He knew they were coming to him even before the two men stopped outside his door.
"Enter," he commanded before they could even knock. His voice was thin and reedy.
When the men came in, they didn't see him right away. Nuihc had to clear his throat to draw attention to himself.
They found the Oriental in a lotus position near the main living-room windows. The men seemed surprised to see that Mr. Viaselli's enforcer was sitting out in the open. Somehow their eyes had missed him. The drapes were drawn.
"We got what you wanted, Mr. Winch," one of the men said as they crossed over to Nuihc.
They were big and muscled, with greased-down hair. The stink of garlic and tomato oozed from their pores.
"Here," Nuihc ordered. He rose to his feet in a single fluid motion, waving a hand to a low table. Nuihc sat delicately to his folded knees before the table. Huffing and puffing, the two men settled uncomfortably down beside him.
"We finished up around nine this morning," the first man said. "It took us this long to get them developed."
Each man had a big manila envelope. From each, they extracted a thick pile of photographs.
"We set up just like you told us," the man continued. "Right out front. Kinda weird you'd want that. Most guys in our line of work like to use the back."
"We are not in the same line of work," Nuihc said icily. He didn't mention that the person he was interested in wouldn't deign to use the service entrance. "Okay, Mr. Winch," the man agreed nervously.
The two men began laying out the photos.
The pictures all showed the main entrance to East Hudson Hospital. They were taken from a car that had been parked directly across the street.
The men set out the photographs very carefully on the funny little table. They were going backward through the stacks, from the ones most recently taken to the earliest.
"We got mostly everybody who come in the front," the first man said as they set down the black-and-white photos, one on top of the other. "Right up to when we heard the guy with the hook killed himself. We figured we was done then."
"He is dead?" Nuihc asked, frowning.
The Viaselli man nodded. "Ripped his throat out with his own hook. Sick bastard."
Nuihc didn't respond. He glanced from pile to pile as the men set down the photographs. Nothing of interest so far. Just people coming and going.
At one point a man in a suit and tie caught his eye. He had wrists thicker than a man of his build ordinarily would. In the photos he seemed to have something....
But there were only two pictures of him. One as he came up the sidewalk and one of him on the stairs. They were quickly covered up. Sorting through a few more photographs, the men suddenly heard a hiss of air.
When they looked up they saw that Nuihc's eyes were open wide. The men saw a look that might have been fear dancing across the Oriental's broad face. It came as a surprise. They both knew well Mr. Winch's reputation.
"That guy showed up about a quarter to five in the morning," one of the men explained, tapping the photo. "I remember we said it was weird 'cause it was almost like he knew we was there. It was like he was posing or something."
In the photo an elderly Oriental in a long robe was shuffling up the sidewalk.
"Look at this. We were going through this bunch before we got here. It's real spooky." The Viaselli man laid out a few other pictures of the old geezer.
In each photograph the old man's head was turned a little more to the left. By the last one, he was staring directly down the camera lens. The Viaselli men had found this particularly disturbing when they'd had the film developed. When they put the pictures together and riffled through them from one corner, it appeared as if the man in the photos was actually turning to look at them.
"Isn't that the craziest thing you ever seen?" the Viaselli man asked.
Nuihc didn't answer. He didn't even look up at the two men sitting at the table with him.
The silence lasted minutes. The room grew very still.
The men glanced nervously at each other. "Um, hey, you okay, Mr. Winch?"
"Go," Nuihc barked.
"Oh. Okay, sure. Anything you say, Mr. Winch." They began reaching for the photos. A hand slapped down atop the stack depicting the old Oriental.
"Leave them," Nuihc ordered.
The men didn't need to be told a second time. Climbing awkwardly to their feet, they hurried from the apartment.
Once they were gone, Nuihc sat there for a long moment. He heard the elevator descend, heard the traffic sounds in the street below. Sirens howled in the distance.
This was Manhattan. The Rome of the New World. As far removed from antiquated courts and dusty thrones as one could get in this modern age.
He looked at the top photograph.
And yet there he was. Older, yes. But still the same. Nuihc picked up the photo, holding it delicately by the corner. "So," he said softly to the empty room. "You have finally come for me, Uncle."
It was a little soon. He would have preferred to put it off another ten years or so. But it would still work. He would have to tweak his employer's plan just a little.
If he planned it just right, he would succeed. And he could finally get retribution for the injustice committed against his family a hundred generations ago.
Nuihc tipped his head to one side. With an index fingernail short but sharpened to a dagger's point, he lazily traced the outline of his old teacher's head.
"The time is come, old man," Nuihc whispered to the photo. "It is finally come."
Cut free from the rest of the photograph, Chiun's decapitated head fluttered gently to the carpet.
Chapter 20
The racial situation was awful, just awful. Senator Leonard Albert O'Day wanted to make the sheer awfulness of it all absolutely clear to the gathered reporters.
"Awful, just awful. We must do all we can to address this terrible situation of race in America."
He was on the sidewalk outside 40 Rockefeller Center. Senator O'Day had just left the New York studios of NBC, where he had announced on the network's Sunday-morning news show that the racial situation in America was awful, just awful.
Senator O'Day had been using that same phrase for the past ten years. Ever since the study he had commissioned had found out that black people who lived in ghettos in America were poorer than affluent suburban white people.
The results of his study were greeted with somber faces and serious nods. Because of his work, Senator O'Day was heralded as a pioneer in the field of race relations.
Back during the sixties, one reporter who hosted an afternoon talk show in the senator's native New York noticed after a year of "awful, just awfuls" that Senator O'Day wasn't really saying anything at all about race. As a result of his very expensive, tax payer-funded study, he just seemed to see a problem with the races that everyone knew was there, but he didn't seem to offer any solutions. The next time the senator was a guest on his show, the host decided that it was high time somebody asked him what his future plans were based on the results of his highly publicized study.
"You've said a lot about race this past year, Senator," the talk-show host stated. "After a year of talking about the issue, can you tell me what you plan for the future? The concrete policies you will try to implement in Washington to deal with this crisis you've recognized?"
"It's a terrible crime the condition these people live in," Senator O'Day said, nodding. "There are many, many Negro children born out of wedlock, which contributes to the problem. It's awful, just awful."
The senator had a lisp, a bow tie and a lock of hair that sometimes hung down over his right eye.
"I understand that," the host said. "But what would you suggest we do to remedy the situation?"