"What have you done for me?"
"I have restored your building."
It was Randal Rumpp's turn to appear startled. "You have? Are you sure?"
"Am positive. If building were no more, I could not be standing on floor as I am now. Would fall through to death."
"Why not?"
"I am vibrating normally. Therefore, floor is vibrating normally."
Randal Rumpp raced to a window. He took up the Frank Lloyd Wright chair and started banging it against a big bronze solar panel, splintering the legs of the eighty-thousand-dollar original. But Rumpp didn't care.
The glass cracked and shattered, and pieces fell out.
He stuck his head out and watched them fall.
The largest pieces shattered into a million golden shards when they hit the pavement below.
At that moment, the electricity returned.
"It's true! It's true!" Rumpp said distractedly. "Not now! I haven't closed the megadeal of the century yet!"
He grabbed the slick creature and said, "Make it go back to the way it was."
"I cannot."
"Then tell me how it got that way in the first place."
"I am not sure. Was sucked into telephone, but number I dial did not pick up. I think I was tricked by American agents. I have been trapped in telephone system since I do not know how long ago. I think I became trapped in your building, and somehow it became as I was. A ghost."
"You're no more a ghost than I am," Rumpp insisted, giving the thing's arm a hard squeeze.
"True," it gasped, grabbing its shoulder.
"Explain it again. You got sucked into the phone?"
"Da. I mean, yes."
"Show me."
"Why should I?'
"I'll give you this Rolex if you show me."
The faceless thing hesitated. He accepted the watch, put it to the side of his head where his left ear should have been, and listened curiously. He brought the watch face up to what passed for his own.
"Is fake," he said, returning it disdainfully.
"How do you know?"
"True Rolex has smooth secondhand movement. This jerks. Is no good. Cheap copy."
"Show me how you did it," Randal Rumpp said quickly, pulling out his ace in the hole, "and I'll let you have this entire building."
The thing moved its smooth head around like a curious radar dish. "Worth how much?"
"A quarter billion."
"Is deal. But I must have safe number to call."
"I got one. Dial 555-9460."
"Where is that?"
"My Florida summer home. The weather's great right now."
"Hokay. I go there," said the thing, picking up the receiver and stabbing the key pad with a flexible white finger. As he dialed the number with one hand, he squeezed the handset between his lifted shoulder and his head, and reached down to his circular belt buckle.
He gave it a twist. Instantly, his outline became a kind of fuzzy nimbus of light. Randal Rumpp blinked as the details of the creature's outer skin grew indistinct.
Then, like a cloud that was being sucked into a cave, the creature collapsed into the mouthpiece.
There was no sound. Just a quick inhalation of glowing white smoke. The deformed head was the last to go. It was drawn into the receiver, which hung in the air a brief moment, then hit the hardwood floor.
"Damn!" said Randal Rumpp, racing back to his office, yelling, "Don't answer that phone! Don't answer that phone if you value your fucking job!"
The ringing was coming from down the corridor, from his office.
He sprinted past his shocked assistant and to his office cellular phone. It was ringing insistently.
Randal Rumpp grabbed up a copy of The Scam of the Deal and slammed it onto the receiver, as if to block a rat trying to escape from a hole. He pushed down hard. The phone kept ringing.
"Dorma! Get a window open and throw something out!"
"But the windows don't open."
"Kick the glass out! Anything!"
The crash of glass came a moment later.
"Listen for it to hit the ground."
"I am."
"Anything?"
"No."
"Keep listening."
"It should have shattered by now."
Then the lights winked out.
"Great!" chortled Randal Rumpp. "It worked! It worked! My deal is still on! I'll be back on top yet!"
He dug out his attache case and extracted his portable cellular phone. It took but a moment to reprogram it to ring when his private number was called. He felt empowered again. He was on a roll. Nothing was going to stop him now.
Chapter 17
The first thing Cheeta Ching wanted to do upon disembarking from the churning BCN helicopter was to liberate the Rumpp Tower. She announced this in a triumphant screech that made everyone else reach for their eardrums.
"Nobody goes in until Cheeta Ching, superanchorwoman of our age, has done her duty!"
"So?" Remo asked. "What are you waiting for?"
Cheeta turned to her cameraman. "Is there enough tape left?"
The cameraman popped the cassette port, looked at the cartridge, and shook his head.
"Then load up a fresh one," Cheeta said impatiently. "I want every dramatic moment immortalized on half-inch tape."
"Oh, for crying out loud," Remo burst out, "just let's all go into the building, okay?"
"Not on your miserable life!" Cheeta flared. "Grandfather, please don't let him ruin my story."
"Remo, behave."
"Watch it, Little Father," Remo warned, "or I'll tell everybody how old you really are."
"I am not a day older than eighty!" Chiun screeched, in a voice whose tone clearly suggested that he had seen eighty a long time ago. In truth, the Master of Sinanju was more than a century old, a fact that he was sensitive about, inasmuch as he had never officially celebrated it. Somehow, by the logic of Chiun's ancestral tradition, this lapse denied him the right to claim that august achievement.
"Do not be ashamed of your advanced age," intoned Delpha Rohmer, "for in age there is wisdom. The druids knew this."
"Weren't they men?" Remo said.
"Warlocks. Male witches, which absolved them of the sins of ordinary men."
"Bulldookey."
Remo folded his arms while Cheeta and the cameraman fiddled with the videocam. Cheeta took possession of the old tape while the cameraman reloaded. That gave Remo an idea.
"Want me to hold that for you?" he asked helpfully. "So it won't get lost?"
"Sure, thanks," Cheeta said, handing it over her shoulder absently.
Remo reached out for the tape, a wicked smile on his cruel lips.
Suddenly, Cheeta let out a screech and her hand snapped back. Remo's reflexes ordinarily would have been equal to snatching it from her easily, but Cheeta's ungodly sudden screech had tripped his defensive reflexes and he had faded back from the horrific sound.
"Something wrong?" Remo asked innocently.
"Last time I let you near one of my cameras, a very important tape turned up missing. Mysteriously missing."
"Missing usually is mysterious," Remo agreed.
"I will be glad to safeguard the artifact," Delpha offered.
Cheeta hesitated. Then, saying, "I know I can trust a fellow woman," turned it over to Delpha, who promptly warmed the cartridge by slipping it down her swelling cleavage.
"It will be safe here," she intoned.
"Especially if it picks up traces of your animal repulsion," Remo said unhappily.
"You mean 'attraction,' " Delpha corrected.
"Let's split the difference and say 'aroma,' " Remo said.
The videocam reloaded, Cheeta Ching fluffed her raven-black hair. Strands of it clung to her fingers like a sticky spider web, and she pulled a small can of industrial-strength hair varnish and created a halo around her head. It not only tamed her hair but kept her thick pancake makeup from flaking off her flat cheeks.
She squared her padded shoulders and started for the entrance, saying, "BCN anchor chair, here I come. "