"Lordy, Lou, will you look at that," said Lester.
Remo glanced over his shoulder and saw a long black stretch limousine turn onto Thermopolis's main drag.
He looked back at Lester. "So what?" he said.
"So we don't get too many of them stretch jobbies in Thermopolis," whispered Lester. "It must be Senator Cole himself."
The limousine drew to a stop in front of Remo and Lester. For one horror-filled moment Lester thought
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that it was indeed Jackson Cole, come to confront him about the bogus childhood story he had been boring people with for the past forty years. But when the tinted rear window powered silently down, a familiar head that didn't belong to Jackson Cole jutted into view.
Remo recognized the giant ears and nose, as well as the close-cropped stubble of steely gray hair. The forehead seemed to go on forever, and the spindly neck vanished below the edge of the car window. On TV, Moss Monroe looked like Mr. Potato Head, but in real life he looked like Mr. Potato Head on steroids, thought Remo.
Lester was beside himself with shock. "Dang!" he gasped. "Moss Monroe in the flesh!"
"Could you boys just tell me where I could find that Ragnarok Ranch I keep hearin' so gol-darned much about?" a familiar nasal twang asked. His sharp Adam's apple bobbed enthusiastically.
"Um, it's..." Lester began, "you, well, you follow this road to the edge of town and then take a right— no, a left. A left to a blinking amber light. Then just follow the road through the woods." He looked to Remo for agreement.
"How the hell should I know?" Remo returned sharply.
Lester shrugged feebly.
"Well, that's just wonderful, that's just great," came the excited drawl of Moss Monroe from the back of the limo. "I'm much obliged, son. I'm more grateful than a live turkey on the day after Thanksgivin'."
The darkened window rolled back up, and the limo sped off.
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Remo pointed after it. "You'd tell him, but you wouldn't tell me?" he said, peeved.
"Hey, I still remember the '92 campaign," Lester explained nervously. "If he asked for directions to the inside of a lion cage I would have driven him there myself."
Chiun was waiting in the car when Remo returned.
"Things have just gotten more complicated," Remo informed him as he slipped back in behind the wheel.
"I saw the funny little man with the big ears," Chiun said. "Was his friend with him?"
Remo raised an eyebrow. "What friend?"
"The one who did not know his name or where he was. You remember, Remo, he starred in the television program where the president of vice won an argument, but was declared the loser, the next president of vice lost, but was declared the winner and the old man with the hearing aid did not listen to the questions at all."
After the most recent presidential race, which had practically put the nation to sleep, the previous contest seemed like ancient history.
"General Stocking?" Remo said finally. He remembered the geriatric general Moss Monroe had dragged out of mothballs to be his running mate, thus proving to the vast majority of American voters that he was about as serious a presidential contender as Pat Paulsen. "No, Stocking wasn't with him."
Chiun considered. "It is a shame that program was canceled," he said pensively. "It was very funny."
Remo nodded. "At least America would have had a good laugh while it was being mugged," he agreed,
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starting the engine. "Find out anything, Little Father?"
"Do you know those little lights on the sides of television cameras?"
Remo arched an eyebrow. "Yeah?" he said lead-
ingly.
"They are detachable."
And by the look of serenity on the Master of Sin-anju's face, Remo knew enough not to ask.
Chapter Seven
Moss Monroe had become a multibillionaire by accepting a huge number of lucrative business contracts from the federal government, before making himself a household name by publicly railing against the same government policies that had launched him from the ham-and-beans income-tax bracket to the stratosphere of the caviar and private Learjets.
Of course, Moss didn't start complaining until the last of the government checks had cleared.
Monroe first exploded onto the political scene as a guest on the "Barry Duke Live" cable-TV program. On that show Moss Monroe fielded phone calls from average Americans as if he were just another John Q. Public. And when those typical citizens asked what could be done to fix what ailed their country, Monroe was blunt: absolutely nothing could be done. America was finished. He said this, however, with a down-home folksiness that made him sound like a cross between Will Rogers and Jed Clampett, and won over people who couldn't tell down-home from dumbed-down.
From the beginning, people were so captivated by the way Moss Monroe spoke, no one paid much attention to what he was actually saying.
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His legislative agenda had the intellectual complexity of a Road Runner cartoon, and his entire political philosophy—though discussed with a reverence that made one think it had been carved of Mount Sinai granite—had been written by a five-hundred-dollar-per-hour PR agent.
The pithiest of these "Mossy Musings" were laminated on a set of giant glossy placards that Monroe carted around wherever he went to sell himself. Because that was exactly what his entire game was: selling Moss Monroe, political savior.
He had once stormed out of a live network-news broadcast because the anchorman conducting the interview insisted that Moss Monroe answer a direct question without referring to the large shiny charts that had been set up on an easel next to the anchor's desk. Without his charts Moss Monroe was as helpless as a baby. A crybaby.
That this man, whose main asset was a well-stocked cupboard of aw-shucks platitudes, had risen to national prominence by declaring the nation was completely bereft of ideas was, perhaps, the most ringing endorsement of his own premise.
In spite of his best attempts at blowing smoke, Moss Monroe hadn't been much of a player in the most recent presidential race. It had been an unspirited snore in which he had been relegated to the role of yapping Chihuahua.
And while to his supporters Moss would always be the ultimate political outsider, to Moss himself it was getting pretty cold outside.
Since the time nearly two years before the 1992 campaign when Moss had begun carefully orchestrating
his "surprise" announcement to run, to the point in 1996 when his hopes had been dashed almost before they had gotten off the ground, Monroe had been forced to postpone the year he expected to finally take possession of the Oval Office. He was now looking at the year 2000, and if past experience had taught him anything, it was that he couldn't win now without a truckload of luck.
What to do. What to do.