Sue me, p.10
Sue Me, page 10
And of course, everything worked the way Robert Dastrow had planned.
And since tinkering was life to him, when he noticed his main source of revenue under a new form of attack, he just had to find out what it was.
While International Carborundum & Phosphate and the international media looked at the valves in the Gupta plant, only two people looked at the real cause of the accident. They had spoken to the newswriter and ultimately the wife who goaded her husband into violating the basic rule of how to make anything work: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
What he had done was to use the social structure to convince most of the people in the city that the administration was broken because it used Americans in previously undesirable jobs.
And the Oriental and the American who did not really have credible cover stories found that out within one day.
None of his work had ever been discovered so quickly. And of course as any good tinkerer knew, Robert Dastrow had to find out what was going on here. Who were these two new people doing the right things?
Did they have the same abilities that he did? A simple test proved they did not, when neither of them could fix the gauge. Therefore there had to be something else they had, and Robert Dastrow would have to figure it out, before he killed them. He had no doubt that he would. There wasn’t anything in the world he couldn’t figure out. He knew how everything worked.
· · ·
The remnants of families in Gupta crowded around waiting for their meager emergency rations, wondering why all the foreigners were coming to them and telling them they were going to be rich.
They cared for their survivors and prayed that this thing would never happen again. In their own minds they believed that they were cursed and therefore some of them were embarrassed.
But a few older women found out that when they cried before the cameras they could at times get a bowl of rice. And so they cried more, and kept crying until their families were fed. Sometimes there were too many women crying in front of the cameras, and that drove down the reward. Little wars between the surviving Indian women developed as to who would have crying rights before which cameras.
Stories were other things. The people quickly found that those who had the most gruesome stories to tell were the ones who were visited most.
But all of this enterprise was nothing compared to the savior of Gupta and what he did for the people there. He brought rice, he brought doctors, he brought promises of rich compensation for the evil done to them by the American factory. He told them they should not let the Americans get away with it.
He was an American himself and he knew how bad the Americans could be. He was here to make them rich, to give them rice for the rest of their lives. Naturally, the offer sounded too good and no one signed up right away. But when he returned with the blessings of some high government officials, the survivors all happily lined up to give their palm prints as signatures to a contract that said he would give them ten percent of all he earned from making the American factory pay.
His name was Genaro Rizzuto, and he bet them all he would win.
Remo and Chiun found this out the second day they were there, but they had great difficulty talking to the people. Gupta was now an official international disaster, and being labeled as such attracted more stars than Remo had ever seen in one place.
Chiun pointed them out. He counted fourteen movie stars with their own camera crews, each posing with the same blinded woman, seven actors with current series on television, and a multitude of American organizations.
There were the directors of Aid to the Famished, International Help, Pity the Children, Save All Humanity, End Racism, Fight Racism, and International Alliance Against Racism. Starring in all this was a woman dressed like an Untouchable who had just scavenged through a dime-store garbage can left outside the plastics department. Her eyes were shaded neon-green. Her hair looked like a swamp that had gotten caught in a yellow-spray-paint machine, and her clothes were as tattered as though she had been the center of attention at a ragpickers’ convention.
“There’s Debbie Pattie,” said one TV newsman who had already gotten his tear shots for the day. “She’s new. She’s not known for social causes.”
Immediately a crowd formed around the young singer.
She was used to people forming crowds around her. What she was not used to was being ignored. And past the row of poor huts the victims lived in she saw two men, one Oriental and one white, who were not even bothering to look her way.
She made fifteen million dollars a year, was on the cover of almost every major magazine in the West, and she was of absolutely no interest to these two. This she spotted despite the fifteen microphones in her face, cameras whirring behind them.
“I soytinly don’t need no more publicity in case yer asking,” she said with a New York accent that advertised itself better than Broadway. “I’m here to help da people. All right? Whyn’t youse guys go talk to da people. Dare the ones what’s sufferin’ around here.”
“What do you think of the negligence of American factories?”
“I’m against anything that hurts,” said Debbie. “What hurts people is what I’m against. I hate unhappiness and they oughta outlaw it.”
“Do you think America has failed to outlaw unhappiness because it’s racist?”
“I don’t know. I know the people of Gupta need our help. And I’m here to see what I’m singin’ for. We’re gonna save the people. All us rock stars and singers are going to save the people of the world and we’re gonna start here for the people of Gupta. Ain’t no reason they should suffer and die just ’cause they was born here. They gotta get treated fair, see?”
“Since when has your new philosophical approach taken over your career?”
“I always believed this stuff. ’Cept youse guys never asked me about that.”
Debbie left a half-dozen television reporters commenting on how she was showing new and deep spiritual feelings, how she was revealing a political sensibility she never had before. However, she wasn’t considered too knowledgeable about international politics because she had failed to blame everything on America.
Debbie excused herself from her agent, her manager, the reporters, the guides, and the Indian constabulary to walk down the muddy street toward the two men who hadn’t even glanced over at her.
The Oriental, in a gold kimono, was talking in the native language to two old men who were describing something with their hands. The younger white man, the attractive one with a sense of being able to do anything a woman might want, or perhaps anything he wanted for a woman, was listening. Debbie shook the multitude of bangles around her neck to make some noise. She also shook a large part of her amply endowed body. She did not believe in bras or panties.
Neither the Oriental nor the white looked up. The white man had found two Indian children to whom he gave money.
“I’m for charity too,” said Debbie.
“Good,” said the white man. “Why don’t you buy yourself some decent clothes then?”
“Hey, you know who I am, wise guy?”
“Somebody who needs a good wash and possibly a simonize. Where did you get that color hair?”
“Does the Chinaman know who I am?”
“He’s Korean, and I don’t think so.”
“If this wasn’t so insulting I’d laugh. It’s really funny, you know? Really funny. Do you know who you’re ignoring, Mr. Nobody? I ain’t never heard of you.”
“What’s bothering you?” said Remo.
“You, wise guy. You,” said Debbie, poking him in the chest. The chest muscles seemed to catch at her purple fingernails. She noticed the Korean had even longer fingernails than she did. She wondered how he kept them that way.
“Well, then leave,” said Remo.
“What’cha doin’ here? Whose agent are ya?”
“If you knew, little girl, I’d have to kill you,” said the white man with a friendly smile indicating that perhaps he was joking. But Debbie felt a tingling sense of danger.
“I’m here helpin’ dese people. I don’t just throw a coupla bucks at kids. I’m gonna earn ’em millions. Make ’em rich. Show da world how to treat people. You know much about music?”
“Not much,” said Remo.
“That explains it,” said Debbie. “No wonder. I’m a big rock star. Youse guys heard about rock, ain’t cha?”
“Music?” said Remo.
“Yeah. Music. Maybe you heard my songs but don’t know it’s me, right?”
“Could we do this some other time?” said Remo.
“Hey, I’m the most desired woman in the world. Don’t you brush me off, punk. You hear?” said Debbie. She pushed her fingernail into him again. For the last three years since her hit single “Rack Me, Rip Me” shot her to the top of the charts, she had discovered two ways to get anything she wanted, legal or illegal. One was to ask for it and the other was to demand it. Now she was demanding.
And there was a person actually refusing. He was saying no to Debbie Pattie.
“Hey, what’s your name? You don’t have to kill me if you tell me that.”
“It’s Remo. Leave me alone or stand downwind.”
“Wise guy. What’cha make, Remo?”
“I make myself happy.”
“Money, jerk.”
“I don’t count it,” said Remo.
On hearing that the Korean sighed but continued his conversation with the old men of the village. Even though she didn’t understand the language, Debbie Pattie knew the old men were telling the Korean they didn’t know the answers he sought. Their shoulders shrugged and their worn brown faces wrinkled in dismay. She thought they were cute, the way they squatted in the Indian dust. But the wise guy was absolutely beautiful. He seemed to move gracefully even when standing still.
“You wanna work for me? I’ll pay you more than ya gettin’ now.”
“Hey, kid. Leave us alone. You don’t even know what we do.”
“I know I can buy you, punk.”
“Well, you’re wrong. So good-bye.”
“You know how many guys’d kill demselves just to touch me once? So how come you don’t even ask me about myself? Ask me what I sing. Ask me what I do. How about it?”
Debbie transferred the peach-sized wad of gum to the other side of her mouth. Remo noticed even the gum was off-color.
“Will you go then?”
“Yeah. I’ll go.”
“All right, what do you sing?”
And there in a side street of Gupta, India, Debbie sang the first few bars of her new smash hit, “Collapse.” The Indians who didn’t leave immediately covered their ears instead. Remo stood transfixed. He thought she was having a fit. Chiun glowered at her interruption.
“Okay. Thank you. Good-bye,” said Remo.
“That song made me three million bucks,” said Debbie.
“Did they bribe you to stop?” asked Remo.
“You know, you’re impossible. You don’t know who I am. You don’t know who you’re talkin’ to. You don’t know nothin’. That’s ignorant. You’re ignorant. You and your old friend there. Ignorant. Uneducated. So buzz off, I’m leavin’.”
In a whirl of off-colored bangles and layers of rags, Debbie Pattie turned to leave.
“Genaro Rizzuto said there’d be people who hated you just for doin’ good,” she snorted.
Remo looked up from the little children. “Is he a lawyer?”
“A decent one, too. Not just a little money grubber like in show business. A decent human being, part of people helpin’ people. Not like you.”
Remo trotted after Debbie in the dusty street of Gupta.
“Look, I may have made a mistake. I don’t know rock music. I don’t know how those things work.”
Debbie waved her hands in the air, signaling she wanted to be left alone.
“I want to apologize for being rude,” said Remo.
“I don’t want to know you because you’re ignorant. An idiot. An uneducated idiot. That’s what youse guys is.”
“You’re right. Rizzuto is part of a law firm, isn’t he?”
“One of the best. Get lost.”
“You don’t mean that,” said Remo. He was going to work on her sensory system but he wanted to do it from upwind. He didn’t know what she bathed herself in, but whatever it was, it was putrid. Now that he was willing to be friendly she wanted no part of him. He glanced back and saw Chiun silently, like the wind, move up the street toward him and the rock star.
In Korean he told Chiun this girl knew one of their targets was around, but he couldn’t get her to talk. He had insulted her in some way.
“In what way?” Chiun asked in Korean.
“I told her to get lost,” said Remo.
“Sometimes people can take that in a negative way,” said Chiun in Korean, and then in English he called out after Debbie Pattie in what Remo recognized as one of those awful Ung poems praising all nature and the power of the universe. Unusually, though, he did so in English translation.
“O radiance, that renews for all eternity. O shower of glory that blesses the little people beneath her, whose divine countenance radiates eternity and all-consuming power, we bless your eternal breath.”
Debbie Pattie stopped in her tracks. She turned abruptly to Remo and Chiun.
“Yeah. Now that’s a friggin’ hello, already. Did you hear that?” she said, pointing to Remo.
“I heard it.”
“He’s a friggin’ gentleman. You’re a jerk, but a cute jerk.”
“What wisdom,” said Chiun with a little bow.
Debbie Pattie posed in a grotesque parody of a statue, her head cocked to one side and one arm up, the wrist dangling limply. She looked Chiun and Remo up and down, and came to a decision.
“I like youse guys. You’re hired. Go to my manager. He’ll get you on the payroll. You, the young one, be in my van with your clothes off in a half hour. I may be there. I may not. Stay ready. Okay?”
“Excuse me, most gracious maiden,” said Chiun, who was not about to endorse any union between his Remo and some painted hussy who might be diseased or, worse, bear a child without Chiun knowing her lineage.
Remo, Chiun knew, was fond of that slothful and self-indulgent habit even found in the Orient, of copulating for pleasure. This to Chiun was as ridiculous as eating food not for its nourishment but for its taste. In either sense, however, this jangling ragpicker in front of them was totally unsuitable.
“Excuse me, most gracious maiden, but I have a calling of a different nature. However, if ever there should be a woman in our lives, of course it would be the most glorious, gracious, magnificent apparition we see before us now.” Thus spoke Chiun to the famous rock star in the muddy streets of the Indian city of Gupta.
“I’ll pay more,” said Debbie. “I’m reasonable.”
“I’m not for sale,” said Remo.
“Why not? You know who you’re turning down?”
“I didn’t say I was turning you down. I said I’m not for sale.”
And holding his breath, Remo moved in close to Debbie Pattie.
“You’re all right. What’s your name?” she asked.
“Remo.”
“What kind of a name’s dat?”
“White,” said Chiun.
“And yours?”
“I am Chiun, Master of Sinanju.”
“I like dat. You run Sinanju, huh?”
“No, I merely serve it, as I serve the world, as Sinanju has served the world throughout the ages.”
“Ya see, dat’s what I like. Doin’ good. I’m into doin’ good. Heavy. You know? Heavy into doin’ good. You think I ought to give these people a few bars of my latest hit?”
“No. They’re in enough trouble already,” said Remo.
Debbie shot him a dirty look, but Remo quickly turned the subject to her friend Genaro Rizzuto, a decent man who had come to Gupta like all the other stars to help.
“We want to help too,” said Remo. “I’d like to meet him.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
NATHAN PALMER SPOTTED the full extent of the disaster first. Rizzuto was on the scene in Gupta. Rizzuto could talk sparrows out of trees and he had brilliantly won over the government with well-placed lavish gifts, lined up the victims, and had one of the greatest negligence cases of all time aimed at one of the richest chemical companies of all time. Everything seemed perfect.
And then the little horrible fact of the paltry value of life in the Third World reared its horrifying head, and Palmer was so panicked he canceled a date for the evening and called in Schwartz, who had to pry himself away from his stockbroker.
It was they, not their mechanical genius Dastrow, who had made the horrible mistake. He had done everything right, as always.
Schwartz was so furious when he entered their plush Century Park City offices that he almost broke the glass case protecting the Desk.
“Disaster in Gupta,” said Palmer.
“I should hope so. That’s what we make money on. We’re going to make a fortune.”
“That’s what we’re going to go to the cleaners on,” said Palmer.
“You called me away from the one stock-market transaction that can make up for a lifetime of losses to make me listen to your pessimism?”
“Arnold, I probably saved you from bankrupting yourself for the rest of your natural life. What do you think happened in Gupta?”
“We started one of the greatest negligence cases of all time. We signed up an entire city as clients. We’ve got two thousand, two hundred and twenty deaths of heads of families, at least seven thousand children deprived of their lives, twenty-four hundred mothers whose love and support will be denied entire families, to say nothing of a slew of healthy young able-bodied young men and beautiful young women who will never bear children or enjoy the loves and lives of families,” said Schwartz. “And I’m not counting the incalculable grief. Rizzuto is going to have those juries attaching every single asset of International Carborundum & Phosphate. It’ll be come-and-get-it day.”
Nathan Palmer shook his head sadly.
