He did not change from his WIMP invisible outfit, but merely took off the hood for his drive back to Brooklyn.
He reached the docks early, but so had Jack and Tony, and standing in the shadows, Wimpler heard their conversation.
"The guy did it, Tony. He did it. I heard it on the radio."
"It's too bad we have to ice him, Jack. He's got style."
"I know. But if the man found out we farmed this out to an amateur . . . forget it, baby."
Elmo watched as each checked his gun, then slid it back into its shoulder holster.
"You gentlemen are not very honest," he said.
Jack's head snapped around. He looked question-ingly into the dark, seeing nothing.
"Who said that?" Tony demanded.
"I did," Wimpler said. As Tony reached for his gun, Wimpler slid the invisible compressor over the man's head. A moment later, Tony was dead.
Jack threw up on what was left of his body.
28
"You can't see me, Jack, but I can see you," Wimpler said.
"What do you want?" Jack gasped.
"My money, Jack. That's what I want."
"Ten grand."
"Make it twenty for my extra trouble. Go and get it. And bring it here. And if you try anything funny, you'll join your friend."
Pale and shaking, Jack nodded. Wimpler watched him walk to his car, talking to himself. He knew the man would be back.
He was, in less than half an hour, holding twenty thousand dollars in cash in his hand. He saw it plucked from his hand, hanging in the air, seemingly of its own power. But before he had a chance to marvel too long, he joined his friend Tony in death.
As he left the dock on Atlantic Avenue, Wimpler thought that not only were Jack and Tony dead. There was another body back on that dock too.
The wimp was dead.
29
stairs, where he found a gang of federal officers and local police milling around the front bedroom.
On the floor were pieces of the federal witness's head. His body was two feet away from the pieces.
CHAPTER FOUR \ "You guys couldn't guard a parked car," Remo
growled, wheeled around, and walked toward the door of the room. It was all he needed, to listen to
Upstairs was getting less and less reasonable, Remo thought, as he drove up toward White Plains.
Getting rid of three hospital orderlies all at once was no big deal, but what was the hurry about then having to race over and check the security on some federal witness? It couldn't wait until tomorrow?
Remo found the address in White Plains and turned his rented Ford into the driveway, expecting to be stopped by guards.
There were no guards.
He drove up the long driveway to the house and was not challenged once. Several men milled about on the front steps. They looked up as Remo walked toward them.
"Anybody want to see my ID?" Remo asked.
"What for?" one man asked. He was seated on the top step, smoking a cigarette.
"Security," Remo said.
"What security? There's nothing to secure, nothing to guard." Then, as if suddenly curious, the man asked, "Who are you anyway, pal?"
"I was sent to check on your security," Remo said. "I have to tell you, so far you're a double D-minus."
"Our client won't mind anymore," the man said. The other men on the steps chuckled.
Upstairs bitching about the dead witness.
There had been ten years of listening to Upstairs bitch. Ever since Remo Williams, a young Newark policeman, was framed for a murder he didn't commit, sent to an electric chair that didn't work, and signed up to work for CURE, a secret agency that didn't exist. CURE was meant to fight criminals without having to worry about the constitutional restrictions against unfair tactics that seemed to tie the hands of every police department in the country. Remo was to be CURE'S enforcement arm.
His boss was Dr. Harold W. Smith, the only director CURE had ever had, a man so rigid and rockhard, that even now, after ten years, Remo still had np idea what was on the man's mind at any time.
It had been ten years of work and ten years of training. Training at the hands of an eighty-year-old Korean, Chiun, the latest Master of the House of Sinanju, an ages-old house of assassins from Korea. Remo had taken the training, and he had learned it was more than training. It had not so much changed what he could do. It had changed what he was. And in that changing, it had given him the power to be more than man. And still, sometimes, he would have traded it all for a woman and children and a
Remo went inside and followed the noise up- I place to live that wasn't a hotel room. 30 I 31
Chiun's hands were bridged in front of his eyes, fingertip to fingertip and, as Remo entered the hotel room the ancient Korean did not look up. His golden kimono, draped around his slight body, looked like an elegant pile of laundry on the floor.
"Have you made it possible for old people to die in peace?" he asked.
"Yes," Remo said. "There was a surprise."
"What was that?" Chiun said, still studying his fingertips.
"The leader was a woman."
"And she was young and pretty," Chiun said. ¦ "Yes."
"And this surprises you?"
"Well, I figured some fat guy with a beer belly and a bookie bill he couldn't pay."
Chiun lowered his hands, shook his head, and looked toward Remo. "You never learn," he said. "All women are killers, and the young, pretty ones are the worst because they think their beauty is their license to kill. You taught her respect for her elders?"
"All right, you're on the snot. Who got you there? Smitty called, right?"
Chiun nodded slowly. "Yes. The Emperor called. He seemed very upset with you. And well he should be. He is your Emperor, Remo, and yet you do nothing he tells you."
"I did everything tonight he told me to do."
"Yes? And at the Plains of White?"
"Plains of White?" Remo said aloud. "Plains . . . White Plains, right. He wanted me to look at the security for a federal witness."
"And?"
"And there was a problem," Remo said. "The witness was dead when I got there."
"The Emperor seems to think you have gone mad. He lectured me on telling you to keep your instructions straight. Are you sure you didn't... ?"
"Dead when I got there, Chiun," insisted Remo. "Some security. Somebody goofed good."
"Probably somebody young," Chiun said.
When Remo and Chiun arrived at the Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York, only fifteen minutes
«tu a *u i, * •* 1-v +~ uQ,„ *uo;^ from their hotel room, Dr. Harold W. Smith was
I showed them what it was like to have their . '.
, „ , „ _ ., standmg m his office, his hands clasped behmd his
plugs pulled, Remo said. sf ^ ^ on£ ^ ^
"Isn't it ironic,' Chiun said, that someone like rf Mand Sound Evei/freom behind> without
you, the most disrespectful of men, should be dispatched to teach someone else respect for their elders?"
"I respect you, Chiun. Honest."
"How easily the lies spring to your lips," Chiun said. "Like the dew suddenly appearing on the morning lily."
32
sedngSmi±,s face> Remo CQuld ^ ^ ^ CTJRE
director was upset.
"What's the matter, Smitty? Somebody in the kitchen take an extra helping of strawberries?"
Remo saw Smith's hands clench. He stood in front of Smith's desk. Chiun sat in a hardbacked chair alongside the desk.
33
Smith finally wheeled around. "I can't believe you," Smith snapped.
"What the hell'd I do this time?" Remo asked.
"How could you be so ... so ... ?" Smith struggled.
"Idiotic," Chiun offered.
Smith shook his head. "So . . ."
"Dopey," suggested Chiun.
"So careless," Smith finally sputtered out.