Smith nodded. "Why?" he asked. "Is this important?"
"It is important to me," Chiun said. "Where is Remo?"
"I don't know. There's been a string of fires in cities headed west. I gave the list to Remo. He's probably following it. Do you want it?"
Chiun shook his head. "All American cities sound alike to me. New something or some Indian or some saint. I will find Remo on my own."
He walked from the office. As Smith watched him go, he sank into his chair. He wished he had been able to find out why the fact that a child was involved in the arson cases was important.
Chiun paused in the hallway outside Smith's office. He withdrew the gold Sinanju medal from his robes and looked at it with a smile. He flipped it up and down in his hand a few times, as if weighing it, then put it back into his robes.
Then he walked away quickly. This time he was not smiling.
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CHAPTER SEVEN
Remo sat in the front seat of his car, folding his map, but every time he folded it, the panel he wanted to look at kept coming up on the inside.
The next stop would be St. Louis. He was sure of it. The fires had been following a pattern, from White Plains to Newark, then city by city, small city by small city, first down the Atlantic coast, and then westward across the country. He looked up and saw a road sign that read 40 miles to St. Louis.
He threw the map out the window into the roadway and stomped on the gas pedal.
In St. Louis, he had no idea where to look to find an arsonist. Did they have hiring halls, like longshoremen? Because he could think of nothing better, he registered at a hotel, then stopped to buy a newspaper, and a headline at the bottom of the page caught his eye.
HOW THE ARSONIST MADE ME A BETTER PERSON ByJoeyGeraghty
Down at Purchlde's Saloon, where my friend Wallace T. McGinty sits for so long that people try to stick spigots in his ear, he was telling me that there
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are some things that people won't do, even for money. He proved this to me by explaining that he would never think of running a busload of blind nuns off the road into a ditch.
"This is a fact," he said.
I said that he would not know a fact if it bit him in his payment book from Household' Finance. Looking around me in Purchkie's Saloon, I said I knew that you could get anybody to do anything, except perhaps to breed wisely.
For some reason, Wallace T. McGinty took this personally. He said we would ask the next person through the door, his opinion would decide, and the loser would buy a drink. Since even a fifty-fifty chance to get Wallace T. McGinty to buy his first drink since Harry S. Truman made the world safe for democracy by incinerating Japanese was a bargain, I agreed.
The first person through the door was Arnold the Matchless, who hangs out in Purchkie's when he is not practicing his profession of turning unsuccessful businesses into urban renewal sites through the application of gasoline and flame.
Arnold got his name. when, on his very first job as an arsonist, he forgot to bring matches. He tried to ignite the fire with an electric extension cord and wound up getting a shock that put him in the hospital first and in the state pen second. He remembers the matches now.
"You are asking me," he said, "if there are some things that people will not do for money."
"That is correct," said Wallace T. McGinty.
"Of course there are," said Arnold the Matchless.
"Buy the drink," Wallace T. McGinty told me.
"Wait a minute," I said. "What, for instance, would you not do for money?" I asked Arnold. "Have you ever turned down a job, any job, for cash? I challenge you to say yes."
"Yes," said Arnold, and proceeded to tell me about a mutual friend of ours who was once in the business of horses but whose problem was that he was becoming too famous, especially to the police of the gambling squad when they were not busy taking bribes.
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So this mutual friend was arrested for the seventh time and he was going to spend the rest of his life making little ones out of big ones, and he came to Arnold the Matchless with a proposition, because, he said, Arnold was the only one who could save him. He had Ulis wonderful theory that nothing could happen to him if his records were lost. He was referring to his arrest record.
"How can I help you?" said Arnold. "For a thousand dollars," said our mutual friend. "What do I have to do?" said Arnold. "Burn my records," said our mutual friend. "Where are they?" said Arnold. "In police headquarters," said our mutual friend. "Wait a minute," said Arnold. "Let me get this laughably straight. For a thousand bucks you want me to go burn down police headquarters."
"That is correct," said our mutual friend. "You can pick a time when there are not many cops on duty. This will reduce the death toll."
Arnold looked at me and then at my friend, Wallace T. McGinty. "And there you are," he said. "This is a thing I will not do for money, this burning down of police headquarters."
There seeming to be no alternative, I bought Wallace T. McGinty a drink and threw one in for Arnold, top, thereby setting a pattern for the day from which they do not like to deviate.
Arnold the Matchless is like Dracula. He works only at night, and as the sun set over Purchkie's Saloon, he lurched toward the door, his belly filled with my booze, for which I had better be reimbursed.
At the door, he stopped and smiled, blinding me with his only tooth.
"That is why you are never going to be a success in your chosen profession," he said. "Why is why?" I asked.
"Because you don't ask the right questions," said Arnold.
"What question did I ask wrong?" I said. "You asked me if I would take money to burn down police headquarters."
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"Right," I said. "And you said you wouldn't." "Correct," said Arnold. He turned back to the
door, then stopped again. "But I would have done it for
nothing," he said.
This, then, is a notice to everyone I interview from
¦how on. I have given up asking easy questions. Let
somebody else buy the drinks.
Remo read the column twice, then found Purchkie's Bar listed in the phone book, and a helpful policeman told him how to get to LaDoux Street.
When Remo got to the bar, there was a television truck in front. A line of people stood outside the bar, and a young man in a Spanish leather jacket and designer jeans was pushing people away from the front door.
Remo walked up to him. "Sorry, pal," the young man said. 'The bar won't be ope'n for a couple of hours."
"Why not?" Remo asked.
"Shooting a commercial inside."
"Good," said Remo. He seemed to drift away. The guard turned slightly to chase off someone else, and Remo, watching the guard's eyes, waited until he was turned just enough so Remo was out of his peripheral vision, and Remo moved in behind him and through the door of the saloon.
"Sorry, you can't go in yet," the guard told another man, a workman in plaid jacket and blue jeans by Farmer Brown.
"Why'd you just let that guy in?" the man asked.
"What guy?"
'That skinny guy."
"Go 'way. I chased him, too," the guard said. .
"You're a dope."
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"Come back in a couple of hours," the guard said.
The old wooden floor of the tavern was crisscrossed with thick electrical cables, and the lighting was as bright as a ballpark at night.
A man was standing at the bar. He was a thick and heavy man, wearing a suit that looked as if it had been mailed to him in a paper bag. Remo recognized him as Joey Geraghty from the picture that had accompanied his column.
Behind Geraghty stood a man and woman, two models dressed neatly to look like customers. Behind the bar stoo'd a bartender, who looked authentic, perhaps because his apron was wet.
Remo sat at a table to watch. The director was standing at the camera, listening to Geraghty complain.