Syndication Rites td-122 Page 9

  It had been like this ever since Louis DiGrotti had shown up at Boston's Raffair office from New York. The big man-who, according to reputation, was adept at mangling much more than just the English language--knew Boston was north of his regular haunts. Geography not being one of his strong suits, DiGrotti had assumed it was somewhere roughly between the wilds of untamed Canada and Santa's magic workshop.

  Even though he'd been in town for two weeks without getting run down by an advancing glacier, he still hadn't been disabused of his preconceived notions.

  "I tooked a pitcher of it just in case," DiGrotti continued. On his desk was a small disposable camera. He had a drawerful. Louis was going to make a photo album of all the amazing animals he encountered while in exile in the Boston tundra.

  "I guess it coulda been a walrus," he mused. "It was real small, though. Maybe it was a baby walrus. Or a cat."

  Across the room at his own desk, Seymour did his best to tune out the other man's voice.

  DiGrotti had already taken dozens of snapshots of a moose that was actually a shrub, a fire-hydrant penguin and a sleeping polar bear that was really a snow-covered Volvo.

  "Youse know what really pisses me off?" DiGrotti said. "Dem reindeer. I been up every night till two since I got here and I ain't seen one. My neck's killin' me."

  He rubbed at the back of his neck with a massive hand. Both hand and neck were covered with hair. So was the rest of his hulking body.

  Back home in New York, he was known as Louis the Bear. Some said that he bathed in Rogaine. Of course, they had sense enough to say this behind his furry back. In addition to his physical resemblance to his animal namesake, Louis the Bear had a temper as great as the average grizzly and the strength to back it up.

  Seymour Botz was aware enough of Louis DiGrotti's intimidating size to not test his temper. The accountant continued to work as the big man talked.

  "I figured the reindeer would be the easy ones to find what with all that sky up there," Louis complained. "They must be hidin' out with all the walruses."

  Frowning deeply, he picked up his camera. He was picking at the lens when the bell above the front door suddenly jingled to life.

  Louis glanced up, a hopeful expression tugging at his five-o'clock shadow. But instead of a wayward reindeer, it was two men who had just entered Raffair's Boston offices. Face sagging once more, Louis tossed his camera to his desk.

  "Damn Rudolphs," he growled.

  The two men didn't seem to hear him. As they crossed to the desks, they continued an argument that had started outside.

  "I'm not saying you can't listen to her," the young white guy was saying.

  "You are absolutely not saying that," the old Chinaman interrupted icily.

  "I'm just saying that the neighbors might appreciate it if you didn't turn it up so loud when you're not in the room. At least until I can replace the broken windows," Remo said.

  "And who broke the windows?" Chiun replied frostily. "Besides, our neighbors are Vietnamese. If I can get used to the sounds of cats being strangled every night at dinnertime, they certainly cannot complain about the lovely Wylander."

  "Wylander gives the cats a run for their money," Remo muttered. "Let's just try to keep the volume down, okay?"

  "Absolutely not," Chiun sniffed. "Will you next muzzle the nightingale or whippoorwill? Where will your callous attacks on beauty end? I must draw a line in the sand."

  At his desk, Seymour Botz eyed the new arrivals with concern. "Can I help you gentlemen with something?" he asked, his eyes bouncing from one man to the other.

  "Just a sec," Remo said. "The only birds you can link to Wylander Jugg are the three hundred that give up their lives every week to fill her buckets of extra crispy."

  Seymour cast a confused eye at Louis DiGrotti. The big man was reacting to the two visitors not with bemusement but with concern. Eyeing Remo and Chiun, he was slowly sliding a furry hand beneath his jacket.

  Seymour shot to his feet as if his chair were on fire.

  "You want stock!" he sang, hoping to cut off any violence. "I can give you a list of Boston brokers!"

  Fumbling at the papers on his desk, he held a sheet out to Remo.

  Remo turned a bland eye on the computer printout.

  "Not interested," he said. "I believe in gold not stock."

  "Don't think you can get around me that way," Chiun cautioned.

  Remo ignored the old man. "Look," he said to Seymour Botz, "I just wasted a whole day flying to New York to visit a dead man and I've apparently got a night of Grand Ole Opry and angry phone calls to deal with, so why don't we just make this easy for everybody concerned and tell me who's pulling the strings on Raffair."

  Botz tensed. "I don't know what you mean," he sniffed.

  "Well, first off, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it's dirty," Remo suggested. "Otherwise, the office Furby wouldn't be pointing that gun at us."

  "He is pointing it at you, not us," Chiun corrected. "People must be instinctively drawn to your negative energy."

  Botz spun to Louis DiGrotti. When he saw the gun in his huge hand, his eyes went wide. "What do you think you're doing?" the accountant cried.

  "Friggin' reindeer," DiGrotti growled. "If them and the walruses ain't gonna help me do what I wanna do, I'm at least gonna do what I was sent here to do."

  With that pronouncement, he squeezed the trigger.

  A sound like a sharp thunderclap exploded in the small office. It was followed nearly simultaneously by the meaty thwack of lead against forehead.

  As the smoke cleared, Louis the Bear blinked. And frowned.

  Remo still stood before Seymour Botz's desk. Behind the desk, Seymour's mouth was open wide. For some reason, a thick maroon dent dotted the center of his forehead.

  When the accountant lurched forward onto his blotter, the spray of brain and bone from the back of his blown-out head could be seen decorating the office wall.

  "Wha... ?" Louis questioned, unable to wrap his tiny brain around what had just transpired.

  A clamping pain on his wrist drew his attention. When he looked down, he found himself staring into the upturned face of the Master of Sinanju. Chiun squeezed, and Louis DiGrotti's hand sprang obediently open. His gun thudded to the floor.

  "Tell me, Remo, have you ever met someone who did not shoot at you?" Chiun said blandly as Remo stepped over.

  "Never happened till I met you," Remo replied. He turned to DiGrotti. "Okay, spill it, fuzzy. What's the deal with Raffair? And make it snappy before you start shedding all over my pants."

  "Raffair?" DiGrotti said, blinking. He was coming out of it. One eye glanced down at his gun. It was lying on the floor near the leg of his desk.

  "Okay," Rerno declared. "Let's remove all distractions."

  He bent and scooped up Louis's gun, handing it back to the thug.

  Louis would have used the handgun on his assailants had something strange not happened to the weapon on the way up from the floor. It had apparently disintegrated.

  Woodenly, Louis looked at the fragments of scrap metal in his hand. They rattled. When he looked back up, Remo was slapping a cloud of metal dust from his palms.

  "Your teeth are next," Remo said flatly. Feeling true fear for the first time in his life, Louis "The Bear" DiCrrotti offered a wide, agreeable smile. Thinking better of it, he slapped a hand over his mouth protectively.

  "Whatever you wanna know, I'll tell you," he promised, his voice muffled by his big furry palm. Remo opened his mouth to speak, but the Master of Sinanju suddenly forced his way in front of his Pupil.

  "I have a question," he announced imperiously.

  "Chiun, can we get this over with?" Remo griped.

  "Silence, hater of beauty," the old Korean snapped. He trained a steely hazel eye on Louis DiGrotti. "You will speak truth, hairy one?" he demanded.

  Both hands now clamped over his mouth, DiGrotti nodded. "Uh-huh," he mumbled.

  "Then tell my loutish son who has two tin ears h
ow much you enjoy the singing of the lilting siren Wylander."

  Behind a faceful of overlapping hands, DiGrotti's brow dropped low. "Wylander?" he asked from between his fingers. "Ain't she dat heifer country star? She's awful, ain't she?"

  His guileless eyes stared hopefully down at the old man as he nodded at the truth of his own words. DiGrotti continued nodding even as he saw the faint rustle of fabric at the old man's kimono sleeve. He thought he was nodding even as he felt the sudden pressure against his neck. He was only marginally certain he'd stopped nodding when his head slipped off his shoulders and the floor came racing up to meet him. He hit, rolled, stopped nodding and stopped processing all conscious thought at the exact same moment.

  Remo jumped forward even as Chiun's hands were returning to his sides.

  "What the hell did you do that for?" he demanded as DiGrotti's headless corpse toppled backward to the floor.

  "I was merely saving you from wasting any more precious time," the old man said. "If this shaggy thing would lie about the comely Wylander, he would lie about anything."

  He flicked a single droplet of blood from one tapered fingernail before replacing his hands in his kimono sleeves.

  "Next time, could you check with me before doing me a favor?" Remo had to take a step back to avoid the widening pool of blood.

  "It was not only for you," the Master of Sinanju sniffed. "By insulting the fair Wylander with his words of hate, he offended all of what it means to be truly American. Such a slur could not be allowed to pass unpunished on this most solemn and holy week for your fledgling nation. I was merely doing my patriotic duty."

  "Why don't you let me worry about the national honor and you worry about not getting filmed lopping people's heads off," Remo said sourly. "Or didn't you notice that?" He aimed a finger ceilingward.

  In the far corner of the room, a single motionless video camera peered out across the office.

  "Of course I noticed," the Master of Sinanju replied blandly. "Now go and collect the tape. You may use it as an educational tool when we return to Castle Sinanju. I will be in the car."

  With that, the old man spun on one sandaled heel and marched from the building.

  Alone, Remo shook his head. "Old buzzard," he muttered.

  He ducked into a back room. At the ceiling, the camera wires ran in from the front. When he followed them to a supply shelf, Remo expected to find a VCR.

  The wires continued out into a back hallway.

  He began to worry when he found that the cable wire ran up a dark stairwell.

  Three flights up, the cable snaked out onto the roof. Remo's stomach sank when he saw where it led.

  A squat white satellite dish was affixed to the icy roof ledge. Tilted up, it was aimed in a southerly direction. The fat black cable was connected to the back of the dish.

  With troubled eyes, Remo looked up at the night sky. The city lights dulled the diamonds of the stars. A cold breeze blew up, tousling his short hair and flapping his chinos. When he spoke, Remo's voice was small.

  "Uh-oh," he said to the desolate wind.

  Chapter 12

  There wasn't even a hint of movement. Maybe a tiny flutter of purple. If you looked hard enough.

  Louis "The Bear" DiGrotti was just standing there one minute, hands over his mouth, scared-Louis the Bear actually scared-and the next minute, he was in pieces on the floor.

  "Damn, his head just up and drops off," one of the men in the small bedroom said, his gruff voice amazed.

  Behind him came a terrified peep. It was the tenth time they'd watched the video, and it still shocked Paul Petito.

  "Maybe it was already loose," Mikey "Skunks" Falcone suggested. "Like a tooth."

  "Heads don't just come loose," Petito insisted.

  "I had a toenail that did once," Mikey Skunks said. "And toenails ain't supposed to come off. Maybe Bear's head's like my toenail."

  "No," Petito stated firmly. "That old Chinese guy chopped it off."

  On the TV screen for the tenth time that evening, Chiun flicked a dollop of blood from the tip of his index nail.

  Although the three men in that room had seen the tape multiple times, the man they had beamed it to in New York was viewing it for the very first time. Apparently, he hadn't expected so grisly a scene.

  "Oh, my God," Sol Sweet's nasal voice gasped over the speakerphone.

  For several long seconds afterward, Anselmo Scubisci's lawyer could be heard retching over the crisp line.

  Paul Petito couldn't blame him. He'd had the same reaction the first few times they'd watched the images that had been beamed into his Massachusetts home. Fingers stained black with old ink wiped sweat from his forehead.

  "My God, he just-" Sweet's voice finally managed to say. "How did he do that?"

  "I guess with them fingernails," Mikey Skunks suggested. "They're pretty long. Maybe he's got, I don't know, razors or something taped to the backs."

  Sol Sweet seemed to not even hear the speculation. "This isn't-" he began. "I mean, it can't... Who are they?"

  "I don't know, Mr. Sweet. Coupla guys, I guess. Hey, you want us to do 'em?"

  Paul Petito's eyes went wide. He wheeled around. Mikey Skunks was calmly watching the screen. Along with the other New York import, he sat on the edge of Paul's bed, a bored look on his face.

  There was a pause on the line as Sol Sweet collected his thoughts. "Yes," he ventured finally. "Now, let me think. I'm not sure I heard the last thing you said, but I think our mutual employer would want you to do what he'd do under these same circumstances." He didn't want to get roped into giving any direct orders. These days, there was no telling who might be listening in on private conversations.

  Mikey Skunks scratched his cheek thoughtfully. "I'm pretty sure Don Anselmo would want us to kill them, Mr. Sweet," he suggested.

  There was another gasp from the speaker, this one panicked. The line abruptly went dead.

  "Yeah," Skunks nodded. "He wants us to kill them." Tongue jutting between his broad lips, he thumbed the VCR remote, rolling back the tape once more.

  "So how do we find them?" Petito asked.

  He sounded ill. This business at the Boston Raffair office was like some awful dream. Paul Petito was just a counterfeiter. He'd been roped into this for selfish reasons that had nothing to do with killing or being killed.

  "We get a picture from here," Skunks said, waving at the image of Remo and Chiun on the screen. "Then I guess we circulate it, start asking around. Can you get their pictures from the TV?"

  Petito nodded. "I know a guy who can do it digitally," he said weakly. As he spoke, he was vaguely aware of the front door opening.

  Skunks heard the sound, too. "It's about time," he snarled. "We're in here!" he hollered.

  By now, the tape had rolled back to the start. Remo and Chiun were standing at the desks in the Boston Raffair office when Paul Petito's bedroom door opened. A fourth man entered the room, lugging two big paper bags. The warm smells of greasy sausage and tomato sauce poured from the bags.

  "What, we eating in here?" he asked with a scowl.

  "Shh!" Skunks snapped at the new arrival. "Here," he said, pointing at the TV.

  On the screen, Louis DiGrotti's head was just rolling off his neck.

  "What the hell?" The new man gaped. "Was that the Bear?"

  Skunks and the others nodded.

  "How did he-?" The man with the bags froze midsentence.

  On the screen, Remo had just stepped forward. He was plainly visible now, standing next to the Master of Sinanju.

  Two shopping bags dropped to the worn carpet. White foam containers split open, spilling red sauce all over the floor. Flecks of red splattered on shoes, wall and bed.

  As the others jumped angrily away from the mess, the latest arrival remained rooted in place. He continued to stare in shock at the satellite-fed taped image on the crystal-clear screen.

  Remo's cruel face remained in sharp focus.

  The man standing in the puddle
of sauce shook his head in uncomprehending shock. In the center of his forehead, between his wide-open eyes, was a large purple bruise.

  When he at last spoke, his voice was small. "Oh, shit, not him again," gasped Johnny "Books" Fungillo.

  Chapter 13

  "This is inexcusable," Harold Smith accused, struggling to control his anger. "How could you allow yourself to be filmed? I thought that you and Master Chiun could avoid cameras."

  "Avoid, yes," Remo said aridly. "When we need to. But I didn't think we had to here. I figured this was just some other dumb-ass stop that didn't matter. Besides, I thought I could just snag the tape. How was I supposed to know it'd be hooked up to a satellite dish?"

  When Smith exhaled, a rusty noise escaped like a wounded genie from the mouthpiece of the pay phone.

  Chiun glanced up, his wrinkled face puckering with displeasure at the sound.

  "Your enemies will quake in fear when they behold the terrifying wrath of the Master of Sinanju, Emperor Smith!" he called loudly. Dropping his voice low, he said to Remo, "Remind me to do something to aid his breathing the next time we see him. Those wheezing jackass brays are becoming depressing."

  "Please tell Master Chiun that I am less concerned about my enemies than I am about the organization," Smith said tersely.

  Remo cupped the phone. "Smitty says-"

  "I heard," Chiun said thinly.

  The old Korean stood near the curb a few feet away from Remo's sidewalk phone. Hands clasped behind his back, he turned his gaze back to the street where he'd been watching Boston traffic, leaving Remo and Smith to discuss their white nonsense.

  "Anyway, I didn't know what I should do, Smitty," Remo said, "so I figured I'd better call."

  "What you should have done was avoid the camera in the first place," Smith said tartly.

  Remo's brow darkened. "Hey, I didn't want to schlepp off on this hare-brained assignment for Captain Diddlepants in the first place," he warned. "So take the snot somewhere else or Chiun and I are outta here."

  Smith sighed again. "I'm sorry," he said. "I suppose recriminations are pointless anyway until we find out what it is we are dealing with." He gave a thoughtful hum. "You're certain it was a satellite dish?" he asked abruptly.