The hands had been rejected at the actor's section of the agency because both the man and his Oriental friend lacked what Hollywood considered "an essential sense of danger. We don't get a feeling that the hands have a person attached to them who can give the audience that sense of danger we get from leading stars."
And that made Ruby even more sure that the hands were those of Remo and the Oriental was Chiun, who was all right if you stayed on his right side. Remo was all right, too, but he was "real country" as Ruby liked to say. And he was funny, although he thought he was the most serious dude in the world. As for sanity, she would have bet on Chiun. She could understand why Chiun did things; there was no explaining what Remo did. Like making commercials.
She flew up to New York to meet Remo's agent.
The agent was so pretty he made Shirley Temple look like a concrete septic tank. He was so neat his lips looked as if moisture on them would be a mess. It was the first time Ruby ever wanted to be a man. If she were a man, this beautiful young man might be interested in her.
"I want those hands," said Ruby.
"Gawd, who doesn't, dear?" the agent said and Ruby wondered how he kept his hair that right.
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Her $9.95 rayon wig didn't come out of the machine that neat. As a matter of fact, nothing was that neat.
"Yeah, but I want to do a commercial on some of my stuff," said Ruby. "I want those hands in the commercial. So call them."
"Well, actually, we don't call them. They call us."
"Tell me where they are. I'll call them," Ruby said.
And because it was all so boring, trying to track down properties who had just hands when there were so many big things going on out there, the agent gave Ruby the address.
The two were in a luxury hotel overlooking Central Park. They had a suite. They were registered as "Jones and the gracious one."
When Ruby stood outside their door, she suddenly became weak for a moment. She remembered the Island of Baqia and the miracles Remo and Chiun did and she remembered how often she had thought of them since that time.
But Ruby Gonzalez was Ruby Gonzalez and when she knocked and heard Remo's voice ask who it was, she answered, "None of your business, dodo. Open this door."
When the door opened, all she could say was, "Hello." And her voice was weak.
"Hello," said Remo. "Where you been?"
"Around," she said.
"Yeah," said Remo. "I've been there, too. What brings you here?"
And Ruby Gonzalez took a deep breath and concentrated and began talking a mile a minute, "Because you two owe me. I save your life and
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you make me promises and then you just go and get lost and you never deliver on your promises and I shoulda known you never would, not you two, and now I'm here to collect."
"Same Ruby," sighed Remo. "Screeching at me. For a minute there, I thought it was going to be different."
But Chiun had seen the look on Ruby's face. He knew it was different, that different emotions had entered Ruby's heart, and while he said, "Come inside, close the door, and get the rice boiling," he was thinking that maybe he had found the way to get a new trainee for the House of Sinanju. One that nobody else would have a chance to mess up.
"Hello," said Ruby, stepping inside the door.
"Animal," said Chiun. "Animal. Rutting animals. Blacks, whites. Sexually active, mentally dormant. I see the looks in your faces, the both of you. I suppose you two want to make love now."
There was no answer.
"I suppose I should be grateful you two don't fall on the rug and couple there," said Chiun. But when they didn't, Chiun decided he had had it with the subtle approach.
"A thousand gold pieces for a male child from the loins of my son," he called out.
"Five thousand," said Ruby.
"Three thousand," said Chiun.
"Wait," said Remo. "Don't I have anything to say about this?"
"No," said Chiun. "Who listens to a television star?"
"No," said Ruby. "You got nothing to say."
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CHAPTER SIX
Lucius Jackson Gonzalez was too busy to wipe the sweat off his brow. He had been on this assembly line since daybreak and was still one hundred units short of his goal. His body twitched with terror.
"Speed up the line," he begged.
From above him on a metal ramp, he heard the overseer's metal-tipped boots clack toward him.
"Quiet," came the gruff voice. Lucius Jackson Gonzalez did not know the face. He did not often look up to see it.
"Yes sir," he said and just prayed that they would speed up the assembly line so he could get Ms one hundred additional units.
It had only been a week since he had been ripped out of his bed at the strange hour of nine A.M., but that seemed like only a vague memory of a time so sweet and lazy he could hardly remember it. Now, all he remembered was the round metal bands he was supposed to wrap securely around the wooden posts that passed him on the assembly line. Late in the day, the work became more difficult as the wooden posts wore down and you had to take more care with the bands.
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In the morning the metal just slipped in and it was secure and nobody was going to say anything. But down the assembly line, where six men used tools to take the bands off, the slots in the wood would wear down. And the bands themselves had to be handled gingerly because if you just snapped them on late in the day, they might break. Metal became tired. And all these problems mounted as the day wore on.
Lucius's right hand suddenly spouted a red leak. He tried to hold back the blood so it wouldn't get on the bands. He had seen them go down the production line with blood on them before and the overseer always found out who did it. Lucius did not want to be found out so, wounded, he worked and prayed.
It was not a slow transformation that had brought him to this eager sweating service. He had been sleeping. And what he remembered was hands grabbing him and he thought it might have been the police, except they would have been afraid to touch him. Police had to read you your rights. Police had to refrain from undue violence. You pretty much had to cut up a policeman before he would put his hands on you.
So when Lucius felt the hands, he knew immediately it wasn't the police. And he tried to reach for his razor, because when you were dealing with a brother, you had better cut first. But he couldn't get to his razor. And then he saw the men were white.
He was working on his lawsuit charging a violation of his civil rights when he felt something very sharp prick his arm and then everything became heavy in his head and very dark.
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He thought he was still falling when he realized he couldn't move his hands or legs and there was a plastic thing on his tongue. He thought he was blinded at first because there was only darkness around him. Then he saw a flat plane of very white light coming in down at his feet. And he saw other bodies in the shaft of light. His mouth was dry and he could not close it to swallow. The thirst became a biting pain and then numb. He could not feel the right arm his head rested on. His left was growing numb. He knew they were traveling because he could hear the motor and feel the bumping of the road beneath him.
Then, the engine stopped and suddenly there was blinding light at his feet and he felt himself yanked out into the light that was too bright to see. Rough hands pulled back his eyelids. His eyes burned.
"This one's all right," said someone. The plastic that wrapped his tongue and kept his mouth open was yanked out. Blessed cool water came in and Lucius lapped it up eagerly. He gulped and swallowed until his belly was full. The bindings on his wrists and ankles came off. And numbing pain came to his right arm on which he had rested.
He was too frightened to talk. As he looked around he saw friends he knew, their eyes wide, laying on the ground or kneeling. Piles of white nylon ropes lay in pieces before him. When he could use his eyes, he saw there were two big buses behind him and their luggage compartments were open wide.