“On second thought, let’s stay,” Remo said. “Hey, look, you buy popcorn at that stand and they let you put on your own butter-like topping. Much as you want.”
Chiun ignored the comment and led the way out. “Remo, I hope you never follow through with your outlandish threats.”
“Hope is good for the spirit.”
“Promise me you never will do something as foolish as luge without clothing.”
“I guess so.”
Chiun’s eyebrows were heavy. “That was not convincing.”
The door of a nearby ticket booth flew open. The woman standing there had frizzy, dishwater hair that looked as if it hadn’t been cut in years or washed in weeks. Her tunic was a flannel sheet with poorly sewn sleeves and seams, and its bright tie-dye colors had faded to dirty splotches.
Her lower lip quivered. “Oh, thank goodness, it’s you! I thought I would never see you again!”
She strode barefoot to Chiun with her arms out, only to come up empty-handed. The wise, ancient Asian man had vanished like a spirit—which, surely, he had to have been.
Chapter 8
The prime minister of Jamaica held a press conference in time for the morning news. The verdant gardens were in Kingston, where the sky was blue and cloudless, the Caribbean Sea was turquoise, and the prime minister’s face went from dark brown to scarlet.
“The Americans always win de games. Jamaicans, dey just die trying,” the prime minister proclaimed. “Yesterday, our special girl Beetrice Goldings, she was cheated out of another hundred t’ousand dollars by the crooks and the thieves of the Extreme Sports Network. Dis is poor sportsmanship.”
Mark Howard was getting ready for work in the suite he now shared with Sarah Slate at Folcroft Sanitarium. He should have moved out weeks ago, but moving out posed its own problems. Where would Sarah go? Home, to the Slate mansion in Providence?
He didn’t want her to go home.
Right now, something was bothering him, and it wasn’t Sarah Slate. It was the prime minister of Jamaica. Howard knotted his tie too long and undid it, tying it again, and he tried to figure out where the PM’s head was at.
“Today I am calling on all athletes from Jamaica to no longer compete in competition organized by the Extreme Sports Network of the United States,” the PM stated. “We won’t compete until the Americans make dere games fair to all de world!”
The prime minister of Jamaica was a dignified, impeccably neat black man who was known to be restrained and friendly. Today he was angry and passionate.
Sarah came out of the shower in a bulky bathrobe, brushing her hair. “What’s the matter?”
“He’s sure mad.”
“He has a right to be, doesn’t he?”
“I don’t know,” Mark Howard replied, but he didn’t know if that was even the point.
“I’m extending a request, too, to my counterparts in Grea’ Britain, to also pull ut of all events sponsored by this network of cheaters and a nation of bullies!”
The PM stalked away from the cameras.
“Pretty strong,” Mark said.
“He’s just jumping on the bandwagon,” Sarah said.
“I suppose he is,” Mark admitted.
“Americans do not always win in our events!” exhorted the president of Extreme Sports Network to the cue-ball, old-school talk-show host. They were sitting around a circular table, and the highly credible interviewer had his shirtsleeves rolled up his arms and his glasses coming down the bridge of his nose.
“That’s not what the rest of the world thinks,” he said.
“Look, I have a pie chart to prove it,” the president of ESN said.
The ESN president felt like a moron with his poster board, but this interview was arranged at the last minute, and he didn’t have time to get his PowerPoint slides transferred into whatever format the TV show needed. Still, the pie chart was eighteen inches in diameter and quite colorful. The sixty-six-percent share in pale yellow represented wins by U.S. competitors or teams. Bright purple, red, blue, green and orange were wins by non-U.S. competitors.
“The winners are still mostly Americans,” accused the interviewer, who had so much journalistic integrity his eyeballs were newsprint yellow.
“Give or take five percent, that’s about the same percentage of U.S. participants in any and all our events since we launched the network,” the ESN president shot back.
“Quite persuasive. But they don’t tell the whole story. What about the discrepancies in dollar winnings?” On the monitor, a freeze-frame of the poster board was displayed side-by-side with a professional-looking PowerPoint slide of a similar pie chart. “This is also a chart of wins from the same events, this time illustrating dollar winnings. The yellow is U.S. competitors and that’s eighty-seven percent The smaller slices are other countries.”
The ESN president gulped. The interviewer’s chart looked much more professional and persuasive.
“Looks to me like you’re letting the Americans win the high-profile, big-prize contests, then throwing some bones to the other countries on the smaller games.”
The ESN bigwig was sweating profusely. To his horror, the cameraman got a close-up of the beads of perspiration on his upper lip. “I’m not aware of these results so I can’t speak to them.”
“Since ESN began programming its biggest media events opposite the more traditional sports such as football, there have been no non-American winners.”
“That’s not true.”
“Our chart proves that it is.” The ESN president’s sweaty mouth was now split-screened with a big red pie chart that showed that one hundred percent of the winners were American.
“I’m going to have to investigate this myself,” the ESN president stammered. “I don’t see how this can be factual.”
The journalist nodded smugly. “I guess it’s up to the world to decide.”
Chapter 9
Remo was feeling like a big fat heel. Chiun was ticked at him for keeping secrets. When Remo asked Chiun not to come along today it only exacerbated the sour mood that had come upon him late the previous night as they roamed Revelry Hills vainly searching for a campground. Chiun reluctantly allowed the search to expand to a few other select Southern California zip codes, and finally agreed to take the first RV lot they could find. Remo could have said “I told you so,” but wisely refrained.
“We shall simply park at the All-Mart,” Chiun sniffed, as if this were a perfectly acceptable alternative. “There is never a lack of such places.”
Ever since he got the RV idea into his head, Chiun had been talking about the wonders of chain stores that allowed RVs to overnight in the parking lots. Since there were countless stores like All-Marts across the country, in every town and city, Chiun insisted they would never be without a place to park the new, mobile Castle Sinanju. The problem was that Chiun had probably never been to an All-Mart. Remo didn’t think the old Master knew what he was getting himself into.
They found an All-Mart in West Hollywood, and even the parking lot smelled bad. They parked there, regardless, and Remo thought that Chiun was beginning to see the impracticality of the Sinanju-mobile.
He found the address he wanted in Burbank and stuck on a fake mustache in the elevator. He hated it. It felt stupid, and he just knew it made him look stupid, no matter what the Romanian image consultant had claimed. The fifth floor was dominated by a perfectly made-up and manicured receptionist. Several office suites were in orbit around her.
Time to be charming, Remo thought unhappily.
“Hi. Romeo Dodd. I’m here to see, uh… Let me check my planner.” He pulled out the crumpled FedEx receipt and examined the smeared characters in a circle along one margin. “Dasheway? You have a guy named that?”