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opened. Half the men wore hairpieces. The others needed them. Remo wondered if there was a correlation between dwindling retail sales and hair loss. Maybe it came from scratching one's head each month when the bills came due.
A man came in the door. His hair was his own, but his suit looked as if it were on loan from Alcoa Industries. The man looked around the room at the tables.
The men at the tables looked up hopefully like hookers in a Honolulu brothel. Remo stood up and walked over to the man at the door. "Come talk to me," he said softly. "Why?"
"Because if you don't, I'm going to fry your eyeballs," Remo said. He took the man's right elbow between his fingers and squeezed. "Owww. Well, if you put it that way . . ." "Let's go."
They sat at Remo's table. Remo released the man's elbow, and he ran his hand through his bushy dark hair.
"What's on your mind?" the man said. "Let's do it just right," said Remo. "One. I'm not a cop. Two. I understand you know something about fire for hue. Three. I want you to talk to me about it." "Why should I?"
"I thought we settled all that just now," said Remo. "You want me to remind your elbow?" "All right. What do you want to know?" "First, how's business?" asked Remo. "Punk," the man said. "But Geraghty's column always brings out people with things to burn. Everybody around here."
"Okay. Why's business bad?"
"Same thing with my business as theirs. Too much competition. You know, there's only so many shirts you can sell and so many fires you can set."
"I'm looking for a guy named Solly. His last name's Martin but he calls himself something else maybe."
Remo looked at the man's eyes, which blanked out. "Solly? I don't know any Solly."
"He's from out of town. He travels with a kid . . ."
The man's face erupted with interest. "The kid. Sure."
"You know them?"
"No, but I heard about them. They're in town here selling. I heard about them. That's why business is bad. They're taking all kinds of jobs."
"Where'111 find them?" Remo asked.
"I don't know."
Remo looked down at his untouched glass of beer. He picked up a pack of matches and lit one. , He used it to light the remaining nineteen matches. The matchbook flared into flame. Remo wrapped his hand around the burning matchbook and extinguished the fire with his palm. "I hoped you'd be more help than that," he said, with sincerity. He dropped the charred matchbook on the table. "So did your elbow."
"Truth, mister, truth. I don't know. I just heard about them. They got into town yesterday, and somehow they been getting to merchants."
Remo waved around the room. "They didn't seem to get to these guys."
"I just heard about them from the grapevine. Solly and Sparky. They're around."
"How can I find them?" asked Remo.
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"I don't know."
"Think about it. Ill make it worthwhile," said Remo.
"Yeah? How?"
"I'll leave you with two working elbows," Remo said.
"All right, already. I'll give you a name."
"What's the name?"
"John Barlin."
"Who's he?" Remo asked.
"He owns the Barlin Sports Emporium on Quimby Street. I know he was shopping for a fire. Then when I was going to call him, friends of mine said never mind, he already made his deal with this Solly. Goddamn carpetbaggers."
Remo stood up. "Thanks."
"Thanks for my elbow," the man said.
The Barlin Sports Emporium on Quimby Street was a long, low frame structure with apartments overhead. It was packed into a long block of buildings that all shared the same basic frame building. The sidewalks in front of the store told the story of the neighborhood, littered with dirt, unswept by the merchants. The Sports Emporium and its commercial neighbors had folding extension screens out front, which pulled over at night and locked shut to protect their display windows against vandals. If Remo had been looking for a textbook example of a failing business ready for burning, he realized he could have used the Barlin Sports Emporium.
As he had expected, the owner was not at the emporium. A very helpful clerk told Remo that Mister Barlin had flown to Chicago on business and would be back the next day.
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That meant the fire would be tonight, Remo realized.
He decided to kill time by going to the movies. There were three theaters in a row. One was showing "Hong Kong Fury" and "Fists of Steel." The next was showing "Hong Kong Tyranny" and "Fists of Iron." The third was showing "Hong Kong Holocaust" and "Fists of Stone."
Remo saw them all. He regarded it as a very entertaining afternoon and evening. He learned that movies are ninety minutes long, that black men are always millionaires who travel the world doing no apparent work, despite which they own their own apartment buildings and private jets. He found that these same black men, in striving to bring peace-and justice to an imperfect world, always join with an Oriental martial arts expert who can beat anyone in the world in hand-to-hand combat, except the black man, because both of them were trained by the Oriental's father. Together they kill a lot of bad people, all of them white and most of them fat. These fat white men are all cowards, corrupt, control the governments wherever they live, and abuse blacks and Orientals. The two heroes also do not like doors, except to kick down while they are flying through the air. They fly a lot.
White women are all prostitutes, lusting after the black man's body. Black women are all noble and they won't give it up, until the end of the movie, and then only because it's true love.
There was a lot of cheering in the theater whenever a white man bit the dust. Remo decided if there was ever going to be peace between the races, all these films would have to be burned first. He wondered if, when he left the theater, he should
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fly through the air and kick down the front door of the movie house. He decided against it. Symbolic protests were not his cup of tea.
He left the third theater just as it was getting dark. The iron grates had been pulled closed across the front of the Barlin Sports Emporium.
Remo stood in front of the closed store, and when the small line at the theater box office had gone inside and the street was again deserted, he grabbed the padlock on the iron grating between his thumb and index finger. He felt across the surface of the lock for the slightly raised spot under which the tumblers were located. When he found the spot, he squeezed. The top hasp of the lock popped open. Remo quickly removed it from the grate, slid behind the iron fence, and then relocked the grate.
He worked his way to the front door of the store. The lock was a simple double-action deadbolt. Remo looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching, then slammed the heel of his hand against the wood near the lock. The door flew open. Remo stepped inside the darkened store, closed the door, and reattached to the door frame the lock receptacle that his blow had loosened.
In the back he found the steps leading to the basement storeroom, and as he expected, the storeroom had shown signs of being cannibalized. It was filled with large cartons and boxes, but the boxes were not filled with sports supplies. They held junk, newspaper, old shoes, broken equipment. What the owner obviously had done, in anticipation of his fire, was to sell off all his equipment. After the fire, he would claim it was all lost in the blaze and file an insurance claim. A double dip.
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Remo sat against a box in the dark. For the arson to be a commercial success, the cellar' would have to be set afire. It would be the right place to wait for Solly and Sparky; the right place to pay them back for the life they had taken from Ruby Gonzalez.
As he sat there, something gnawed at his mind. There was something he should do; something he should do now. But he could not think of it.