and Remo Is Never Right."
"Are you through?"
"No, but you are. There's Molly Pardon and her high-class Magic freaking Country Kingdom. Go have a ball."
Chiun examined the distant spectacle of Molly, her inhuman upper-body proportions digitally recreated on a vast screen made from hundreds of lights.
Come On In, Y'All! the sign proclaimed, and several hundred cars were obeying her command, creeping at a snail's pace through the front entrance and into vast parking lots. In the distance they could see the ticket gates, towered over by a roller coaster with several loops, a water ride that tried to replicate a river in the Smoky Mountains and a single ravenous-looking dinosaur. "You are right," Chiun said. "Huh?"
"Mollywood. It looks to be as tacky and low-brow as the rest of this Pigeon Fudge place."
"Yeah."
Chiun sighed. "And you are right." This time Remo said nothing.
"I have detected the smell on this bus. The poison used on the people to make them into killers. It was not here before and now it is. I found it hard to believe."
"You didn't have faith in me."
"You were suffering from the arrogance that comes of being a newly appointed Reigning Master. Your pride tainted your judgment."
"Not enough to make me wrong."
"This is so."
"So?"
"So I will not hold your unseemly outburst against you."
"Thanks a whole lot."
Chiun nodded magnanimously. "You are welcome."
Chapter 23
Just because you were a biker didn't mean you were a bad guy. Some bikers repaired PCs or sold advertising for the local newspaper and restricted their biker activities to a few hours on a Friday night. Then there were the beer-drinkers and hell-raisers. The kind who got arrested every once in a while and maybe had a few turf wars and maybe sold a few drugs.
And then there were the serious hard-case bikers. The true one-percenters. They hated the world because, for whatever reason, the world hated them.
But there were some hard-ass bikers that even the one-percenter subculture thought were beneath its dignity. They called themselves the Smoking Hogs, but other gangs called them Mollyriders, or Hell's Pigeons, or Pigeon Fudge-Packers. From Louisville to Charlotte the Hogs were a laughingstock.
Donald Deemeyer had heard the laughter. It hurt your feelings to be laughed at like that, you know? Some of his gang actually moved away from Pigeon Fudge and tried to integrate into a more respected motorcycle social club. It never worked out. They always found out where you came from, and then you got laughed out of town-in fact, you got laughed all the way back to Pigeon Fudge, Tennessee.
And that kind of ridicule, year after year, it got to you, you know? If made you feel bad. Made you kind of bitter.
Donald Deemeyer found a useful outlet for that anger. It happened one night when the Smoking Hogs attended a biker festival at a roadside motel in the Smokies. It was an annual event, with motorcycle social clubs from all over the region.
The taunting started early this year. The new leader of the Raleigh Rampagers seemed to think the Smoking Hogs came just for his entertainment.
Donald Deemeyer finally got fed up and called the Raleigh Rampager leader a pussy. The Smoking Hogs jumped on their bikes and the Rampagers roared out after them, pursuing them on the twisting mountain roads. When the Rampagers closed in, the Hogs let them have it.
Eight quarts of motor oil.
The Rampagers slipped and slid and piled up on the mountain road. It was a mess, and a miracle that not one of them careened off the mountain. They were still trying to get back on their bikes when the Smoking Hogs reappeared.
"You Pigeon fuckers are dead! Dead!" the commanding Rampager shouted.
But he was incorrect. One too many times Donald Deemeyer had been ridiculed. He dumped the contents of a red plastic gasoline container at his feet. It trickled downhill, mixing with the oil. The other Smoking Hogs had gasoline cans, too. Donald Deemeyer lit a match and the Rampagers burned alive.
When the flames sputtered out, the Smoking Hogs returned to the biker party. It was curious how the raucous, drunken revel became deadly quiet.
"The Smoking Hogs and the Raleigh Rampagers have patched things up," Donald Deemeyer announced. "Haven't we, old buddy?" He dragged a fire-blackened corpse into the light of the bonfire.
"See? No more nasty comments about the Smoking Hogs!"
The bikers knew how to deal with a knifing or a brawl or a shooting, but this one had them stunned. "Does anybody else want to say anything about the Smoking Hogs?" Donald demanded.
Nobody did.
Needless to say, the party was over. And the Smoking Hogs were no longer welcome at regional biker gatherings. They were never charged with the mass murder of the Raleigh Rampagers, but the truth became known. The chief of police of the Town of Pigeon Fudge, Incorporated, let Donald Deemeyer know what he knew. He brought it up several times. He brought it up again that afternoon right about lunchtime.
"Yeah, so arrest me."
"I don't want to arrest you, D.D.," the chief said, ordering himself a beer from Belle, owner and proprietor of the Watering Whole. It was the closest thing Pigeon Fudge had to an honest-to-god biker bar, although the truth was it was way too clean and well-maintained for a biker bar. The place had ferns. It had old-fashioned advertisements for bars of soap framed on the walls.
It had a kids' menu, for God's sake.
"So what the hell do you want?" Deemeyer demanded. "I want you to do a favor for a friend of a friend," the chief of police said.
"A favor."
"Yeah."
"Something illegal, I assume?"
"I don't know and I don't want to know. But I know you'll get paid for the job."
"You're trying to set me up, pig," Deemeyer growled. He tried to sound gruff but, to his humiliation, the wait staff had gathered around a nearby table, presenting the diners with a cupcake stuck with a burning sparkler.
The waiters and waitresses began clapping and singing. "Hap! Hap! Hap! Hap! Happy happy birthday! We! Hope! You! Have-A! Happy happy birthday!"
Everybody applauded the birthday girl. Even the chief clapped. Deemeyer was horrified to glimpse a few of his own Smoking Hogs in a back booth clapping, too.
Deemeyer tried to ignore it all and took a chug from his too-clean beer mug.
"I give you my word this ain't no setup, D.D.," the Chief added.
"Don't call me D.D. Makes me sound like a damn cheerleader."
"Watch your mouth!" snapped the owner as she strolled by with a tray full of her namesake Belle Burgers. "That ain't the kind of talk we tolerate in a family place. This is your last warning, Deemeyer. I hear you cussin' in my place one more time, and you're outta here. Got it?" Deemeyer glared into the beer.
"You wanna go back to drinkin' your beers at the Applebees?"
"I got it!" Deemeyer snapped.
"Don't you take that tone with me, biker boy. I know your momma!"
Belle stalked off. The chief was chuckling. "Life just ain't fair to a hard-ass like yerself sometimes, is
it, D.D.?"
"Got that right."
"I think you need a little hell-raising. Get back to your roots."
"I don't need to get back to my roots."
"Then do it for the boys." The chief nodded at a back booth where several of the Smoking Hogs were using complimentary crayons on the placemats Belle had printed up for her twelve-and-under patrons. Cocker was coloring an elephant bright orange, his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth. Could that actually be the same Jake "Shit-Kicker" Cocker who had run his bike over the smoking skull of a North Carolina biker just to see the steaming brain porridge squirt out? Damn, those were the good old days.
"Okay." Deemeyer sighed. "I'll do it."
Even if the chief was setting them up, Deemeyer thought, some quality jail time could do the Smoking Hogs nothing but good.
Chapter 24
"It's a little something for your trouble," said the nervous woman in the ugly orange dress jacket.
"The agreement was for cash," Deemeyer said testily.
"Oh, yes, that is correct. The beer is just a, you know, a bonus." The woman laughed like a coyote. Deemeyer wanted to clap his hands over his ears. Better yet, over her ears. He forgot about that when she pulled out the envelope.
"Here you go."
Deemeyer snatched it, ripped it open and counted the contents.
"And here are your instructions." Timidly, the woman placed a small boom box on the floor of the garage.
"What the hell?"
"They're on the tape," she explained nervously. "Please listen to the entire first side."
Deemeyer shrugged. "Whatever."
The nervous woman practically ran to her little rental car and tore off.
"Man, this is weird," Blackeye Bierce complained.
"The cash is real," Deemeyer said, examining the bills. He counted off fifteen Smoking Hogs. Then he recounted the $4,500 in cash. That came out to, how much again? Was it two hundred each? No, wait...
"The beer's real, too," said Jake Cocker, downing most of his plastic cup in a few swallows.
They gathered around the kegger and listened to the tape. It was a man's voice, and he took a long time to come to the point. First he described in detail the tour bus that was on its way to them. They were not to enter the bus. No one inside the bus was to be harmed. The voice then described two men who would be riding atop the bus. "Did he say on top of the bus?" Cocker belched.
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