"Oops," he said sheepishly. He eyed the many guns. "I'm out of practice. Is this a good time to offer a bribe?"
The woman screamed once more before jumping behind a cubicle wall.
"Face on the floor!" an officer commanded.
"No," Remo corrected. "Feet on floor. See feet go. Go, feet, go."
And before the cops knew what was happening, he was gone from their midst. When they spun, they saw him flying up the aisle toward the main entrance.
Gunfire erupted in Remo's wake. He flew into the hallway amid a hail of bullets.
The Master of Sinanju was with the coroner's men near the elevators. He frowned deep displeasure as Remo raced up to him.
"What have you done now?" Chiun demanded as Remo slid to a stop beside him.
"Nothing," Remo said. "Told somebody my name. The rest's a blur."
Chiun's wrinkled furrows grew deeper. "If you must say something stupid, do not say anything at all."
Police officers began spilling into the distant hall. When they yelled for Remo to stop, the two men from the coroner's office immediately leaped behind the broad receptionist's desk beneath the LFB plaque.
"I like my name," Remo challenged, hurt, just as the police opened fire.
Standing before the closed elevator doors, the two Masters of Sinanju weaved and dodged around the incoming volley of bullets. Several screaming shards of hot lead thudded into the sheet-draped corpse beside them.
"By all means, then, remain here and like your name to your heart's content," the Master of Sinanju began. With a ping, the doors slid open. "I, however, like my life more."
As bullets whizzed by his parchment-draped skull, the old man ducked aboard the elevator car. Remo shot a final glance at the still-firing police. Arranged at the end of the hall, they were frustrated by their inability to sight down on their quarry. They continued shooting as Remo jumped inside the elevator car. He stabbed the button for the first floor. "Can they not halt our descent?" Chiun asked as the doors slid shut. He tucked his hands inside his voluminous kimono sleeves as the elevator began its swift slide downward.
"You've seen too many movies. By the time they figure out how to shut it down, we'll be long gone."
"How?" Chiun asked skeptically.
Remo smiled. "I've seen a lot of movies, too." Reaching up, he pulled down the cheap suspended ceiling. Behind it was a small trapdoor. He gave it a push, and the door slapped against the roof of the car.
"Rock, paper, scissors for who goes first?"
Chiun was peering up through the hole. "Hurry up, retard," he said peevishly.
"Guess I volunteer," Remo muttered.
Hopping up, Remo snagged the open mouth of the trapdoor with both hands and slid his thin frame easily through the narrow opening. In a flash, he was on the roof. The grimy dark walls of the elevator shaft were close.
They were already closing in on the eighth floor. "Get the lead out, Little Father," he called down into the car.
"Do not rush me," Chiun complained.
Through the opening, Remo saw the old Korean carefully gathering up the hems of his purple kimono into a tight ball.
They were approaching the sixth floor.
In the elevator car, Chiun's exposed ankles tensed. The instant they did, it seemed as if he were locked in place as the elevator continued to descend. The hole closed down around him. For a moment, as the trapdoor slid down around his shoulders, his flowing robes made him look like a wrinkled jack-in-the-box. A second later, he cleared the door and joined Remo on the roof of the car.
"What now?" the Master of Sinanju asked, releasing his bunched kimono.
"We make like all of Wylander Jugg's highschool blind dates and jump for the nearest available door," Remo replied.
They were passing the second-floor doors. Remo's feet left the roof of the car. Chiun's sandals hopped away a split second after his pupil. They landed simultaneously on the narrow ledge before the closed doors.
Behind them, the empty car continued its descent. Even as it was stopping one floor below them, Remo and Chiun were prying open the second-floor doors. They stepped out into the corridor. As they did so, shouted voices began echoing up from the depths of the elevator shaft.
They quickly found a fire exit. Before the police figured out what had happened, they'd taken the stairs down to the street. As sirens of the first backup police cruisers rose over the snarl of Wall Street traffic, they were walking briskly away from the Lippincott, Forsythe, Butler building.
The two Masters of Sinanju melted in with the foot traffic near Trinity Church.
"I suppose this means we hit a dead end with Larry Fine," Remo commented as they strolled down the street.
Chiun shook his head. "Our trip was not wasted," he replied. "In spite of your best efforts to make it so."
Remo raised a curious eyebrow. "Why? You get a chance to sneak a peek at the body before the fireworks started?"
The Master of Sinanju nodded. "And?" Remo pressed.
As they walked, Chiun stroked his thread of beard thoughtfully. "In days gone by, it was common for emperors to slay the builders of their palaces to keep secret any hidden treasure rooms or escape passages."
"I know that," Remo frowned. "Why, was there a secret passage back there?"
When he craned his neck back to see the LFB building, he found it hopelessly out of sight. Beside him, Chiun's impatience at his pupil's persistent obtuseness manifested itself with a weary drooping of his bald head. With a single delicate nail against Remo's chin, he guided the younger man's gaze away from the vanished LFB building. "Please, Remo, make an attempt to focus your thoughts." The Master of Sinanju sighed. "If not for your sake, for the sake of our village. Smith's dead stooge built a house of finance," the old man explained. "He was removed because his services were no longer required by the Romans."
Remo blinked. "Romans?"
"Or whatever ugly name they go by now," Chiun waved dismissively.
The notch in Remo's brow deepened. "Larry Fine probably wasn't Italian, Little Father," he said slowly.
"That would not prevent him from working for Nero's sons," Chiun said. "If you need further proof, when did the constables begin shooting at you?"
"After I told that ditzy woman my name," Remo said.
"Which is a Roman name," Chiun stressed. "She probably took one look at you and mistook you for one of them." He dropped his voice low. "Given the mongrel soup out of which you flopped, I really cannot blame her for her error, Remo. In the right light, you can pass for nearly everything that walks, crawls or swings by its tail from a banana tree."
"Don't knock my roots," Remo warned thinly. "When I shook my family tree, a Master of Sinanju fell out."
Chiun couldn't argue with that. He therefore ignored it. "The woman feared the Romans because she knew the stooge was in league with them," he said.
"So how do you know?"
Chiun raised himself to his full height. "The smell of death is strong," he intoned. "The smell of boiled tomatoes, even stronger. At least two mashed-tomato eaters were involved in this killing."
"Even if you're right, I don't know that it means anything," Remo said. "I'll give Smitty a call and let him know what happened to Fine."
"Be sure to tell the emperor to direct his oracles to search for those of Roman descent," Chiun instructed.
"I'll tell him your theory," Remo agreed. "But his computers look for criminal stuff, not people's ancestry. Unless they're in the Mob or something, we've hit a dead end. Of course, I'm keeping a good thought that maybe these guys who are following us can tell us."