"Heroin, booze, pot, even a cigarette if a person wants it badly enough. Anything will do. Food will do if your man's hungry enough. Old hat, buddy."
"Then why didn't you go along?"
"Jesus."
"That's old hat," said the maharaji.
"He is new, and I will see him fresh."
The young man rubbed his moon face and thought, then said, very slowly and very carefully:
"Do you know we bring peace of mind to thousands? And without drugs too? Thousands. Drugs are just for special cases—that we need something special from."
"You bring false peace."
"You reformed scumbags are impossible to deal with," said the maharaji.
"Praised be the Lord."
"Thank you," said Dor absent-mindedly and then realized the man wasn't talking to him.
"Tell you what," said the Blissful Master. "I think I can save your body. Let's make a deal."
"No deal," said the man. Both eyes began to twitch. Dor knew the end was near now.
"I'll give you whatever you want if you can recommend a hit man to me."
"A what?"
"A professional killer."
"No, I am gone from that life. I don't deal with those people."
"I'll tell you what. I've got five other Baptist ministers here. Five. I'll let one go if you give me the name of a good killer. I mean good. Most people are incompetent. Give me the name of a competent one, and I'll give you back one of your people to your god. How about it? A guaranteed Christian for you, against the life of some target who's most likely a heathen. Maybe even a Catholic or a Jew. You hate them, don't you?"
"No."
"I thought all you people hated each other."
"No."
"If there's one thing that abounds, it's misinformation. What about it? I'll give two. I'll be down to three Baptists then. You can't leave me with any less."
"All of them."
"All right. All of them."
"Release all of them from your evil ways, and I will, God forgive me, give you the name of a hired killer."
"Done. You have my word on everything that's sacred to me. The word of the Maharaji Gupta Mahesh Dor, the perfection on earth, the Blissful Master. My secret bond. Where can I reach the guy?"
The dying minister told of a river called the Mississippi. Up that river from New Orleans were many towns. Some were settled by the French. In one of those towns was a family named De Chef, although they used the name Hunt now. From father to son, this family had passed on its methods. They were the finest marksmen in the world. But this was twenty-five years ago. He did not know if they were still in business.
"Once in the rackets, always in the rackets," said the maharaji. "What's the name again?"
"De Chef or Hunt."
"How far upriver from New Orleans? I said, how far?"
Dor placed his hand on the man's chest. He could not feel the heartbeat. He put his ear to the pasty flesh, which felt cool. Nothing. He quickly lunged to the foot of the bed and grabbed the minister's chart, which was an unbroken line going down. There was a ballpoint pen attached to the clipboard. In a rush he wrote down the name. De Chef.
He ripped the sheet from the chart and walked to the door. In the corridor outside was one of the former Baptist ministers.
"O Blissful Master, I heard your promise to send me back to my former ways. Please don't do this. I have found truth here."
"What makes you think I would kick you out?"
"Because of the promise you made to the unenlightened one."
"Oh, to the stiff. In the room back there, right?"
"Yes. You promised by everything sacred to you."
"I'm sacred to me. You're sacred to me. We are sacred to us. That rotting carrion back in the room was unenlightened, and therefore he is not sacred. One does not desecrate sanctity by bonding it to the profane. Therefore there was never a bond in the first place."
"Praised be your eternal truth," said the man, and he covered Dor's feet with kisses. Which was hard because the Blissful Master was walking at the time. Very quickly. You had to keep a good pace or they'd get your instep all sloshed up with saliva.
"What do we have in New Orleans?" asked the Blissful Master of one of his arch-priests. "We got to have a mission there. It's a major market area. I know it."
CHAPTER FIVE
The Divine Bliss Mission on Lorky Street in San Diego stood like a fresh-washed face in a lineup of bums. Its windows were sparkling clear, its walls white with fresh paint. Around it, crumbling clapboard houses settled into their dry wooden frames, gray wood exposed like nude corpses waiting for the grave. Grass grew on Lorky Street, the last surviving remnants of what had been lawns before the neighborhood had fallen prey to a government housing policy of helping people to buy homes with no money down and with no prospect of keeping up the monthly payments. The "buyers" had lived in the houses a year or less, let them decay, then skipped on the unpaid mortgage bills, and the decayed houses stayed empty. And decayed more.
Remo looked at the street in the afternoon sunlight and sighed.
"I shipped out to Vietnam from this city. I went with a girl who lived on this street. I remember this street. It was beautiful once. I thought I was fighting so that someday I would own a home on this street. Or on one like it. I used to think a lot of things."
"A girl would go out with you the way you looked before I found you?" asked Chiun.
"I used to be a good-looking guy."
"To whom?"
"Girls," said Remo.
"Oh," said Chiun.