"How'd you do that?" the manager asked. Remo felt no need to reveal the obvious: that he had moved faster than the bullet. The man fired again. Again, Remo shifted his weight off his heels, and then back onto them, and then there was another hole in the notebooks.

"This is getting dull," Remo said. And just as the fat manager was squeezing his fat finger around the trigger for the third time, he saw Remo move and decided not to shoot. As manager of a successful economy-budget chain store, he recognized his responsibility to the community. He realized that innocent people might get killed if he continued to pursue this nut case. He reconsidered shooting a defenseless man at point-blank range. He also observed that Remo had twisted the barrel of his revolver around so that it formed a perfect U and was now pointed directly into his own pudgy face.

He opened his hand to drop the gun but the gun did not drop and the hand did not open because the butt of the gun was jammed into the metacarpals of his hand. Then came the pain. "Eeeeeeeee," the manager cried.

22

Remo tugged at his ear and shook his head. "That's not E. That's A-flat. You tone deaf?"

"Eeeeee," the man insisted.

"No, no," Remo said. "Here's E." He twisted the man's ear. The pain shot up eight notes.

Remo nodded his head approvingly. "Now I'll make the pain go away, if you'll do something ha return," Remo offered.

"Anything. One-thirty-five-twenty-four-sixteen-eight."

"What?"

"That's the combination to the safe. Eeeeeeeee."

"Hallelujah," said one of the checkout clerks who had come to watch the action. She ran off toward the safe in the back of the store, followed by the rest of the staff.

"So much for your money," Remo said. "Now I want you to do a little advertising, to let your customers know what an honest guy you are."