On the way back to the motel, Remo spotted the Master of Sinanju walking along, his hands tucked into the sleeves of his sky blue kimono. Remo stopped and rolled down his window.
"Going my way?" he asked cheerfully.
Chiun looked at him with a wrinkling nose and disdainful eyes. "Have you showered?"
"No," Remo admitted.
"Then I am not going your way, unclean one."
"Oh, come on. Don't be that way."
"You smell worse than before," Chiun said pointedly.
"I just attended an autopsy."
"Then it is doubly important that you shower," sniffed the Master of Sinanju, hurrying on.
Remo let him go. He drove past, watching the one who taught him Sinanju in his rearview mirror with unhappy eyes.
"Every time I meet somebody I like, he's gotta pull this tired old crap," muttered Remo.
Chapter 11
The conventional wisdom was that Thrush Limburger would end up like Morton Downey. His ego is too big, they said. He's growing too fast. People listen to him just to laugh at him, others insisted. Just you watch, once his ratings start to fall, they'll find that windbag in some airport men's room stall, his head shaved, Mirrors of Venus-the symbol for womankind-lipsticked all over his dazed face, babbling that the "Feminasties" are out to get him.
They said that in his first year. They said it in his second. When he jumped to television, they claimed it would be the kiss of death. Thrush Limburger. He's so "hot" he's on TV. Ha-ha-ha.
The conventional wisdom said that when a trend or movement or whatever hit the tube, that meant it was on its way out, if not already dead.
Everybody knew it. Everybody except Thrush Limburger, that is. He was already hard at work on his next bestseller, I Told You So, as his red, white, and blue remote broadcast RV rolled into the town of Ukiah, the proud letters TTT NETWORK emblazoned on the side.
"As I speak to you from the rolling hills of Mendocino County," Thrush boomed into the microphone, simultaneously typing on his portable computer, whose keys were padded so he could write and broadcast simultaneously, "I am struck by how gullible large segments of the American people have become in our electronic age. Let's take Theodore Soars-With-Beagles-I mean Eagles. Now the press is reporting that he's a full-blooded Chinchilla Indian. My friends, I have combed every encyclopedia, spoken to noted anthropologists and ethnologists, and they all tell me that there is no such being as a Chinchilla Indian. Now I admit even I had to look this up. I couldn't be certain. Sure, it sounded funny, but I suppose it's possible for there to be such a thing. After all, there's a tribe calling itself the Pontiacs, and they have nothing to do with the auto industry. So let me share something with you."
Abruptly, Limburger gave his jowly right cheek a slap with his fleshy right hand. The sound was like raw pork chops colliding.
His audience accepted the mushy sound without a qualm. They understood that Thrush Limburger was an excitable fellow. He often drummed his fingers, stamped his feet, and fluttered faxes and newspaper clippings into the open mike. It was part of his on-air persona, he boasted. What he neglected to mention was that Thrush Limburger suffered from a mild form of Tourette's Syndrome.
Thrush was also on a self-improvement program where if he found himself using a mushy word on the air, he would stop and slap himself in the face as an ungentle reminder that he had committed an inappropriate public utterance.
In this case, the mushy word was "share."
"Now Theodore Soars-With-Eagles calls himself a Chinchilla Indian," Thrush continued. "And that is his God-given right. He can call himself a springbok if it so pleases him. But here's a flash. There are no Chinchillas, except the furry ones women wrap around their necks. At great peril to their well-being, by the way, thanks to the animal rights crowd. For the benefit of the adherents of PAPA and Mr. Theodore Soars-With-Eagles, if you can hear me, my fine feathered friend, the correct tribal name is Chowchilla. Not Chin chilla. Chow chilla. Now I ask you, listeners, how seriously can we take the pronouncements of a self-appointed Indian spokesman if he can't even get the name of his own tribe right?"
Thrush chuckled throatily, a good-natured sound, even amplified by sound systems all across the nation. "I'll be back, after this message from our sponsor, Tipple."
Limburger popped a cassette into the rack, and as his deep orator's voice extolled the virtues of his favorite soft drink, his haberdasher, and the very loud ties he wore, he hit the intercom button and asked his assistant, "Where are we, Custer?"
"Approaching Ukiah, Thrush."
"Hot damn. You call that coroner?"
"He says he'll see you. But not on the air."
"Why not? Doesn't he know Thrush Limburger is on three-hundred-thirty stations here and in Canada, one for every blessed pound in his generously proportioned body?"
"Maybe he doesn't like the press."
"Press? I'm not the press. I'm the antipress. I'm the truth. "
"He won't budge, Thrush."
"Okay, I'm a reasonable man. We'll do it his way. What we'll do is a bunch of packaged stuff. Feminasty Report. Furry Friends Update. Liberal Valhalla. The whole works. That should give me time to talk to him, and the audience won't even miss me-because I won't ever have stopped talking."
"You got it, Thrush."
When the RV pulled up before the Esterquest and Son funeral parlor, the rear door popped open and Thrush Limburger lumbered out, the sound of his own canned voice following him in.
He was inside not ten minutes. He came out like a rogue elephant, jumping to the driver's side window and bouncing happily. The entire van rocked on its heavy-duty shocks.
"I got it!" he chortled. "I figured it out! This is perfect. This is amazing. Only Thrush Limburger could just roll into a town and crack open something that has stumped official Washington."
"You always say official Washington is made up of lukewarm chowderheads," said his assistant, behind the wheel.
"I was right then and I'm right now, Custer. Let's get on to Nirvana West, pronto. I want to bust this thing wide open from the environmentalist whackjob ground zero. Damn, am I good."
The red, white, and blue RV roared out of Ukiah trailing a long coil of carbon monoxide.
And all across American, the voice of Thrush Limburger proclaimed, "My faithful listeners, you are about to be rewarded for your loyalty to this show. In the months to come, you people are going to be able to boast that you were among the discerning multitudes who heard Thrush Limburger debunk the HELP crisis for all time. That's right, while you were listening to my Democratic Hall of Shame via the magic of audiotape, your tireless servant was lifting up rocks and digging up the unpleasant muck under them. And guess what I found? What I always find. What you expect me to find. Dramatic pause here." Thrush cleared his throat with a sound like a steamroller grumbling and lowered his voice, knowing that millions of Americans, already on the edge of their seats, would lean closer to their radios. "I found . . . the truth. And it shall set you free!"
With that, Thrush Limburger popped in an ad cassette and leaned back in his chair, his pudgy hands folding over his ample belly. A self-satisfied smile crossed his broad, open features.
Cody Custer was Thrush Limburger's chief of staff, gofer, and when necessity arose, his personal driver. Thrush Limburger did not drive. He liked to say that he had been too busy to stop and learn how. But the truth was, at three-hundred-thirty pounds, getting behind the wheel of even a Lincoln Continental was an effort for Thrush Limburger. Besides, the steering wheel always left a red crease in the rolls of fat surrounding his navel.
So he didn't drive. Cody Custer drove for him.
Two minutes out of Ukiah, a tape cassette came through a slot that connected the driver's cab with the RV body, and Thrush Limburger's voice said, "When we get there, put this out over the PA speaker. That ought to atttact a huge crowd."
"Right, Thrush."
As he piloted the TTT Network RV to Nirvana West, Cody Custer wondered how even his brilliant boss could pierce the veil of media fog that surrounded Human Environmental Liability Paradox. Sure, Thrush was a genius in his way, part philosopher, part showman. And his book had been number one on the bestseller list for three months, except for that black period when Madonna's overhyped nonbook had knocked it to the number two slot. But Thrush hadn't been inside that funeral parlor for more than ten minutes. Less.
Cody Custer's musings were interrupted when, coming around a sharp bend in the road, he was confronted with a set of California Highway Patrol saw horses.
He started compressing the brake pedal. The big RV began to slow. Rubber smoked and squealed.
There was a CHP black-and-white unit and a motorcycle, he saw, parked off on the shoulder of the highway.