"That's just supposing that they hung on to the old ways, am I right?" asked Remo.
"It would be scandalous!" Humphrey proclaimed, as if Remo had dared suggest his favorite daughter might turn out to be a mindless slut. In fact, he didn't seem embarrassed by the notion of surviving pirate bands, but rather by the notion that they might adopt newfangled methods for themselves, in place of raiding as their great-great-great-grandfathers had conducted their attacks two centuries before.
"So say these free spirits did exist," said Remo. "How would, say, a freelance journalist with cash to spend get hold of them and make arrangements for an article, perhaps a full-length book?"
"You're taking much for granted," Ethan Humphrey answered, showing off the store-bought pearly whites. "Naturally, I'll see what I can do, but don't expect too much in way of miracles."
"I never do," said Remo, sounding far more sober than when he had spoken just a moment earlier. "I also need a travel agency, trustworthy and reliable, to recommend a native crewman for the next leg of our journey."
"Native crewman?" Humphrey struck a pose right on the stool, pretending that he had to scan his brain for an idea.
In fact, if Remo's instinct was on target, Humphrey was about to set him up with a potential nest of con men, maybe worse.
"There is a certain travel agency," the transplanted New Englander went on. "Trade Winds, the owner calls it. Nothing terribly original, but they arrange for guided tours, pilots, crewmen, anything you need to make your island getaway a memorable experience."
"Sounds perfect," Remo said. "Where do I find them?"
"Bay Street," Ethan Humphrey said. "Are you familiar with the town at all?"
"Just what I've seen since we got in, about an hour ago."
"When you say we...?"
"I have a traveling companion," Remo said. "He's been with my family for years."
"Faithful retainer, eh?"
"Yes," Remo smiled. "Faithful retainer. Exactly."
"I understand, of course." The pearly dentures flashed again. "It does you credit, bringing the old boy along to see the sights on your vacation. There's no Mrs. Rubble, then, if I may be so bold?"
"Not currently," said Remo.
"Ah. Two men out on their own, then, challenging the sea."
"Well..."
"It's the finest way there is to travel." Humphrey leaned in on his elbows, dropping his voice to an almost conspiratorial tone. "Women simply muck up these adventures, don't you find?"
Remo was waiting for the older man's hand to find his thigh and was relieved when Humphrey kept his paws to himself. Apparently, his rapt enthusiasm was restricted to the bounding main.
"I really couldn't tell you," Remo replied. "This is my first time out at sea, I guess you'd say. I mean, I used to take the family sailboat out from Montauk sometimes, in the summers, but it's been a long, long time."
"You never lose the feel, though, do you?" Humphrey didn't wait for a response to his own question. "Being on the water is like dreaming, flying, giving yourself up to magic that's been drawing men away from land since time began."
"You're some enthusiast," said Remo.
Humphrey may have blushed behind the tan, but it was difficult to tell. "Forgive me, please, if I sound maudlin. I'm afraid the sea has always been my one great love. It's difficult for landlubbers to understand, I know. As for myself, I heard the calling early on, but it has only been the past few years, since my retirement from the halls of academia, that I've been able to indulge myself."
"You live here?" asked Remo.
"What, in Puerta Plata?" Humphrey had to think about it for a moment, as if he could not remember his address. "I've been here for a year-or is it eighteen months? No matter. I go where the sea winds blow me, as the spirit moves."
"Some life," said Remo, wondering how much of it was total bullshit.
"Yes," the older man said, beaming back at him, "it is. I'm working on a book about those days. My magnum opus, you might say. There's never been a definitive study of the Caribbean pirates before, the way they lived and died, the reasons why they chose an outlaw life."
"About that travel agent," Remo said, "if you could let me have the address..."
"Of course," said Humphrey, coming back as if Remo had summoned him from dreamland. "It's at number 20 Bay Street." He rattled off the directions and was disappointed when Remo called it a night, claiming he needed to be up early.
"Of course, I understand," Humphrey said, giving Remo a final glimpse of false teeth. "Good sailing, then."
Outside, the night was cooling down. Streetlights were few and far between, but Remo did not mind darkness. Even if he hadn't been able to expand his pupils to make catlike use of the ambient light, a handy Sinanju skill, he still would have been able to find his way back to the harbor by following his nose and keeping to the streets that ran downhill. The handful of pedestrians ignored him as he made his way toward the waterfront.
As Remo walked, he thought about his conversation with Ethan Humphrey, the old man's fascination with pirates and their lawless lifestyle. It was a little odd, but not freaky-odd, Remo decided. A professor of history who kept up with his hobby in retirement, finding a way to blend study with relaxation in a pleasant tropical climate-it didn't seem so peculiar. Still...
The muffled scream distracted him. Remo went in search of it. He might save a damsel in distress and that would be his good deed for the year, or it might be a trap, some kind of setup. He hadn't been subtle in his questions, here or in the other ports of call where they had briefly stopped along the way. There was at least an outside possibility that someone, possibly the very men he sought, would try to take him out and end this unpleasant undercover work.
Please be a trap, please be a trap, he thought as he stepped into the brooding shadows of an alley, the source of the scream.
Chapter 8
The alley looked and smelled like any of a thousand others Remo had explored as a teenager, as a Newark cop, or during his years with CURE. Bare dirt and gravel under foot. A reek of garbage that had nearly liquefied when no one bothered to collect it. Scuttling, feral sounds of rats or scrawny kittens as they foraged in the trash for something edible. This night, though, this alley held the muffled sobbing of a terrified woman and the gruff, excited voices of her tormentors.
Remo made no conscious attempt to camouflage his approach, but some of his earliest training with Chiun had taught him to move with effortless silence. His soon-to-be adversaries huddled in the blackness at the far end of the alley. Remo counted four of them by their voices. It was a lengthy dead-end alley, Remo saw, with no escape for their intended victim-or for them, now that he stood behind them, cutting off their only access to the street. The alley made as good a killing pen as he had ever seen. Three of the men were Remo's height or shorter, average for the Caribbean mixed breed they represented, while the fourth and nearest to his left stood six foot five or better. Remo guessed the hulking mugger's altitude had marked him as a freak from adolescence, opening him up to taunts and ridicule that would have led him into fights and taught him to rely upon his strength and size for settling arguments.
All four were dressed in peasant shirts and baggy trousers. Mr. Big displayed patches on his rump. One of the men, on Remo's right, had picked up a Malcolm X cap somewhere; he wore it backward, at an angle, the curled bill half covering his neck, the faded X resembling a target on the back of his skull.
Remo caught a glimpse of their victim, and that's when he wanted to start shouting profanities. The woman cornered in the stinking alleyway was Stacy Armitage.
In fact, Remo wasn't tremendously surprised, just ticked off. Their conversation back in Maryland had left him thinking that she was the ambitious type, likely to make an attempt to solve the mystery herself, and now here she was, ass deep in alligators, waiting for a sympathetic knight to come along and rescue her.
Of course, that wasn't fair. From what Remo saw-the blouse torn open to expose
one breast, the dark smudge of a bruise on Stacy's cheek-she hadn't counted on the rough reception she was getting in Puerta Plata. She probably hadn't set him up for this, he decided. Even so, there was a moment when he thought of leaving her to sort things out herself-enjoy the benefits of amateur sleuthing with limited resources and no one to back her up in the event that she encountered trouble.
A couple of the thugs were talking back and forth in Spanish, chuckling at some not-so-private joke, and all were keeping their eyes on the woman.
Remo didn't bother to dredge up his bare minimum of Spanish, all of it learned from constant repetition from Chiun's Mexican soaps. He didn't even know what it meant. Probably, "and now, a word from our sponsors." So instead he said, in English, "Is this a private game, or can anybody play?"
The four thugs spun in unison, as if they choreographed it.
"Nice footwork," Remo said. "But it's so sad to see how far the Four Tops have fallen since their years as pop music superstars."
The Four Tops stopped being surprised almost immediately and started being angry. Stacy Armitage showed a mixture of relief, desperation and stark surprise in her features. Remo became grudgingly convinced she hadn't been expecting him-or anyone-to come along and save her from the evil-smelling gang.
The tallest attacker was first to find his voice. Whatever he said was unintelligible, but Remo had no difficulty with the tone. It was a warning, a threat, telling Remo that the girl belonged to him and his buddies and possibly suggesting Remo should get wise and run away.
"Don't speak the lingo, sorry," Remo told them. "All sounds the same to me, you want to know the truth."
"Joo got big prublem, gringo," said the weasel in the backward cap.
Remo addressed the English-speaker. "Are you being anti-Semitic? Can't we stop the hate? You know I was going to cut you guys some slack and let you walk, but now you've gone and pissed me off."
The muggers glanced at one another, three of them apparently confused, their faces registering anger as the fourth translated Remo's words. Stacy Armitage clutched her open blouse and watched Remo with a dazed expression, convinced that he would soon be dead.
"Lass chince, gringo," said the interpreter. He drew a switchblade from the right-rear pocket of his baggy pants and snapped it open, long blade gleaming even in the darkness of the alleyway. As Remo stood and watched, the other three pulled weapons of their own: another knife, a razor and a length of rusty chain for Mr. Big.
"You losers shouldn't play with toys like that," said Remo, smiling as the muggers started to encircle him.
Considering the crude enveloping maneuver, Remo half expected them to rush him all at once, but it was Mr. Big who made the first move on his own. He swung the chain at Remo's head, as if delivering a roundhouse punch, the steel links hissing in the night air.
Instead of shattering the skull he aimed for, though, the big man's flail sliced empty air. Remo simply stepped aside and let the chain swing by harmlessly. He waited just long enough for Mr. Big to realize he had missed entirely, then retaliated with a swift kick to the big man's knee.
There was an ugly cracking sound, immediately followed by a scream as Mr. Big lurched backward, hopping on his one good leg. The chain was totally forgotten as he lost his balance, long arms flailing, and collapsed into a pile of garbage spilling from a capsized trash can. As he fell, the giant's own chain whipped around and struck him in the face, adding insult to injury.
Remo's trio of lice-ridden adversaries hesitated, each man glancing briefly at his companions as their hulking comrade fell. Mr. Big's rapid defeat might have prompted them to run, except that Remo barred their only exit to the street.
"C' mon, c'mon, c'mon!" Remo complained. "Let's just get this over with, huh?"
Remo Williams, Reigning Master of Sinanju, was far less distracted and impatient than he seemed. His senses provided him information from all directions and his awareness was high, like the awareness of a hunting big cat. He knew that Stacy Armitage was moving, for example, seeking out a corner of the dead-end alleyway and searching for a weapon, anything that she could use in self-defense if Remo failed to drop his three opponents. At the same time, he was also conscious of the wounded mugger to his left, moaning in pain as one hand clutched his thigh, the other still wrapped up in chain.
Mr. X advanced with his switchblade held in front of him, lips drawn back from his teeth as he cursed Remo in a steady stream of gutter Spanish.
Remo didn't even try to translate, gliding forward to surprise the blade man. The blade man was very surprised indeed. One second he was facing an unarmed skinny white tourist. The next second his knife was gone, his wrist was broken and the wall on one side of the alley was rushing at him at a hundred miles per hour. He bounced off it, more bones breaking inside his body, and before he could fall he found himself facing the skinny white guy again. The pain of the broken wrist was just screaming into his brain as he felt the white guy take his head in his hands. There was a brief flash of rapid movement, then there was blackness.
When Mr. X collapsed, the faded cap was facing forward and it was the blade man's head that was reversed, facing directly backward on a broken neck. That was enough for the two men still on their feet. They wanted out of there, but Remo didn't plan to let them go so easily. He stood his ground and waited, knowing they would either have to rush him or-
The dark man with the knife turned and made a rush at Stacy Armitage, but the rush didn't get too far. Remo had lost patience with this gang of dull blades and stepped in fast, giving the would-be hostage taker a quick nudge in the back. The knife man flew into the brick wall near Stacy Armitage with a liquid thump. Not hard enough to kill him, but the knife man's good looks got squashed into pulp, which he would discover when the pain would bring him screaming back to consciousness hours later.
Mr. Big chose that moment to drag himself erect, one hand clutching the filthy wall behind him, his good leg taking his weight. It had to have hurt like hell, but he was grimly silent as he made his move. Remo faced off the razor man long enough for Mr. Big to get himself up, then moved in fast on the razor man. Too fast for the razor man to even see, and then the razor man was flying-for a fraction of a second he was actually airborne.
The two muggers came together with stunning force, damaged each other irreparably, then fell away from each other like two sides of a lightning-split tree trunk.
Stacy Armitage couldn't quite believe all she had witnessed in the past few seconds. Suddenly her attackers were neutralized. No longer crying, she stared at Remo as if she couldn't believe her eyes.
"Are they all dead?" she asked finally.
"Not that guy," said Remo, pointing at the wall kisser. "These two I don't know."
Stacy raised one shaking hand at the man in the Malcolm X cap.
"You broke his neck."
"Oh, yeah, that guy is dead, definitely. Let's go." She almost flinched when Remo reached to take her hand, but at the final moment she gave in and let herself be led away. The alley was two blocks behind them, and they were proceeding toward the waterfront, before she found her voice again.
"I can't believe you killed them, just like that," she said.
"They made the rules," said Remo. "You were in some trouble with those four, as I recall."
"I never said that I was sorry," Stacy told him. "I just can't believe it was so easy. Who are you?"
"We've been through that already," Remo said.
"You're not like any federal agent that I ever heard of," Stacy said.
"Why, thank you! That was a compliment, right?"
"An observation," she replied. "Don't let it swell your head or anything."
"I'll do my best," he said. "Stop here."
Stacy Armitage found the fingers on her arm were an irresistible force. She stopped because she didn't have any choice. They were standing in a dark place between what few lights there were on the streets.
She felt Remo's hands on her body, but she didn'
t have time to consider the possibility that he had taken her from the would-be rapists so he could ravage her himself. The man touched her in various places, quickly and methodically.
"Anything hurt, aside from the bruise?"
"No," she responded. "I don't think so."
"You'll live," Remo pronounced, and they started walking again. "What are you doing here?"
"As if you didn't know." Her tone was bitter. Remo knew there was a lot more to come. He gave her a look in the darkness, which was all he needed to do.
"I know you and a bunch of other Feds said my brother's case was being taken care of," Stacy blurted. "I know. Except that wasn't good enough, okay? I couldn't just sit back and wait to read about it in the papers, or to have some stuffed shirt come around six months from now and say it's over, but the details have been classified. I need to see it through. Is that so hard to understand?"
"You almost saw it through tonight," said Remo. "How'd you meet those four gorillas, anyway?"
"I've been in town two days," she said. "Flew down from Jacksonville on Thursday afternoon. The Coast Guard wouldn't give me any information, and the local cops are worse than useless. I've been asking questions, checking out the kind of places where your basic pirates might hang out, if they had time to kill."
No pun intended, Remo thought, but kept it to himself. "So, let me guess," he said. "One of those characters suggested that he might have useful information he'd be willing to let go of, for a price?"
"The Spike Lee fan," she said. "I know he suckered me, okay? Don't say it."
"And he took you to the alley, where his friends were waiting?"
"Pretty much," she said. "I still thought I could talk my way out, maybe buy them off, but they had something else in mind. They would have...I mean, if you hadn't shown up when you did... well, thanks."
"No problem," Remo said. "Unless, of course, somebody in the dives where you were hanging out remembers seeing you with Mr. X. The locals may not care who dropped those four, but if they do, and tongues start wagging, you could have a whole new set of problems on your hands."
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