Warren Murphy: Mugger Blood

Spesk slowed the car at the site where the building had been torn down. He noticed a large hole in the ground. He left the car with Nathan out behind him, holding the gun. They had excavated, these Americans. They had excavated and still not found it.

Spesk's keen eyes noticed the small marks at the edge of the lot. They had excavated with chisels. Therefore the device was small. If it existed. If it was worth anything.

And then there was the shot behind him.

Nathan had done it. He had not fired to protect them. He had shot at an Oriental in glaring yellow kimono across the street and now, the white man who was with the Oriental was moving across the street.

Spesk did not have time to wonder what another white man was doing in this neighborhood. The white man moved too quickly for that. Nathan fired again and it seemed as if it was aimed right at the oncoming chest. There was no way Nathan could have missed.

And yet the thin white man was at him and virtually through him by the time the shot stopped ringing in Spesk's ear. The white man's hands hardly seemed to move, yet they were out and back and Nathan's dark skull collapsed beneath the man's fingertips and his brains went shooting out the other side as though popped from a cookie gun.

"Thank you," said Spesk. "That man was about to kill me."

CHAPTER FOUR

"Anytime I can, I'm glad to help," said Remo to the blond man, who showed an amazing coolness for someone who had moments before feared for his life. The dark-haired man with a gun lay very finally on the sidewalk, his mind not troubling him because it was spread in a fanlike pattern of brain just beyond his head like a sunrise. The slum smelled of that same strange old coffee-ground flavor Remo noticed in slums all over. They all smelled of it, even in areas that didn't use coffee. A sticky early summer coolness blew down Walton Avenue. Remo wore his usual slacks, loafers, and tee shirt.

"What's your name?" Remo asked.

"Spesk. Tony Spesk. I sell appliances."

"What were you doing out here?"

"I was driving along downtown and that man broke into my car, stuck a gun in my neck, and ordered me to drive here. I guess he decided to shoot at you when he saw you. So thanks, pal. Thanks again."

"You're welcome," Remo said. The man was overdressed. His tie was pink. "That your car?"

"Yes," said Spesk. "Who are you? A policeman?"

"No. Not that," Remo said.

"You sound like a policeman."

"I sound like a lot of things. I sell diet gelatin. I sell strawberry and chocolate and cocoa almond cream."

"Oh," said Spesk. "That sounds interesting."

"Not as interesting as tapioca," Remo said. "Tapioca is a thrill." The man was lying of course. He had not come down to the states from Canada-the car had Canadian plates-to sell appliances. The man behind him had left the car a good time after good old Tony Spesk, to provide cover. And this was evident because the man had been more interested in roofs and windows than in the man he was supposed to be threatening.

And then the man had seen Chiun and wheeled for a shot. There was no reason for that shot. He didn't know who Chiun was, or Remo. He just shot, which was strange. But the dead dark-haired man belonged to yellow-haired Tony Spesk. There was no doubt about that.

"Do you need some help?" Remo asked.

"No, no. Do you need some help? Say, fella, I like the way you moved. You a professional athlete?"

"Sort of," Remo said.

"I can pay you double. You're not young. You're at the end of your career."

"In my game," Remo said, "young is fifty. What do you want me for?"

"I just thought a man with your abilities might want to make himself some good money, fella. That's all."

"Look," said Remo. "I really don't believe anything you've said, but I'm too busy to keep an eye on you, so just so I'll recognize you at a distance and maybe slow you up a little…" Remo let his right palm slap down at the man's knee, very gently.

And Spesk, standing there, remembered when a tank had thrown a tread and it had taken off an infantryman's knee. The calf was held to the thigh by a strand. The tank tread had shot off so fast, he had hardly seen it. This man's hand moved faster and there was a searing, emptying pain at his left knee, and even as he dropped, gasping in pain; he knew he wanted this man for Mother Russia. This man would be more valuable than any silly toy created thirty years ago. This man moved in a way Spesk had never seen before. It was not something better than any other man; it was something different.

And at twenty-four, and the youngest colonel in the Soviet, he was probably the only officer of that rank who would dare make the decision he made now, going down to the sidewalk, his left leg useless. He was going to get that man for Russia. The dunderheads in the higher ranks might not understand immediately, but eventually they would see that there was an advantage in this man, offered by no machine or device.

Spesk crawled, crying, to his car and jerkily drove away. He would find compatriots in New York who could arrange for medical care. It was not safe to lie wounded in this area, not without Nathan for protection.

Remo walked back to his car. A young black boy hopped around, clutching his wrist. Apparently he had attempted to pull Chiun's beard and had been immediately disappointed to find out here was not a frail old rabbi.

"What depths your nation has sunk to. What indescribable horrors," said Chiun.

"What's the matter?"

"That thing dared touch the body of the Master of Sinanju. Have they not been taught respect?"

"I'm surprised he's alive," Remo said.

"I have not been paid to clean the streets of your cities. Have you not had enough of this country, a country where children would dare touch the Master of Sinanju?"

"Little Father, there are things that trouble me about my country. But not fear for your person. There are other people out there though, people without your skills, who are not protected as you are by your skills. Smith is worried about some gadget that somebody invented. But I am worried because an old woman has been killed. And it doesn't matter to anyone. It doesn't matter," said Remo and he felt the blood run hot up his neck and his hands trembled and it was as if he had never been taught to breathe properly. "It's wrong. It's unjust. It goddam stinks."

Chiun smiled and looked knowingly at his pupil.

"You have learned much, Remo. You have learned to awaken your body in a world where most people's bodies go from mother's breast to grave without ever the breath of full life. Hardly is there a man to challenge your skills. Yet no master of Sinanju, for century upon century, has had skill enough to do what you wish to do."

"What is that, Little Father?"

"End injustice."

"I don't want to end it, Little Father. I just don't want it to flourish."

"Be it enough that in your own heart and your own village, justice triumphs."

And Remo knew he was about to hear the story of Sinanju again, how the village was so poor that the babies could not be supported during the lean years and had to be put to sleep in the cold waters of the West Korea Bay. Until the first Master of Sinanju many centuries before had begun to rent out his talents to rulers. And thus was born the sun source of all the martial arts, Sinanju. And by serving well the monarchs, each Master saved the babies. This was Remo's justice.

"Each task you perform with perfection feeds the children of Sinanju," Chiun said.

"They're a bunch of ingrates in Sinanju and you know it," said Remo.

"Yes, Remo, but they are our ingrates," said Chiun, and a long fingernail stressed the point in the dark night.

It was dark because the neighborhood's street lamps had been torn down when the people discovered they could sell pieces of the new aluminum poles to junkyards. There had been a television special on the darkness in the slums, comparing it to a form of genocide, whereby the system stole light from the blacks. A sociologist made a detailed study and blamed the city for being in collusion with the junkyards to put up lights that could be torn down without too much effort. "Again, the blacks are victims," the sociologist had said on television, "of white profits." He did not dwell on who did the tearing down or whose taxes paid for the lamp posts in the first place.