When the elevator door opened on the eighteenth floor, Remo stepped out and was overrun by Barenga, who charged the elevator as if leading his Black Liberation Army of Free Africa to free samples at the welfare office.
«Calm down,» Remo said. «What's the hurry?»
«Honkey, move on over,» said Barenga, who had occupied his time waiting for the elevator to arrive by clawing at the closed elevator door. «I gotta get out of here.» He tried to push Remo from the empty elevator.
Fully annoyed now, Remo grabbed the elevator door with one hand and refused to move. Barenga pushed, but he might as well have been pushing at the base of the Empire State Building.
«What's the hurry, I said?»
«Man, you get out of here. There's a crazy yellow man back there gonna kill us all, you not careful. Man, I gotta get me a cop.»
«Why?» Remo said, suddenly cautious, wondering if Chiun's television shows had run late this day.
«'Cause he just killed a man. Oooweee. He just hop across that room and he move that foot like magic and that man die. He just up and die.
Ill
Ooooweee. Too many people getting killed today. I gotta get me a cop.»
His eyes rolled wildly in his head and Remo saw that Barenga would not settle for just a cop. A cop, a hundred cops, the state police, the sheriff's office, the U.S. Attorney, the FBI and the CIA. If they all came in now to protect Barenga, wearing full battle dress and marching in close order, he would still be in a state of panic. Remo needed no more complications this day. Nothing resolved complications faster than death.
«You do that,» Remo said. «You go get a cop. Tell them Remo sent you.» He stepped back out of the doorway and as Barenga reached forward to tap a button, Remo drove a hard right index finger into the black man's clavicle. By the time Barenga hit the floor, Remo was humming, busily working on the elevator control panel. He found the electrical cable cutoffs and shredded the wires with his fingers, so that nothing would work on the elevator, except the force of gravity. He backed out of the car, reached in through the open door, and tapped two wires together, then jumped back. The elevator unlocked itself and started down with an intensifying whoosh. Remo looked through the still-open door, down the shaft, as the elevator picked up speed on its way to the subbasement.
He could feel warm air circulating around the back of his neck in the wake of the runaway elevator. He continued to watch until he saw and felt the elevator crash at the bottom of the shaft. Its walls crumpled as if made of typing paper. Cables slithered down and fell on top of the car. Heavy clouds of greasy dust coughed up.
Remo stepped back, rubbing his hands briskly. He felt better now. Nothing like a little tussle with an intellectual problem to clear the troubled mind.
He felt so good that he was able to ignore Chiun's rantings about an upstart offspring of an upstart house insulting the Master of Sinanju. Remo just quietly shoved Lhasa Nilsson's body into a closet for safekeeping until he could figure out a way to shame Chiun into disposing of it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Big Bang Benton hit the button that activated his recorded theme music, waited for the engineer's gesture that signaled that his microphone was dead and he was off the air, then stood up and waved to the twenty-five girls who were observing his small studio from behind protective soundproofed glass.
He rubbed a hand over his head, careful not to mess up the expensive woven hair piece, stretched himself luxuriously, then motioned again. The girls responded with cheers and eager waving of their own.
Benton stepped forward toward the glass, an awkward, pear-shaped man, thumping heavily on the heels of his blue Cuban boots. As if on signal the girls, most of them in their early teens, ran forward. They pressed their faces against the glass like hungry urchins on Thanksgiving, and Benton could hear their squeals when he ran his fingers through his hair again. He lowered the almost black smoked glasses he wore until they perched on the end of his nose, and he leaned his face forward to the glass, careful not to press his body against it because it might crush the rolled satin flowers on his purple and white satin shirt.
He mouthed the words against the glass.
«Who wants to come in and talk with the old Banger?»
He heard the usual shriek go up and leaned back to examine the reaction. Twenty-five girls. Twenty-five takers. Wait. Twenty-four.
The one who wasn't taking was a freckle-faced redhead with a sleek, lithe body and a face man, that was zonkier than zonked.
She had to be high, because she looked bored, and young girls did not get bored in the presence of Big Bang Benton.
Big Bang fixed her with his never-fail stare over the dark glasses, letting his eyes sing her songs of love and lechery waiting just around the corner.
The girl yawned. She didn't even bother to cover her mouth with her hand.
That decided Big Bang. He waved to a young pimply-faced usher who stood behind the crowd of girls, and then pointed to the redhead. Without another word, he turned away, left his studio and headed down the hallway to his dressing room. A dressing room was totally useless for a disc jockey, who could work in his underwear. But Big Bang Benton, who had been hooked on show business since he was Bennet Rappelyea of Batavia, New York, fifteen years earlier, had insisted upon and gotten one in his new contract.
Damn good thing too, he thought. Because if the station had balked about it, Big Bang was prepared to leave and take his following to any of the other dozen stations in the city that were falling all over themselves to sign him. When the Banger whistled, the station danced, and for the frustrated entertainer, there was a kind of sweet music in that too.
Back inside the studio, the teeny hoppers were making less than sweet music.
«Who does he think he is, walking away like that?» one demanded.
«But he smiled at us. Maybe he'll be back,» said her companion.
The usher approached the redhead.
«Big Bang wants to see you,» he said, touching the girl's arm.
She turned and looked deep into his pimples, her eyes not quite focused.
«Does he really know Maggot?» she asked, her voice mushy thick, as if her tongue tip were stuck to the back of her lower teeth.
«The Banger knows everybody, honey. They're all his friends,» the usher said.
«Good,» said Vickie Stoner. «Gotta ball that Maggot.»
The usher leaned forward and whispered in her ear. «First you gotta ball the Banger.»
«'S' all right. Him first. Gotta ball that Maggot.»
By now, the other girls had realized that Vickie was Big Bang's chosen girl of the day and they crowded toward her, wondering if she were some famous groupie that they had not recognized. But her face was unfamiliar to them and after a few seconds' inspection, they decided that she was not their equal, that Big Bang Benton's taste was all in his ass, and they turned away. The usher took Vickie by the hand and headed toward a door in the corner of the room. At the door, he turned and called to the girls who were motionless, in that brief frozen moment before the stampede to the exits started, «Hang around, girls. I'll be back in a few minutes to tell you some inside stories about Big Bang and your other favorite stars.» He smiled, cracking open a white-headed pimple on the side of his mouth, but the girls ignored that and squealed. Even an usher at an acid rock station was a celebrity.
The usher pushed Vickie through the door and began walking her down a long, rug-deadened hall, festooned with the station's initials. W-A-I-L. «Wail with Big Bang.» «It's Big Banging Time at WAIL.» In a series of framed advertisements behind glass on the walls idiotic slogans reduced Marconi's act of genius to its lowest common denominator. The advertisements were obvious allusions to sex, all happily seized upon by youngsters who wanted to embarrass their parents, without the concomitant danger of being responsible for the slogans themselves.