Then a slow pleased smile stretched his mustache like a miniature accordion, to reveal gleaming white teeth like a row of tiny tombstones.
"Why, you're perfect!" Antony Tollini said in awe.
Remo blinked. Something was not right here.
..I am?".
"Sit down, sit down," Antony Tollini said, gesturing to a comfortable black leather chair.
When Remo had settled in, Tollini said, "It says here you grew up in Detroit."
"If that's what it says," said Remo, who never bothered with the details.
"From a good family neighborhood, am I right?"
" I remember it that way, yeah," said Remo, who had grown up in Newark, New Jersey, an orphan and ward of the state.
"Great. My family is from the Old Country. I'm second-generation. On my mother's side."
"I'm Irish too," lied Remo, who was finding this easier than he had thought. So far, none of the questions had been hard. He had boned up on computer terminology while waiting for his application to be processed. He hoped it would get him through.
"Irish? With a name like Remo?"
"Half-Irish," Remo said quickly, realizing the man meant some other Old Country.
"Great, great," Tollini was saying. He looked at the resume again. His head lifted and met Remo's eyes with a shine that was almost worshipful. "You're hired."
" I am?" said Remo, eyebrows quirking upward.
"Can you start today?"
"Sure.
"Right now?"
"Yeah."
"Good. You're on the next flight to Boston. The car is waiting."
"Boston? What's up there?" ,
"Our most important client. Their system is down."
"Down where?" asked Remo, frowning.
"Broken," said Antony Tollini. "Don't you know what down means?"
Remo suddenly remembered what "down" meant in the world of data processing. It had been on the list. Right under CPU.
"Where I come from, we don't say 'down,' we say 'flat.'
" 'Flat'?"
"Yeah, like a tire. All computer talk is like that in Detroit., When our computers crash, people get glass in their faces.'
"Now that you're with IDC,' Antony Tollini said, rising from his desk, "you say 'down.' Can you say 'down'?"
"Down," said Remo, suddenly noticing Tollini's arm across his shoulder. Remo allowed himself to be hustled from the office. This was happening awfully fast, he thought.
"Good. I can see you have a bright future with us, Mr. Mercurio."
Out by the secretary's desk, Antony Tollini was simultaneously congratulating Remo with a frantic two-handed handshake and telling his secretary to provide Remo with the proper documentation.
It was under his arm when Remo was hustled into a waiting company car. They had to wait while the paramedics finished loading a gurney into the back of an ambulance.
"Someone get hurt?" Remo asked the company driver.
"Lobby security guard. Fainted."
"Imagine that."
"Yeah, and they found him in his shorts. No sign of his clothes. Poor bastard will be reassigned to Siberia.
"IDC have a Russian office?"
"Siberia," the driver explained, getting the car going, "is defined at IDC as anyplace other than Mamaroneck."
"What does that make Boston?" Remo wondered.
"You going to Boston?" the driver asked sharply, looking up into the rearview mirror. ,
"That's what my airline ticket says.'
"I've driven a lot of new employees to the Boston gate," said the driver thoughtfully. "I can't remember ever picking one up again."
"I'm the exception that proves the rule," Remo told him smugly.
"I'll bet you are. I've been with IDC going on twenty years. I've never seen a new man dressed like you."
"Didn't you hear? They've relaxed the dress code. All they expect now is clean underwear."
"Who told you that?"
"That security guard, as a matter of fact. Guess the shock was too much for him."
At the airport, Remo checked in and sought a pay phone. He called his hotel and got a busy signal.
"Dammit," Remo said, hanging up. He walked the waiting area impatiently and tried again. The line remained busy. He couldn't understand it. Chiun hated telephones.
When they called for final boarding on his flight, Remo was listening to another busy signal.
He was the last one on the plane. What the hell was Chiun doing on the phone all this time? Remo wondered as he took his seat.
Then he remembered. During the months when Chiun had been presumed dead, Harold Smith had stopped taping Chiun's latest passion, British soap operas. The Master of Sinanju had hectored Smith unmercifully until he had promised to acquire the complete backlog.
No doubt a fresh shipment had arrived and Chiun was catching up. He usually left the phone off the hook while he watched his soaps. When he didn't rip it out of the wall entirely, that was.
" I hope they're especially good episodes," Remo muttered as the 727 engines began to whine preparatory to takeoff, "because when I get back, Chiun's going to kill me."
Chapter 6
At Boston's Logan Airport terminal, Remo looked around for a payphone.
He was halfway there when an upright hulk in a sharkskin suit got in front of him and asked, "You the guy from IDC?"
"How'd you guess?" Remo asked.
"You got the blue book. They all come with the blue book. We got a lot of blue books now, and we still got our problem."
"Yeah," Remo said, looking around the terminal distractedly. "And if I don't make a quick call, I'm going to have a problem. "
"It can wait," the chauffeur said, placing a meaty paw on Remo's shoulder.
"No, it can't," Remo said, heading for the pay phone. The chauffeur was stubborn. He refused to release Remo. And so he found himself being frog-marched to the pay phone, his expression a mixture of surprise and respect.
Casually Remo dropped a quarter into the pay-phone slot and punched in the number. While he was waiting, he absently reached up to pry the heavy hand off his shoulder.
Remo got another busy signal. He hung up. "Okay, lead me to the car."
"You know," the chauffeur said, looking at his numb hand with vague disbelief, "you're not like the stiffs they sent before. " , The classified I answered specifically said 'No Stiffs.' '
The chauffeur's thick features brightened. " I got a good feeling about you. What'd you say your name was?"
"Remo. "
The chauffeur's broad face broke out into a broad grin. "No kiddin'? Remo. I'm Bruno. Come on, Remo. You might be just what the doctor ordered."
"That's what Tollini said."
"That Tollini, now there's a stiff. Keeps sending us stiffs, even though we keep tellin' him not to."
"I think he got the message," said Remo.
"I think he did, at that."
The car was a black Cadillac, Remo saw. It was parked in the middle of a line of cabs. None of the cabbies seemed to mind.
"Hey, Remo," the driver said once they were in traffic.
"Yeah?"
"Do yourself a big favor."
"What's that?"
"If you can't fix the boss's box, don't come out and say so right away. Know what I mean?"
"No."
"Don't give up so easy. We don't like quitters in our outfit. Catch me?"
"What happens if I can't fix it?" Remo asked.
"Never say never. That's all I got to say."
At the offices of F and L Importing, Remo took one look at the lonely personal computer sitting on the Formica card table in the dim room surrounded by husky security men in sharkskin suits and without preamble broke the bad news.
"It's hopeless."
"What'd I tell you!" Bruno the chauffeur moaned. "Ain't you got ears? Don't you listen?" He got between Remo and the three security men, and waving his arms, said, "He's kiddin' us. He's a kidder, see? I was talking to him on the ride over, gettin' him wise." The chauffeur turned to Remo and said, "Tell them you're kiddin', Remo. His name is Remo, see?" he called over his shoulder.