Triad Death Match

by Harwood, Seth

  Jane moved out of the hotel room for days at a time. Her daughter would return from Jane's parents', and Jane would want her to sleep in her own room. Any stability in a storm, she said. Then, when her daughter went away, Jane came back.

  They waited for a phone call from the man in the dark Mercedes. That, or Chen's sixth sense to go off and tell them it was time for the fights again.

  In the end, exactly one month later on a Thursday night, a phone call told them that the fights were resuming. A message left on Jane's voicemail said just five words: Fight tonight. You will come.

  In the taxi up to Chinatown, Jack put his hand on Gannon's knee. She wore a red dress this time, cut tighter than the silver one with the sequins and shorter. It covered even less of her thighs. Chen sat in the front wearing a full karate suit, black with white trim on the sash and on the flaps that covered his chest.

  When they got to the Stockton tunnel, Chen told the driver to stop and hopped out.

  "We are not together," he said through the window. "You two have your cover, and I will try to make my entrance with guile." He patted the top of the car and walked off toward the street.

  "With guile?" Jack asked.

  "Keep going," Jane said to the driver. "That's what he said, Jack. Our man is a guile-ful motherfucker."

  Jack turned to look out the window at the tiles of the tunnel and the thin, smoky walkway along its side. He had to act the part of a big time Vegas gambler again, and he felt himself getting into the roll. "I think I can win me some money tonight," he said to the air.

  They pulled up in the same place as the last time and made their way through the alleys to the door. This time, the bouncer on the inside didn't need convincing; he saw Jane and stood off to the side right away, ushering them past with a wave of his hand.

  "Good fight tonight," he said. "The champion will be crowned."

  "Champion?"

  "Come on, Jack." Gannon pulled him by the arm into the inner door and down the stairs.

  In the large interior room, the crowd looked thinner than the last time, and the fight had yet to begin. The crowd around the betting tables looked more manageable, like Jane could actually place a bet. She started in that direction, and Jack followed.

  In the stands, men talked softly in Chinese, smoking cigarettes or drinking coffee out of small paper cups. Above the floor, attendants swept the ring. The stage behind the betting tables was empty: no elders in silk robes, no sign of the guys from the black Mercedes.

  Jack wasn't sure whether they were here to find out more or to shut things down. Either way, he knew it wasn't supposed to get as crazy as it had the last time. Somehow, Chen was the key to all that, but Jack still wasn't sure quite why.

  The program that Jane brought back from the betting table showed three fights planned for the night. On a single sheet, pictures of the fighters lined the sides of the page, with their names, Jack guessed, in Chinese characters. All of the fighters looked Chinese, and the card looked to be all in Chinese lettering. The only thing Jack could make out was the faces. In the upper right-hand corner, he recognized one of the opponents in the main fight: it was Chen.

  Three

  "You believe this?" Jack waved the fight program in front of Jane, tapping Chen's face with a finger. "What the fuck?"

  "That's our boy," Jane said. "Maybe we should bet on him."

  "Fuck that."

  A loud voice came over the arena, making an announcement in Chinese that sent most of the bettors to their seats.

  "Guess this thing's ready to start."

  "Maybe. But I want to get a bet down first. We need proof that money is exchanging hands here." Jane made a bee-line for the betting table.

  On the program in his hand, Jack saw two tough-looking fighters staring back at him from the bottom row, one sporting a Mohawk. Jack knew you should always bet against the guy with the Mohawk. Popular wisdom dictated that anybody crazy enough to wear the most traditional Crazy-Man Haircut would actually be crazy and therefore a bitch to fight, but lately half the idiots in San Francisco had Mohawks or some gelled-up version of it. The days of Travis Bickle announcing to the world that he was the nastiest vigilante taxi driver to walk the streets of New York were long gone.

  "Bet against–" Jack started, but Jane was already too far away. The crowd made less and less noise as a drum started beating softly. Gradually, it grew louder. The more noise the drum made, the less commotion came from the crowd. Finally, when it was loud enough to quiet the entire audience, the drum picked up pace, beating out a faster and faster rhythm.

  Jack waved to a man selling small waxed-paper bags of peanuts and bought one for a dollar. Jane had reached the front of the betting line, so Jack started to look around the bleachers for seats.

  He chose to head half-way up the old wooden benches, high enough to see the surface of the ring but not so high he'd have a hard time getting out to the arena's doors in a hurry. The spot he found had a little room around it, enough that Jack could breathe.

  When Jane joined him with her betting slips, the fight was about to begin. New spectators had been steadily filing down the stairs. Already, bodies were starting to block them in.

  Sure enough, Jane had bet on the guy with the Mohawk.

  "Personal bet on the side," Jack said. "Your guy with the Mohawk loses the first fight."

  "Bullshit. Look at the tattoos on this kid."

  Jane pointed at the first fighter as he jumped down from the stage, ran once around the elevated ring with his hands up, and then hopped up onto the canvas and started shadow-boxing. His whole right arm was covered in body art so tight Jack couldn't pick out any individual images. He was sure the kid had a dragon in there somewhere.

  "Guys with the most body ink always win," Gannon said. "Haven't you ever watched UFC?"

  Jack shrugged. The other fighter came out onto the stage and jumped down. Instead of making his lap, he climbed straight up onto the ring. He stood still, staring at his opponent as the other man danced back and forth, throwing punches at air.

  "Seriously, let's make a bet here."

  As Jack said it, the drum beat once more, loud, and the whole arena went quiet. Two older men now sat on the stage in two of the four ornate wooden chairs. One of them said something softly in Chinese, and the two fighters bowed. They stepped toward each other in the center of the ring.

  Suddenly, non-Mohawk sprung into a set of cartwheels across the ring and ended in a flipping upside-down kick that caught his opponent not once, but twice across the face. Mohawk went down onto one knee and touched the mat with his hand.

  Jack couldn't believe what he'd just seen. This guy was Spider Man without a mask.

  "See," Jane said. "In a normal fight this thing would already be over. You see how hard he just got kicked?"

  "Ken," someone behind them yelled. A few others in a higher row picked it up and began to chant, "Ken… Ken… Ken."

  "I guess my boy's name is Ken. Come on, let's bet. I'll give you two-to-one odds right now." Jack held his hand in front of Jane. She didn't move. As Ken started shuffling toward Mohawk again, Jack pulled his hand back.

  "And I'm out," he said.

  Ken spun into a back kick that Mohawk ducked. He tried a counter-punch to Ken's back leg, but it didn't connect. Ken fell back into his stance again, one foot extended toward Mohawk and one foot back. He crouched lower, crossing his hands in front of him like he was pulling back an arrow in a bow.

  Neither fighter moved. The crowd was quiet.

  "Seriously. Hundred dollars."

  Mohawk yelled something like a death knell and shot forward at Ken, going for a kick to the head that looked a little like Danny LaRusa trying the crane move against Cobra Kai at the end of the original Karate Kid. Ken sidestepped it easily and threw a wicked left hook into Mohawk's kidney. Mohawk shuffled his feet as his body looked like it wanted to double over and curl up around the punch.

  As he it did, Ken reached up with a left uppercut, barely even pu
lling his fist back, and cracked Mohawk's head up from under his chin with a sound loud enough to make Jack's teeth hurt.

  "Jesus. That's got to hurt his hand."

  "Not to mention your boy's face."

  Jack cracked a peanut and flipped the nut into his mouth.

  Mohawk turned around slowly; Ken stalked him with his eyes only, hardly moving his feet.

  "The fuck is up with our boy Chen being on the card?" Jane asked. "How'd he engineer that?"

  Jack nodded as Ken waited for Mohawk to make a move. "This fight is over, by the way. Good thing you didn't take my bet."

  "We’ve hardly let him out of our sight these past weeks. How could he have gotten involved with these guys for the fight?"

  "You think the death part of this whole thing is really serious?"

  Mohawk stepped forward and faked a jab that set him up to throw a wide right. Instead he came back with a left leg front-kick and Ken knocked it away, pushing Mohawk back with a straight right to his chin.

  Then Ken brought a left and followed it through to spin around into a backhanded right that caught Mohawk flush on the side of his head.

  "Oh shit," Jack said. "Guess we're going to find out."

  Mohawk went down on one knee, a universal sign of submission. Ken rose up and kicked him once across the face.

  Then Ken brought his right leg high in the air, jumping high off his left foot. The right heel came up over his head, and he brought the heel down hard as his body started its descent. The very back of his foot, as hard a bone as Jack could think of, came down right in the middle of Mohawk's forehead and split it open on contact.

  The sound was like an anvil falling onto a watermelon, hollow and complete at the same time. Mohawk went down face-first onto the mat, as Ken stood over him watching blood pour out onto the ring.

  Mohawk's legs started to convulse as Ken stepped away. Ken brought both feet together and bowed at his fallen opponent, then turned and bowed once toward the older men on the stage. Jack noticed there were four of them now, all sitting in the ornate chairs, wearing the fine silk robes.

  Somewhere the drum sounded a single beat.

  The crowd erupted onto its feet, hooting and hollering, some shouting Ken's name. Jack rose reluctantly to stand, still watching the body in the center of the ring. Mohawk didn't move; his hands lay by his sides. Instead of a medical team, two men with no shirts on jumped up onto the ring and lifted him under his arms. One held a white towel to Mohawk's face to catch the blood, but he wasn't careful about not covering his nose and mouth like he would be if the man were still breathing. They carried him to the side of the ring and then down off it and up one of the aisles to a door on the other side of the arena, Mohawk's head hanging the whole way and his feet trailing behind him in the sand.

  "Did we really just see that happen?"

  "Apparently we did." Jane checked her bet ticket–she'd hand-written "first" on it in pen because the rest of it was all in Chinese–and tucked it into the breast of her dress. "Fucking crazy. I guess Chen wasn't kidding about these things going all the way to the death."

  "So where are they getting the fighters for this? Who's got a supply of fighters willing to die?"

  Jane shook her head with wide eyes. "For enough money," she said, and shrugged.

  "Maybe."

  Ken, finished walking around the ring, jumped down and made his way onto the stage, then out of the arena.

  The crowd started gradually to quiet, then to leave their seats and mill around, smoking cigarettes. Bets were placed. Jack shook his head and looked down at the fight program. There was one more fight before Chen's.

  This fight was longer and better-matched than the first. It was also much bloodier after the taller fighter got kicked above his eye in the first round. He started to bleed, and a few kicks later, he managed a sweeping hand slash across his opponent's chest that also drew blood.

  The shorter man stepped back, like in a typical Bruce Lee move, and touched his own blood. Seeing it on his fingers, he raised them to his mouth for a taste. Then he launched himself directly back at his opponent.

  Jack had no idea who he'd take in a bet. Both these guys looked anonymous to him and fought well enough so that neither should be allowed to die. Either of them would clearly kick his ass.

  "You think we know anyone who could stand in with either of these guys?" Jack asked Gannon.

  "Chen," she said. "I hope."

  "Maybe Shaw?"

  Jane laughed. "That might be asking a lot."

  The crowd had gone silent at the start of this match, and neither fighter drew cheers or chants. The aura in the arena was one of general respect, as though Jack wasn't the only one incredulous that either of these men would die. They were both just too good for that.

  They kicked and punched, blocked attacks with perfect timing and fast footwork, until it looked like nothing would change until one of them made a huge mistake or wore down completely and couldn't go on.

  There was no clock; after periods that seemed longer than five minutes to Jack, the drum sounded once and the fighters returned to their corners to catch their breath for a minute or less.

  From the three-minute rounds Jack had spent in a ring, he couldn't imagine how anyone could go as close to all-out as these guys seemed to be going for this long. He'd seen them go at it for three stretches that passed for rounds in this place, and still they both kept on.

  By the time they started into the fourth session, both of them were bloody around the faces and forearms, and the taller man's left leg was swollen above the knee.

  Yet they still moved nimbly and purposefully around the ring.

  "I don't know how much more of this I can watch," Jane said.

  "Yeah. They should just call it and say both of them won. What the fuck?"

  The fight ended soon after, when something popped out of place in the taller man's leg. It happened in a way that looked so painful and sounded so clear to Jack that the hush of the crowd afterward seemed deafening, terrible and fierce. From then on the man fought on one leg, like Danny LaRusa, but this wasn't a points-match, and in a real fight that one-kick shit didn't work.

  Eventually the shorter fighter got the bigger man down and started his own version of what had to pass as his version of Ground and Pound. A bloody series of face-punches later, the winner stood up, victorious. He bowed once, quickly, to the loser, whose face was nothing more than a battered mess of red meat and blood, then to the old men, and finally hobbled down from the ring toward a set of stairs on the other side of the arena.

  Jane looked at the few bet tickets she held in her hand. Jack couldn't make sense of anything on them, even which were winners, and he knew it wasn't about collecting on winnings at this point for either of them.

  The drum struck again, and the other members of the audience started to rise. They collectively rose to their feet in their own due time and then gradually broke out into a cascade of applause for the severity and duration of the fight. As he departed, the winning fighter turned back toward the crowd from the top of the stairs that led out. He held up his right hand and nodded once, looking down at them. The applause went on as he turned and left.

  As the sound turned into the murmurs of a hundred individual conversations, Jack watched two handlers drag the loser out of the ring. This time he faced up as they pulled him by the arms. Jack saw his sunken, beaten chest. His head lolled back at an impossible angle, the bottom of his chin the only part of his face Jack could see.

  "Yeah, this shit is for real."

  The crowds at the betting table swelled in size as men waved winning tickets. Still more looked to place bets on the next and last fight–Chen's.

  Jane looked pale. She stood and touched Jack's arm. "I need a fucking smoke," she said.

  They went up the stairs and out the way they'd come in, back into the small airshaft to smoke in the night. As soon as Jack lit their cigarettes and slipped one between her fingers, she took a long, deep drag, ta
pping her foot.

  "I had to get out of there," she said, when she'd let it out. "That fight was fucking insane. That made UFC look like old school boxing. Or Hulk Hogan fighting Nikoali Volkov."

  "Exactly. Well said."

  "I hope they clean the ring before the next fight." She shook her head. "No way they can get that much blood off. They'll have to just burn the canvas after tonight and put in a new one."

  Jack took a drag, considering the possibility that they had to do this after every night of fights.

  "What you think, Jack? What do we do here?"

  "I thought those details were your department."

  She blew out smoke, shaking her head. "They are. I know. But we're basically fact-finding here. Seek out and explain. But now I don't know. Do we intervene if we see Chen in there?"

  "What if we do? You really think we can get out of another riot? Last time was pure dumb luck."

  "I can't be a party to this kind of killing."

  "You already are." Jack shrugged. "If he wins, he'll go back to Memphis. Then I won't have anyone to train with."

  "Jack, fuck the idea of you going through some training montage bullshit for the next year of your life and turning into one of these fighters. Fuck that. No soft music building to some heart-pounding crescendo, no getting better and better. No." She tweaked his dick. "Your cock is mine, and I'm not letting you waste your time that way or get killed over thirty fucking grand. No way. We've got one mission here, and that's to find proof that this thing is really going down and who's running it."

  "Proof? Um. You want me to take pictures? What more do we need?"

  "My man in the suit from the Mercedes." She finished her cigarette and flicked the filter against one of the courtyard's brick walls. "Come on, let's get our asses back in there so I can talk him up."

  Jack took another drag as Jane knocked on the Zanzibar door. He couldn't believe they were going inside to see a follow up to the last bout. And he still didn't know how Chen had gotten back involved.