Warren Murphy: Air Raid

Another squirt hit a superthin, impeccably dressed female pedestrian in the side of the face. Yelping in pain, the injured woman whipped out her own can of pepper spray. The two women proceeded to spritz each other like gunslingers at the OK Corral.

Remo danced lightly between them. Other pedestrians caught in the cross fire weren't so lucky. "Mine, mine, mine!" the first woman screamed.

Half-blinded now, she whipped the door open and began flinging packages inside the back of the cab. The second woman hadn't even wanted a taxi, but the unprovoked attack, as well as the first woman's loud proclamations, had triggered some base territorial urge. She suddenly decided that she wanted the cab, too. When Remo turned away, the second woman had the first in a bear hug around her ample middle while the first whacked her over the head with a roll of infant-Jesus Christmas paper.

"Try to do something nice for someone," Remo muttered.

Shaking his head in disgust, he headed down the street.

On the corner, a man dressed as Santa rang a bell for charitable donations. As Remo approached, he saw a scruffy-looking pedestrian grab Santa's donation bucket from the metal tripod where it hung. The man took off.

As Father Christmas yelled obscenities, the mugger ran down a nearby alley.

Remo was off like a shot. The crowd seemed suddenly charged with some electrical current that repelled them from Remo's path. They split instinctively up the middle as he raced down the sidewalk. Remo flew past the still screaming Saint Nick and ducked down the open end of the dark alley.

He caught up with Santa's mugger twenty yards in. The man was still running full-out.

"You know," Remo said as he grabbed the startled man by the scruff of the neck, flinging him into a grimy wall, "as stupid crimes go, it's pretty dumb to rob a guy who keeps a list of who's been naughty or nice."

The mugger spun on Remo, a demented gleam in his eye. Dropping the bucket he'd pinched from Santa, he clicked open a switchblade.

"I'd say assault with intent to commit bodily harm falls into the naughty category, too," Remo advised him. "You're bucking for a lump of coal in your stocking, pal."

The mugger lunged at Remo's belly with the knife. Dodging the blade, Remo snagged the man's wrist between two fingers, guiding the thrusting hand toward the alley wall.

In a twinkling, the solid brick seemed to go soft. To the mugger's amazement, the blade of the knife somehow managed to penetrate deep into brick before coming to a stop at the hilt. When he tried to pull it free, he found it stuck more firmly than Excalibur in the stone.

With a look of fear washing over his pale face, the mugger backed away from Remo. He bumped the wall behind.

"Not that nice is all it's cracked up to be," Remo grumbled. "Here I am, supposed to do something nice, and I don't even know the what or the who." He shook his head. "It's always the same thing. Always about tradition. First he says I've become Reigning Master just because I say I'm Reigning Master, then he pulls all this traditional rite-of-passage crapola out of his pocket. And not even right away. Oh, no. That'd be too painless. He eases into it during the month of hell I spend recovering from third degree burns. That's what he's like. Korean water torture. Drip, drip, drip."

"He who?" Santa's mugger asked anxiously. His eyes darted to the mouth of the alley. It seemed very far away.

"The pain in the ass who taught me," Remo said. "And don't think I haven't spent the last I-don't-know-how-many years of my life trying to figure out if he's an okay guy who's also a pain the ass or if he's a pain in the ass who just happens to sometimes be okay. On days like this, I just think he's a plain old everyday run-of-the-mill pain in the ass, and that's that. End of story."

"Yeah. Wow. That's too bad," the mugger commiserated. He would have begun inching to the street, but this wacko with the flashing hands and the fingers that could stick steel through brick was standing right in his path.

"It is, isn't it?" Remo agreed. "So I'm supposed to be Reigning Master, right? Wrong. Now I've got this whole Master Nik tradition to deal with."

The mugger's face brightened hopefully. "Nick?" he asked. "That's my name." He smiled, hoping to establish some kind of a connection with this crazy man.

"And if I was your parole officer or the guy who used the free needles after you, I just might give a fat flying Kringle," Remo assured him. "This Nik lived about twenty-seven hundred years ago. Didn't do anything to distinguish himself as Master, except establish one tradition." His voice grew mocking as he repeated the words passed down from Master Nik. "'No disciple of Sinanju shall attain the title of Reigning Master without he first deliver the proper act of kindness.'"

The mugger blinked, sensing opportunity. "Kindness?" he asked.

"Yeah, can you believe it?" Remo asked, shaking his head. "Vague as all get out. And what's with that 'without he first'? Is that even proper English?"

The mugger didn't hear. "So you've got to, like, do a good deed?" he pressed.

Remo nodded. "All of a sudden now I'm a freaking Boy Scout," he said. "As a kid I was a Cub Scout for barely one day. Mrs. Callahan was the den mother. She smoked cigars, had fifteen mooching Callahan kids running all over the place and her kitchen floor had more sand on it than Pismo Beach at low tide. I quit after the first meeting."

"So this good deed you gotta do," Santa's mugger said, steering Remo back to the topic at hand. "You sure you don't know what it is?"

Remo scowled, annoyed at the interruption. "No." The man's face was hopeful.

"Maybe it's that you should let me go," he offered brightly.

Remo considered for a long moment. As he mulled over the man's words, the mugger grew increasingly optimistic. His hopes were dashed the instant Remo opened his mouth once more.

"Nah," Remo concluded firmly. "I'm pretty sure that isn't it. Besides, it's time for Santa's revenge." Even as the mugger's face fell, Remo was reaching out.

The mugger didn't have time to run.

Remo spun the man, tapping a spot at the top of his fifth vertebra. The mugger's arms went slack. "I hope you got all your Christmas stealing done for the next five years, because that's how long it'll be before you get back use of your hands," Remo announced as he deposited Santa's mugger headfirst into a garbage can.

Scooping up the small donation pail the mugger had stolen, Remo headed back out the alley. Someone had run into a nearby store to call the police, but a cruiser had yet to arrive. Santa was standing anxiously near his tripod. He was cautiously relieved when he saw Remo appear with his bucket. Relief became amazement when he found it still full of coins and bills.

"You're a real lifesaver, buddy," Santa said, pawing a green mitten through the bucket of money. "Here, have a five-spot. Hell, it's Christmas. Take ten."

"Isn't that for the poor?" Remo frowned.

"Yeah, and reindeer can fly," Santa said with a broad wink. He stuffed some of the bills in his pocket. Remo saw the pocket was already bulging with Christmas cash.

Realizing that there was little hope that this was the good deed he was after, Remo let out a frustrated sigh before sticking the bucket firmly onto Santa's head.

Loose change rained onto the sidewalk. Pedestrians promptly prostrated themselves on the pavement, their grabbing hands scooping up wayward coins. The last Remo saw of Saint Nick, the portly man was stumbling blindly into traffic, his belly jiggling like a bowlful of panicked jelly.

By the time Remo heard a squeal of tires and a Santa-size thump, he wasn't even looking. Chin in his hand, he sat morosely on the curb.

"Maybe it's something even simpler," he muttered.