Warren Murphy: Chained Reaction

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body as easily as if it had been an inert lump of mud.

"You can't do this," DePauw shouted. "This is America."

"Right," Remo agreed. "Best country ever. And it'll be even better after you leave."

"I want my lawyer," DePauw screamed as Remo twisted the ends of chain together in front, of DePauw's waist.

Remo stood up and met DePauw's eyes with a wink.

"Why?" he asked. "He swim better than you?"

With no more effort than it would take to dribble a basketball, Remo hauled DePauw to the edge of the boat and threw him over. There was one last scream but it turned into a gurgle as the water rushed over his plummeting body and DePauw vanished from sight.

"Satisfied, Ruby?" Remo asked.

She nodded. She looked down at the water where DePauw had vanished. There were a few bubbles breaking the surface, as if the life was boiling out of Baisley DePauw. And then nothing.

Remo put the boat in forward gear and spun it around, heading back toward the DePauw mansion.

As the boat roared toward land, Ruby stood alongside Chiun on the rear deck, looking out past the wake at the spot where DePauw had submerged.

"'S funny," Ruby said. "We come to this country in chains and we gets out of them and still there's always somebody trying to put those chains back on."

She looked toward Chiun, who slowly turned

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his face toward her, then reached out his hand and touched her cheek.

"You need never fear," he said, before turning away. "Chains find only willing wrists."

Remo neatly solved the docking problem by letting the boat run aground on the beach behind the house. The three of them walked around the back of the main house to the front door of the building that served as the slaves' sleeping quarters.

As they went in, they heard the sound of motors.

Three Rolls Royces were coming up the driveway, parking in front of the main house.

"You two go down and let everybody go," Remo said. "I'll see what this is all about."

Remo reached the front steps of the main house just as the limousines disgorged their passengers. Six men, in neat dark suits, with highly polished shoes, carrying small expensive leather briefcases.

The backbone of America. Its forward-looking, creative-thinking businessmen.

"Hi," Remo said. "Mr. DePauw sent me to meet you. You're here for the demonstration?"

The men looked at each other with smiles. One of them, with hair that was styled to look un-styled, and fingernails that had been manicured to look as if he was not wearing nail polish, nodded to Remo. "Ready to be part of the new great American experiment," he said.

"I know Mr. DePauw wants you to be part of it," Remo said. "We all do. Won't you come this way?" He turned toward the steps, then stopped.

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"Oh, you can let your drivers go. You'll be a couple of hours."

The businessmen began to give instructions to their chauffeurs when Remo broke in.

"No," he said. "Leave the cars. In case he wants to take you somewhere. Mr. DePauw will have drivers for them. There's a good sandwich shop down the block. Your men can kill time there until we send for them."

The businessmen gave instructions and followed Remo inside the house. He hustled them down the corridor to the left, toward the secret panel in the wall.

"Wait'll you see this," he said with a chuckle in his voice. "I know you're going to get a hoot out of it."

Ruby and Chiun had released the leg chains on the thirteen men and led them up the steps into the small slave shack. The men were looking for their clothing when Ruby heard Remo's voice coming through the open trap door from down in the work area.

"That's it," she heard him say. "You three wrap those things around and you three unwrap them. Got it?"

There was a pause and Remo's voice was louder.

"I don't hear you. You got it?"

Six voices answered in unison. "Yes sir."

"That's better," Remo said. "Now remember, Mr. DePauw wants you to be happy. And so do I. So you sing, just to show how happy you are. You know any songs?"

Again there was a silence.

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"Any kind of song," Remo's voice said, and it was harsh and demanding.

Instantly, one frail nasal voice began to sing tentatively.

"Good," Remo said. "Now louder. And all of you join in.

The voices came now, recognizable.

Disco Lady.

Won't you be my baby?

Ruby laughed aloud. Remo's voice again: "Thattaway. Now just keep working there and don't worry about a thing. Somebody'll be along and get you out of those leg irons. Probably no more than a couple of days."

A minute later, Remo came up through the trap door into the shack.

The black men were dressing. They looked at Remo as he came in. He met their eyes, then jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the trap door.

"You've all been replaced."

One of the black men cocked an ear to listen to the weak strings of "Disco Lady."

"Gotta admit it," he said. "Them white folks sure's got rhythm. Makes you want to tap yo' feet and dance."

Remo told them they were driving home to Norfolk in style. "Take the Rolls Royces in front. Nobody's going to miss them for awhile."

The black men ran toward the front of the shack, Lucius Jackson among them.

"Hey, Lucius," Ruby called. "You gonna go back with us?"

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"Hell, no," Lucius called over his shoulder. "I wanna ride in that Rolls Royce."

Ruby turned to Remo as her brother went outside into the sunlight. "I think I liked him better when he was wrapping that metal around those poles."

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Their car was the first back to Norfolk and Ruby led Remo and Chiun upstairs to give her mother the good news.

"Mama, Lucius is coming home," Ruby said.

Her mother inhaled a deep lungful of pipe and exhaled a smoke that looked greenish. She looked down at her feet.

"What he been doin' the last week?" she asked.

"Working," Ruby said.

Her mother looked up at her sharply.

"You sure it be Lucius?"

For the first time, she seemed to notice Remo and Chiun. "That fella you be leavin' here, I fix up his arm best I could. But then he wen' over the hotel to stay. Say?"

"Say what?" said Remo.

"Iffen he be a doctor, how come he cain't fix his own arm ?"

"Not that kind of a doctor."

Mrs. Gonzalez nodded, her dark face deepened with chasms of crease wrinkles. "Guess not. Otherwise he be able to fix hisself up."

"Where is he ?" said Remo.

"De hotel."

"Which one?"

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"One of dem."

Remo looked around to Ruby for help. She was talking agitatedly with Chiun in a corner of the room.

"Ruby," Remo squawked.

"He's at the Holiday Inn," she said. "You two can go ahead. I'll meet you there. I want to make sure Mama's all right."

Smith was sitting in his hotel room in a straight backed chair, reading newspapers. The room looked as if it had emerged from the hermetically sealed pages of a Sears Roebuck catalogue, as if no one alive had ever been in it, and looking at Smith's pinched acid face, Remo saw no reason to dispute that judgment.

"How's the shoulder?" Remo said.

"I think by tomorrow I will have been able to wash off all that green slime that woman insisted on putting on it. Then I won't be too embarrassed to go to a doctor."

Chiun opened Smith's shirt and pulled it down off his right shoulder to investigate the wound. He pressed with his fingers and nodded.

"That green slime has done very nicely," he said. "I must learn what it was. You are healing well."

"What happened in Florida?" Smith said, re-buttoning his shirt.

Remo found it hard to remember the last time he had seen Smith without a jacket and vest.

"Florida?" Smith repeated.

"Oh, yeah," Remo said. "DePauw is dead. The prisoners are free. God's in his heaven, all's right with the world, and I'm back in retirement."