“I’m ready when you are.”
He considered me for a moment longer. His gaze reflected sharp slivers of light like surgical probes. Then in silence he turned back to the Camaro, opened the door, and got in.
I followed his example. A minute later we were on our way, leaving behind the sections of Carner that I’d started to know.
The night sky, rendered featureless by Carner’s ubiquitous artificial illumination, didn’t help my general disorientation. Before long, however, I developed the vague impression that we were heading approximately downtown.
Marshal’s warnings squirmed at the back of my mind. I felt an unexpected impulse to call Ginny, let her know what I was doing. As if we were still partners—
I needed to get over that somehow.
Sternway led me onto one of the freeways, then off again before I could identify it. We spent a mile or two on Vista Boulevard, a divided street arched over with louring elms. When we left it, we seemed to pass almost immediately into a zone where the city fathers begrudged spending money. Their commitment to excessive lighting remained, but the quality of the illumination shifted, grew colder and more fluorescent, less habitable. Unnatural white lay on the walls of the buildings and the cracked pavement of the sidewalks, turning them the color of desiccated bone. At the corners, shadows deepened and spread, forming swatches and pools of real darkness. Defying Carner’s expenditure of electricity, night found its way into the city’s unprotected alleys and doorways and gutters. Grit and dispossessed scraps of paper fluttered occasionally in broken gusts of wind.
The streets narrowed as Sternway led me between squat bars, pawn shops, and porn joints that looked like the fallen sections of some larger hulk. Neon signs and advertisements in crass colors flickered over the sidewalks, but most of them had letters or pieces missing, and dirt and neglect dulled the rest.
Without signaling, the Camaro turned left into an alley crowded with shadows that seemed to swallow the Plymouth’s beams. Barely able to see, I crept along behind Sternway’s taillights like a sailor who’d wandered into a Sargasso, walls of storm looming on either side. We passed a series of unlit doors, some broken and gaping, others slumped on their hinges like homeless souls. Then his brake lights flared, and the alley opened into a small parking lot like an abandoned scrap yard.
A dozen or so cars nearly filled the space, but Sternway wedged his Camaro into a gap against one wall. I eased the van in behind him close enough to tap his bumper. This way, I thought grimly, he couldn’t abandon me here no matter what happened.
When I stepped out, I smelled refuse, rotted kitchen scraps, piss, and the lingering reek of vomit. But behind those odors hung an unexpected athletic scent, the distinctive scent of sweat, Tiger Balm, and pain.
Despite my disorientation, I felt suddenly that I’d arrived in a world I understood. I couldn’t so much as guess what this grubby place had to do with Sternway’s famous martial credibility, but I knew beyond doubt that the language spoken here would be furtive and hostile, as familiar as the midnight patois of Puerta del Sol.
Sternway locked the Camaro and joined me. A stretch of lamplight from the street lay across the middle of the yard, revealing him clearly as he passed through it. The disinterest he’d conveyed outside Martial America was gone. Now he reminded me of a lit fuse, primed with secret excitement—sparking toward detonation.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“It doesn’t have a name. That’s why we couldn’t meet here.” He drew me into motion behind him. “You might not have been able to find it. And they wouldn’t let you in without me.”
I wasn’t at all surprised.
Almost hurrying now, he approached a door in one of the side walls. This door was metal, heavy as a lid, with a closed shutter at the level of his face. He knocked crisply three times, raising a muted echo from the frame. After a heartbeat or two, the shutter clattered open. From the small window, light and cigarette smoke spilled outward.
Framed in the opening, a blunt face with what appeared to be dragon’s claws tattooed around the eyes glared at us. The eyes focused on Sternway and dropped slightly in recognition. Then they shifted to me.
“Friend of mine,” Sternway volunteered insincerely.
A voice like a gravel sifter issued from the door. “He carrying?”
Sternway glanced at me and nodded. “Looks like it.”
“Tell him to leave it.”
The shutter crashed shut.
My friend considered me as if he expected me to comply automatically. Until then I hadn’t realized that he knew I had a weapon. When I frowned, he said in a casual tone, “Put your gun in the van, Brew. They won’t let you in with it.” He looked almost happy. “You don’t want to argue with the bouncers here.”
The hell I didn’t. From inside the door I heard muffled sounds like screams. He might as well have asked me to walk into a fire fight unarmed.
I wasn’t sure I knew how to face trouble without the .45.
Unfortunately I couldn’t imagine an alternative that didn’t involve turning my back and driving away. After a moment’s hesitation, I shrugged, returned to the Plymouth, and stashed my gun in its holster under the seat. There I hesitated again. In some other life, I would’ve called Ginny for backup, but that wasn’t an option now. Instead I took the phone out of my jacket and slipped it into a pants pocket. Leaving my jacket on the seat, I relocked the van and strode back toward Sternway.
Even then the night air felt too warm to be natural. The surrounding walls seemed to retain something more than the sun’s heat.
Sternway nodded his approval and immediately repeated his knock. This time the shutter stayed closed. But the door scraped outward, pushed by a hand the size of a Christmas fruitcake.
At once the shrouded din inside resolved itself into shouts of encouragement, scorn, and exertion, combined with the flat thud of blows. Behind the stink of cigarettes and cheap cigars, the athletic odor sharpened.
In the doorway a man with a recidivist’s skull, bulging forearms, and at least fifty pounds he didn’t need acknowledged Sternway, but didn’t step out of our way. Instead he studied me. He wore a black muscle shirt and torn jeans held up by a length of heavy chain. From the neckline of his shirt protruded the tattooed head of a Chinese-style dragon with scaled forelegs that reached up along his neck and face until the claws circled his eyes. Chewing tobacco stained his lips a sickly red.
Deliberately he scowled at my pants.
Swallowing stomach acid, I suggested politely, “Make up your mind, asshole. I can get sneered at anywhere. I don’t need to stand here for your benefit.”
He ignored me. To Sternway he said, “Left pocket.”
There was a distinct bulge in the left pocket of my pants.
“Cell phone,” Sternway answered cheerfully.
The bouncer shifted his wad. “You know the rules. He calls the cops, you’re both history.”
Heavily he retreated from the doorway to let us in.
Sternway practically bounded over the threshold. I followed with less enthusiasm.
As I passed him, the bouncer said, gravel-on-metal, “Watch your back, motherfucker.”
I smiled. “Don’t worry about me. I’m already impressed. I didn’t know it was possible to say ‘motherfucker’ without moving your lips.”
Apparently he didn’t care whether I was impressed or not. Dismissing me with a contemptuous snort, he turned away to slam the door. It clanged shut like the door of a cell.
When I was sure he didn’t mean to watch my back for me, I went after Sternway.
He paused to let me catch up. Then he warned me softly, “I hope you’re as tough as you talk, Brew. If you keep that up, you’ll have to prove it.”
I wanted to laugh in his face. Less than twenty-four hours after Muy Estobal shot me, I’d killed him with nothing but my arms and my weight. Thugs like that bouncer didn’t scare me. I’d been defending myself in Puerta del Sol’s rathole bars, derelict
parks, and littered alleys for years. Under pressure I’ve been known to throw filing cabinets around like paperweights.
On the other hand, my chest still felt tender where Parker Neill had poked me. And I couldn’t pretend, even to myself, that I’d regained all my strength. Hell, my torn guts hadn’t really stopped bothering me until a few days ago.
And I knew what beatings felt like. I’d taken my share.
Instead of laughing, I told Sternway, “I’ll try to keep my mouth shut.”
He nodded and turned away.
A doorway to the left let us into a corridor with lockers lining one wall. Roughly half of them were locked. The rest may’ve been empty. The force of a falling body somewhere ahead made their doors rattle.
Sternway stopped at a combination lock halfway down the row, dialed the locker open, and took out sparring gear—foam hand- and foot-pads, a mouthpiece, a protective cup. I’d seen similar equipment everywhere at the tournament.
Shit, I thought. It’s a fight club. What fun.
He meant to show me that he deserved respect by pounding the by-products out of a roomful of drunken brawlers.
No wonder the damn place didn’t have a name. It had to be illegal. Especially if people put money on the bouts—and I was sure they did, knowing Sternway. Even more so if it served booze.
He gave me a sharp glance to gauge my reaction, then stowed his wallet and keys in the locker. When he’d kicked his moccasins in as well, he replaced the lock and spun the dial.
Lithe and quick, he continued along the corridor. Past the row of lockers, he pushed open the door to what must’ve been a changing room, judging by the concentrations of Tiger Balm and battered weariness in the air. “Restrooms here if you need them,” he informed me as he went in.
I shook my head. Instead of following, I moved forward to take a look at what I was getting into.
After half a dozen paces, the corridor reached a room with decor like a black hole, large enough to house a popular dance club and bar. At once the noise seemed to swell like a mushroom cloud, enhanced by the hard linoleum floor and cinderblock walls. Through a haze of smoke that obscured the ceiling, I saw maybe as many as fifty tables crowded around all four sides of a raised boxing ring, complete with ropes and corner poles. Streaks and splotches that looked like old blood decorated the canvas.
At the moment the ring was empty.
Small groups of men occasionally accompanied by women occupied folding chairs at most of the tables. Some of the women looked like they were trolling for muscular companionship. The rest had apparently come to cheer on their husbands, boyfriends, or pimps.
Ashtrays and drinks, mostly beer, littered the tabletops, but the room didn’t sport a bar, and at first I didn’t see where the booze came from. Then off to my right an unmarked door with no knob or handle swung open, and a couple of waitresses came in wearing what looked like the cast-off remains of can-can costumes. They carried trays packed to the rims with bottles, glasses, and cans. For a second I wondered how they re-opened the door from this side, but then I noticed a hasp on the inside of the door hinged to extend past the frame. That prevented the door from closing completely.
Clever, I muttered to myself. A bar pretending it was separate from the fight club supplied the booze. Shut the door, snap on a padlock, and tell the cops you don’t have anything to do with what’s on the other side. And of course the patrons of the fight club would claim that they brought all their drinks with them. Nothing illegal there. The cops couldn’t prove otherwise unless they staged an undercover raid. Which might get a little risky without guns, considering the fight club’s clientele.
I scanned the room for a couple of minutes, forming an impression of the men at the tables. Some of them had the bulging stocky look of ex-pugs and prizefighter wannabes. Others carried leaner frames and sleeker muscles that reminded me of the black belts I’d seen spar at the tournament. A certain number had obviously come just to watch and bet. They were too full of beer, or otherwise larded with dissipation, to be mistaken for fighters themselves. And a small handful, almost dapper compared to the rest of the crowd, had the characteristic air, at once avid and detached, of bookies and punters, here to set odds, back favorites, meet bets, and generally stir money around the room so that plenty of it ended up in their pockets.
Four bouncers circulated between the tables, usually in the general vicinity of the waitresses—just making sure the patrons didn’t stiff anyone. Like the thug at the front door, a couple of them wore thick chains somewhere handy. The others apparently relied on bulk, threatening faces, and a manly indifference to pain to make them effective.
In the far corner, a steel door sealed the room, imitating a fire exit. After a moment, I decided that it had to be a second, maybe more private, entrance. There weren’t enough cars in the parking lot to account for all the people here.
From where I stood, I didn’t see anyone who looked familiar, from the tournament or anywhere else. Maybe Sternway was an exception—maybe most karate-ka didn’t play this game. Or maybe they were just more choosy about where they played it.
For a moment or two, I felt positively cheerful. Inside these walls—if nowhere else in Carner—I knew exactly what was going on.
Before long Sternway arrived at my shoulder. He wore his foot-pads, carried his gloves and mouthpiece. From there he moved into the crowd and took a chair at an empty table close to the ring. As soon as I joined him, he leaned forward.
“Works like this,” he told me in a primed whisper. “Challenger gets into the ring. Anybody who wants to. Guy who won the last bout gets first chance to accept. If he refuses, somebody else can accept. Again, anybody.
“No rules, no time limit. Gear optional. Bout’s over when one of them surrenders. Or can’t get up.”
“No rules?” I stared at him. “You mean biting is OK?”
He grinned sharply. “If you can get away with it.”
I’d never seen him grin before. It made him look feral. Predatory as a polecat.
In one smooth motion, he left the table. After a quick pause with one of the punters, he headed for the ring, flowing easily between the ropes. At once a halfhearted shout of recognition went up from the room, a mixture of leaden cheers and groans. Obviously most of the crowd knew him. And, just as obviously, some of them weren’t glad to see him.
I watched with a sort of bemused dismay as he pulled on and secured his hand-pads, waiting for an opponent. The sonofabitch was serious. He wanted me to shiver in my little booties whenever I looked at him, purportedly so that I’d understand why men like Nakahatchi, Hong, and Soon let him tell them what to do, and he didn’t care who he beat up to achieve his desired effect.
His eagerness suggested that he was in no danger of getting beat up himself.
Apparently the former “victor” refused Sternway’s challenge. For a minute or two he gazed around the room, looking for candidates. Then a chair behind me scraped the floor, and a man headed for the ring. He was naked to the waist, and in the clouded light he looked like he’d been spit out by a rock crusher and glued back together again. He moved with the lumbering inevitability of a landslide, but as far as I could tell his only real qualifications seemed to be arms the size of axletrees and enough scar tissue to deaden the impact of a piled river.
He didn’t have gloves, foot-gear, or a mouthpiece. Maybe he didn’t even wear a cup.
A couple of dozen people shouted approval when he climbed into the ring. While he faced the crowd and turned in a circle to let everyone get a look at him, activity flurried briefly around the bookies and punters. The little I could overhear suggested that the impromptu book was against him, 3-1.
Sternway would have to earn his money the hard way.
A waitress with a wasted syphilitic face arrived to ask me what I wanted. Instead of telling the truth, I ordered a club soda. She took my money disdainfully, didn’t offer me any change.
When the betting subsided, Sternway and his opponent squa
red off.
In spite of myself, I was impressed—not for the first time—with Sternway’s dangerous ease. He couldn’t have looked more relaxed without falling asleep, but instead of slumping he seemed to lift, grow lighter, until his feet hardly touched the canvas. In contrast, the other man looked solid enough, dense enough, to leave dents with every step.
Hoarse cheers spattered around the room as scar-tissue-and-rocks started forward.
He didn’t get far. In the middle of his second stride, Sternway lunged into a punch so fast that I hardly saw it hit. Then somehow the same motion carried Sternway into the air for a flying kick that rocked his opponent’s head. A second later he was out of range again, floating as if he hadn’t moved at all.
His feral grin seemed to fill his whole face.
But the scarred man wasn’t discouraged. Maybe Sternway’s pads softened the blows. Shaking his head to clear it, he charged headlong at the IAMA director.
That much force would’ve driven a Volkswagen into the ropes, but Sternway stepped aside. As his opponent went by, he flicked an elbow casually at the bigger man’s shoulder. The blow looked as light as a kiss, but it snatched a roar of pain or frustration from the big man.
He started to turn like he wanted to charge again. Sternway stopped him with a kick on the top of his calf that collapsed him to his knees. Before he could try to stand, or even get his hands up, Sternway hit him three times in the face, blows as loud as shots. Then Sternway drifted happily back out of range.
To my chagrin, I realized that I’d been holding my breath. Almost involuntarily I identified with the scarred man. He fought the way I did. I wanted him to shrug off his hurts and keep going.
If he landed one punch, he’d knock the damn joy off Sternway’s face.
Obediently he regained his feet and went back to work.
This time, however, he didn’t charge. Instead he advanced more cautiously, looking for a chance to grab or strike. For a while he and Sternway circled each other like dogs in the preliminary stages of a dominance contest.
Then a look of calculation came into Sternway’s eyes, hinting at a pre-planned attack. In the process he offered his opponent an opening I could’ve hit from where I sat.