They made a date for dinner and dancing at the Four Corners Restaurant. So what if them girls was going after him and his brother for their money? It was just Sophie’s bad luck that she wasn’t in the right place at the right time to take this opportunity. Then she’d have been the one to get stuck with the ugly brother. But Breck did know Trina and Sophie well enough to be sure they weren’t gonna let a money-grubbing opportunity such as this one slip away, even if poor Sophie got stuck with gross old Jeremy.
Trina was a lucky gal, Breck thought, seeing as how he had the cleaner fingers and the more complete set of teeth and even some culture under his belt.
That was why he was the one who dealt with the public and did the RV selling, except for today. It was an unspoken understanding that Jeremy was, well, not a people person. Repulsive, in fact, but also an artist. Still, Jeremy’s skills would have never seen the light of day if it weren’t for his handsome, smooth-talking brother selling his creations.
Everybody he knew, Breck Kasle thought, was lucky to have Breck Kasle in their lives.
Remo tried finding out what exactly Chiun had contracted the grease monkey to do. It cost a lot of cash. Not that Chiun couldn’t afford it, and not that it mattered at all anyway since the entire sum was electronically transferred from the credit card account of one Bucky Chang, a sixty-seven-year-old podiatrist from Madeira Beach, Florida, who did not exist. CURE would pay the bill, but Remo wanted to know what the money was actually for.
“I have a feeling I’m gonna be living in it, whether I want to or not,” Remo complained. “I have a right to know, don’t I?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Keep your eyes on the road.”
“I keep getting distracted by all that yummy-looking corn they grow around here.”
“Don’t bother trying to raise up my goat.” Chiun turned to his iBlogger for the next twenty miles.
“Hey, Chiun,” Remo said then, “you think Smith was on to something about these mine shaft killings?”
“You mean about them being possibly the work of the earth-drilling German from New Mexico?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Chiun looked up. “Remo, it was you who disabled the tunneling machine. Do you doubt that you did so effectively?”
Remo had been worrying about that very fact, but had also come to a conclusion. “No. It was broken.”
“Then you have your answer.”
“Not only did I break the hydraulic earth flattener, but I locked it up so bad it froze the engine. Then we buried him under sixty feet of soil.”
“Exactly.”
“He might have, maybe, been able to dig his way out of the hatch and then clear enough dirt to work on the hydraulics, but I don’t see him having a lot of spare parts. It would have been nearly impossible to make the thing run without the smasher to compact the earth he dug up. And anyway, there’s no way he was going to rebuild the engine on the driller, even if he did have access from the interior of the thing. Right?”
“Precisely.” Chiun wasn’t paying attention.
“So what if he was rescued.”
“By whom?”
“Whiteslaw?”
“Herbert Whiteslaw is a manipulator. He is in government because he is skilled in the art of influence - and because he has hot the desire or ambition to achieve his own goals. I do not believe he would take the initiative to rescue his trapped coconspirator, even, if he did know what had become of the man.”
“He could hire someone to do it,” Remo suggested. Chiun waved the idea away.
“He had help from somebody else, right? Whoever was handling the operation in D.C.”
Chiun shut down the iBlogger with a sigh. “The one on the airplane went into the ocean.”
“So the Air Force claims. Did you see it happen?”
“No.”
Remo Williams was thinking about Chiun’s reaction. Had he just stumbled across something? “What’s with the weird vibes. Little Father?”
“It is the effect of the corn pollen, intoxicating you and dulling your senses.”
“No,” Remo said, “that’s not it. It’s coming from you.”
“Corn pollen?” Chiun demanded.
“You know what I mean. You’ve been, well, not quite right.”
“You believe you have the exclusive right to be the one who is always behaving improperly?”
“See, even that insult was halfhearted. And in the office with Smith, I was causing all kinds of bad trouble and you were just letting it roll off you.”
“I controlled my temper in the presence of the Emperor. This is a skill you would do well to learn. It is foolish to become hysterical in the presence of the king who provides our gold.”
“You usually don’t let me get away with it, either,” Remo said. “Are you becoming more tolerant?”
“I am weary.”
“Bulldookey. Are you giving me less grief because you’ve accepted the fact that I’m supposed to be the one calling the shots anyway?”
“Of course not.”
“Then what?”
Chiun tamed on his iBlogger again.
