Remo had thought he would never understand and never learn, but his body learned without him, and one day he was just doing the things Chiun had taught him, although he did not know how he did them.
Remo located the power station he wanted, and waited then until the darkness of past midnight. He checked the very light plastic suit folded into his jacket pocket and the rubber mask folded in the other. No point in going ahead unprepared, he thought.
Inside the power station, Remo eloquently explained to the chief engineer what he wanted.
‘Show me how to turn off the power for several hours or I’ll break your other arm.’
The chief engineer, rolling on the floor in agony, thought this offer made eminent sense. He mumbled something Remo could hardly understand about backing up and currents and all the things chief engineers were expected to know about. What it came down to was pulling the lever on the top of the panel and the lever on the bottom at the same time.
‘The one with the little squidget kind of thing?’ asked Remo.
‘Si’ said the engineer, moaning.
‘Thanks,’ said Remo, and pulled both levers simultaneously. He was in darkness. San Juan’s hotel strip, across the highway from him, was in darkness too.
‘I will wait here and if you so much as move,’ Remo said, ‘I will kill you.’ And then, with the quiet of a lynx on a fur blanket, Remo was out of the power station with the engineer still believing that the monster was with him.
The El Diablo and the Columbia Hotels are the largest on the strip, separated only by an alley. Their gambling rooms stay open until 4 a.m., but now in the predawn darkness, the gambling stopped, and the men reached for candles and flashlights. Remo was into the El Diablo by the front door as bellboys and managers searched for lights. The night manager of the hotel knew exactly what to do in a power blackout. When the lights went out, he slammed shut the safe, according to regulatory precautions.
He stood by it with a pistol, according to regulatory precautions.
What was not in the regulations was the incredibly severe pain at the base of his spinal column. He was told how he could end the pain and since he wanted that more than anything else in the world, he did what he was told. He opened the safe by the light of a candle, and when it was opened, and Remo saw where the bundles and bags of gambling money were, he blew out the candle. From his jacket pocket, he removed the full rubber head mask and stuffed the face with money. He filled the chest cavity of the suit with money, and moving his arm into the empty arm of the one-piece jumpsuit, held the chest money which supported the head money, and for all practical purposes, it looked as if he held a dummy at the end of his arm.
Except in the darkness, it did not look like a dummy, but a man who was holding on to Remo for support. Remo moved through the bustling confusion and vagrant flashing lights, saying ‘Man injured. Man injured.’
But no one could be bothered with an injured man. After all, was that not the night manager yelling about a robbery?
‘Injured man,’ yelled Remo as he crossed the alley to the Columbia Hotel, but he was ignored, for men’s jobs were at stake and these jobs depended on the most important thing at a casino. Money.
‘Injured man,’ yelled Remo, moving to the manager’s office of the Columbia.
‘Get that sonofabitch out of here,’ yelled the manager of the Columbia, thinking that if there ever was a negligence suit, he could deny what he had said in court, and it would be his word against the word of the two guests.
Then he no longer cared about his word or anyone else’s word. He cared only about the incredible pain in his stomach. He too was told how he could make this pain stop, and he did, so Remo put him to sleep and filled out the rest of the dummy suit with more money.
Into the lobby went Remo, only now, for the police, he was a drunk with a drunken buddy, trying to tell them how to do their job.
‘You get the hell out of here,’ ordered a police captain, ’or you’re under arrest.’
Chastened, the two drunks moved off, out of the lobby, into the night. Remo felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see a policeman, high-peaked island hat and all.
‘Okay, buddy,’ the cop said, ‘I know your game. Something big is happening, and you want to get arrested, so that later you can brag about how you were arrested on the big night. Well, we’re not stupid mainland gringos here. So get moving.’
And roughly, the police officer pushed Remo and his friend past the squad cars, down the street, and the officer waited until the two drunks had left.
‘Damned gringo and their emotional problems,’ said the officer, who had just taken a course in psychology for a promotion he hoped someday to get.
The packing house was closed when Remo broke a window lock, made his way to the freezer, found the boxes marked with the red X, and replaced much of the dry ice with money. He kept two handfuls of one hundred dollar bills, and then left through the window. He shredded the suit and mask in a nearby trash can and waited for the manager to arrive.
‘Punctual,’ Remo said, as the manager arrived with the first rays of dawn. ‘I like that.’ Remo paid the remainder of the charges in cash and promised an order five times as big if this delivery was really as prompt as the manager promised. He made this promise as sincerely as possible, because he was entering politics and one had to be sincere in politics when one told lies.
The manager personally drove his new customer to the airport. On the trip, Remo mentioned several names he had read in a CURE report, men whose Mafia connections Stateside were immaculate. The manager caught the drift of the conversation and assured Remo of his fidelity.
‘Fidelity is a very healthy thing,’ said Remo.
The manager understood completely.
Remo gave him a little present for himself. A half-inch of money.
‘You are too generous,’ said the manager, wondering exactly what Remo’s mob connections were.
‘Spend it in good health,’ Remo said. ‘Be sure to spend it in good health.’
On the plane, Remo read in the San Juan paper the reports of the robbery. Brilliant, cunning, masterfully executed, well planned. The paper reported that a team of men—one injured—simultaneously robbed the two largest hotels. The cash loss was estimated at $2.5 million.
Remo would have to check that out against his fish which were due to arrive in Miami an hour after he did. He didn’t think he had gotten that much. Probably employees had filched some. Maybe even the police. These things happened sometimes during big robberies. He felt angry that there were so many crooks in the world.
He went to the New York Times, feeling self-righteous and self-satisfied. Nothing there about the robbery. It had happened too late for the early editions of the Times which was flown to the island.
In the back sections of the paper was a picture of a stunning, knockout blonde in an evening gown. She was, the caption said, the Madison Avenue genius, Dorothy Walker of Walker, Handleman and Baser. An accompanying story said that her firm had never lost an account, and never failed to sell the client’s product. Remo looked at the face that stared at him off the page. Smart, cultured, professional, and she looked as if she had great boobs, to boot.
Done. Decided. Walker, Handleman and Daser, which had never lost, would run the campaign for Remo’s candidate for mayor. All he needed was a candidate for mayor, and that would be no problem for a man who was, as the San Juan robbery reports had it, ‘brilliant, cunning, a masterful planner.’
‘Brilliant,’ he mumbled to himself, reading again about the robbery. Perhaps if he had been running CURE instead of Smith, there never would have been the foulup and the leak in Miami Beach. Well, he would plug up the leaks and get Smith out of his little jam, try to give him some advice on proper security.