Another block and Hunt hung a left and began moving his old 1952 MG up a hill that was like riding along the back of a giant snake that had curled up on the roadway to die. And then he was upon the hidden driveway, almost past it, and he yanked the car down into second gear, spun the front wheels to the right to skid the rear end while he jammed the brake, then turned off the car key and released the brake just as the car lined itself up nose-first to go into the driveway, and the car raced ahead, but then slowed down of its own weight, and Hunt folded his arms and let the car roll, and he was not at all surprised when it stopped precisely one inch from a closed garage door.
Unlike civilized America where the garage is either attached to the house or in close proximity to it, the garage hung out over the edge of a cliff, and Hunt saw steps on the side, leading downward.
As he stepped onto the stairs, he was met by four men, large men with inscrutable brown faces, wearing long pink robes. Arms folded, they stared at him.
"I'm Ferdi…"
"We know who you are," said one man. "You will follow us."
Down, two stories below the garage, the house nestled on an outcropping of rock, a gray cedar sprawl surrounded by windows on all sides.
Wordlessly, Hunt was ushered into the house and taken to a small pink room on the second floor of the building. The room resounded with pings. He was pushed inside and saw himself looking at the back of a big metal cabinet that stood in the center of the floor. Jutting out from either side of the cabinet, he could see lightly polished English riding boots and plaid jodphurs.
"He is here, Blissful Master," said a voice behind Hunt.
"Get out, for Christ's sake," came a voice from behind the machine.
Then Hunt was alone. He felt the door close behind him. He heard another set of pings, ping, ping, ping, and then, "Oh, shit."
A fat face peered from around the machine.
"So you're the button man," it said.
"I am Ferdinand De Chef Hunt," said Hunt, who did not know what a button man was and did not know why he was here except that the two owners of his firm had put him on leave of absence with full pay and had paid his way to San Francisco.
"Are you as good as those two Wall Street dingalings say you are?"
Hunt, who did not know, shrugged.
The Maharaji Gupta Mahesh Dor stood up behind the machine. He had been sitting on a high barstool and, standing, he still was not as tall as the machine. He wore brown, red, and white plaid jodphurs, deep brown boots, and a tan T-shirt with three monkeys—hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil—on it, and the shirt was pulled tight across his soft, almost feminine-breasted chest.
"Grab a stool," he said. "You know what I want?"
"I don't even know who you are," said Hunt, moving to the black leather tufted barstool, matching the one Dor had been sitting on. Dor turned to face him and leaned back against his stool.
"You got a name besides Hunt?"
"Ferdinand De Chef Hunt."
"Okay. Ferdinand it is. You can call me Maharaji or Blissful Master or God, whatever pleases you." He looked at Hunt carefully. "There's trouble in paradise, pal."
"There's always trouble in paradise," said Hunt.
"I'm glad you know that. Then you understand why I need an avenging angel. Is that seraphim or cherubim? I don't know, I can never keep them straight. Theology was never really my bag; business administration was. Anyway, Ferdinand…" As he talked, Dor turned toward the electronic ping-pong machine, depressed a red button, and a white dot sprung from one side of the machine and moved slowly across the face of the television screen to the other side. Dor put one hand on a knob on the right, another on the knob on the left, and with a sidelong glance at the machine, intercepted the moving dot by turning the knob and repositioning the small vertical line. The dot seemed to rebound from the small line, back to the other side of the screen. Hunt watched, fascinated.
Dor kept speaking, paying only casual attention to the game. "Anyway," he said, "I got a big number to do here Tuesday night, and two guys are stepping on my skirt. They went to my place in Patna, that's our Pentagon in India, and laid all kinds of shit on my troops. Scared away some of my bodyguards and yanked back one of my broads."
"Who are they?" asked Hunt, still wondering why he had been sent here.
"I'm getting to that." Ping. Ping. Ping. "A week or so ago, one of my defectors was killed. And then one of my troops was killed. And then another one. Right here in the U.S. of A., which is a drag, man." Ping. Ping. Ping. "Anyway, these guys got killed with crushed necks, and all the old hankie heads with me are moaning and groaning about some kind of curse."
Ping. Ping. Ping.
"It's two guys been doing it, and I figure they're around here somewhere. That's why I'm hiding out here in the hills instead of being in the city."
"So what do you want from me?"
"I don't want these two messing up my number at Kezar Stadium, man. This is the big flagpole toot for my American scene, and I don't need interference."
"What do you want me to do?" asked Hunt.
Dor wheeled on the stool. His hands came off the levers, and there was the ring of a bell as the unintercepted dot hit the far side of the screen and scored a point. Score: 1 to 0, the top of the machine flashed. Dor looked at Hunt.
"Well, I didn't want you to cook them a meal, shmuck. I want you to off them."
Hunt watched the machine again as the white dot reappeared and moved from right to left. Unintercepted, it vanished at the left of the screen. The bell rang. The score changed to 2-0. Hunt could smell the heat from the machine.
"Off them?" he said.
"Yeah. Punch their tickets."
"Punch their tickets?"
"For Jesus' sake, are you stupid or what? Kill them, dummy."
Hunt smiled. So that's what a button man was. As he watched, the score on the untended machine mounted to 3-0, 4-0, 5-0.
"What kind of hit man are you anyway," Dor asked. "How many notches on your piece?"
"By that, I assume you mean how many men have I killed?"
"Righto, Ferdy. How many?"
"None."
Dor looked at him with annoyance creasing his smooth, unlined face. "Wait a minute," he said. "What is this crap?"
Hunt shrugged.
"Goddamit, I asked for a hit man and I get a southern gentleman who sits there like a bump on a log and smirks. What the hell is going on here?"
"I can kill them," Hunt said, and was surprised to hear his voice say that.
"Sure, pal. Sure. I had ninety-eight bodyguards at Patna, a bigger goddam internal security force than old Crossback in Rome, and you know where they are? All ninety-eight? They're back in the hills pissing in their pants, all because of these two creeps. And now you're going to get them? Hah."
Ping, ping, ping. The score was 11-0, and the vertical lines disappeared. The game was over, and the white dot began to move randomly back and forth with none of the intensity of a ball in play.
"I can kill them," Hunt said again, calmly, and this time it sounded more natural to him, as if it were something he should have been saying all his life.
Dor turned back to the machine, waving a hand at Hunt in disgust, in a gesture of go on, get out of here, you bum.
Hunt sat and watched as Dor played the game with grim intensity, playing both sides with both knobs. The score seesawed back and forth, 1-0, 1-1, 2-1, 3-1. Each point took a long time to play and gave Hunt time to think. Why not? His family had done it for centuries. The two stockbrokers, Dalton and Harrow, had talked about Hunt's becoming very wealthy. And why not? Why not? Why not? At that moment, Ferdinand De Chef Hunt returned to the ancestral bosom of his family and decided to become a hit man. And now, goddamit, he was not going to be dissuaded from it by this porky little pig.
"What is that game?" he asked aloud.
"Electronic Ping-Pong," Dor said. "Ever play it?"
"No. But I can beat you."
Dor laughed derisivel
y.
"You couldn't beat me if I wore a blindfold," he said.
"I could beat you if I wore a blindfold," said Hunt.
"Get out of here, will you?" said Dor.
"I will play you," said Hunt.
"Go away."
"My life against the job. The game decides."
Dor turned and looked at Hunt's face. The American rose and walked to the machine.
"You're serious, aren't you?" said Dor.
"It's my life," said Hunt. "I don't fool with it."
Dor clapped his hands. The dot went from side to side on the machine. Unhindered, it kept scoring points for the server.
The door opened, and in it stood the four men who had escorted Hunt into the house.
"We're going to play Ping-Pong," said Dor. "If he loses, waste him." He turned to Hunt. "That all right with you?"
"Of course. But what if I win?"
"Then you and I will talk."
"We will talk in the six-figure kind of talk?" Hunt said.
"Right, but don't worry about it. In three minutes, you'll be among the dear departed." He reached for the red button to cancel out the game and start a new one.
"Don't do that," said Hunt.
"What?"
"This game is fine," said Hunt.
"I knew it. I knew it. I knew there was a hitch. You want a spot. Well, I'm not spotting anybody no seven points. It's eight to one, make it nine to one, already."
"I'll take the one point. Play," said Hunt, putting his hand on the knob that controlled the left vertical line. The ball pinged gently from the right lower side of the machine toward him.
"It's your funeral," said the maharaji. "And I mean that."
Hunt slowly turned the knob. The vertical line moved up. He reversed the motion of the knob, and the line moved down. He ignored the dot, which moved uninterrupted off his side of the screen.
"Ten to one," said Dor. "One more point."
"You'll never score it," said Hunt. He had the feel now of the knob. He touched the hard black plastic gently with his hand, his fingers gripping easily into the ridges around the knob, molding into them as if the knob had been designed for his hand alone. He could sense the speed of the vertical line, its motion, the turn necessary to move it top, to move it bottom. Without thought, with his brain divorced from what he did, Hunt knew these things. The next serve came from Dor's side of the screen, aimed at the bottom. Dor smiled. Hunt moved his vertical paddle slowly downward, and as the dot rebounded upward, his paddle intercepted it, and the white dot went straight back across the bottom of the screen. Dor moved his line downward directly in front of the dot and let it rebound straight back, along its approach line, back toward Hunt.
Hunt's vertical line had not moved since he had returned the serve. Now it was in the same position to return the ball straight back across the screen, but as the dot approached the electronic paddle, Hunt moved the vertical line and the movement hit the dot, as if off a curved paddle, sending it up toward the top of the screen. Dor moved his paddle up to intercept it right at the top, forming an upside down L between paddle and top of screen, but the dot slid over the top of his paddle and the machine pinged.
"Ten to two," said Hunt with a smile. He realized there was a dead spot at the top of the machine from which a paddle could not return a ball. Now to see if there was one at the bottom of the screen.
The serve switched to Dor now. The game went on. There was a blind spot in the bottom of the screen too. Ten-three, ten-four, ten-five.
Dor played in growing frustration, shouting at the moving dot. Hunt stood silently alongside the machine, moving his control knob slowly, almost casually.
When the score reached ten-ten, Dor smashed the heel of his pudgy left hand against the base of the machine. On its face, it registered TILT, and the electronic paddles disappeared.
"Okay," he said to the four men, who stood just inside the doorway. "Okay, okay. Bug off."
As they left, Hunt said, "That was right-handed. I haven't shown you left-handed yet."
"Don't bother."
"How about left-handed with a blindfold?"
"You can't play this with a blindfold. How can you play if you don't see?"
"You don't have to see," said Hunt. "You've never noticed. The machine makes a different sound when a ball is coming in low than it does when it's coming in high. You can hear a siss that tells you fast or slow."
"You know, I don't think I like you," said Dor.
"I could beat you by telephone," said Hunt.
Dor looked at him, at the studied insolence in Hunt's eyes, so different from the look of bland confusion that was there when he first entered the room. The maharaji decided he could ignore the challenge in order to harness Hunt's talent. He said:
"One hundred thousand dollars. Kill them both."
"Their names?"
"All we've heard so far is Remo and Chiun. They're probably in San Francisco."
"Too bad for them," said Hunt, and he enjoyed saying it.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Today, Remo thought, Joleen was almost human.
She had spent the previous evening sitting quietly, listening intently, as Chiun had gently lectured the girls of the San Francisco Divine Bliss Mission; then late at night she had tried to join Chiun on his sleeping mat in the large bedroom that had been given to Remo and Chiun.
But Chiun had flitted her away with a swish of his hand, and she had settled for Remo and climbed into his bed, and because he was tired and wanted to sleep, Remo serviced her, just so that he did not have to listen to her talk.
The cab episode yesterday had weakened her insane devotion to Maharaji Gupta Mahesh Dor, and their sojourn in bed last night must have weakened her even further, Remo decided, because today she was talking like a human being and not like a recorded announcement.
Chiun, meanwhile, had spent the morning complaining that insects had bothered him all night, while he tried to sleep, and when Remo said they had not bothered him, Chiun had suggested that they would not bother one of their own.
Now they sat in the front seat of a rented car, Joleen sandwiched between Chiun and Remo.
"I do not understand," said Joleen.
"Hear, hear," said Remo.
"If you are a Master," she said, "what then is the maharaji?"
"For small people there are small things," said Chiun. "For large people, there are large things. It is the same with masters."
Joleen did not answer. She clamped her mouth tightly and thought. Chiun looked across her body toward Remo.
"Where are we going?" asked Chiun. "I did not know we could reach Sinanju by automobile."
"We are not going to Sinanju. Now knock it off."
"I think this one is cruel," Joleen said to Chiun, nodding her head toward Remo.
"Ah, how well you know him. See, Remo. She knows you. Cruel."
"Don't forget arrogant," said Remo.
"Yes, child," Chiun said to Joleen. "Do not forget arrogant. Or, for that matter, slothful, inept, lazy, and stupid."
"Yet he is your disciple," she said.
"To make beauty from a diamond is given to many men," said Chiun. "Ah, but to make beauty from a pale piece of pig's ear is something else. That takes the skill of a master. I am still trying to make him seem human. Beauty will come later." He folded his arms.
"Could you make beauty of me?" she said.
"More easily than of him. You have not his bad habits. He is a racist."
"I hate racists," Joleen said. "My father is a racist."
"Ask the racist where we're going," said Chiun.
"Where are we going?"
"I'm taking us out for some fresh air. All that incense and bowing and scraping was getting me down."
"See. He is an ingrate too," Chiun confided. "People willingly open their doors to him, and he downgrades their gift and their hospitality. What an American. If he tells you he will take you back to Patna, do not believe him. White men never keep their pro
mises to others."
"Hey, Chiun. She's as white as I am. She's from Georgia for Christ's sake."
"I don't think I want to go back to Patna anymore," Joleen announced suddenly.
"See," said Chiun. "She is different from you. Already she grows in wisdom, while you have learned less than nothing in the last decade of your years."
Remo pulled the car to the curb. "All right, everybody out. We're going to walk."
"See," said Chiun. "How he orders us about. Oh, perfidy."
Chiun stepped onto the sidewalk and looked around. "Is this Disneyland?" he asked aloud.
Remo, surprised, looked around him. A small carnival to benefit St. Aloysius Roman Catholic Church had been erected on an asphalted parking lot a half-block away.
"Yes," said Remo. "It's Disneyland."
"I forgive you, Remo, for being a racist. I have always wanted to visit Disneyland. Forget everything I said," he told Joleen. "Who brings the Master to Disneyland is not all bad."
"But…" Joleen started to speak. Remo took her elbow. "Quiet, kid," he said. "Just enjoy Disneyland." He squeezed. She understood.
Chiun's body meanwhile was moving up and down as if he were jumping in joy, while keeping his feet planted firmly on the sidewalk. His long saffron robe looked like a pillow case into which shots of air were being jetted, causing it to rise, then deflate, rise, then deflate.
"I love Disneyland," said Chiun. "How many rides can I go on?"
"Four," said Remo.
"Six," said Chiun.
"Five," said Remo.
"Agreed. Do you have money?"
"Yes."
"Do you have enough?"
"Yes."
"For her too?"
"Yes," said Remo.
"Come, child. Remo is taking us to Disneyland."
"First, I've got to make a phone call."
Ferdinand De Chef Hunt drove slowly back into San Francisco. The city confused him with its mazelike streets that seemed to run from hill to hill and then vanish.
With help he found Union Street and with more help found the building that housed the San Francisco Divine Bliss Mission. If these two targets, this Remo and Chiun, were looking for Dor around San Francisco, they had probably stopped at the mission.
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