As he slid back down into the pool’s depths, children laughed and the sun-baked crowd applauded. Chiun sat with Remo in a front row seat and said, ‘Barbarians.’
‘What now?’ Remo asked.
‘Why is it you white men think it somehow charming to take an animal, a creature of nature, put a ribbon on him and have him beep a horn? Is it cute?’
‘Who’s it hurt?’ Remo said. ‘The whale doesn’t even seem to mind.’
Chiun turned to him, away from the pool where a pretty blonde was now riding around on the back of the whale. ‘You are, as usual, wrong. The spectacle hurts the whale because he is no longer free. And it hurts you because—senselessly, without considering the consequences—you have deprived that animal of his freedom. It makes you less a man, because you no longer think and feel as a man.
‘And look at these children. What are they learning here? How they too can one day grow up and imprison nature’s beasts? Barbarians.’
‘As opposed to?’
‘As opposed to anyone who does not tamper with the order of the universe. As opposed to anyone who appreciates the virtues of the free life.’
‘Strange to hear an assassin sing the praises of life.’
Chiun exploded in a babble of excited Korean, then said, ‘Death is a part of life. It has always been thus. But it required you white men to discover something worse than death. The cage.’
‘You don’t have zoos in Sinanju?’
‘Yes,’ Chiun said evenly. ‘In them we keep Chinese and white men.’
‘All right,’ Remo said, ’forget it. I just thought you’d like to see the aquarium. It’s the most famous in the world.’
‘After lunch, may we visit the Black Hole of Calcutta?’
‘Will it improve your disposition?’
‘The Master of Sinanju spreads light wherever he walks.’
‘Right on, Chiun, right on.’ Remo was surprised at Chiun’s display of ill humor. Since they had arrived in Miami Beach, the old man had been in great spirits. He talked to wealthy old Jewish ladies about the transgressions of their children. Mrs. Goldberg, he had breathlessly told Remo, had a son who had not visited her in three years. And Mrs. Hirshberg’s son did not even telephone. Mrs. Kantrowitz had three sons, all doctors, and when her cat caught cold, not one of them would take the case, even though she would have insisted upon paying, so as not to be a burden.
Mrs. Milstein was the woman whose son was the television writer, and Chiun marvelled that she bore up so bravely under the disgrace of a son who wrote Chinese comedies. She did not even acknowledge disgrace, Chiun said, but walked with her head high. A sterling woman, he had said.
For his part, Chiun must also have talked about his son who would not carry the luggage and who embarrassed him at every turn. What he said, Remo could only guess by the fact that occasionally walking through the halls of their apartment, he was hissed by old ladies entering their own apartments. Chiun talked, too, of his desire to go back to the old country and see the village where he had been born. He would, he said, gladly have retired, but he did not feel that his son was yet able to carry on his work. Your son, my son, her son, their son. Chiun and the ladies talked. If any of them had ever given birth to a daughter, it was not mentioned.
In just a few days, Chiun seemed to have met half the Jewish Momma population of Miami Beach. He also seemed to be happy and Remo expected him to be happy for the chance to see the aquarium. He had not expected abuse.
Remo shrugged, took a sheet of yellow lined paper from his shirt pocket, and looked at it again.
‘C’mon, Chiun,’ he said. ‘Our man works at the shark run.’
The shark run was a half-mile-long oval of shallow water. In a half-dozen places, the narrow channel broadened out into deep pools and jagged rock inlets. The entire run was bordered by a steel fence, over which spectators could lean and look down at the sharks swimming by. There were hundreds of sharks in the run, of all sizes and shapes and types. With the maniacal single-mindedness of the deadly, they ignored the wide spots in the run, they ignored the deep pools. Instead, they just swam continuously around, oval after oval, mile after mile, a ceaseless search for something to kill.
The only break in their routine was feeding time, when the fishes and the red meat thrown into the water drove them into frenzies that turned the water white and bubbly as they fought for their meals, not with their jaws and teeth, but like basketball players fighting for a rebound, with their bodies and their stealth.
The first name on Remo’s list was Damiano Meola, head of the county’s government employees union. Meola and the two thousand employees of the union already had backed Mayor Cartwright for re-election.
Chiun and Remo found him in a sheltered, shaded area in the back of the shark run, a small section sealed off from the public by a locked gate. Meola was a big man, his burly body pulling at the seams of his light blue workmen’s uniform. He stood at the rail of the shark run, large buckets of dead fish at his feet, dropping them one at a time into the water, and laughing as the water churned into froth just below him.
He talked to himself as he fed his charges. ‘Go get it. That’s right sweetheart. Take it away from him. Watch out for Mako. Careful. Don’t let that mother get it. Careful. Ahh, what’s the matter? Hungry? Starve, you vicious bastard!’
He reached down to pick up another fish, and then stopped, as he saw behind him Remo and Chiun’s feet. He turned around quickly, an angry expression on his broad, flat-featured face. ‘Hey, wotsamatta, witcha, this part ain’t open to the public. G’wan, scram.’
‘Mister Meola?’ Remo asked politely.
‘Yeah. Watcha want?’
‘We’ve come to talk to you.’
‘Yeah?’
‘We represent Mr. Mac Polaney.’
‘Yeah?’
‘And we want you to support him.’
Meola laughed in their faces. ‘Mac Polaney!’ he said sputtering. ‘Hah. That’s a laugh.’
Remo waited quietly until he had finished laughing. Chiun stood, his hands folded inside the sleeves of his thin yellow robe, his eyes looking skyward.
Finally, when Meola had quieted down, Remo said, ‘We’re not joking.’
‘Well, for people who ain’t joking, you sure tell funny stories. Mac Polaney. G’wan get out of here.’ He turned away, picked up a dead fish by its tail and held it out over the water.
Remo stepped to one side of him and Chiun to the other.
‘Mind telling me why you’re against Polaney?’ Remo asked.
‘Because my members endorsed Cartwright.’
‘But your members do what you tell them. Why not Polaney?’ Remo asked.
‘Because he’s a screwball is why.’
‘Two thousand dollars,’ Remo said.
Meola stopped and shook his head. He dropped the fish into the water and the sharks attacked.
‘Five thousand dollars,’ Remo said.
Meola shook his head again.
‘Name a price,’ Remo said.
Meola, thinking of his brother-in-law, who was a stockbroker handling all the assets of the employee’s pension fund and splitting his earnings with Meola, said, ‘No price, never, nothing. Now get out of here because you’re starting to annoy me.’
‘Ever see a man bitten by a shark?’ Remo asked.
‘Watch this,’ Meola said. ‘It drives them crazy.’ He took a fish from the bucket and with a knife he carried in a sheath on his side, slit its belly open. He dropped the gutted carcass into the water. Instant explosion as the sharks went berserk.
‘It must be the smell or something,’ Meola said. ‘But gut a fish and they go wild.’
‘How long do you think a man could last in there?’ Meola dropped in another fish.
‘A man with gutted fish in his pockets and cuffs?’ Remo said.