The Man Who Fought Alone

  Nakahatchi dismissed all that. It seemed to run off him like water. “Sifu Hong is a great master,” he stated as if that answered my objections. “But Wing Chun is not for you. For you, Shotokan is best.”

  “Well, now,” I replied, procrastinating shamelessly, “I’m not sure about that.” I needed time to think. “What I’ve seen of Wing Chun looks pretty impressive. And—”

  You’re too short. You’re too old.

  I bit down on the inside of my cheek to make myself shut up.

  “Much of Wing Chun is oblique,” he said. Explaining something he thought I needed to understand. “It’s purposes are likewise oblique. Shotokan is direct. For you, to be direct is necessary.”

  As if I needed the benefit of his wisdom on that point.

  Exasperated now, and too angry to be polite about it, I countered, “Listen to me, Mr.—”

  With no warning at all—no flick of his eyes, no catch in his breathing, no hint of intensification—he stepped toward me.

  The room whirled, and I found myself on my hands and knees. The hardwood in front of my face had a long grain like flowing veins. It seemed full of remembered sunlight, too warm for ordinary wood. The lines between the boards looked deep enough to reach the center of the world, the center of reality. Shock paralyzed my solar plexus. That’s how I knew he’d hit me. I certainly hadn’t picked up any other clues. Until the room stopped moving I couldn’t imagine how he’d swept me off my feet.

  When I finally raised my head, I saw him standing several feet away—far enough for safety, too far to threaten me if I wanted to get up.

  The paralysis in my chest eased. My lungs sucked small gusts of air. A distant roar in my ears sounded like advancing rage, a tornado gathering its forces on the horizon.

  Unsteadily I pushed my legs under me and stood up.

  Trembling, I went back to the place where I’d left my shoes, emptied my pants pockets into the pockets of my jacket, did the same with pens and notes from my shirt pocket, then pulled my jacket off and dropped it beside my shoes. I undid the straps of my shoulder holster, set the .45 on top of my jacket. Despite the way my knees shook, I crouched down to strip off my socks.

  Ginny’d have my hide for this. If we were still partners.

  If I still cared.

  The roaring grew louder. It filled my head. Anything that might’ve objected to what I was doing couldn’t make itself heard. I’d already had all the cowardice I could bear. While that wind tore through the room, nothing else mattered.

  Deliberately I walked back into the center of the dojo. The center of the world. Toward Nakahatchi.

  Evaluate my character? Mine? I wasn’t the one who wanted to steal those chops. I hadn’t killed Bernie.

  Tremors mounted through me, hints of crisis.

  He stood ready for me, waiting. This time he assumed what he seemed to consider a sparring stance, left foot forward, left hand open near the level of his chin, right fist relaxed on his hip. Somehow he conveyed the impression that he floated a fraction of an inch off the hardwood, impervious to such mundane concerns as gravity and mass.

  Well, fine. Just stand there.

  If he wanted direct, I’d show him direct.

  Timing it in stride, riding the storm, I wheeled a punch at his head hard enough to stagger a lamp post.

  Except that my bicep found the point of his elbow before my fist reached his head. A shredding pain like the path of a bullet ripped at my arm while Nakahatchi cross-stepped past me. His right hand touched my groin. I felt his fingers skim my crotch before they reached the underside of my thigh, but I couldn’t do anything about it, it was happening too fast, lightning strikes of pain had burned their way through the gale inside my head, when he pinched the nerve center of my hamstring a cattle prod went off in my thigh, and all my muscles spasmed, flinging me backward across his hip. If he hadn’t caught me at the last second, slowed my fall, I would’ve landed like a load of cinder blocks.

  A warning. Komatori had warned me. Nakahatchi had just warned me twice. Evaluate my character. My damaged bicep wailed along the wind. The back of my thigh felt like the kiss of a high-tension line.

  Rolling through the rest of the fall, I staggered upright. For some peculiar reason, my chest strained for air as if I’d just run the mile. Nakahatchi seemed to stand at a slight angle. Or, no, it was the floor tilting—

  Hell, even Parker Neill had warned me. Sternway had practically jumped up and down on my head about it.

  Barely audible through the howl in my ears, Nakahatchi announced, “It was written by Gichin Funakoshi sensei, ‘If your hand goes forth, withhold your anger. If your anger goes forth, withhold your hand.’”

  All right. If that’s the way he wanted to play. I’d show him what “goes forth” really meant.

  I went at him again, exactly the same as before. If you didn’t count the weakness in one arm, or the involuntary hitch in my opposite leg. Or the fact that I couldn’t tell the difference between rage and pain. This time, however, I didn’t try to punch him. Instead I swung up a kick from the pit of my stomach, aiming to punt the little shit out of the stadium.

  He slid aside effortlessly. I missed so hard that I would’ve smashed down onto my back if my pinched leg hadn’t collapsed under me, pitching me forward.

  Somehow I caught myself on my arms. The jolt rocked through me hard. If I’d stopped to notice, I might’ve realized that I’d dislocated a shoulder or two, or maybe a kneecap. But I didn’t, and apparently I hadn’t. The slam of the impact and the wind seemed to bounce me back onto my feet, and I could still stay there, so in some sense I must’ve been OK.

  Nakahatchi had resumed his floating stance, one hand raised and ready. I could barely breathe, but he didn’t show any sign of strain—or even exertion.

  That was about to change. I’d already suffered enough beatings to last me forever. But I’d also delivered a fair number of them. There were still thugs in Puerta del Sol—enforcers, extortion muscle, bodyguards, and such—who couldn’t look at me without flinching. And I hadn’t let a little thing like a bullet through my guts stop me from putting Muy Estobal out of everyone’s misery.

  Evaluate my character, fuck.

  Ignoring my sore bicep and hamstrung thigh, my bruised knees and shocked shoulders and stunned respiration, I attacked again.

  More cautiously this time. More slowly. And straighter. I didn’t try to swing a roundhouse, or bring up a kick. That sure as hell hadn’t worked. Instead I concentrated on jabs. And careful footwork, so that he couldn’t turn my momentum against me. Jab jab jab. A quick step in. Jab cross jab. Another step.

  Also I kept my eyes on his, studying them for hints. He’d counterattack soon. When he did, I wanted to see it coming.

  He didn’t meet my stare. Instead he kept his gaze focused on the middle of my abdomen.

  For the first few flurries, he seemed content to block and retreat, block and retreat. His blocks were so effortless, so nearly gentle, that I couldn’t figure out why I hadn’t hit him yet. No matter how hard I punched, he merely patted my fist or my forearm with one hand or the other and stepped back. None of my blows reached him.

  Patty-cake, patty-cake, baker’s man.

  Jab jab. Jabjabjab. I could not get inside his defenses.

  Nevertheless I didn’t consider surrender. My inner tornado consumed me. That blast demanded release. Clearly I wouldn’t get a real chance to hit him until he stopped retreating, so I used my attacks to steer him toward one of the walls.

  If he couldn’t back up, I’d connect sooner or later. Or come close enough to get my hands on him. Then I’d have him. Hell, all I had to do was fall on the sonofabitch—

  That might’ve worked, but he didn’t stand still for it. Just when I thought I’d trapped him, and my desire to finally land a punch had become fire in my veins, he turned one of his patty-cake blocks into a sweep and stepped aside.

  Behind me.

  Inspired by pain and gales, I wheeled in th
e opposite direction, all the way around, and lunged after him.

  He must’ve sensed what I was about to do, felt it before I moved. By the time I dove at him, he’d already retreated two steps, three—

  —out of reach.

  Almost out of reach.

  By stretching out headlong, and making no effort to keep my feet under me, I managed to grab the hem of his gi just above his sternum before the rest of me dropped to my knees.

  Now, I thought through the roar, now he was mine. From here on it was just muscle, and he didn’t stand a chance. If he believed that he could force me to let go by simply hitting me, he was about to learn an important lesson.

  Only I was wrong. Again. He didn’t hit me. While I scrambled to gain my feet, straining for leverage so that I could use my bulk, he calmly set the ball of his thumb into the hollow where my collarbones met. And pushed.

  His thumb dug in. Damn, it dug in. He was going to strangle me. Crush my trachea. Already I couldn’t breathe. Or see. Blackness stormed through my head, effacing everything else.

  And it hurt. The nerve center in the supersternal notch has links throughout the torso. My brother taught me that, Rick Axbrewder, Richard, he’d learned it while he was with the Special Forces. The brother I’d shot to death in drunken negligence.

  With my free hand, I hacked at Nakahatchi’s arm. He stopped me somehow. Suffocating around the pressure of his thumb, I hardly registered other sensations. Had he taken hold of one of my fingers? Was he bending it backward? Did the agony of it pull me harder onto his thumb?

  I clung to his gi anyway. Fuck him. In fact, fuck him with a crowbar. He couldn’t make me let go. Not just by hurting me. Not me. I knew things about pain that would make him howl at the moon if I happened to mention them.

  He made me let go.

  An autonomic desperation compelled me. Just when I’d decided to hang on until he killed me or lost his nerve, I snapped. Releasing my hold, I wrenched sideways to twist my throat off his thumb, then frantically heaved myself upward, up and forward, over his tearing grasp on my finger.

  His finger lock helped me go. My legs pitched at the ceiling, and I plunged face first at the floor.

  Broke my neck, crushed two or three vertebrae, severed my spinal cord. Or would have, if he hadn’t caught me again. Anchoring me in the air until my legs finished their arc, he lowered my shoulders to the hardwood. Actually lowered them. Only my heels landed hard.

  If I were lucky, I thought, stupid with shock, I’d shattered bones, and I’d never walk again. Then I wouldn’t have to go on humiliating myself like this.

  But I didn’t stop. After a couple of seconds—or a couple of minutes—I rolled onto my side, then over to my chest. Pulled my knees under me.

  Gasping for breath, I shifted my weight back onto my feet.

  The pain made me gasp. My heels felt like they’d been hacked apart. Serrated agony sliced along all my nerves into my brain.

  Nevertheless I could stand. My feet held me.

  Nothing else held. The windows and the floor and Nakahatchi all existed in dimensions of their own, drifting on trajectories that made no sense in relation to each other. Air shuddered in and out of my lungs, but it didn’t help. There wasn’t enough oxygen in all the world to turn me back into the man I was.

  Somehow I didn’t fall over.

  While the room went off in all directions like hurled water, something in my head found its center. A place where no wind blew. An imponderable stillness cupped the dojo, humbling me when I didn’t know how to humble myself.

  Soon I could hear again. First the declining racket of my heart, the edged urgency of my breathing. Then the ambiance of the room, the shrouded complaint of traffic outside, the small splash of sweat dripping from my face to the hardwood. The faint deified susurrus as Nakahatchi shifted his feet.

  Well, hell. Maybe he didn’t actually float after all.

  My face felt strange. For a few moments I couldn’t figure out why. Then I realized that I was grinning. I couldn’t help it.

  My list of hurts was too long to count, so I didn’t bother. Instead I dragged my fists up in front of me, flexed my knees a bit, and took two or three fractured steps forward. When I was close enough to talk without raising my voice, I panted hoarsely, “You said you wanted to teach me. I’m ready to learn now.”

  I went on grinning.

  For all I knew, grinning at your instructor was an insult. But he didn’t look offended. And he didn’t resume his fighting stance. With his hands at his sides, he bowed deeply. Then he announced, “We are done, Axbrewder-san. We will spar no more today.”

  “No, please.” Straightening my legs, mainly because I didn’t have the strength to keep them flexed, I opened my hands like an appeal. “I’m sorry it took me so long to get in the right frame of mind. I wasn’t angry at you. I just needed a target. But I’m ready now.”

  I’d never been more sincere in my life. Whatever his secret was, I needed it. Badly.

  “No.” He shook his head gravely. “I honor your courage. And I will teach you. But first you must learn this. Pain is a means to an end, but it must never become the end. Today you believe you are ready because your pain has become greater than your anger, yet you are not defeated by it. That is important, Axbrewder-san. It is necessary. But you will not be ready indeed until your pain has become separate from your anger.”

  Again he bowed.

  This time I did the same. I didn’t think I had much choice. And he’d called me “Axbrewder-san.” That counted for something.

  Now he smiled. For a moment the old sorrow on his face lost its immediacy. “I will leave you,” he said quietly. “You may remain or depart, as you wish. Return tomorrow at the same time.”

  With the kind of dignity you can only get from real mastery, he walked to the edge of the floor, bowed to the dojo and his shrine, then crossed the library and disappeared down the stairs.

  Apparently he trusted me alone in his sanctum.

  Separate from your anger.

  I almost understood him.

  22

  Briefly I considered defacing his shrine. Not that I had the slightest desire to do so. In fact, I would’ve fought to protect it. But such lunacy helped distract me so that I could move. Become separate. Otherwise I might’ve remained stuck where I stood for hours, trapped between bruises and immanence.

  Sure, deface the shrine. The world was full of spare excrement. I could probably find some if I put my mind to it.

  Whee.

  Then some of the tension in my chest released itself, and I began to breathe a bit more easily.

  I let my shoulders slump, took a couple of tentative steps toward my shoes and jacket. At first everything in me seemed to hurt, and I felt damn near crippled. But as I breathed the pain receded to more realistic proportions.

  Nakahatchi hadn’t actually done me much damage. Apart from one throbbing bicep, one strung hamstring, a sore finger, and a lump of pain at the base of my throat which made swallowing difficult, I’d mostly hurt myself by falling a lot. And he’d softened that for me as much as he could. Hardshorn had hit me harder.

  I finally concluded that Nakahatchi’s lessons felt so dangerous because he’d disoriented me completely. I’d never been eluded and tossed around like that before. Everyone else who’d ever beaten me up—including Muy Estobal—had done it like Hardshorn, straight and brutal, in ways I understood.

  Vaguely I noticed that my shirt looked like I’d used it to polish the floor. That disoriented me as well. I felt filthy—and transformed. Torqued into a new shape. No wonder I wasn’t entirely sure which way was up.

  I paused to rub my bicep for a moment, then shambled over to the edge of the hardwood. My heels weren’t happy with me, but they didn’t bitch too much when I pulled on my socks and stepped gingerly into my shoes. With that challenge behind me, I had an easier time slipping my arms into the straps of the shoulder holster and the sleeves of my jacket.

  Now what? I ha
d no idea. I’d recovered some small measure of mobility, but I still couldn’t think effectively. The chops were genuine. Bernie was dead. Surely I was supposed to do something?

  At last I got it. Take a shower. And a nap. Put on clean clothes. For my date with Deborah Messenger.

  That seemed inadequate somehow. Insufficiently arduous. Us manly-type private investigators were born to suffer. That’s why God put us on this earth. But what alternatives did I have? Figure out why Hong was in danger? Grasp the connection between Bernie’s murder and Nakahatchi’s antiques? Make everything right with Ginny? In my condition? Ha.

  A shower and a nap sounded like Heaven. And I was getting just a bit tired of all this divinely inspired angst.

  I decided to go back to the apartment.

  Fortunately I didn’t encounter anyone on my way out of the dojo. Unhindered, I stumbled out into the sun’s glare like I’d just escaped a shipwreck.

  The Plymouth seemed ridiculously far away, but under cover of sunglasses I managed to cross the blazing concrete, unlock the van, and climb in. God, I hoped I wasn’t still here when summer came. Carner would be a furnace. Some people considered Puerta del Sol hot, but there the drier air and the elevation blunted the sunlight’s cruelty. I didn’t feel so belittled by it.

  Still in a state resembling stupefaction, I coaxed the Plymouth to life, engaged the AC, and began to retrace the route I’d used to come here just a few hours ago, in a previous life.

  Become separate from your anger.

  I probably could’ve driven all the way to the apartment without actually thinking about anything. As it happened, however, my phone rang while I still had a couple of miles to go.

  For a moment or two I couldn’t figure out what that insistent electronic chirp meant. On automatic pilot, I fumbled around in my pockets until I found the phone. By the time I tugged it out, I’d remembered what it was for.

  The possibilities gave me a little rush. I sounded almost awake as I announced, “Axbrewder.”

  “Brew, are you all right?” Deborah’s voice answered. “You seem blurry. Or do we have a bad connection?”