"Why don't you ask her?"
"Maybe she lie?"
"Oh, good grief," Remo said.
"Maybe she like it." She smiled wickedly.
"Sidonie." Fabienne's voice brought the huge woman running. Remo exhaled gratefully.
"Who do this to you, girl?" she asked, pressing the girl's face into her mammoth bosom. "You tell Sidonie, she going fix his butt good."
Fabienne coughed to bring her voice above a whisper. "It was the mute, Sidonie. The Dutchman's mute."
The black woman's eyes closed as she sucked in air noisily. With two fingers she gave the sign of the Evil Eye to ward off demons.
"You know I'm getting tired of all this crap," Remo said. "Any mention of this Dutchman character around here, and everyone gets scared out of their bloomers. It is to puke."
"Do not mock him," Sidonie warned. "He hear you. He is the Evil One. He knows."
"Oh, bull fat," Remo said. "I'm going up to that castle on the mountain today and haul that mute, or whatever he is, down to the police station. And if the Dutchman doesn't like it, I'm going to pop his cork."
"Do not speak so quickly, Remo." Chiun stood behind him, glittering in a ceremonial robe of teal-blue brocade.
"See, he know," Sidonie said, gravitating toward Chiun, whom she showered with affectionate pats and clucks. "You look real fine today, Mr. Chiun," she said sweetly. She turned back to Remo, scowling. "This white boy, he come out wearing a towel around them skinny legs, him with a girl in his bed."
"I wish I could have been spared the sight," Chiun said. "And I'm sorry for the mess Remo made here last night. We were attacked by hoodlums last night. They broke my television."
"That's a shame, Mr. Chiun. I'll have the place fixed up in no time."
"Can you replace my television?" he asked hopefully.
"You just leave it to me. You going to teach that trash what beat up Fabienne a lesson?"
"Yes. His last lesson," Chiun said coldly.
There was a loud knocking at the door. "What fool come visiting this time of day?" Sidonie mumbled as she lumbered toward the front entrance.
"Something special going on today?" Remo asked Chiun, who was arranging the elaborate folds of his ceremonial robe. Chiun shrugged. "You're not going to tell me, are you?" Remo said, fingering the cloth of the kimono.
"There is no need for you to know."
Sidonie's loud whisper wafted toward them. "No," she hissed, stomping. "I ain't giving you no hundred dollah. You never give back the last fifty you borrowed."
"Sidonie, baby," Pierre's smooth voice cooed. "It the truck. She broke. I got to have the money, or I go out of business."
"Too bad for you, then. You got to go to work now like an honest man."
"Who goes?" Chiun called.
"It only Pierre," Sidonie said. "I telling him to leave now. You hear that, boy?"
Remo and Chiun walked into the living room.
"Mister Remo." Pierre nodded. "I come to talk to Fabienne, if she here."
"Hah!" Sidonie grunted. "You come to rob me again."
Pierre ignored her. "I been most everywhere on the island," he said, "looking for her. I got to give her some bad news."
"She's here, but she's not feeling well," Remo said. "Maybe you can tell me."
"Well..." He shuffled his feet. "It not good. I seen her house today. It wrecked. Windows smashed, mud all over the door, everything. Look like somebody get real mad, tear the place up."
"It must have been the mute," Remo mused.
Pierre's eyes bulged. "The Dutchman's mute?" he said in a strangled squeak.
"Shut up, you nosy no-account..."
Pierre gasped. Something was lying on the end table near the sofa. He took a few hesitant steps and picked up the white plastic card that had fallen from the shirt of the dead man when Remo yanked him from the ceiling. "Dis yours?" he asked tentatively.
"Ain't none of your business," Sidonie snapped.
"It is nothing," Chiun said.
"How do you know?" Remo asked, irritated. "We don't even know what it is."
"It the gate-opener," Pierre said softly.
"The gate-opener?"
"It is inconsequential," Chiun said. He pointed Pierre toward the door. "Come again another time. Call first."
"Like maybe next year," Sidonie growled.
"What gate does it open?" Remo asked.
Pierre looked from Remo's face to Chiun's. The old man was tense and angry. "Uh... it not important. Like the man say."
"What gate, Pierre?" Remo glided in front of him, locking into the black man's eyes.
"The gate to the shipyard," Pierre admitted, looking at his shoes. "My cousin had one when he work for the Dutchman a while back. He stick it in the gate, and the fence lose electricity. Dat how you get in the shipyard."
"Does your cousin still work there?" Remo asked.
"Naw. Nobody work there long. The Dutchman don't keep nobody long enough to know nothing. My cousin never even seen the Dutchman. Me neither."
Remo took the card and turned it over in his palm. The shipyard. Everything pointed to the shipyard. And the Dutchman.
"You'd better leave now," Chiun told Pierre. His jaw was clenching.
"Sure thing," Pierre answered with a two-finger salute. "Oh, one more thing, Mr. Remo. My truck. She broke, and—"
"Git!" Sidonie roared. She grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him until his head rolled. "Don't you be bothering the tourists with your cheatin' and lyin'. Git now and don't come back!" She tossed him out the door. He staggered a few feet, regained his balance with a grunt and a hateful backward glance, and headed off.
"What was that about?" Remo asked as he put the card back on the end table.
Sidonie chuckled. "He be bothering everyone on the island to lend him money, but nobody trust Pierre. He never give it back. I throw him out before he try you."
"Oh." It always surprised Remo that money was considered so valuable to most people. He himself had all the money he ever needed, thanks to the good graces of Harold W. Smith, who kept him supplied with cash. Not that he needed much. A man who was officially dead and worked as a government assassin didn't have much use for shiny cars or big homes or a fancy wardrobe. He didn't eat in restaurants, didn't have hobbies, had no family to support. Except for the fact that his physical organism was one of the two best in the world, he was, in worldly matters at least, dead. He had no more use for the money he carried than a corpse in a grave had for credit cards.
He pulled a roll of bills from his pocket and peeled off two fifties. "Give this to Pierre the next time you see him," he said tonelessly. "I guess he can use it. Here, take a hundred for yourself, too."
"Mr. Remo—"
"Where's Chiun?" The old man had vanished. Remo took a quick look around the house, although he knew Chiun wouldn't be there. He had known about the card, and for some reason he had kept it from Remo. The end table where he had placed the card was empty. Right now the old Oriental would be making his way, swiftly and silently, toward a place where Remo was not invited.
"Take care of the girl," Remo said on his way out the door.
He reached the shipyard in a few minutes at a dead run, passing near a tangled swamp where bamboo grew in tall shoots. The fence surrounding the yard hummed with its charge of deadly high voltage. Chiun was nowhere in sight. Remo doubled back to the swamp, hacked off a long bamboo pole, then carried it back to the fence and vaulted over.
"Chiun," he called.
"I am here," a voice came from the interior of the shipyard. Chiun was standing near some battered truck bodies, his hands tucked into the sleeves of his robe. He said, "Go home, Remo. This is not your affair."
"I just want to know what the hell's going on here. Since we started this so-called vacation, I've been shot at, hung off a cliff, maced, and told to break the arms of a dead man. Now Fabienne's been half strangled, our house is a disaster, and here you are in the middle of a shipyard in a goddamn ceremonial robe. You can't expect me to just turn around now and go home."