After he left for his gate, she barged into line and accosted the same reservations clerk.
"I need to go where that tall drink of ugly is going."
"Brownsville, Texas."
"Right. Texas. I'm going there."
The reservations clerk cut her an open-ended return ticket to Brownsville, Texas, and Tammy loitered at an adjoining gate until the last boarding call came. She slipped aboard and took her seat without being noticed by Wurmlinger.
At Brownsville, she was one of the first off the plane, which put her in a position to grab a cab before Wurmlinger collected his luggage.
The cabbie wanted to know where she was going.
"Just get me out of the airport, and I'll get back to you," Tammy told him, snapping open her cell phone.
She dialed Clyde Smoot in New York.
"What is Dr. Wurmlinger's address again?"
"Didn't you find him?" Smoot asked.
"I'm on center stage in something bigger than 'X-Files.' Just give me the address, Clyde."
After it hit her ears, Tammy repeated it to the driver, and he gave the cab real gas.
"This," Tammy said, "is the way to cover breaking news."
Chapter 22
Remo Williams was walking the halls of Castle Sinanju in North Quincy, Massachusetts.
He was bored. There was nothing to do. Chiun was closeted in his private room doing God alone knew what while Grandma Mulberry-or whatever her name was-haunted various rooms like a cantankerous Korean ghost.
Remo avoided her at all costs, but it was hard. She roamed from room to room dusting and cleaning and cackling to herself. Chiun claimed she was singing an old Korean love song. To Remo, it sounded like a hen cackling.
At six o'clock, he checked in with the local news. Since Chiun was busy, that meant Remo could watch the newscaster of his choice. That meant Channel 4. The other two channels both boasted a reporter named Bev Woo. They were not the same person. It was a local oddity that created no end of problems for Remo if they had to watch any Woo. Chiun insisted on watching the dumpy, middle-aged Bev Woo, whom he had dubbed the incomparable Woo. Remo preferred the lithe and chipper Bev Woo, whom Chiun detested. But since he had a real choice, Remo went with the third option, Channel 4, where a new Asian anchorette with the unlikely name of Dee-dee Yee held sway.
It turned out to be a slow news day. A drunken car crash led the top of the news. A record-sized blue shark had been captured in a Kingsport fisherman's net, and the weather for tomorrow was promised to be "springlike." Since this was New England, that probably meant rain. Maybe even hail. Brimstone was also possible.
At the end of the broadcast, the anchor said goodbye, and the station immediately cut into a bumper that rehashed the lead stories the station had recapped two seconds earlier, adding, "Tune in at eleven for details."
"Why do they always do that?" Remo muttered. Increasingly, it seemed that the news had more teasers for the next segment or the next newscast than hard news itself. He wondered if there was some kind of plot afoot by commercial advertisers to hook America into watching what was fast becoming a perpetual, round-the-clock newscast. On second thought, maybe they saved more money teasing than reporting.
Then he remembered he had a fourth option. The Fox News Network.
The Fox report started with an update on the is-there-life-on-Mars? controversy and segued into a story about an Iowa corn farmer who claimed a "windless wind had devoured his crop."
"Are space aliens responsible for these mysterious events?" the reporter intoned. "Stay with Fox News for the other side of the news. The news the other networks dare not tell. Fox is committed to tracking down the stories no others will report. For news, think Fox."
There was nothing on the killer-bee story or the strange serial coroner deaths on both coasts. And no sign of Tammy Terrill. Remo wondered if maybe she had succumbed to delayed bee-sting shock after all.
Bored, Remo decided to rattle Chiun's cage.
"Hey, Chiun. You busy?" asked Remo, knocking on the door.
Chiun's querulous voice came through the panel. "Go away!"
"What do you mean, go away?"
"Go away. I am improving my mind."
"You're what?"
"Reading a book," Chiun explained.
"All right. All right. Sheesh."
After that, Remo decided to go for a walk.
He happened upon Grandma Mulberry, who stuck her tongue out at him and said, "Good riddance."
"Who said I was going out?" growled Remo.
"You wearing kiss-me-pretty-boy face," she tittered.
"That's it! I'm getting a room."
"Better than crouching in bush with other faggots," she taunted.
"Remind me to string you up in the nearest tree for a scarecrow," Remo snapped.
Grandma Mulberry then bestowed upon Remo a very respectable Bronx cheer. She sounded like old buzzard with stuttering gas.
On the way out, Remo noticed a book lying on the kitchen table. It was entitled The Joy of Astral Sex. Curious, he opened it up.
A quick scan showed it was some kind of New Age self-help book. Most of it concerned instructions on how to achieve an out-of-body experience. The rest focused on finding the proper disembodied sex partner, and how to do it the ectoplasmic way.
"It's the only way the old bat's going to get any," grumbled Remo, who rolled the book into a tight cylinder and fed it into the garbage disposal with grim glee.
He found himself walking along Wollaston Beach a few minutes later. The wind was flattening the gentle ripples of Quincy Bay, and in the distance Logan Airport's squat concrete control tower showed clearly.
There was no getting around it. He would have to move. Strangling the old bat was out of the question. Chiun would make his life even more miserable than she did. There was no way he was going to win. And he still didn't understand why Chiun had hired a housekeeper in the first place. They had gotten along fine, just the two of them, for more years than Remo cared to count.
It would be hard to live apart from the old reprobate, but it was either that or put up with snide insults for the rest of his days.
Remo was so intent on his thoughts he didn't notice the auburn-haired woman until she practically stood in his path.