But less than a year later, much of his pack was dead, and the others no longer looked at him with the adoration and obeisance he was accustomed to.
Revenge would be sweet, but more importantly revenge was absolutely necessary if he intended to regain the trust of the pack.
The Chinaman would have to die. So, too, the woman who had managed to elude them at Desire House, the malicious Gypsy witch. And especially the younger man who ran faster than a wolf and killed with a touch.
He and the Chinaman were of a kind, but what that kind was Leon Grosvenor did not know. One thing for sure. Those two weren't normals.
REMO STOPPED at the first gas station outside town. It was a huge, brightly lit complex with something like eighteen gas pumps. Several of them were being used by rowdy partyers who shouted and whooped as they gassed up.
He found the pay phone at the far side of the parking lot and leaned on the one button. Somehow this connected him to Folcroft Sanitarium and the offices of CURE.
"Lucky Dollar Store and Incense Emporium," said a voice in heavily accented English.
Remo looked at the phone. Looked at the keypad. Had he accidentally held down the wrong button? "Hello?" the voice said.
"Hello?"
"Is Harold home?" Remo asked.
"Remo, it's about time," Harold W. Smith said suddenly.
"What's with the hired help who answered the phone?" Remo demanded.
"That's a new automated system for weeding out undesirable calls," Smith explained quickly. "Believe it or not, there are people out there who have nothing better to do than see what happens if they hold down their 1 button. The system will let you through as soon as you speak and it recognizes your voiceprint. Now give me your report."
"Fine, thanks," Remo complained. "The report is I just spent my evening chasing wolves around N' awlins."
"Yes, we've been getting the reports of several wolf attacks in the French Quarter," Smith said. "Also about the attack on the Romany camp. I spoke with Master Chiun about that earlier. I wish you would have phoned more quickly, Remo. Master Chiun is not, er, precise when it comes to details."
"Yeah, well, I was busy." Remo quickly ran down the events that had occurred since arriving in New Orleans. He ended by describing his questioning of the last wolf.
"You questioned it?" Smith asked dubiously.
"I tortured it, if you must know," Remo said.
"And?" Smith asked noncommittally.
"It talked."
"It talked?"
"Yeah."
"The wolf talked?"
"Read my effing lips. It effing talked, Smitty. The thing used to be human. Dr. White's really outdone herself this time."
"Remo," Dr. Smith said quietly, "I agree that Judith White achieved some shocking physiological changes in her subjects. But to make a man into a wolf-it seems unlikely."
"Figure it out for yourself," Remo said. "I've got one of the chatterboxes in the trunk of the rental. Test him out. You're gonna find all kinds of DNA or genetic material or whatever little buggies people normally have that wolves don't."
"Is it-"
"Dead as a doornail, and it'll be getting ripe by morning. Have somebody come pick it up." Remo gave Smith the location in Westwego he expected to be leaving the car and described his plans for moving into the bayou-and forcing Leon Grosvenor into the open.
"All right." Smith sighed heavily. "It'll take some doing, but I'll have it picked up and sent to a private lab for testing. When will you be able to report in again?"
"First phone booth I find in the bayou," Remo said.
"How will you get the test results?" Smith asked. "They could be revealing as to the nature of these creatures."
"I know their nature, and it ain't natural," Remo said. "My objective is to make them dead. Except Leon. Him I want to ask questions and then make dead."
"You still think he'll give you a lead on Judith White?" Smith asked.
Remo felt grim and he said, "No. But it can't hurt to ask. Can't hurt me, anyway. Now, Leon, it's gonna hurt."
"YOU SURE about this, Reverend?"
"Course I'm sure," the portly televangelist told Jeremiah Smeal. "It's perfect, son. I know exactly what I'm doin'. Just you wait and see."
The Reverend Rockwell could sympathize with Smeal's misgivings, staring at the empty auditorium and hearing all that whoop-to-do outside. As far as he could figure out, no one had ever tried to stage a mass revival in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, much less right smack-dab in the middle of the French Quarter, but that was what appealed to Rockwell. He would be the first, which meant he would be noticed. That meant free publicity!
The campaign TV spots were eating up his money faster than he had expected, and he didn't like those rumors that the IRS was gearing up to scrutinize his books at JBN. Rockwell had a team of born-again accountants handling the money side of things, with strict instructions not to leave a paper trail, but there was always something for a bloodhound to latch on to if you let him sniff around for very long.
Rockwell's temporary answer to the two-fold problem, ready cash and federal scrutiny, was Mission Mardi Gras, two nights of hellfire and damnation-with an option for a third night, if the crowds were large enough-that would replenish empty coffers and supply him with a whole new audience. The program would be run in its entirety on JBN, of course, but local TV news had also been alerted to stand by for something big from Reverend Rockwell.
The auditorium was one block south of Charles, near Audubon Park. It wasn't huge compared to some of the New Orleans theaters and concert halls, but Rockwell had chosen it both for its proximity to the French Quarter and for the nightly rental rate, which he found very reasonable.
And with any luck at all, there would be news cameras on hand to catch the show.
As if in answer to his thoughts, Smeal said, "You think they'll come?"
Rockwell didn't have to ask who they were. News people with minicams. The sacred talking heads. "They'll come," the televangelist replied. "God told me so."
That wasn't strictly true, of course. The scheme had come to him while he was on the toilet, battling the chronic constipation that had plagued him ever since he tossed his halo in the ring to run for governor. Rockwell had been straining like a modern Jacob wrestling with the angel and refusing to give up before he got his blessing, when it hit him. First, the flood gates opened down below, and then a light went on upstairs: a Mardi Gras revival! Free airtime!
He would present the greatest story ever told to fans and new recruits alike, while just outside the door old Satan staged his biggest party of the year.
He scanned the silent auditorium, imagining a crowd that spilled into the aisles, all swaying, chanting, lifting hands to Jesus, opening their wallets, purses, cracking piggy banks.
"I want this whole place SRO tomorrow night," the reverend told his flunky.
"SRO?"
"Standing room only," Rockwell explained, and offered up a silent prayer for patience in the face of rank stupidity. "I don't care if you have to drag them off the street in costume," he continued. "Better yet, I want a few of them in costume. Maybe half a dozen."
"Right," Smeal said. "What for?"
"To show the power of the word," Rockwell said, remembering that patience was a virtue of the saints. "Poor sinners out there drinkin', fornicatin' in the streets, dressed up like demons out of hell itself, but even they find Jesus in New Orleans. Even they receive his message. Even they are saved."
He fell into the singsong pattern of his TV sermons automatically, from force of habit. "Even they can testify to Christ's redeeming glory. Everyone out there in television land will feel the power of His message."
"Amen!" enthused Jeremiah Smeal. The Reverend Rock was on a roll.
"YOU SURE about this, Elmo?" Maynard Grymsdyke sounded dubious.