"No, it is a palace on wheels!"
Remo didn't like the sound of that one bit. "Help me look, will you?"
"How can I help when I do not know what I am looking for? This kitchen is a miracle-small and yet complete down to the smallest detail. There is even a warming drawer!"
"We eat rice, fish and more rice. What would we warm in a warming drawer?"
"The drawers are made with a tiny catch to keep them from sliding open while the vehicle is in motion!"
"Wait," Remo said. He stopped and looked around the room. He sniffed. Chiun creased his eyes at the young Master.
"Smell anything?" Remo asked.
"I smell a thousand aromas. I assume you smell something out of the ordinary."
"Not yet, but I'll find it." He sniffed loudly.
"Pah. You smell like a horse-and I mean that in every sense," Chiun said. "Tell me what we are attempting to locate, if sharing the secret is not too troublesome."
"Well, I don't know exactly. Some sort of a drug or chemical or something that would make people act crazy."
Chiun's white mouth drew up in a hard line. "As in violently maddened? Is that why we are here, Remo, to hunt down the source of the tavern brawl troubles?"
"Yep. That's the reason."
"Why did not Emperor Smith inform me of this purpose?"
"Emperor Smith doesn't know we're here, okay?" Remo said. "It was my idea to come here. I'm the one who started thinking that maybe this bunch of Caribbean nincompoops was making all the bad stuff happen. The only person I told was Prince Junior and only because I needed to get some of my facts straight."
Chiun nodded, uncharacteristically thoughtful. Remo tried to ignore him as he opened cabinets and sniffed under coffee tables.
"What did the Prince Regent think of your deductions?"
"You know what he thought, Chiun! He thought-I was grasping at wild geese and I am sure you do, too. So what do you say we skip all the sarcastic remarks this time."
Remo felt the Master Emeritus watching him. The old man was just standing there. Remo hated it when Chiun acted all quiet, as if pondering weighty matters-such as the magnificence of the ignorance of the man who was now Reigning Master.
"Well, like it or not, here we are," Remo announced finally. "So why don't you humor me and see if you can find anything suspicious."
"Very well," Chiun replied quite agreeably.
For the next ten minutes they ransacked the customized touring bus and went through the two bedrooms in the rear. They found prescription bottles, several stocked liquor cabinets and a plastic bag of Mary Jane's Delight Brand Legal Pipe-Blend. Even in a sealed plastic bag Remo could tell it was only catnip and oregano.
"I do not believe we will find what you are seeking, my son," Chiun said as they finished their rounds. Remo said nothing, just stood in the small dining area with a realistic-looking electric-log fireplace. His freakishly thick wrists twisted absently.
"Any bombs?" asked the driver with a smile as he strolled through the curtains that partitioned off the driving area. He made for the kitchenette, where he refilled his insulated mug.
"Can't be too careful," Remo replied as his wrists stopped twisting.
"I 'preciate your thoroughness."
As soon as the driver left, Remo went to the kitchenette. He snatched open the doors of the golden oak cabinets.
"I have already searched the kitchenette," Chiun said.
"Maybe it's in the coffee. They used to try to hide cocaine in coffee shipments because the drug dogs couldn't sniff it out that way."
"My sense of smell is superior to that of any drug-sniffing dog. If there were drugs in the coffee I would have found it "
"I know you would, Little Father," Remo said through gritted teeth-as he opened a five-pound can of Folgers and plunged his fingers into it. He scooped up several handfuls of coffee.
Just coffee.
Chapter 16
"All right, let me have it," Remo said after an hour of excruciating silent treatment.
"Let you have what?" Chiun asked.
"You're mad at me, and you're dying to tell me about it."
Sitting with legs crossed, Chiun modestly adjusted the skirts of his kimono. Every loose bit of silk fluttered in the wind. "I do not know what you are talking about."
"Overpass," Remo announced, nodding his head low on his chest. The big tour bus rumbled at sixty-five miles per hour under the concrete supports of a county highway that had been routed over the interstate. There was just an inch of clearance between the windwhipped tips of his close-cropped dark hair and the underside of the overpass. Chiun didn't even bother to bow his head. At about five feet tall, he was already as low as his adopted son was ducking.
The overpass was left behind in a flurry of rushing air.
"I didn't trust you or I second-guessed you or something when we were in the bus. You told me the drugs were not in the coffee and I went and looked in the coffee anyway. You're mad about that."
Chiun said nothing. The white tufts of hair decorating each of his shell-like ears looked as if they would fly off any second.
"Well, I guess I can understand why you'd be mad. I don't know why I checked the coffee. Even I could smell that it was just coffee. Aw, crap."
A state trooper, lying in wait behind the viaduct, was now speeding up behind the tour bus.
"Why couldn't he be sleeping?" Remo complained.
"You did not expect to ride half the morning atop this vehicle without being noticed," Chiun said. "Besides, the first two police were sleeping."
They stood and walked to the front of the bus, which alarmed the trooper into sounding his siren. They stepped off at a point near the front where they would be unseen by the trooper and bus passengers, then jogged alongside as the bus slowed. Finally they veered off into the wildflower field that encroached on the two westbound lanes.
"I guess I really wanted to find the stuff in the damn bus," Remo continued as the two of them stepped up into a comfortable looking tree and watched the trooper clamber all over the tour bus. They heard the derision cast on the trooper by the bus driver and several of the occupants, who had debarked to watch the entertainment. The trooper's face was bright pink by the time he crawled onto the roof himself and searched it, expecting to find a trapdoor or a hiding place.
"Is that why we are staying with the bus? Because you cannot stand the thought of being mistaken?"
"No, because I don't think I am mistaken," Remo said. "I've got a strong intuition that there's a link between this entourage and the outbreaks of violence. Like when I was in Boston putting the screws to Jorge Moroza. The TV was on in the restaurant to a Spanish language station, and they showed one of the news items with Greg Grom. Then we saw him on the news again in Nashville. And I think I saw him at the Big Stomp-remember the limo that pulled in right after we got there? I saw half a face inside it. Just the eyes. And it was through the dark glass. But I think it was him. Grom."
Chiun looked at him as if waiting for a punchline. "I had this sort of feeling that I was missing something, you know. I couldn't put my finger on it, but for some reason I kept smelling pork tamales in my head." Chiun looked more interested, and slightly pitying. "Crazy, maybe, but I couldn't shake it out. Then I was just sitting there on the plane, not even trying to think about it, and that's when I remembered smelling pork tamales. It was when I questioned Jorge Moroza. He must have eaten thirty of them. That was when I remembered that I had seen Grom on the TV when I was with Moroza. Everything clicked into place."
"You equate an obsession with pork tamales with investigative insight?" Chiun pondered. "Pork tamales no less, Remo. Pig fat and corn. There must be no more appealing food on the planet to one with your bizarre and degraded pedigree."
"Chiun, I guarantee I will never eat a pork tamale, especially not after watching what they did to Moroza. And I must have been onto something. I had Prince Junior check into it, and he figured out that this bus has been within strike range of all the outbreaks of violence."