“Now would be the ideal time to hit ’em,” Remo observed.
“But not the ideal time for a walking tour of Kingston’s fabulous Hope Road,” Chiun added, as a tour bus pulled up, bearing the freshly painted billboard, Walking Tours Of Kingston’s Fabulous Hope Road!
It was an old school bus, painted sky-blue and allowed to rust for twenty years. Lately, however, the sign was added and the windows, inexplicable, changed to black mirror windows.
“Let’s catch that bus,” Remo suggested.
Then came the second bus. And the third. Remo stopped counting at six.
“First we keep the prime minister from getting whacked or napped,” Remo said. “Then we’ll worry about the rest of them.”
They moved down Hope Road as the bus pulled to a stop at the unloading zone. The driver of the bus pressed his fingers into his eye sockets—for a moment he thought he had seen human beings shimmering in the haze of heat coming off the asphalt.
The doors of the bus were removed from their hinges noisily.
“Hi.”
“Mother of gawd!”
“You here for the King’s House tour? I’m Remo Lee, and I’ll be leading the tour.”
The passengers were stunned for all of three seconds. Then they began muttering among themselves in Spanish and Haitian Creole.
“All men on this tour?” Remo asked.
“Who are you?” the driver demanded. Remo sensed the man was suitably outraged and fearful to be sincere. He dragged the driver out of the seat and onto the sidewalk in a flash. “Get out of sight or you’re gonna get killed.”
“Wha’? Wha’ ’bout dem passengers?”
“Dem haffa getta beatin’.” Remo shoved the large Jamaican driver, slamming him through the front doors of a gift shop, where he dropped out of sight, and then he was on the bus.
There was a rattle of machine-gun fire that took out the front windows and Remo lunged for the gunner, pushing the gun into his stomach and into the seat behind him. Then he went down the row snatching weapons and tapping heads. “Guns are not allowed on my bus. No cigarettes, no alcohol, no pornography. Give me that, mister!” He snatched a length of cable from a dark- skinned man in a pink golf shirt, looped it around the man’s neck and pulled it taut. The man’s head bounced on the aisle and rolled toward the rear. A group of four in the rear came to their senses and dived for the rear emergency exit. As soon as they went out, they came flying back inside, bouncing off the ceiling and crumpling onto the seats, lifeless and limp.
“Okay, I think we can all see that there is going to be no government takeovers by this bunch of ill-mannered boys today. If I get some honest answers out of you hoodlums, I’ll go easy on you later. First question— who’s the boss?”
There was a chorus of answers. Even the ones in English were too accented to understand.
“Little help?” Remo asked. Chiun was now standing in the fear entrance.
“Have I not assisted enough? I count four assassinated by me, and just two for you, who are the Reigning Master.”
“I mean translating, Chiun. What the hell are they saying?”
“Muffa Muh Mutha,” repeated one of the attackers. “That is the name.”
“Muffa Muh Mutha?”
“He is star of reggae from Brighton in England.” Remo understood.
“Yes, mon.”
“I see. Is he a part of today’s activities?”
“Yes, mon.”
Remo smiled. “I see!”
Sir Muffa Muh Mutha didn’t take the news well. “Get everybody back to the Mutha-rev,” he ordered. “I’ll personally make the move on the PM.”
“That’s not safe thinking. Sir Mutha.” Sissy Muh was his chief of security and general of his army. She was also his foremost lay at the moment—a smart woman and quite adorably beautiful. She wore her glossy black hair braided down to the small of her back, like an elegant Egyptian princess. Like Muffa, she was from the streets of Brighton, where she grew up being unexceptional in every way, until she dropped out of school and started looking for a cause.
For the young man named Reginald Parkins, the cause became music. Using a personal computer and illegally downloaded music files, he learned to splice together bits of sound, thus creating something entirely original and new. He took on a new name to go with the career—nobody would take Reginald Parkins seriously, but Muffa Muh Mutha sounded like reggae and American street combined.
No matter what anyone said, he was an artist who created music that was new and fresh.
Skirting and dodging copyright-infringement lawsuits around the world, Muffa became a star of the British reggae scene. Jamaica was another story. His first visit, he had been heckled the moment he was off the plane. His concert sold well—but it turned out the tickets had been sold to vehement Muffa-haters. He was booed offstage before he finished performing his first track, “I Knifed the Constable.”
‘Thief! Thief! Thief!” the crowd chanted.
“I’m no thief. I wrote the damn song,” he snarled to an entertainment reporter later on. Being from the British press, the reporter sided with Muffa.
“They claim that a similar song was performed by another reggae star some time ago,” the reporter said.
