"In certain ways you are less than gracious," Hiroshi murmured. "Yet it becomes you."
"Umph," I said, out-of-sorts.
Our friends the Bastard Bones gang were there, augmented by eight more of their number. Two of them were female, one a dark-complexioned girl, Latin, with luxurious long wavy hair, but distressingly fat and dirty. The other was a Caucasian girl, actually quite pretty under the dirt; her hair was blond, her eyes blue, her skin pale. She was very small and thin, childlike; she couldn't be more than thirteen.
The males spread out to impede our passage. Hiroshi stepped off the sidewalk to let them pass, while I stopped where I was. But two of them stepped out to block him again.
"Excuse me, please," Hiroshi said politely, seeking once more to get around. But the toughs formed a circle around us. There had been other people on the sidewalk, but they abruptly faded out.
"I think you hurt someone's feelings," I muttered.
"I apologize," Hiroshi said brightly. "I was only curious about their emblem, the little bones." He made to pass through the ring.
Acutely conscious of the bag of diamonds he still carried in one hand, I stepped close behind him. I didn't like the look of this, but I suspected the punks were bluffing. I had run into some of them before, and once one of them had worked out briefly in my dojo, practicing karate. I had discouraged his attendance once I ascertained that he wanted to learn only how to crack skulls, not absorb philosophy along with the physical discipline. These kids knew my business and generally steered clear of me.
But the line held firm. "What's the matter, gook?" the Bastard leader demanded of Hiroshi. "We're not good enough for you to walk the sidewalk with us?"
"By no means. I have admired your emblem, the illegitimate skeleton."
"What's in that bag?" another youth demanded. "Snow?"
"He's with me," I said sharply, hoping to warn the Bastards off. If they realized that Hiroshi was a martial artist, they might quit.
But the gang was hungry for violence, and its numbers gave it courage. The word had evidently leaked out that Hiroshi's bag contained something valuable; I regretted having let my voice rise in the bar.
The leader grabbed Hiroshi with his left hand, taking the loose material of the kimono over the little aikidoist's chest and hauling him forward while he cocked his right fist.
Then the Bastard leader screamed and dropped to his knees. The other gang members looked on, startled at this seeming display of weakness or of cowardice, not comprehending what had happened.
I knew. There may be more dangerous men in the world to attack than the little old aikido sensei, but the average person will go a lifetime without encountering one. I myself, opposing Hiroshi in the Martial Open, had suffered a broken finger, and he had been not trying to hurt me. Age is no barrier to prowess, not when you happen to be a man like this. Hiroshi had applied a thumb lock to the gang leader's left hand, grasping the wrist so as to prevent escape, and with his other hand pressed down on the thumb. He bent that captive thumb inward against the palm of the hand. It was a submission hold.
There are a number of submission holds in the martial arts. Some apply to the fingers, some to the wrists, some to the elbows, some to the neck—in fact, just about any part of the body is vulnerable to some kind of compulsion. Anyone who has experienced a submission hold applied by a competent person knows there is only one reasonable reaction: to submit. It is not just that there is pain; it is that even the attempt to fight out of it is very likely to result in severe injury of a crippling nature. I'd far rather risk being knocked out by a powerful blow than suffering a dislocated elbow; I'll get over the effects of the first in minutes, hours, or days, but the second could impair the use of that arm for the rest of my life.
But the Bones leader could not submit—not in front of all the Bastards, including the girls. Pain prevented him from acting with his body, so he used his voice. It was a mistake. "Kill him!" he screamed.
A small ratty-looking kid lunged at Hiroshi from the side. The leader gave a piercing scream accompanied by a loud crunching sound as his thumb-socket articulation was destroyed. Hiroshi, his attention divided by the second attack, had allowed his hold to become too strong. At the same time, he launched a side kick, yoko geri, to the other kid's face. The second Bastard fell back, his face bent out of shape, his jaw broken.
Meanwhile, I was moving into position, covering Hiroshi's rear, watching for weapons. They appeared, as the remaining eight, including the girls, closed in. Knives, an ice pick, a tire iron, baseball bat, potato stuck with razor blades—the usual alley assortment. These punks were cowards, but they did not yet realize what they were up against, and they were armed. Such cowards are a genuine menace.
Then I saw the nunchaku, like two billy clubs strung together on eight inches of cord. It was a weapon I was well familiar with, having been trained in it in Asia. Now it was becoming popular in America, as it was easy to make at home, and potent in combat. There was my obvious target. A man who is skilled in the nunchaku, or "chukas," can tackle a crowd; but an amateur only fouls himself up. I was sure this was an amateur; I could tell by the manner in which he held his weapon. That was a double advantage for me.
I charged the nunchaku. He swung at me overhand, the loose stick whistling down. But I was moving fast, ducking under the blow, and sure enough, he was inexpert. He did not have the proper wrist action, stick speed, or aim to score effectively. I caught his descending arm as I turned about, so that the force of the wood was almost spent as the point hit my back. It stung, but it was no more than a bruise.
Now I put my right arm around his neck, thrust one leg deep between his legs and threw him with the uchi-mata hip technique. One has to be careful when executing this throw, or it is possible to mash a man's genitals as his crotch gets hauled across your leg. I was careful—to hit him right where his thighs met. He got mashed. I can't say I'm proud of such lapses in sportsmanship, but in a combat situation against weapons I want to be sure the man I put down stays down. Then he landed on the concrete, hard. That took whatever fight remained out of him. I plucked the weapon out of his flaccid hand.
That was my second advantage: now I was armed, and unlike this clod, I was proficient in its use. I had not just disarmed an opponent, I had quadrupled my own fighting effectiveness. I whirled to meet the six remaining Bastards, for Hiroshi had dispatched another in the interim.
The youth had run at Hiroshi from the back, and he obviously had had some wrestling training at school. He grabbed the little sensei in a full-nelson from behind, intent on breaking his frail neck. Very calmly Hiroshi took one of the fingers and bent it until it popped out of its socket. The pressure on Hiroshi's neck relaxed with this pain, and he threw the punk to the left with an eri-otoshi shoulder throw. The Bastard had the misfortune to land on his shoulder on the curb, dislocating it. He was out of the fight.
Too bad we were in this fray, I thought as I searched for the most dangerous remaining Bone. The kids were mostly Puerto Rican, but it was not their origin that set them off, it was their criminality. Many Puerto Ricans worked out in my dojo, and several were real whizzes. In fact, some of the best American karatekas come from that island. Their numbers and importance in the martial arts are all out of proportion to their strength in the population. But people, seeing the Bastard Bones, would assume that all Puerto Ricans were gangsters, forgetting that the white gangs were just as bad.
One had a knife that he thought to plunge into Hiroshi's back. Knowing Hiroshi, I doubted the blade would ever touch him—but why take chances? My nunchaku shot out, striking the jerk in the solar plexus, knocking him out. Then I turned on the one with the potato razor.
This is a more formidable weapon than it looks, perhaps the most deadly nickel's worth of armament available. Several razor blades are embedded in half a potato. It is usually used to maim during close contact, though death can occur from bleeding. A scraping motion is used, and the face is the preferred target. The b
lades are, by definition, razor-sharp; where they touch, they cut. The potato anchors them and protects the hand of the wielder. Very nasty.
But not against a weapon like the nunchaku. I scissored his potato hand between my sticks. Over the noise of battle I could hear the sound of his bones breaking. I let him drop just in time to catch a tire-iron wielder next, across the jaw, smashing in a tooth or two.
Hiroshi, the pressure relieved, relaxed. He stood calmly by, watching me perform, as though I were an apt student, a benign half-smile on his face. He wasn't worried; only three of the Bastard Bones remained standing, and two of those were girls.
But the fat dark girl was opening her purse, and the gang leader, the one with the broken thumb, was reaching for it. I knew it was no cosmetic she had in there, but I had to deal with the last male Bastard, who was coming at me with a piece of metal pipe. He had a certain skill with his weapon, and I could not afford to take my eye off him. Not until I had put him away.
I wrapped the chain of my nunchaku around his arm, jerking him forward. Then I hit him with a straight inverted fist, uraken, a punch in the middle of his nose. He evidently did not feel the formidable pain of that strike, as is sometimes the case in the midst of combat; he continued to fight.
I glanced at my companion. But Hiroshi had the situation well in hand. He was across the circle of bodies and could not get to the girl in time. For it was a gun she took from her purse, a cheap "Saturday Night Special" that was no aristocrat among firearms but would kill just as effectively at this range. Instead, Hiroshi let fly with his tonki, a tiny throwing knife. He must have learned this weapon from his ninja mentor, Fu Antos. At any rate, his aim was true, and the blade skewered the reaching hand of the Bastard. Now neither hand was any good for holding a weapon or anything else.
The girl had spunk. She lifted the gun herself, snarling like a cat at bay, and pointed it at Hiroshi.
But I had finally tapped my opponent, him of the potato, on the head, putting him forcefully to sleep. Now I shot the chuka sticks at the girl. The tip of one struck her arm and knocked it upward. Then Hiroshi was on her, having hurdled the bodies with surprising agility. One hand caught her wrist, the other gently wrenching the gun upward and backward so as to disarm her without maiming her hand, whose index finger was still caught in the trigger guard.
Something landed on my back, hard. It was the blond girl-and what a little wildcat she was! She clung like a sucker, her hard, pointed nails racking my face, going for the eyes. Her legs were locked around my waist, and though she was so small and light I found it hard to dislodge her, especially while fending off those claws, I was also aware of the feminine mass of her thighs. Childlike, but no child.
I didn't like to do it, but I had to. I reached over my shoulder and grabbed a hank of her long straggly yellow hair and pulled, twisting hard backward and sidewise. Hair-pulling is frowned on in formal judo, but so is eye-gouging. A good yank on the hair at the proper moment can break the strongest man's neck or easily bring him down to the ground. In certain respects street fighting differs from polite practice.
Having loosened her clutch, I hauled up, hard, and she had to come. She fell off my back, twisting sidewise, and landed on her buttocks, what there was of them. The hard blow at the end of her spine must have been felt all the way to her brain, addling it even more. She had probably fissured her tailbone. At any rate, she gave a cry of anguish, and despite the circumstances, I felt remorse for hurting a girl.
The fight was over. The few Bastard Bones who were still mobile fled; the rest waited in their assorted agonies for whatever was to come. I would have felt sorry for these youngsters, but they had asked for it. They had terrorized the neighborhood for several years, with new young punks coming in to replace those who grew out of it; many people had been robbed or beaten and possibly killed. So we had done the neighborhood a favor, and given the gang a good taste of its own medicine.
I heard a police siren coming. I remembered Hiroshi's diamonds, and knew they would be impounded as police evidence.
"Come on," I said. "We don't want to get tangled up in police reports."
No indeed! The police were likely to arrest us, not the Bastards. After all, we were grown men, established martial artists, and I was holding the nunchaku, a legally defined "deadly weapon." The lawyers would have a field day ridiculing how a martial-arts champion took that weapon and beat up a bunch of underprivileged children. And how could I deny it? That was exactly what I had done. Which shows what a lie a half-truth can be.
Hiroshi had not answered. I looked about. He was gone. He must have departed while I was dealing with the blond bitch. Bastard, I mean.
Except... I looked down in amazement.
The bag of diamonds was in my hand.
The bastard—sensei, I mean—had stuck me with the ninja exchequer after all, thereby committing me to its cause. For I had either to return the diamonds or to use them, and I knew I would never find Hiroshi unless he wanted to be found. It would be easier to investigate the weapons-supply situation.
Chapter 4:
Nympho
By the time I got back to my dojo, I had made up my mind: I would try. Hiroshi was obviously determined to see me committed to this effort, and Fu Antos—well, I was really quite curious to know whether this child really was the four-hundred-year-old ninja master. I didn't believe it, of course, yet one part of my mind could not shake off the awe of what had happened, or had seemed to happen, in the second Black Castle on Hokkaido island. Only by meeting this boy again, and observing him, could I resolve that nagging doubt. And only by cooperating would I have the chance.
So I would at least make the effort. Perhaps for the wrong reasons, but what man really understands his own motives? If it turned out to be impossible, legally, to obtain weapons for export, as I rather suspected was the case, I would then admit my failure and try to contact Hiroshi again. At least I would have tried.
First I had to convert those diamonds to cash. I didn't care to take them to a bank or jeweler; I knew they would ask me a multitude of unanswerable questions. Hiroshi had assured me the stones were legitimate, and I believed him, but a whole bagful of unidentified diamonds would arouse instant suspicion that would foil my purpose.
The judo class was gone, but Ilunga remained, putting things in order. I had never been able to afford really good exercise mats, so each day the small ones had to be rolled up and put away so the place could be cleaned, a tedious chore. Ilunga was a good housewife to my dojo, though she would have clobbered anyone who called her that. She was fiercely independent, yet she had artistic sensitivity, and I suppose she liked the feel of legitimacy and proprietorship.
At any rate, I was satisfied with her performance on several counts: she was a good karate instructor, she kept the dojo neat, she handled the accounts well, and her presence encouraged both female and black attendance. I had never had any great number of either type—black or female—before; now business was improving, and it was because of the increase in female and black attendance. As I saw the black karate mistress, I remembered the humiliation Hiroshi had visited upon her in front of the class. I would have to set that right, somehow.
"Don't bother," she said, as if reading my mind. "Hiroshi came by not five minutes ago and apologized."
"He's here?" I asked, startled.
"When I turned around, he was gone. The man moves like a little old ghost."
"He studied under a ninja master," I explained. "Ninjitsu is sometimes called the art of invisibility. The ninjas were a kind of spy class in medieval Japan, highly trained warriors who usually specialized in stealth. So it's not surprising that Hiroshi has that talent. He just pulled the same thing on me. Disappearing."
She shrugged. "You know, he has the ki."
"I know."
"Like yours, only he can call it up anytime. He's quite a man."
"He's the leading aikidoist of the world," I said. "But that isn't what you meant, is it?"
&nb
sp; "No."
"Look, Ilunga, I need some advice."
"He told me."
I looked at her, surprised again. "Told you?"
"The bag of rocks. Hot ice. You need it fenced."
"Fenced! That's what criminals do with stolen goods!"
She smiled a trifle bitterly. "How does it feel, white knight?"
"But I'm no—I mean, I couldn't help—"
"Lots of suckers in jail say the same thing."
"But these are legitimate diamonds!"
She shrugged. "Who's to know the difference?"
Who indeed! Already I liked this business less, and I had hardly liked it before. Selling uncut diamonds to a fence to raise money to buy quasi-legal arms for export! Was this the way all criminals got started, step by step, just trying to help out a friend? I would watch myself before I talked about any "criminal type" again.
But I had already decided I had no conventional alternative. "You have connections?"
"I used to," she said.
I understood her reticence. Ilunga had a criminal past, tied in with the drug addiction: kill-13, the demon drug. Now she was going straight. There had been a police inquest, and I had testified as to her character and the vital assistance she had rendered me on more than one occasion. No adverse witnesses had shown up, and the judge had finally put her on probation, on condition that she remain in town and behave. She had no incentive to associate with criminal elements, now that she was off the drug and gainfully employed.
In fact, I doubted she had ever been a criminal. She had been gang-raped as a child by four white men, and had no reprieve from the law. So she had turned to karate, so as to deal with such men. She had been an apt student, and her anti-rape campaign, while lacking in grace, had been remarkably effective. Rarely did any woman get raped or mugged in this area today. All the chronic offenders were now castrated. Then she had gotten hooked on kill-13, the most compulsive habit of them all, and been forced into criminal behavior. It was the drug, not the person, responsible. And in the end she had helped me to demolish the demon cult and wipe out its leader, Kan-Sen.