Thinking, Don’t do it, that’s what he wants, I watched the bigger man go for the opening with a roundhouse hard enough to powder cinderblocks.
Again Sternway shifted out of the way. All according to plan. While the punch extended the bigger man’s arm, Sternway flicked another elbow at the exposed shoulder.
The same shoulder he’d hit before. In the same spot.
When the bigger man recovered from his swing, he couldn’t lift that arm anymore. Couldn’t even hold it out in front of him. His fingers seemed to writhe with a life of their own, autonomically, no longer under his control.
His supporters groaned and swore disgustedly. Money changed hands as a few spectators paid off.
Ignoring everything else, Sternway drifted around the ring like he was gamboling inside.
His opponent bared his teeth and moved to attack again, but I didn’t want to watch. While Sternway systematically reduced the bigger man to rubble, I made a show of looking for the waitress. Actually I was trying to think of an excuse to leave.
Eventually Sternway’s opponent lay on the canvas, still conscious, not obviously bleeding, but as slack as a man with a broken neck.
As the bouncers removed him, a movement behind them caught my eye. The alleged fire exit opened and closed. The ring blocked my view, but I thought I spotted the top of a head enter the room. Then it dropped out of sight as the new arrival took a seat.
I felt a sudden tingling in my guts—the first cold touch of premonition, intuitive alarm.
Acting detached, Sternway left the ring and headed for the punter who held his bet. Then he returned to my table. For the moment, at least, he’d hidden away his eagerness. Only a smolder of it showed in his eyes as he sat down.
He wasn’t sweating. Hell, he wasn’t even breathing hard. Apparently he found no-rules fighting about as aerobic—not to mention stressful—as a walk in the park.
He leaned toward me to say something, but the waitress interrupted him with my drink. He ordered a diet Coke, paid her out of his winnings. Judging by his wad of bills, I guessed he’d just made a couple of hundred bucks.
“Feel like trying it?” he asked. The noise in the room covered his tone, but it sounded like a taunt nevertheless.
I gave him a grin as sharp as I could make it. “This is your idea of fun, not mine. When I’m in the mood for excitement”—I pretended to laugh—“I lie down until I feel better.”
His upper lip hinted at a sneer, but he didn’t argue.
By then another challenger approached the ring. The pang in my stomach tightened as I recognized the bouncer who’d let us in.
I looked a question at Sternway. The fight club could lose control of its patrons if it let the bouncers get pounded.
He shrugged. The issue didn’t interest him.
Deliberately I asked, “You going to take him on?”
He didn’t answer.
The tattooed bouncer climbed between the ropes like a man with a mission and planted himself in the ring. His eyes in their claws glared right at Sternway and me. I assumed—or hoped—that he wanted to know if Sternway accepted his challenge. But before Sternway could react, the man’s gravel-sifter voice grated out, “Not you. Him.” He pointed straight at me. “I want you, motherfucker.”
I might as well have had a spotlight on me. Suddenly every head in the room turned in my direction. Tension or anticipation spattered through the smoke like overheated oil.
Sternway made a sound like the bark of a raptor. “Up to you,” he told me. “You have the stones for it?”
On some other occasion, I might’ve said, Fuck you, and gone home. But not this time. The premonition clutching at my insides didn’t let me.
The room held dangers I couldn’t identify.
“I said I want you!” the bouncer announced. Just in case I hadn’t understood him.
I still had no clue what I was looking for, but I got to my feet anyway.
A few men shouted approval when they noticed my size. Sounds of interest scattered through the room. Bookies and punters went to work. But I ignored everything around me.
For the first time since I’d sat down, I could see past the ring to the people at the far tables.
“I’m new at this,” I said, pitching my voice to carry. “Let me see if I’ve got it straight.” I spoke to the bouncer, but I hardly glanced at him. Past his bulk I scrutinized every face that wasn’t turned away or hidden. “No rules. Is that right? And we go at it until one of us surrenders?”
“That’s right, motherfucker,” my challenger snarled. Maybe he thought his tattoo made him an actual dragon.
Casually Sternway offered, “Or until one of you can’t continue.”
At first I saw nothing beyond the ring except more people, none of them distinguishable from the rest of the club’s patrons. They regarded me with a kind of conflicted hunger, a desire composed of bloodthirstiness, greed, and scorn. Some of them didn’t care who won, as long as fighters got hurt. Others scurried around inside themselves, trying to calculate odds for and against.
But then the man I didn’t know I was looking for raised his head, and suddenly everyone else seemed to recede, leaving him alone across the canvas from me, isolated by lights and smoke and butchery.
A big man, dull eyes floating above a heavyset frame. Jowls like fanny packs strapped to his jaws. A forehead suited for battering down doors. A pile of debris instead of a nose.
I answered the bouncer without paying any attention to him.
“Fine. I surrender. You win.”
I wasn’t sure that the heavyset man had actually focused on me yet. Hell, I wasn’t sure that he’d gotten a good enough look at me the other day to recognize me now. But I turned away quickly, just in case.
While the tattoo roared obscenities, and his disgusted audience volleyed contempt at my head, I ducked down to tell Sternway, “I think I’ll go puke.” Throwing as much chaff in his eyes as I could. “If I’m not back in a couple minutes, order me a stomach pump. And some Valium.”
Then I headed for the restroom.
It was a tactical decision, and I hated it already. Bernie’s death burned holes in my gut. I wanted to go after that thieving goon now, right now, drop him where he sat before he could so much as think about trying to get away. In an earlier life—as recently as two months ago—I wouldn’t have hesitated.
But I didn’t have all my strength back. When the cops found out that I’d been withholding information, I’d be in trouble. And I wasn’t after the heavyset man himself. I only cared about him because he could lead me to my real target.
Also I didn’t have the .45.
In other words, I was afraid. Which I hated to admit, even to myself. But at the tournament he’d moved with Sternway’s plastique lightness—and I’d just watched Sternway demonstrate what that ease meant.
Hounded by expletives and raspberries, I pushed into the changing room and let the door swing shut behind me. At once the smells of effort and aching muscles replaced the club’s cigarette stink. Gripping the cell phone, I checked the stalls, urinals, and showers to be sure I was alone. Then I dialed 911 and chewed the inside of my cheek while I waited for the dispatcher.
The phone hadn’t stopped ringing when it was snatched out of my hand with enough force to jolt my head.
Instinctively I turned and pitched a fist that would’ve caught Sternway dead in the face if he hadn’t been lightyears too fast for me. He flicked my punch away with his fingers like he’d seen it coming for the past week.
At the same time, he canceled my call.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” he demanded almost cheerfully. “Don’t you listen to anybody? If you call the cops, we’re both history.” He must’ve heard me dial only three digits. “And I do not mean barred from the club. We’ll be left in so many pieces nobody will ever identify them.”
A shiver of cold fury gathered in my stomach. As if I hadn’t just tried to clobber him and failed, I held out my han
d. “My phone.” Deliberately I snapped my fingers. “Give it back. Or explain to Detective Moy why you’re obstructing his investigation.”
Sternway returned my gaze with an air of vague amusement. No doubt he could’ve killed me with one hand. And I believed him about the danger. If a bouncer caught me calling the cops, I’d be in serious shit. But at the moment I didn’t give a damn.
I stared him down anyway.
“The goon Bernie followed into the men’s room is here.” I put all the acid I had into it, every scalding drop of heartburn and grief. “Moy wants him for murder.
“He didn’t do it. That’s obvious. But he knows who did.”
I hoped that was a punch Sternway hadn’t seen coming.
A muscle at the corner of his jaw twitched. He didn’t betray any other reaction.
“Moy is a cop,” I flung at him. “He’s going to think you and that asshole are in this together, so give me the damn phone.”
Just for a second, I thought he would drive his hand right through me and pull out my heart. But then his head made a small movement like a nod. Half smiling to himself, he looked away so that he wouldn’t have to watch while he dropped the phone into my hand.
“It’s your funeral, Axbrewder,” he said softly. “Don’t expect me to back you up. Not here.”
With a gentle shrug, he left the room.
Abruptly its smell seemed to shift. Now the odor of Tiger Balm and bruises felt more threatening than the rank hunger of the fight club. Hurrying because I was scared—and because I didn’t want the goon to get away—I went to the door and braced my back against it while I re-dialed. Then I held my breath.
When the dispatcher answered—a woman’s voice—I didn’t give her time to ask questions. “Just listen,” I told her. “My name is Axbrewder. Get a message to Sergeant Edgar Moy. He’s investigating a murder at The Luxury, and I’ve spotted his suspect. He better get here fast. I don’t think I can handle him myself.”
Quickly I gave her the best directions I could. Five seconds later, the phone back in my pocket, I headed for the ring to find out whether the heavyset man was still there.
Now no one noticed me. For all I knew, the whole club had forgotten I existed. A new fight transfixed the room. The tattooed bouncer had found an opponent, one of the lean fast men who looked like he’d styled his body after a greyhound. At the moment the lean fool was getting killed. He could scarcely stand, and as soon as the bouncer found a handhold that dragon would start to crush bones.
The heavyset man remained in his seat, observing the fighters with a look that resembled clinical detachment.
For a heartbeat or two, relief left me woozy, and the smoke almost smelled good to me. Finally, I thought. A break. Now I can get somewhere.
Trying to stay calm, I found my way back to Sternway’s table and sat down.
He hardly glanced at me. “Satisfied?” Maybe the fight interested him somehow.
I waited for a pause in the grunt-and-slap of the struggle, the halfhearted encouragement and disgust from the spectators, then said, “Ask me later. Moy isn’t here yet.”
A moment later I heard the unmistakable sound of bones breaking, the sharp anguish of the bone itself muffled and moistened by battered flesh. I looked up just in time to see the bouncer fold his opponent’s elbow in several different directions at the same time. The lean man squealed once, like a horse with a shattered leg. Then the bouncer punched him to the canvas, and he stopped complaining. For a few seconds I wasn’t sure that he was still alive. But eventually he coughed, splashing blood across his cheek, and then I saw his chest shudder with pain as he breathed.
I didn’t realize that I was on my feet until the bouncer faced me and pointed at his opponent, “That’s you, motherfucker!” he snarled over the crowd. “He took your place!”
After a few ragged heartbeats, I managed to sit back down.
“Dickless bastard!” the tattoo offered viciously. “Left your cock in your momma and never got it back. You like watching what you can’t have?”
I didn’t take him up on it. Under other circumstances, I might’ve thought I had something to prove. But at the moment I did not need to get my back broken while the heavyset man disappeared into the night.
I’d given him a good look at me. If he recognized me from the tournament—
Sternway leered contemptuously, but I ignored him the same way I ignored the jibes and catcalls around me. I had too many other things to worry about.
While the dragon tattoo stomped around the ring, waving his arms and demanding a new challenger, another bouncer and a stricken woman, a wife or girlfriend, got the lean man off the canvas. “What happens now?” I asked Sternway.
He shrugged dismissively. “He gets left outside. If she doesn’t have a phone, the bar next door calls an ambulance.” A cold smile stretched his mouth. “It’s reported as ‘gangrelated violence.’ If either of them mentions this place, he doesn’t make it out of the hospital. Maybe she doesn’t either.”
He paused for a moment, then added as if I’d asked for a justification, “He knew what could happen. He’s got nothing to bitch about. If he didn’t tell her the rules, that’s his problem.”
Oh, sure, I thought. Fine. All clean and tidy. If you made it sound any prettier, you could set it to music.
Grinning over my teeth, I muttered back, “I can see why you like it here. All this honest brutality probably makes you feel right at home.”
Briefly his mouth twisted, but he didn’t say anything.
The next instant I forgot all about Anson Sternway as the heavyset man rose from his seat.
Carrying his gear, my target climbed into the ring so easily that he practically wafted.
I wasn’t sure, but I thought I caught a glimpse of consternation in the bouncer’s eyes.
At once the room about went crazy as everyone with a spare buck scrambled to place bets. By the time the action around the bookies and punters subsided, the odds were 3-2 against the dragon tattoo. Which would’ve suprised me if I hadn’t see that look in his eyes. Everything else about him proclaimed that he could stand up to a howitzer shell at point-blank range.
In a kind of nauseated suspense, I watched the goon pull on his hand- and foot-pads and turn to face the bouncer. On all sides of the ring, men hollered and whistled, brandished their fists and pounded the tables, as if they expected a bloodbath. Two or three women raised their breasts like they were offering themselves as trophies.
I hated it, but I wasn’t much better myself. My own lust squirmed in my stomach, throbbed in my bones. The heavyset man had something to do with Bernie’s death, he could lead me to the killer, and I wanted him hurt—damaged enough to make him docile.
The bouncer and my target didn’t waste time posturing. Without warning they flung themselves at each other with a shock that made my guts lurch.
Right away the tattoo tried to grapple, secure a hold so that he could put his bulk to work. But the goon ducked under his arms and drove uppercuts into his ribs, rapid and staccato, a sound like pounding beef. Then the heavyset man danced clear.
If the bouncer were hurt, he didn’t show it. Instead those uppercuts had shaken the consternation from his eyes. Now they bulged in the dragon’s claws, porcine with rage, and a beast’s predatory roar stretched his jaws.
His opponent’s dull gaze suggested boredom. The goon carried his knuckled forehead and loose jowls with an air of weightless negligence, as if he already knew exactly how the fight would end.
The fighters jumped at each other again. The tattoo swung a wide punch that would’ve stunned a gorilla, but the goon surged inside the blow. Before the bouncer could react, the goon delivered an elbow strike that rocked the bigger man’s head, staggered him.
The crowd responded with a howl that made no distinction between approval and outrage.
Again the heavyset man eluded a grab and drifted away.
Snarling deep in his throat, the bouncer slapped himself hard a co
uple of times to clear his head. Then he went back to the attack. But this time he didn’t charge. Instead he shifted a step or two from side to side as he advanced. He wanted to back his opponent toward the corner pole, trap him there long enough to get a grip on him.
An urge to cough rose in my throat—tension, cigarette smoke, and heartburn working together. I fought it down.
My target let the bouncer herd him backward a few feet at a time until he was deep in the corner, hemmed in by the ropes. Blind intuition warned me that he was luring his opponent after him. If I’d been the bouncer’s trainer, I would’ve screamed at him to retreat, keep to the center of the ring where he could maneuver. But his supporters didn’t see what I saw—or didn’t care. The entire room squalled at him to press his apparent advantage.
Then the heavyset man struck his audience silent with an attack so sudden that it hardly registered on me until it ended. In the space between one heartbeat and the next, he seemed to lift into the air, drawn upward by the rising force of his left knee. And when he reached the apex of his jump, his right leg lashed out like the snap of a whip, catching the bouncer under his jaw and cracking his head back hard enough to splinter his spine.
Or someone’s spine, anyway. Mine, for instance. The dragon tattoo rocked with the blow, staggered backward a step. But he simply had too much muscle to go down that easily.
Which the dull-eyed goon must’ve known. Without so much as a flicker of hesitation, he landed in a long crouch—right knee compressed under him, left leg extended behind—that dropped him below the bouncer’s reach. In virtually the same motion, he drove forward again, heaving off the spring of his right leg to ram his left knee into his opponent’s belly with the force of a sawed-off shotgun.
The bouncer doubled over with a gasp that seemed to expel every atom of oxygen from his lungs.
Now the heavyset man paused for a fraction of a second—just long enough to adjust his position. Then he swung his thick right leg up in an arc around the bouncer until it stretched almost straight for the ceiling. From there his heel slashed downward, hammering with all his weight and muscle behind it onto the base of the bouncer’s neck.