"So, anyway, in those days, it was tough for a woman to be divorced and to have a kid. Neighbors, family, nobody would talk to her and finally, she decided it would be best if you went to the nuns. I was furious when I heard about it, but if I came to get you, it would look like I was saying your mother didn't know how to take care of you. So I left you there, even though it broke my heart. I just figured . . . well, I figured there was no looking back."
"I guess not," Remo said. "Do you have a picture of her? Sometimes, I used to try to imagine what my mother looked like. When I was a kid, I used to lie in bed when I couldn't sleep and make up faces."
"Is that so?" the gunman said as he put on his jacket. "And what'd you think she looked like, kid?"
"Gina Lollobrigida. I saw her in a movie once. I always wanted my mother to look like Gina Lollobrigida."
"That's amazing, son. It really is. Your mother looked exactly like her, exactly. You must be psychic or something."
Remo looked up and said, "Where are you going?"
"Out. I've got business to attend to."
"I'll come with you."
"Look, kid. It's good that we found each other after all these years but I can't have you following me everywhere. Now relax. I'll be back in an hour or so. Go get yourself fed or laid or something. Practice. That's it. Practice. 'Cause when I come back you've got to start telling me how you do all that stuff with walls and fighting and all." The hotel-room door slammed on Remo's hurt face.
The gunman took the elevator to the hotel garage and drove his car onto the dingy street of Detroit.
"Jeez," he said to himself aloud. "This is going to be a bitch."
He lit a cigarette, hating the stale taste in his mouth. He had to get rid of the kid. What he didn't need now in his life was some overgrown teenager worrying about Daddy. Maybe he would wait until Remo had taught him his tricks. Sinanju, he called it, whatever that was. He didn't know what it meant, but you were never too old to learn new things, especially if they could help you in your trade. Maybe he'd wait and learn and then one night when the kid was sleeping, just put a bullet in his brain and get away.
That was one way. The other way was just not to return to the hotel and let this Remo kid try to find him. But Remo had found him before. Whatever Sinanju was, he seemed to be able to do things that normal people couldn't do. The old Oriental too, for that matter, and he had to be eighty if he was a day.
The gunman wondered why the old Oriental was hounding him. First, he showed up at the Mangan hit, and then at the Dynacar demonstration and then at the Millis shooting. All because the man who hired him had insisted on sending the stupid environmental warning to the newspapers. That part had been dumb and unprofessional, but it was part of the job. The old gook though; he wasn't part of the job.
He had tried to escape from the two of them that early evening when he had left them fighting on the rooftop. But even as he was pulling out of the parking lot, he saw the kid coming down the side of the building and running after him.
He had sped up to seventy-five, then slowed to sixty-five once he got to the interstate highway, thinking he was free. And suddenly the passenger door was pulled open.
He had stomped on the gas pedal and swerved to the right so the twin forces would slam the door shut, but the door would not close. It was being held open, and then a voice had yelled, "Hey. Keep the wheel steady."
It was the kid, Remo, running alongside the car, holding the door open, and then he hopped into the passenger seat and slammed the door after him.
"Don't worry, Dad," the kid had said. "I'm all right." Just the memory of it made the gunman's mouth dry.
It was going to be hard to shake this Remo. At least for a while. The best way to stay alive was to play along. And what if the kid was right? What if Remo was his son? It was possible. A guy who could run as fast as a car could be anything he wanted to be.
Remo Williams sat in the darkness of the hotel room which to his eyes was not darkness at all, but a kind of twilight.
It was something he did not even think about anymore, this power of sight, but simply allowed his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Unlike ordinary eyes, the pupils did not simply dilate to catch all the available light; it was something more. Chiun had once called the phenomenon "fishing for light." Somehow, in a way Remo was trained to achieve but never to understand, his eyes fished for the light and even in utter pitch darkness, he was able to see.
Remo wondered if it was a talent that had been in all men back in the days before artificial light, before campfires and candles, when man's earliest ancestors had to hunt by moonlight, and sometimes, without even moonlight. Remo did not know; he only knew he had the power to do it.
Thanks to Chiun.
His feelings toward his teacher, as he sat in the darkness that was not darkness, were confused.
Chiun had always done what was best for Remo, except when Sinanju came first. That was understood between them. Sinanju was the center of Chiun's personal universe.
But this was different. Chiun-Smith, too-had hidden from Remo the truth about his father. It was hard to take and even harder to understand.
It was all hard. Remo had not thought of his parents for years. They had been no part of his childhood, much less his adult life. They were simply an abstract concept because everyone had parents at one time and Remo just assumed that his were dead.
Once, well into his Sinanju training, Remo discovered he could tap into his early-life memories, calling them up the way Smith called up information on his computers. So he sat down one day to call up the faces of the parents he must have seen when he was an uncomprehending infant.
Chiun had found him seated in a lotus position, eyes closed in concentration.
"What new way have you found to waste time?" Chiun had asked.
"I'm not wasting time. I'm calling up memories."
"He who lives in the past has no future," Chiun had said.
"That's not real convincing from somebody who can recite what every Master of Sinanju liked to eat for breakfast. All the way back to the pharaohs."
"That is not the past. That is history," Chiun had sniffed.
"Says you. Now would you mind? I'm trying to summon up the faces of my parents."
"You do not wish to see them."
"Why do you say that?" Remo asked.
"Because I know," Chiun had said.
"No, you don't. You can't possibly know. You knew your parents, your grandparents, all your forebears. I know nothing about mine."
"That is because they are not worth knowing," Chiun had said.
"Why is that?"
"They are not worth knowing because they were white," said Chiun.
"Hah!" Remo shot back. "I've got you there. All the time you're trying to convince me I'm part Korean, just to justify your giving Sinanju to a white. Now you're changing your tune."
"I am not changing my tune. You are changing your hearing. You are not white, but your parents were. Somewhere in your past, overwhelmed by generations of diluting mating with non-Koreans, there is a drop of proud Korean blood. Perhaps two drops. Those are the drops that I train. It is my misfortune that the white baggage has to come along with them."
"Even if my parents were white," Remo had said, "that doesn't make them not worth knowing."
Chiun said loudly, "They are not worth knowing because they thought so little of you that they left you on a doorstep. "
Chiun had stalked off and Remo closed his eyes again but he was not able to recall his parent's faces. A moment before, he had been all the way back into his early days at St. Theresa's Orphanage, and was sure that in another minute, he would have his parents in his mind. But not now. Chiun had ruined it with his remark and he wondered if Chiun had been right. After that failure, Remo never tried to summon up those infant's memories again.