"What's he got to do with this?"
"I'm not sure. He's flitting around the edge of the whole thing, and I'd like to know more about him."
"I'll take care of it."
"Good. I'll get back to you."
Remo hung up and knew that the phone booth was surrounded by a half-dozen surly-looking kids with blades. But what really bothered him was that he knew he was going to have to go through them without killing one, because he'd never hear the end of it from Chiun.
CHAPTER NINE
When Remo got back to his hotel room, the door was open and the place was virtually littered with broken and battered bodies. Chiun was seated peacefully in the midst of the carnage.
"Are they all dead?" Remo demanded accusingly, slamming the door shut behind him.
"Of course. Some of us do not have faulty technique."
"Oh, great," Remo said. He walked around the room checking bodies, hoping to find at least one live one they could question. While doing so, he noticed something that surprised him.
"Chiun, these are all kids," he said. "They're all young, and you killed them."
Chiun made a sound of disgust and said, "You look, but you do not see."
Remo checked the faces again and saw what Chiun meant. Although all of the dead men were young, there wasn't one of them who wasn't of legal age. As far as Chiun was concerned, they were no longer children.
"I guess that's what happens to the kids when they get too old to be pushers," Remo said. "The organization makes them into killers."
"Trash."
"Maybe, but if we'd gotten even one of them alive, we might have found out something."
"Pah," Chiun said. "You left me alone here all day so that my serenity was shattered by these amateurish oafs, and now you bother me with trivialities. You know nothing about suffering."
"I do too. As a matter of fact, I ran into a gang of goons myself."
"You were attacked?"
"Sort of," Remo said, feeling that he had put his foot in his mouth.
"And you questioned them?"
"Well, um, no."
"Yet you didn't kill them?"
"They kind of got away from me." Chiun made a face. "Well, what could I do?" Remo went on. "They were kids, real kids. And I knew I'd never hear the end of it from you if I killed even one."
"So what did you do?"
"I scared them away."
"Oh? That's interesting. How?"
"Let's just say we owe the city of Detroit one phone booth."
When the phone rang, Remo raced for it, just to terminate Chiun's questioning.
"Excuse me, Mr. Randisi," the desk clerk said, using the name Remo had registered under.
"Mr. who? Oh, yeah. What is it?"
"There's a policeman here to see you."
"Now?" Remo looked around the corpse-strewn room. "Tell him we're not in."
"I'm afraid he's already on his way up, sir."
"Terrific." Remo sighed. "That's just peachy. His name's Palmer, I suppose."
"Why, yes, sir. He said—"
Remo hung up and ran immediately to the bodies lying sprawled around the room, propping them up on chairs and daubing at the crusted blood on their faces with wet tissues.
"Come on, Chiun. You've got to help make these guys look like they're alive."
"The Master of Sinanju does not perform laborers' tasks," Chiun said.
"But geez, it's the cops," Remo said, dashing frantically to stop one of the bodies as it fell forward off a chair. "They'll pull us in for murder, for Pete's sake. Smitty'll have a hemorrhage."
"I am an assassin," Chiun said loftily. "I do not bring the dead back to life. That is the work of a magician. If Emperor Smith wished evil persons to remain alive, he would not have hired—"
"Grab him, will you?" Remo pointed to the body, which was slowly lolling forward. Chiun flung out his left arm. There was the crunch of neckbones as the body jolted back into an upright position.
Detective Palmer pounded on the door.
"Hold it a second," Remo yelled irritably while pressing together the skin on another dead man's forehead to cover a hole made by Chiun's index finger.
Softly Chiun spoke. "You had better answer the door."
"I will, already."
"You had better answer it now." Chiun was staring at the door, Remo followed the old man's gaze. The door was falling forward.
"The hinges came off during my altercation with these persons," the old Oriental said. "For aesthetic purposes, I reattached them to the wall."
Indeed, the hinges were embedded beautifully in the plaster. The only trouble was that they weren't attached to anything.