"Connor misses. He's three feet from the guy and he misses. The first time in his life and he misses. Bang. And nothing. This Remo creep moves like he ain't even been touched. Good-bye, Connor. Like three feet and…"
"Dammit, Pig. Get on with it."
"Then he goes through the first layer right, and he's into and partially through the second layer, and fast. I mean you think you know fast. You think you've seen fast. You think Gale Sayers is fast. Gale Sayers is a cripple. Bob Hayes is a slug. And shifty? Willie Pep is a plodder. Muhammad Ali walks on his heels."
"Get on with it, Pig!"
"'Okay, okay. I'm telling ya what went wrong."
"You're telling me why you're not responsible for what went wrong, not what went wrong."
"I did what ya told me."
"Go on. Go on, damn you."
"Yeah, well, okay. Then he starts to really move. I mean move. Sometimes you don't see him, he's so fast. I swear on my mother's grave, you don't see him he's moving so fast. And I try to get off a shot. Other guys try to get off shots, and pretty soon we're shooting back at the people who are shooting at us. And then we're in a fire-fight with ourselves and we don't even see this guy Remo get away."
"That's what I thought, Pig."
"It wasn't our fault, Mr. Jethro. Honest."
Jethro sulked. He turned away from Negronski and Pigarello. He twisted the handkerchief, looked at it a moment, then threw it into a wastebasket.
"You're going to have to wait here, Pig."
"You ain't gonna do a job on me, are you?"
"No. No. I don't think so."
"Whadya mean ya don't think so? I mean what is that? You don't think you're gonna kill me. I mean, what is that?"
"That, my dear fat New England friend, is where it is at."
"You ain't gonna kill me, you shit-kicker," said the Pig. He grabbed a chair. "You've had it, pretty boy. We ain't in your little room now, shit-kicker. You get yours now. I seen what McCulloch did to you before he went into that room, and you ain't in that room now." The Pig advanced on Jethro and Negronski went for the chair. With massive, hairy arms the Pig nipped Negronski aside.
"Stay out of this, Siggy. This is me and Jethro."
Like a lumbering truckload of gravel, Pigarello moved on Jethro, the heavy oak chair raised above his head as if it were light as matchsticks. Negronski raised himself and saw the chair move towards Jethro's head.
But Jethro was standing in a strange position, not like when they'd have to face an occasional challenge in a Nashville bar, but like a peculiar old man with a spine injury. The toes were pointed in. The hands outstretched and curved loosely. The wrists stiff. The face impassive and free of hate, as though listening to a column of tax figures.
The Pig put his bulk into the downward swing of the chair, but Jethro was no longer there. His left hand, with the light-quickness of a laser, was into the Pig's stomach. The chair tumbled harmlessly behind Jethro. The Pig stood as if watching a surprise party for a ghost. The mouth was open. The eyes were popping wide, and his hands dropped to his sides.
Jethro brought what looked to be a dainty slap to the Pig's head. It was like touching a blood faucet. The Pig spit a stream of red. Like a bowling pin, he began to wobble straight-legged, then down, face forward. Crack. Negronski heard the head hit, and shuddered.
"I had to do it, Siggy," said Jethro.
"You want me to get a doctor down here?" Negronski's voice was flat.
"No. He's dead, Siggy."
"I guess we're going to have to move him to that special room."
"Yeah," said Jethro.
"We ought to have rollers to that room and a regular conveyer belt."
"What do you mean by that?"
"You know what I mean. You know the Pig isn't the last. You know that room is gonna be filled every week. You know it's never going to end, Gene."
"No. It will. It will. As soon as we get the transportation lock on the country, we'll be home free. Everything will quiet down then. It'll be beautiful, Siggy. Beautiful."
"It'll be more of this," said Negronski, absently reaching over to the fallen Pigarello and straightening the bandage, for reasons beyond his comprehension. "It was supposed to be beautiful when we got the convention switched to Chicago. It was supposed to be beautiful when we got the building built. It was supposed to be beautiful when you become president of the drivers. Yeah. And the only thing we got was more killing and more bodies, and more of that room over there. It's never gonna end, Gene. Let's give up and go home. I wouldn't even mind doing time now. Going to the cops, levelling the whole thing. There's no death penalty anymore. And I don't think we'd get the chair anyhow even if there was. Give a full confession. Maybe we'd spend most of the rest of our lives in jail, but it would be our lives. Not running to kill this guy because of this, or that guy because of that. It never ends, Gene. What do you say. For old times' sake. Let's chuck this thing."
"We can't," said Jethro. "Help me with the body."
"It used to be Pigarello. He's not just a body."
"It's a body, Siggy. And it's either our bodies or his body. Now which do you want it to be?"
"Nobody, Gene. I'm through." Sigmund Negronski rose to his full height. His legs planted firm, he stared the new president of the International Brotherhood of Drivers directly in the eye.
"I'm through, Gene. No more. Maybe you can't stop. Maybe you can't get out, but I can. I quit. Right now I wouldn't even touch a sparrow if it were pecking at my head. I'd run. And right now, I'm running. I'm through. I helped you. I stepped aside for you. I helped you, but I'm not helping you anymore. I'm not gonna talk to the police because I know you'd kill me, Gene. That's the way it is nowadays, and I want to live. I want to see tomorrow so bad I can breathe the morning already. Back home. Not here in Chicago. I want to wake up with my wife next to me with her cold cream and curlers and bitching for me to make the coffee, and I want to worry about getting up the mortgage money, not the body counts. I want to walk down the street and be happy to see people, not happy to not see them, if you know what I mean. I want to live and you can take this union and shove it up your velvet bell bottoms. Good-bye. I'm going back to driving a truck. I'm good at that."
"Siggy, before you go, help me with this," said Jethro. His voice was cold and smooth like an ice pond.
"No," said Negronski.
"Just to the room and then you're through," Jethro smiled the old smile again, the smile that washed away worries and used to make the business fun.
"Okay. Just to the room."
When Gene Jethro left the special room an hour later, there were two giant green Garby Bags sitting by the door with a note to the janitor to dump them in the building's furnace. Jethro left the room alone.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
"I have failed, little father."
Remo said this mournfully, daring to interrupt Chiun who sat before the hotel television set, entranced by the problems of a housewife telling all to her psychiatrist. Remo knew Chiun had heard him enter. He was on his way to change his clothes when Chiun did something Remo had never seen him do before. He turned off the picture on the television. Voluntarily—by himself.
He beckoned Remo to him, turning in his seated position to an empty space on the floor. It was a gesture used by countless Korean teachers of previous generations to students who were to listen to something of great import. It was a gesture of a priest to a neophyte.
Remo sat down on the carpeting facing Chiun, his legs crossed beneath him in the position taught him many years before when just a few minutes of sitting like this would bring excruciating back pains. Now Remo could sleep with his legs tucked under him, his back straight, and awake refreshed.
He looked into the wise, un-telling eyes of the man he had first hated, then feared, then respected and finally loved, a father for a man who had known no father, a father for the creation of a new man.