"There was something in the booze that caused it, so that makes it the business of the booze bureau."
The trooper's lips went tight. "You wait right here." He scurried off, never noticing the pair was silently tailing him, but the Masters halted when a white limousine turned into the lot and rolled to a stop on crunching gravel.
"Do you see, Remo? People of wealth come here. It is a place of importance in musical history."
"Yeah." The limo received personal service from one of Tennessee's finest. A trooper chatted with the driver, but Remo was more interested in the figures behind the dark glass in the back seat. "You mean they aren't reopening tonight?" asked a voice from the rear. Whoever he was, he was hidden behind the bulk of a bodyguard.
The trooper chuckled politely and explained that it would take hours to process the crime scene and, no, the place would not be reopening tonight. The figure in the back stared past his hired muscle, taking it all in. Then he stared fixedly at Remo-it was the voyeur gaze of a man who knew he could see but, behind the dark glass, not be seen.
But this time he was wrong. Remo adjusted his vision to compensate for the refraction of the flashing light that turned the windows into mirrors, at the same time adjusting the angle of his face so that the headlights of the nearest squad car put his own face in shadow.
But the man in back never moved out from behind the bodyguard. Remo saw only the eyes.
Then the limo rolled away.
REMO AND CHIUN FOUND the cavernous interior of the Big Stomp crowded with uncollected corpses, shattered furniture, and the stench of spilled beer turning sour under hot crime-scene lights.
"Yeesh. The Big Stomp is a big dump," Remo said. "So how come you've heard of it?"
"It is renowned throughout the world," Chiun said.
"Which world we talking about?" The stark white police lights hid none of the shabbiness of the peeling wall paint, the scratched floor or the water-stained ceiling tiles.
"This is where the career of Wylander Jugg blasted off," the old Korean explained.
"Launched?"
"Before she became a star, the comely Wylander was performing here without appreciation of her marvelous talents, until a musical agent came to see her show. Even in this foul place her brilliance shone, and the musical agent took her under his wing."
"Ah. Many things now makes sense to me about Wylander Jugg." Remo looked down at a body inside a chalk outline. The broken end of a beer bottle protruded from the stomach of a man with a week's growth of shaggy beard.
"Nasty, ain't it?" asked the man taking pictures.
"Looks like a prop from a Patrick Swayze movie," Remo commented.
The photographer screwed up his face. "Dirty Dancing?"
"I wish. Who did all this running amok?"
"Who didn't?" the photographer said. "The whole place went nuts. Started out with one little fight on the dance floor, and next thing you know everybody was brawlin' everybody. We had five bodies when we got here and we musta sent fifty wounded to the Methodist hospital."
"Were they lucid?" Remo asked.
"Were they who?"
"You know, were they thinking clearly? Or kind of confused?"
"Oh. Definitely more like kinda confused. None of ' em seems to know what happened. None of 'em even knows who did the killin'."
"Can I help you?" demanded a county official with a sheriff's badge pinned on his rumpled white shirt. "You federals are not supposed to be here."
"Just asking a few questions," Remo said. "Won't take long."
"Let me see your identification:"
Remo thrust his badge at the sheriff. "Where's your witnesses?" he asked the photographer.
"Don't answer that, Aberle!" the sheriff snapped. "What about him? You gonna try and tell me he's ATF, too?" The sheriff nodded at Chiun, who watched stoically with his hands tucked neatly in the sleeves of a scarlet kimono. .
Remo tried to remember what Chiun's ID said. "Who're you with again, Little Father?"
"CLECIC," Chiun chirped without hesitation. Remo and the sheriff were equally befuddled. "Huh?" the lawman demanded.
"Congressional Law Enforcement Corruption Investigation Committee," Chiun explained in his pleasant singsong.
"There ain't no such thing!" the sheriff insisted. "Let me see your damn-"
The sheriff stopped talking and stopped moving. His mouth hung open, ready to complete the expletive. The photographer found it very curious. He also found it curious that the little Korean man was now holding the sheriff by the earlobe. "What just happened?" he asked the skinny Caucasian ATF agent.
"We were being rudely interrupted. You're done blathering, right, Sheriff?"
The sheriff had tears rolling down his face, but he managed a terse nod.
"Okay. Now tell me about the witnesses."
The photographer looked questioningly at the sheriff, who gave his permission with very emphatic head jerks. "Okay," the photographer said. "Well, there was just one witness. The bartender."
"Yeah. He among the living?"
"Oh, yeah, not a mark on him. He got out. Went into the manager's office and locked the door behind him, then watched the whole thing through the peephole."
"What about the manager?"
"He's at a restaurant trade show in Chicago."
"Wait staff?" Remo asked.
"Two beer gals usually, but tonight one of them called in sick, and she's lucky she did. The only serving girl who was working the place is over there."
He nodded at a nearby mess of flesh that had erased its own chalk outline with spreading blood.
The photographer expected a gag or a gasp, but Remo just sighed.
The little old Korean man rolled his eyes. Then he strolled to the long, L-shaped bar and gingerly lifted a plastic beer mug, sniffing the contents.
Remo, too, had noticed the odd aroma that permeated the place. Even masked by the stench of spilled beer, the smell was obvious and alien. Chiun looked puzzled.