Warren Murphy: Child's Play

"Look, Little Father, I'm a bit worried. Smitty said we should stay away from Chicago until he could find out more about that guy. Maybe I'm not doing the right thing."

And on this rare occasion, the Master of Sinanju yelled: "Who have I taught, you or your Smith? Who knows what is right, some seedling emperor, of which are there many each generation, or the skilled product of Sinanju? You are wonderful, fool, and you do not comprehend this yet."

"Wonderful, Little Father?"

"Do not listen to me. I carp," said Chiun. "But know you this. While you were at that Army outpost, doing what a mere emperor told you to do, you failed. Now you will succeed because you do what you know to do, what I have taught you to do. Sitting, even a stone is not safe. Rolling, it carries all before it. Go."

At this point, the cab driver who had been expecting a big tip under the reasonable assumption that a lie was worth more than the truth in the tipping market, did note that perhaps the Oriental did carp a bit. However, he did not dwell on this. He had more important and immediate things, like getting his ears out of the triangular vent window of the front seat. His nose was very close to the outside mirror and his ears pinched as he tried to pull his head back through. What he could not figure out was how his head got there. He had made the comment about carping and then was wondering how to get his ears past the metal trim, back into the cab. If he could squeeze his ears through, he could get the rest of his head back in and that would be wonderful. It was what he wanted now more than anything else in the world. He heard the Oriental tell the white guy to trust himself and then the Oriental stopped the deafening clatter for a moment and the cab driver said:

"I was sort of wondering if you could help me, sort of, get back in the cab."

"You would ask a carper for help?"

"You don't carp," said the driver. He felt a fast warmth around his ears and then his head was back inside and what was most amazing was that the window panel wasn't bent. Sir, no sir, the sir wasn't a carper at all, sir, and yes sir, it was really amazing how people would not listen to good advice these days, sir.

Chiun thought so too. Even transportation servants, when properly reasoned with, could come to correct solutions.

Inside the Chicago board of education, something was wrong. People moved quickly, some barking sharp commands. Knots of worried faces exchanged questions with each other.

"What happened?" came a voice. Several answered.

"Warner Pell. At his desk."

"What?"

"Dead."

"No."

"Yes."

"Oh, my God. No."

And while this was going on, another:

"What happened?"

"Warner Pell."

"What?"

"Dead."

"No."

"Yes."

"Oh, my God. No."

Remo intruded upon a knot of people.

"You say Warner Pell is dead?" Remo asked.

"Yes," said a fleshy-faced woman with large rhinestone eyeglasses hanging by a cord over widening breasts that seemed to strain her twenty-pound test weight nylon bra, like large formless vestigial lumps that might, ten or twenty years before, have been used to feed babies.

"How?" asked Remo.

"Shot to death. Murdered."

"Where?"

"Down the hall. Murder in the board of education. This is becoming as bad as a classroom. My God, what next?"

"As bad as a classroom," said another.

Remo spotted two blue uniforms down the other end of the hallway. He still had his Justice Department identification. He used it.

The two patrolmen nodded Remo into the office. He sensed something was wrong, not by any overt movement, but by a sudden disruption of their rhythms. Unless people were aware of it and purposely controlled it, a sudden realization of the mind was displayed in the body. With some people it was a roar, like a Gary Grant double-take. With others, it was a more subtle deadening of the facial muscles. One cop had it, turned his back to Remo and whispered to the other who, of course, did not turn around to look at Remo, but if you watched his shoulders, they jerked upward as his mind responded.

A big cardboard sign hung outside the door to the inner office. It read:

Special Advancement Progress,

Warner Pell, Assistant Director for Coordination

Inside, Pell was not coordinating anything. One arm rested on the side of a couch, the head was tilted back over a chest bib of blood. Someone had shot him several times under the chin. The dead eyes were directed at the ceiling. A police photographer clicked off a flash. Pell sat facing an undersized chair.

Remo showed his credentials.

"Know who did it?"

A detective whose white shirt had surrendered to the summer heat outside and whose face had made a similar pact with his job years before, said:

"No."

"How was it done?"

"A .25 caliber up through the chin."

"Then the killer had to be below him?"

"That's right," said the detective.

Again, a hit from below. That was how Kaufmann had gotten it also.

"Anybody see the killer leave?"

"No. Pell was interviewing some problem kid. Kid was in such a state of shock, he couldn't talk."

"Maybe the kid. How old is he?"

"A kid. Nine years old, for Christ's sake. You guys from Justice are real screamers. A nine-year-old kid, not a suspect."

"I thought he might have been fifteen or sixteen."

"Nah. A kid."

In the outer office, a white woman with a fierce Afro and an indignant scowl that could putrefy a mountain breeze, demanded to know what the police officers were doing disrupting her schedule. If the clothes had not flaunted such severe dark lines, with a heavy wide belt and a brass buckle that looked as it if shielded a foreign embassy instead of a navel, she might have been attractive. She was in her early thirties, but her mouth was in its fifties. She had a voice like boiling Drano.

A nine-year-old boy stood meekly at her side, looking for directions.

"I am Ms. Kaufperson and I demand to know what you police are doing here without my permission."

"There's been a homicide, lady."

"I am not your lady. I am a woman. You," she said to Remo. "Who are you? I don't know you."

"I don't know you, either," Remo said.

"I am the coordinating director of motivational advancement," she said.

"That's the retards," said one detective.

"No," said another. "Pell was the retards."

"What's motivational advancement?" Remo asked, watching the two patrolmen from outside close in on the door. Their guns were out. All right, two at one door, he'd go through them when they crossed, making sure they didn't fire their guns and hurt somebody in the room, especially the little boy who was with Ms. Kaufperson.

"Motivational advancement is exactly what it means. Through viable meaningful involvement we positively affect underachievers toward fuller utilization of their potential."

"That's lazy kids," said one detective.

Then the first patrolman at the door made his move. Stepping between Ms. Kaufperson and Remo, he pointed his revolver toward Remo, announcing: "Hold it, you. It's the suspect posing as Justice Department, Sergeant. He's the one. With that funny first name."

It was really a juggling act more than anything else. Remo had to keep the gun at him and the one drawn by the other patrolman and the two guns being drawn by the detectives from firing at anyone, preferably himself. So as the first announced that Remo should not move, he eased behind one detective and pushed him inside the angle of the gun arm of the patrolman and spun the second detective off into the corner and then simply moved himself through the falling bodies toward the last patrolman whose gun was up and ready to fire. Remo put an index finger into the nerves of the gun hand. To an outsider it looked like a bunch of people suddenly collapsing into each other while one rather thin man seemed to walk through them quietly.