The cabby called up. "You still there, buddy?"
"So far."
The taxi driver knew his streets. He ran the cab up a side street and across, getting in front of the convertible. He slammed on the brakes so hard Remo's body was thrown forward. But his feet stuck to the taxi roof as if Krazy-glued.
There was almost a collision. The red convertible J-turned, burned rubber backing up, and sped back the way it had come. In reverse.
The cabby screeched after him.
"This is a one-way street," Remo warned.
"Tell that to the other guy," the cabby snarled.
"You pull this off, and there's twenty bucks in it."
"Don't worry. The meter's running."
Squinting into the airstream, Remo saw the convertible closing in on the oncoming traffic. It would have to slow down soon, or dart up a side street. If the driver could stop in time, which Remo doubted. The maniac was doing sixty, the wrong way on a busy downtown street.
Whether the convertible would have braked in time to cut down a side street will never be known. As it passed one intersection, it ran a red light.
Coming in from the north was a Backgammon Pizza delivery truck, running a yellow.
The person who had ordered the pizza collected a free Pepperoni Supreme later that day. The next of kin of the deliveryman received a sixty-thousand-dollar death benefit, and collected one-point-three million in a wrongful-death suit from the company.
The driver of the red convertible got a pauper's grave, because he was mangled beyond recognition at the moment of impact, then incinerated to a blackened twist of meat when his gas tank ignited.
The smell of burning pizza and human flesh was not long in coming.
The taxi slowed to a stop and Remo hopped off the cab roof. The cabby came out from behind the wheel, his mouth slack in horror and his eyes sick.
Remo reached the twisted, burning mass of metal, and saw the flames shrivel and blacken the driver of the red convertible. When the flames reached the backseat, and the mailing tube, it began jumping and making popcorn sounds. A bullet whined up through the bubbling paint of the roof and knocked out an overhead streetlight.
Remo pulled the cab driver back. "Bullets," he warned.
"You a cop?" the shaken driver croaked.
Remo ignored the question. "So, what's the fare?" he asked.
"How can you think of money at a time like this?"
"Good point," Remo said cheerfully. "Can I keep the tip, too?"
The cabby picked that moment to vomit up his lunch. While he was filling the gutter, Remo slipped away.
He was not having a good day. But there's one consolation, he thought to himself. If there were only two people out to snuff Enrique Espiritu Esperanza, both are now out of the picture.
Even Harold Smith couldn't find fault with that.
Chapter 11
When Remo reached him by phone, Harold W. Smith's reaction was typically Smith.
"You say the second gunman was burned to death?"
"To a crisp," Remo said sourly. "If you're going to quote me, do it right."
"Remo, this is serious."
"The way I see it, Smitty," Remo said absently, lifting the covers of his bed to check on the first gunman, "this is a happy ending. We have our killers."
"But we do not know who hired them," Smith pointed out.
"No, but we can put on our little thinking caps and guess. General Nogeira. Since he's dead and they're dead, Chiun and I should be outta here by sundown. And not a moment too soon."
"I would rather you remained in Los Angeles, Remo."
"Sure you don't want what's behind Door Number Two?" Remo asked airily.
"Er, what do you mean?"
"I mean even as we speak, several floors over my head, Chiun is mooning over a certain hatchet-faced Korean anchorwitch."
Harold Smith sucked in a dry breath that seemed forceful enough to dislodge Remo's right eardrum. "Not Cheeta Ching?"
"Funny," Remo said dryly, "that was my exact thought when I first spotted her."
"Ah, do you think this represents a security threat?"
"If by 'threat,' you mean do I think Chiun is on the verge of making a major conquest, no."
"Good."
"On the other hand," Remo added, "she has the hots for me."
"Cheeta Ching?"
"Wants me to be her partner in procreation," Remo said lightly.
"Remo, under no circumstance are you to appear on camera with Cheeta Ching," Harold Smith said tightly.
"Smitty, where Cheeta Ching is concerned, I'm strictly behind the camera. I was running her minicam when her interview was interrupted by the sniper." "Is there a chance your camera picked up anything important?"
"Search me. I dropped it when the ruckus started. It could have picked up anything, from the sniper to Chiun. "
"Remo," Smith said, urgency coming into the lemon-flavored voice, "obtain that tape. I do not care how you do it."