Warren Murphy - Voodoo Die

Remo reached over and chucked her under the chin.

"You're cute," he said.

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"And you're country. Why you wearing them white socks with them black shoes?"

"I can't believe this is really happening," Remo said. "I come to rescue a woman from jail and she's bitching about the color of my socks."

"You couldn't rescue me from a tub of warm water," Ruby said. "Man don't care 'nough to dress right, don't know 'nough to do right."

"Hell with it. Stay," said Remo. "We'll go back in our jeep by ourselves."

Ruby shook her head. "Oh, I might as well go with you, make sure we gets out all right. How long you been gone from Newark?"

"Newark?" Remo said.

"Yeah. Say, you hard o' hearin' or you just dopey? Newark. It in New Jersey. How long you been gone from there?"

"How do you know that?"

"We all know how people talk in Newark 'cause we all gots relatives that lives there." .

"I had expensive speech teachers help me get rid of my accent," Remo said.

"They took you, dodo. Get your money back."

"The government paid for it."

"No wonder," Ruby said. "Government always gets taken."

She was following Remo up the stone steps. Chiun stood inside the closed door, looking down at them.

"You think I dress funny, wait till you see this," Remo said to Ruby. "Chiun, you've finally met your match. This is Ruby."

Chiun looked at the young woman with disdain.

Ruby bowed to him, low from the waist.

"At least she knows how to greet someone," Chiun told Remo.

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''Tour robe is beautiful," she said. "What you pay for it?"

"This is a replacement of a very ancient robe that was unfortunately spoiled for me by a slug of a laun-dryman," Chiun said.

"Yeah, it was made in America. I see that. What you pay for it?"

"Remo," said Chiun. "The amount." "I think it was two hundred dollars." "You was taken," said Ruby. "They makes these robes in a little place near Valdosta, Georgia. I know the owner. He lots them out for forty dollars. So a hundred percent for wholesale and a hundred percent for retail and you shouldna paid no more than one-sixty."

"See, Remo, how you allowed us to be cheated again?" Chiun's voice was indignant.

"What do you care?" Remo said. "You didn't pay for it."

Ruby waved a hand at Chiun. "Listen up," she said. "Next time you needs a robe, talk to me. I get you something really good and the right price. Don't listen to this turkey no more. He wearin' white socks." She leaned close to Chiun and whispered. "He might be getting a rake-off for himself. Watch him."

Chiun nodded. "How true. Selfishness and greed are so often what one gets in return for dedication and love."

"Let's get out of here," Remo said in disgust. He moved toward the door behind Chiun.

"Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait," Ruby said, the words strung together so quickly that they sounded like a railroad conductor spitting out the name of a single lake in Wales.

"Who out there knows you in here?" she asked.

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"Everybody," Remo said.

"Who everybody?"

"The warden. The guards. El Presidente himself," Remo said. "He came down to free you too."

"The big ugly dude with the medals?"

"Yeah. Generalissimo Corazon."

"You think he don' have no guns trained on this door right now?" Ruby asked.

"Why should he?"

" 'Cause he a jerk. That man liable to do anything. Come on, we go upstairs and over the roof."

"We go out the front door," Remo said stubbornly.

Chiun put a hand on his arm. "Wait, Remo," he said. "There is wisdom in what this one speaks."

"You're just trying to con her into cutting the price of a robe," Remo said.

"Bunk it," Ruby said. "You go out the front door. The old gentlemans and I go upstairs. We mail your body wherever you want it sent."

She touched Chiun's elbow. "Come on. We go," she said.

Chiun allowed himself to be led up the stone steps. Remo watched them for a moment, glanced at the front door, then shook his head in disgust, and went up the steps, too. He slid by them to lead the way. "Glad you finally coming around," Ruby said. "If you want to walk with us, why don't you put that .38 you're carrying in the middle of your belt?" Remo said.

Ruby felt her shirt. The .38 was in the left side of her belt, covered by her long blouse.

"How you do that?" she said to Remo. "How you know I got a gun? How he do that?" she asked Chiun. Her voice rose into a coloratura squawk.

No one answered.

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"You was looking and you saw the piece," Ruby said. She made it sound like an indictment for a capital crime.

"I didn't see it," Remo said.

"He didn't see it," Chiun agreed. "He hardly keeps his eyes open at all to see anything."

"How you do that?" Ruby insisted, her voice still a screech. "How you know it be a .38?"

This she had to know. Ruby saw instantly that there was real value in learning how to tell when someone was armed. She could copyright the method or patent it, if it was mechanical, then sell it to storekeepers in cities around America. They'd pay top dollar for a foolproof way of knowing that someone coming through their front door was carrying a gun.

"How you do that, I say?" she shrieked. Her voice, when she chose to use it that way, was high-pitched and abrasive. It sounded like it should be giving a locker-room critique to a high school football team losing 48-0 at half time.

"Anything if you stop screaming," Remo said. He was still leading the way up the steps. "You have the gun near your left hip. It throws off your balance when you walk. I can hear the heavier pressure on your left foot. The amount of pressure tells the weight of the gun. Yours weighs out as a .38."

"He really do that?" Ruby asked Chiun. "That dodo, he don't seem smart enough to do like that."

"Yes, that is what he did," Chiun said. "Sloppy, sloppy work."

"What?" asked Ruby.

"He did not tell you that your pistol has in it only three cartridges. If he were as alert as he should be, lie would be able to tell that."

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"He really did that? You really do that?" Ruby demanded.

"Yes," said Chiun.

"Pipe down," Remo told Ruby. "Your voice is like ice cubes cracking."

"How you learn to do that?" Ruby asked him.

"He taught me," Remo said.

"I taught him," Chiun said. "Of course, he does not leam as he should. Still, even a chipped pitcher is better than none at all."

"I want to leam how to do that," Ruby said. She was calculating. A half million storekeepers at a thousand dollars each. No, cut the price. Five hundred dollars each. Two hundred and fifty million dollars. Overseas rights. Around the world sales. Military application.

"I give you twenty percent of everything," she said to Chiun, softly so Remo would not hear.

"Forty percent," said Chiun who did not know what Ruby was talking about.

"Thirty," Ruby said. "I don' go no higher. And you take care of the turkey." She pointed at Remo.

"Done. A deal," said Chiun, who would have taken twenty percent if he knew what it was all about. He felt he had the better of it because he was stuck with taking care of Remo anyway.

"You got it," said Ruby, who would have given forty percent if she had to. "And no backing off now. We got a deal."

Remo pushed open the upstairs door. They were on a flat roof two stories about the central courtyard of the U-shaped compound.

They leaned over the edge and looked down where Generalissimo Corazon stood by his helicopter, a metal box in front of him. Corazon moved over to

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squat behind the box, peering through a tube that served as a gunsight, aiming it at the door.

"Where are they?" Corazon grumbled to Major Estrada, who stood next to him, leaning against the plane, smoking.

"They'll be along," he said, smoking casually.