Chinese Puzzle td-3

by Warren Murphy

  Sweet Shiv turned right on 14th Street, then made a U turn in the middle of the block, got back on the East Side Highway and headed north.

  He had $800 in his pocket. He would not stop at his home to pick up his cash, he would not even bother to seal his car when he reached Rochester. He would leave nothing by which anyone could trace him.

  Let them have the money. Let some stranger take the car. Let them have everything. He was going to live.

  "Baby," he said to himself, "they really had you going."

  He felt somewhat happy that he was going to live another day. He felt this way until just before the Major Deegan Highway leading to the New York Thruway and upstate. A black family was sitting by their stalled 1957 Chevrolet, a paint-worn, chipped, banged-up leftover of a car which had apparently surrendered its ghost for the last time. But Jackson figured he could make it run again.

  He pulled it over, the wide soft wheels with their magnificent springs and shocks, taking the curb like a twig. He stopped on the grass which rose to a fence which separated the Bronx from the Major Deegan a few miles south of Yankee Stadium, the Black and Puerto Rican Bronx with dying buildings teeming with life.

  He opened the door and got out into the stale smelling air and looked at the family. Four youngsters had been playing with a can, four youngsters in clothes so casual they looked as if they had been rejected by the Salvation Army. These four youngsters, one of whom might have been Sweet Shiv Jackson 15 years before, stopped playing to look at him.

  The father sat by the front left fender, his back to the flat bald tire, his face cemented in resignation. A woman, old as flesh and weary as millstones, snored in the front seat.

  "How you doin', brother?"

  "Fine," said the man looking up. "You got a tire that will fit?"

  "I got a whole car that will fit."

  "Who I got to kill?"

  "Nobody."

  "Sounds fine, but...."

  "But what?"

  "But I wouldn't make it to your wheels, man. You got company."

  Sweet Shiv, maintaining his cool, slowly scanned behind him. A simple black sedan had pulled up behind his Fleetwood. From the near window, a black face stared at him. It was the dude, the man on the ferry, the man who had given him the numbers and the methods, and the orders.

  Jackson's stomach dissolved into strings. His arms hung leaden as though enervated by electricity.

  The man stared directly into his eyes and shook his head. All Bernoy (Sweet Shiv) Jackson could do was nod. "Yowsah," he said, and the man in the car smiled.

  Jackson turned to the man on the grass and carefully peeled from a roll of bills in his pocket all but $20.

  The man eyed him suspiciously.

  "Take it," said Jackson.

  The man did not move.

  "You got more smarts than I got, brother. Take it. I won't need it. I'm a dead man."

  Still no movement.

  So Sweet Shiv Jackson dropped the money in the front seat of the remnant of a 1957 Chevrolet and returned to his Fleetwood which still had one payment on it outstanding. The life of Bernoy (Sweet Shiv) Jackson.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Remo Williams spotted the man with the .357 Magnum first. Then the man with the very big bulge in his Oscar de la Renta suit spotted Remo. Then the man smiled weakly.

  Remo smiled too.

  The man stood before the Bong Rhee karate school, a walk-up entrance with a painted sign telling people to walk up one flight and that when they traversed the stairs they would be in one of the leading schools of self defence in the Western Hemisphere.

  Remo said, "What's your name?"

  "Bernoy Jackson."

  "How do you want to die, Bernoy?"

  "No way, man," said Bernoy honestly.

  "Then tell me who sent you."

  Bernoy recounted the story. His black boss. The numbers that hit. Then standing on the corner near where three men were killed. And the information.

  "That corner. That's where I saw you."

  "That's right," Remo said. "I probably should kill you now."

  Sweet Shiv went for the gun. Remo snapped out his knuckles into the man's wrist. Jackson grimaced in pain and clutched his wrist. His pain brought sweat to his large forehead. "All I gotta say, man, is you a bunch of mean bastards. You the meanest, toughest bastards on this planet ever."

  "I hope so," Remo said. "Now beat it."

  Sweet Shiv turned and walked away and Remo watched him go, quietly sympathizing with the man who was obviously a CURE agent and did not know it. Remo had been framed. Bernoy Jackson had been bought. But they were brothers under the skin somehow, and so Jackson lived.

  What hurt was that Remo had been marked for death. And now he could trust no one. But why had they sent that Jackson? CURE must be compromised beyond saving. Then why go through with the search for Liu? What else was there to do?

  Remo went into the door of the karate school. He felt Chiun follow him up the creaky wood steps in the narrow stairway, boxed in by grease-coated, dust-catching green paint. A light bulb at the top of the stairs illuminated a red painted arrow. The paint was fresh. Mei Soong followed Chiun.

  "Oh, how wonderful it is to work with you, Remo," Chiun said.

  "Drop dead."

  "Not only are you a detective and secretary of state but now you are becoming socially aware. Why did you let that man walk away?"

  "Swallow your spit."

  "He recognized you. And you let him go."

  "Suck cyanide."

  Remo paused at the top of the stairs, Chiun and Mei Soong waiting behind him.

  "Are you contemplating the stairwell or a new cause of social justice?" Chiun's face was serene.

  It would be Chiun. Remo had always known it, but did not want to believe it. Who else could do it? Not that Jackson. Yet Chiun had not terminated him.

  That Chiun had not been able to was out of the question. The thought momentarily arose in Remo's mind that Chiun might have refrained because of affection for Remo. The thought was as fleeting as it was absurd. If Remo had to go, Chiun would do it. Just another job.

  Then it was the message that had failed. It had not reached Chiun. Remo thought of the phone call to Smith, and his insistence that Remo tell Chiun to return to Folcroft. Of course that was the signal, and Remo had not transmitted it.

  The course for Remo now was clear. Just throw a shot to the frail yellow throat in the hallway, now while they were pressed together. Stun him. Kill him. And then run. And keep running.

  That was his only hope.

  Chiun looked up at him quizzically.

  "Well," he said, "are we to reside here forever to become an element of the scenery?"

  "No," said Remo with heaviness in his voice. "We're going inside.

  "You will find it a most attractive and rewarding experience to witness the martial arts," Mei Soong said.

  Chiun smiled. Mei Soong pushed past them and opened the door. Chiun and Remo followed, into the large low-ceilinged white room with sunlight coming in over the backs of large pictures in the front windows of what had once been a loft. Off to the right were the usual paraphernalia of karate schools, sandbags, and roofing tiles, and a large box filled with beans, used for toughening the fingertips.

  Mei Soong confidently walked over to a small glass-windowed office with a bare desk upon which sat a young Oriental man in white floppy karate suit tied with a red belt. His head was shaven almost clean, his features smooth, his expression calm with the kind of calmness that comes with years of training and years of discipline.

  Chiun whispered to Remo: "He is very good. One of only eight true red belts. A very young man in his early 40's."

  "He looks 20."

  "He is very, very good. And would give you an interesting exercise, if you chose to allow it to be interesting. His father, however, would give you more than an interesting exercise."

  "Danger?"

  "You are an insulting young man. How dare you think that som
eone I trained these many years would be in danger of such a red belt? What insulting stupidity. I have given you years of my life and you dare to say that." Chiun's voice lowered slightly. "You are a very stupid man and also forgetful. You fail to remember that anyone taught pure attack can defeat karate, even a man in a wheelchair. Karate is an art. A minimal art. Its weakness is that it is a killing art only at time, a small slice of the circle. We approach the circle. They do not."

  Remo watched Mei Soong, her back to him. The Oriental in the red belt listened closely. Then he looked up, seeing Remo but concentrating on Chiun. He left his office, still peering at Chiun and when he was five feet away, his mouth opened and blood appeared to drain from his face.

  "No," he said. "No."

  "I see, Mr. Kyoto, that you have earned young your red belt. Your father must be very proud. Your family has always loved dancing. I am honoured to be in your presence and extend utmost cordialities to your honourable father." Chiun bowed slightly.

  Kyoto did not move. Then, recollecting his functions, he bowed extremely deeply in a smooth graceful motion, then backed away quickly until he bumped into Mei Soong.

  From the wall farthest from the window, where a sign read dressing room, a file of men emerged through a door, seven black men in phalanx, all wearing black belts. They moved with grace and silence, their white karate uniforms blurring against each other, creating a mass which made definition more difficult.

  "Go back, go back," yelled Kyoto. But they kept coming until they had surrounded Chiun and Remo.

  "It is all right, Mr. Kyoto," said Chiun. "I am just an innocent observer. I give you my word I will not get involved."

  Kyoto glanced back at him. Chiun nodded politely, smiling.

  One of the black men spoke. He was tall, six-feet four, 245 pounds and no flab. His face looked carved of ebony. He was grinning.

  "We of the third world has nothin' against a brother of the third world. We wants the honky."

  Remo glanced at Mei Soong. Her face was frozen, her lips clamped thin. She was undoubtedly going through more emotional tension than Remo who was just going to do what he was trained to do. A woman in love betraying her lover was an airport of signals.

  "Learned master of all arts, am I to understand you will not intrude yourself?" asked Kyoto.

  "I will stand aside to witness the spectacle of all these people attacking one poor white man. For I can see that is what they are prepared to do," Chiun said this almost as a sermon, then pointing a shaking forefinger at Mei Soong, he added: "And you, faithless woman, luring this unsuspecting young man into this den of death. For shame."

  "Hey, old man. Don't feel sorry for no honky. He our enemy," said the man of the ebony face.

  Remo, listened to the interchange, yawned. Chiun's dramatics did not impress him. He had seen Chiun play humbled before. Now Chiun was setting them up for him, although from their swaggering they appeared not to need setting up.

  "Move over," said the leader to Chiun, "or we'll move on over you."

  "I beg a boon," implored Chiun. "I know this poor man who is about to die. I wish to say goodbye to him."

  "Don't let him, he'll pass him a gun or something," yelled one of the blacks.

  "I have no weapon. I am a man of peace and solitude, a frail flower cast upon the harsh rocky soil of conflict."

  "Hey, what he talk?" came the voice of the man with the largest Afro, a spray of coiled black weeds exploding in all directions from his tan head.

  "He say he ain't carrying," said the leader.

  "He look funny for a gook."

  "Don't say gook. He third world," said the leader. "Yes, old man. Say goodbye to the honky. The revolution is here."

  Remo watched the crowd raise their fists to the ceiling of fluorescent lights and wondered how much he would reduce New York City's welfare bill. Unless, of course, they were somewhat competent in which case he would reduce the crime rate.

  The group was now giving each other fancy handshakes, saying "Pass the power, brother."

  Remo looked at Chiun and shrugged. Chiun beckoned Remo's head to lower. "You do not know how important this is. It is very important. I know personally Kyoto's father. You have some bad habits which inhibit grace when you become excited. I have not corrected them because they will work themselves out and to change them now would inhibit your attack. But what you must avoid at all costs is a full energy attack, because these habits will surely show, and Kyoto's father will hear about your lack of grace. A companion of mine lacking grace."

  "Gosh, you have problems," Remo said.

  "Do not joke. This is important to me. Perhaps you do not have pride in yourself, but I have pride in myself. I do not wish to be embarrassed. It is not like white or black men were watching but a yellow man of red belt whose father knows me personally."

  "And it's not like I'm going against Amos and Andy," Remo whispered. "These guys look tough."

  Chiun peered briefly around Remo's shoulder at the group, some of whom were taking off their shirts to show their muscles, for Mei Soong's benefit.

  "Amos and Andy," Chiun said, "whoever they are. Now please, I ask this favor of you now."

  "Will you give me a favour in return?"

  "All right. All right. But remember. The most important thing is not to embarrass my instructional methods."

  Chiun bowed and even pretended to brush away a tear.

  He stepped back, signalling Mei Soong and Kyoto to join him. One of the men who had removed his shirt showed fine round muscled shoulders and a good rippling stomach stacked with rows of muscles like a washboard. A weight lifter, thought Remo. Nothing.

  The man swaggered to Chiun, Kyoto and Mei Soong, signalling they should go no further.

  "He is my pupil of a few days," Chiun confided openly to Kyoto, while pointing to Remo.

  "You stay where you is. All of you," said the well muscled man. "Ah don't wants to hurt no brother of the third world."

  Remo heard Kyoto snort laughter.

  "I take it," Chiun said, "that these are the students of your honourable house."

  "They have walked in," came Kyoto's voice.

  "Walk in?" Remo heard the guard behind him say. "We been working out here for years."

  "Thank you," said Chiun. "Now we will see what years of Kyoto instruction does in comparison with just a few humble words from the house of Sinanju. Begin if you will."

  Remo heard Kyoto groan. "Why must my ancestors be forced to witness this?"

  "Don't worry," came the black guard's voice. "We'll do you up proud. Real proud. Black power proud."

  "My heart trembles before your black power," said Chiun, "and my respect for the House of Kyoto knows no bounds. Woe is me and my friend."

  The seven black men moved wide for the kill. Remo set for the attack, his weight centered for instant movement in any direction.

  It was funny. Here Chiun was warning him about performance, and Remo needed no warning. It was, the first time Chiun would see his pupil in action and Remo wanted, as he wanted few things, to win praise from the little father.

  One should not concern oneself with appearances but results. That is how Remo's training differed from karate, but now he was worried about appearances. And that could be deadly.

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  There were seven and Remo prepared to work right, slant in left, pick up two, then come back across, pick up one, and work it from there. It wasn't necessary.

  The biggest one, with the ebony face, stepped into the circle. His Afro was manicured like a well-tended hedge, and he stood with bis forearms held forward, wrists limp. One of the blacks behind him, who did not practice the Preying Mantis attack of the school of Kung Fu, laughed.

  Large, strong men rarely used the Praying Mantis. It was an attack small men used to compensate. If the big man with the flaming Afro should slip past Remo's attack, Remo would be dead with one blow.

  "Hey, Piggy," said the black who had laughed. "You look faggy."


  Piggy moved fast for a big man, extending one leg, then moving a stroke towards Remo's head. Remo was under the stroke, driving fingers into the solar plexus, then back up to catch the sirloin roll neck with a down stroke, knee up to smash the face and set it up for a follow through with the fingers extended into the temple. The body hit the mat almost silently, the face still surprised. The left hand remained curved.

  Then there were six, six stunned black faces, eyes widening. Then someone had the correct idea to attack en masse. It looked like a race riot in martial arts robes. "Get the honky bastard. Kill Whitey. Get whitey."

  Their screams echoed in the hall. Remo glanced to Chiun to see if there was approval. Mistake. A black hand came into his face and he saw darkness and stars, but as he felt himself going down, he saw the white of the mat, and saw the arms and legs and black hands with lighter palms, and felt a foot come up toward his groin.

  He brought one hand up behind the kneecap, and using his fall flipped the body attached to the knee over his head. He brought a foot up into a groin and rolled. As he did so, he moved to his feet, caught an Afro and cracked down into it, smashing a skull.

  A voiceless body hit the mat. A black belt launched an attack with a foot shot. Remo grabbed the ankle and kept it going behind his head and brought his thumb up sharply into the man's back, damaging a kidney and flinging him to the side, shrieking in pain. Now there were four, and they weren't as anxious to get whitey. One was downright brotherly as he nursed his broken knee. Three black belts surrounded Remo in a semi-circle.

  "All at once. Attack. On three," said one, making sense. He was very dark, black as night and his beard was scraggly. His eyes had no whites, just black fires of hate. Perspiration beaded his forehead. By showing his hate so openly, he had blown his cool.

  "Ain't like the movie, Shaft, is it, Sambo?" said Remo. And he laughed.

  "Mother," said the black belt to Remo's left.

  "Is that a plea? Or half a word?" Remo asked.

  "One," called out the man with hate.

  "Two," called out the man with hate.

  "Three," called out the man with hate, and he went with a foot, the other two with straight ahead punches.