"Okay," Cindee droned to the doctor. "That was really fascinating stuff. I was-wow-just, well, fascinated. Bye." She turned to go.
"But he didn't even turn his camera on," the doctor said, face collapsing in disappointment.
"Outta tape," Cindee confided.
"No, I'm not," said the cameraman.
Cindee clouted the camera operator in the back of the head before spinning around and marching away. "Sorry," Remo said to the doctor after Cindee Maloo and her Winner crew were gone.
As the desperate physician looked for someone else to tell his story to, Remo and the Master of Sinanju headed back down the sidewalk.
In the street beyond the crowd of babbling reporters, two men watched Remo and Chiun go.
The pair of Harlem police officers sat in a cruiser at the edge of the crowd.
An alert had come over the radio two hours ago. All cruisers in the area had been given a description of two men, a young white and an elderly Asian. In Harlem, a pair like that would stick out like sore thumbs.
The men in question were believed to be armed and were without doubt very, very dangerous.
Starting their engine, the police officers drew cautiously away from the curb. Slowly so as not to attract attention, they began trailing the suspects down the litter-strewn street.
Chapter 8
With the mob dispersed and the former president safe, technically Remo's work was done. He would have been okay to head back to Folcroft. But Folcroft wasn't any fun at the moment, what with all the cops and dead bodies and crazy people. And even if Smith allowed them to stay in residence a few more days, Remo wasn't really in the mood to be cooped up in his quarters surrounded by packing crates and staring at the walls. Not with the Master of Sinanju in his current snotty mood.
The Harlem doctor had sown a tiny seed of doubt in Remo's mind. When he asked a bystander, Remo found out that most of the rioters had been brought to the same nearby police station. He decided to check them out before leaving.
On their way to the station he checked on his car. Since the most hardened Harlem criminals usually went home come sunup, the hours from dawn to noon were low tide for criminal activity. It was a little after seven in the morning, and all the pros were safely tucked away in bed. Consequently, instead of being completely stripped, Remo's car was only half-dismantled.
"You've got twenty minutes," Remo announced to the gang of eight grammar-school kids who were tearing apart his car like wrench-wielding locusts.
"What you talking 'bout?" one of the kids demanded.
He was thirteen, looked nineteen and had a Glock pistol jutting from the waistband of his exposed underpants.
Remo took the gun, shattered it into three fat pieces and skipped the parts down the street. Eight young jaws dropped.
"Twenty minutes, class," Remo repeated. "I come back and my car's not back together by then, you're all going to be victims of white rage."
Remo grabbed the oldest kid. "You're elected hall monitor." Climbing one-handed, he hauled the youth up a telephone pole. He hung him by his exposed underwear from the shattered overhanging streetlight.
"You can oversee reconstruction," he said. "Anyone leaves, you're telling me names and addresses."
"Yessir!" the terrified kid said.
When Remo slid back to the ground, the others were already frantically trying to reassemble the car. The Master of Sinanju was supervising their work with a bland eye. As Remo headed off to the police station, the old man padded up beside him.
"What kind of children are you raising in this country?" the old Korean asked.
"No one's raising them," Remo said. "That's the problem. America's inner cities have turned into Children of the Corn with crappier production values."
The Master of Sinanju stroked his thread of beard. "Perhaps it is not so bad that you wish to shoot me like the old horse that pulls the milk wagon, Remo. At the speed with which this nation is falling into ruin, it would only be a matter of time before a building drops on my head anyway."
"Keep picking that scab, and I'll never take over as Reigning Master," Remo warned. "Those lazy slugs back in Sinanju'd have to find real jobs. How would it look to your ancestors if you became the first Master who trained a student who decided to ditch that craphole of a village?"
"You would not be the first," Chiun said coldly. Remo realized he'd misspoken. He had forgotten about Chiun's nephew, Nuihc, the renegade Master of Sinanju who had trained Jeremiah Purcell in the ancient martial art.
Rather than dig himself in deeper, he clammed up. As the two walked along, Remo noted that they had drawn attention from the surrounding buildings. About a dozen video cameras were trained on them from the windows.
The riot and the subsequent police and news activity had drawn them out. The locals were hoping to catch an instance of police brutality they could sell to the networks.
Chiun floated away from the cameras, finding blind spots and shadows where no lens could find him. Remo had his own technique for avoiding identification. Every time he felt the pressure waves of a camera aimed his way, he vibrated his facial muscles.
Later on, when the camera operators tried to view the image on the tape, all they'd see was a blur where a face should have been.
Remo had successfully negotiated his way through the gauntlet of window cameras when he spied yet another lens up ahead. It was nestled in a clump of ugly, snow-draped weeds that huddled at the corner of a squalid tenement. He recognized the face of the cameraman.
Marching over, Remo dragged Cindee Maloo's camera operator from the bushes. The little red light on his camera was lit. It was still aimed at Remo. "What the hell is this?" Remo demanded.
He addressed not the cameraman, but a broken-down wall that rimmed the adjacent vacant lot. A sheepish Cindee Maloo rose into view from behind the shattered wall. The cameraman turned the lens to the Winner producer.
"I didn't get your name," Cindee asked.
Remo's face fouled. "Bunny Wigglesworth," he said, dropping the cameraman to the sidewalk.
"You're not very nice, are you?" Cindee frowned. "That could work. Someone nasty's always fun to toss into the mix. Are you a struggling actor?"
"What is all this?" Remo asked. "Don't you have a game show to go rig?"
Cindee waved a dismissive hand. "The cameras are rolling continuously back there. Whatever happens, we'll get it. Right now I'm thinking ahead. The next season of 'Winner' will have to get started soon. We've gotta get another cast assembled. You want to test for it?"
"Oh, brother," Remo exhaled.
He started down the sidewalk. Cindee and her cameraman hurried to keep up.
"Seriously," Cindee insisted, dogging him. "You're kind of good-looking, in a mean sort of way. "
"Kind of thanks a heap, in an up-yours sort of way." Remo snarled.
"I will do it," Chiun announced.
Cindee screamed, startled by the new voice. She wheeled around, expecting a mugger or worse. "Oh, it's you," she breathed when she saw the wisp of an Asian trailing behind her. "I didn't see you there." She sniffled relief and rubbed her hands for warmth.
"I will do your program," Chiun repeated.
Remo could see the frozen earnestness in the old man's weathered face. The Master of Sinanju was serious.