Dark Horse td-89 Page 10

  Enrique Espiritu Esperanza introduced a note of sanity.

  "It would be better for all concerned if this embarrassing spectacle did not go out over the air," he said quietly.

  "I like your thinking," Remo said. "How about I steal it?"

  "I do not like that word. I am a moral man."

  "Borrow it, then?" Remo suggested.

  "Borrow is good," Harmon Cashman said quickly.

  "The trick," Remo said, looking at the white-knuckled way Cheeta Ching was holding the minicam up to her flat face, "will be prying those bony talons from the camera grip."

  They decided to wait until Cheeta ran out of tape. The way she was going, only that would bring the selfinterview to a bloodless conclusion.

  Meanwhile, Remo filled them in on his attempt to locate the killers.

  "They are dead?" asked Enrique Espiritu Esperanza, his cherubic face sad. It was clear that the deaths saddened him. Even the deaths of murderers.

  "We do not fail," Chiun said sternly, his wistful eyes on Cheeta's flat profile, as if beholding true beauty.

  "What do you see in her?" Remo whispered.

  "Grace," said the Master of Sinanju.

  Remo thought she looked like Medusa staring down the minicam.

  "Unless there are more of these guys in the woodwork, this should be the end of it," he added.

  "Have you no idea as to their identity, these two men?" asked Esperanza.

  Remo shook his head. "No ID on them. But they looked Hispanic."

  "Hispanic?" Harmon Cashman mumbled. "They're our core support. Why would Hispanics want to kill Ricky?"

  Remo shrugged. He decided not to mention the Nogeira connection. It would only complicate things. "Maybe they were just crazies," he suggested.

  Enrique Esperanza nodded. "Ah, loco. That I understand."

  Over in the corner the minicam clicked, and the faint whir of the videotape cartridge came to a stop.

  "Oh, damn!" Cheeta Ching swore.

  Chiun gasped, as if a priest had loudly passed gas.

  "Let me get that," Remo said helpfully, seeing his opportunity.

  Cheeta turned. Her eyes took in Remo. They lost their dagger's edge, softened to melting hot-tar blobs.

  "Demo!" she squeaked.

  "Remo."

  "Romeo!"

  "Demo is fine. Call me Demo."

  "Oh, Demo, would you be a darling and get me a fresh tape from that arthritic cameraman of mine? He's down in the lobby-probably updating his resume."

  "Sure," Remo said. "In fact, why don't I get fresh batteries for this thing while I'm at it?"

  "That," Cheeta Ching said breathily, "is the most brilliant suggestion I ever heard. Anyone ever tell you you're a natural-born cameraman?"

  "Not this week," Remo said brightly, taking the minicam from Cheeta's slow-to-unclench hands. He noted that the pistol grip was slippery with sweat when he took hold of it.

  "I won't be a moment," Remo said. He winked. Cheeta beamed. In the corner, Chiun glowered.

  Remo felt Cheeta Ching's eyes follow him as he floated to the elevator. On his way out, he bared his teeth. It made him look like he was smiling. No point in blowing this when it was going to be so easy.

  Remo had barely reached the elevator when he heard a squeaky voice say, "I know something you do not."

  "Oh, no," Remo said under his breath. "Chiun. Don't do this to me."

  "What's that?" Cheeta asked suspiciously.

  "Chiun . . ." Remo groaned.

  "You have surrendered your precious tape to a notorious kleptomaniac," Chiun warned.

  "What!"

  "It is true," Chiun said loftily. "He is tricky-fingered. Notoriously tricky-fingered."

  "He's just jealous!" Remo called back. He made his lips grin. By grinding his teeth, he seemed to smile wider. He hoped his eyes smiled with them. He doubted it very much.

  The doors opened just in time. Giving Cheeta a limp little wave, Remo stepped back.

  Cheeta, her eyes stricken, torn between hope and fear, waved back. Her wave was even more feeble than Remo's.

  The doors snicked shut.

  Remo breathed a sigh of relief as he rode the elevator down.

  In the lobby, he called out, "Where's Cheeta Ching's cameraman?"

  "Out committing suicide," someone said in a bored voice.

  "Why?"

  "He was too slow. He knows he's dead. He just doesn't want to die the Shark's way."

  "Cheeta the Shark?" Remo asked.

  "They call her the Korean Shark."

  "They," Remo said, "have a higher opinion of her than I do."

  Remo got a ripple of nervous laughter that broke the ice enough for him to ask, "I need two fresh videocassettes, and I'll pay well for them."

  "How well?" a voice asked.

  "A hundred each."

  Minicams popped their ports and began disgorging black, plastic boxes. No two looked alike.

  "I need ones that will fit this baby," Remo said, hefting his minicam. Half the tapes were withdrawn.

  Remo exchanged two hundred-dollar bills for two cassettes. He went off into corner to change tapes.

  A minute later he called out, "A fifty to the guy who shows me how to open this thing."

  Remo hurried back to his hotel room, took the original tape, and shoved it down the front of the dead man's shirt. Then he tucked him back into bed, making sure his head was covered. He was beginning to smell, Remo found. He would deal with that later. Before he shipped the stiff back east to Folcroft.

  Then he took the lobby route back to the penthouse. The sooner I get this over with the better, he told himself.

  Cheeta Ching's stiff mask of a face almost cracked with joy when Remo sauntered into the penthouse, brandishing the two tapes. In fact, makeup flecks from the anchorwoman's chin rained onto the carpet like pink dandruff.

  "Ta-dah!" he crowed.

  "Excellent!" Cheeta said, grabbing the minicam. She popped a cassette in and handed the rig back to Remo.

  "Now interview me," she ordered. "All of you. Ask me any question that comes to mind. Just leave my fallopian tubes out of it, okay?"

  "What about Ricky's interview?" asked Harmon Cashman.

  Cheeta looked blank. "Ricky?"

  "The guy you came to talk to in the first place," Harmon pointed out. "You know, the candidate."

  Cheeta's face fell. "Oh. That's right. I guess I should do that, too, shouldn't I?" She looked to Remo. Remo said, "I can get you all the videotape you could ever want. Or I can send my little friend, Chiun, to fetch it. He owes me a favor. A big one."

  The Master of Sinanju drank in this spectacle with widening eyes. His face was ashen, the wrinkles flattening in shock.

  "Augh!" he said, storming from the room.

  That left the coast clear for the interview. Remo got the minicam going, and Enrique Espiritu Esperanza took a seat opposite Cheeta Ching.

  The interview began. Cheeta was obviously distracted. At one point she noticed the blood on her thumb, and began sucking on it. Remo made sure he captured the precious sight on tape.

  When it was over, Remo realized he had learned almost nothing about Enrique Esperanza that he hadn't already known. And he knew almost nothing about the man.

  "Got enough?" Remo said doubtfully.

  "Plenty. This will be a sidebar to the main story," she said, snatching the minicam from Remo's hand and the other blank from the coffee table and starting for the elevator.

  "I have to rush this to editing in time for the five-o'clock feed. Coming?"

  "I'm not hungry," Remo said, straight-faced.

  "I'll be in touch, Nemo."

  "Demo."

  "Get your resume together."

  "Count on it," Remo said, waving Cheeta off.

  After she had gone, the Master of Sinanju reentered the penthouse.

  "Never have I been so humiliated in all my life," he huffed.

  "Wait'll I call in my marker," Remo said dryly.

  "Aug
h!" said Chiun, storming out into the smog-laden air once more.

  Remo started for the elevator. "Chiun will keep an eye on you," he told Enrique and Harmon Cashman.

  "Where are you going?" Cashman asked.

  "I got a package to mail to the folks back home, and I want to hit the post office before it closes."

  Chapter 12

  That evening, the second attempt to assassinate gubernatorial candidate Enrique Espiritu Esperanza led the BCN Evening News with Don Cooder.

  There was no tape shown. Instead, after an opening background piece, they went to a satellite hook-up interview between Don Cooder and Cheeta Ching. Millions of viewers nationwide were treated to a rare view of the back of the anchor's thick helmet of black hair and the sight of Cheeta Ching, teeth on edge, answering harsh questions.

  "Cheeta. About this alleged second attempt . . ."

  Cheeta glowered. "It was not alleged. I was there!"

  "True. But I was not. So let's say 'alleged.' The sniper, he was shooting at random, was he?"

  "No! He was shooting at me! He grazed my thumb."

  Cheeta Ching held up her heavily bandaged thumb for ninety million Americans to behold.

  Don Cooder pressed on. "What about the candidate? Was he frightened? Obviously cowed? Did he wet his pants?"

  "I didn't notice," Cheeta admitted glumly. "I was too busy protecting my reproductive system with my body. I lose that, and there will be no future Cheeta Chings to carry on the superanchorwoman tradition I single-handedly pioneered."

  Don Cooder swung around in his seat, gave the camera a steely look, and said, "Obviously, Cheeta has yet to recover from her remarkable brush with death. Speaking for her colleagues here at BCN, I wish her godspeed and good news on the fertility front. More news, after this."

  "They didn't even show the interview!" Harmon Cashman complained, jumping up from his seat.

  Enrique Esperanza patted the air with his hands. "Harmon, sit down please. It is of no moment. There will be other interviews."

  "I'll bet that damn Cooder killed the piece. You could just see the jealousy crackle between those two."

  Harmon Cashman resumed his seat in the living room of the penthouse suite overlooking Los Angeles, now a forest of fiery towers in the setting sun. Absently, he took an Oreo cookie off a silver tray and gave it a hard squeeze. Creme filling oozed out, and he began licking it. His eyes went to the tiny wisp of a Korean, who stood out on the parapet, taking in the blazing sunset.

  "I don't get it. Why bring that little guy into the campaign organization?" he asked.

  "He is Korean. We must reach out to all people, all colors, if we are to win."

  "You know, Ricky, no matter what you do, you're still a long shot."

  Enrique Espiritu Esperanza laughed good-naturedly. "I do not mind being a long shot. Just so long as I am not shot before election day."

  Harmon Cashman stopped licking. "Who the hell could be trying to kill you? It doesn't make sense."

  "Perhaps someone who sees that I am a threat to the established order. You know, Harmon, that this state simmers with racial tension."

  "Yeah, white people are petrified at the numbers of illegals coming across the border, and jealous of the Asians coming in from Hong Kong. The black people see their piece of the pie being gobbled up by everyone else. One day, it may just explode."

  "Not if all these people come together."

  "Never happen."

  "What if they are brought together?" asked Enrique Esperanza, taking his empty brown fists and bringing them together, with a sound like tupperware containers bumping.

  "By you?"

  Enrique Espiritu Esperanza nodded. "By me."

  "Look," Harmon said, "you got the Hispanic vote sewed up, if you stick with that. The white liberals will help. Yeah. Might even bring us in second. But you go after the black and Asian vote, and you're wasting your time. Hell, most of the blacks don't even vote. And the Asians are too busy holding down two-three jobs to have the time."

  "Harmon, do you know why I chose Los Angeles County to launch my campaign?"

  "Sure. Because its got a humungous Hispanic population. No mystery there."

  "No. Because L.A. County is the blueprint for the future of this country. The black, Asian, and Hispanic populations are mushrooming. The white people are in decline. In twenty, thirty, perhaps fifty years, all of America will be like this."

  Harmon Cashman paused in the act of separating an Oreo sandwich in halves, exposing the white creme filling. "It will?"

  "These are the trends. I have studied them. Carefully."

  Harmon Cashman put down his Oreo. He was from the South, had grown up in Virginia. He remembered the Old South. How intolerant it had been. He also remembered how much safer it had been.

  Enrique Espiritu Esperanza went on. "White people, whom I call blancos, are growing nervous. They see their cultural dominance in decline. They fear for their future, and the future of their children and grandchildren. But there is nothing they can do. Immigration is immigration. New children are born every day, in all colors. Their skin colors happen not to be white."

  "My God!"

  "But there is a way to allay these fears," Enrique Esperanza added quickly.

  "What? Tell me!"

  "A new idea. One that is taking root all over. One that will erase these fears, all barriers."

  "What? What is it?"

  "Multiculturalism."

  "Huh?"

  "It is a brave new philosophy," Esperanza said. "I am not the candidate of color, but of hope. I represent the man who will lift up people of color, while at the same time protecting the blancos from the erosion of their estate in life."

  Harmon Cashman frowned. "Sounds like Rainbow Coalition stuff. You sure you're not talking Rainbow Coalition? You know that won't fly with the electorate. Especially down in Orange County."

  "No, it will not fly," Enrique Esperanza admitted. "But multiculturalism will."

  Harmon Cashman's eyes went to the tiny wisp of a Korean then.

  "Tell you what-you bring that little fellow in here and tell him that. Let's see if it goes over with him."

  "Agreed," said Enrique Espiritu Esperanza.

  The Master of Sinanju stared into the setting sun. It burned his tender features, wise with age. Never had he felt such pain. Never before had he been so wounded.

  The mellow sound of Enrique Espiritu Esperanza's voice dispelled his pain like a soothing pool of light.

  Turning, the Master of Sinanju padded into the room where the man called Esperanza waited with his white lackey.

  "I am at your service," said Chiun, using polite words he did not feel.

  "I am glad to hear this, because I have a favor to ask of you," said Enrique Espiritu Esperanza.

  "Speak."

  "I will be governor of this state in less than a month's time."

  "If the people are with you," Chiun added pointedly.

  "They are with me. With your help."

  "As long as the Master of Sinanju stands at your side, you need not fear for your safety."

  "And I do not. But I need more than that."

  Chiun wrinkled his button nose. "I am no soldier, who volunteers to perform lesser tasks. You know what I am?"

  "I do. And it is with that in mind that I make the following offer to you."

  "Continue."

  "I have yet to select my cabinet."

  Hearing this, Harmon Cashman gulped. "Ricky . . . Think about this," he said hotly.

  "I will soon be governor of the state with the largest economy in this country. An economy that is ranked as the seventh largest on the face of this earth. I need someone to attend to the financial concerns of this economy. Someone to handle the money."

  Between anguished fingers, Harmon Cashman ground his bifurcated Oreo into crumbly bits.

  "How much money?" asked the Master of Sinanju coolly.

  "Billions," replied Enrique Esperanza.

  "Continue," Chiun
invited.

  "The person who performs this task is called a 'treasurer.' "

  "An honored post, since before Egyptian times."

  "I would be honored if you would consent to be my treasurer," said Enrique Espiritu Esperanza.

  The Master of Sinanju took in the words of the man called Esperanza. He saw a man of vision, of unsurpassed brilliance, one who knew the value of the House of Sinanju without being told. One who recognized greatness when he came upon it.

  In this bitter hour, it was more than enough.

  "I accept," said the Master of Sinanju, bowing deeply.

  "I am honored," returned Enrique Esperanza, matching the bow.

  Off to one side, Harmon Cashman groaned as if he'd been impaled by a Zulu spear.

  "Now let me tell you how I plan to achieve this goal and bring us both to power . . . ." Enrique Espiritu Esperanza continued smoothly.

  "It is called cultimulcherism," Chiun said into the telephone.

  "Good for it," Remo said. "I've booked a room in the hotel. Forty-four D. Any time you feel like coming down, feel free."

  "It will not be necessary."

  "Okay, I guess we take turns guarding Esperanza then. When do you want to be relieved?"

  "Your services will no longer be required."

  "Cut it out, Chiun. For crying out loud. You don't speak for the organization. And until Smitty pulls us both off this one, I'm as stuck as you are."

  "I am not speaking for Smith or for the organization," said Chiun testily. "I am speaking for Esperanza. I have joined his crusade in cultimulcherism."

  "Never heard of it."

  "In return, he has promised me the exalted position of Lord Treasurer of California."

  "He what!"

  "Where I shall rule in splendor, issuing wise decrees, and being appreciated by all."

  "And skimming any small change that passes through your hands," Remo suggested darkly.

  "Of course there is a magnificent salary attendant to this position," Chiun said loftily. "As befits one of my grace."

  "Smitty won't like this, Chiun."

  "I will leave it to you to convey my regret to Emperor Smith that our current contract negotiations have borne no fruit."

  Remo said, "You're not quitting, are you?"

  Silence.

  "Chiun?"

  "This is a decision I will make at a later date," Chiun said at last.