"It says here not to drive in through International Drive," Remo pointed out.
"Actually that's been updated. It's I-4 that's unsafe now."
Remo looked up.
"Urban predators read, too. Some of them."
"Excuse me, chump," a surly voice said at Remo's side. And a long brown arm reached under Remo's elbow to slip a pamphlet from the plastic holder. "Gotta have one of these here brochures."
Remo felt the butterfly touch on his wallet, which he carried in his right front pants pocket because pickpockets had the hardest time reaching into it undetected.
Remo stepped back, bringing the heel of one hand-tooled Italian loafer down on the instep of the would-be pickpocket with deceptively gentle force. Like a jigsaw puzzle held together by tough ligaments, foot bones began separating along every fault line, and the pickpocket yelped and kept yelping until Remo released the foot.
"Hey, man, what your damn foot made out of anyways? Lead?"
The pickpocket was hopping on his good foot while clutching his other Reebok with both hands. Blood seeped up around the laces with each hop.
The pickpocket saw the blood seepage and rolled onto his back the way Remo had seen hip-hoppers drop to the sidewalk to spin in place.
This man didn't spin. He began screaming that he was going to sue everybody in a fifty-foot radius for inflicting personal injury, emotional carnage and "expensive stuff like that there."
To quiet him, Remo nudged his skull with the toe of the same foot that had rearranged his foot bones. He began spinning. And screaming.
"Haaalllp!"
"Happy to oblige," Remo said as the rental-booth door was opened by a second possible urban predator. He gave the spinning man another nudge, which sent him spinning like a top out the door and onto a moving escalator.
"What his problem?" the newly arrived possible urban predator wanted to know as his head snapped from the escalator to Remo and back again.
"He tried to pick the wrong pocket," said Remo.
"What pocket is that?"
"My pocket."
The possible urban predator-Remo had sized him up by the steely 9 mm bulge in the crotch of his baggy pants pocket-did a double take, pretended to look at the red Mavis sign on the glass door again and said, "Oh. This be Mavis. I want Burtz. They number two and try harder."
"You were saying?" Remo asked, turning his attention back to the rental agent.
"You shouldn't have done that."
"Why not?"
"All he wanted was your wallet."
"And all I wanted was to keep my wallet."
"He might sue."
"He might," Remo agreed.
A screech came from the vicinity of the escalator. "My damn leg! It caught in the fucking escalator! I'm gonna damn sue some sonna bitch over this."
"Just as long as he doesn't sue me," said Remo, grinning. And put out his hand for the keys.
"I need to finish telling you about the safety problems," the agent said.
"I have the pamphlet, remember?"
The agent plowed on anyway. "If, while driving from the airport, you are rammed from behind or someone attempts to run you off the road, under no circumstances should you stop your vehicle. Or if you are forced to halt, do not exit your vehicle."
"Got it," said Remo, signing the credit card slip.
"Your car will be waiting in the lot. For your personal safety our tags are no longer emblazoned with the Mavis corporate logo."
"How many Mavis renters bought the farm before the front office decided on that innovation?" asked Remo.
"When our rentals dropped thirty percent in one month," admitted the rental agent.
On his way to the rental lot, Remo stopped to buy six of the biggest pieces of luggage he could find, in bright red leather, an I'm Going to Sam Beasley World T-shirt and a yellow Day-Glo Welcome to Florida acrylic baseball cap.
He carried them balanced on one upright palm in a stack that teetered right, then left, then right again and threatened to fall countless times but never did because the stack, precarious as it was, had become one with his perfectly balanced body.
At the foot of the escalator Remo paused only to step on the free hand of the urban predator who had earlier tried to pick his pocket and was now trying to free a baggy pant leg from the stalled escalator treads.
Under the brief pressure of Remo's foot, the metacarpals became the base ingredient of gelatin.
"You again. Damn, I gonna sue you ass off."
"Have your lawyer call my lawyer," Remo called cheerily.
"What your lawyer's damn name?"
"Alan Dershowitz. And don't let him tell you any different."
Remo walked out of the airport and into the morning humidity of Florida, whistling. He was a tall lean man with dark deep-set eyes, high cheekbones, a cruel mouth and wrists like railroad ties.
The car was waiting for him, and to the horror of the lot attendant, Remo stacked the red leather tourist luggage in the back seat until it resembled a Lucite luggage rack, put on his yellow Welcome to Florida baseball cap and drew the colorful Sam Beasley World T-shirt over his own.
"Sir, I would not recommend doing that."
Remo slid behind the wheel. "Which is I-4?"
The attendant pointed to an exit. "That one. Whatever you do, don't take it into the city dressed as you are. Take International Drive or the Beeline Expressway."
"Thanks," said Remo, tooling the car out of the lot and onto Interstate 4.