The audience applauded as the center of the wooden stage began to sag and then with a sickening crack, it collapsed. Bodies fell into each other. Guitars and bones cracked in the onslaught. The center-stage singers were crushed under the load, smothered by the bodies of those who fell on top of them. It was a full minute before the audience realized this wasn't the best rock piece they had ever heard but a disaster.
Remo and Chiun saw immediately that the people were in trouble, not singing about it. Using the wires, they pulled Debbie and her guitar free and then dove into the center of the surging mass of bodies, lifting off rock stars, passing them up over the side of the stage. Those on the bottom could not be saved, but they managed to get the upper layers free so that doctors could get to those who were still alive at the bottom.
At the lower levels the bodies were slippery from the blood.
Some of the rock stars didn't realize what happened for the whole evening. One of them, with a punctured lung and enough cocaine coursing through his blood to numb the whole of southern California, only discovered he was injured when he tried to sing and nothing came out but blood.
Another with a broken hip, completely smashed on Quaaludes, thought she couldn't walk because this time she'd taken one pill too many. The idea made her giggle.
Debbie Pattie was furious that Remo and Chiun yanked her off the stage before she could get in front of the cameras.
"I hated all this anyway. All those other people sharing the attention. I was going crazy. I had withdrawals. I know others did, too."
One thing did make her feel better. At least it showed Remo that rock stars not only gave of their time and money but also of their blood.
"You can't say we're not saving now," said Debbie. Remo ripped off the wires, and so did Chiun. "Why do you use such sticky wires?" he asked.
"Hey, I'm talking to you. I said you can't say we're not saving now," said Debbie. "I mean, people are bleeding on that stage."
"I didn't say you didn't mean well," said Remo. "I just said jumping up and down and screaming 'Save' over and over doesn't mean anything. You're not saving people by dying, any more than you're saving people by screaming."
"That's singing," said Debbie.
"Whatever," said Remo. "Do you always use wires that stick?"
Debbie shrugged. She hired people for that. She honestly didn't know how a lightbulb worked, but when you made enough money, things just were supposed to work or you fired people.
"That's the difference between singers and nobodies," said Debbie.
Remo noticed that Rizzuto, who was standing at the front of the stage, had escaped the collapse of its center by simply jumping off. Being a good trial lawyer, he had the presence of mind to look for an open microphone. Finding one, he gave a last message to the people.
"Do not let them die in vain. Do not let them bleed in vain, everyone, you here and across the world, support change of venue for negligence. Please, I beg you in the name of humanity, the suffering humanity you see here, and the suffering you don't see which is even worse, write your congressmen. March in the streets. Barricade your courtrooms, Americans, because if the venue isn't changed to America, if it stays in Gupta where human life routinely suffers extermination by the powerful, then, friends, no humanity is safe. No mother is safe. No child is safe. No one is safe. You are not safe."
A stagehand wanted to borrow the microphone for a minute to get people in the rear to open a way for an ambulance. Rizzuto put his hand over the microphone.
"In a minute. In a minute, all right?"
"People are dying here, buddy. We got to get the ambulance. "
"I said in a minute," said Rizzuto, and made one more appeal for the change of venue, this time telling the people in so many words that if they helped the class-action suit against International Carborundum , they would be saving their own air, their own water and, as Rizzuto put it with a trembling voice, "your own green, green grass of home. "
Debbie Pattie saw Remo start to break away from her to get to Rizzuto.
"Hey, you're the luckiest man in the world. I'm ready to ball you. Let's go."
"Later," said Remo.
"Hey, I'm the most sexually desirable female in America," said Debbie.
"Sorry."
"Then I'll ball the old man, and he'll tell you what you missed. Everyone says I'm great in bed, everyone lucky enough."
"Fine," said Remo, easing his way through the stretchers and wounded. He knew that Debbie had as much chance of getting Chiun into bed as the pope. No, the pope would be easier. But if he told her that, she would keep bothering Chiun all night. Debbie Pattie wanted only one thing in life, it seemed. Whatever someone told her she couldn't have.
The thing that struck Remo about Rizzuto was that the man was only pressing the Gupta case. If each of those rock stars earned millions, and many of them would not be able to perform again, the size of the negligence suit would be awesome. And yet when Rizzuto dusted himself off, he went happily looking for what he called "action."
In Gupta, according to what Chiun found out, Rizzuto was right on the scene with a well-prepared case. Here, he walked past millions of dollars in liability, telling Remo that he thought he might know of a crap game in the hotel. Remo followed him, and that was exactly where Rizzuto went. There was a bigger negligence case on that one stage that evening than in all of Gupta, but Rizzuto ignored it.
And Palmer, Rizzuto with a man already on the scene, made no move to get any part of it. In fact, it was one of the few really major cases that year that the firm didn't get.
Remo contacted Smith on a public phone. Somehow, and of course Remo did not know how, the line was secure the moment contact was made.
"Smitty. I don't know that this detective thing is getting anywhere. I can't figure out a lot of this. A lot of things don't make sense. What if we just gently hang Rizzuto out of a window somewhere and find out what really makes them tick, and then you move the evidence somewhere?"
"Holding someone out a window, Remo, is not evidence. Just find out how they're doing this, how they're causing these accidents, and I can get the evidence worked up from here for some prosecutor. We've got to destroy these guys in a courtroom. We've got to have the law appear as though it's taking care of its own. Legally we have to do what Chiun always wants us to do. Hang a head on the wall. "
"I don't even know where the wall is in this case."
"Keep on it. And by the way, are you all right?"
"You mean that crazy business, or what you called that crazy business? Yeah. I'm fine. I haven't had a desire to do something decent for days. I just run around after people."
"I wasn't talking about that, Remo."
"What were you talking about?"
"To be honest, Remo, I don't know. Something is wrong. We're not getting the right readings from our sources. I backed everything off to the perimeters of the law firm's business and still our own system doesn't seem to make headway with them. We have a program that checks and analyzes every call they make. It's done automatically, even analyzed by the program itself. But every time their phone system connects to the Midwest it seems to suddenly go blank with an incredible amount of static."
"Like the system you use, Smitty?" asked Remo.
"Something like that, Remo. Except we're the only ones in the world who are supposed to have it. Or know how it works."
"So?"
"So, there's been an even stranger silence from that firm that I can't figure out. It's like that quiet in the jungle before a tiger strikes. Have you ever seen a cat stalk prey?"
"Maybe. I don't know. What are you getting at?"
"I think you're being stalked by someone or something. "
"Why?"
"A hunch."
"Smitty, you don't play hunches. You don't even have hunches. In fact, I wonder if you have feelings sometimes. So how come you're coming up with hunches all of a sudden?"