"Relax," Remo told the good-cop trooper and his hulking, silent partner, the bad-cop trooper. "We're Feds. We'll just listen in."
"Like hell," growled the bad-cop trooper, a colossus who knew he didn't even have to stand up to be intimidating-so he didn't bother. His shoulders were powerful, his arms massive under the specially tailored uniform. "This ain't your jurisdiction until I hear otherwise. Amscray."
"No, thanks." Remo nodded pleasantly, hoping the good-cop trooper would continue the questioning. The colossus got to his feet. He did it slowly, as if moving his monstrous frame into a standing position required a mighty challenge to the forces of gravity. "Don't make me go local on you, U.S. boy," he growled.
"Okay, Unincredible Hulk, you made your point. You're big and tall. Ooh. Ahh. So what. Sit down." The trooper with the notebook went white. Wrong thing to say! he communicated to Remo Williams silently.
Remo Williams didn't care. He wasn't here to make friends. In fact, he didn't know what he was here for. Upstairs had him running around doing all this lookinto-this stuff and investigate-that stuff. He wasn't experiencing job satisfaction and he wasn't running into a lot of friendly, cooperative people. Even the cops were giving him crap.
So when the hand the size of a manhole cover made a grab at his collar, he broke it.
Even the giant didn't get it at first. He thought the skinny little guy had simply batted his hand away. Then he felt the sensation of shattering bones and the pain that traveled up his arm like a flood tide. With a bull-sized bellow he went for a full body tackle, and stopped midair. The skinny guy from the federal government caught him in the chest with his palm, and it should have sent the little guy flying halfway across the state. Somehow it was the giant state trooper who crashed to the floor.
"The bigger they are, the smarter they are not," Chiun observed.
"But they are louder," Remo added, groping around the back of the giant's neck and making a small adjustment. The bellow ended.
"Ah, peace and quiet."
"What'd you do?" the good-cop trooper demanded.
"Don't worry, I just hit the mute button. Please carry on."
"But he's wounded! He's paralyzed!"
"Criminy!" Remo opened the door and gave the giant a nudge with the bottom of one expensive Italian shoe. The paralyzed trooper rocketed out the door and down the short hall, still moving fast when he hit the messiest of the corpses. Sliding on blood, he actually seemed to pick up speed. Remo didn't bother to watch the dramatic end of the wild ride. grabbing the pen and notebook from the hands of the other trooper and tossing them out the door, as well. The trooper stared at Remo dumbfounded.
"Well? Go fetch."
The trooper nodded sadly and left.
The bartender was, if anything, mildly amused.
"I hate to do this to you again, but could you tell us what happened here?" Remo asked.
"Hell, sure. You two are the first law enforcement I seen all night that act like they could actually do something about it." The bartender quickly related the events that led up to the violence. "That door saved me," he said. "It's like a safe door. Solid steel. Anything less they would have got me and killed me for sure. When they couldn't get in, well, it was like they had to take it all out on somebody. They started fighting each other. Somebody would go, 'Hey, ain't you the bartender?' and they'd go after one of the other customers and kill him and then do it again."
"That's sort of unusual, isn't it?" Remo asked. He knew the guy was telling the truth, but it sure made no sense.
"Weirdest damn thing," the bartender agreed.
"The one who purchased the intoxicants for your patrons was gone by this time?" Chiun asked thoughtfully.
"Yeah, he left right after he sicced everybody on me."
"But you don't know who he was or what his home address is or anything like that?" Remo prodded, knowing he was grasping at straws.
"Naw. You know, you don't ask questions like the other cops."
"Yeah, this ain't my gig," Remo explained dejectedly.
"He is not skilled at speech or thought," Chiun added helpfully.
"But I can tell you he was disguised," the bartender offered. "I saw him in the parking lot. I lock myself in here and grab the phone for the cops and I look out back." He nodded at the grimy window over his shoulder. "There he was, writing in his notebook."
"Huh?" Remo asked.
"That's what I thought," the bartender agreed. "Just a quick note. Then he rips off his eyebrows and his hairpiece and he drives off."
"In what?"
"The car? Couldn't tell."
"See what he looked like without the fake fur?"
"Naw. Back's dark."
"You been a lot of help."
"I think the state of Tennessee is really mad at you guys," the bartender offered as a megaphone down the hall demanded the surrender of all occupants of the office. "That's just perfect," Remo grumbled.
"Really?" Chiun asked with raised eyebrows. "You mean to say this is going as you had intended?"
Chapter 10
"The State of Tennessee multidepartmental task force has established an irrefutable link between the incident at the Big Stomp Saloon, the Mafia and the Yakuza." Harold Smith's voice was more sour than usual.
"Is that so?" Remo replied in his best not-in-the-mood-for-it voice. Trouble was, he'd been using that voice a lot lately, and nobody seemed to get the message.
"They report their crime scene was aggressively compromised by two men posing as federal agents."
"Us?" Remo asked.
"It was not us, Emperor," Chiun called out, never turning away from the television set. He was sitting on the hotel-room floor staring at the screen.
"One elderly Asian and one Caucasian male, age indeterminate," Smith reported.
"That's what they're going on?"
"There's more," Smith said. "I'm getting into the Tennessee crime database now."
Remo sat on the hotel bed and listened to Smith tap the keys. The tapping stopped but Smith said nothing. "Let me guess," Remo volunteered. "It's the shoes and kimono."
Smith spent a long time saying the word "Yes."
"So we go in there and get what you asked for despite a bunch of Southern-boy attitude, and all they see is a pair of Italian loafers and an Asian guy in a bright robe. I don't know what's more amazing-that they came up with the Yakuza and Mafia theory or the fact that you think we blew it."