Warren Murphy: Firing Line

"If you insist," Chiun said.

"I insist."

"You assume that they are going into hiding. But they do not necessarily know who you are. They may just simply think you were someone who blundered into their performance. You may just have been an annoyance that they already have totally forgotten."

Chiun kicked at another pigeon, which waddled around at his feet, cooing.

"You may be right, Little Father," said Remo.

"I usually am," Chiun said. "So we must just keep watching for them in places where they can be expected to do business," he said.

"We?" asked Remo.

Chiun nodded. "Yes, we. Did you ever stop to think, Remo, that here, after Ruby's death, you

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want to do something for her and what it is you want to do is to destroy her killers?"

"Yeah, I've thought of that."

"Doesn't that tell you anything?" Chiun asked.

"Like what?"

"Like this. That you fulfill yourself as an assassin. That this is the only way, in your life, that you will find pride, by doing what you do best."

"I've thought about that," Remo said. Tm still thinking about it. It's just that I really think I'm a nice person. ..." He paused, waiting for Chiun to laugh, but the Oriental did not respond. "I think I'm a nice person and I can deal with being both a nice person and an assassin. But how can other people deal with that? You think anyone else is going to think I'm a nice person if I tell them I'm an assassinF'

"You are telling me that these other persons, whoever they may be ... their opinion of you is important to you." He kicked again at a pigeon that had wandered too close to his robe.

"I guess so," Remo said.

"That is a childish attitude," Chiun said. "Somebody has to be an assassin. You were just lucky enough that you were the one who was picked. Think of all the amateurs who try to be assassins and give the art a bad name. And yet you, you of all people, were lucky."

"Some people might not regard it as good luck," Remo said.

"And some people think the world is flat," Chiun said. "You care about these people?"

Remo shook his head. "I don't know, Little Father. I just don't know."

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"Really, Remo, someone must do something about these pigeons. They are worthless, dirty beasts that neither sing nor beautify the world and yet you Americans feed them fat." Another pigeon was brushing against his robe. Chiun found a peanut under the park bench and with the toe of his slipper pushed it forward. When the pigeon saw the peanut, he moved toward it.

"And as for assassins being nice persons," Chiun said, "why not? I am proudly an assassin. Yet is there anyone nicer than me?" he asked. He stood up from the bench and his right foot lowered toward the pigeon. The flowing folds of Chiun's daytime kimono hid the bird from view, but Remo had caught sight of the bird's last spasm.

He laughed, stood up, and put his arm around Chiun's shoulders.

"No, Little Father," he said, "there is no one nicer than you."

The assistant manager at their hotel apparently thought so, too, because he gestured to Chiun with a large smile when the old man and Remo entered the lobby.

Chiun walked to the man, who whispered in his ear. When Chiun came back, Remo said, "What was it?"

"Something personal," Chiun said.

Remo laughed. "Personal? What personal?"

"My personal," Chiun said. "Please go to the room. I will join you."

"I don't understand this," Remo said.

"This' then has company. There are so many things you do not understand," Chiun said. He put

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his hand between Remo's shoulder blades and propelled him toward the elevator.

Bemo stepped into a waiting car. As the doors closed, he pressed the open door button. The door opened again, and Remo saw Chiun walking toward a bank of telephones in the far corner of the lobby.

Remo rode upstairs wondering what message it was that would bring Chiun to use a telephone.

Remo was lying on the couch when Chiun returned to the room.

"Why are you lying there, slug-a-bed?" Chiun asked.

"Where would you want me to lie?"

"I would want you on your feet and packing because we are leaving," said Chiun.

"Oh? Just where are we leaving for?"

"New York City."

"That's nice," said Remo. "New York is beautiful in the summer. The heat from the pavement cooks the garbage on the sidewalk and casts sweet perfume over the muggers who are holding a convention on every street corner."

"We are going, nevertheless," Chiun said.

"Why?"

"Because the firemen there are going on ... what do you call it?"

"I don't know. What are you talking about?"

"What is it when people don't want to work anymore?"

"Public employment," Remo said.

"No. Something else."

"A strike?" suggested Remo.

'That is correct. They are stricken," said Chiun.

"Striking," Remo corrected. "How do you know?"

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"I make it my business to be aware of such things," Chiun said. "Anyway, if the firemen there are stricken, then where else . . ."

". . . would our arsonists go?" said Remo.

"Correct," said Chiun.

"On to New York," Remo said.

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CHAPTER TWELVE

If somebody hadn't put too much orégano in the spaghetti sauce, there might never have been a fireman's strike in New York.

Fireman First Grade Anthony Ziggata was preparing to go from a firehouse in Manhattan's Upper East Side to City Hall to shake hands at the conclusion of contract negotiations. He had showered in the firehouse and was getting ready to put on his dress blues.

Ziggata had been a fireman for twenty-two years. He had last seen the inside of a firehouse as a worker nineteen years before, when he was first elected as a union delegate. He then rose through the ranks to become a member of the contract negotiating team and finally president of the Amalgamated Consortium of Firefighters.

He was in this firehouse only because it was negotiating season, and at least once during every one of the bargaining sessions, one of the New York City newspapers got the original idea to send a photographer to accompany the union president on the job and watch him fight a fire.

This year, the New York Post had had that original idea. Fortunately, there had not been a fire

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alarm pulled in the district, so they settled for a picture of Ziggata cleaning hoses. Ziggata hated fires. They made him nervous, and when he got nervous, his skin broke out in itchy, scaly bumps.

The contract he had been negotiating would cover the city's fire department for the next three years. It would guarantee that the fire department was the highest paid in the world. It did not guarantee that it would be the most efficient. Such suggestions were made only infrequently and tentatively by negotiators for the city administration and were quickly dropped when it appeared that for mere money, the city could buy continuing labor peace. This always appeared to be a good deal to City Hall, especially since the city had gone virtually bankrupt and now depended on Washington and Albany to pay its daily bills.

Everything should have gone simply. Ziggata was whistling. The rest of it was a chip shot—just the formality of shaking hands with the mayor, smiling for photographers, and then he could go home. To his real home. But when he opened his locker, he found his dress blue pants on the floor of the locker.

"Sumbitch," he yelled aloud. Who the hell did this?" He held up the wrinkled pants between thumb and index finger as if they were a particularly vile, smelly species of fish.

Nine firemen lay around on cots, waiting for a bell to ring. Like firemen everywhere, they did not talk much to each other, preferring to lie on their cots and listen in to what the others were saying. Since none of the others spoke either, this did not make for much verbal camaraderie.