When Remo returned to the Forty-First Street Inn, Chiun was sitting on a tatami mat in front of the television, a look of sublime contempt stamping his ancient features as the Channel 3 News came on.
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"News," Chiun spat. "What is new about war, famine, pestilence, and plague? Never do these programs relate the serene doings of a Master of Sinanju in their very midst."
"So don't watch it."
"I must watch it," Chiun said, staring raptly at the screen. "The news is the only program which features persons of the right color."
Remo glanced at the TV, where the Channel 3 anchorwoman, Cheeta Ching, was staring darts at her audience while spewing out the day's events in a voice that would sharpen razorblades at fifty feet.
"She is Korean," Chiun said knowingly.
"Oh, turn that barracuda off," Remo said.
"Barracuda? You, with the taste of an earthworm, dare to call the lovely Cheeta Ching a barracuda?"
"Sorry."
"You are incapable of appreciating true . beauty," he said. "Even the lovely daytime dramas are filled with your kind, ugly fat white men and cöwlike women with udders like hot air balloons. Only the news shows women of decent ancestry." He turned back to the screen. "Barracuda," he groused.
Cheeta Ching crouched forward and licked her lips. "And now for today's lead story," she spat with wicked glee. "A bizarre murder at the site of the Hollywood Disposal Service is perhaps the harbinger of a new era of grisly 'skinning' killings in the Los Angeles area."
Ms. Ching's viperous stare was replaced by a black and white photo of the deceased Lewis J.
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Verbanic, who was found by L.A. police at 1:15 a.m. today.
"Already there is speculation as to the nature of the skinning," Cheeta screeched on. "Spokespersons for the Society of Brotherhood in Terrorism have reportedly found a link between Verbanic's death and the lastest demands of the PLO, IRA, and splinter movements of the People's Republican Army of Afghanistan."
"That guy looks familiar," Remo said, studying Verbanic's picture.
"Of course. All white men look alike," Chiun
said.
"The victim's accused assailant, Marco Juan San Miguel de Ruiz Gonzalez, is being held without bail in the L.A. County Courthouse. According to the coroner's office, Verbanic was .slain and then skinned on the spot."
"I think there's something about the nose," Remo said.
As he spoke, the television picture changed to an employee identification photo of the accused Marco Gonzalez, the gap in his teeth gleaming darkly.
"Gonzalez, who claims to have been a witness, rather than the perpetrator of the murder, alleges that Verbanic was killed by a six-foot-tall metal robot. Gonzalez is scheduled to undergo extensive psychiatric testing later this week."
Chiun chortled. "Six-foot-tall metal robot. Heb. heh. White men will say anything, Heh heb.."
"The lab," Remo whispered.
"And now for a brighter look at the news," Cheeta Ching continued. "Revolutionary freedom
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fighters in EI Salvador scored a brilliant coup against American-trained imperialist troops today in a stunning grenade action against the U.S. Embassy. This marks the fourth such victory in two months of valiant fighting. . . ."
"Where are you going?" Chiun said to Remo's retreating back. "Do you not wish to gaze on the charming visage of Cheeta Ching?"
'Td rather gaze at a baboon's butt," Remo said. "I'm going to jail."
Chiun snorted. "Good. That is where louts who cannot understand beauty belong."
The jail was ringed with protestors, some carrying placards demanding immediate execution of Marco Gonzalez, others demanding his release on the grounds that "Skinners Are People Too." A third group, carrying 60-pound radios broadcasting disco music, blared through loudspeakers that Gonzalez was being used as a scapegoat by racist elements of society seeking the extermination of Hispanic citizens.
A fat young man with a radio stopped Remo as he was bounding up the stairs to the building. "Shake Your Love Thing" was playing so loudly that he couldn't hear anything except the lyrics, but he could read the man's lips, which curled around two rows of greenish, fuzzy tombstones faintly resembling teeth.
"You a newsman?" the fat boy mouthed.
"No, actually I'm from a super-secret government agency investigating the role one of the prisoners in custody played in the disappearance of a top-secret defense weapon," Remo said,
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knowing that the man wouldn't be able to hear him unless he turned down his radio, which was about as probable as getting him to use mouth-wash.
"We only letting press in there," the man mouthed, jamming his ample stomach with its attached radio into contact with Remo. "The American people going to know about this injustice before the court can make a mother of Gonzalez."
"A mother?"
"Yeah, stupid, a mother. Like Jesus. Can't you speak no Inglese?"
"You mean martyr," Remo said.
"He gonna die for a cause," the man with the radio continued.
"If you don't move, I'm going to die from your breath," Remo said.
The man with the radio scowled and placed himself stubbornly in Remo's path. "You no go in 'less you press," he said.
Remo shrugged. "Suits me. I'll press." He lifted the mural-sized radio and wrapped it around the fat boy's midriff until his chubby face was purple and "Shake Your Love Thing" was vibrating through his rib cage.
The ground floor of the courthouse was lined with courtrooms and chambers. Remo checked each one until he came to a room occupied by a middle-aged man with sweat pouring down his face. He was perspiring so heavily that the sweat rolled in streams down his neck and stained the immaculate white collar of his shirt. When Remo walked in, he saw the sweating man jump and
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turn a pale shade of green. His hands were green, too, since they were clutching dozens of fifty- and hundred-dollar bills. Similar currency was strewn on a table in front of him.
"A gift," the sweating man announced in a smooth, authoritative tone common to men with vast experience in graft. "Merely a gift. No services or promises were exchanged in return at any time.
¦ "I'm looking for the guy who's been arrested for murdering the garbage collector," Remo said.
The man stuffed handfuls of bills into his bulging pockets. "Never heard of him," he said. "I haven't told you his name yet." "I still never heard of him." More bills crunched as they entered his clothing.
Remo looked at the name plate on the desk. It read: the hon. james addlington blakely.
"You didn't happen to be in night court around two this morning, did you?"
"Never heard of him." He stuffed the last of the bills into his pockets. "Excuse me. I have to run."
The Honorable James Addlington Blakely was running to TWA flight 211 to Grand Cayman Island, where his untaxable bank account had grown to hefty proportions through years of scrupulous bribe-taking. As Blakely often disclosed to close confidants, however, he had not grown rich merely by taking bribes. He was a shrewd man, a principled man. The principle he always followed when offered "gifts" was what separated the Honorable James A. Blakely from the common glut of crooked politicians. It allowed him to hold his head high, no matter what outsiders might per-
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ceive the circumstances to be. It gave him honor and pride, for he never violated his cardinal principle, which was not to accept any gift of less than five dollars. He never dealt with riffraff.
Flight 211 was scheduled to leave in 45 minutes. The seat beside Blakely's on the plane was already occupied by the silken, expressive rear of Christine Clark, his administrative aide, formerly of Eddie's Massage Heaven.
The Honorable James A. Blakely was not about to miss his plane on account of some snoopy nobody in a T-shirt. It was for that reason that he pushed, in a gesture of distracted contempt, the snoopy T-s-hirted nobody who was blocking the door.