When Remo entered the cell, he found Minister Hal Shittman sprawled on a soiled bunk like a velour-wrapped whale. With every snoring exhale, the famous minister's giant belly deflated only to strain velour once more on the inhale. The rancid wind that passed his lips reeked of the two dozen stale Twinkies and gallon of grape Kool-Aid that had been his previous night's supper.
Only at the clank of the closing cell door did the minister awaken. As sleep fled, bleary red eyes looked up unhappily at the white man standing in his cell. "Who are you?" Shittman demanded.
"Adidas corporate lawyer," Remo said. "Since you insist on dressing in our clothes, we'd like you to either lose nine hundred pounds or stick masking tape over our logo. It's bad for business having a guy with breasts bigger than Pamela Anderson's waddling around in our sports gear."
"You ain't my lawyer," Shittman declared. "I put in a call to Mr. Johnnie. Get lost, skinny."
He flopped back on his bunk.
Remo didn't feel like wasting more time than he had to in that cell. Shittman's cologne was vying with his breath for the title of worst stink in the tristate area.
Remo drove two hard fingers into a neck that felt like sweaty pudding. He only knew he'd somehow found the proper pain receptors when Shittman's eyes sprang open wide.
"Youch!" Shittman yelped. Fat arms flailing, the minister rolled to a sitting position.
"Now that I've got your attention," Remo said, "tell me what happened last night. And make it fast, 'cause that aftershave of yours smells worse than a lying, shit-smeared teenaged girl."
The shock of pain that had shot through his body was still reverberating through his most distant extremities. The minister's great blubbery jowls jiggled in fear.
"I keep telling everybody I don't remember last night," Shittman said. "Last thing I remember I was mindin' my own business, as the black man always is. Next thing I knows, I wake up here. Racist whites made it a crime to drive while black. Now it be a crime to sit at home while black."
"You don't remember leading last night's riot?"
"I don't riot, I protest," Shittman replied. "And I sure wasn't protestin' last night. They trying to tell me I was there-they even try to shove their white programming in my head so I'll crack up and confess, but I was home. No doubt about it."
"People saw you there," Remo said.
"Liars."
"They've got you on tape."
"Computer-generated forgeries," Shittman insisted. "Phonied up by the CIA to discredit me. The government been pulling that kind of shit on me my whole life."
Remo didn't like the minister. Shittman was one of those community leaders whose job it was to jab a stick in the humming beehive of racial tensions every few months and give a good vigorous stir. Yet despite his personal distaste for the man, Remo could clearly see that the minister-at least in his own mind-was telling the truth.
"What do you mean shoving programming in your head?" Remo asked.
"That's the worst thing," Shittman moaned. "I don't know how they done it, but I can see the words. I see them right now." Bleary eyes stared at the cell wall.
"Where?" Remo asked.
"There," Shittman said, his fat face worried. He pointed at the air before him. "They there. Even though I know they not, they there. All kind of just floating there. Like when you look at something for a long time and then look away. How you still can see it? That's what I see."
Remo saw the troubled urgency on the minister's face.
"What do these words say?" he asked.
"Well, there be some stuff about the old president," Shittman said. "The words are telling me to surround his building and not let him out till morning. They look like they fading. But the ones I see strongest are just two words. They just kind of hang there, even when I been sleeping. They telling me to kill that guy with the funny name from that 'Winner' show. I can even see him dead on the ground. It strange, 'cause that was the show I was watching when I blacked out an' I don't remember him dying on the TV."
This jibed with what Remo had heard already. Cindee Maloo had let it slip that one of the Winner contestants had been killed during the mob action the previous night. Apparently, Shittman had been involved in the murder but had no real recollection of participating in the events.
"I hate to admit it," Remo said, "but I believe you."
"'Course you do," Shittman sniffed.
"No," Remo explained. "I really, really hate to admit it. You have no idea how much I don't want to believe you."
He suddenly felt as if he needed a shower. He turned to go.
"You think all this might have somethin' to do with them teeny TVs they give us?" the minister called after him.
Remo suddenly remembered all the little broken handheld television sets he and Chiun had found around the former president's office building.
"Who's passing out free TVs?" Remo asked.
"Fellow from BCN, the big TV network. He bring some cases of them around to my church. Say he's doing a study of viewing habits among African-Americans for his homogenized, white-bread, nocoloreds-allowed network. He pass out the TVs to my flock." Shittman waved a hand to the other cells. "Most of the folks he give them to are right here."
"You know where I can find this guy?"
"Sure," Shittman said. "I let him set up shop in the basement of my church. He gots all kinds of broadcast and computer stuff there. Fella passes out free TVs in Harlem's a fella you don't mind giving a little office space to."
"Thanks," Remo said. He headed for the door. "And try to get some rest. Sleep burns calories. A slimmer you is just eight million years away."
He called the guard to let him out.
Remo sensed something was amiss when the cop who had escorted him to the cell tried to shoot him through the bars.
Remo danced around the hail of lead.
"What the bliz-blaz?" he demanded as the young officer unloaded his revolver into the tiny room. Bullets screamed into the cell, ricocheting sparks off the brick walls. In a panic, Hal Shittman screamed and rolled onto the floor. The minister tried to stuff his massive bulk underneath his bunk.
"Brutality! Brutality!" Shittman screeched, in the first understatement of his public life.
Remo didn't know what was going on. When the policeman ran out of bullets, he continued to click the trigger, barrel aimed square at Remo's chest. His eyes were glazed.
Remo reluctantly surmised that-what with all the shooting and trying to kill him and all-the cop wasn't going to be nice and let him out of Shittman's cell.
"Why isn't my life ever easy?" Remo groused. Muttering to himself, he broke the lock on the cell and banged the bars into the forehead of the vacanteyed cop.
The police officer sprawled backward onto the cellblock floor. His gun clattered away. As Remo exited the cell, he saw something pressed in the cop's other hand.
He was surprised enough when he realized it was another palm-size television. But he soon received a fresh shock.
"What the hell?"
There was a regular television broadcast in progress. On one of the morning network talk shows, the hosts were discussing the violence in Harlem. But there was something else on the screen. Two words flashed intermittently beneath the talking heads. It was like the command to watch Winner that he'd seen in the hotel lobby down in Mexico.