"You know what you are?" she asked. "You're a dinosaur. A dinosaur." She giggled. "Plodding around in the past, trying to stop tomorrow. I just saw one. You're a dinosaur."
She was interrupted by a voice from the back of the room.
"You can come in now."
Remo looked up. The speaker was a young Puerto Rican. He wore the uniform of The Gauchos, a street group that had been set up as the Boriqueno equivalent of the Black Panthers, but which had pretty well died out when the TV networks stopped covering their antics. He wore a brown beret, a brown shirt with military patches and emblems, brown slacks tucked into highly polished paratrooper boots. The youth was small and slim, perhaps twenty, and he crooked an imperious finger at Joan, beckoning her to follow him.
She got up and turned to Remo again. "A dinosaur," she said. "And just like all the dinosaurs that couldn't accept change, you're going to be dead." Her voice was an angry hiss.
"I'm going to wait for you," Remo said. "Right here. We're not done talking yet."
She stomped away from him and went into the backroom. Remo went to the counter at the front of the shop, sat on the stool nearest the door, and ordered coffee.
But all hopes he had of hearing what went on behind the door were shattered as one of the customers put a quarter in the jukebox, and it began to blare out the music of a Latin band that sounded as if it had one hundred men on first trumpet
Behind the door, Joan Hacker looked around the room, into the nut-brown faces of twenty-five young Puerto Ricans, swallowed and explained what she wanted.
"Why you come to us?", one young man, with more medals and insignia than the others asked.
"Because we're told that you are tough and smart."
"Oh, yes," he said, with a toothy grin, "we are toughs girl. That is because we are men. The men of the streets. And we are smart too. We understand that is why you did not get Negritos for this work."
She nodded, even though she felt it was not proper for them to feel that way about blacks. After all, they were part of the same Third World. Perhaps if she had more time, she could have made them see that they and the black men were brothers. But she did not have the time.
Others around the room now were nodding, babbling. "Right We smart Not like the others." Another said, "Damn right, we men. Lady, you want us to show you how much man we are?" Many of them chuckled; Joan felt their eyes on her thinly clad bosom and wished she had worn a jacket
The leader said: "Do you have the money?"
"I have half the money. The other half comes after," she said.
"And for this, we are to demonstrate at the United Nations tomorrow?"
"Yes," she said. "But no violence."
"That is much money, just to hold a parade," he said cautiously.
"There will be more, if your demonstration is big enough." Joan Hacker thought of Remo sitting outside. "There is one other thing," she said.
"What is this one other thing?" the leader asked.
When the door opened, Remo turned, expecting to see Joan Hacker. But again, the slim Puerto Rican was there. He looked around the room, his eyes lighted on Remo, and he said: "The girl wants you."
Remo hopped off the stool and followed the youth into the backroom. But inside, he saw that Joan Hacker had gone. There was a back door leading from the large meeting room. That door was now blockaded by ten youths. Remo felt a hand press between his shoulder blades and push. He allowed himself to be propelled forward into the middle of the floor. Behind him now were another dozen young men.
"Where's the girl?" Remo said, trying to sound inoffensive. "I thought you said she wanted to see me."
"When we are done with you," the young leader said, "no one will ever again want to see you."
He looked around the room. "Who wants him?"
There were shouts from both sides.
"You, Carlo," the leader said, and another youth, taller and huskier than the rest, stepped away from the rear door, his face split wide in a grin.
He reached into a back pocket and brought out a black-handled knife, then pressed the button and a six-inch blade snapped forward into place, glinting white and shiny under the overhead fluorescent lights.
He held the knife in front of him, holding it correctly, like the right hand on a golf club, and began to wave it back and forth in front of him.
"You want him in big pieces or little pieces, El Jefe?" he asked.
The leader laughed and while the others chuckled, he said: "Bite size chunks."
"Hold on a minute," Remo said. "Don't I get a knife too?"
"No."
"I thought you guys believed in fair fights. How fair a fight is it if I don't have a knife?"
"You want a knife?" said the youth known as El Jefe "You shall have a knife." He snapped him fingers. "Juan. Your knife." A tiny youth, no older than sixteen, handed him a knife from his pocket. El Jefe snapped it open, looked at its long blade, then turned and slipped the blade in the crack between the door and the jamb. Then he wrenched the handle to the left, snapping off the blade and leaving only the handle.
He beamed with a grin and tossed it to Remo. "Here, gringo. Here is your knife."
Remo plucked the handle out of the air. "Thanks," he said. "That'll do." He curled the knife into his right fist
"Go get him, Carlo!" shouted El Jefe. "Cut the marichon,"
Carlo jumped Into the attack like a fencer. Remo stood his ground. Only three feet separated them now. Carlo waved his knife back and forth in the slow hypnotic movements of a cobra, following the snake charmer's flute.
Then he lunged. He aimed the knife point at Remo's solar plexus, and moved forward, knife, hand and arm. Remo moved aside, and as Carlo turned to cover, Remo's left hand darted out and flicked off the bottom of Carlo's right ear lobe.
"Lesson number one," Remo said. "Don't lunge. Slash."
There was a collective sip of air around the room. Carlo felt the blood trickle down his neck. He went wild, jumping forward toward Remo, his knife slashing air back and forth. But then Remo was behind him, and as Carlo turned to him, Remo put his left thumb into Carlo's cheekbone. The loud crack as the bone popped resounded through the room.
"Lesson number two," Remo said. "Don't take your eyes off the target."
Carlo now was frantic, rage fighting with fear for possession of his body. With a scream, he raised his knife over head and ran at Remo, planning to plunge it down into Remo's body.
Remo stood his ground, but then as Carlo reached him, Remo went up into the air. his right arm, which he had not thus far used, went up over his head, and then the hand came down on the top of Carlo's skull. The un-bladed knife crashed against the top of Carlo's head, and then the pressure carried the handle through the bone, and the knife was imbedded deep in his brain. Carlo staggered once, then fell to the floor.
"Lesson number three," Remo said. "Don't screw around with me. I'm El Exigente, and I won't buy your beans."
He walked to the front door, and the twelve Puerto Ricans scattered to let him pass through. As he walked out, Remo grabbed El Jefe by the windpipe and dragged him along behind him.
In the street outside the coffee shop, El Jefe decided to tell Remo everything. The girl was obviously an idiot; she had agreed to pay two thousand dollars for The Gauchos to picket the United Nations tomorrow. No, they would not commit any violence. And no, if Senor did not want them to show up, they would not even show up, because maintaining the social order was more important than money to them.
"Show up," Remo said, gave El Jefe's windpipe a squeeze of remembrance, and walked off down the street
No point in looking for the girl; she had gotten away by now. But the main line tomorrow was to be an attack on the delegates; he and Chiun would be there to stop it.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN