"The fire," the boy said softly. Conn noted that he had a vague Southern twang. "See the fire? The fire burns."
And as if some hidden switch had been thrown, the Mafia man went berserk.
Screaming, the Viaselli soldier slapped his hands flat against his own head. He beat his palms to his chest as if trying to extinguish invisible flames. Howling in pain and crying for help, he whirled in place. At first MacCleary thought it was some kind of seizure. But when the man spun to him, he couldn't believe his eyes.
Blisters were rapidly forming on the man's face. As MacCleary watched in terrified fascination, the erupting boils turned red, then white. They spread across the man's cheeks and down his neck. As his face became one big blister, the man screeched in horror.
There was no flame, no heat. The belief that he was on fire was enough for him to experience the effects. The skin ruptured and boiled and spit and crackled as if he were fully ablaze. As MacCleary stared in disbelief, the screaming Mafia man's eyes baked to an opaque milky white. Then he wasn't screaming anymore because he was dead. The man fell face first to the neatly vacuumed wall-to-wall carpeting.
"Sweet mother of mercy," Conrad MacCleary gasped.
He saw a shuffling movement. Numbly, Conn looked up.
The kid was coming for him. He had that same weird look on his face, this time directed at MacCleary.
Conn's eyes darted around the room.
Felton and the others melted back. All the men were shocked. Only the Oriental was unaffected. He stood rooted in place, a knowing smile on his broad, flat face.
And coming toward Conn, a look of possessed doom in his deadly eyes, was the freakish yellow-haired kid.
Hypnosis or something else entirely, it didn't matter. Conn had seen what that kid could do.
There was only one way out. Calculating every possible alternative in an instant, MacCleary came up with the only workable solution. And as soon as he had it, he acted upon it.
Conn fell back from the kid, from the Oriental. From Felton and the other mobsters.
The floor-length balcony drapes blew gauzy white into the apartment. Conn stumbled through them. Felton and the others started to run, but it was too late. Conrad MacCleary flipped up and over the wrought-iron balcony railing and dropped from sight. "Dammit," Felton snarled, bounding out onto the terrace.
He was just in time to see MacCleary bouncing off a third-floor balcony. Conn had tried to grab on with hook and hand. It slowed his descent enough that when he hit the landscaped evergreens they didn't tear his flesh to shreds. He struck the trees and rolled, hitting the sidewalk hard.
The uniformed doorman and a few tenants from the parking lot ran over to the body. The doorman quickly raced back inside the apartment building to phone for an ambulance.
"Witnesses," Felton growled. "Damned witnesses."
He whirled back around, face furious.
Winch was gone. So, too, was the blond-haired kid. O' Hara lay dead on the floor. Jimmy Roberts stood over him. The two remaining Viaselli men were hovering over their own dead companion, their faces dumb with shock.
Felton shook his head, trying to shake away the shock of the past few moments. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.
"Get someone down there to check the body for an ID before the cops get here," he ordered. "And clean this mess up." He waved to the two bodies in the room. "I don't want any evidence when they start asking questions."
As Jimmy got on the phone and started issuing orders, Felton took one last look at the burned body. When he stepped into his study a moment later, Norman Felton's face was ghostly white.
Chapter 16
"That's not to say you Catholics were always bad," the Master of Sinanju announced.
The old Korean was sitting cross-legged on a broad, flat rock in the middle of the prairie. The cold and lonely sky above his aged head was black and scattered with stars. Somewhere far off, a lone coyote howled at the waxing moon.
They had been in the desert for so long now, Remo had lost all track of time. His sunburned skin had long since gone from lobster red to a dark tan.
It was closing in on midnight. Rather than return to their motel when evening fell, as had become their custom during these weeks in exile, Chiun had proclaimed that this night they would remain out in the desert.
At the old Korean's insistence, Remo was trying to start a fire. He had been trying to start one for the past three hours. Remo didn't know what he was doing wrong. After all, he had seen it done in Westerns a million times. Something to do with rubbing sticks or banging rocks. Unfortunately, what was child's play for Gabby Hayes was proving impossible for Remo Williams. All the sticks he managed to scrape up were snapping and all the rocks were shattering in his hands.
Remo was squatting in the sand. At his toes was a growing pile of broken sticks, crushed rock and no fire.
When the Master of Sinanju brought up Catholics for the umpteenth time, Remo wasn't in the mood. "Are we back to Catholic bashing again?" Remo grumbled as he worked. "I thought you'd reserved today for dumping on the Chinese."
The Master of Sinanju's rampant prejudices became even clearer as the days bled into weeks. By the sounds of it there weren't many members of the human race he had much use for. Even the inhabitants of Sinanju-which Remo learned was also the name of the North Korean fishing village from which Chiun hailed-weren't spared criticism. Two days ago Remo had been forced to endure a six-hour monologue on the village cobbler, with the ominous warning never to entrust him with a pair of ceremonial greeting sandals. Remo-who had never worn a pair of sandals in his life, never intended to wear a pair, thus negating the need for mending, and who had never been to Korea and had no intention of ever going there-agreed to take Chiun's warning to heart. That blessedly ended the Sinanju-cobbler harangue. But since sunup yesterday it was all about the Chinese and how they were all thieves and liars, so Remo was a little surprised when the old man started up on Catholics again.
"You just said a prayer to the founder of your cult," the Master of Sinanju explained.
Remo frowned. "No, I didn't."
"I heard you distinctly," the old Korean said. "You invoked your deity. You said 'Jesus Christ, why won't this light?'"
"Oh," Remo said, nodding understanding. "Just a figure of speech. Although I wouldn't object to a little otherworldly intervention right about now. The Lone Ranger could use his gun to start a fire. You wouldn't happen to have a .45 stashed up that skirt of yours, would you?"
"For your sake I will pretend I did not hear that," Chiun droned. His hooded eyes sought night shadows.
Remo sighed. "Back to square one." He returned to his rocks and sticks.
"There were some nice popes in the Middle Ages," Chiun resumed as Remo crushed a fresh pair of rocks. "Now, the Borgias. There were some popes who knew how to treat their assassins. And when there was more than one pope at a time, the babies of Sinanju ate well. But now you people have settled on one pope who seems content to follow your founding precepts. Worse even than a false religion is a false religion that actually practices what it preaches."
"Yeah," Remo said. "I can see how that'd wreck the market for professional killers." More rocks shattered in his hands. "Damn," he muttered as he threw them to the ground. "You know, this would be a hell of a lot easier if you'd just let me drive to town for some matches."
"No matches. Steer clear of those evil things, Remo," Chiun warned darkly.
Remo almost hated to ask. "What have you got against matches?" he said, sighing wearily.
"Aside from fostering a reliance on devices for doing something that you should be able to do yourself?"
"I don't fart fire, Chiun," Remo pointed out.