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  He turned and saw the old fish-eater. He wanted to turn and kill the intruder, but the ache in his belly would not permit it. At the back of the near end zone, he broke into a trot. A trot for Boomtower in his present physical condition was like an all-out sprint for anyone else. For a ninety-year-old Oriental, it should have been impossible.

  Should have been.

  The fish-eater not only matched his sudden burst of speed, but even gained on him.

  Confidently, Boomtower increased the pace to a sprint. High-kicking, he could feel the huge muscles of his quadriceps shudder at each impact with the natural sod. His size-18 feet felt light and quick under him. And they were. Since he started using the patch, he was easily the fastest man on the team. Faster even than Regional Parks, the NCAA hundred-meter record holder.

  The biggest and the fastest.

  His superbody sliced through the air, which screamed around his ears. He passed the twenty-yard line, the fifty, and with the opposite goalpost looming large, took the opportunity to look back over his shoulder. He expected to see the old man falling back somewhere around seventy yards behind, or perhaps even collapsed on the field. Instead, to his shock, he discovered the old guy running right at his back.

  Well, maybe running wasn't the right word.

  It didn't appear that the Oriental geezer's legs were moving at all. And his arms weren't pumping, either. He had his hands tucked inside the baggy sleeves of his robe. Yet, there he was, serenely drafting in the wake the nose tackle left behind.

  Boomtower blinked once, and like the pop! of a dream coming to a sudden end, the old man was gone. When Number 96 turned his head back toward the goalpost, he witnessed a vision that made his jaw drop. He saw the fish-eater descending, from a height of at least thirty feet, his robe flapping in the breeze. The old man's somersault ended as his slippered feet came down on the goal post's cross bar. He stood there, not waving his hands around for balance, but rock steady like he was standing on flat ground.

  Boomtower didn't plan on stopping, but the fisheater dropped from his perch, light as a feather, right in front of him, blocking his path. The absolute strangeness of all this made the nose tackle skid to a halt.

  "Get out of my way!" Boomtower said. The sweep of his enormous right arm sent a rush of wind that stirred the tiny old man's straggly beard. The Oriental did not so much as blink.

  Beyond the end zone Boomtower now faced, beyond the track, was the training center's parking lot. From where he stood, he could see his white 500-class Mercedes two-door with its one-way windows, its gold-plated bumpers, side-trim molding and wheel covers. Two days before, he had had both the front seats ripped out. No bucket seat on earth could contain his five hundred pounds. He had had a specially designed leather-upholstered bench seat installed. Also, the frame and shocks on the driver's side had been reinforced to keep the vehicle from listing too much to the left. Boomtower wanted to get to his car and drive to the nearest source of dietary fat without further delay. Over the power lines, he could just make out the gaudy signs lining the main boulevard, signs that advertised All Things Fried.

  Craftily, he inched forward on the little fish-eater. And when he was well within reach, with a mighty grunt he unleashed a backhanded swing at the old man's head, a blow intended to send him flying, if not kill him outright.

  Between the start of the movement and its conclusion, something very unexpected happened: his fist made contact with nothing. Which sent him tilting off balance on the edge of his left foot. Before he could catch himself came a touch that felt like a hint of breeze. A touch so soft he might have imagined it. Just there on his right hip. Instead of knocking the old man into the cheap seats, it was Boamtower himself who went suddenly hurtling through the air. He landed with a sickening crunch, twenty yards away, near the sideline.

  As he scrambled to his feet, he once again faced the slip of an Oriental.

  "In you, I sense a great void, a terrible hollowness," Chiun told him, shaking his head.

  "Hungry," Boomtower growled, starting to lunge forward, in the direction of his Mercedes. "Got to eat."

  "No."

  When the little man raised his slender hand, with its extremely long fingernails, the football player paused.

  "This hollowness I sense is different," Chiun explained. "Not a vacuum of the belly that can be filled with material sustenance. This is a vacuum of the spirit. You are strong, but you are also weak. And your weakness is so great that your strength is more than negated."

  "Hah!" Boomtower said, thumping his massive pectoral with a balled fist.

  "Under all that flesh of yours, you are still a piddler."

  "Why, I could pop your little yellow head like a pimple!"

  "No, you couldn't."

  Boomtower lunged for the scrawny neck in the Mandarin collar. Silk brushed his outstretched fingertips; of that he was sure. And then with a jarring starburst of impact, he found his face buried to the ears in the coarse sod. Spitting dirt and strands of Bermuda grass, he looked up.

  "As I said," Chiun went on, "the animal power that you possess is chaotic, undisciplined. Ungrounded. It appears indomitable, but that is an illusion of physical form. Your strength lacks the focus of careful meditation and long study. It fails to tap the inexhaustible chi force of the universe. And because of that, it is as empty as a child's balloon. Perhaps it is good enough for your American football, but even the simplest strategies of teeter-totter would be beyond your grasp. The lesson here is that shortcuts do not always lead you where you want to go."

  "Where I want to go is over there," Boomtower said, nodding in the direction of the parking lot. "Stand aside."

  "I have questions for you, from my Emperor."

  "Screw your Emperor. And screw you, you crazy motherfucker."

  "Those options are not available. My Emperor wishes to know the source of your newfound animal strength."

  Boomtower could wait no longer. His internal pangs were too powerful. They even overwhelmed his instinctive fear of this strange little man. Reverse pivoting, he tried to get the Oriental moving the wrong way. For his trouble, there was an explosion of pain in his shin, and a simultaneous and sickening crack of bone. Bradley Boorntower dropped to the turf, clutching his right leg below the knee with both hands.

  "You broke it!" he moaned. "Jesus, you broke my leg!"

  The fish-eater's strike had been so swift, he hadn't appeared to have even moved. He stood there completely relaxed, his high forehead unlined, a slight smile on his ancient, withered face.

  "Perhaps we can talk now?" Chiun said.

  The nose tackle dived for him, broken leg and all. Though the distance between them was less than a yard, Boomtower missed his target by a wide margin. And when he hit the ground, he had a shattered right forearm.

  "I'm not enjoying this," Chiun assured the shrieking Goliath as he stepped closer. "I am an assassin by trade, not some ham-fisted torturer. Killing is what I do best. So you see, I would much prefer to kill you. And I will do so if you do not answer."

  "Go to hell."

  The nose tackle took a left-handed swipe at Chiun's ankles that didn't even come close. Then he struggled up on his one good leg. In his eyes was the naked fury of the jungle, of the wounded beast. Boomtower looked as if he would have gladly torn off his broken arm and used it to beat Chiun over the head.

  "I do not understand your stubbornness," the Master of Sinanju said, clucking his tongue. "Have I not proven to you that your overwhelming strength is of no value in the face of my weakness?"

  Growling from low in the pit of his stomach, Boomtower lunged with all his strength. And this time his fingers closed on silk brocade.

  Chapter 12

  "You guys had enough?" Remo challenged, tossing the football a foot or two in the air and catching it. The Riots offensive line lay draped over the weight-room benches, sweat soaked and panting. Only the left guard had strength enough to wave his hand in surrender. The four linemen had transferred every pound
of movable weight from one side of the room to the other in their attempt to squash the dude in the black T-shirt and chinos. And now that wiry guy stepped, unfazed, over the resulting piles of iron plates, the heaps of dumbbells.

  "That was fun," Remo said. He tossed the football back into the bin as he headed for the exit door. "We'll have to do it again real soon. I got to tell you something, though. It's no wonder you're always at the bottom of your conference. You guys are really out of shape...."

  Outside, Remo quickly located Chiun, who stood at the far end of the practice field. He also saw a large form slumped motionless at the Master's feet. It was their quarry, Bradley Boomtower. Remo broke into a run. As he crossed the fifty-yard line, he saw Boomtower make a sudden grab for Chiun's ankle. Remo's immediate thought was Oh, shit!

  To an untrained eye, the scene in front of the goalpost appeared to suddenly blur, as if obscured by heat waves rising from the earth. To an untrained eye, it appeared that two figures maintained their relative positions. As a student of Sinanju, Remo saw things much differently. He saw the huge man lifted by the small one, whirled around his head like an orange-and-black pillow, then bounced on the turf. Lifted, whirled, bounced. Five times. Boing. Boing. And when the bouncing stopped, the two were in exactly the same spot as when they had started.

  Remo knew without taking a pulse that the football player was dead. Chiun stood in the center of a churned-up ring of sod. It looked like the turf had endured a twelve-play goal-line stand.

  "Did you have to kill him?" Remo said.

  "Stupid question. I wouldn't have killed him if I didn't have to."

  "We needed information from him."

  "His mind was confused. He couldn't answer even the simplest of questions. The chaos inside him was too strong."

  "You couldn't have just knocked him out?"

  "I did him a favor."

  "Yeah, maybe. But where does that leave us?"

  "Examine his backside."

  "What?"

  "Pull down his pants and you will find the source of his animal nature."

  "Yeah, right..."

  "It is a small plastic patch on his right buttock."

  When Remo looked more closely, he could see the outline of the square through the tightly stretched Lycra fabric. "What is it?"

  "It is where the bad smell begins."

  "No doubt. But it has something to do with the drug, too?"

  "Of course."

  As Remo struggled to draw down the football player's skintight pants, he muttered, "God, I hope this little scene doesn't make 'Peephole USA.'"

  He exposed Boomtower's behind and a two-by-two-inch patch of adhesive. Remo recognized it as a time-release drug-delivery system, like that used for nicotine.

  When Chiun reached down to peel off the patch with the tip of a long fingernail, Remo brushed his hand away. "No, don't touch it!" he exclaimed. "If you get some of the active ingredient on your fingertip, it'll go straight into your bloodstream."

  "Why do you shudder so violently?" Chiun asked him. "Is it because of your concern for my safety?"

  "What else?" Remo said. And he forced from his mind the image of a five-hundred-pound, five-foot-nothing Chiun running amok in Los Angeles.

  Chapter 13

  When the homicide unit of the Hollywood police rang the doorbell of Puma and Chiz Graham's palatial mansion, it was answered not by a uniformed maid or butler, but by a very small man in a three-piece pin-striped suit.

  "Good morning, Detectives," Jimmy Koch-Roche said.

  The lead investigator, a burly man with a shock of snow white hair, produced two folded documents from inside his plaid sports jacket. "We have a warrant to search these premises, Jimmy," he said. "And a warrant for the arrest of one Puma Lee, also known as Harriet Louisa Smootz, on a charge of first-degree murder in the death last night of the actress Vindaloo."

  Koch-Roche examined the papers, then handed them back to the officer. "All properly done, Detective Hylander," he said. "My client is prepared to surrender herself into your custody at this time. I caution you that she will make no statement to you outside my presence. And as to your search of the premises, I would like to remind you that this house contains numerous priceless works of art and irreplaceable antiques. Please instruct your forensics people to be very careful."

  The tiny lawyer led the officers into the mansion's dizzying foyer, which soared three stories high to a domed greenhouse ceiling, and was quite warm and humid. The white marble floor and walls were lined with tiers of exotic plants. Among the green-and-yellow-and-pink-striped leaves, rare orchids hung from chunks of bark in the perpetual drizzle of an automatic watering system. Koi fish spattered with color swam in the dark blue garden pool.

  "Your high-profile clients seem to be having a run of bad luck," Detective Hylander said as they filed into the mansion proper. "Sort of a mini-crime wave, in fact. This is the third time in less than twenty-four hours that we've had one of your people in on murder charges."

  "Nothing I can't handle," Koch-Roche assured him.

  Puma Lee and her husband rose from the Art Deco love seat as their lawyer and the police entourage entered the overfurnished but vast living room. It looked more like an art gallery or antique showroom than a place where people actually lived. Puma was dressed in stark contrast to her public image. Instead of revealing as much of her astounding figure as possible, she concealed it under a very conservative, past-knee- length beige silk suit. Chiz wore one of the extrabaggy shirt-and-pants outfits that had previously hidden his between-picture flab. The attempt to conceal their extreme muscular development, urged by their legal counsel, was only partially successful. If one looked closely, one could see the outlines of Puma's massive quads under the silk skirt, and Chiz's baggy Hawaiian shirt couldn't conceal the breadth of the shoulders and depth of the chest it hung from.

  Detective Hylander read the movie star her Miranda rights, then asked her if she'd care to make a statement. It was all polite and routine.

  Jimmy Koch-Roche replied for her. "No, she wouldn't care to make a statement," he said. "On advice of counsel."

  "Then I guess it's time for a trip down to the station," Hylander said.

  Puma glanced down at her attorney, who nodded in agreement. From the love seat, she picked up a large leather purse, which matched the color of the suit. The purse was so overpacked its sides bulged out.

  "Better leave that here, ma'am," Hylander said, reaching for the shoulder strap.

  For an instant, the eyes of the cop and the movie star met. And locked. Hylander froze like a rabbit caught in high beams. The tendons in Puma's neck twitched as her gaze held him fast.

  Jimmy Koch-Roche interceded at once. "It's okay, Puma," he assured her, lightly touching the back of her hand. "You won't need the purse. If you take it, it will only prolong the booking procedure. Everything that's in there will have to be logged with the police clerk. And we want to get you out on bond as quickly as possible."

  Knowing that its weight in junk food would have dropped him to his knees, the attorney let Chiz take the purse from her.

  "Jimmy and I will follow you over there," Chiz told his wife as the police led her away. "Don't worry. We'll bring whatever you need."

  After they'd gone, Chiz slumped back down on the love seat and said, "What a fucking mess!" Then he glowered at the tiny lawyer. "And it's all your fault."

  "Wait a minute," Koch-Roche protested. "Didn't I warn you that the drug was experimental? I told you up front that there might be side effects. I sure as hell didn't put a gun to your heads and make you take it."

  "So says the pusher man."

  "Look," Koch-Roche snapped back, "strip the patch off your ass right now. Give me the rest of the supply you have. And I'll refund your money. I'll write the check right now."

  Chiz considered this, then he dry-swallowed. "I'd go back to the way I was?"

  "Fat and forty."

  "Thirty-six!"

  "Whatever. It's your choice
. I gave the same option to your wife a few hours ago and, as you know, she turned me down flat. What do you say, Chiz? Wanna give up the new hard body?"

  Chiz pulled at his world-renowned chin and grimaced. After a moment, he said, "Can you get her off the murder charge?"

  "Piece of cake. And I can do it for under ten million."

  "But her handprints are all over the crime scene!"

  Koch-Roche tut-tutted his client. "This is the law, Chiz. Facts mean nothing. It's all in the interpretation. The right interpretation. I'll bring in a dozen expert forensic witnesses who will testify that Puma left those prints while struggling with the real assailant, who was in the process of ripping Vindaloo apart. I'll show that the prosecution's blood evidence came as the result of a valiant but failed attempt by Puma Lee to save her colleague's life. By the time I'm done talking, the mayor will award her a certificate of heroism. Maybe the city will even put up a statue."

  "So there's really nothing to worry about?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "No reason to stop taking the drug."

  "Like I said, that's completely up to you. A personal decision. If you don't want it, I'll buy it back. Believe me, there are plenty of others standing in line to get their hands on it."

  "No, I'm talking about what's happened to Puma. The Venom Club and Vindaloo. I mean, what if I go berserk like that? What if I happen to kill somebody?"

  Koch-Roche shrugged his narrow shoulders. "As far as legal consequences go, as long as you've got the bread to pay for a proper defense, conducted by yours truly, there won't be any."

  Chapter 14

  Before he drove out of the mansion's eight-car garage, Chiz Graham removed the convertible top of his custom-made, cream-colored Excalibur sports car. Jimmy Koch-Roche had suggested that he take his own wheels to the police station and drive Puma home personally. He'd also suggested that Chiz put the top down so the army of waiting photographers could record the happy event in its entirety. In the hope of coloring the water for potential future jurors, Koch-Roche wanted a public display of confidence from Chiz. Strong, committed husband supports wife's innocence. The usual drill.