Killing Time td-50 Page 3

  "I, who prefer just about anything to Cheeta

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  Ching," Remo said. As he left the room, Cheeta was spewing out the terrible events of the day with grisly delight.

  "Police have still not identified the participants in the grotesque murder of Secretary of the Air Force Homer G. Watson, known to Third World circles as a warmongering capitalist pig. Watson was executed in his home early yesterday by one or more assailants using what might have been a flame thrower, police report. The flame thrower theory was based on local­ized fire damage in the victim's Maryland home. Wat­son's charred and mutilated corpse was identified through dental records. Police report that everything possible is being done to locate the perpetrators of the murder, but so far, no clues are available. As a final note, we at WACK salute the valiant freedom fighters who so efficiently eliminated the Air Force bureaucrat with a hearty 'Well done, boys.' "

  "Oh, Mr. Remo," the girl at the motel's reception desk called crisply. "There's a message for you." She picked a neatly folded piece of paper out of Remo's room slot. "Call Aunt Mildred," she read primly. "That is all the message says. You are to call Aunt Mildred."

  "Smitty's back to Aunt Mildred again," Remo mum­bled.

  The girl clapped her hands over her ears. "We are not concerned with the private lives of our guests, Mr. Remo."

  "Fine. Do you have a pay phone here?"

  "You have a phone in your room, Mr. Remo."

  "I know. I'm not allowed in there."

  "I told you, we are not interested in the private lives of our guests. Why don't you use the phone in your room?"

  "I don't want to use the phone in my room. I want to

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  use a pay phone. Now teil me where the pay phone is."

  "Oh, all right." She pointed an icy finger down the hail.

  As Remo turned the corner, he saw her scurry to the switchboard and rearrange the wiring on it. He walked into the phone booth and lifted the receiver. As he had expected, the faint sound of breathing emanated from the other end, where the girl was listening in.

  He pitched his voice low. "In five seconds I'm going to grab that pretty woman at the switchboard and tear ail her clothes off," he rumbled.

  There was a little shriek from the other end before the line went dead. The receptionist's skirt billowed in the wind as she ran out the door.

  Remo caught her before she hit the sidewalk. "Okay, what's the idea?"

  "I-I don't know what you're talking about," she said. "Are you really going to tear all my clothes off?"

  "You were listening in on my phone call. Who do you work for?"

  "Nobody."

  "Who?" He grasped her hand more tightly.

  "Okay, okay," she said testily. "It doesn't matter, I suppose."

  "Who is it?"

  "I don't know. That's the truth. Somebody called me and asked me to monitor all the phone lines. The ones in the rooms are easier, but I can get the pay-phones, too, with a little switch on the wires."

  "What for?"

  "Who knows? He just wanted me to write down any­thing anybody said about the army, the navy, or the air force. I get twenty dollars for every item I send in to the computer information center in Albuquerque."

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  "Computers?" Remo asked, raising an eyebrow.

  "Yes. He said I'd get a government check.! figured he was from the CIA or the FBI or something like that."

  "What did this guy sound like?"

  "Sound? Well, kind of-lemony,! guess. That's the only way to describe it. Sort of like your Aunt Mildred."

  "All right," Remo said with disgust. Smith had struck again. For an operation as minuscule in size as CURE, Smith had tentacles reaching into every corner of every city in the world. "Forget it. I didn't mean to scare you." He walked down the street.

  "Hey, wait a minute," the girl called after him. Her face was a caricature of disappointment. "Aren't you going to rip off my clothes now?"

  "Later," Remo said.

  He found a pay phone down the street and dialed the Chicago Dial-a-Prayer number that connected au­tomatically with Smith's phone at Folcroft Sanitarium. "Yes?" came Smith's acid voice.

  "What in hell are you doing now?"

  "Meet me in one hour on Mott Street in China­town," Smith said.

  "I want to know why you have henchmen listening in on my phone calls at the E-Z Rest Motel."

  "Not yours, Remo. Everyone's. That person is one of thousands who've been contacted."

  "What's going on?"

  "I'll fill you in later. One hour. The dragon." Smith hung up.

  There was only one dragon in Chinatown, and that was the one winding its way down Mott Street in the Chinese New Year's parade.

  "Excuse me," Remo said, pressing his way through the crush of cheering spectators.

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  "It is everywhere," Chiun said ominously behind him.

  Remo looked around. "What's everywhere?"

  "Pork," the old man said. "The smell of stir-fried pork is emanating from every barbaric Chinese mouth here."

  "Take it easy."

  "Only a white man would ask a Korean to tolerate a mob of pork-eating Chinese."

  "Then why did you come along? You didn't have to come to Chinatown," Remo said irritably.

  Chiun sniffed. "I came because it is my duty to come," he said archly. "As the Master of Sinanju, it is imperative that I attend to Emperor Smith's wishes personally."

  "Little Father, I work for Smitty. You're my trainer. You don't have to come."

  "I do," Chiun insisted. "When the Emperor wishes to bestow a gift upon a valued assassin, the receiver of that gift should be present. It is only polite."

  "Gift? What gift?"

  "The portrait of Cheeta Ching. Emperor Smith has promised it to me."

  "You already have a portrait of that flat-nosed bar­racuda. You've made a shrine out of it."

  "That portrait is of Cheeta Ching in Western dress I requested one of the beautiful and gracious lady at­tired in the traditional robes of her native Korea."

  "She doesn't even know where Korea is. For her, the underside of one rock's as good as another."

  "White lout. Pork eater."

  "I thought the Chinese were the pork eaters of the day."

  "Chinese, white, what difference does it make? A waste is a waste."

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  As they neared the multicolored paper-mache dragon, it began to wobble and stagger randomly down the street, knocking over a fried-noodle stand. Remo slid under the cloth sides of the beast in time to see Smith buckle in exhaustion to the ground. He picked Smith up with one arm while supporting the sweltering shell of the dragon with the other.

  "You okay, Smitty?"

  "You're fourteen minutes late," Smith said, con­sulting his Timex. "How long did you think! could hold this thing up by myself?"

  "Sorry, Smitty." He set him on his feet. "Why are we meeting here, anyway?"

  "Silence, brainless one," Chiun said. "The Em­peror has chosen to meet us in this teeming, stinking location because he is a man of great sensitivity and humility." He bowed to Smith. "He wishes to bestow his gift of beauty in the midst of squalor to demon­strate that loveliness can transcend all ugliness. Oh, very wise, Emperor. Most fitting."

  "I'm not an emperor, Chiun," Smith began to ex­plain for the hundredth time. Chiun persisted in be­lieving that Smith had hired Remo and Chiun for the same reasons emperors throughout history had hired Chiun's ancestors. "Oh, never mind," Smith said.

  "I am honored to accept your gift, O mighty one," Chiun said, smiling.

  "Gift?" Smith looked to Remo. "What gift?"

  "A picture of the Korean version of Godzilla in drag," Remo said.

  "The photograph," Chiun prompted. "The portrait of the beauteous Cheeta Ching."

  "I thought I got one of those for you."

  "In ceremonial robes. The traditional Maiden's Por-

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  trait." His wrinkled face wa
s falling in disappointment. "You have not forgotten?"

  "Er, I'm afraid I have," Smith said impatiently. "I'll see what I can do. I've brought you here because what I have to tell you is of the utmost secrecy-and must remain so."

  "Like the requests of your valued assassins," Chiun muttered.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Never mind," Remo said. "Go on."

  Smith spoke urgently. "You know, perhaps, that the Secretary of the Air Force was murdered yesterday morning."

  "I think I heard part of that. Burned by a flame­thrower or something."

  "Right. What the press doesn't know is that last night the Secretary of the Navy, Thornton Ives, was murdered, too. Bayonetted. He was ambushed out­side the home of Senator John Spangler in Virginia. It looks like the work of more than one assassin."

  "A white assassin," Chiun grumbled. "Only a white man would attempt to kill with a net. For a real assas­sin, one comes to the Master of Sinanju. But does one bother to honor the small request of the aging Master? Never. Perhaps we should use nets, too. We could bludgeon the enemy with the holes."

  "A bayonet isn't a net, Little Father," Remo ex­plained. "It's a sort of spear on the end of a rifle."

  "Oh, I see. The white assassin uses a rifle to stab with. Very efficient."

  "Get off the snot, Chiun," Remo said in Korean. "Just because you didn't get your picture."

  "Just because the one small light in my twilit years has been extinguished. . . ."

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  "Please, please," Smith said. "We have limited time."

  "Forgive me, O Emperor," Chiun said with humility. "I will not speak again. Who cares to hear the pleas of an old man, anyway?"

  "Now really-" Smith began, but Chiun clamped his jaws together and turned his back. Smith sighed and went on. "The man who found the body, a gar­dener at the Spangler house, doesn't know anything. The FBI and the CIA have been grilling him ever since he reported the incident."

  "To the police?"

  "No. The police are being kept out of this. They've lost every lead on the murder of the Secretary of the Air Force, and the president is afraid they'll bungle this one, too. We can't afford that. It's beginning to look like a pattern."

  "Who's next?"

  "The Secretary of the Army, probably. The Secret Service already has a twenty-four-hour guard on him, as well as on key persons around the president. But it can't go on indefinitely. Whoever is carrying out these killings has to be stopped."

  "Is that why you've got your spy network going full tilt?"

  "Of course. Since we have nothing, any scrap of in­formation may help to bring some pieces of the puzzle to light."

  "Okay," Remo said. "If these guys were killed by flame-throwers and bayonets, it could be the work of the military. Want me to start there?"

  "I don't think so. All the branches of the military are carrying out their own investigations, and I'm already tapped into their computer information banks. I think you ought to start at the scene of the crime. Go to Sen-

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  ator Spangler's house and see who else was at the party last night. The guests there were the last to see Admiral Ives alive."

  "That's routine police work," Remo protested.

  "We have every reason to believe this isn't a routine murder," Smith said. "And we have to start some­where. All the police know is that a body was found on the front lawn of the Spangier residence. The sena­tor's daughter, Cecilia, alerted the FBI immediately, and the body was removed from the morgue before it was identified."

  "Then why doesn't the FBI handle this?"

  Smith checked his watch. "Remo, if we had two years, the FBI could handle it. But we don't. The heads of two military branches of the United States government have been eliminated, and I don't know if we've seen the end of this spree. The president is alarmed. We have to work fast, before things get worse."

  "Ail right, all right," Remo said, not relishing the idea of slogging around, asking questions of every guest at a drunken Washington party. "But I don't see where it's going to get us."

  "It will get us out of this stinking pork hole," Chiun said in Korean. "Say yes. Pretend the emperor knows what he's talking about. Then we can return to civ­ilization."

  "I thought you weren't speaking."

  "I am not speaking to him. To you, I speak. Take me home."

  "To the land of the round eyes?"

  "To the television," Chiun snapped. "Miss Ching's news brief will be broadcasting soon."

  "Oh," Remo said. "Look, Smitty, I think we ought to discuss this some more."

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  Someone was pounding violently on the sides of the dragon and screaming in Chinese. Then a head peered inside, waving a ten-dollar bill and pointing at his watch.

  "I think our time's up," Smith said. "I rented this thing for a half-hour."

  "For ten bucks," Remo said. "No wonder you brought us here. It was cheaper than a cab."

  "Ten dollars is sufficient payment," Smith said ac­idly.

  "You know, Smitty, you're really a cheapskate."

  "That is no concern of yours."

  Chiun bowed and slipped out of the papiermache dragon. In another moment, the Chinese man who was screaming at Smith disappeared. Remo pulled up the cloth covering and saw Chiun in the crowd, speak­ing and gesturing loftily to the Chinese, who bowed and nodded in understanding. Then Chiun returned and bowed once before Smith.

  "We will take our leave now, O illustrious Emperor, and leave you to your peace. Do not waste a mo­ment's thought on my humble request for a picture of the beautiful lady. It means nothing to anyone but my­self, and my lowly needs do not concern one so mighty as you. Come, Remo."

  As they left, a crowd of Chinese stripped the dragon off Smith and clambered around him, shouting an­grily.

  "What's with them?" Remo asked. Smith was look­ing around helplessly in the center of the noisy mob.

  "They feel the Emperor has cheated them," Chiun said.

  "I wonder who gave them that idea."

  Chiun shrugged. "It was not I. I would never be­tray the Emperor who pays the pittance to my village

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  for the services of the Master of Sinanju."

  "I saw you talking to that guy. What did you say?"

  "I told him on!y that the last time i hired the use of one of those cloth and paper beasts, i paid the sum of one hundred dollars. Anything below that would be a grave insult. That is what I told him."

  Remo saw Smith finally take out his wallet and hand a small wad of bills to the Chinese man. The Chinese bowed, and Smith awkwardly bowed back, glaring an­grily at Remo and Chiun.

  "I think we'd better get out of town for a while," Remo said.

  Chapter Three

  The Virginia residence of Senator John Spangler was a sprawling, plantation-style mansion surrounded by snow-tipped gardens and white pillars. A fat, middle-aged woman in dungarees and a sweat shirt opened the door before Remo knocked. "If you're from the press, get out of here," she said.

  "Is this the Spangler house?"

  "You know it is. Scram."

  "You're not Mrs. Spangfer, are you?"

  "No." She slammed the door. Remo stopped it with his pinky. The door shuddered and loosened on its hinges.

  "Is she at home?" Remo asked politely.

  "What do you think you're doing?" the woman yelled above the whistling wind as she lunged toward the door, which began to fall into the room.

  He entered through the huge black and white tiled anteroom into a grand and spacious sitting room. Above the mantle hung a portrait of the senator, a vig­orous, youngish man in the bloom of life. In the dis­tance he heard a woman's voice shrieking.

  "I told you to hang the Bob Mackie dresses, not pack them," the voice raged. "That bag's for cookies.

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  36

  Don't drop it. One broken cookie and it's curtains, un­derstand?"

  "Yes, mum," a deferential man's voice said.

&nb
sp; "The last servant who dropped my cookie bag is doing time in Leavenworth."

  "Yes, mum." The man spoke as he descended a curving staircase, carrying six pieces of luggage. The three people behind him were hefting several bags apiece as well. The entourage lumbered through the large entrance.

  Behind them, swathed in a long sable coat, was a beautiful brunette stuffing cookies into her mouth. On her head she was wearing a turban covered with violet flowers to match her eyes.

  Apparently oblivious to Rerno, she squinted meanly at the sight of the fat lady who was puffing as she tried to right the door into its frame. "What have you broken now?" she snapped.

  The fat lady turned around, her expression one of deep hurt. "I didn't do anything," she explained. "It was him." She pointed to Remo. "He barged in here-"

  "Well, well," the violet-eyed brunette said, sud­denly flashing a dazzling smile at Remo. "It's been a long time, darling."

  "We've never met," Remo said. "Are you Mrs. Spangler?"

  She stared at him blankly. "I don't remember," she said. "I'm Mrs. Somebody. ! always am. My hus­band's name is Paul. Or George. Something ordi­nary." She pointed to the portrait of the senator on top of the mantle. "John,-that's it. See, up there above the fireplace? That's my husband. think. Unless the divorce came through. Are you my lawyer?"

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  "No," Remo said. "I'm a friend of a friend."

  "You're lovely. What's your name?" She gobbled down another cookie.

  "Remo."

  She pondered. "Remo. I've never been married to a Remo before. Unless it was an awfully long time ago. We've never been married, have we, Remo?"

  "I don't think so."

  "Wonderful. I have a simply divine wedding gown I've been saving. Would next Thursday be all right?"

  "I think I'll be too busy to get married," Remo said.

  "Pity. Well, 1 have to be off. Toodle-oo."

  "I'd like to ask you a few questions before you go. About the party."

  "Party? Was it a wedding?"

  "I don't think so."

  "Good. I was just beginning to get used to what's-his-name."

  "The senator?"

  "Yes, that's him. i was married to him once."

  "I thought you were married to him now."