"Still your tongue," Chiun hissed.
"Well, we have had old people on before," Cindee said.
"He's not doing it," Remo told her. "Chiun, Smith would have a heart attack if you went on 'Winner.'"
"He has had them before and yet still lingers to vex the living," the Master of Sinanju said. "Worry not about Smith's strong heart, but about my weak one, which you have broken in your mad desire to hasten me out to pasture."
"You could be interesting," Cindee admitted.
"Not could be," Chiun corrected, "am."
Remo shook his head firmly. "He is not interesting and he is not going on some game show where the other contestants vote the rest off the show. And I'll tell you why. He wouldn't hunt, he wouldn't forage, he wouldn't lift a goddamn finger to help anyone else out. He'd be the laziest sack of egomaniacal selfishness you ever had on that show. He would be the first-the very first-they would vote off, and then he'd win the million bucks because the whole rest of the cast along with the production staff would get snuffed out one by one on national TV like tiki torches until someone cut him a check. He is not interested."
"Silence, O basher of the aged and infirm," Chiun hissed.
"Oh, if you're not in good health, we couldn't use you," Cindee apologized.
"I am healthy as healthy can be," Chiun said rapidly, with a wave of his frail hand. He pitched his voice low. "Do not ruin this for me," he warned Remo.
Remo threw up his hands. "Fine. Kill Smith by going on national TV. Just remember, you've lost your fallback position. The little prince is on his way out the door."
Cindee was pulling some business cards from her pocket. She passed one to the Master of Sinanju.
"Here's the address to send your demo tape to." Chiun happily accepted the card. It disappeared inside the voluminous folds of his kimono.
Cindee tried to give Remo one of the cards. As he walked along, he tore the card to confetti with blurry hands and let the hundred fragments flutter to the cold street.
"Don't you want to be famous?" Cindee asked.
"Fame ain't all it's cracked up to be," Remo said. "For what I do, reputation is better. The parts of the world where they need to know me? Believe me, they know me."
"That doesn't make sense," Cindee said. "Reputation is fame. If someone knows you, they know you."
Remo shook his head. "They only need to know what I am, which they do. The 'who' changes. That little glory hound back there-" he nodded over his shoulder to where the Master of Sinanju padded along behind them -he's the current who. I'm the next who. There have been five thousand years' worth of us. The faces have changed, the reputation remains the same. And we got all that without sucking up to key demos or studying overnight ratings in Pittsburgh."
She saw that he spoke without boasting. As if he knew what he was saying to be true. And the way he walked. More a glide than a normal man's stride. He had a confidence and inner grace that she found at once mysterious and sexy. He seemed to just know what and who he was.
Cindee was a twenty-eight-year-old Australian woman who had risen in the American TV ranks to be producer of one of the biggest cultural phenomenons to hit the small screen since Uncle Miltie donned his first dress back in television's golden age. She was well on her way up the professional ladder. Cindee Maloo had arrived. Yet for some reason he made her feel as if she'd done nothing with her life. She suddenly felt the need to justify herself to this stranger.
"I didn't start out doing 'Winner,'" Cindee confided all at once.
"Are you still here?" Remo asked, irritated.
"'The Box,'" she said. "That was something I produced all by myself for one of the nets last year. We took fourteen real people and put them in a big steel box and buried it under a pile of sand. Every day for two weeks the people in the box would vote one person out of the box."
"I never heard of it," Remo said. Cindee's face grew glum.
"Well, that's because things didn't go too well with the pilot." She raised a gloved finger. "Technically, it wasn't my fault. I assumed someone else would figure out all that stuff about air holes and oxygen. Fortunately, all our contestants had signed releases, so their heirs didn't have much of a leg to stand on legally."
"As reality shows go, I guess 'This Old House' doesn't cut it anymore," Remo said dryly.
"I don't do boring," Cindee said. "The public likes their stuff to be edgy. I did another pilot, this one for syndication. It was called 'Sea of Love.' In that one we took seven men and one woman and put them on a yacht out in the middle of San Francisco harbor. Every day for a week the woman voted one man off the boat till only one was left."
"I sense a common thread here," Remo said.
Cindee bristled. "There isn't one," she insisted. "If you're saying that they're just like 'Winner' and all I was doing was copying that show, you're wrong. They were both very different. One was underground and one was on a boat in the water. Are you stupid or something?"
"Yes, he is," Chiun replied.
"So what happened to the boat one?" Remo asked.
Cindee flushed. "It wasn't my fault," she said. "Someone else suggested that it'd be sexy to make them go skinny-dipping by moonlight. Who knew there were sharks swimming around in San Francisco harbor?"
"I did," said both Remo and Chiun.
"Well, I should have hired you both as consultants, shouldn't I?" Cindee said sarcastically. "Anyway, my shows didn't get picked up, but they got noticed. That's how I got the job with 'Winner.'"
They had arrived at the steps of the police station. Remo turned to Cindee Maloo.
"Are you through following me?" he asked.
Cindee gave a reluctant frown. "I still think you'd be great on the show. You've got something. I think people would find you appealing. Anyway, your friend's got my card if you change your mind."
Remo was grateful when Cindee and her cameraman turned to go. As the Winner crew went back down the street, Remo and Chiun mounted the station house steps.
"You know we're being watched," Remo said to the Master of Sinanju once they were alone.
"Of course," Chiun sniffed, insulted. "I am not an invalid. They have been following us for ten minutes."
At the top of the stairs Remo shot a glance back at the street. The police car that had been tailing them ever since they'd left the front of the ex-president's building was slowing to a stop in front of the precinct house.
"We don't exactly look like we live around here," Remo said. "Probably just making sure we're okay." As a former beat cop, Remo was heartened to see there were still dedicated officers who took seriously their duty to protect the public. Leaving the pair of uniformed patrolman out in the street, he ushered the Master of Sinanju inside the station.
Remo felt the vibrations of a pair of video cameras as soon as he stepped inside. One was directed at the door; the other swung his way as he walked up to the desk.
Chiun was playing coy with the cameras again. He found a blind spot where neither lens could track him, settling on a bench where several handcuffed men awaited processing.
When Remo presented his phony FBI identification at the desk, the sergeant on duty seemed a little more interested than he should. He studied Remo's picture ID and his face several times before allowing him inside.
"You coming with, Little Father?"
The old Korean shook his head. "This seems like as good a place as any to observe the collapse of Western civilization," he replied.
Leaving the Master of Sinanju in the lobby, Remo followed a uniformed officer into the bowels of the station.
The cells in the back of the station were full. Remo found that the Harlem doctor had been right about the rioters. Many of the people in the cells he passed seemed lost and frightened, completely out of place in a jail environment. The people were mostly middle-aged or older. Women outnumbered men.