"Isn't that kinda like being semipregnant?"
"Freight lines are suffering, as well. There was a derailment in Texarkana the night before last. I want you and Chiun to go there."
"What are we looking for?"
"According to the preliminary NTSB report, they cite human failure on the part of the engineer. The report hadn't been released to the public, but I would like you two to look into it. You will be Department of Transportation agents. Liaise with the NTSB chief investigator. He was very quick to cite drugs. Too quick. I would like to know more."
"Want us to hold him upside down and shake the truth out of him?"
"Be discreet."
"Chiun will be wearing a flaming red kimono trimmed with silver-and-gold salamanders. That discreet enough for you?"
"Why are you being so testy, Remo?"
Remo leaned against the brick. "Oh, I don't know. I guess thinking you were dead and finding out I kinda missed your sour old puss put me in a mournful mood. Now I wish you'd go back to being dead. I liked you better dead."
"I am not dead. Go to Texarkana. Report as needed."
"And happy rebirth day to you, too," said Remo, hanging up.
BACK AT THE BELL TOWER, Remo broke the news to the Master of Sinanju.
"Bad news. Smith is alive."
"He gave you the secret password, naturally?"
"What secret password?"
"Arrgh! You failed to verify it was Smith! Must I do everything myself?"
"Believe me, it's Smith. Two minutes into the conversation, I started hating the sound of his voice and he gave us a dippy assignment."
"What assignment?"
"We're looking into the train derailments, starting in Texarkana."
"I do not know that place."
"Oh, believe me, Chiun. You'll love Texas. And Texas will love you."
"Is that one of the flat, square provinces far to the west where the buffalo roam and the roughnecks play"
"The phrase is rednecks and I'm sure we'll bump into a few of those."
"We will go because we are obliged to go. And Texas will be the last place the faceless ronin will seek us."
"Let's go," said Remo as Chiun turned to pick over his steamer trunks. They were half-packed. The open ones spilled elaborate brocaded kimonos, tatami mats and many of the papyrus scrolls Chiun had brought from Sinanju, on which were inscribed the inked histories of his village.
"You will take the silver trunk with the lapis lazuli phoenixes."
Remo groaned. "Not that one again."
"Do not drop it, and above all do not open it under any circumstances."
"Didn't I lug this thing across half of Mexico last time out?"
"Now you will lug it to exotic Texarkana, where men's necks are red and never a discouraging word is heard."
"I think I'm going to rewrite that last part of the song," grumbled Remo, lifting the trunk onto his shoulders.
Chapter 11
Melvis O. Cupper didn't like what he was hearing.
"No drugs," the Texarkana medical examiner was saying.
They were in the county morgue. The body of Southern Pacific engineer Ty Hurley lay on the porcelain autopsy table, his head and a few disconnected parts piled at the top of the table, above the main portion of his torso.
Hurley looked as if he was about to be sewn back together. But Melvis knew nothing would ever put the poor bastard together again. Out of respect for the dead, in his big red hands he held his white Stetson with the black letters NTSB stenciled on the crown.
"Mind closin' his eyes for me?" Melvis said.
"They bother you?"
"I'm fixin' to talk about the poor fella behind his back and all, I don't care to have him starin' at me like that."
The ME shrugged and dropped a sheet over the head and loose parts. Somehow that made it creepier. Melvis could have sworn the shrouded eyes were peering through the thin cloth. He thought he could see the outline of the pupils against the whites.
"You sayin' absolutely no dope?"
"No drugs, no liquor. Not even aspirin traces."
"What about amphetamines? Surely you found some of those. After all, he was a dang engineer. They live on the stuff."
The ME shook his head in the negative. "No illicit substances in the system."
"Check the stomach?"
The ME lifted a clear plastic bag that sagged with a blackish substance.
"What's that?" Melvis grunted.
"His last meal. Moo Shi pork."
"Looks like regurgitated saw grass to me. How can you tell?"