Warren Murphy: Summit Chase

"Yeah, and I would have beat him too if I hadn't gotten careless and let him capture my queen on the sixth move," Remo said, annoyed to even have to remember the business in Buenos Aires, which had not been one of his brighter moments. "Look," he said hurriedly. "You're too upset now to talk about things like vacations. Suppose I do this job and then we'll talk about vacations? What do you say?"

What Smith said was, "I'll get a file to you. Everything we know. Perhaps something will come out of it. But about all this vacation time…"

Remo turned the dial on the earpiece from fourteen to twelve and immediately Smith's voice went berserk again.

"Grbble, breek, gleeble."

"I'm sorry, Doctor Smith, we're having trouble again with this de-" Remo turned the dial on the mouthpiece to another setting. He could picture Smith at Folcroft, furiously twisting the dials, trying to get Remo's voice back.

Into the mouthpiece, Remo said: "Brueghel, Rommel, Stein and Hinderbeck. Sausage meat machines. Cold cuts, one dollar the pound, up to your ankle. Don't make no bull moves, Dutch Schultz." He hung up. Let Smith chew on that one for awhile.

As he removed the scrambler units from the phone, he tried not to feel his annoyance. He didn't need a file from Smith. He didn't need any neat computer printouts. All he needed was the description and location of the targets. Nemeroff. Asiphar. They were dead. That was that. Girl scouts could do it. A stupid thing to let louse up a vacation.

Remo put the scrambler units back in the drawer, kicked off his tennis shoes and watched the back of Chiun's head. He wanted to tell Chiun about his feelings today at the federal prison. How he had been frightened and nervous, almost out of control.

He wanted to tell him. It was important. He hoped a commercial would come soon.

He lay there, waiting for one. But if I tell Chiun, what? Will he lecture me? Give me exercises to do? Tell me that white men can never control their feelings?

Maybe, a year ago, he would. But now? Probably, he just wouldn't be interested. He'd just grunt and keep staring at the television.

Remo did not want that to happen. He decided not to tell Chiun.

CHAPTER FOUR

"C'mon, you want to go to the zoo?"

The old man had turned off the television and was beginning to hook up his TV tape player to play back the shows he had missed because of concurrent scheduling.

Even his white robe seemed to rise in indignation as he looked at Remo, then answered softly:

"This is all a zoo. All the place, all around the place. No, thank you. But you go. Perhaps you can teach the bull moose how to bellow."

Remo shrugged and disguised a sigh. There was no doubt about it. He was not the same Chiun any longer. The Master of Sinanju was growing old, but somehow it seemed obscene that that finely-honed weapon, the only person Remo had ever loved, should be subject to growing old. As if he were a mere mortal. As if he were not the Master of Sinanju.

Remo got up to leave but paused at the door. "Chiun, can I bring you anything back? A newspaper? A book?"

"If there is a special on arteries somewhere, buy me five feet. Otherwise nothing." Then he was back in his lotus position, again staring at the set, and Remo could not remember ever feeling so sad.

If the two men in the lobby had worn neon sandwichboards, they could not have been more obvious. They sat on the edge of two facing chairs, their heads leaned forward, talking to each other. Each time the elevator door opened, they looked up and then, finding nothing of interest, put their heads back together. When Remo came out of the elevator, their eyes locked on him and they nodded at each other, imperceptibly.

Remo spotted them as soon as the elevator door opened. His first instinct placed them as cops, but why cops should be eyeing him, he couldn't understand. Maybe they were just plain thugs. The two groups were usually indistinguishable, generally coming from the same social class.

Without appearing to watch them, he saw them eye him, he saw them nod to each other, he saw them get up from their chairs and walk around to intercept him near the door. He was not going to be grabbed by them outside. If they wanted to talk to him, they could use the lobby.

So Remo walked to the cigar stand and bought a pack of True Blues. Maybe he'd have one later. He had not smoked a cigarette in a year. He picked up a copy of the afternoon Post, which read like the Tel Aviv edition of the National Enquirer, and gave the old lady at the stand a dollar and told her to keep the change.

He folded the paper lengthwise, stood against a wall next to a potted palm and began to read the main sports story on the back page. He would outwait them.

He hadn't long to wait. The two men sidled up to him and Remo decided they were not policemen; they moved too well.

Both were tall. One was Italian-looking and lean. The other was burly, his skin tended toward yellow and there was a trace of the epicanthic fold over his eyes. Remo thought, Hawaiian maybe, Polynesian somehow. Both men had the same kind of eyes, humourless, somehow always connected with the profession of crime-either solving it or committing it.

Remo knew the eyes well. He saw them every morning when he shaved.

He felt something pressed against his side, just above the right hip, something hard.

"I know," he said, "don't do anything stupid, I've got a gun stuck in my ribs."

The Hawaiian, or whatever—who held the gun—smiled. "Smart guy, are you? That's good. Then we won't have to tell you anything twice."

The other man took up position in front of Remo, screening him from the view of the rest of the lobby.

"What is it you want?" Remo asked.

"We want to know who you're working for." This time the Italian-looking one spoke. His voice was as brittle as his features.

"The Zingo Rollerskate and Surfboard Company," Remo said.

The gun jabbed into his ribs hard. The burly one said, "Now I thought you were going to be smart. And instead you're being stupid."

"You must have the wrong guy," Remo said. "I tell you, I work for the Zingo Rollerskate and Surfboard Company."

"And your job is to dress up like a priest and to visit jails?" the burly one asked. He was about to go on when a look from the other silenced him.

So they knew. So what? If they were cops, they would have brought him in. Since they weren't, it wasn't likely anyone was going to care much about what happened to them.

"All right," Remo said, "you got me. I'm a private detective."

"What's your name?" asked the man with the gun.

"Roger Willis."

"That's a funny name for a detective."

"It's a funny name for anyone," the Italian said.

"Did you come here to make fun of my name?" Remo said, trying to sound outraged.

"No," the Italian said. "Who are you working for?"

"He's a European," Remo said. "Some kind of Russian."

"His name?"

"Nemeroff," Remo said. "Baron Isaac Nemeroff." He watched their eyes carefully for any sign of reaction. There was none. So they were just lower-echelon goons who would know nothing, who could tell him nothing. Suddenly, he resented their wasting time which he could better spend at the zoo.

"Why'd he hire you?" the Italian said.

"I don't know. Probably let his fingers do the walking through the yellow pages. It pays to advertise. He sent me a letter. And a check."

"You still got the letter?"

"Sure. It's up in my room. Listen, pal, I don't want any trouble. This was just a simple talky-talk job. If it's more than that, just let me know and I'll get the hell out of it. I don't need any headaches."

"You be a nice boy, Roger, and you won't have any," the Hawaiian said. "Come on." He jabbed Remo with the pistol before putting it back into his pocket. "We're going up to your room to get the letter."