It was an insult when they broke his door instead of knocking—though in truth, it would be difficult, to make the room look worse than it already did. The motel manager would clearly not attempt to bill Chiun for the damages, unless he had grown tired of life in Dogwood and was anxious to pursue another incarnation. Either way, it was a trifling matter to the Master of Sinanju.
There was a question of respect, though, which he could not, in good conscience, overlook. Barbarians didn’t offend him, in their proper place—a social station that included drudge work in the fields and mines—but Chiun didn’t appreciate them being forced upon him otherwise. The loathsome situation was exacerbated by the ignorance and rudeness of the three inept killers.
“You never said he was a Jap,” one of them told the others.
“Shit,” a second one replied, “he’s older than my grandma.”
Chiun considered whether he should kill them swiftly and be done with it, or make them suffer for their insults. Three barbarians were hardly worth his time, but there was still a principle to be upheld.
The Master of Sinanju did not suffer insults lightly.
He was meditating on the problem—quick and clean, or slow and painful—when the seeming leader of the three stepped in to block his view of the old TV and turned the sound off on the set.
“Hey, Pops,” the stranger said, “we need to talk.”
Chiun examined him the way a butcher might regard a cow or hog, deciding where the first cut should be made. He didn’t speak, returned the killer’s gaze without a hint of trepidation.
“You speak English, man?” the door-breaker asked.
Chiun nodded, still not speaking. As a mental exercise, he found the thug’s carotid artery and spent a moment counting heartbeats. This one did not want his friends to know he was afraid.
“Say something, then,” the young barbarian demanded.
Chiun obliged him. “You should step aside,” he said, “and turn the sound back on.”
The man blinked, incredulous. “I don’t believe this shit,” he told his friends, and forced a smile to make himself appear at ease. He turned back to Chiun. “You got more problems than a fucking TV show, old man.”
“It is poor quality, of course,” Chiun allowed, “but better than Roseanne.”
One of the others giggled nervously, a woman’s sound. Chiun had his position marked, without the need of facing him.
The young barbarian was glaring at him now. “Forget about Roseanne, all right?”
“It is my pleasure,” Chiun conceded.
“So, where’s your buddy?”
“Who?”
“You’ve got somebody staying with you. Where is he?”
“Gone,” said Chiun.
“Gone where, old man?”
Chiun offered the suggestion of a shrug, his shoulders barely moving. “Who can say?”
“You’d better say. We haven’t got all night.”
“Then you should not waste precious time with foolish questions.”
“What?” The young man turned to his companions. “You believe the fucking nerve on this old Nip?”
“I can’t believe it,” one replied. “Fuckin’ nerve,” the other echoed, without conviction.
The young man aimed his pistol at Chiun, its muzzle hovering six inches from the Master’s face. “You know what this is, Grandpa?” he demanded.
“I believe it is a boom device.”
“Bet your skinny ass it is! You gonna make me use it?”
“No man is compelled to prove himself at the expense of reason,” Chiun replied.
“Say what?”
“Do what you have to do,” Chiun translated.
“You heard him, Ernie,” one of the companions chimed in from the sidelines. “Fuck ’im up.”
“He’s makin’ fun of you,” the other said.
“That right? You making fun of me, old man?”
“I am not Mother Nature,” Chiun informed him, reasonably. “I am not responsible for your deficiencies.”
Another high-pitched giggle from the shortest of the three. Chiun wondered if the young man was retarded or just easily amused.
“You gonna take that shit?” the other asked.
“Fuck no!” the one called Ernie answered, stepping closer, drawing back his arm to strike Chiun with the gun.
It would have been a challenge for the quickest eye to follow Chiun as he reached out to grab the young man’s genitals, his razor-sharp nails incising and separating a critical area. That brought the young man to his knees and instantly negated any risk of future generations being sullied by his evident genetic defects. By the time the gunman found his voice to scream, the rigid fingers of Chiun’s left hand had crushed his larynx, canceling the sound and cutting off his flow of precious oxygen. He would be dead in seconds flat, but Chiun didn’t wait to observe the process.
He had other work to do.
The two survivors gaped at him in shock as Chiun leaped from the floor and closed the gap between them to convenient striking distance. Both men raised their guns and fired at once, but hastily. In truth, a fleeting pause to aim would not have saved their lives, but reckless haste made Chiun’s work that much easier.
His movements hardly visible to the eye as he ducked and twisted slightly to his left, the bullets whining past like insects, shattering an ugly lamp and drilling through the wall behind him. Wasted effort. He was on the giggler in a flash, the Master’s hands a blur as he struck two, three, four blows in the time required to blink an eyelid. Bones snapped with the sound of green twigs breaking underfoot, and Chiun’s unworthy adversary toppled over backward, dead before his body hit the threadbare carpet.
That left one, and he was breaking for the door as Chiun stepped up to intercept him. It was child’s play, stretching out a foot to trip the clumsy killer, watching as he vaulted forward, skull colliding with the wooden door frame.
He was barely conscious when the Master picked him up one-handed, holding him at arm’s length like a half-drowned cat. The application of a bony fingertip revived him, and he was gasping at the sudden pain.
“Who sent you here?” Chiun inquired.
“Hey, man, I just go where I’m told, okay?”
Another probe, and this time it produced a breathless scream.
“Hey, Jesus! I don’t know who let the contract out, awright? We got a call from Ernie, he says let’s go roust these guys outa the Dogwood Inn. That’s all I know, I swear to God.”
“Who told him to come here?”
“Aw, shit…the manager, I think. That’s what he said. Why don’t you let me go, huh? I won’t tell a soul, I promise.”
“I believe you,” Chiun replied, and snapped his neck.
The narrow bathtub had not been designed for three, but it would serve for now. Reluctantly Chiun switched the television off and straightened his kimono. There was one more small job to complete before he could attempt to find another worthy program.
Humming to himself, he went to find the owners of the Dogwood Inn.
Chapter 12
“So, have you ever seen these guys before?”
Joy Patton, standing in the bathroom doorway, blinked at Remo, then went back to staring at the bodies in the bathtub. She was looking slightly green around the gills, but Remo thought she handled it all right, considering the circumstances.
“Maybe that one,” Joy said, pointing to the one on top. “It’s hard to say for sure. He looks familiar in a way, but then again, I haven’t seen that many purple faces lately.”
There was nothing he could do about the color, after Chiun had smashed the shooter’s larynx, cutting off the flow of oxygen and leaving him to strangle.
“You’d have seen him at the home?” he prodded.