Warren Murphy: The Ultimate Death

Remo leaned on his elbow on the counter. "By all means," he said, gesturing to the counter boy. "Slather on the soybean oil."

As the counter boy worked the antique butter pump, the latino youth sized up Remo. "You queer or something?" he spat.

"You're welcome," Remo said pleasantly.

"Yeah, yeah, gracias."

When the transfer was complete and Remo had paid, the hood trudged away and the boy behind the counter heaved a sigh of relief. "Do you know who that was?" he asked.

"No," said Remo. "Who?"

The boy looked at Remo as if he were an alien. Then his expression changed. Remo could see that the boy realized that was what this skinny white man most probably was-to this neighborhood. "Only Tarantula," he said. "Head of the Spanish Spiders, that's all."

Remo glanced after the hood in the hat with mild interest, but the teenager had already gone inside Cinema Three, under the sign that read TRANSFORMED TEEN TAEKWON DO TERRAPINS III: SHELL GAME.

"No kidding?" he grunted to the boy behind the counter. He leaned forward conspiratorially. "But now that we're alone, let's make a deal. I bet you've got an actual, honest-to-god popcorn-popping machine in the back. How much would it take for you to make me some with nothing on it?"

The boy looked at him with wonder, then greed. "Nothing?"

Remo made a small space between his forefinger and thumb. "Just enough corn oil to pop it," he said. "But no MSG, no salt, no oleo, and no magic yellow powder, okay?" He pulled out a ten-dollar bill.

The counter boy licked his lips. "It's going to taste awfully bland," he warned.

"That's okay," said Remo. "I'm not going to eat it. I'm only going to smell it."

The theater was already a cacophony of people shouting at the screen as Remo chose a row and carefully slid along the back of the seats in the row in front of it, lightly stepping on the sticky cement floor wherever there were no feet. The row's occupants were ready, even eager, to complain, but he gave them no excuse.

Remo sat down, placing the tub in the middle of his lap. He looked up at the screen. On the billowing, patched white sheet was the blurry image of four humanoid sea turtles in polyurethane and foam-rubber suits. The scene shifted to Central Park at night. It looked just like Central Park by moonlight-except for the ninjas in the trees. They were more plentiful than the squirrels.

Remo held the tub beneath his nose and took a big sniff.

"Ah, that's good!" he breathed, taking another long inhalation of popcorn aroma.

"Whatchu doin', man?" laughed a teenager beside him. "Think that stuff's coke, or something?" He turned to the man beside him, "Hey, Gomez!" he cackled. "Look at the anglo, man! He think the popcorn is some good blow!"

"You wouldn't believe what they put on it nowadays," Remo told him flatly. "It'll burn out your insides."

The boy laughed. "You're flyin', all right." He turned back to the screen. "Bitch is gonna get stuck now!" he shouted.

Remo looked up. Sure enough, the sea turtles' very human and very blond sweet young girlfriend had been surrounded by ninjas near the Alice in Wonderland statue. Just another night in Central Park.

"The bitch'll have to show them where to put it!" a raucous voice shouted. The entire house laughed. Except Remo.

"You don't mean they're going to soil that girl's virtue, do you?" Remo asked in a loud voice, his tone mock-concerned.

A voice laughed. "No man, they wanna pork her! Oink, oink, oink!"

"Imagine that . . . ."

Sure enough, just after the sweet young girl's shirt had been ripped a lone sea turtle showed up, and now the ninjas were circling him. Remo watched in a detached manner, wishing he could actually eat his popcorn.

But his system was now too sensitive to suffer the sharp edges of the puffed kernels. Almost nothing but steamed rice and duck and fish had passed his lips for the last twenty years. He felt sad. What good was it to be the greatest assassin on earth, if he couldn't even eat a simple staple like popcorn?

Cancel that: the second greatest assassin on earth. He was the latest in the unbroken line of Masters of Sinanju. A small, thin, wizened Korean was the keeper of the sun source of all martial artistry. It was this man, the Reigning Master of Sinanju, who had taken the fresh-from-the-grave Remo Williams and taught him proper breathing, correct diet, and more importantly, how to fully utilize the incredible powers locked in his sleeping mind and body so that he could become the enforcement arm for CURE, a government organization so secret only the President knew it existed.

Remo watched. The terrapin-Remo thought he was Porthos-was systematically being pummeled to the ground by ninja nunchuks. But before they could deliver the killing blow, Aramis, Athos, and d'Artagnan popped up from a manhole cover and sent the ninjas flying in all directions.

To Remo's eyes, it looked painfully slow and staged.

The audience went crazy; laughing and hooting and throwing things. A butterfly knife sailed up at the screen and impaled the blonde neatly in her cleavage.

Remo sighed. It hadn't been this much of a zoo when he was young.

His gaze settled on a man in the front row, over on the right aisle, and his face froze. It was Tarantula, reputed head of the Spanish Spiders, and he was taking advantage of the din to tell someone across the aisle what he thought of him.

The object of his abuse was watching the screen intently, but his body was twisted in the seat toward Tarantula, and there were at least a dozen teens on either side of the aisle who were intently interested in his response to the verbal abuse.

Remo exhaled slowly through his nose.

So much for an evening lost in popcorn aroma and nostalgia. Taking the tub of popped corn with him, Remo started to move sideways down the row. He slid easily across the sticky cement, as if the soles of his Italian loafers had been impregnated with anti-stick.

". . . you marachita," Tarantula finished, snapping his head sideways as if in punctuation. Then he leaned back, having vented his rage, and waited for Faroom, Supreme Sheik of Allah's Swarm, to respond. His posse lounged around him on the Spanish Spiders' side of the cinema, their leers mocking, and their attitudes saying that Faroom couldn't possibly match their leader's invective.

But their smiles disappeared as Dum-Dum Dudley, the teen beside Faroom, started spitting a bass beat, and Faroom himself began spewing an obviously prepared rap.

Obvious, because it was so tight. There was no way anyone could do that off the top of his head. The words were coarse, and the rhymes vicious. They told Tarantula what he could do, where he could do it, and with whom.

Tarantula's face became an onyx sculpture, and his baseball jacket billowed open. His fingers reached quickly inside, and his hand yawned open to grip the shining, nickel-plated handle of the weapon within the tan leather shoulder holster.

Remo flicked a kernel of popcorn in the tough's direction.

"Snack?" he asked, simultaneously shoving the cardboard tub under Tarantula's nose.

Tarantula's hand came out of his jacket as if his namesake had bitten it, and stared dumbstruck at the crushed popcorn petal imbedded like shrapnel in his hand. He looked to his right just as his main man seemed to vault up in midair back first, then land in the lap of another thug in the row behind him.

Suddenly Remo was sitting beside him, rooting around in the popcorn, intent on the screen. "The movie's pretty lousy," he remarked. "But the floor show's good."

Tarantula looked at Remo, who added, "I see you've finished your popcorn. Care to try some of mine?"

The Spanish Spiders started to rise from their seats, but Tarantula held up his bleeding hand. "You better haul butt out of here, you anglo fruit," he spat.