Suddenly, Musso was enveloped by a whir and then a roar. Hot water poured into his face. Soap jets shot at him, filling his nose and mouth as he tried to scream from the scalding, and he could feel bubbles forming inside his head. He wrenched and yanked, trying to pull himself free, but he could not.
He fell back and looked up. The whirring came from the overhead brushes, giant brushes, two feet in diameter; they were lowering now, coming down, only inches away, then touching Musso's face. They began to spin. He felt the first bristle flick away a gouge of skin from his face. The bristles kept turning, brushing his face, it felt like nothing more than an uncomfortable sunburn, but then the pressure came down harder and harder on him, and there was stinging where the soap was jetted into it. Now he could hear his clothes ripping under the pressure of the brushes. There was more steaming hot water. Then Musso remembered nothing.
Remo waited a full ten minutes at the control panel of the car wash. Then he flipped the lever that activated the conveyor chains and the Cadillac began to lurch forward. Remo fished again into his pocket.
When his body was found the next morning, Musso would be dry and sparkling. Remo had thrown in an extra quarter to give him the special diamond-hard wax finish.
Back in the car, Chiun was still looking at the map. "Korea is not on this map," he said as Remo got behind the wheel.
"No. It's a map of California," Remo said.
"A map without Korea is no map at all," Chiun said, rolled down his window and tossed the map out onto the crushed rock driveway.
"Tell me," he added, "are you always so melodramatic?"
"Only when I know you're watching, little father," Remo said, driving away.
"Watching? Who would watch such a display?"
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
It was growing dark when they got back to town but Wyatt's black-and-white squad car was still parked in front of his office. Remo and Chiun parked across the street in a supermarket parking lot and waited.
It was almost an hour before Wyatt stepped from his front door. Remo spotted his Stetson rolling from side to side on his head as he walked around to get into his car. He still carried the brown leather valise.
Wyatt paused at his door a moment, then looked both ways before sliding in behind the wheel.
He pulled from the parking spot, drove to the end of the block and turned left, heading out of town. Remo eased out of his parking spot and fell in line, a car behind Wyatt, keeping his eyes trained on the oval stoplights on the back of the sheriff's car.
Then Wyatt turned again and he was moving out, faster now, out onto the highway leading up into the San Bernardino Mountains. It was dark now. Remo turned off his lights and drove in darkness, two hundred and fifty yards behind Wyatt.
Remo recognized the road. It was the way to the Richter Institute. So it was Dr. Quake.
Now there could be no mistake about their destination." Wyatt turned off the main highway onto the narrow branch that led only to the shelf of mountain on which the institute was located.
Rerno kept his two hundred and fifty yards distance. Then up ahead, he saw the stop-lights on Wyatt's car flash on and off as he tapped the brake, then come on to stay as he rolled to a stop. Remo quickly shifted into low, to brake the car, then into neutral and turned off the key so Wyatt could not hear the motor. He let the car roll forward, slowing it with his parking brake, finally rolling it to a stop in the darkness one hundred yards behind Wyatt.
That was odd, he thought. Wyatt had stopped short of the bridge that led up into the institute's parking area. Then Wyatt was out of the car. Instead of heading up toward the institute, he began walking along the base of the cliff. Remo remembered the trailer there. He had seen the Volkswagen bus parked in front of it the first day. It was the girls' trailer. The twins. Jacki and Jill. They were behind the quakes.
He had been a damn fool not to realize it before. Of course. They had the device. Probably had made more than one of them. Poor dumb Dr. Quake knew nothing about it. The women's libbers, they were doing it. Probably just for the dough.
He tapped Chiun on the shoulder. "Follow him," he said softly. "See what he does and where he goes. I'll meet you up there in the parking lot."
Chiun stepped away from the car, a tiny little man in a black robe. He took two steps away from the car, then vanished in the blackness of the night.
Chiun was Ninja, of the Oriental magical men who could follow a bird in flight, who could appear and disappear at will; the invisible men of the Orient. Remo knew, intellectually, that there was no magic; that it was all tricks and training. But beyond intellect, he knew too that with Chiun it was more than tricks and training. It had started that way. But it had become a magic of its own.
Wyatt whistled tunelessly to himself as he stepped heavily along the broken earth that marked the location of the San Andreas fault. Do no good to fall in, he told himself. No good at all.
And only three feet from him, but unseen, unheard, undreamed of, followed Chiun, his steps timed with Wyatt's, moving softly, sideways, not even breathing. He could have followed at a distance. A matador could have worked three feet from the bull's horns. But if he was a good one, he didn't have to. Chiun was a good one.
Remo waited and then started the motor again. As quietly as he could, he drove ahead, past Wyatt's parked car, across the wooden bridge and up into the institute's empty parking lot where he backed the car into a corner, out of sight of the roadway.
It had been the girls. And the dead men? The water-laser had been used to crush them. That was why their bodies were wet around the waist: the force of water had been used to drive their intestines from their bodies. Probably after sex, when they were too weak to resist strongly, he thought, remembering the open flies on the trousers of the men in the ditch.
Remo sat in the car, silent now, and remembered a lot of things, things he should have noticed at the start if he had been any kind of detective at all. How the girls dodged questions yesterday about the two Mafia men they had gone off with. The giggle when one said something about picking the men up "along the road."
He remembered something else too. Leaving his own house this afternoon and seeing the bright blue had come to use it on him. After they had drained and exhausted him.
He smiled to himself. Score one for Remo, As a matter of fact, score two.
He did not hear the car door open. He knew Chiun was there only when he felt the pressure of someone sitting next to him on the seat.
"Where did he go?" Remo asked.
"There is a trailer there. He carried, the suitcase in and put it in the refrigerator. I took it out. Here it is."
Down below, Remo heard Wyatt's car start up and a moment later, he saw the oval tail-lights speeding down the road.
Chiun had the money on his lap. What would happen if they didn't put it back in the girls' trailer?
Let's just see, Remo said to himself.
He started the motor and drove out of the parking lot. Smith'd be happy to get his money back. And Remo would be happy to get the girls.
But when he got back to his house, the girls had gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
"He was the bravest man I ever met.
"He was the smartest, finest, one hundred percent American I ever met.
"He was the nemesis of all law-breakers, no matter how big or powerful they might be."
"He" was Sheriff Wade Wyatt and he was dead. He lay naked in the master bedroom of his ranch-style house, under the seven-foot square blow-up of the raising of the flag at Mount Suribachi with the photographer's name blacked out in the corner.
The bed around his midsection was soaked with water, and his entrails fought their way out of his mouth. His eyes were opened wide in deadly horror.
Looking down on the sheriffs body, working out the phrases of his eulogy, sucking on a Mary Jane, was his deputy, Brace Cole. It had not occurred to him yet that the sheriff had met a terrible death.
Cole was ready now, in case he should be asked for a statement by anyone.
So he looked around the room. He saw no clues. He looked at Sheriff Wade Wyatt's body. Just like the two guineas that they found dead in the ditch. Just like Feinstein and that geology fellow from Washington.
The men in the ditch. What was it Wyatt had said? "I wouldn't be surprised if he had something to do