"How did you do that?" Remo asked, not having seen any currency pass between Chiun and the driver or Chiun leaning into one of the man's pressure points.
"I trust in the honesty of our good driver. All in the West is not foul or ungrateful or complaining… I carp, Tieh, heh," cackled Chiun. "I carp."
There were a multitude of reasons why Chiun could not possibly carp. Remo heard every one of them in detail on the way to the board of education, the last one being it was not Chiun who had lost Kaufmann, not Chiun who had said fifty-seven different gambling odds, not Chiun who had wasted his time at that Army post. Why not Chiun? Because Chiun was not a carper.
"Look, Little Father, I'm a bit worried. Smitty said we should stay away from Chicago until he could find out more about that guy. Maybe I'm not doing the right thing."
And on this rare occasion, the Master of Sinanju yelled: "Who have I taught, you or your Smith? Who knows what is right, some seedling emperor, of which are there many each generation, or the skilled product of Sinanju? You are wonderful, fool, and you do not comprehend this yet."
"Wonderful, Little Father?"
"Do not listen to me. I carp," said Chiun. "But know you this. While you were at that Army outpost, doing what a mere emperor told you to do, you failed. Now you will succeed because you do what you know to do, what I have taught you to do. Sitting, even a stone is not safe. Rolling, it carries all before it. Go."
At this point, the cab driver who had been expecting a big tip under the reasonable assumption that a lie was worth more than the truth in the tipping market, did note that perhaps the Oriental did carp a bit. However, he did not dwell on this. He had more important and immediate things, like getting his ears out of the triangular vent window of the front seat. His nose was very close to the outside mirror and his ears pinched as he tried to pull his head back through. What he could not figure out was how his head got there. He had made the comment about carping and then was wondering how to get his ears past the metal trim, back into the cab. If he could squeeze his ears through, he could get the rest of his head back in and that would be wonderful. It was what he wanted now more than anything else in the world. He heard the Oriental tell the white guy to trust himself and then the Oriental stopped the deafening clatter for a moment and the cab driver said:
"I was sort of wondering if you could help me, sort of, get back in the cab."
"You would ask a carper for help?"
"You don't carp," said the driver. He felt a fast warmth around his ears and then his head was back inside and what was most amazing was that the window panel wasn't bent. Sir, no sir, the sir wasn't a carper at all, sir, and yes sir, it was really amazing how people would not listen to good advice these days, sir.
Chiun thought so too. Even transportation servants, when properly reasoned with, could come to correct solutions.
Inside the Chicago board of education, something was wrong. People moved quickly, some barking sharp commands. Knots of worried faces exchanged questions with each other.
"What happened?" came a voice. Several answered.
"Warner Pell. At his desk."
"What?"
"Dead."
"No."
"Yes."
"Oh, my God. No."
And while this was going on, another:
"What happened?"
"Warner Pell."
"What?"
"Dead."
"No."
"Yes."
"Oh, my God. No."
Remo intruded upon a knot of people.
"You say Warner Pell is dead?" Remo asked.
"Yes," said a fleshy-faced woman with large rhinestone eyeglasses hanging by a cord over widening breasts that seemed to strain her twenty-pound test weight nylon bra, like large formless vestigial lumps that might, ten or twenty years before, have been used to feed babies.
"How?" asked Remo.
"Shot to death. Murdered."
"Where?"
"Down the hall. Murder in the board of education. This is becoming as bad as a classroom. My God, what next?"
"As bad as a classroom," said another.
Remo spotted two blue uniforms down the other end of the hallway. He still had his Justice Department identification. He used it.
The two patrolmen nodded Remo into the office. He sensed something was wrong, not by any overt movement, but by a sudden disruption of their rhythms. Unless people were aware of it and purposely controlled it, a sudden realization of the mind was displayed in the body. With some people it was a roar, like a Gary Grant double-take. With others, it was a more subtle deadening of the facial muscles. One cop had it, turned his back to Remo and whispered to the other who, of course, did not turn around to look at Remo, but if you watched his shoulders, they jerked upward as his mind responded.
A big cardboard sign hung outside the door to the inner office. It read:
Special Advancement Progress,
Warner Pell, Assistant Director for Coordination
Inside, Pell was not coordinating anything. One arm rested on the side of a couch, the head was tilted back over a chest bib of blood. Someone had shot him several times under the chin. The dead eyes were directed at the ceiling. A police photographer clicked off a flash. Pell sat facing an undersized chair.
Remo showed his credentials.
"Know who did it?"
A detective whose white shirt had surrendered to the summer heat outside and whose face had made a similar pact with his job years before, said:
"No."
"How was it done?"
"A .25 caliber up through the chin."
"Then the killer had to be below him?"