"This is mine," Remo said, grabbing a brown over-the-shoulder bag and a black leather briefcase. "Shall we go?"
"Yes. But we'll have to take a cab."
"You don't look like you have much driving experience," Remo remarked lightly.
"Oh, I'm older than I look. Much older."
She led him to the first cab waiting in line. The driver got out and opened the trunk. Remo saw that he was the same driver who had brought him here.
"What happened to Asia?" the cabby asked gruffly.
"Search me," Remo said, forcing a smile. "Last I heard, it was still in the Pacific."
The driver scratched his head as he jumped back behind the wheel.
"Where is the office putting me up this time?" Remo asked.
"The Watergate Hotel," the girl who answered to the name of Cynthia said quickly.
"Watergate it is," the driver muttered. To Remo's relief, he was silent during the rest of the ride.
Remo made small talk as he took stock of "Cynthia."
Seen closer, she struck him as younger than he had thought. Her body was certainly mature. But her face, under expert makeup that included a purplish-yellow eye shadow, seemed girlish. She had that dewy look.
"Yellow must be your favorite color," Remo suggested.
"I worship yellow," Cynthia said, fingering her scarf. "It's so . . . eye-catching." She laughed. Even her laugh sounded pure. Remo wondered how someone with that kind of high-school laugh could strangle ten people.
He would remember to ask her that-before he took her out.
At the Watergate lobby, Cynthia turned to Remo and said, "Why don't you relax? I'll check you in."
"Thanks," Remo said, putting down his luggage. He watched her saunter over to the front desk. She had a nice walk. A little slinky. She walked in her high heels as if driving tacks with them.
As Remo watched, she leaned over the counter, startling the clerk with her ample bosom. "Any messages?" she whispered.
The clerk's "No" was a croak. His eyes were on her bosom as if it snarled and snapped at him like a pair of pit bulls.
Cynthia thanked him and palmed a key from her yellow purse as she turned.
Remo smiled tightly. His acute hearing had picked up the exchange. And the palming, though slick, was made obvious by Cynthia's body language.
She was taking him to a room she had preregistered. Either her own, or to one that was a convenient dumping ground for victims.
Either way suited Remo Willams just fine. If she was an acolyte of Kali's, he'd soon know where his mortal enemy was hiding. He could decide whether to run or strike, depending on the answer.
Cynthia joined him. "I don't see a bellboy," she said, frowning. A bellboy hovered out of sight. Obviously paid to ignore anyone Cynthia brought in.
"I can carry my own bags," Remo said quickly.
"Great. I hate waiting."
Once they stepped on the elevator, the mood changed. Cynthia stared at the ceiling, lost in thought. Her yellowtipped fingers went to her neck scarf. This time they plucked at the fabric nervously. The loose knot slipped apart. When Cynthia brought her hand down, the scarf floated with it.
This time Remo suppressed his smile completely.
The elevator came to a stop.
"After you," Cynthia offered, her voice cool and tight.
Remo picked up his bags. This was the critical moment. His hands were encumbered. Would she take him before he stepped off the elevator, or wait until they were in the room itself?
He stepped out into the corridor, feeling Cynthia's warm presence trail after him. Her body heat registered on the back of his bare arms. A temperature change of only a few degrees would indicate an impending attack.
But the attack didn't come. Instead, Cynthia got in front and opened the door for him. It was pitch-dark inside.
Remo slipped in, tossing his bags down. He snapped on the light switch. Before he could turn, it snapped off again. The door slammed. The room went totally black. He was not alone. Remo skipped the mock protestations. He shifted to one side as his visual purple adjusted to the blackness. As a Master of Sinanju, he could not exactly see in the dark, but he could detect shadowy motion within the blackness.
In the dark, he grinned in fierce anticipation.
And in the dark, the yellow scarf settled over his throat with a silken snap.
Casually Remo reached up. A supersharp fingernail raked the smooth fabric. The scarf tightened. It parted with an angry snarl.
"Sorry," Remo said. "Yellow isn't my color."
A hiss answered him, low and feline.
Remo snagged a soft, thin wrist. He gave it a twist.
"Oww! You're hurting me!" It was Cynthia.
"Not what I had in mind," Remo said, collecting the scratching fingers of Cynthia's hand in one fist. He pushed the hand back, exposing the wrist.
With his other hand, Remo found the girl's wrist and tapped it once, sharply.
"Oh!" said Cynthia. It was a very surprised "Oh." Remo tapped again. This time her exclamation was dreamy and moist.
As he tapped, Remo drew Cynthia to the light switch. He nudged it with an elbow, without breaking the building rhythm of his manipulations.
In the light, Cynthia looked up into Remo's dark, obsidianchip eyes. There was no anger there. No hate. Just a kind of wondrous fear that caused her pink lips to part. She ran a deeper pink tongue over her lips, moistening them further.
"They call this the thirty-seven steps to bliss," Remo explained in a low, earthy growl. "How do you like it so far?" "Oh," said Cynthia, as if impaled on a delicious pin. Her eyes went from Remo's cruel face to her wrist as if trying to fathom how this ordinary man could reduce her to squirming helplessness with only one intermittently tapping finger. "I don't understand," she said in a surprise-twisted voice. "What are you doing to me?"
"Let's start with your name."
"Kimberly. It's Kimberly," Kimberly said, panting a little. She squeezed down as if cramping. Her thick eyebrows gathered together, forcing her innocent blue eyes into narrow slits of bright cerulean:
"Good start. This, by the way, is only step one."
Kimberly's eyes popped open. "It is?"
Remo's smile was arch. "Honest. Would I kid a blond that had just tried to throttle me in the dark?"
"I don't . . . know."
"I wouldn't. It's such a rare experience. So, tell me. Why'd you waste the Iraiti ambassador?"
"She told me to."
"She?"
'Kali."
"Spell that."
"K-a-l-i."
"Damn," Remo muttered to himself. It was true. Now he would have to take this to the bitter end.
"Take me to Kali," he said harshly.
"I only take offerings to Kali."
Remo tapped once more, then stopped. "No introduction, no happy finger action," he warned.
"Please! It hurts when you stop."
"But it will feel so good when I start up. So what's it gonna be? Do I finish the job or do I leave you here to play with yourself? It won't be half as much fun. Trust me on that."
"Finish me!" Kimberly pleaded. "I'll do it! Just finish me!"
"For a pro," Remo said, bringing his finger to bear again, "you're not very collected about this stuff."
"This is my first time," Kimberly gulped. Her eyes were worried and inward-looking.
"That's a laugh. Is that what you told the Iraiti ambassador?"
Kimberly was no longer listening. She rested one steadying hand on Remo's hard bicep. The other, trapped in Remo's immovable fist, squeezed harder and harder as her eyes squeezed tighter and tighter. The tapping finger continued to strike the sensitive point she had never suspected existed there. A tear leaked out of one eye as her pretty face gathered together, reddening, twisting, apprehensive.
"Something's happening!" Kimberly cried sharply.
The shudder started in her face. It rippled down her neck and convulsed her entire body. Her breasts seemed to
actually throb. Remo had never seen breasts throb before.
"Oh Oh Oh Oh . . . uuuuhhh," she cried, uncoiling like an old spring from a sofa. She swayed this way and that. Then all the life seemed to escape her body.
Remo caught her.
"If you give as good as you get, you're probably worth every dime," he said, carrying her to the bed. He set her down, noticing that her chest seemed almost an inch bigger than it had before. The damn thing looked like it was trying to strain free of her dress front.
Kimberly lay on the bed, zoned out, as Remo checked the room. The closet and bathroom were both empty. There were no personal items. It was a setup room.
"Where is she?" Remo asked.
"I will never betray her," Kimberly said softly, her eyes fixed on the ceiling.
Remo collected her purse from the rug. He went through it. Deep inside, he found a brass key. It was stamped with the hotel's crest and a room number two floors down.
"Never mind," he said, tossing the purse on a bureau. "I think I can handle it from here."
Remo drifted over to the bed and, with two fingers, closed Kimberly's dreamy eyes. Then he took her trembling chin in hand.
"You're going to kill me." It was a realization, not a question.
"That's the biz, sweetheart," he said, breaking her neck with a quick sideways twist. When he removed his hand, Remo saw no mark. Chiun would have been proud.
He left the room in silence, thinking that maybe this wouldn't be so difficult after all.
The key fitted the lock on Room 606, two floors down.
Remo paused, his heart rising in his chest. He wasn't sure what to expect. Another idol? A portrait? Kali in the flesh?
Whatever, he knew he would have to hit hard and fast, if he wanted to survive. Remo placed an ear to the door. He heard no organic noises. No breathing or heartbeat. No gurgling of bowels.
He turned the key.
The door eased inward. In the harsh hallway light, Remo caught a flash of maroon drapes. He pushed the door open some more.
The light caught something white and spidery, with too many upraised arms.
Remo hit the light switch, plunging into the room. He flashed for the white outline. One hand out and open, he drove for its vulnerable neck.
Too late, he realized his mistake. His stiffened fingers made contact. The outline shattered into repeating images. The white thing was a mirror reflection.
"Damn!" Remo whirled in place, dropping to a protective crouch, as he zeroed in on the white many-armed thing.
It squatted on a dresser, pale legs crossed, three faces-one looking out, the other two facing east and west-fixed in identical malevolent expressions. The eyes were closed, however. A necklace of flat skulls draped over its pendulous breasts.
Without hesitating, Remo floated up to it. He detected no odor. The last time, it was the hellish scent that had gotten him. There had been no odor clinging to the girl. And this statue was equally sterile.
It was clay, Remo saw. It possessed four normal arms, but other, smaller limbs stuck out from different points in its torso. These lesser limbs were thin and withered.
Remo would dismember the gruesome thing first, he decided.
As if the thought had triggered something deep within the clay idol, its eyelids snapped open. The gash of a mouth writhed in a silent snarl like a Claymation illusion, and a cloying sickly-sweet scent billowed toward him. And the familiar, dreaded waves of psychic force pushed toward him.
Remo struck. A slashing hand slipped through the shoulder area, cleaving two arms and bending others. The clay was soft, Remo found. It would be easy.
Remo drove a fist to the head. He knocked the triple face half off its neck. It gave like soft separating excrement.
The hands came to life. Remo batted them back. Somehow animated, they were still but moist clay. He slapped them back without effort. Clay hands flew from clay wrists. Clay nails raked his face, leaving only slimy whitish trails and clay crumbs.
"Must be the heat," Remo mocked. "You're positively melting."
The psychic waves abated, the dreaded scent grew no stronger. An unhearable voice screamed in defeat.
Grinning with relief, Remo plunged his fingers into the thing's thick white torso. On the floor, the triptych of faces howled in silent protest as Remo kneaded the clay out of shape. His steely fingers constricted. Clay oozed out from between them. He flung clods of the heavy stuff in all directions. Some of it stuck to the walls. The clay make gushy noises as Remo pulled and pushed and separated the heavy white stuff, reducing the ornate body of the thing to a lump of heavy inactive matter.
When he was done, Remo looked around the room. A clay hand was quivering on its back. Remo nudged it with a toe. It flopped over and, finding its fingers, began to scuttle away.
Laughing, Remo brought his foot down on it. The fingers spread out and died.
"Not so tough now, are you?" Remo taunted.
He looked for another hand. He found one, writhing as if in its death throes. Reaching down, Remo brought it up to his wild-eyed face.
The fingers made a futile stab for his face. Remo laughed again as he calmly began pulling the fingers off, one by one.
"She loves me . " he sang. "She loves me not."
When he plucked off the thumb, he said, "She loves me," and flushed the maimed palm down the toilet.
There were no other intact hands, Remo was disappointed to see. He looked around for the head. Not finding it, he frowned.
"Here, kitty," he called, for want of a better term. "Here, kitty, kitty."
When that produced no response, Remo got down on hands and knees and spied under the furniture.
"Not under the dresser," he muttered. Shifting, he saw the head wasn't beneath the writing table either. Nor was it hiding under the chairs.
"That leaves . . ." Remo began, reaching down for the hem of the bedspread.
" . . Under the bed. Boo!"
The head beneath the bed reacted to the sudden light and the sight of Remo's face with horror. The clay mouth formed an O that was echoed by its mates. The opaque white eyes went round too.
"Well, if it isn't Mrs. Bill," Remo said, reaching in for the head. It bit him. He laughed. The teeth were soft clay. It could do nothing. Kali was the goddess of evil, but he was the Reigning Master of Sinanju. He was invincible.
Getting to his feet, Remo carried the protean head to the window. Brushing aside the drapes, he employed one fingernail to score a circle in the glass. The sound was like a diamond-tipped glass cutter at work.
"Don't you just hate that screechy sound?" Remo asked the head, lifting it so its many eyes could see the whitish circle in the pane and the city lights it framed.
"Guess what happens next?" Remo asked the head of Kali. The six eyes closed. And Remo smacked the face into the glass.
It stuck there, the center face mashed flat. The side faces, however, continued their fearstruck contortions.
"Next time, come back as something a little stronger. Like balsa wood," Remo suggested, giving the back of the head a gentle tap.
The glass gave a crack! The circle fell outward. It carried the clay head down eight stories to the pavement below.
Upon impact, the glass circle shattered. Remo looked down.
A matronly woman stopped dead in her tracks before the flat white blob on the sidewalk that was surrounded by a litter of glass shards.
"Sorry," Remo called down. "Temperamental artist at work." Then he laughed again, low and raucously. He hadn't felt so good in years. And he had been so scared. Imagine. Over a stupid clay statue. So what if it was imbued by the spirit of the demon Kali? According to Chiun, Remo was the avatar of Shiva the Destroyer. Remo had never believed that. What the hell would Shiva be doing come back to earth as a Newark cop?
But if he was Shiva, obviously Shiva was mightier than Kali.
Remo left the hotel room laughing. He was free now. Really free. He could do whatever he wanted. No more CURE. No more
Smith. Hell, he didn't even have to listen to Chiun's carping anymore.
"Free. Free. Freeee," he sang with drunken joy.
Chapter 12
Remo Williams whistled as he rode the elevator to the lobby.
The cage stopped at the second floor, and a well-dressed man stepped aboard, a copy of The Wall Street Journal tucked under his summer jacket.
"Nice night, huh?" Remo said.
"Indeed," the man said dryly.
"On a night like this, you really understand what life is all about."
"And what is that?" The man sounded bored.
"Winning. Taking care of your enemies. Squeezing their soft doughy guts through your fingers. It doesn't get any better than that."
Eyeing Remo nervously, the man edged over to the safety of the elevator control panel. He pretended to finger a spot on the brass panel that was greasy with skin oils. His hand stayed close to the alarm button.
Remo resumed his whistling. He wasn't going to let some stiff who didn't understand what a glorious night this was ruin his good mood.
The cage deposited Remo in the lobby, where he found a pay phone and dropped a quarter in the slot.
"Mission," Remo said after Harold Smith picked up, "accomplished. Surprise. Surprise. Bet you thought I had deserted you."
"I knew you would not," Smith said without pretense.
"Sure, sure," Remo said. "You probably want my report, huh?"
"The target has been neutralized?" Smith asked cautiously.
"Sleeping the sleep of the dead," Remo said, humming. "And I got the statue."
"You did?" Smith said in an odd voice.
"It too has been neutralized, to use your quaint expression. In fact, to coin one of my own, I would say it's been mashed to a crisp."
"I am glad your mind is free of worry," Smith said, dismissing the matter of magical statues with his brittle tone, "but what about the target?"
"I told you-dead as a doornail. Where did that expression come from, anyway? I mean, what the heck is a doornail?"
"It is the metal attached to a knocker," Smith said. "One strikes it with the knocker."
"Is that so? Imagine that. Smith, I'm going to miss your dictionarylike personality. Your encyclopedic wit. Your-"
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