Alvin rubbed the sleepers from the corners of his eyes and looked again at the bars. The two figures were still there, stark white on the side near the light, black on the shadowed side away from the light.
"Who are you?" asked Alvin uncertainly.
"We are the ghosts of the men you have killed."
"How come two ghosts when I only killed one guy?" asked Alvin.
"Errrr, the spirit is divided into two parts. We are both parts."
"That's crazy," said Alvin. "Look. You want to talk to me, see my lawyer. I've got to get some sleep. There's a shrink coming tomorrow to look me over, and I want to be at the top of my form."
"We are here to give you a chance to repent of your sins."
"Hey, buddy," said Alvin. "Why don't you take your sheet and go back to the laundry? Leave me alone or I'll call a guard. I'm tired." Alvin Dewar lay back down and rolled onto his right side so he was facing the wall. He had been warned. The cops might resort to anything to get him to talk.
"Last chance, Alvin," came the voice.
"Piss off, will you?"
Alvin shook his head in disgust. Now the two dopes outside the cell were arguing.
"No such thing as a bad kid, huh?"
"He is not bad. Merely misguided." That was a funny voice, a sing-song like the Kung-fu show he used to like to watch.
Then there was a sound that Alvin didn't like, the sound of a train shrieking to a stop, metal intimidating metal. Alvin spun on his cot. His eyes were now more accustomed to the semi-dark.
There was a hole in the cell door, where one bar had been ripped loose. He saw the smaller cop in the sheet put his hands on another bar. There was that terrible metal sound again, and then the bar snapped. The little cop dropped it on the floor. The bigger cop in the sheet grabbed the cross piece that connected the upper and lower sections of bars and gave it a twist and bent it away from the door, as if it were a paper-covered wire tie for a Hefty trash bag.
Alvin Dewar suddenly came to the decision that these two were not cops. They entered his cell. Alvin sat up and pressed back toward the junction of the two walls, his back against the cold cinder block.
"You two leave me alone," he said. "I'll yell."
"Repent. Repent."
"Go away. Go away."
"Does he sound repentant to you?" the big one asked the small one.
"I am sorry to say that he does not."
"Now what are we going to do?"
"What we should have done in the first place. What everyone should have done in the first place."
And then the smaller figure in the sheet was through the ripped bars and swirling across the floor toward Alvin who pressed back harder against the wall. Rough lumps from the cinder block pressed through his thin night shirt into his back. He ignored the hurt. His mouth tasted dry. He would have liked a cigarette.
He cringed in the corner as the small figure loomed over him. Then, as if Alvin had no more weight than a feather pillow, the figure lifted him and Alvin found himself lying across the sheet-clad bony knees of the apparition and being spanked.
Spanked hard.
It hurt.
"Stop. That hurts."
"It is meant to hurt, you rude and thoughtless calf," came the voice, but the sing-song no longer sang. It was a high-pitched screech.
The bigger one stood in front of Alvin as the spanking went on.
"Who told you to put the hit on Warner Pell?"
"I'm not supposed to talk," cried Alvin.
"No?" said the figure holding him. "See how you like this, calf." The spanking increased, faster and harder, like nothing Alvin had ever experienced before. If anyone had warned him there would be nights like this, he would never had gotten into the business.
"Stop it. I'll talk."
The spanking continued.
"Talk is not enough," the smaller one said. "You will go to church ?"
"Yes, yes. Every Sunday, I promise."
"You will work hard in school?"
"I will. I will. I really think I like school. Stop."
"You will honor your family? Your government? Your chosen leaders?"
"Honest I will. I'm going to run for class secretary."
"Good. If you need help in convincing voters, you have only to call on me." The spanking stopped.
The bigger one said to the smaller one: "You finished?"
"I am done," said the smaller man, who still held Alvin across his knees.
"All right. Who told you to put the hit on Warner Pell?"
"Ms. Kaufperson. She told me to. And she made me do it. I wouldna done it any other how."
"All right," said the big one. "Alvin, if you're screwing us around, we'll be back for you. You understand that, don't you?"
"Yes, sir. I understand it. Yes, sir. Both of you, sirs. I understand. I surely do."
"Good."
Then Alvin felt himself lifted and put back on his cot and he felt a light pressure behind his ear and fell instantly asleep. In the morning, when he looked at the bars of the cell and saw them intact, he would feel that he had had a very unusual bad dream. Until he looked at the bars closely and saw rough edges on some of them where they had been ripped loose and later rejoined.
And it would ruin Alvin's taste for Maypo.
On the street outside the correctional institute, Remo walked thoughtfully along beside Chiun, kicking a can.
"One thing I don't understand, Little Father."
"One thing? If you had asked me to guess, I would have said everything. What is it, this most unusual one thing?"
"Today, I couldn't attack that kid when he was shooting at me. I couldn't lift a hand. You told me that was normal, some rigamarole about showing children only love."
"Yes? So?"
"So tonight you smacked Alvin around in that cell pretty good. How come you can do it and I can't?"
"You truly wonder why there are things the Master can do and you cannot? Oh, how vainglorious are your pretensions."
"No lectures, Chiun. Why?"
"To strike a child, one must be sure that one is an adult."
"You mean I'm a child? Me? At my age?"
"In the ways of Sinanju, you are yet young."
"A child?" said Remo. "Me? Is that what you mean?"
"I mean what I mean. I do not continue explanations interminably. If I told you more, I would be carping. And I do not carp."
CHAPTER NINE
From the hallway came the sound of someone whistling. The whistler's lack of talent and the Doppler effect made the melody unrecognizable.
The whistling stopped moving. It was outside their door, and it was possible to pick out a tuneless rendition of "I Am Woman."
The key clicked in the lock, the door opened and Sashur Kaufperson entered her apartment.
Her whistling stopped somewhere in the vicinity of lifting her weary hands up to the sky, when she saw Remo and Chiun standing in the center of her living room.
She paused, then held the door open wide behind her.
"You. What do you want?"
"Talky talk," said Remo. "Close the door."
She looked at him and Remo nodded and she closed the door.
"We can start," said Remo, "with Alvin Dewar. Why did you tell him to kill Warner Pell?"
"Who told you that?"
"Alvin Dewar. Now I answered your question. You answer mine. Why did you tell the kid to kill Pell?"
Sashur glanced at her watch before walking into the living room where she sank into a chrome and velvet sofa.
"I guess I'd better tell you."
"I would recommend that," Remo said. Chiun paid no attention to the conversation. He busily scanned the walls, packed frame to frame with paintings which he thought a waste of both canvas and pigment. On the far wall, he saw a set of gold coins in a frame and walked across the room to examine them.
"I don't know," Sashur said. "Pell was in some kind of trouble. He had been doing some things with the kids. The children were becoming, well, antisocial."