"You might just sky-write the message," said Remo. "Now that everybody knows about us, secrecy isn't important anymore."
"I will call you," Smith said coldly and hung up.
Remo dropped the phone into a waste basket and turned toward Chiun, who was unrolling his sleeping mat in the center of the floor.
"Remo, please move that couch away."
"It's not in your way. You've got enough room to lay down a field of corn."
"Its presence intrudes upon my thoughts," said Chiun. "Please move it."
"Move it yourself. That's laborers' work."
"Hold. Hold. Are we not co-equal partners by order of Emperor Smith?"
"Chiun, he's not an emperor. For the thousandth time."
"The House of Sinanju has worked for emperors for centuries. He contracts with us; he is an emperor." Satisfied with the logic of this, Chiun demanded again: "Answer. We are coequal partners?"
"Why does our being co-equal partners wind up with my having to move the furniture."
"It is share and share alike," Chiun said. "I am preparing my bed. That is my share. You move the furniture. That is your share."
"Right," said Remo. "Share and share alike. You go to sleep, and I move furniture. Okay. Got any pianos you want carried downstairs?" He bent over the edge of the couch and put his hands on the top of the arm. He slid the sofa back and forth to get a sense of its mass and its balance. "Move furniture," he mumbled. "Find out who's doing the killing. Find out who's behind the kids. Get my picture on television. Take out the garbage. Get rid of the bodies. I don't mind telling you that I'm getting tired of all this."
He pressed down on the arm of the couch with both hands, applying slightly more pressure with his right palm. The end of the couch tilted up into the air and Remo gave it a push. On its two closest legs, the couch skidded across the floor, like the prow of a speedboat cutting through waves. It skidded past a chair, then the parting extra pressure of Remo's right hand caused the couch to veer around the chair. It moved onward toward the wall. It slowed. Its front end lowered.
It dropped and stopped an inch from the wall, its left arm exactly parallel to the wall.
"Games. Always games you must play," said Chiun, smoothing out his mat.
"Furniture moving's no game," Remo said. "From now on, move your own couches."
"I will. I will. From now on, I will move the couches. You take care of the chairs. That is coequal, right? Therefore, please move that chair. It…"
"I know, it intrudes upon your thoughts."
Remo lifted the chair in his arms and tossed it across the room. It landed solidly on the back of the couch and rested there.
"You, Smitty, this job-you're all getting under my craw."
"That is good. Dissatisfaction with one's lot shows that one is coming of age and is no longer a child. Think, Remo," Chiun said with sudden glee. "One day, instead of being a stupid, wilful, stubborn, insignificant child…"
"Yeah."
"You will be a stupid, wilful, stubborn, insignificant man. Some things one never outgrows." Chiun giggled as he delivered this last, and stretched himself out on the woven grass mat. "Heh, heh," he mumbled to himself. "Some things one never outgrows. Heh, heh."
Remo looked around the room. He saw the telephone in the wastepaper basket and put it back onto the hook.
"I'm putting the phone back on the hook," he said.
"What you do with your playthings is no concern of mine."
"Smith is supposed to call," Remo said. "He may call late."
"Tell him I am sleeping."
"He won't be calling for you. But won't the ring wake you up?"
"Not if I do not choose to let it."
"Hmmmpppph" Remo said.
"HnnnnnnWckTckk" responded Chrun, snoring deeply already.
Remo turned the bell of the telephone up to loud and wished it could go louder.
"Hnnnnnnkkkkkkkk."
Rerno lay down on the couch, his head jammed against the chair.
"HnnnnnnrikkkkkkTc." Chiun's snoring reverberated through the room. The Venetian blinds seemed to vibrate from the air disturbances with little whirring sounds, like saxophone reeds.
When the telephone rang, it rang with a piercing blast. Remo jumped up on the couch, exploded from sleep by the clarion screech.
"Hnnnnnnk'kk'kkk." Chiun snored.
"Braawwwwkkkk." The phone rang.
"Hnnnnnkkkkkk."
"Braaawwwww."
"HnnnnnnnnnKkKkkkk."
Fugue for Ma Bell and Adenoids. But Chiun seemed to be winning. Remo answered the phone.
"It's okay now. My wife is out."
"Remo?"
"Of course, Remo."
"No go with Warner Pell," Smith said.
"What do you mean no go?"
"He wasn't running the operation."
"Why not?" Remo asked.
"His total worth in the world was $19,000. Hardly what you'd expect for the head of a multimillion-dollar hit machine."
"How… ?" Remo started to ask, and then changed his mind. He knew how. Smith and his computers and his inputs and his outputs and his grain movements and his shipping records and his studies of mass movements of money and his files on everybody, it seemed, who ever drew a breath, that's how. Smith knew everything. If he said no to Warner Pell, it was no.
And it was also a pain in the ass.
"Now what?" Remo said.
"I think you ought to go back to this Kaufperson person and find out more from her. She may have known who Pell's boss was. And, remember, it's somebody with contacts in the Justice Department, or they couldn't find out where the witnesses are being sheltered."
"All right," said Remo. "But I want to tell you something. When I signed on for this job, I didn't sign on to be a detective. I signed on to do my specialty, zip, zip and get out. And now I'm a detective and I don't like it. I didn't even want to be a detective when I was alive."
"Please, Remo, we're on an open line."
"I don't care. I'm tired of working out of my function. I've been a bodyguard and a messenger and a detective and I'm not supposed to be any of those things. Why don't you hire a detective if you want a detective?"
"Because good detectives cost money and you work cheap," said Smith, and before Remo could decide whether or not Smith was indulging in a rare moment of levity, Smith had hung up the phone.
Remo hung up too, vowing that the next day he would buy a new wardrobe. He would buy three new wardrobes. He would throw away all his clothes and buy enough clothes for the entire backcourt of the New York Knickerbockers, and he would charge them all to Smith.
This prospect gave him sixty seconds of unalloyed pleasure until he remembered he had done just that the week before.
"HnnnnrikJckTcKkTck." The snoring gave him no pleasure.
Remo picked up the phone again and dialed the desk.
"Desk."
"Hello, this is Mr. Maxwell in Room 453. I need a favor."
"Yes sir, I'll try."
"Are you on duty all night?"
"Yes, sir."
"Fine. I want you to ring my phone every hour. Ring it just three times and hang up. Don't bother waiting for an answer."
"But…"
"You see, I'm working on this big project and I've got to keep at it all night long, but I'm afraid I might doze off."
"Oh. I see, sir. Certainly, I'll take care of it."
"Fine, and in the morning, I'll take care of you."
"When should I start?"
"It's ten to twelve. Why not at midnight and then every hour from then on? Three rings."
"Very good, sir. And good luck."
"Good luck?" asked Remo.
"With your big project."
"Oh, that. Thanks."
Remo changed his shirt and as he was leaving the room, he closed the door gently behind him, holding it open just slightly.
"HnnnwiKkKkkKk."
The telephone rang.
Braawwwwk'k.
Braawwwwk'k.