The man was dead but Nilsson held his arm around the corpse's throat, feeling the power the murder had given him. How many years had it been. Twenty-five? Thirty? He had not raised a gun in anger. He had turned his back on a family history and what had it gotten him? A famous tradition with no one to carry it on, and a dead brother. As the man grew heavier in his arm, Gunner Nilsson decided something that he had always felt: he was the greatest assassin in the world. And he was doing now, in vengeance and in the full power of his genius and skill, what God had always meant him to do. The blood pounded in his temples. Viking fury rose in his throat and he tasted the bite of anger because someone had dared to violate the closing of the contract.
And there at center stage in his purple jacket and his black eyeglasses was the imbecile who had ignored Gunner Nilsson's warning to the world: this job is mine, stay away. Big Bang or whatever his name was would need a lesson too. The curtains began to open. There on the stage wearing their charnel-house costumes were Maggot and the Lice. The audience went wild. The musicians just stood there. Girls jumped over seats and began clambering down the aisles. Reluctantly, Big Bang Benton began to move out of the center spot toward the side of the stage away from Vickie Stoner. Nilsson waited until the angle was perfect, then snapped off a shot from his .38 that ripped through the front of the Adam's apple of the disc jockey. Benton clutched his throat and staggered offstage. No one noticed him, and the bullet, after passing through his throat, buried itself quietly in a sand bag near the edge of the curtain.
Nilsson smiled. Big Bang would not use his voice again to offer someone a contract that the Nilsson family had closed.
Then Maggot hit a chord on his guitar, one heavy seventh chord that hung in the air of the theater and whose echo overwhelmed and quieted down the fans' noise. For a moment, the echo competed with the stillness of the audience and then over the silence was heard the plaintive haunting cry of the red-haired woman backstage:
"Gotta ball that Maggot."
The sound was buried as the music began. Nilsson raised his pistol again, looked down its barrel and planted the tip of it against Vickie
Stoner's closed right eyelid. He held it there momentarily, then smiled and lowered the pistol. The million dollars would come later. First, there must be Remo and the aged Oriental.
Gunner Nilsson walked out of the theater box, back into the hallway and headed for the front of the theater. They would not be here tonight, his two primary targets. He would watch and wait. He went down a long flight of stone stairs to the lobby of the movie house which had, as most movie houses, been elegant once, but was now just wilted.
The red carpet in the lobby was worn, and tan threads showed through it as Gunner Nilsson walked on dry shoes toward the front door. His mind was far away. He would have to call Switzerland again and tell them that anyone else who moved on the Vickie Stoner contract would end up like the man in the hat. He would have to find out where the Maggots, or whatever their names were, would be performing next, because he would follow them until the girl's bodyguards arrived. When he found them, he would extract his revenge. And then. .. but only then ... the girl.
These things went through his mind as he walked toward the front doors of the theater and his mind was not fully on his surroundings and he did not notice the young white man coming through the door until he had bumped into him.
"Excuse me," Nilsson said.
The white man grunted.
Nor did Gunner Nilsson notice the old Oriental standing off to the side of the lobby, looking at still photographs of movies that were coming Tuesday and Wednesday back in 1953.
The Oriental noticed Gunner Nilsson however.
"Come on," Remo said to Chiun. "We've got to keep an eye on Vickie if she's here." He noticed Chiun's eyes following the man who had just bumped Remo. "What are you staring at?" Remo asked.
"That man," Chiun said. "What about him?"
"He bumped into you but did not blink," Chiun said.
"So what?" Remo said. "He didn't burp either."
"Yes, but he should have blinked." "Maybe his blinker broke," Remo said, still looking out toward the street, where the man now stepped off into the rain. "What difference does it make?"
"To a fool, nothing makes a difference," Chiun said. "Just remember, that man did not blink."
"I'll carry the knowledge with me to the end of my days," Remo said. "Come on." He turned and walked rapidly toward the orchestra section of the theater. But Chiun lagged behind, still looking out toward the street, still thinking of the man who did not blink.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
"Good-bye, Remo."
Chiun and Remo had worked their way backstage. The policeman who guarded the stage door entrances in the private side aisles had been confused when the two men approached. The elderly Oriental spoke to the two officers and pulled their eyes to him and the white man who was with him vanished. Just vanished. And when they turned to look for the white man, he was nowhere to be seen. They looked back to the Oriental to question him and he was gone too.
On the other side of the door, Remo and Chiun looked around. Remo felt relieved when he saw Vickie Stoner leaning near a lighting control panel. Stoned but alive, he thought.
He started to move toward her, but Chiun held back, looking in wonderment at the busy backstage, people scurrying about, perhaps apparently in logistical support of the creatures who were out on the stage now, making subhuman electrical noises.
It was then that Chiun said, "Good-bye, Remo."
"Good-bye? What Good-bye?"
"The Master of Sinanju tarries no place where people sing mugga, mugga, mugga, mugga."
"Don't listen. Block your mind," Remo suggested.
"Easy for you, since your mind is always blocked. I am returning to our hotel."
"Chiun, dammit. Who knows what might happen here? I might need you,"
"You will not. Whatever is going to happen has already happened."
"You know that for a fact?"
"I do."
"Who told you?"
"The man who did not blink." With that, Chiun turned and walked back through the door to the hallway, politely saying "excuse me" to the policemen who had almost convinced themselves that the two men they had seen before were merely apparitions, hysterical visions brought on them by the heavy music of Maggot and the Dead Meat Lice.
Remo watched the door swing shut behind Chiun; he shrugged and moved to Vickie Stoner's side.
"Great, aren't they?" he said.
"Bitchen, man. Bitchen." She looked around. "Hey, it's you. My one and only lover." Her face showed real happiness to see Remo.
"If you loved me so much, why'd you run away?"
"Hey, I had things to do and I know you wouldn't let me. Besides, somebody was laying a lot of shit on me about his television shows."
"From now on, you just stay with me. Don't get between Chiun and his television set and everything'll be all right."
"Whatever you say, Remo." She put an arm over his shoulder. "You missed all the fun."
"What fun?"
"Somebody shot the throat out of Big Bang Benton."
"That's fun?"
"Ever hear his radio show?" Vickie asked.
"No," Remo said.
"Him without a throat is fun."
"Anything happen to you?" said Remo, suddenly cautious and moving around in front of Vickie to shield her from the upstairs box seats which he noticed had a good view of backstage.