"You need help persecuting the freedom fighter?"
Remo sighed. "You know I'm on the right track this time."
"I know no such thing."
"You're full of it. You know the stuff is on board this bus. You know I'm the one who figured it out. Me. Remo the Pale Piece of Pigs Ear Piece of Crap Reigning Lazy Ass Master of Sinanju. But your friggin' ego is so friggin' huge because you're Chiun, Chiun the Wise, Chiun the Patient, Chiun the I'm Never Wrong and Remo Is Never Right."
"Are you through?"
"No, but you are. There's Molly Pardon and her high-class Magic freaking Country Kingdom. Go have a ball."
Chiun examined the distant spectacle of Molly, her inhuman upper-body proportions digitally recreated on a vast screen made from hundreds of lights.
Come On In, Y'All! the sign proclaimed, and several hundred cars were obeying her command, creeping at a snail's pace through the front entrance and into vast parking lots. In the distance they could see the ticket gates, towered over by a roller coaster with several loops, a water ride that tried to replicate a river in the Smoky Mountains and a single ravenous-looking dinosaur. "You are right," Chiun said. "Huh?"
"Mollywood. It looks to be as tacky and low-brow as the rest of this Pigeon Fudge place."
"Yeah."
Chiun sighed. "And you are right." This time Remo said nothing.
"I have detected the smell on this bus. The poison used on the people to make them into killers. It was not here before and now it is. I found it hard to believe."
"You didn't have faith in me."
"You were suffering from the arrogance that comes of being a newly appointed Reigning Master. Your pride tainted your judgment."
"Not enough to make me wrong."
"This is so."
"So?"
"So I will not hold your unseemly outburst against you."
"Thanks a whole lot."
Chiun nodded magnanimously. "You are welcome."
Chapter 23
Just because you were a biker didn't mean you were a bad guy. Some bikers repaired PCs or sold advertising for the local newspaper and restricted their biker activities to a few hours on a Friday night. Then there were the beer-drinkers and hell-raisers. The kind who got arrested every once in a while and maybe had a few turf wars and maybe sold a few drugs.
And then there were the serious hard-case bikers. The true one-percenters. They hated the world because, for whatever reason, the world hated them.
But there were some hard-ass bikers that even the one-percenter subculture thought were beneath its dignity. They called themselves the Smoking Hogs, but other gangs called them Mollyriders, or Hell's Pigeons, or Pigeon Fudge-Packers. From Louisville to Charlotte the Hogs were a laughingstock.
Donald Deemeyer had heard the laughter. It hurt your feelings to be laughed at like that, you know? Some of his gang actually moved away from Pigeon Fudge and tried to integrate into a more respected motorcycle social club. It never worked out. They always found out where you came from, and then you got laughed out of town-in fact, you got laughed all the way back to Pigeon Fudge, Tennessee.
And that kind of ridicule, year after year, it got to you, you know? If made you feel bad. Made you kind of bitter.
Donald Deemeyer found a useful outlet for that anger. It happened one night when the Smoking Hogs attended a biker festival at a roadside motel in the Smokies. It was an annual event, with motorcycle social clubs from all over the region.
The taunting started early this year. The new leader of the Raleigh Rampagers seemed to think the Smoking Hogs came just for his entertainment.
Donald Deemeyer finally got fed up and called the Raleigh Rampager leader a pussy. The Smoking Hogs jumped on their bikes and the Rampagers roared out after them, pursuing them on the twisting mountain roads. When the Rampagers closed in, the Hogs let them have it.
Eight quarts of motor oil.
The Rampagers slipped and slid and piled up on the mountain road. It was a mess, and a miracle that not one of them careened off the mountain. They were still trying to get back on their bikes when the Smoking Hogs reappeared.
"You Pigeon fuckers are dead! Dead!" the commanding Rampager shouted.
But he was incorrect. One too many times Donald Deemeyer had been ridiculed. He dumped the contents of a red plastic gasoline container at his feet. It trickled downhill, mixing with the oil. The other Smoking Hogs had gasoline cans, too. Donald Deemeyer lit a match and the Rampagers burned alive.
When the flames sputtered out, the Smoking Hogs returned to the biker party. It was curious how the raucous, drunken revel became deadly quiet.
"The Smoking Hogs and the Raleigh Rampagers have patched things up," Donald Deemeyer announced. "Haven't we, old buddy?" He dragged a fire-blackened corpse into the light of the bonfire.
"See? No more nasty comments about the Smoking Hogs!"
The bikers knew how to deal with a knifing or a brawl or a shooting, but this one had them stunned. "Does anybody else want to say anything about the Smoking Hogs?" Donald demanded.
Nobody did.
Needless to say, the party was over. And the Smoking Hogs were no longer welcome at regional biker gatherings. They were never charged with the mass murder of the Raleigh Rampagers, but the truth became known. The chief of police of the Town of Pigeon Fudge, Incorporated, let Donald Deemeyer know what he knew. He brought it up several times. He brought it up again that afternoon right about lunchtime.
"Yeah, so arrest me."
"I don't want to arrest you, D.D.," the chief said, ordering himself a beer from Belle, owner and proprietor of the Watering Whole. It was the closest thing Pigeon Fudge had to an honest-to-god biker bar, although the truth was it was way too clean and well-maintained for a biker bar. The place had ferns. It had old-fashioned advertisements for bars of soap framed on the walls.
It had a kids' menu, for God's sake.
"So what the hell do you want?" Deemeyer demanded. "I want you to do a favor for a friend of a friend," the chief of police said.
"A favor."
"Yeah."
"Something illegal, I assume?"
"I don't know and I don't want to know. But I know you'll get paid for the job."
"You're trying to set me up, pig," Deemeyer growled. He tried to sound gruff but, to his humiliation, the wait staff had gathered around a nearby table, presenting the diners with a cupcake stuck with a burning sparkler.
The waiters and waitresses began clapping and singing. "Hap! Hap! Hap! Hap! Happy happy birthday! We! Hope! You! Have-A! Happy happy birthday!"