"I want to find out who did in Mrs. Mueller. So I've got to talk to them," Remo said. "Dead men don't talk."
"Fuck 'em. Shoot 'em all," said Pleskoff.
Remo took his gun away. "Just the bad guys."
"Right," said Pleskoff. "Can I reload?"
"No," said Remo.
"You know, I may not even get into trouble for this. Nobody has to know it was a' policeman who stopped a robbery and rape. They could think it was a relative who shot up those two or maybe they didn't pay a Mafia loan shark. Then there would be no fuss at all."
This idea made Pleskoff happy. He was not sure whether the women would talk. But if word ever got back to the Reverend Josiah Wadson and the Black Ministry Council, then Pleskoff would lose his retirement pay. Perhaps even be fired.
If that happened, maybe he could go independent, offer a novel service of armed men protecting the unarmed. If this idea caught on, why, people without guns might be able to walk New York City's streets again. He did not know what this service might be called but one could always hire an advertising firm. Perhaps "Pro-tecta-Block." Everyone on a block could chip in to pay for it. The men might even wear uniforms to distinguish themselves and let those who might harm people on the block know that there was protection there. It was a whiz-bang idea, thought Sergeant Pleskoff, and the good Lord knew New York City could use it.
Outside a schoolyard of concrete, surrounded by a high cyclone fence, Sergeant Pleskoff saw the dark blue denim jackets of the Saxon Lords. There were twenty or thirty of them moving along the fence. He did not have to read the lettering, even if he could on this dark night. Twenty or thirty dark jackets had to be the denim of the Saxon Lords. At first, he felt a fear of going on this street without their permission. Then he remembered he had a gun he could use. The man who had showed him the FBI Card held the gun for him. Pleskoff asked to reload.
"Those the Saxon Lords?" asked Remo.
"Yes. My gun," said Pleskoff.
"You use it before I tell you, you'll eat it," Remo said.
"Fair enough," said Pleskoff. His mind was feverish with possibilities for his unique Protecta-Block. The men protecting people could carry guns too. Like the one he had. There might even be a snappy name for these men in uniforms who carried guns and protected people, thought the New York City policeman, but he couldn't think of one right then. He filled the chambers of the gun with bullets.
Chiun watched the American policeman, then the group of young men. The young men walked with the confident arrogance of bullies. It was natural for man to herd but when he herded, what he gained in group strength he lost in individual courage.
"Who you?" demanded the tallest, revealing to Chiun and Remo that the gang was really disorganized. When the biggest ruled, it was a sign that physical prowess had to be used to gain leadership, not cunning or agreement. It was the same, then, as a gathering of strangers.
"Who am I, you mean," said Remo.
"Who you? Dat what I axed," said the tall one angrily.
"You want to know who I am. And I want to know who you are," said Remo.
"Dat mans need mannas," said the tall one.
"Manners, right?" said Remo. That's the word he thought it was.
"Let me take him," whispered Sergeant Pleskoff to Remo.
"De sergeant, he shoulda tol' you who de Saxon Lawds is, man. Ah sees de jive turkey, he wif you. We ain' got no street lights cause'a white oppression and 'trocities against de Tird Worl' Peoples. I gone be perfesser English when I learns to read. Head ob de department. Dey gotta has niggas. It's de law. Whole English 'partment, biggest in de worl'. De blacks invent de English, de whites done rob it from dems. You rip off, honkey."
"I'm not sure what you said but I understood that honkey part," Remo said, leveled two right ringers into the tall young man's navel and, finding the spinal column joint, severed it. There was hardly a whoosh from the collapsed lungs. The dark form doubled over, its shaggy head plopping into its pop brand-new sneakers with the Slam Dunk treads and the Super Soul super-sole of polyester and rubber. The sneakers had red stars on the insteps. If the tall young man had still had an operative nervous system, each eye could have seen at microscopic close distance, right under the instep star, the legend that the sneakers were made in Taiwan.
The nervous system also failed to pick up the loud metallic sound of a .45 caliber automatic clacking to the pavement that cool dark morning. The gun had come from the youth's right hand.
"Wha' happen? Wha', man?" The questions came from the young Saxon Lords as their leader stood only up to his waist, and then, in a slow moment, toppled forward in collapse, so that when he came to rest his legs were neatly pressed on top of him.
"He daid?" came a moaning voice. "De man's do a 'trocity on de brother."
"Shoot," said another. "I ain't seen nuffin'. Just another jive honkey with Sergean' Pleskoff. Hey, Pleskoff, wha' that in you hand?"
"No," said Remo to Sergeant Pleskoff. "Not yet." There were two other guns of smaller caliber in the gang. Remo removed them, with stinging pain, from their holders. After the fourth gang member to fall in pain, the shouts about blood vengeance modified. On the fifth Afro snapping back like a wild dust mop on a tight spring, the tenor of the game changed from threats to obeisance, from master to slave, from macho posturing to "no sirs" and head scratching, and they were just standing here innocent at four a.m., minding their own business. Waitin' to see if some nice white man should come along so they could help. Yessuh.
"Empty your pockets and put your hands up on that fence," said Sergeant Pleskoff. He grinned with delirious pleasure. "I wish I had twenty pair of those things. The kind of things that go on wrists and lock. The whatchamacallits."
"Handcuffs," said Remo.
"Yeah, right. Handcuffs," Pleskoff said.
Remo asked about the house that had been torn down. Nobody knew anything about the building. Remo broke a finger. And very quickly he found out that the building had been in Saxon Lord territories, the gang had hit the Muellers a few times, the man had been knifed, but no one here had done the final one on Mrs. Mueller. Lordy, no. No one here would do anything like that.
"Was it another gang?" asked Remo.
"No," came the answer. Remo broke another finger.
"All right," he said. "Who did Mueller? Who did the old man?"
There were murmurings over exactly which old white man Remo meant.
"De one dat cried, begged, and cried not to slam him no more? Dat white man? Or de one whats bleed de carpets like puddles?"
"The one with the German accent," Remo said.
"Raht. De one dat talks funny," said one.
As near as Remo could determine, there had been two old white men in that building. The Saxon Lords killed the first because he wouldn't tell them where his insulin needle was hidden. The second, seeing that they were about to successfully enter his apartment, threw himself at them.
A young man grinned at how that seventy-year-old man tried to fight.
"You were there?" Remo said.
"Ah was. He were funny, dat old man."
"Try a younger one," Remo said and wiped the grin out onto the sidewalk in little white pellets of teeth and with his right hand cupped like the top of a juicer, pushed the face into the schoolyard fence like potatoes through a masher. The head stuck. The body dangled. The fence quivered and it was established at this point on 180th Street off Walton Avenue in the Bronx that frail old white people struggling for life were not humorous matters.
"All right, now we'll try again. Who killed Mrs. Mueller?"
"Idi Amin," said one young man.
"I thought I warned you about joking," Remo said.
"I not joking. Idi Amin, he our leader, he de one you kills ober dere." He pointed to where the gang's leader lay on the schoolyard pavement like a closed-up jacknife.