The Man Who Fought Alone

  From the back of the dojo I crossed the dressing room to the fire door and punched it open with the heel of my palm.

  25

  The fire door let me out onto the ground floor of the building’s utility well. Wet and damn near frozen as I was, entering the well felt like walking face first into a space heater. The boiler, furnace, and AC units put out enough BTUs to liquefy Styrofoam.

  I went straight to the equipment cage, spread out my arms, and pressed my shivering against the grate. I couldn’t afford the time to hang there like a heat sink, soaking warmth while my clothes dried. Nevertheless I stayed motionless for twenty or thirty seconds—long enough to restore blood to at least some of my muscles.

  Duct and conduit insulation gave the air a faint sulfurous tinge I hadn’t noticed the other day. Floodlamps in the walls filled the well with a glaring shadowless artificial illumination. The whole place resembled the atrium of an inferno.

  Fortunately it was quieter than I’d expected. Or feared. Despite the thrashing fury outside, only a muffled sibilance penetrated the well. The skylights overhead must’ve been just about bulletproof.

  As soon as I could move without quivering, I shoved the .45 back into its damp holster, hid the cell phone in a jacket pocket, and tugged the jacket up my arms. I wasn’t much concerned with concealing the .45, but I needed to keep my phone hidden and accessible without risking it in my sodden pants.

  Wrestling out my keys, I hurried around the equipment cage to Traditional Wing Chun’s fire door. If I got in there before the lab boys, paramedics, and uniforms left, I might be able to prevent this disaster from getting any worse.

  My key released the lock. I pulled open the door and went in.

  The dressing room was dark. Likewise the small dojo beyond it. But enough light leaked in from the entryway to let me see where I put my feet. In any case, I didn’t need light to hear that I was already too late. Again.

  The confusion of angry voices sounded like thirty or forty people primed to tear each other’s throats out. A hell of a crowd must’ve gathered in the main dojo. The consequences of Hong’s death multiplied faster than I could imagine them.

  Trying not to run, I crossed the dressing room and the dojo to the entryway.

  Ahead of me the front door swung open, letting a slash of rain carry a man and a woman inside. They wore canvas gis with their belts—purple and brown respectively—cinched tight. Neither of them paid any attention to me. Tossing their umbrellas to the carpet, they hurried into the main dojo.

  I followed on their heels.

  Instead of thirty or more people, I saw only twenty or so. Maybe half of them wore street clothes. Three or four still had on raincoats. The rest had donned their martial uniforms—silk pajamas, canvas gis. I was tall enough to see over most of them.

  They crowded around a clear space in the middle of the floor, shouting furiously at each other. The gis were mostly to my right, opposite the pajamas. I didn’t know any of the pajamas, or the men and women in street clothes. Among the gis, however, I recognized one of Nakahatchi’s students, Aronson, and the two kids who’d helped him and Komatori move the display case to Martial America.

  Words like “murder” and “revenge,” “unforgivable,” and “stolen” raged back and forth, but I didn’t try to sort them out.

  In the center of the crowd stood Hideo Komatori and T’ang Wen. Hideo’s wet gi dripped on the hardwood. Water cast a sheen along his scar. He must’ve taken the fire escape route out of Essential Shotokan, then run through the rain unprotected to Traditional Wing Chun. Unlike their supporters, he and T’ang didn’t yell. It wasn’t necessary. They faced each other with the deceptive menace of martial artists, self-contained and calm, ready to detonate. From where I stood, I couldn’t see T’ang’s face, but Komatori’s eyes held a killing intensity that made my guts ache.

  I couldn’t locate Parker Neill.

  His absence hit me like a club. I’d been hoping fervently that he’d arrived ahead of me. That Deborah had reached him, and he’d agreed to do what I asked.

  Without him—

  Oh, fuck.

  Then some of the shouts penetrated my alarm. Stolen? Moy had told me that T’ang Wen didn’t know the chops were gone. What in God’s name was Hideo doing? Had he come over here to accuse Hong of stealing—?

  Using my bulk, I plowed through the crowd into the clear space around Komatori and T’ang. My presence struck the dojo silent, at least for a moment. Suddenly all the hostility in the room refocused on me. When Komatori and T’ang noticed me, I stepped between them.

  Quietly I demanded, “What the hell’s the matter with you two?” If I kept my voice down, the crowd might stay quiet to hear me. “You don’t think we already have enough trouble? Now you want your students to beat each other up?”

  Hideo didn’t hesitate. “Brew-san, this affront to my master is intolerable. You know that I can’t—”

  “No!” T’ang put in hotly. “My master has been slain! I did not insult that Japanese. I said to the police only what I know to be true, that I can think of no one else who might wish my master ill. Yet he comes here to accuse my master of the theft of the chops. It is indeed intolerable, and we will not suffer it!”

  “He lies, Brew-san,” Komatori retorted. “I haven’t mentioned the chops. I haven’t accused Sifu Hong in any way. I came because I won’t endure the claim that my master has any desire for Sifu Hong’s death. My master’s esteem for Sifu Hong is boundless. His death is an affront to all martial artists. I will not allow it to be placed on my master’s shoulders.”

  I believed him. Hell, I believed both of them.

  But if Hideo hadn’t said anything about the chops—

  “He’s right, Axbrewder,” a hard voice put in. “It is an affront to all martial artists. But who else took the chops? Who else wanted them as badly as Hong did? And if you don’t think Nakahatchi killed him, tell us who did. Who else had a reason?”

  Turning sharply, I faced Anson Sternway. He stood with his back to the windows like he’d just materialized out of the storm. Reflected lightning strobed behind him, emphasizing him against the dark glass.

  He wore virtually the same clothes he’d had on last night, a grey sweatshirt and warmup pants over canvas deck shoes.

  Between one heartbeat and the next, my pulse rate about tripled. Maybe he’d been there all along. Somehow I hadn’t spotted him. Too busy praying that Parker would show up, probably.

  “Mr. Sternway,” I gritted through my teeth. “What the fuck are you doing? This’ll be great for Martial America’s reputation. Just great. I need help here. You’re stirring these people up. We should be calming them down.”

  He shook his head. “No, Axbrewder. You don’t understand.” His lack of inflection was the viscid surface of a pool of acid. “This has to be resolved. If it isn’t, it will tear Martial America apart. They’re approaching it the traditional way, the only way it can be resolved. A challenge between schools. Both Komatori-san and Mr T’ang are prepared to fight for their masters’ honor. Their students are ready to back them up. I suggest you get out of their way.”

  “Do you mean to tell me,” I protested, “that you buy this bullshit? You think Hong stole the chops, and Nakahatchi killed him to get even? In case you haven’t heard, Hong was killed in his bed. Do you actually believe that Nakahatchi could sneak up on a renowned fighter like Hong Fei-Tung, break his neck in his sleep?”

  Never mind the obvious fact that Hong had no known access to Essential Shotokan.

  Without faltering Sternway countered, “Do you know anything about Ninjitsu?”

  I stared at him. He had everyone’s attention now. Even Komatori and T’ang shifted in his direction.

  “It’s an assassin’s art,” he explained. “It teaches stealth and an imaginative use of weapons. Similar arts have developed in other countries. The Thuggee in India, for example. But no one has ever surpassed Ninjitsu.

  “It’s a Japanese art.”
r />   He shocked me. Nakahatchi? A Ninja? Surrounded by men and women so charged with adrenaline and fear that they could hardly hold themselves back, I could still feel a kind of horrified admiration.

  The IAMA director was that confident.

  Despite my shock, however, I had to admit that he might be right about one thing. Maybe a fight was the best way to resolve this.

  Komatori sure as hell thought so. “Withdraw, Brew-san,” he told me like the stroke of a blade. “Mr. Sternway indulges in fancies. I don’t hear him. I leave the theft of the chops to you. And Sifu Hong’s murder. You’ve earned that much respect from me. But the accusation against my master I leave to no one.”

  “Yes, withdraw,” T’ang Wen sneered. “It may be that you have earned honor from this Japanese, but you have dishonored yourself to me. With your own mouth you promised that your presence would protect my master. Now I have seen how your promises are kept. You have no word to speak that I will hear.”

  Inwardly I cringed. He was right. I’d bought Hong’s cooperation with promises I couldn’t keep.

  And I’d given his killer a reason to take him out.

  But I was still bigger than Komatori and T’ang. I was bigger than most of their students. And I could yell louder.

  “You want me out of your way?” I barked at both of them. “Fine. I’ll ‘withdraw.’” My voice rose. “On one condition. No one else fights. Your students stay out of it. They accept the outcome.” In a brawl any number of them would get hurt. With so much martial expertise running loose, someone might be killed. “Otherwise I’ll haul the cops in here, have them arrest the whole pack of you.”

  An empty threat. In this weather I couldn’t summon anyone except Edgar Moy and his two uniforms. But that might be enough—

  “No!” Aronson shouted immediately. Damn fool. Half the karate-ka with him were kids, but he was old enough to know better.

  At once T’ang’s students roared back. In an instant the whole room erupted with challenges. Pajamas and gis and street clothes started for each other.

  Sternway watched me nervelessly.

  Before I could react, however, Hideo wheeled on his people. His voice rang out with a command I didn’t understand.

  His students jerked to attention as if he’d cracked a whip in their faces. He had that much moral authority for them.

  “You will do as Brew-san says.” Each word struck with the force of a fist. “You’ll watch and do nothing. Otherwise you’ll dishonor Nakahatchi sensei—and you know I won’t allow that.”

  I wanted to give him a round of applause, but I didn’t have time. As soon as he finished, I turned on T’ang Wen.

  I didn’t speak. I didn’t have to. Komatori’s example was more eloquent than anything I could’ve said. I simply glared into T’ang’s face until he gave a reluctant nod.

  “This Japanese has given me face,” he told his students bitterly. “You will not take it away. While those of Essential Shotokan remain only to witness, you will do the same. If you do not, I am dishonored regardless of the outcome.”

  I thought that some of his supporters would object. They had more at stake—Hong was dead, Nakahatchi wasn’t. Nevertheless they agreed ungraciously, muttering to each other as they did so.

  That was the best I could do. To no one in particular, I muttered, “Fine. Knock yourselves out.” Feeling like a coward, I moved into the crowd toward Sternway.

  He considered my approach scornfully. As soon as I reached him, I took hold of his left forearm and dug my fingers in hard, just to get his attention. When he winced involuntarily, I let go.

  “Don’t leave,” I breathed in his ear. “I want to talk to you when this is over.”

  Without warning his right hand flicked under his left arm. His fingertips brushed my ribs, he hardly touched me—and yet a sudden spasm of pain clenched my chest. He must’ve caught a nerve. For a moment or two I couldn’t move. If he’d decided to put his entire arm down my throat, I wouldn’t have been able to stop him.

  “I’ll be right here,” he replied like a warning.

  I sneaked a quick gulp of air.

  At least we understood each other. He knew what I wanted to talk to him about. And I knew I was as good as dead.

  In the center of the dojo Hideo Komatori and T’ang Wen prepared themselves for battle.

  They stood six or seven paces apart. Hideo bowed to T’ang with his palms on the sides of his thighs, then shifted into a fighting stance like the one Nakahatchi had used on me earlier. T’ang replied by dropping into a kind of crouch, his right leg doubled under him, his left extended ahead with only the ball of his foot on the floor. In that position he covered his right fist with his left hand and straightened his arms toward Komatori.

  Neither of them moved.

  Everyone else in the room seemed to have suspended breathing.

  Then T’ang moved his lead foot, stroked the hardwood with his toes in a circle that brought his left foot under him. Flowing up from his crouch, he poured his weight onto his left leg, tucked his right foot behind the knee, cocked his left arm over his head with the fingers of that hand pinched together, and gestured toward Komatori with his right hand open, palm upward.

  That hand beckoned for Komatori to attack.

  Without warning Komatori surged forward.

  At the same instant T’ang sprang at him, yelling fiercely.

  In unison, as if they were both part of the same technique, they burst into a flurry of movement. Punches from all angles met blocks, blocks became punches and more blocks, Komatori and T’ang swayed in and out from the waist while their arms fired like bolts off a static generator. The spasm in my chest eased, yet I hardly breathed. I couldn’t believe that they weren’t pummeling each other bloody. But I didn’t actually see a blow land.

  Abruptly T’ang whirled into a spin so swift that he seemed to flicker. His leg flipped out, snapping his heel at Komatori’s head.

  Komatori ducked under the kick, swept one of his own at T’ang’s supporting leg. T’ang hopped over the attack into another spin and kick that would’ve taken Komatori’s head off if Komatori hadn’t dropped to the floor and rolled away.

  T’ang went after him. By the time Komatori regained his feet, T’ang had leaped high into the air. For an instant, a small shard of time, he seemed to hang there, poised to crash down on his opponent like a boulder from a trebuchet. Then he dropped, driving both heels at Komatori’s chest.

  He hit hard enough to pulverize cement, never mind ordinary human bone—or he would have if Komatori hadn’t slipped aside. While T’ang was still in the air, Komatori fired a punch from his hip straight into T’ang’s sternum. Komatori’s hoarse shout covered the thud of impact.

  T’ang didn’t fall. I couldn’t imagine how he managed that. A blow like Komatori’s would’ve dropped me to my knees for life. But somehow T’ang got his feet under him, landed staggering backward. Two steps later, he recovered his balance.

  His flat eyes burned silver with mayhem.

  At the edge of my attention I thought I heard the front door open. I turned reflexively. Parker—?

  No.

  A second later half a dozen people in gis, no, ten, fifteen, charged into the dojo, streaming rainwater as they came. Their gis sported patches that said Master Soon’s Tae Kwon Do Academy. They all wore black belts. Apparently Song Duk Soon had brought most of his senior students with him.

  What the fuck—?

  Before anyone could react, Soon’s people rushed into the middle of the room, forcing the combatants apart.

  Shock held the dojo for a moment. No one moved. Komatori stood at attention, his expression shrouded. Panting at the force of Komatori’s blow, T’ang poised himself on the balls of his feet. The lines of his stance shed threats the way Soon’s black belts shed water.

  Sternway cocked an eyebrow at me. He might’ve been laughing.

  Goddamn it, how many phone calls did Sue Rasmussen make?

  Then Soon spread his
arms, cleared a small space around him. The look on his face resembled triumph.

  “Disgraceful!” he almost crowed. “Chops stolen. Masters murdered. Fighting in your dojo. This is the work of children! You disgrace yourselves and your schools. You disgrace the martial arts.”

  It was Rasmussen’s doing. All of it. Unless Sternway himself had told T’ang Wen about the chops.

  Any doubt I might’ve retained was gone, burned away in a flare of perfect outrage.

  “I will not allow it!” Soon went on. Water dripped from his gi like eagerness. “You are fortunate that we were informed. For you yourselves I care nothing. I would leave you to pummel each other like babies. But I will not allow this insult to the martial arts. The newspapers will not make distinctions between us. They will say that all martial artists are wild dogs.” He closed his fists. “It falls to taekwondo-ka to act responsibly.”

  The sonofabitch sounded like he’d gained the pinnacle of Heaven. Anointed by the Almighty to achieve his rightful superiority.

  Which would’ve been fine with me. As long as he stopped the fight before T’ang or Komatori got hurt—as long as he sent everyone home—I didn’t give a shit how much stature he assigned himself afterward.

  But that wasn’t really what he wanted. I could see it in his eyes. One of his black belts was Cloyd Hamson, looking even more belligerent—in other words, frightened—than he had yesterday. Another was a big Korean man, practically a giant, with a face like a hatchet and the closed remorseless aspect of an ax murderer. He was probably Pack Hee Cho, Soon’s chief enforcer.

  What Soon really wanted was a fight. He wanted to beat the crap out of every karate-ka and Wing Chun stylist in sight, force the whole damn building to admit that he was the best.

  Stung by dread, I started forward. But I was too late. Always too late. Before I’d taken a step, T’ang Wen brought up a yell from the bottom of his heart and struck Soon’s nearest black belt hard enough to double the man over.

  Instantly the room went up like a high-octane gas fire. Howling their anger and fear, thirty-plus men and women with too much training and too little restraint hurled themselves at each other. By the time I’d finished one step and started another, the uneasy balance of the dojo had shattered into a brawl.