"Yes, he is," Chiun agreed from the back seat.
"What's gross?" Remo asked.
"You are gross," said Chiun.
"I'm not talking to you, Chiun," Remo said. "What's gross, Viki?"
"The funeral. The whole thing. That fat faker of a reverend that my father hated standing there at the grave spilling out banalities. The whole awful murder. Why would someone, anyone kill my father that way? You have any idea?"
Remo put his hand comfortingly on her left knee. "Not one idea."
"Never ask that one for ideas, little girl," said Chiun. "He knows not the word."
"Come on, Chiun, knock off the carping, will you?" said Remo, turning onto the Angus' street. "What do you know anyway. You haven't been listening to anything that was said since we got to the cemetery."
"I know enough," said Chiun, his head still deep in parchment. "I know that the emperor has named a new disease after you."
Remo kept looking for the Angus house.
"A new disease? What's that mean?" he asked.
"Swine flu," said the small man from the back seat. He thought this line so funny that he giggled and repeated it. "Swine flu. Heh, heh, heh."
"Anyway," said Remo, "It's nice to see you in good humor and talking to me again."
"I am not talking to you. I am humiliating you."
Remo ignored him and turned back to Viki who sat looking out the window at her neighborhood.
"Why didn't your mother come to the funeral?" Remo asked.
"She was too torn up. She stayed home to get things ready for the wake. Here's the house."
Remo turned the rented car into the two-car driveway in front of the brown split-level with the yellow window shades.
As the three moved out of the car and up the lawn, Remo saw a dark figure moving alongside the house, bending over to peer in through a window.
"Wait here," he said to Viki. "Watch her, Chiun."
Viki moved close to Chiun as Remo moved off around the house. She put her hand on his arm and smiled at his impassive face.
"The man at the cemetery," she said, nodding toward Remo. "You call him emperor. Why?"
Chiun shrugged. "It is not for me to understand white men's games. I do not try. I call him emperor, Remo calls him Smith, the emperor calls Remo Nichols, everybody calls somebody something else. This is a very strange country but I will make it all clear when my beautiful drama is shown on television."
With that, the Master returned his gaze toward the house and remained silent. But his face had the same expressionless look as when he had stood next to the coffin in the cemetery.
Remo found the dark figure hunched over a cellar window a few feet ahead of him. Remo moved within an inch of the man. The figure rose and turned right into Remo's chest.
The Right Reverend Titus Murray almost had a massive coronary.
"Hello, Pastor," said Remo. "Trying to gain immaculate entrance ?"
"Hugga, hugga, hugga," said the minister, back to the house, his belly moving like a bellows.
"Whatever you say," said Remo, taking Murray's arm, and leading him to the front of the house. He waved Viki and Chiun up. "False alarm," he explained. "What are you doing here anyway, Reverend?"
Murray collected some of his composure. "Mrs. Angus didn't answer the door. I was looking for her. I thought she might need some spiritual comfort."
"Or help with the sandwiches from the looks of you," Remo said. "Viki, do you have a key?"
Viki bounced up the steps and tried the door. "That's odd. Mom never locked it before." She took a key from under the welcome mat and unlocked the door, then stepped inside.
Rev. Murray followed and Remo turned to Chiun who still stood on the front lawn, one sandaled foot poking the dead grass near the base of a tree.
"Come on in," Remo said.
"I think I will remain out here," Chiun said. "There is something here that I do not like."
"I know, me. Right?"
"This is serious, Remo. There is something here."
"Little Father," said Remo at the door. "It's cold and it looks like rain so come in."
"I will be out here," Chiun said stubbornly.
"Suit yourself," Remo said. He went inside and closed the door behind him.
Chiun waited a few seconds as if smelling the air, then began to move slowly toward the back of the house.
"There's food downstairs," said Viki, stepping up the stairs to the kitchen. "I'm going to wash my hands. Mom! I'm back."
Rev. Murray went downstairs and Remo stood in the foyer wondering what was on Chiun's mind. It was unusual for him to be so obviously worried about something, and when he was, it was generally serious.
Remo heard a soft hissing sound like the tiny wake of a miniature surfer from downstairs and then heard water begin to splash upstairs. Then Remo heard a harsh gasp from up in the kitchen and a thud from the basement.
Then he heard Rev. Murray's elephantine feet thudding upstairs, and then the minister ran by him, screaming, "Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God." His back was slick and red. Viki began screaming in the kitchen.
As Murray ran out the front door, Remo peeked down into the basement. The floor was covered with blood.
Rev. Murray had stopped next to a cypress tree on the front lawn and was throwing up.
Remo ran up the steps and into the kitchen. Soapy water was running down Viki's arms and face. She was standing straight, feet together, only occasionally bending her knees to gather air for another scream. There was no one else in the kitchen.
Viki's large brown eyes, now twice their normal size in shock, were looking over the sink, through the kitchen window, out at a carcass in a long black bloody dress who looked back from the limbs of a tree.
Remo leaned to the window and looked out at the remains of Ruth Angus.
And he saw Chiun, moving around the trunk of the tree, poking the cold winter ground with his toe.
CHAPTER FIVE
Peter Matthew O'Donnell was enjoying a vodka and tonic in the comfort of his condominium apartment in the Timberwood complex of Westport, Connecticut, and watching the Vikings pretend to play in the Super Bowl when his foot became one with the ottoman.
One moment he was sitting before his color set with the newest electronic dial and the built-in recording unit, and the next moment the football game had become a jumbled haze and his foot had become part of the splintered wood, sharp-ended metal springs, screws, and stuffing.
O'Donnell tried to get up, but suddenly his other foot had joined the first and the bottom half of his legs were a foot stool.
"Time out," said a voice behind him.
O'Donnell lost his drink as well as his lunch, his breakfast, and part of his dinner the night before. His legs felt as if they had been used in the production of toothpicks and his bulky leisure shirt was a small green lake of evil-smelling liquid.
"Yaahaaa," he said.
"The score Anybody, 17, Vikings, zero," said the voice beside him. "You want to see the final score, you talk to me."
"Gaa gaa yaa haaa," said O'Donnell.
"Your name was on a small pad in Vinnie Angus' study. It said to call you. Why?"
"My legs, my legs."
"Right now they are," said the voice. "But if you don't answer me, your legs belong to me. I carry them out under my arm."
"He called to tell me that the meat I sold him has some tough spots."
"What spots?" asked the voice.
"Around the USDA mark."
O'Donnell saw a hand attached to a thick wrist move down his leg, slowly, like a pearl drifting through pancake syrup, and suddenly his left foot miraculously healed.
"Aaaaaahh," he said in satisfaction.
"Good. Now," said the voice, "why did he die after calling you?"
"I don't…" O'Donnell began to say and then there was a blur in front of him and his left leg felt as if it had split in half and re-wrapped itself in braids.