"Is this your father?" the boy asked, grinning.
Remo looked at Chiun, who gave him a warning look back. Remo took a deep breath and turned his attention back to the young man.
"Look, son, if you've got something particular on your mind, I wish you'd get to it. Otherwise, you can just get out of our way."
"Oooh," the kid said, widening his eyes and backing up a step. "Tough talk when all you've got to back you up is one old chink."
Remo looked at Chiun to see what effect this remark had had. Maybe it would make him forget that these were just "children." Chiun's face was as impassive as ever, though, so he wasn't going to get any help there.
"What's on your mind?"
"We was just wondering what you were doing in that house, is all. See, our friend used to live there."
"Is that a fact? What if I told you it was none of your business?"
"Well then," the boy said, looking at his friends for support, "I guess we'd just have to make it our business, wouldn't we?"
"Look, I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't get my friend here angry," Remo said, indicating Chiun. "I can't be responsible for his actions if you get him angry."
"Him?" the boy asked, laughing. He looked at his friends, who also laughed on cue. "What could he do?"
"Oh," Remo said, as if he was in pain, "I've seen him do some nasty things to men twice your size. Sometimes he doesn't know his own strength."
"Oh, yeah?" The kid looked at Chiun with keen interest. "What is he, some kind of black belt or something?"
"Black belts cross the street to avoid passing him," Reno said quietly.
The entire group studied Chiun now, and then the leader said, "Well, what about you? You a black belt? Or maybe just yellow." The others laughed at the leader's joke.
"Clever," Remo said. "Maybe when you grow up, you can be a comedian in the state pen."
The kid stepped forward, blocking the car door with his body. "You ain't getting in this car, man."
"Oh, no?" Remo snatched the car's hood ornament and pulled it free of its mooring. Without taking his eyes off the boy, he squeezed the ornament until the metal began to bend in his hand.
When it had folded in half, he buried it in his palm and closed his hand again. Then, applying constant pressure, the way Chiun had taught him, he managed to grind the metal into a powder resembling salt crystals.
He walked up to the leader of the group and poured the powder over the kid's head. "Time to go, Chiun," he said.
The group fanned out and away from the car, congregating around their leader, who glinted in the sunlight like a statue made of glitter.
"Happy I didn't hurt anybody?" Remo asked, starting the car and pulling away.
"A barely satisfactory performance," Chiun said.
"Oh? I thought I was pretty good."
"There was no need to intimate that I am the possessor of an unmanageable temper."
"Intimate? I didn't intimate. I flat-out lied—"
"Oh, 'how sharper than a serpent's tooth…' " Chiun began, permitting a pained look to cross his face.
"Okay, I apologize. Anyway, I'm interested in Moorcock. He was obviously looking for something in the house. What was it?"
"What were we looking for?" Chiun asked.
"I don't know."
"Why could he not have been looking for the same thing?"
"He might have been," Remo said, but he couldn't help but wonder if the good minister hadn't been looking for that money. And where had Billy Martin's father gotten such a windfall?
A man entered the office of a car rental agency and began to tell the clerk behind the desk a story about a terrible driver.
"We very nearly had an accident, and I'd really like to give him a piece of my mind," the man told the clerk.
"I'm terribly sorry, sir. But are you sure he was driving one of our cars?" the clerk asked.
"Positive. The car had one of your stickers in the windshield," the man replied. "I'd like to find out who the guy is and where I can find him."
"Well, it would be highly irregular for me to give out that information, you understand," the clerk said. "And we may not even have a local address for him."
"I understand," the man assured him, surreptitiously pressing a crisp twenty-dollar bill into the clerk's hand.
"What was the license number?"
The man recited the license number of the car. The clerk looked it up and gave him the man's name— Remo Randisi— plus the name of the hotel where he was supposed to be staying.
"Thank you very much. I appreciate this… more than you know."
The man left the rental agency and crossed the street to a large black car. He got into the back, where another man was waiting for him, and repeated the information he'd gotten from the clerk.
"Very good," the other man said. "Now we'll handle this Remo, whoever he is."
"Do you think he's a cop?" the first man asked.
"If he is," the second man said, "he's a dead one."
CHAPTER FIVE
In the morning, Remo's car exploded.
He wasn't in it. No one was, and he didn't find out about it until he came down to the hotel parking lot. Chiun was up in their room composing that same damned Ung poem, and he'd decided to leave him to his artistic expression while he checked out some leads. He was in no mood to listen to Chiun harp about "children" again.
There was a fire truck outside the hotel, and a hose had been run into the parking area beneath the building. Whem Remo got off the elevator at the parking lot level, he saw all the commotion and collared a hotel employee to ask what had happened.