The Seventh Stone td-62 Page 11

  "We'd better get back," Remo said. "I think we've had enough vacation for one day. Anyway, I don't know what the dress code is around here but I don't think a well-placed hand and a couple of clam shells are going to count for too much."

  "I'm ready to go back," Kim said quietly. Her teeth were chattering and her smooth skin was pebbled with goose bumps.

  With his arm around her trembling shoulders, Remo led her along the dark deserted beach. There were lights on in the condominium. Chiun sat cross-legged on the floor, engrossed in one of the scrolls. As Remo shepherded Kim through the open French doors, Chiun looked up and said, "Usually I prefer that people who visit wear clothing. Particularly whites."

  "We were in one of the caves down the beach," said Remo. "The tide came in and trapped us there. Swimming out was close."

  Chiun shook his head. "I heard that those caves were treacherous. A number of people have drowned there, usually people who have not paid the proper amount of attention to their surroundings. People easily distracted by trivial things."

  He folded his hand across his narrow chest. "I'm not criticizing, you understand. I never criticize. It is one of my truly outstanding qualities that no matter how stupid you are, I never tell you about it."

  "You just keep not telling me about it," Remo said. "I've got to do something." He slipped into the bathroom and came out with a towel wrapped around his middle and a fluffy white terrycloth robe in his arms. It had the condo resort emblem on the pocket and was five sizes too large for Remo. The management had sent it over after Remo's impromptu landscaping of the aloe garden. Kim moved out from behind the thin gauze curtain where she had been hiding and slipped it on. It looked on her like an unpegged tent but somehow Remo thought it made her look gorgeous.

  Chiun was still explaining how he never criticized stupid Remo for being stupid, acting stupidly, living his life in a stupid fashion.

  "Chiun, this is Kim Kiley."

  "Nice to meet you," said Kim. Along with the pleasantry, she gave Chiun one of the megawatt smiles that melted the hearts of moviegoers around the world.

  "Of course it's nice to meet me," Chiun replied in Korean. He inclined his head a scant eighth of an inch. In Sinanju, it was the form of greeting used to acknowledge the presence of lepers, tax collectors and traffickers in day-old fish heads. It acknowledged their presence but completely ignored their existence. A fine point of Sinanju etiquette that was not lost on Remo.

  Remo cleared his throat. "I thought since we've got plenty of room, we could put up Kim for a few days. You'd hardly notice she was here."

  "I would notice she was here. And more important, so would you," Chiun said, shaking his head. "This is not a good thing. We cannot have her staying with us."

  "We were just talking about your well-known generosity," Remo said.

  "That's the trouble with being generous," Chiun said. "Everyone wants to take advantage of you. You give a little here, a little there and suddenly you have nothing left and you are out in the street with a frayed robe and a beggar bowl."

  "Kim is from Hollywood," Remo said. "She's a movie star."

  Chiun looked up with heightened interest. "Were you ever in As the Planet Revolves?" he asked.

  "Ugggh. A soap? No, I was never in a soap." Chiun pursed his lips in distaste at her distaste.

  "Do you know Barbra Streisand?" he asked, mentioning his favorite American woman.

  "No. Not really."

  "Do you know Cheeta Ching?" Chiun asked, mentioning his favorite television personality.

  "No," Kim said.

  "Do you know Rad RexP" Chiun asked, mentioning the name of his favorite soap-opera star.

  "Sure," Kim said. "He's a fag."

  In Korean, Chiun said, "Remo, get this imposter out of here." He looked down again at his scrolls.

  Remo said, "I'd better get you a room, Kim."

  "I'd rather stay with you," she said.

  Remo shrugged. "I'm sorry but Chiun doesn't think that's a good idea."

  "Do you always do what he says?"

  "Most of the time," Remo said.

  "Why?"

  "Because most of the time he's right."

  "I never heard of a servant who was right," Kim Kiley said.

  "Chiun's not a servant."

  "I thought he was. Chinese butlers are all the rage on the coast right now. They're such hard workers and you can usually get them at minimum wage. And they're really decorative and cute, padding around the house like little yellow gnomes. Do you think your friend would be interested in domestic work?"

  "No." Remo grinned. "I don't think so." He tried to picture Chiun maneuvering the Electrolux over the carpet, taking out the trash, passing out a tray of canapes at a cocktail party. It seemed very improbable and when he glanced toward Chiun, the old Korean mouthed the words for "Out. Get her out of here."

  "I'd better see about your room," said Remo. He pressed a buzzer in the wall and waited and in less than a minute, three men in white with red sashes around their waists appeared at the French doors. They looked nervous because they were nervous. They had waited on Remo before.

  "You rang, sir?" all called in unison.

  "Right. I need a room for Miss Kiley here."

  "A room, sir?"

  "Yes, a room. You know, one of those things with four walls."

  The three knew that there weren't any rooms. Not only here at the Del Ray Bahamia but on the whole island itself. This was the height of the tourist season and there weren't any rooms. There was an oversized utility closet up on the third floor, but they didn't want to think about what would happen if they offered this man an oversized utility closet.

  There was only one vacant lodging in the whole complex-the senator's suite. The senator's suite was furnished with priceless antiques and the walls were covered with Rembrandts, Van Goghs and Picassos. It had its own wine cellar and Jacuzzi.

  The senator allowed no one into his permanent suite, not even the local help. He sent his own German cleaning woman down once a week by Lear jet to dust off the priceless Ming vases and fluff the pillows. If they put this woman in the senator's suite and he found out about it, they would all lose their jobs, have their tax returns audited and go to jail for the rest of their lives. But if they told Remo no ... They remembered the wall and the desk he had thrown through the window.

  The senator was in Washington and the cleaning woman wasn't due for five more days. "We'll put her in the senator's suite," the three said in unison.

  Remo smiled. "That sounds good."

  "It is good. It is the very best we have."

  "I'm starved too," said Kim. "I'd like something to eat."

  "Anything you want, miss."

  "A filet mignon. Rare. If there isn't a little blood on the plate, I'll know it's been overcooked. And I'd like a baked potato with that, sour cream and a big salad with bleu-cheese dressing. Send a bottle of burgundy along too. The older the better."

  "Will the gentleman be dining with madam?" they asked.

  "Fresh water and rice," Remo said.

  "Nice and clumpy," the three chorused. "Just the way you like it."

  They looked to Remo for approval and Remo nodded and smiled.

  Chiun grumbled in Korean for Remo's ears. "Good. Get out of here and go watch that cow eat dead cow meat."

  "Sure," said Remo. If Chiun wanted to be alone, let him be alone. Remo hadn't wanted this vacation in the first place and now that he was starting to enjoy it a little, he wasn't going to let Chiun spoil it. If only Remo could shake that crazy restless feeling that sat in him like an undigested meal. He thought he had lost it for a while, back there in the cave with Kim before the tide came in, but now it was back, clinging and unshakable as the smell of death itself.

  "We'll show you to the senator's suite now," the room-service trio offered.

  Kim followed them through the door, the oversized robe trailing behind her like a beachwear wedding gown. Remo paused in the doorway, turned and said, "Good nigh
t, Little Father."

  "For some," Chiun muttered without looking up from the spread-out roll of parchment. "If you come back reeking of dead cow meat, you'll have to sleep on the beach."

  Remo smiled. "I don't think I'll have any trouble finding a place to sleep."

  Chapter Ten

  Reginald Woburn III took a tentative sip of orange juice, gagged and spit it out. Fighting the queasy feeling in his stomach, he poked at the two crisp strips of bacon on his plate, but couldn't bring himself to lift them to his mouth. He knew they were fine, just the way he liked them, but right now they had no more appeal than terminal lung cancer.

  And the eggs were worse. There were two of them, sunny-side-up, nestled in the center of the plate between the sliced fruit and bacon, but they stared up at him like two milky-yellow blind but accusatory eyes. He could almost hear them speaking to him: "Reginald, you failed again. What kind of Wo descendant are you? You are a failure."

  Reggie pushed over the glass-and-wrought-iron table. It hit the carpeted floor of the gazebo with a crackling crash. The tabletop shattered. The glassware broke. Food bits were spattered everywhere.

  Reggie shoved back his chair and ran into the shrubbery, retching, his throat constricted, flooded with the loathsome-tasting bile. He tried to throw up, but nothing came out because his stomach was as empty as a freshly dug grave.

  He had not been able to eat anything, not since last evening when he heard the news that the sea had not killed the one called Remo.

  This time it wasn't a couple of lazy Indians or three over-priced hit men. The sea was the goddamned sea. The sea, cold, relentless, powerful enough to swallow up fleets of ships.

  But not Remo. No, the sea could suck up the Titanic like a cocktail hors d'oeuvre, but Remo just went right through it, from bottom to top, and swam back to shore again with no more challenge than if he had been paddling around the shallow end of a backyard pool. With the girl in tow; that made it even more incredible.

  Reggie rose from his knees and brushed off his white flannel trousers. His hands were shaking as if he had just come off a three-day party at the polo club with plenteous liquor and pliable women.

  He moved slowly, like an old man with aching legs and nowhere to go, back to the gazebo, and collapsed into the high-backed wicker chair. Deep down inside, where his heart was supposed to be, he knew what was wrong with him. It wasn't that his stomach hurt or his hands trembled. They were symptoms. What was wrong with him was fear, terror, older and darker than time itself. He could feel it eating away at him, consuming him in big hungry mouthfuls from the inside out, and he didn't know how much longer he would be able to stand it. Soon, nothing would be left but a dry empty husk, not enough Reggie Woburn left beneath the dry papery skin to even matter.

  Could it be that the seventh stone was wrong? Were these two invincible? Or did he just not understand the stone's message yet?

  He had been certain that the sea would kill the "plum" named Remo, so certain that he already considered it an accomplished fact. But the sea, so big that you couldn't even hire it to do your work, had failed him. And what else was left? There had to be something else, especially now that the two "plums" were together again. But as he sat and thought, no new ideas came to him, only the fear gnawing away at his insides, taking away a little more of his manhood with every passing minute.

  He tried to get a grip on himself. He needed something, something big and important to prove that he was not only still a man, but also the first son of the first son in the direct line of Wo, and therefore a ruler.

  His train of thought was broken by the sound of someone singing. It was a high strong lusty voice, female and thick with the island's lyrical accents. The sea breeze carried the song from the beach. It was a happy song, a celebration of love and life, and not at all the kind of song that Reggie was in the mood to hear.

  Craning his neck, he peered over the thick wall of shrubbery that separated his gazebo from the beach. He saw an immense black figure waddle into view. Her brightly colored cotton dress stretched around her huge body like a sausage casing about to split. The woman's toenails were painted an improbable day-glo pink. A bright red kerchief was wrapped around her head and atop that was a towering stack of hand-woven baskets nearly as tall as herself.

  She moved along the sunlit beach with her own easy, shuffling rhythm, singing. As she came abreast of the gazebo, she noticed Reggie and ended her song abruptly and favored him with a wide easy smile.

  "Basket Mary at your service," she said. "Everybody know me. I make the best baskets in all the islands, maybe even the whole wide world. Big baskets, little baskets, all sizes in between, all different colors, all different shapes. You want something special, I make it up for you. Only one day wait. You ask anybody and they tell you that Basket Mary's baskets are the best. The best."

  She paused at the end of her oft-practiced spiel and looked at Reginald Woburn III for encouragement.

  "Let's have a look at them then," Reggie said with a smile. He leaned over and opened the little wrought-iron gate buried inside the shrubs and then stepped back while Basket Mary squeezed her bulk through it. Her grin faded a little as she caught sight of the overturned table, the shattered crockery, the little slumps of congealed egg and fruit with the bluebottle flies buzzing around them. Something was not so nice here was the expression that briefly crossed her face. Something was not right. But like the smallest cloud crossing in front of the sun, the feeling passed in just a moment. Basket Mary looked up. The sun was still there, right up in the middle of the sky as always, and she smiled as she looked again at Reginald Woburn and noticed his beautifully cut clothes, the luxurious furnishings of his gazebo and the private beach that led to the big fine mansion on the hill behind it.

  Basket Mary decided there was nothing wrong here, at least nothing that a couple of her baskets couldn't cure.

  "Let's see the green-and-white one there," Reggie suggested. "The one in the middle of the stack."

  "You got the eye for real quality," Basket Mary congratulated him. With a swift and surprisingly graceful motion, she transferred the teetering stack of baskets from her head to her hands and then to the carpeted floor. She leaned over to separate the one he wanted from the stack. Reggie leaned over too. He was smiling as his fingers fumbled for and clasped the breakfast knife, lifting it out of the debris of his scattered food.

  Suddenly Reggie was feeling good. The fear that had clawed at his inside was melting away as if it had never been there at all. In its place was a warm glow, the thrill of anticipation. What had he ever been afraid of?

  "Here you go." Looking up, Basket Mary held out the pretty green-and-white basket.

  "And here you go," Reggie said, smiling. Sunlight glistened off the long slender blade as he drove it into her vast chest. Blood sputtered around the metal and Basket Mary screamed, until Reggie clapped his hand over her mouth and bore her to the ground with the weight of his own body, as his knife-continued to rummage around in the big woman's chest.

  She struggled for a few moments, her body thudding around as she tried to buck Reggie off her. The latticework walls of the gazebo shook, and then she was still.

  Reggie never felt better in his life. Suddenly, he wanted breakfast. He rose and looked down at Basket Marys body. Then he remembered something he read once: that inside every fat person was a thin person trying to get out.

  He knelt again alongside Basket Mary, raised the knife and started to test that theory.

  When he was done, he picked up a telephone and dialed the police. "Could you send someone over?" he requested cheerfully. "There's a dead woman all over my gazebo."

  The constable arrived an hour later. He stood just inside the wrought-iron gate and surveyed the carnage with professional calm. "No arrow in the heart, no morder," he pronounced. "Natural causes for sure. Never any morder here. Just surf, sun and good times. A real vacation paradise."

  "Absolutely," Reggie agreed. He nodded toward what used to b
e Basket Mary. "If it's not too much trouble, I'm a little short of staff."

  "No trouble," the constable said. "I get her up for you." He reached into the pocket of his baggy uniform and pulled out a folded plastic trash bag. "My scene-of-the-crime kit," he said. "Never go nowhere without it. Come in handy when these natural-causes deaths be messy like this one."

  "Very commendable," Reggie said.

  "You go and enjoy yourself. I clean up fine." Kneeling down on the blood-soaked carpet, he began to shove Basket Mary into the bag, with all the eagerness of a slum kid who had unintentionally been invited to the White House Easteregg hunt.

  The aftermath of killing held no interest for Reggie. He picked up a croissant that had landed atop one of the bushes, and munching casually, he opened the gate and sauntered down to the beach. There was a cool pleasant breeze from the sea. Gulls wheeled and dived above the clear blue water. The surf lapped gently against the rocks like a lover talking.

  Reggie sat down on a flat-topped rock at the water's edge. Now that he was feeling like his old self again, his thoughts returned to the problem of the two plums. He could think of them now without fear. It was a strange but wonderful contentment, a feeling of being at peace with himself.

  With the sun warm against his face, he leaned over to doodle in the wet sand with his blood-encrusted finger. He drew a sailing ship with no emblem on its unfurled canvas. He doodled men in armor, their faces old and wise and full of mystery. He drew himself and his father and a crude outline of the island and finally the seventh stone itself. The surf came in, spitting at the rocks. When it went back out again, the wet sand was smooth, his drawings erased by the sea.

  Not fully aware of what he was doing, Reggie leaned over again. The sand and water had washed the blood from his finger. He began to draw again, not shapes or images this time, but a single word, in ancient runelike characters. He recognized the language immediately. It was the language of Wo, the words that tied all the descendants of Prince Wo together. And he recognized the word too, a single word of command that had come unbidden to his casual finger from somewhere in the deep recesses of his mind. He had known all the time what he must do about the "two plums." Smiling, Reggie stood and studied the word in the sand. It was a summons, a call to the far-flung Wo clan.