Then everyone bowed to everyone else. Again. Komatori joined his master at Nakahatchi’s door. With an almost processional solemnity, as if everything they said and did carried spiritual weight, they ushered Hong and T’ang into Nakahatchi’s apartment.
I found myself staring past Deborah and Swilley like I’d gone stupid.
“Brew.” She reached for me with a smile. “I’m going to take Mr. Swilley back to his shop. Then I’ll call Mr. Lacone, let him know what’s going on.”
I heard myself say thanks. Between her smile and my alarm, I hardly knew who I was anymore.
She came closer. “It looks to me like you’ve accomplished something pretty special. These schools can’t go on distrusting each other now.” Her eyes studied my face for hints of what was wrong. “Maybe you should take the afternoon off, get some rest.” Holding herself so that Swilley couldn’t see her face, she moistened her lips. “You’ve got a big night ahead of you.”
I couldn’t imagine smiling myself, but I tried. It felt like a skull’s grimace.
Swilley looked ostentatiously at his watch. It was probably a Rolex, but I didn’t care.
“Tell Mr. Lacone,” I replied unsteadily, “he can’t sit on his hands any longer. Those security measures I requested have to be installed now.”
Deborah’s smile shifted into a perplexed frown.
“Scare him a bit,” I explained. “Even if it’s not true. We need action here. And I don’t think he takes me very seriously.”
Her expression cleared. “Got it. If he won’t listen to me, I’ll sic Sammy on him.”
Trying not to sound too fervent, I muttered, “Good.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Same to you.” Then she turned back to Swilley. “Shall we go?”
He didn’t muffle his impatience. “Indeed.”
Just for a second, before she escorted him out of the room, I could’ve sworn he glared at me.
I didn’t care about that either. When they were gone, I leaned back against the wall, then slid down it to the floor.
Bernie was already dead. So was Hardshorn. How many more people would get hurt or killed before I figured out what was going on?
21
Unfortunately moping about it solved just about as many problems as sitting on the floor did. Also it made my butt hurt.
With a sigh, I labored to my feet and considered my options.
The only people I really wanted to talk to were Marshal, Detective Moy, and Ginny. But she was on duty with Mai Sternway. And the other two wouldn’t appreciate being harassed for answers they didn’t have. Marshal would probably call me if he learned anything—including whatever he heard from Moy.
So. What else could I do?
No question about it, the time had come to tackle Song Duk Soon.
I’d been putting that off, even though it was obviously necessary. He’d left the tournament hall in plenty of time to trap Bernie. And, as I remembered his location on the bleachers, he could’ve seen me watching the picks. If he were Hardshorn’s spot—
I told myself I’d delayed confronting him so that I could learn more about the residual tensions in Martial America. However, the truth was that he scared me. I hadn’t seen any sign that he shared Hong’s and Nakahatchi’s measured restraint.
And I still wanted to postpone encountering him. I didn’t even want food. I was losing confidence by the hour, and I needed a shower. I wanted to blast hot water at my knotted doubts until they dissolved into soapsuds and steam. But I couldn’t afford to wait any longer. Not if the chops were genuine.
Nevertheless I had to warm up for the challenge. On general principles, I let myself out of Essential Shotokan, coaxed the Plymouth back to life, and drove away in search of lunch.
An hour later I was back.
It wasn’t 1:00 yet, which seemed a bit early for “after lunch.” In other words, I’d run of out excuses. Bob Gravel and Malaysian Fighting Arts didn’t worry me—Song Duk Soon and his school did. After drumming my fingers fretfully on the van’s steering wheel for a couple of minutes, I tightened my grip on myself and went to face Master Soon.
Under his awning, I found another wooden door engraved with Asian symbols and kanji. I couldn’t tell the difference between this one and Essential Shotokan’s design, except that here everything had been gilt-edged. The intaglio effect made the door stand out like the portal of a trap.
Sternway shouldn’t have admitted that he considered Tae Kwon Do a “toy martial art.”
Inside, I took off my sunglasses and looked around. As expected, the basic floorplan matched the other schools—a main dojo to my right, a smaller one lined with specialized training equipment to my left. In the larger room, a youngish man wearing a crisp white gi and a black belt led twenty or more students, mostly middle-aged women in leotards and sweat shirts, through exercises that looked suspiciously like martial aerobics. The students bounced and flopped strenuously around the floor, yelling at regular intervals—punching and kicking their way to fitness. In contrast, their instructor seemed to coast through the movements.
The smaller room held four or five students of various ages, all male, all wearing white canvas pajamas and brown belts, with Master Soon’s Tae Kwon Do Academy patches on their chests. They practiced drills in pairs. One partner launched an implausible attack of some kind—a two-handed punch, or an aerial kick—while the other attempted an equally implausible block. Snorting to myself, I turned away. Most of the street thugs I knew would’ve dismantled these “artists” in about four seconds.
While I waited for someone to notice me, I scanned the entry hallway. Maybe a dozen trophies, some of them four feet tall, stood on stands attached to the walls. Between them hung rank certificates in ornate frames, boasting of at least twenty black belts. And up out of reach near the ceiling hung a variety of weapons, all of them apparently old. Some I recognized—katanas, tonfas, bos. Others I’d never seen before. A couple looked so unwieldy that I couldn’t imagine how they were used.
A cluttered bulletin board hung near the doorway to the main dojo. Mostly it held flyers for Tae Kwon Do tournaments all over the country. But after a moment I located a class schedule. Apparently Song Duk Soon ran a busy school. The women in leotards were studying “Fitness Tae Kwon Do.” A whole series of kids’ classes would take over the dojo from 2:00 until 5:30, after which the training divided into beginning, intermediate, advanced, and black belt sessions. Soon’s Academy must’ve had at least two hundred students.
Since I didn’t see a brown belt class listed for the afternoon, I assumed that the men in the smaller dojo were working out on their own. Demonstrating their diligence for anyone who bothered to notice.
A sheet of general information about the school hung near the class schedule. It informed me, among other things, that dues were $100 a month. $20,000 a month altogether. $240,000 a year.
Somehow I felt sure that Traditional Wing Chun and Essential Shotokan weren’t doing anything like the same amount of business.
The straining women had stopped yelling. When I turned away from the bulletin board, I found their instructor in the doorway, staring at me with thick arms folded on a broad chest.
He was a white guy, aggressively so, with pale eyes, sandy hair, and enough freckles to make him look vaguely leprous. From a distance he’d seemed youngish, but up close he looked older. For a heartbeat or two, I couldn’t figure out why. Then I realized that the skin of his cheeks was too worn for his years. He had the kind of cheeks you usually see on tired boxers, flesh beaten to the consistency of leather by too many fists over way too many years. His left cheekbone had been flattened with blows.
He also looked like you could smack him across the chops with a bundle of rebar and not faze him. He would’ve fit right in at Sternway’s fight club.
“You’re Axbrewder,” he announced. His voice didn’t suit his pugilistic features. It was incongruously high, a voice for whimpering in fright or whining complaints, not for intimidation. But th
at didn’t stop him. “I remember you from the tournament. You humiliated one of ours.
“We don’t like that around here.”
Oh, joy.
Right on cue, the brown belts came out into the hallway and ranged themselves across from me, shoulder to shoulder, like a team of amateur enforcers. They all had belligerence in their eyes. At least a couple of them looked like they meant it.
Joy and wapture. Just what I needed, a testosterone check. And here I was supposed to be keeping the peace and all.
“Then I guess it’s a good thing,” I replied pleasantly, “that you’re wrong. I didn’t humiliate him. He humiliated himself. All I did was intervene before someone hurt him.”
One of the brown belts opened his mouth, but another shut him up with an elbow in his ribs. Apparently students weren’t supposed to express themselves in the presence of an instructor.
“Is that right?” the black belt sneered. “I guess you think you’re pretty tough. Is that right, Axbrewder?” He made my name sound like an obscenity. “Do you?”
Sweat gathered against my ribs. Trying to be unobtrusive about it, I shifted so that I could keep an eye on the brown belts and their instructor at the same time.
“I’m sorry,” I said in a neutral tone. “I didn’t catch your name.” Then I stuck out my hand optimistically.
My challenger didn’t take it. Instead he grimaced like he was going to spit. “I’m one of Master Soon’s senior black belts. That’s all you need to know.”
Two of the brown belts fumed at the ears. The rest just did their best to look fierce.
I smiled with all my teeth. “Oh, I don’t think so. I’m sure I’ll want to mention you by name when I tell Master Soon how I was welcomed.
“I’ll have to talk to him, you know,” I explained amiably. “Part of my job. I’m in charge of security for Martial America. Just in case”—I unsheathed a threat of my own—“anything happens to Nakahatchi sensei’s collection of Wing Chun chops.”
“That’s bullshit,” freckles retorted. “Those chops are junk. We’ve got swords here worth more than any damn collection of printing blocks, and nobody ever hired security for us.”
“I’m not so sure.” Exercising my famous people-skills. “Did you ever ask for security?”
At the same time I slipped my right hand under my jacket, ostensibly to scratch my ribs. Let him think I took him that lightly. But I left my hand inside my jacket.
“Nobody hired security for us,” the black belt snapped back, “because they’ve got it in for Tae Kwon Do. Especially for Master Soon. Hiring you for Nakahatchi is another way of sneering at us. We’re the best, but nobody wants to admit it.
“We don’t need you here. We don’t need your fucking security. We take care of our own. So why don’t you just get out of here before I show you how we do it?”
He was probably serious. An extravagant, almost rabid glare darkened his face. His fists tightened at his sides. Following his example, the brown belts clenched themselves, tensing to jump at me.
“Well,” I drawled, “I still think you should tell me your name. It’s the polite thing to do.”
Hell, it was probably the martial thing to do. Hadn’t I heard people talking about “respect” and “perfection of character”?
Deliberately freckles hawked and spat at my feet.
So much for respect.
The poor bozo couldn’t spit worth a damn. His mouth was too dry. The little saliva he produced came out in an ineffectual spray. A bit of it got on my pants, but mostly it dribbled down his chin.
He was more frightened than he wanted to admit. That’s what made him so belligerent. He’d been hit far too often for his own good, but he kept picking fights—and getting clobbered—so that he wouldn’t have to recognize his own fear.
I didn’t let that stop me, however. Some days scared fighters are more dangerous than nerveless thugs who know what they’re doing. And if freckles was frightened, half his brown belts were downright petrified.
Before any of them could move, I swept out the .45 and lined it up on the startled face of the nearest brown belt. My left index finger I pointed like another gun at freckles’ forehead.
Instantly he froze, and the blood rushed out of his face. Instead of glaring, he gaped like I’d stuck a knife into his crotch. For a second there, I thought he might piss himself.
Quietly—very quietly—I said, “Listen to me, junior. Before someone gets hurt. I don’t have to think I’m tough. And I certainly don’t need to prove it to you. I’ve been stomping on punks like you since high school.”
Then I repeated, “I didn’t catch your name.”
He didn’t answer. Maybe he couldn’t. The poor clot didn’t realize that I hadn’t chambered a round.
“His name is Hamson, Mr. Axbrewder,” a voice behind me said, full of compressed ease and violence. “Cloyd Hamson.”
Past my right shoulder, I saw Song Duk Soon at the foot of the stairs.
“Perhaps you would do well,” he went on, “to set your weapon aside and step into our dojo.” He didn’t move. “Allow Mr. Hamson to measure himself against you. We would all profit by observing how you ‘stomp on punks.’ It might be quite instructive.”
I couldn’t help noticing that he didn’t reprimand Hamson. Or the brown belts.
“Master Soon.” I wanted to wheel toward him, cover him with the .45, but instead I lowered it immediately, put it away under my left arm. “Do your students always treat visitors this way, or am I getting special treatment?”
He lifted an eyebrow. His brows were stark and black against his brown skin. They arched over his muddy eyes like lines of surprise, but the hard lines of his jaw and the inflexibility of his mouth contradicted them. “Are you a visitor, Mr. Axbrewder?”
Touché. “I guess not,” I admitted. “I’ve been hired to take a look at security for Martial America. That practically makes me a resident.”
Which to me meant that I deserved more courtesy, not less. But apparently he didn’t see it that way.
“Then enter our dojo, Mr. Axbrewder,” he retorted. “Demonstrate yourself to us. Or depart. I have no interest in the needs of those who cannot defend their own.”
Damn, I was tempted. Life isn’t much fun if you aren’t willing to put your muscle where your mouth is. Besides, he pissed me off. I hadn’t forgotten the way he’d humiliated one of his students at the tournament. I felt hot and ready, and all my frustration and alarm wanted to boil over at once.
But he’d left the tournament ahead of Bernie and Hardshorn.
That made me think again.
In addition, getting into a brawl here didn’t exactly fit my job description. I was supposed to ease tensions, reduce potential security problems, not alienate Soon and his entire school.
Swallowing my pride, as they say, I attempted a smile.
“Master Soon, I apologize. I got off on the wrong foot with Mr. Hamson. There’s a serious misunderstanding here, and I’d like to correct it if I can.”
By then my knees quivered with anger, and the frustration in my shoulders felt like overstretched cables. I hated backing down. Loathed it. Always had.
“Bullshit,” Hamson muttered again. He sounded stronger with his sensei to back him up.
Somehow I ignored him.
“Truly?” Soon’s eyebrows signaled disbelief again. “You were swift to exert yourself against a defeated brown belt, a mere youth. Yet now you decline to confront a black belt who challenges you. Are you not a coward?” His tone held no sarcasm. He didn’t need any. “What have I misunderstood?”
“Everything, apparently,” I snarled before I could catch myself. Then I bit down on my anger. “Whether or not I’m a coward”—my mouth twisted involuntarily—“is beside the point.
“The point,” I pronounced more carefully, “is that Nakahatchi sensei owns a rather controversial treasure, and you need my protection.”
My right palm ached for the necessary weight of the
.45.
“I?” Soon scowled. This time I’d surprised him for real. “What foolishness is this? I need no man’s protection.”
I shook my head. “You’re mistaken.” Ire leaked into my voice despite my efforts to control it. “If anything happens to those chops, there will be only two primary suspects. Sifu Hong first. Then you.” Soon tried to interrupt, but I overrode him. “Him because he resents seeing the chops in Japanese hands. You because you resent seeing them in anyone’s.”
And because he’d left the tournament.
“You think they diminish you,” I finished. “You think they draw attention away from your school.”
The small hairs on the back of my neck picked up hostility and discomfort from Soon’s students. I felt exposed, vulnerable. The skin over my kidneys squirmed, but I kept my focus on Soon.
“They do so,” he said between his teeth. “They do so.” He’d lost his explosive relaxation. Tension knotted his shoulders. “We compete for students, Mr. Axbrewder. For students and respect. Perhaps you do not understand that. In any equal comparison Tae Kwon Do will stand above its competitors. But here the comparison is unequal. The attraction of antique netsuke grants Essential Shotokan an advantage it has not earned.
“That is the true source of Hong Fei-Tung’s dissatisfaction,” he stated flatly. “And it is the source of mine.”
His students seemed to swarm like bees near my shoulder-blades. Behind the clenched surface of my professional facade, I wanted to pistol-whip them all. I was fucking tired of being treated like a personal insult. But I didn’t do it. Instead I countered, “And it’s why you need my protection.
“You probably consider yourself a man of honor. But if that display disappears, the cops won’t even listen when you tell them you’re too honorable to sully your hands by stealing. They know something you might not want them to know. They know you left the tournament just a few minutes before I found The Luxury’s Chief of Security dead in the men’s room.”