Warren Murphy - King's Curse

And down the street, his arms pinned by two burly men with raging Afroes, was a young man, his eyeglasses askew, his eyes wide with terror, his sneakers kicking helplessly in the air.

"That him," yelled a woman. "That Joey 172."

"Burn the mother," yelled a man.

"Cut him," shrieked a kid. "Cut him. Cut him good."

Remo eased himself from the stoop and cut into the mob, some of whom had been loudly discussing what to do about the white man across the street.

He wedged himself toward the opening where the two burly men were slapping the youngster into place. Remo cleared a small area in front of him quickly. To the crowd it looked like hands floating and bodies falling. The front of the crowd, after making some useless swings with knives and knuckles, tried to retreat from Remo. The back pushed forward and the front pushed back. Swinging started in the center of the crowd. Remo yelled for quiet. He wasn't heard.

"I don't suppose," he said, in a voice smothered to insignificance, like a pebble rolling uphill against an avalanche, "that you would consider this graffiti an expression of culture and ethnic pride?"

Not getting a response, he dropped the young man's handlers with two backhands flat to the side of the skull, just compressing the blood flow momentarily. Each dropped like a ripe plum. Remo grabbed the boy and cut his way through a wing of the crowd. Two blocks away, he avoided a police column that was waiting for the mob to fight out its energy before moving in.

"Hey, man, thanks," said the youngster.

"You're not going anywhere, kid," said Remo, stopping the lad by cementing the tool's wrist to his palm. They were in a deserted alley now with crumbled bricks rising toward the end like refuse from a bombing raid.

"Are you the painter of the Joey 172's?" Remo asked.

"No, man, I swear it," said the boy. He was about twelve years old, a foot shorter than Remo. His Captain Kangaroo tee shirt was torn off his left side revealing a skinny chest and bony shoulders.

"All right," said Remo. "I'll take you back to the mob, then."

"I did it," said the boy.

"Now we're talking."

"But I didn't mess up no wall of respect, man."

"I know," said Remo. "I did it for you."

"You mother," said the boy. "What'd you do that for?"

"So that I could enlist the aid and resources of the community in meeting you."

"You ain't much with a spray can, man. You got a weak hand. A real weak hand."

"I never defaced anything before," said Remo.

"Why should I help you?" asked the boy logically.

"Because on one hand I'm going to give you two hundred dollars cash if you do, and on the other, I'm going to puncture your ear drums if you don't," said Remo, just as logically.

"You make a sweet offer. Where's the money?"

Remo took a wad of bills from his pocket and counted out exactly two hundred dollars.

"I'll be back in a minute," said the boy. "I just want to see if this money's real. Can't be too careful nowadays."

Remo took a flat hand and, pushing it up against the boy's spinal column like a concentrated jet of force, catapulted the boy into the air so the floppy sneakers paused momentarily above Remo's head.

"Eeeow," yelled the boy and felt himself turn over and head for the rubble below him, skull first, until he was caught like a parachute harness an eyelash away from ground collision and righted.

"Money's good," he said. "What can I do for you, friend?"

"I've got a problem," said Remo. "I'm looking for some people who are mad about something."

"I feel for those mothers, man," said the boy honestly.

"These people are mad over something you wrote 'Joey 172' on. Like the mob back there at the 'wall of respect.' "

"That's a mean group back there."

"This group is meaner," said Remo.

"Here's your money back, man," said the boy wisely.

"Wait. If I don't get them, sooner or later they're gonna get you."

"You're not gonna hand me over to them?"

"No," said Remo.

"Why not?" asked the boy. He cocked his head.

"Because they have, pretty stiff penalties for defacing property."

"Like what?"

"Like they cut your heart out."

The boy whistled. "They the ones that offed the politician and the rich lady?"

Remo nodded.

The boy whistled again.

"I've got to know what you defaced."

"Improved," said the boy.

"All right, improved."

"Let's see. Bathrooms at school."

Remo shook his head.

"Two cars on an A train."

"I don't think so," said Remo.

"A bridge."

"Where?"

"Near Tremont Avenue. That's real uptown," said the boy.

"Any church or religious monument nearby?"

The boy shook his head.

"Did you do it on a painting or something?"

"I don't mess over someone else's work," said the boy. "Just things. Not works. Rocks and stuff."

"Any rocks?"

"Sure. I practice on rocks."

"Where?" asked Remo.

"Central Park once. Prospect Park a lot. Rocks are nothing, man."

"Any place else?"

"A museum. I did one on the big museum off Central Park. With the guy on the horse out front."

"What did the rock look like?" asked Remo.

"Big. Square like. With some circles and birds on it and stuff. A real old rock. The birds were shitty like some real little kid carved them."

"Thanks," said Remo.

CHAPTER SIX

Off Central Park Remo found the Museum of Natural History, a massive stone building with wide steps and a bronze statue of Teddy Roosevelt on a horse, facing fearlessly the onslaught of the wilds, namely Fifth Avenue on the other side of the park. The bronze Roosevelt presided over two bronze Indians standing at his side, equally fearless in their unchanging stare across the park.

Remo made a contribution at the entrance and asked for the exhibit of stones. The clerk, drowsy from the mind-smothering passing out of buttons, which labeled the donor as one of those keenly aware of the importance of nature and of the Museum of Natural History, said the museum had a lot of stones. Which one did he want?

"A big one," said Remo. "One that has some graffiti on it."

"We don't feature graffiti, sir," said the clerk.

"Well, do you have any stones? Large ones?" asked Remo. He felt heat rising in his body, not because the afternoon was muggy but because if the organization was still operating, they could probably have had this whole thing worked out in an afternoon and just given him the name of whoever or whatever he was supposed to connect with, and that would be that. Now he was looking for rocks in a museum. If he were right, he would have this whole little mess wrapped up in a day. Give him the sacred rock and the killers would have to come to him.

"We don't just collect rocks, sir," said the clerk.

"This is a special rock. It's got engraving on it."

"Oh. You mean the South American artifacts. That's the ground floor. Turn right."

Remo wandered past a stuffed bear, an imitation jungle, two dried musk oxen, and a stuffed yak eating a plastic peony into a dark room with large stones. All were intricately carved. Massive heads with flattened noses and almond eyes. Curving serpents weaving among stilted birds. Rock remnants of peoples who had disappeared in the western onslaught. But as Chiun had said, "The sword does not destroy a people; only a better life does. Swords kill. They do not change."

But on South American cultures Chiun had never shed any light, and Remo was sure it was because those cultures had been cut off from the rest of the world until the coming of the Euro-peans in 1500. Which meant to Chiun, since an ancestor had probably never done business there, that the area was still undiscovered.

"You mean you didn't have book on any of them," Remo had said.

"I mean the area is undiscovered," said Chiun. "A wilderness with strange people, like your country, until I came. Although your birthplace is easier because of so many descendants of Europeans and Africans. But now that I have discovered it, future generations of Sinanju will know of your inscrutable nation."