Warren Murphy: Funny Money

Remo steadied the man on his feet.

"I will remember that alley down there, looking down at it, as long as I live," gasped the judge.

"That's nice," said Remo.

"But I may not live too long. My bodyguard, Dom, is not exactly a bodyguard. He's my executioner."

"I knew you had a bodyguard which was why I didn't come in the front way," Remo said.

"He's there to make sure I don't make mistakes," Mantell said. "The carrot and the stick. The money's the carrot; Dom is the stick."

"He has a room in your apartment?"

"That's right," said Judge Mantell, shaking.

"Breathe deeply," Remo said. "I'll be back in a minute. Breathe to the base of your spine. I don't want you dying of shock now that you've gotten religion. That's it. To the spine. Imagine your lungs are attached to your spine."

The portly judge, in urine-soaked pajamas, breathed the way he was told and miraculously he felt the terror ease away. He barely noticed the thin young man leave the empty apartment beneath his own and he was so relieved to feel the terror flood away with each exhale that he did not mark time. It seemed like only an instant and then the young man was back, guiding the huge bulk of Dom who was a good foot taller and a good hundred pounds of raging muscle bigger than the thin man. But the man apparently was more bored than struggling as he guided Dom into the apartment.

"Is this Dom?" asked Remo, one hand on the back, the other on a shoulder.

"Yes, that's him," said Judge Mantell. "That's Dom."

"Goodbye, Dom," said Remo and propelled him to the window where Dom spreadeagled his feet, one on each side of the window, bracing his huge bulk. Unfortunately for Dom, this huge bulk cracked on through his pelvis and out into the open air over the alley with his feet nestled beside his shoulders. He went with a thwack and landed with a whoomph.

"I know you won't forget who we are and what we want of you," said Remo to the man in the stained pyjamas. Remo waited until he left to walk back upstairs, before going into the bathroom of the empty apartment to wash the black substance from his face and hands. He took off his black shirt, turned it inside out, exposing its white lining, rebuttoned it and left the apartment, a man in white shirt and black pants, who skipped down thirteen floors of stairs whistling, and walked out past the doorman with a cheery good morning.

He walked back to his hotel, a morning stroll along Park Avenue. When he reached his temporary suite in the Waldorf Astoria, he did his morning exercises with the heavy breathing and hoped that the frail old Oriental figure curled on a mat in the living room portion of the suite was asleep. It was Chiun's ability to place his sleeping mat in such a way as to dominate and interrupt any other activity in the room. No matter how large the room, the wisp of a man with white strands of beard could always dominate it. Even in his sleep.

Only this morning he was not asleep.

"If you must do your breathing improperly, why do it where people can hear you?"

"I thought you were asleep, Little Father."

"I was. But discord shattered my peace."

"Well, if you'd sleep in the bedroom like anyone else, you wouldn't be awakened by my breathing."

"No one can be like anyone else for no one truly knows anyone else. He can be like he thinks someone else is, but not knowing what that person is, he must naturally be less. Now the someone else I am around most of the time is you, and for me to be less than you is clearly impossible. Therefore, I sleep here."

"Thanks," said Remo, who had not followed that one at all, and then he noticed a torn box on top of the television. Dark film, twisted in matted circles, rose from it like the head on a beer. The box was addressed to Remo's suite and had been hand-delivered, Remo knew, because it had the blue tag on it. The blue tag also meant something else.

"That box has the blue tag, Little Father," said Remo.

"Yes, you're correct," said the Master of Sinanju, rising in his yellow sleeping robes. "It is blue."

"And you know that blue, that color blue with the triangle shape is from upstairs, don't you?"

"From Emperor Smith," said Chiun, referring to their common boss, Dr. Harold W. Smith, the man with the lemony voice who was head of the secret organization CURE.

To Chiun, since Smith ran the organization, then he was emperor. It made no difference that Smith's ostensible title was Director of Folcroft Sanitarium. For generation upon generation, Chiun and his predecessors, earlier masters of Sinanju, had rented their services to emperors to support the little village of Sinanju in Korea, just south of the Yalu River. Some of these emperors called themselves kings, ethnarchs, patriarchs, czars, princes, priests, and directors of sanitariums. Or even "upstairs," as Remo called Smith. But an emperor was an emperor, and he who paid the House of Sinanju was an emperor.

"I know the blue tag is from Smith. It means the box is for me alone. You are not to open it. You know that," said Remo.

"It rattled," said Chiun.

"The blue tag doesn't mean that you're not supposed to open it unless it rattles. It means that you're not supposed to open it. Rattle or no rattle."

"What difference does it make? It was broken anyway. It was all broken. When it plugged in, there was no picture. Just a light and whirring."

"It's not a television, Little Father. It's a movie projector with film," snapped Remo.

"That they forgot to put on the blue tag. But that I shouldn't open it, oh, that is important. Who sees what, that is important; but what it is does not matter. Who can understand the white mind?"

"That's the film Smitty wanted me to look at."

"Is it a beautiful story of love and devotion?" asked Chiun, his hands with long delicate fingernails coming to rest upon each other in front of him, like beautiful birds settling in their nests.

"No. Actually, it's some sort of a personal attack, one on one, with dismembering or something. Smitty wants the technique. He told me he had seen this somewhere and it was important. Something to do with money."

"Money for us?"

"No. Counterfeit bills."

"When you do not deal in gold, it is all counterfeit. I never trusted these pieces of paper and as you know I do not allow my moneys to the village to be given in paper. Gold. All else is a hope or a promise. Remember that, Remo. Sometimes jewels. But you do not know jewels."

Remo examined the box and began the laborious process of untangling the film and stretching it the length of the room and back until it was all out flat on the floor where he could roll it back onto the spool. Chiun watched, careful to see that none of the film touched his mat or his television set which had the daytime dramas he so loved.

"Why would anyone want to watch someone at work?" Chiun asked. "I do not understand this, although I sometimes see it on the television and naturally turn it off. Why would not Smith send you beautiful pictures?"

"It is work. He wants to know something about technique."

"Ah, that is why he is coming here this morning."

"He's coming? Why didn't you tell me?" asked Remo.

"Because the phone call didn't have a blue tag, heh, heh, heh," said Chiun and cackled intermittently until the projector was set up and running. They watched one man come to the street corner and wait Another approached. Chiun noted the show could use organ music although he didn't particularly want to hear what they were saying. Remo said the man with the little smile seemed to have very, very good control of his breathing. Chiun thought Rad Rex of As the Planet Revolves was more handsome. Remo thought the man had fine balance. Chiun said he couldn't wait for the commercial. Remo pointed out that something small struck the attacker in the forehead and tore at the flesh. Chiun thought that sort of thing was a disgrace to show on movies. Remo noted that the balance of the man was somehow wrong. Chiun thought the whole show lacked the feminine touch: "What is art without woman?" Remo wondered how the man did the dismemberment, feeling a respect for the victim who apparently had attempted to hold on to the objects in his hands with his last bit of life. Chiun thought the show could have used a doctor, or at least an unwanted pregnancy.