"A man? With no pants?"
"Quiet down, Little Father."
The old Oriental looked around. "Why? Are you afraid I will wake someone up?"
Remo scanned the seats around him. Indeed, almost half the audience seemed to be fast asleep. He craned his neck to see into the orchestra section. A thousand heads bobbed up and down rhythmically as the air welled with the sound of deep snoring.
"Everybody's conked out," Remo whispered.
"What do you expect? Even unconsciousness is preferable to watching those legs."
"Something weird's going on here," Remo said.
At intermission, the curtain came down to a smattering of applause. The house lights came up, and a few people straggled into the aisles. Most of the audience remained sprawled in their seats.
"Let's find Smitty," Remo said.
Smith was standing by the refreshments counter on the first tier. Remo and Chiun had a hard time getting to him because the other patrons kept staggering in front of them.
"Out of my way," Chiun commanded as a young couple slammed into him on either flank.
"Sorry," the young man said with exteme slowness. His mouth worked further, but only drool came out.
"Slovenly creatures. White, naturally."
"He's not the only one," Remo said. Near Smith stood a fashionable middle-aged woman in green taffeta. As Smith purchased something from the bar, the woman melted to the floor. A few feet away, another patron, an elderly gentleman holding a styrofoam cup in his hand, slid slowly down the wall to the carpet.
"What's wrong with all these people?" Remo asked. "They're falling like boll weevils at first frost."
Smith walked over to them, a styrofoam container in his hand. His face was grave. "Can you see what's happening?" he asked.
"I see it, but I don't believe it," Remo said. "Is it like this all over New York?"
"All over the country," Smith said. "The first reports came from Miami, but within hours I'd heard from every city in the United States. The hospitals are full with accident cases, from people falling asleep at the wheel. Suicides are quadruple their usual rate."
"Maybe it's something in the water," Remo offered.
Smith shook his head. "Unfortunately, we know what it is. There've been enough autopsies to prove it beyond a doubt."
"And?"
Smith looked around him. "Heroin," he said.
"Heroin?" Remo repeated unbelievingly. "The whole country?"
"Somehow, a huge quantity of heroin has been introduced to the American public. The epidemic has crossed all social and ethnic barriers. There's no pattern." Smith took a sip of his coffee. "I'm afraid there's just no way of stopping it at present, since we don't know the source. That's yourjob. Find out who's behind this scheme, and how he's operating. And then stop him."
Remo waffled. "There's just one thing—"
"I recommend you start with known drug contacts in the Miami area, then work your way up to the main distributors."
"Yeah, but..."
"But what?"
"See, I'd like to catch this bum as much as you, but I've come to a decision. About my life. That is, about the way I spend my life. It's the killing, Smitty.... Smitty?"
Smith stood weaving in his spot, staring glassily at Remo.
"Are you all right?"
He didn't answer. Remo waved a hand in front of Smith's face. He didn't blink. Then slowly, his arm dropped and his coffee spilled in little rivulets down the side of his trousers.
"Smitty!"
With a muffled sound, Smith careened backwards and lay unconscious on the floor.
Remo scooped him up in his arms. "It's got Smitty, too," he said. He listened to Smith's heart. "I think he's okay. We've got to get him home."
He put Smith in a taxi, gave the driver a roll of hundred-dollar bills, and sent the cab off to upstate New York.
"What now?" Chiun said in the light of a street lamp.
"We'll start in Miami."
"I thought you were not going to work again."
"I said I wasn't going to kill."
They traveled to the airport in silence. Why, Remo wondered, would anyone want to drug the entire population of the United States? Whatever the reason, Remo had the sickening feeling that things had just started.
?Chapter Three
The city of Miami was like a ghost town. Except for the constant wail of ambulances in the distance and an unusual number of derelicts, the city seemed to be deserted.
Remo walked purposefully past the palm trees lining the wide boulevard. A restriction banning all but emergency vehicles from the roads lent the empty streets an air of spaciousness.
He knew where he was going. Skirting the main routes, he turned into a series of alleyways in the northwest section of town. At the far end of a dead-end street hung a filthy shingle reading "Shoes Repaired" above a dingy storefront. Through the window Remo could see a counter tended by a laconic, murderous-looking fellow.
If Remo remembered correctly, there was a false wall at the back of the shop that opened to a warehouse filled, intermittently, with large shipments of heroin.
CURE's computers had flushed out the warehouse some months before, and Remo himself had been inside to verify the stash, but had left it untouched. Harold Smith preferred to leave big drug busts to the FBI, so Remo's climactic moment had come with an anonymous call pinpointing the location of the warehouse. The place had been raided and the heroin seized, but the Feds didn't wait to check the facts about who was in charge, and ended up arresting some minor cog in the drug wheel with no more information than the average street pusher.
The real operator, Johnny Arcadi, had taken appropriate precautions at the time and was securely and visibly out of town during the raid, speaking at an electrical contractor's convention in Detroit. Arcadi was left clean, as usual.
The Feds watched him for a while, but with so many underlings working for him, Arcadi was never in the shoe repair shop anymore. Most of the Feds concurred that Arcadi had moved to a new location. Harold Smith knew he hadn't, but Arcadi was small potatoes to CURE.
Smith waited, hoping that when Arcadi led him to the next rung on the ladder, surely a man untouchable by the democratic laws of the United States, he would send in Remo. To finish both jobs in a way the Constitution did not permit but, the only way that would work. Remo decided that the time had come.
The shoemaker in the shop was sitting on a high stool, a cigarette dangling from the side of his mouth.
"Whaddya want," he said.
"Johnny Arcadi. Your boss."
"Never heard of him," the shoemaker, whose only calluses were on his trigger finger, said. He removed the cigarette from his mouth and slowly lowered his arm behind the counter. "Who wants to know?"
"My name's Remo. And I wouldn't pick up that gun if I were you."
"What gun?" the shoemaker drawled. From an almost imperceptible twitch of the man's right shoulder Remo knew that the man's fingers were wrapping around a weapon.
Shifting his position slightly, Remo kicked a hole in the front of the counter with the bottom of his foot. The gun spun into the air in three pieces, and with the same movement the shoemaker slammed shoulders first into the back wall. It yielded under his weight. Then Remo was over the counter and through the hole and into the warehouse, and the shoemaker was hanging off Remo's right hand by his nose.
"Now do you remember who Arcadi is?" Remo asked pleasantly.
The shoemaker made motions with his tongue. The only sound that issued from him was a kind of squealing grunt.
"That mean yes?"
"Ga. Yuh."
"Give him a call. Tell him I want to talk to him. Here. In five minutes."
"Gla," the man said. Remo set him down. "You a cop?"
"No."
"Then why do you want Arcadi?"
Remo extended two fingers toward the man and pressed a place on his neck that convinced the man that further explanations were unnecessary. "He's in his car," the shoemaker said. He lifted the phone and dialed, his eyes glued to Remo's hands. "Johnny? I think you better come down here. Some guy named Remo. Says he's not a cop. He wants you should come here in five minutes. Yeah... Sorry, boss. Okay." He hung up. "He says you should go stick your pecker in a ravioli machine." He held out his two hands, palms forward, in defense. "You said call, I called. Mr. Arcadi's with a lady. He ain't coming." A bubble of a laugh escaped from his lips. "At least not now."