The general consensus was that it was Freddy Fish, the class clown. Until somebody remembered that Freddy had died attempting to hotwire his front door bell into a car battery three April Fools' ago.
Somebody got the courage to pull off the pumpkin. It refused to come off. But a lightning bolt of blood did trickle down from under the man's neck.
Someone laughed and said it was colored Karo syrup. He rubbed a fingertip in the goo and brought it to his mouth. When it tasted salty instead of sweet, he started heaving.
Cookie screamed.
When the paramedics arrived, naturally they removed the jack-o'-lantern so as to give the victim CPR. The moment the pumpkin came off, a woman shouted "My God! It's Lewis!"
"Who?"
"Lewis Theobald."
"Jesus, you're right. He's hardly aged at all!"
"Well, he ain't gonna age anymore."
"Poor Lew. What will his parents say?"
It was unanimously decided to turn over the proceeds of the Class of '72 raffle to Lewis Theobald's survivors. Cookie went along with a sick smile. She had had the raffle rigged so she would win.
By that time, Remo was miles away. He felt sad. He knew that if he could ever have attended one of his own high school reunions, he would have had no more in common with his old classmates than he'd had with the roomful of strangers he'd just fooled.
For everything he had told Manuel the Weasel-destined to be dumped into a potter's field when the coroner learned that Lewis Theobald was already buried in Ohio-was true. Remo Williams had been officially erased so that he could become CURE's enforcement arm. He had lost his name, his identity, his friends-he had no family-and his face. Only recently, he had gotten that back through plastic surgery. But as comforting as that was, it wasn't enough. Remo wanted more. He wanted a life. A normal life.
Remo had long ago ceased to be normal when Chiun, the elderly Master of Sinanju, had taken it upon himself to train Remo in the assassin's art known as "Sinanju." From this training, Remo had emerged a Master of Sinanju himself, the first and greatest martial art. There was almost no feat the human body was capable of that Remo could not match. Or exceed. He had become, in a literal sense, a superman, albeit an inconspicuous one.
It wasn't enough. He wanted more. Or perhaps it was less. He wanted a home of his own and a family.
He decided he would take it up with Upstairs. Chiun was in the middle of contract negotiations.
Pulling over to a roadside pay phone, Remo picked up the receiver and thumbed the 1 button. He held it down. That triggered an automatic dialer sequence that rang a blind phone in an artist's studio in Wapiti, Wyoming, and was rerouted to Piscataway, New Jersey, before finally ringing on a shabby desk in a shabby office overlooking Long Island Sound.
"Smitty. Remo. The Weasel is a dead duck."
"Remo," said the lemony voice of Harold W. Smith, director of Folcroft Sanitarium, in Rye, New York-the cover for CURE. "You have called just in time. There has been an event on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue."
"Nuclear?"
"No."
"Then what do you mean by 'event'?"
Smith cleared his throat. He sounded uncomfortable. That could mean anything.
"Smitty?" Remo prompted.
"Sorry. Chiun has already left for the site."
"Chiun? Then it must be serious, if you're rash enough to let him run loose unsupervised."
"It is unprecedented, I agree."
"Is it something you can explain in twenty-five words or less?" Remo wanted to know.
The line was very quiet. "No," Smith said at last.
Remo switched ears. "I'm not up for charades, Smitty. I've been strangling weasels, remember?"
Smith cleared his throat again. Whatever was bothering him, obviously it was big. Remo decided to press his advantage.
"You know, Smitty," Remo began casually, "I've been thinking. Ever since you threw Chiun and me out of our own house, we've been footloose vagabonds. I'm sick of it. I want a permanent campsite."
"See Randal Rumpp," Smith blurted.
"The real-estate developer? You got an in with him?"
"No. The-er-event is at the Rumpp Tower."
"There's that word again. 'Event.' Can I have a tiny clue?"
"People are-um-trapped inside the building."
"Okay."
"And people who go in-ah-never come out again."
"Terrorists?"
"I wish it were only that," Smith sighed. Then the words came rushing out. "Remo, this is so far beyond anything we've ever faced before, that I am at a complete loss to account for it. Please go to the Rumpp Tower and evaluate the situation."
Harold Smith sounded so ragged-voiced that Remo forgot all about pressing his advantage.
"Is Chiun in any danger down there?" he asked.
"We may all be in danger if this event spreads."
"I'm on my way."
Before Remo could hang up, the normally unflappable Smith said a strange thing.
"Remo, don't let it get you, too."
Chapter 3
The Rumpp Tower occupied half a city block at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-sixth Street, abutting the quiet elegance of Spiffany's.