Warren Murphy: Bidding War

There were times when Remo imagined her alive and there were times he lay awake sobbing silently into his pillow so the nuns and the other orphans wouldn't ask him why.

On those nights he mourned for his dead mother. It was easier to imagine her dead. It made more sense. If she lived, she wouldn't have abandoned him to be raised in an orphanage. No one's mother could be so heartless.

So Remo had buried her and mourned her and in time forgot about her all except in the secret recesses of his imagination.

A year ago she had appeared to him, wearing a face more angelic than the most idealized product of his longing imagination. That was when Remo knew with certainty she had died.

To this day he didn't know if she was a ghost or spirit or the product of some infant memory. But she had spoken in a voice he could hear and bidden him to seek out his living father.

Just to hold on to the memory, Remo had gone to a police sketch artist, who drew her face from Remo's description. He carried it with him wherever he went.

Nearly a frustrating year had passed before she had appeared to him for a second time. This time to tell him that the time to find his father was growing short.

Remo would have scoured the planet to find his father except the spirit of his mother had also showed him a vision of a cave and in the cave sat a mummy Remo had recognized as Chiun.

It wasn't Chiun. The mummy turned out to be Ko Jong Oh, but when Remo told the Master of Sinanju what he had seen, Chiun had dragged him from one end of the earth to the other in the Rite of Attainment until Remo found himself in the Sonoran Desert outside Yuma, Arizona.

There Remo had found his father, a stuntman turned actor, and learned that Chiun had known the identity of Remo's father for years. Remo and Chiun had encountered him during an assignment years before. Chiun had recognized who he was. Remo hadn't.

Of all the cons Chiun had perpetrated, this was the most selfish, yet Remo had understood why. And it had all worked out.

That was the funny part of their relationship. Remo always forgave Chiun. No matter what. Chiun, on the other hand, piled the slightest injury or imagined slight on his shoulders, complaining all the while.

In this dream Remo's mother was standing on a high dune, silhouetted against the desert moon.

He knew her by name now. Dawn Starr Roam. But he couldn't bring himself to call her by that name.

In his dream his mouth was open as he struggled with the right word. Mother sounded too formal. Ma was no good. Mom sounded like a character out of a fifties sitcom.

In his dream Remo didn't know what to call her. And as he wrestled with the dilemma, she lifted her perfect profile to the night stars and faded from sight as if she had been made of coalesced moonbeams.

Remo was running for the dune, calling "Wait!" when the gunshots shattered the night.

They came in a string of three pops followed by two more.

He was out of bed and at the door of his igloolike sheepskin hogan before he was really awake. His Sinanju-trained reflexes had carried him from sleep and into action.

Out in the night someone was trying to bring down the moon with a Winchester.

"Wa-hooo, I'm a Sun On Jo brave and I got everything money can buy except a future!"

And he squeezed off another shot at the low-hanging moon.

"Hey!" Remo called.

The Indian took notice of him. "Hey yourself, white eyes."

Lowering the rifle, he swung it around. Jacking another round into place, he drew a cool bead on Remo.

"I hear you got yourself some magical powers, white eyes. Let's see you percolate down into the sand ahead of hot, angry lead."

The trigger clicked back. And the rifle spit a tongue of yellow-red flame.

Remo slid from the path of the bullet before the lever could eject the smoking shell from the breech. When the bullet kicked up distant sand, Remo was already coming in from the darkness off to the rifleman's left.

The brave surrendered the rifle to an irresistible force that snatched it from his hands.

"Yep," he said, stumbling back. "You are a true Sunny Joe, 'cept there ain't gonna be a tribe for you to protect, Sunny Joe. What do you say about that?"

He reached down to the sand at his feet and hoisted a bottle of tequila to his lips.

Remo took it away from him, chipping a front tooth with the bottle mouth.

"Hey! You got no call—"

Remo gave the bottle a casual flip, and it climbed thirty feet into the clear air, spun in place like a pin-wheel and dropped down.

The Indian had a good eye. He snagged it before it could crash against a rock. But when he felt its heft, he knew it was empty. He held it up to his eye to be sure, and nothing came spilling out. Not one solitary drop.

"Hey! How'd you do that?"

"You saw every move I made," Remo said coolly.

"Sure. But tequila don't evaporate into thin air. It's not in its nature."

"Is that you making that goldurn racket, Gus Jong?" rumbled Sunny Joe Roam from the surrounding darkness.

He was coming down the trail like an angry soft-footed bear.

Gus Jong cracked a crooked grin. "Hey, Sunny Joe. Your little apple slice here has got himself some slick ways."

"Don't you call my son no apple, you drunken redskin."

"I ain't drunk. Hell, I hardly got started."

"You're flat done drinking for the night. Now, mosey on your way."

Gus Jong stumbled back to his hogan under the watchful eyes of Remo and Sunny Joe Roam.

"You gotta excuse ol' Gus," Sunny Joe rumbled. "Ain't really his fault."

"Not how I see it," said Remo.

"That's fine for you. But my braves look down the trail and all they see is their graves and no one to mourn them or carry on their ways. It takes them by the throat sometimes."

"I know the story. No girl babies have been born in years. But who's stopping them from finding wives in the city?"

"Lot of things. Pride. Stubbornness. Knowing they don't fit in white society. And the Navajo and Hopi won't accept them into their tribes. They're plumb at a dead end and they hardly got started on life yet."

"Nobody ever found their future at the bottom of a bottle."

Just then a sprinkling of what felt like cool rain pattered down to pock the dust at their feet.

"Funny. That don't feel like rain," Sunny Joe grunted.

"It's tequila."

Sunny Joe looked dubious.

"It's not as heavy as glass," said Remo, starting for his hogan.

Sunny Joe loped after him. "Why the long face?" he asked.

"Had a dream about my mother."

"Your mother was a good woman. Gone over thirty years now, and I still miss her something powerful."

"I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for her."

"That could be taken in two ways, you know."

"I mean if she hadn't come to me, I wouldn't have found you."

"In these parts we call that a vision quest. You had a vision quest, Remo."

Remo stopped. "Does that mean I really didn't meet her?"

"Damned if I know what it means. I spent a lot of time in cities. Don't much hold with ghosts or spooks. But you showed me a drawing that was your mother's face down to the last eyelash and that sad kinda droop of her eyes. Whatever you saw, it wore your mother's face."

"I wish I had known her."

"Well, there's nothing lost by wishing. Not much gained either."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"The old chief's been gone most of a day now."

"I know where to find Chiun."

"Maybe. But he's the other reason you're standing here right now, Remo."

"Maybe."

"Were I you, I wouldn't have let him go off like that."

"You don't know Chiun. Sometimes we have to go our separate ways for a while. It'll work out."

"You ask me, he seemed powerful sad to leave you behind."

Remo slanted him a glance. "Chiun said that?"