Last Rites td-100 Read online

  But the guy kept coming.

  "I get it. I get it. He's bait. That's it. Don Silvio thinks I'll give him a tumble, and either the fruit whacks me or I contract AIDS offa him. Fuck! Gotta get rid of him."

  He called out, "Numbnuts, Fatface, Bonehead-where are you stupid mutts?"

  The dry padding of sandpapery paws came rushing out of the playroom, where the three ridgebacks had been sleeping contentedly.

  Pushing their eager brown muzzles away from his crotch, Vinnie said, "See the guy on the screen? You gotta get rid of him for me. Got that? He's bad."

  And Vinnie pulled down the drop stairs that led to the roof and the only exit from his underground tire fortress.

  Not having seen daylight in weeks, the dogs poured out, their big, muscular, toast-colored bodies eager.

  Vinnie sat back to watch the guy being torn limb from limb. There were no dogs more ferocious than the African ridgeback, for they had been bred to fight lions and hunt men.

  REMO SAW THE DOGS coming for him and decided his search was over. They came out of a hole in an embankment. And knowing that dogs don't normally dwell underground, he figured he had the right patch of dirt.

  Howling and yapping, the three dogs galloped toward him like small toast-brown horses.

  Remo let the first one pass between his legs. The dog kept on going, snapping at legs that his eyes told him were still in front of him.

  The second dog went for his throat, and Remo got him by his floppy ears. Spinning, he sent the canine flying tail first into an evergreen.

  The third dog, seeing all this, skidded to a stop. The dark bristly ridge along his smooth back lifted like hackles. He growled.

  Remo casually tossed him a dog treat. The dog sniffed it, gobbled it up and Remo tossed another.

  By this time the other dogs had gotten themselves organized, and Remo began flinging treats in all directions. The dogs fell upon them with eager, sniffling muzzles.

  While they were occupied, Remo opened the hatch in the ground and yelled down. "Vinnie Cerebrini?"

  "You get outta my house!" an agitated voice shouted up.

  "You Vinnie 'Three Dogs'?" Remo asked.

  "I said, you get out my house, gaybo. I don't swing your way."

  "I don't know what you're talking about. I'm here to kill you."

  "Stay away from me," Vinnie said. "Don't touch me."

  And Vinnie lifted a Mak-90 assault rifle.

  "Look, you're a bad guy and that thing won't help you much," Remo told him. "Let's just get this over with, okay?"

  "Listen, I'll blast you to hell before I let you lay hands on me."

  Shrugging, Remo set himself as if about to drop in for a visit.

  Vinnie "Three Dogs" Cerebrini opened fire. The Mak-90 emptied itself up at the hovering fruit. Trouble was the fruit had some really smooth moves. He sidestepped every shot. Must have studied ballet, Vinnie decided, yanking the clip out and inserting another.

  He was about to bring the weapon up to bear when suddenly the roof started coming down. Dirt showered, then heavy tires started dropping like bombs. They hit, bounced and rolled crazily. Vinnie had to dance out of the way to keep from being run over by the very protection he had labored to create for himself.

  Above, the fruit seemed to be stamping and stomping around in controlled, angry circles.

  "Oh, man, look at him go. This flaming hornbag must not have gotten laid since Christmas."

  So Vinnie began shooting wildly into his own roof. The trouble was, the very tires that had kept bullets out also absorbed those trying to go the other way. Try as he might, Vinnie could not whack the annoyed fruit. "You are a dead man," he shouted up during a lull.

  "Not yet."

  "After you are dead, I'm gonna piss into your dead mouth. I am going to abuse your corpse. I don't care what people say. How you like that?" raged Vinnie, peppering the ceiling above with hot lead. Cold dirt showered down in response.

  More roof tires sagged and spilled earth. The air became a cloud of unbreathable dust.

  Vinnie was on his fourth clip, surrounded by dirt and rubber with a big patch of New England sky overhead when he felt a hand on his shoulder. The hand felt like a claw bucket. Then the fingers dug in.

  Vinnie looked up to see the deadest eyes in the world looking at him as if he was dead meat.

  He screamed. And the other hand reached out for the Mak-90.

  There was nothing he could do. Vinnie was helpless. As the man brought up the loaded Mak-90 to his head with casual ease to intimidate him into surrendering, Vinnie decided right then and there he would rather be dead than raped by some faggot from the Maine woods.

  "I'll show him," Vinnie thought, and pulled the trigger.

  REMO STEPPED BACK as the body of Vinnie "Three Dogs" Cerebrini fell facedown onto the dirt floor, wondering why it had been so easy.

  As he left the grounds, tossing his last dog treats to the three yellow dogs, he decided the Mak 90 must have had a hair trigger to go off prematurely like that.

  Cloudy dirt hung in the afternoon air. It billowed slowly out from the zone of destruction, following him down a path of sticky pine needles.

  A quarter mile down the road, Remo came upon the Master of Sinanju atop the largest, ugliest moose Remo had ever seen in his life. The moose had antlers like spreading trees.

  "Where'd you get that bag of hair?" Remo asked warily.

  "Have a care how you address the awesome Arcadian Hind."

  "A moose?"

  "Hind," corrected Chiun, giving the moose's hindquarters a whack. Obligingly the moose launched itself at Remo, head down, antlers sweeping ahead like plows.

  Remo dodged the first pass easily. The moose turned on its clumsy, ungainly legs and came at him again. This time Remo reached up and grabbed hold of a tree branch. When the antlers were almost into his belly, he snap-rolled up.

  The moose clopped past noisily.

  The Master of Sinanju piloted him back, coming to a stop under Remo's branch.

  "You must come down and defeat him," Chiun insisted.

  "I'm not fighting any freaking moose!"

  "It is the Hind of Arcadia. You must defeat him as Hercules defeated him."

  "If that's the Arcadian Hind, where are its golden horns and brass hooves?" Remo shouted back.

  "This is a very old Hind. Sadly, its gold has faded."

  "Well, I'm not coming down."

  "You cannot stay up there forever," Chiun warned.

  "You're right," said Remo, standing up on the tree branch. It bowed under his weight, and when it was at its most springy, Remo launched himself off and into the next tree.

  The moose followed.

  Jumping from tree to tree, Remo stayed ahead of the galloping moose.

  When he reached the edge of the tree line, he doubled back. Doggedly the moose doubled back too. For a solid hour, Remo played the game. He started to tire, but only because he had been through so much in so short a time.

  In the end the moose began to show the worst signs of fatigue and disorientation. Its clumsy legs went wobbly. It stumbled.

  "You are abusing this magnificent beast," Chiun complained.

  "I'm not the one riding him into the ground," Remo shot back.

  The moose's long red tongue was hanging out now. Its sides pulsed like laboring bellows.

  When the eyes were distinctly glassy, Remo dropped down from an oak and stood there with his tongue hanging out. He stuck his thumbs in his ears and wriggled his fingers like loose four-point antlers.

  Chiun urged the moose into action.

  The creature took three steps forward-and its legs gave out-completely. They splayed in all directions, and its belly hit the dirt. Chiun found himself standing up, straddling the moose.

  "I'd color him defeated," Remo said. "Wouldn't you?"

  Angrily Chiun stepped away from his panting steed. "You are a disgrace to your brethren," he spat at the prostrate moose.

  "Some hind," Remo said.
<
br />   "You cannot find good hinds in this land," Chiun complained, joining Remo. They began walking.

  "Is this it?"

  "How many athloi have you completed?"

  Remo made a hasty count using his fingers. "Twelve. Time for you to live up to your end of the bargain."

  "We must rest before we go on."

  "I won't argue with that."

  They found lodgings at a Bangor Holiday Inn, and Remo threw himself on the rug three seconds after he got the bellman to open the door to his room.

  Sleep took him instantly.

  REMO FOUND HIMSELF wandering through a stand of tall green sorghum that rustled in a sultry breeze. Somewhere to the west, a drum was beating. It sounded familiar. It wasn't the beating of the hourglass-shaped drums of Korea. Nor was it the tom-tom beating of Africa. It sounded, if anything, like the prelude to an Apache attack in an old Western shoot'em-up.

  Remo followed the beating drum.

  On the way he met a tall, handsome man with intensely black hair who wore a white cotton shirt and black leggings tied at the ankles. Remo had never before seen the man but he instantly recognized him. "You're Chiun."

  The young Korean threw back his shoulders proudly and said, "I am Chiun the Elder. And you are the avatar of Shiva who wears the skin of a white tiger."

  Remo let that go past without comment. He was in no mood to have an argument with Chiun's father.

  "Master H'si T'ang, who completed Chiun's training after you died, told me you knew about my father," Remo said.

  One black eyebrow shot up. "I know no such thing. He must have meant my son, young Chiun."

  "Chiun denied it."

  Chiun the Elder shrugged. It echoed Chiun's own gesture perfectly. It was weird to meet Chiun's father, who had died young, Remo thought. It was like meeting Chiun himself as a young man.

  "Do you know where I can find Kojing, then?" Remo asked.

  "No. But perhaps the drum beating from the next field is calling for you." Chiun pointed the way.

  "Okay, thanks," said Remo, hurrying on. Gradually the sorghum grew less tall and wild. Remo was deep into a field of waving green plants before he realized the sweet sorghum scent had given way to the smell of fresh corn.

  "I didn't know corn grew in Korea," Remo muttered.

  As he walked along, he saw that the corn was planted in orderly rows. The drumming was very near now. It seemed to find his heartbeat and make it quicken with anticipation.

  Remo cut west through the corn until he found the man in the yellow silk kimono seated between two corn rows with his legs wrapped around a drum. He was beating it with his bare hands.

  "Kojing?" Remo asked, for he looked exactly like Master Kojing.

  The man looked up, and said, "I am Kojong."

  "I'm looking for Kojing."

  "But you have found Kojong."

  "Right. Right."

  "Why do you seek my brother, Kojing?"

  "He's supposed to know something important about me."

  Kojong ceased his monotonous beating. "All of my brother ancestors know something important. That is why we are here. That is why you are here, brother of my blood."

  Noticing an eagle feather sticking out of Kojong's thin white hair, Remo asked, "What are you doing?"

  "I am calling up the corn."

  "That's nice."

  "I eat corn. I do not eat rice."

  "Good for you," said Remo, looking around for Kojing.

  "My people are corn eaters,"

  "Uh-huh."

  "My people are the people of the Sun."

  Remo's head snapped around. "What did you say?"

  "I say, my people are the people of the Sun. We do not fight. We are forbidden to kill. That is our way. Our way is different."

  "Who are the people of the Sun?" Remo asked, anxious-voiced.

  "My people. Your people, as well, white eyes."

  "That's what my mother told me. What do you know about my people?"

  "Your mother has a message for you, white eyes. You must heed the wind."

  Remo cocked an ear to the western wind. It sighed through the corn, making it sway and troubling its golden tassels.

  And on the wind Remo heard his mother's worried voice call out, "You must hurry, my son. For he is dying."

  "Where are you!" Remo cried out.

  "Hurry!"

  "Where is he?" Remo shouted. "Just tell me where to find him!" But the wind gave no answer.

  But from the fertile soil, Kojong looked up and said, "Chiun knows. Ask Chiun."

  "Chiun the Elder?"

  "No," said Kojong, his hands returning to the ritual drumming, "Chiun the Younger."

  All around him the wind-troubled corn began to waver and roil as if a great spoon was stirring the Void. And Remo woke up.

  HE ENTERED the adjoining hotel room without bothering to knock or turn the doorknob. The door jumped out of his way the second he smacked it with his palm.

  "I just had a talk with your father about my father," Remo said angrily.

  "Is he well?" said Chiun from his place on the floor.

  "He's dead."

  "Yes, but is he well?"

  "He told me he knew nothing about my father. Then I met Kojong."

  "There is no Master by that name," Chiun said thinly.

  "Well, I met him and he said to ask you about my father."

  "What were his exact words?"

  "He said to ask Chiun the Younger. That's you."

  "But my father is younger than I, having died in his prime years."

  "Don't hand me that bull."

  "Sit."

  "No, I want answers. My mother said my father was someone I knew. Just now her voice told me he's in danger. You know who he is, don't you?"

  "If you will sit, I will tell you how to find your father, just as I promised I would."

  Fists tensing, Remo scissored to the rug before the Master of Sinanju, his face a thundercloud. Chiun regarded him blandly.

  "When your mother first appeared to you, it was not an accident. It was because you looked into the mirror of memory, as I have urged you for years."

  "So?"

  "Looking into your own reflection summoned up her face in your mind's eye before her spirit found you. You saw there the eyes of your own daughter, and deep from your earliest memories came similar eyes. Those of the woman who bore you. It will be the same with your father, if you only have the courage to examine your own features for his likeness, for all who came before have left their mark upon you."

  "You're playing games. I want answers."

  "I have been your father in many ways. What kind of father would I be if I hand you this important thing and deny you the boon of discovering it for yourself?"

  "Take me to my father, damn it!"

  Chiun narrowed his eyes. "Very well. If you insist." And the Master of Sinanju led Remo out to the streets of Bangor, Maine.

  They walked up and down the streets aimlessly for nearly fifteen minutes, with Chiun striking his gong often until Remo was ready to explode.

  Just before that happened, Chiun stopped before a vacant lot beside an old brick building. He took up a position and, spreading his arms wide, proclaimed, "Behold Remo, your long-lost father."

  Remo looked. There was just Chiun. No one and nothing else.

  "You're not my father."

  Chiun dropped his arms in exasperation. "Oh, you are so blind. I do not mean me."

  And turning, Chiun gestured to a billboard perched atop the brick building.

  Remo looked up. It was a movie advertisement. The film was The Return of Muck Man.

  Remo started to say something harsh, when his eyes locked with those of the leafy green face on the poster. He froze.

  "I know those eyes," he said half to himself.

  "They exist in the mirror of your memory, which you refuse to consult."

  Striding forward, Remo walked up to the billboard and began reading the credits.

  He went as
pale as a ghost, and his rotating wrists suddenly grew still. Hands fisting up, he spun on the Master of Sinanju. "You knew! You knew all along. All these years you've known, haven't you?"

  Chiun said nothing.

  "Haven't you?" Remo raged.

  "And if you had looked correctly into the mirror of memory, you would have known, as well," Chiun said evenly.

  "Bull!"

  The face of the Master of Sinanju flinched, and Remo brushed past him, cold and angry.

  Silently Chiun padded after his pupil, who neither heard nor sensed his presence.

  There would be no stopping him now. All was in the hands of the unforgiving gods.

  Chapter 23

  The flight from Phoenix to Yuma, Arizona, was brief. Less than an hour. Nothing but trackless desert lay below.

  They were carried through the early evening air by a nineteen-passenger Beech 1900. There was no stewardess. Remo sat in the front and Chiun several rows behind. A thick silence hung between them. Remo passed the time looking at the drawing of his mother's face thoughtfully.

  When Yuma with its lettuce groves appeared, Remo's mind went back to an assignment several years before. Posing as a stuntman, he had infiltrated the making of a war movie about an invasion of the US. financed by a Japanese industrialist. There were labor problems, and because the famous American film actor Bartholomew Bronzini was starring, Harold Smith had sent Remo to look into matters. It was all a front. The weapons were real, and the extras were a Japanese paramilitary unit. They had seized the entire town of Yuma, which lay like an island oasis in the Sonoran Desert.

  Wholesale executions had been undertaken and televised to the rest of the country. The objective was simple. To hold Yuma until the helpless US. military was goaded into nuking one of its own cities. The man responsible had sought revenge for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

  It had almost worked. Remo had been nearly killed when he participated in a stunt involving volunteers from the Yuma Marine Corps air base. It had been a massive parachute drop. The Japanese had sabotaged the chutes. The Marines had all died, leaving Yuma undefended. Remo woke up in a hospital after it was all over, only to find that Chiun had saved the day without him. He couldn't remember anything that had happened to him after he'd bailed out over the desert.

  A man Remo had worked with had died during the occupation, Chiun had said. Only now did Remo know different. Only now. Five years later.