"A father-and-son FBI team? I don't believe it." "And yet you broadcast a television program last season based on that premise," Chiun pointed out.
"Nobody bought that, either," the receptionist said. "That's why we replaced it with Odd Couples who Shack Up."
"He's not really my dad," Remo said. "He's just old,
and, you know." He twirled his finger in the vicinity of his ear.
"He's crazy and old and he dresses like that and they let him in the FBI?"
"Yeah, can you believe it?"
"Shh!" She was busy jotting it all down on a tiny square sticky note. "Series about crazy old Jap cross- dresser (R. Machio dead yet?) and hunk (Keanu dead yet?), FBI team..." Remo read Bang's name and office number off a small laminated map next to her, and they went to find him while she finished her concept.
"He was here." News Director Bang chuckled. "Man, was he a mess! All wrinkled up and he smelled offal. Get it? Offal?"
Remo thought that, however much of a mess Griffin had been, he couldn't compare to Bang, who perspired profusely just from the effort of walking out of the production room.
"He couldn't talk you out of running the promos, I take it?"
"Naw. Besides, the tapes are already in New York, for running nationwide. They're promoting the story now, coast-to-coast. Too late to stop it, even if he had met my price." Bang chortled.
"Any idea where he went?" Remo was getting extremely bored chasing California State Representative Griffin.
"Naw."
"What is this?" Chiun asked, pointing to the muted television screen in the small room outside the video production studio.
"That's live." Banks chuckled. "MAEBE."
"Maybe it is live?" Chiun asked.
"MAEBE. That's MAEBE. That guy there is from MAEBE."
"It's live?" Remo demanded, not trusting the Live! banner in the top left corner of the display.
"Press conference. See that guy? He's gonna be the next President of the United States of America. Maybe!" Banks huge torso never stopped its amused jiggling.
"We know him," Remo said. "Don't we?"
"He used to serve under the presidential pretender," Chiun said. "He was the official glad-hander until he fell from favor."
"That's Orville Flicker. Used to be the President's press secretary. Remember the whole big controversy about the Office of Religious Activities?" Banks asked.
"No," Remo said.
"Excuse my son," Chiun explained.
"Yeah, I'm an idiot, so what about this guy and the office of God Activities?"
"When he was press secretary for the President, he came out one day and told the media that the President had decided to make the Office of Religious Activities a cabinet-level position and would have a say in all major executive decision-making," Banks said, clearly delighted by it all. "Don't know how you missed it— the Democrats went bonkers! The separation-of-church-and-state people started screaming from sea to shining sea. Man, it was wild for, like, three hours, and then the President comes on and says it was just a big he and Orville Flicker made it up! And that made everybody even more nuts! Half the people thought the President put Flicker up to it just to judge the public reaction. But he swore up and down it was all Flicker's doing and next thing you know, Flicker's out of a job."
Remo was trying to catch up. He hadn't heard a word about this, but, then, the only TV he got to see was Spanish-language melodramas and even that wasn't by choice. "Okay, but what is he doing on TV now?"
"He's the MAEBE nominee for president, if you can believe that."
Remo looked at Chiun questioningly. Chiun shook his head. "I cannot explain this. I find everything about this nation's process of leader-choosing to be baffling."
"Here's the really bizarre part," Bang said. "He just might do it."
"No way," Remo said, watching the tall, scrawny man in the nerd glasses speak to the crowd.
"Yes way." Bang had stopped laughing. "I know shit about politics but I know popular opinion, and this MAEBE bunch has got a rocket engine strapped to it in the popularity poles. If they keep climbing like they have been, and if they can hold on to a good chunk of it, then that fuck Flicker'll do what Ross Perot only dreamed of."
Remo briefly considered what it would be like to have the skinny PR guy calling CURE's shots. "Not good," he announced.
"Not good at all," Bang agreed, and now his flabby face was a bulldog frown. "They're so right wing they'll outlaw half the lifestyles in San Francisco. No ifs, ands or maybes."
29
"I believe now would be an excellent time to call Emperor Smith," Chiun said.
"First things first." The tires squealed and Remo steered the rental car around a knot of fist-shaking pedestrians, ignoring them and putting his foot down as far as it would go.
"This is unwise."
"Everything I do is unwise, isn't it?" Remo felt the sinking of his entrails as the car shot over a rise and momentarily defeated gravity. The long street went straight downhill, with a number of rises designed to slow traffic that otherwise would have had a three-mile mountainside slide into the sea.
"When I said unwise I was being kind," Chiun insisted as they roared into the next rise.
"You? Kind?" They went over. "Never!"
The tires never left the pavement but the car was almost weightless for a few seconds, then descended heavily and the underside hit with a brief crunch.
"You'll kill the both of us!"
"What would the world be like without you?"
"Why are we in such a hurry? The killers will still be there when we get there."
"I don't want to take any chances!"
"If this meets your definition of 'not taking chances'—"
They went up again. They came down again.
"Pieces of the car are being left behind," Chiun shouted over the suddenly loud engine noise.
"They can't be too important. It's still going," Remo insisted.
"Have you considered they might be important if and when you decide to stop?"
Chiun was a master of balance, among other things, and he adjusted his body perfectly as the car dipped, roared and soared. Then it came down, and down, and kissed the pavement with a spray of sparks and a ripping of plastic body parts.
"I had daylight under them wheels that time, Little Father!"
"You're a lunatic!"
"You're a grouch. And you're supposed to be watching the street numbers. What are we at?"
"We're in the thirty-eight hundreds."
The tires squeaked and kept squeaking for ten seconds. The rental car, a three-week-old Saturn that had no future except to provide parts to other Saturns, skidded and vibrated and shuddered to an ugly stop.
Remo found himself alone in the front seat. He jumped out and discovered Chiun waiting twenty paces behind him.
"I had no desire to be a part of your spectacular finale."
"There's Griffin's headquarters," Remo said, jogging by Chiun fast. "Come on."
They heard the choked sound, not a scream, more like a sob that other ears would not have heard. It came from behind the glass of the storefront that had the legend Bruce Griffin, California State Representative.
Remo stopped. Chiun was surprised. Not that it made him falter as he, too, came to an immediate halt. He simply didn't understand what Remo was doing.
"Little Father, nobody dies. Got it? Nobody dies."
Chiun didn't get a chance to respond before Remo was bolting for the door and twisting off the door latch.
The metal knob made a short protest, but Remo didn't care. He slipped inside, finding himself in an empty reception area illuminated only by the light through the window. An eight-foot portable office wall blocked off the rest of the office. The sobbing came from behind it, as did the alarmed voices of people who wondered about the sound of the lock ripping apart. Remo went up and over the wall as if it were waist high and landed silently in the midst of the killing floor.