Warren Murphy: Skull Duggery

The man in black quickened his pace.

Zhang stood frozen, transfixed by the half-hidden gaze of the approaching man. His fear was palpable. Unlike the blind tanks, he felt there was no escape from this black devil.

A shot broke his paralysis. It came from inside the house. Hoarse shouting followed. The FBI man! He lived!

"Tom! I out here!"

Another shot. A window broke, and from within the house another voice, guttural and harsh, spoke one word in Chinese: "Sagwa!"

Zhang Zingzong's eyes were pulled from the house back to his stalker. Abandoning his sure pantherlike approach, the man in black raced for the front door, going through it like an ebony arrow.

That was all Zhang Zingzong needed. Slipping and sliding, he ran down the streets of the foreign land of America, where he had thought he would be safe, and was not.

As he stumbled around a corner, he wondered why the guttural voice had called him sagwa. He was a college student.

Chapter 2

His name was Remo and he really, really knew his rice.

"Let me have a bag of that long white, and some brown," he told the blond at the health-food store. "Got any Blue Rose?"

"I never heard of Blue Rose," the blond admitted. She was tall and willowy. Her long straight hair looked as if it had been ironed. Remo didn't think anyone ironed her hair anymore. Not since Janis Joplin.

"Grows only in Thailand," Remo told her. "Has kind of a nutty taste."

"Really?" the blond said, her deep brown eyes growing limpid. "Maybe I can special-order some."

"In that case, put me down for as much as you can get."

"You must like it a lot."

"I eat a lot of rice. A lot of rice. When you eat as much rice as I do, variety is important."

"I'll bet."

"In fact it's critical," Remo went on. "If I had to go on just domestic Carolina, I'm not sure my sanity would survive."

"Sounds tres New Age," the blond prompted.

"It's not," Remo said flatly. "How about Patna? Got any of that?"

"That's another one I never heard of," she admitted. "Are you some kind of rice connoisseur?" "I didn't start out that way," Remo admitted glumly, his eyes scanning the shelves of glass containers with their heaps of hard rice grains. Most of them contained the usual boring domestic lowlands, California Carolo's and Louisiana Rexoro's and Nato's. "Let's see . . .

"How about wild rice?"

Remo frowned. "Not really." He was going to say that wild rice was no more rice than white chocolate was true chocolate. But why bother? Only another rice connoisseur would appreciate the distinction.

"Guess I'll take some short-grain white," Remo said. He pointed at one container and said, "Let me see that one."

The container came down off the shelf and Remo lifted the lid. As the blond watched, he took a pinch of grain to his lips and tasted it carefully.

"Pearl," he pronounced with the authority of a wine taster. "Grown in Java."

The blond's eyes widened in surprise. "You can tell that by tasting?"

"Sure. It has that iron tang. Goes away in the cooking-unless you undercook it, of course."

"I'll bet your wife never, ever undercooks your rice."

"Absolutely correct," Remo said, disposing of the tasted grain in a wicker wastebasket.

The blond acquired a slightly sad pout.

"Since I don't have a wife," Remo finished.

The pout jumped back into her mouth and her lips curved into a smile.

Her reaction was not lost on Remo Williams. He pretended not to notice it as the blond busied herself scooping quantities of rice into clear plastic bags, tying them with twister seals and making small talk.

"Hope you're not planning to carry all these home on foot," she quipped.

Remo jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "That's my car out front."

The blond looked up, her brown eyes curious to see what kind of car a rice authority would drive. Her curiosity froze.

"What car?" she asked.

"The blue one," Remo said absently, scanning rice labels.

"Shouldn't it be waiting for you?"

Remo turned. There was no blue car parked out front.

Came a screeching of tires and a blue Buick Regal suddenly jumped into view, going in the opposite direction it had been pointing when Remo had parked it minutes before.

Hunched behind the wheel was a black man Remo had never seen before.

"Damn!" he bit out. Remo raced for the door as the car picked up speed. The blond followed.

"Should I call 911?" she gasped, her eyes fever-bright.

"No," Remo said grimly. "I'll handle it."

"You will?"

Remo Williams began running. He started off with an easy, joggerlike pace, his bare forearms up, fists not loose-fingered, but tight. His thin, just-this-side-of-cruel mouth was grim.

He hit his stride at forty-five miles an hour, his mouth slightly parted. If he was exerting himself, there was no sign of strain on his high-cheekboned face. Only tight determination showed in his deep-set brown eyes.

He caught up to the Buick at a stoplight.

The driver wore a pea jacket and his hair was razored close at the temples. The name "Shariff " was shaved in bare scalp. He pretended not to notice Remo tapping on his window, so Remo planted his feet the way he had been taught and grasped the door handle firmly, waiting for the red light to change.

The driver-he looked about twenty-two-continued to ignore him as he fiddled with Remo's radio. The arrogance of the youth's nonchalance made Remo's blood boil. He calmed himself, thinking that he was not going to be ignored much longer.

The light turned green.

The driver hit the accelerator.

The rear tires spun, throwing off rubbery clouds of smoke.

The Buick stayed in place. A station wagon directly behind started to honk. With his free hand, Remo waved the car to go around him. His other hand held on to the driver's-side door handle, his feet rooted on the asphalt street as if by Super-Glue.

Remo waited patiently for Shariff to notice him. It was taking a while. The guy jammed the accelerator to the floor. The rear tires spun faster, shaving hot rubber off his treads. They were winter tires, so Remo didn't sweat the loss of tread. Besides which, he'd get satisfaction from the car thief soon enough.

Finally the driver released the gas. He put his nose to the glass and looked up at Remo.

Evidently he was not frightened by what he saw, a skinny dude of indeterminate age wearing-despite the winter chill-a black T-shirt and black chinos, because he rolled down the window.

"You mind?" he said.

"Yes, I do mind," Remo said pleasantly. "You are sitting behind the wheel of my car."

"This?"

"Do you see any other wheel you're sitting behind?"

"This your car?"

"I answered that. Now, you answer this: Why are you driving my car?"

"You weren't using it."

"So you just felt free to steal it, is that it?"

"I ain't stealin' it! Get outta my face with that shit!"

Remo leaned down. He bestowed a friendly disarming smile on the tough's scowling face. "Correct me if I'm mistaken, Shariff, but isn't that a screwdriver where my ignition used to be?"

"What you expect? You forgot to leave me the keys." His tone changed. "How you know my name?"

"ESP," Remo said.

"ESP? How you do that?"

"Do what?"

"That thing you did before. Had the pedal to the metal and I wasn't goin' nowhere. You shoulda been yanked along for the ride. Instead, I'm wastin' time talkin' witchu."

Remo made his voice contrite. "Sorry about that."

"You gonna tell me how you do that, or what?"

"Sinanju."

"Spell it. I wanna buy it, learn it, or steal it. Whatever it takes."

"Actually, it takes about fifteen years and seventy tons of rice just to master the basics. Then you really have to buckle down."

"Don't have that kind of time. Now that I got this fine car, I plan on moving up in the world, Jim."