And Remo walked off, whistling. He did not walk far-only to the closest subway stop, where he took the Red Line through Boston to the city of Quincy, where he now lived.
He wasn't a big fan of the subway. But he had driven in Boston traffic enough by now to understand he had a better chance of survival if he went over Niagara Falls in a Dixie cup.
Chapter 3
From the North Quincy stop, it was a short walk to the place Remo Williams called home.
The sight of it made Remo long for the days when he lived out of a suitcase. Remo had always envisioned that one day he would live in a nice house with a white picket fence-not in a baroque monstrosity of sandstone and cement.
It had once been a church. It still looked like a church. Or more like a church than anything else. Depending on which compass direction you were approaching it from, it resembled, variously, a Swiss chalet, a Tudor castle, or the condominium from hell.
Right now, it looked like a Gothic warehouse because of all the delivery trucks parked around it. There was a UPS truck, a Federal Express van, another from Purolator Courier, and numerous other package delivery service vehicles.
"What's Chiun up to now?" Remo muttered, quickening his pace.
He caught up with the UPS driver as he was dropping off a plain cardboard box.
"This for a Chiun?"
The man looked at his clip. "The invoice says M.O.S. Chiun."
"I'll take it."
"If you sign for it, it's yours. My responsibility stops at the front steps."
Remo signed "Remo Freud" and took the box. He had to put it down in order to climb the steps. The steps were piled with boxes of all types. He was clearing a path as the other drivers came out of their trucks, their arms laden with boxes of all shapes.
"What is all this stuff?" Remo demanded after he had finished signing for six more packages.
No one knew. Or cared. So Remo reluctantly accepted the boxes and added them to the pile.
He carried what he could inside and set them down at the mailbox buzzers. In the days when Remo was a Newark cop and he had to get into an apartment building, he had used a little trick. Press all the buzzers at once. Usually, somebody would ring him in.
In this case, there were only two inhabitants distributed among the sixteen units that made up the church-turned-condo-himself and Chiun, Reigning Master of Sinanju, the ancient house of assassins which had operated at the edges of history for thousands of years, and to which Remo now belonged.
A squeaky voice called down from above, "Remo, is that you?"
"No," Remo called up, "it's me and the entire Sears gift department."
"My packages have come?"
"They're piled to the freaking ceiling."
The Master of Sinanju floated down the steps. He was a frail wisp of a little Korean with a face that was like a wrinkled-up papyrus mask. The top of his head shone under the lights, bald but for the patches over his ears, where cloudy white tufts of hair clung stubbornly. He wore a chrysanthemum pink kimono bordered in white silk that made him look like a thousand-year-old Easter egg.
His wizened face puckered up in pleasure, bringing a twinkle to his clear hazel eyes.
He fell upon the box with long fingernails that were like X-acto knives. They sliced plastic packing tape cleanly and flaps popped upward like ugly cardboard-colored flowers.
"Where did you get this stuff?" Remo asked, curious.
"From the television."
"Say again."
"It is a new custom. One watches television and one merely calls certain individuals and reads to them certain useless pieces of information and in return they send interesting presents."
"What useless pieces of information?"
"Oh, mere numbers."
"Charge card numbers!"
Chiun made a small mouth. "Possibly."
"Little Father," Remo said patiently, "you know Smith's been on our case about spending. The new President's been after Smith to cut his budget and help reduce the deficit and-" Remo stopped. The Master of Sinanju was holding up a silver utensil like a spatula.
"What's that?" Remo demanded.
"It is a cheese fletcher."
"Cheese! We don't eat cheese. We can't eat cheese."
"We might one day have company who does and they will be insulted if we do not fletch their cheese properly. "
Chiun continued picking over his booty. One box he regarded disdainfully and passed to Remo saying, "This is for you."
"It is?" said Remo, his face momentarily softening. "You bought me a present?"
"No. It is from Smith."
"Why would Smith send me a present?"
Chiun shrugged. "He said something about it the other day. I believe it is a pox."
Remo's face went blank. "Pox? Isn't that a disease?"
"I do not know, for I do not get diseases."
Remo knelt down and ripped open the box. Inside a roll of bubblewrap was the largest, ugliest telephone Remo had ever seen.
"This is a fax machine!" Remo blurted. "Why would Smith send us a fax machine?"
"Possibly because he could not obtain a proper pox."
Remo carried the fax upstairs to the main room of the building, a huge four-windowed crenellated turret that corresponded to the steeple of the former house of worship. It was crammed to the high rafters with all manner of knickknacks and electronic equipment, ranging from microwave ovens to blenders.