Chiun turned to Esperanza. "Have no fear."
"I have none," said Enrique Espiritu Esperanza. "For I know I am protected by the best."
Chiun, bowing formally, breezed from the room. Remo followed.
"Who is that guy, that he knows all about you?" Remo asked.
"Esperanza is a great man," Chiun said.
"Bulldookey," said Remo.
They weaved their way through the furniture. No bullets struck them. No bullets came at all.
Moving low, they reached the parapet and peered up over the edge.
There was only one sniper. He was crouched on the roof of a high-rise office building, directly across Wilshire. They could see the color of his face. It was as brown as a cashew.
"He looks Latino," Remo whispered.
Chiun stood up and shook an angry fist, which was mostly bone covered by yellow parchment-skin.
"Hear me, O villain!" he called. "I am the Master of Sinanju, and I say that your minutes are numbered!"
The sniper brought his weapon up to his cheek and put an eye to the sniper scope.
It was a mistake. The Master of Sinanju cracked a piece of parapet off the roof combing, and with a flicking motion sent it screaming on its way.
The sniper had no sooner laid the cross hairs onto his target than the scope filled with stone. The stone, moving at terminal velocity, drove the scope into the man's eye socket, shattering it, so that the tube buried itself for half its length in the soft cheese of his brain.
"Scratch one sniper," Remo said, coming to his feet.
"He will never threaten Cheeta again," the Master of Sinanju intoned.
"Not to mention the inspiring Esperanza," Remo said dryly.
"Him, too."
"Too bad you had to waste him," Remo said slowly. "Now he can't tell us who put him up to it."
"We could not risk a stray bullet harming Cheeta."
"Fickle as she is, right?"
"Perhaps something may be learned from that body," Chiun said pointedly.
"Just what I was thinking. You know, it would be a good idea if one of us were to spirit the body away before that hairy barracuda wakes up and starts asking questions."
"I do not dispose of bodies," Chiun said icily.
"That means you want the Cheeta detail, huh?"
Chiun considered. "She is fickle, but it may be she will come to see my good qualities."
Remo grinned. "You forget. I have a boon coming to me."
Remo had known the Master of Sinanju a long time. He had seen him angry, greedy, elated, and sad, and every mood in between. But he had never seen the old Korean do a slow burn before.
Chiun first went pale. Then a flush crept up from his neck, which had turned very, very red. The flush suffused his wrinkled visage, until his bald head came to resemble a Christmas bulb with almond eyes.
"Of course," Remo said quickly, not sure that a volcano wasn't about to blow, "for the right word, I might be willing to fetch the body."
The Master of Sinanju's voice was thin. "What word?"
"The P word will do."
"Pale piece of . . ."
"Not what I had in mind. How about 'please'?"
Chiun hesitated. He cleared his throat. Remo waited.
"Aren't you going to say it?" Remo asked.
"I did."
"Huh?"
Chiun cleared his throat again. More clearly, he said, "Is that not sufficient?"
"No. I want to hear the vowels caress my ears."
Chiun parted his dry lips. A word emerged-long, drawn-out, a sibilant hiss.
It sounded like "please." Although it might have been "sneeze" or "bees" or "freeze."
"Close enough for government work," Remo said lightly. "I got the body."
"Then begone, callow one."
On his way to the elevator, Remo called back, "Whatever you do, don't let Esperanza out of your sight!"
"He is safe, never fear."
Remo grinned. "What, me worry?"
Remo took the elevator to the lobby. When the doors opened, he was immediately confronted by a trio of LAPD cops and a flock of press. Since this was the private penthouse elevator, there was no disguising where Remo had come from.
"I don't remember letting you pass," the head cop said.
"Funny, I don't remember passing you," Remo said, offering an ID that identified him as Remo Custer of the Secret Service.
The cop lost his attitude. "Everything all right up there?"
"Shouldn't it be?"
"Guess so."
From that, Remo figured the gunshots hadn't been heard down here. He moved toward the door. The waiting media, smelling a quote, tried to follow him through the lobby.
"Have you any statement?" he was asked.
"Get a life."
Remo foiled them at the revolving door. As soon as he was out on the sidewalk, he gave the door a reverse shove. The door was not meant to go in reverse and it jammed, trapping three reporters in the glass pie-slice sections, and the remainder in the building itself.
Remo slipped across the street and into the office building on the other side. He grabbed the elevator and pressed the highest number, hoping the cage would take him to the top without his having to transfer.
It got as far as the sixth floor. The door opened, and a long-necked mailroom clerk rolled a dirty, canvas-sided mail hamper into the cage, practically squeezing Remo into a corner.
"This going down?" the mail room clerk asked, as the cage resumed its climb.
"This feel like down to you?"
"It feels like up."
"Must be that we're going up."
The mail clerk frowned. "I want down."
"You got up. Tough."
The boy shut his mouth, and started stabbing buttons at random, trying to get the car to stop.
It finally stopped at fifteen. The clerk got out and reached in to pull the hamper out of the cage. The hamper refused to budge.
"I haven't got all day," Remo pointed out.
"It's stuck!"
"This is what happens when you get on the wrong elevator."
"I can't leave it," the clerk said frantically.
"Tell you what," Remo said, "you get off, catch the next elevator to the first floor, and when I get to my floor I'll send this thing down. You can reclaim it in the lobby. How's that?"
"I can't leave this. It's full of important mail."
"I never heard of mail that wasn't important," Remo pointed out, "but you can't tie up this elevator until you grow muscles."
The mail clerk was reluctant. Finally he said, "I guess it'll be all right. Promise to send it right down?"
"Scout's honor," said Remo, lifting four fingers ceilingward.
The mail room clerk got off. The doors closed, and Remo removed an inhibiting toe from the metal frame that held the wheels to the hamper.
The rest of the ride was pleasantly uneventful.
On the top floor, Remo pushed the hamper off the elevator, pushed it into a gloomy corner, and went in search of a way to the roof.
It was a drop-down ladder. Remo pulled it down and popped the hatch.
The body of the sniper had almost finished twitching when Remo reached it.
"Chiun musta been nervous," he muttered, gathering up the body. "They almost never twitch this long."
The head wobbled as Remo carted it back to the ladder. That was because the sniper scope, rifle still attached to it, kept swinging with each step.
Down on the top floor, Remo scooped out a bed for the corpse and laid it in the hamper. He covered it with assorted envelopes and packages. The rifle stuck up, so Remo simply snapped it off the scope mount and tossed it away, along with a long mailing tube that kept getting in the way.
That solved the problem.
Whistling, Remo rode the elevator down to the lobby.
The long-necked mailroom clerk was, as Remo had expected, waiting for him impatiently. His eyes were coals of fear. The worried look on his moist, twitchy face turned to one of relief when Remo stepped off, pushing the squeakywheeled hamper.