by John Donohue
They were not happy to see me.
One pushed himself off the car, stuck his cigarette in his mouth and regarded me through menacing eyes. He gave a curt order to one of the others, the youngest in the bunch, who circled me warily and then trotted up the trail to see who else was coming.
The men silently spaced themselves in arc in front of me. Three of them. Four counting the kid at my back. I didn’t see any weapons, but I figured knives were probably a certainty. I, on the other hand, was only armed with my trusty gold laminated hotel card.
Trained guy that I am, I got that visceral jolt that was the body’s deep knowledge: you’re in deep trouble Burke.
When I first started training, I didn’t know how to interpret the feeling. The clench in the gut, the elevated heart rate, and the cool tingling along the outer arms and neck. I thought it was fear. But it’s merely the body’s quick read of the situation: you’re going to need to do something violent soon, and you better get ready because the outcome will be important.
“Habla Ingles?” I asked, exhausting the remains of four years of high school Spanish. They smirked a little at that but didn’t say a word. I watched the shift of their eyes. They were waiting for word from their scout up the trail. No need to waste words at this point.
One of the men in front of me reached into the jeep and pulled out a roofer’s hammer. It had a longish handle and a really nasty looking spike on one end. It was a weapon, but not a gun, so part of me was relieved. Blunt trauma is part of my world. Plus, now I knew who was probably going to take the lead when things heated up.
The goal with multiple attackers is to keep them from getting to you all at once: you shift around a bit in the hopes that they’ll get in each other’s way. But it’s tricky. Above all, you don’t want people getting behind you. Particularly when they’re carrying a hammer.
I heard the scuffle of feet as the young guy came back.
“No hay nadie,” he said, puffing a little bit from running.
That was all they needed. The guy with the hammer came in at me without any kind of indicator, no need for a windup or a command from his pals. He wasn’t big, but he was stocky, arms and chest thick with years of hard toil. His bones would be dense, his muscles hard sheaths of fiber, his hands blunt and strong.
He swung the hammer around, seeking to smash my head with a powerful blow to the temple. His mouth was slightly open with excitement and I caught a glimpse of big, stained teeth. I moved in toward him, bringing myself into the safer zone that lay inside the arc of his attack. I could smell the tobacco on his breath. Most people with weapons expect you to back off when they attack. But Yamashita’s basic rule is to never do what people expect, never be where they anticipate you’ll be. He’s pounded it into my head over the years and it’s a great strategy, providing you can read people correctly. Read them right, and you’ve gained an advantage. Read them wrong and you hope for another chance to get it right.
It’s not like the movies. You don’t meet an attacker and push him away and then go on to the next guy in the circle. Because if you do, the person you pushed away is going to come back again. And, eventually, they’ll wear you down. It’s the basic strategy of all pack hunters.
So I got my left sword-hand up to block the blow, redirected his arm out and down and back up again. I spun him around in a classic shiho-nage technique, controlling his arm and bending it so his palm faced his rear and I was locking the arm up at wrist, elbow, and shoulder. The body positioning is designed to take someone right off their feet, and I could feel him start to shift. In the practice hall, you line up the joints so as not to hurt your partner. But now I swirled around that dusty place and purposefully brought the arm out of alignment. I could smell his body odor, and the dry dirt smell of the hillside. When you’re really focused in the middle of a technique, sensations get imprinted in the strangest ways. So you don’t remember all the details of the things you do. But I remember how he smelled.
And the sensation of tearing joints that vibrated up his bones to where I held him. That and the sound of his shriek.
I dumped him down as hard as I could, although I didn’t have time to look for a really big rock for him to land on, because I was spinning around to deal with the next guy. Fortunately, it was the kid. The young have energy, but not much wisdom.
I drove up from a crouch, pivoted toward this new threat, and rammed a left into his solar plexus. I heard the wind go out of him. I slapped him on the side of the head for further distraction, and spun him around to get him between me and the other two guys. The kid was barely standing, but the spin made him fight against the loss of balance and his head came up a bit. I formed a tense arc with the web portion of my hand between the thumb and forefinger and popped him in the throat. Not too hard. But he fell backward onto his rear, sitting down hard enough to make his teeth snap together audibly. He started to gag a bit.
I backed away, trying to get up the trail while watching the last two men. We were all crouched with arms slightly extended, animals waiting for the next snarling lunge of an attack. I could hear the sound of my breath sawing in and out. My mouth was dry and I could taste the alkaline dust that swirled around us.
From the rim of rocks toward the southwest, near the drop off to the jumbled stretch of land that led to Mexico, I saw a shape loom up out of the corner of my eye. The figure was black against the red sky, and I was afraid to look too closely, afraid to take my eyes off the men from the Jeep.
“Paratelos!” a voice commanded. The two men still standing looked at the man on the rocks. They paused momentarily. On the ground, the man with the hammer was moaning, cradling his arm, and trying to sit up. The kid had vomited all over himself.
There was a flurry of excited discussion in Spanish. A lot of pointing at me and at the two men on the ground. I edged slightly away and got a good look at the man on the rocks. It was the desert guide who called himself Xochi. His stylish shades were nowhere in evidence and his face was flushed with anger. The horizon was brightly lit, but in the little dip on the trail where we stood the light was beginning to fade.
Xochi hopped down from the rocks, light-footed and confident, while the argument continued. He moved to my side.
“Thanks,” I murmured.
He looked at me, his eyes flat and disapproving. “You should not be here,” Xochi said flatly.
I looked at him, surprised at his attitude. But he seemed to be getting the boys with the hammer calmed down. Drop it, Burke. Leave it. Walk away.
“Consider me gone,” I told him.
“That would be wise,” he said. “Hurry. You are losing the light. The desert at night is a dangerous place.” His tone of voice was flat.
I backed my way up the slope, taking a last look. The bodies sprawled in the dirt—the blood red sky. Shadows like wraiths, growing and twisting as evening approached. And five men watching me as I made my way out of the wasteland.
6 Centering
“I miss you,” I told her. I was tucked away in my hotel room, safe from men with hammers. I stared up at the textured ceiling, dismissing the minor bruises from the fight, and conjured up an image of Sarah, all those miles away in New York.
“I miss you, too,” she said, and I imagined that I could hear the slight smile over the phone line. “But I’m getting some really focused training in with Yamashita now that you’re not around to distract him.”
I snorted. “Yamashita doesn’t get distracted.”
“Oh yeah?” she countered. “Something was bothering him tonight in the dojo.”
“Bad technique?” I teased.
“Be serious, Burke. It didn’t seem to be anything we did, that I could see, but he’d occasionally stop and well, if it wasn’t Yamashita, I’d say daydream.”
“A disturbance in the force…” I suggested, using my patented James Earl Jones voice. But I could hear her exasperation even through the filtering of the electronics, and so quickly followed with, “I know what you mean. I
’ve seen the same thing. Sometimes… I don’t know. I’ve come to accept that he’s some sort of receptor and picks up on things we don’t even know are around. It could have been almost anything.”
“Well whatever was happening,” she said, “By the end of the night, he was really agitated.”
I did the mental arithmetic of the difference in time zones and got a cool tingly feeling, thinking about where I was around that time and what was happening. The Western part of me dismissed it as coincidence. But I’d been with my teacher for too many years not to consider that, on some non-rational level, he perceived the world in ways that none of us could imagine. But all I said to Sarah was “Huh.”
We talked some more, saying the kinds of things people say when they’re apart and wish they weren’t. I gave Sarah a highly-edited description of my day. I didn’t mention the fight.
I once asked my brother Micky how much detail he shared with his wife Deirdre about his adventures as a cop. He squinted at me. “Connor,” he said. “Life with me is not a laugh riot in the first place, ya know? I try not to clutter our life up with every bad thing that happens on the job. Ya put it in a box and you don’t let the family peek inside unless it’s absolutely necessary.” It seemed to me like good advice.
But, Sarah saw through my edits, much, I suspected, as Deirdre sees through Micky’s. In their case I think it’s for Micky’s peace of mind, not her’s, that Deirdre allows Micky his silences. Sarah chose instead to softly edge into my deletions.
“What’s really happening Connor?”
“It’s nothing,” I said, still trying to protect her.
The silence on the other end of the line crackled with tension.
“You don’t see it, do you?” she finally said.
“What?” I protested.
Sarah took a breath. “It’s like you’re being sucked in… into thisblack holeof Yamashita’s life.”
“It’s my life too.”
“Do you think? I wonder.” Her words were cutting. “Sometimes I think you’re just following out of blind loyalty.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Burke, loyalty doesn’t have to be blind. But if you can’t see that, then your decisions will always be, oh I don’t know—tainted. It’s dangerous to live blindly in his life. I respect Yamashita and I don’t think he means to bring you into harm’s way, but, there’s something about him—his life is shrouded in violence.”
I felt defensive. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Yamashita’s not even here and he had nothing to do with my coming out here.”
“Okay, Burke, have it your way. By the way,” she added, her voice tight and raspy with irony, “Yamashita says he needs you to do something.” She had me write down a name and a telephone number.
“Hasegawa Sensei,” I noted. “Here in Tucson. I got it. What’s the deal?” Trying for normalcy in my tone and not really pulling it off.
“I’m just the messenger,” she said. Her voice was curt and resentful. “Tell Burke he must call,” she said in her best Yamashita style. “Ima wa,” Now.
“Hai,” Yes, I conceded with resignation to the presence of my teacher, invisible but nonetheless real.
I rose at dawn and went out for a run. The sun had edged up over the jagged hills that studded the horizon, but it was still cool outdoors. Sprinklers hissed everywhere on the manicured grounds of the hotel property, lush grass a deep green sparkling in the sunlight. Birds chirped and uniformed service workers moved quietly around in the half-light, cleaning walks, tending the pools, and stocking up on towels in the cabanas.
The hotel had a measured running trail that wound around the edge of the resort and up a little ways into the seared hills. You’d think after yesterday, I’d know better, but I had to run and that was where the path led. It was an old pattern in my life. I got to the trailhead and started some stretches. A fit-looking, deeply tanned woman arrived right after I did. She was wearing a stylish pastel ensemble, including a pink baseball cap. Her streaked blonde hair was pulled through the back of the cap, a high ponytail. It bounced along with the rest of her, as if her good health couldn’t be contained. She smiled tightly to acknowledge my presence, a tight flash of white teeth in a lean face. Then she turned away and, with a show of great focus, began her own warm-ups. Exercise is serious business.
Or maybe she didn’t approve of my outfit. I was wearing a pair of ratty shorts that were questionable even by my standards and a faded T-shirt that proclaimed “I’ve Seen Elvis!” It had a few rows of pictures of the big E variously disguised as a nun, Marilyn Monroe, and a Russian soldier to name just a few. Maybe the lady in the hat was a fan of his. Or maybe she’d actually seen Elvis and knew he wasn’t living in a convent.
I shook off the vision of too many Elvises and hit the road.
The trail wound past the hotel golf course, behind the corral where the electric carts were penned up, and then out into the hills. The transformation from manicured lawn to brown earth was dramatic, as if a line had been drawn across the terrain. Without the constant irrigation of sprinklers, the wild land beyond the hotel’s property appeared as sterile as the surface of the moon. But the light was soft and the desert landscape was soothing. I settled into the rhythm of the run, happy that the path was long, the terrain open and I didn’t see any suspicious characters in a Jeep. After twenty minutes or so, I headed back. I could feel the growing force of the sun as it climbed higher into the sky. As I approached the hotel grounds, I looked up and caught sight of a still form standing deep in the shade of a tree near the pro club, watching me. Xochi
He was motionless, and I doubt I would have noticed him at all if I weren’t still a little on edge from yesterday. People who spend a great deal of time outdoors have a knack for silence and stillness. Good naturalists have it. So do hunters. So, I noted, did Xochi. I looked back down to the trail, as if concerned with my footing. I didn’t want him to know that I had spotted him.
He faded back around the corner of the building as I came closer. I headed off toward my room, taking a winding route in the hopes of catching another glimpse of him. But Xochi was gone.
Charlie Fiorella was at his desk, though, reading a report of some sort. His blue pastel golf shirt was pressed and his forearms were brown and thick. He looked up and peered at me over his reading glasses.
“I got jumped last night,” I started as I sat down and filled him in on the details.
Charlie pursed his lips as if tasting something unpleasant. He took the report he was reading and carefully filed it away in a desk drawer. Then he got up from the desk and quietly closed the door to his office. His gray pants had a crease as sharp as a blade; his tasseled loafers gleamed.
“You OK?” He asked softly as the door clicked closed behind him. I nodded and he continued. “You want to file a report with the locals? I’ve got some contacts.”
“Would it do any good?”
“Honestly? No. A big waste of time.”
I’d come to the same conclusion. I could imagine myself telling the story to the cops: out-of-towner takes a wrong turn down an unmarked trail, comes across a few locals, gets in a scrape, and gets away. I didn’t know who they were. I didn’t get the license plate number on the Jeep. They could follow up with Xochi the guide, but he would probably stonewall and claim he had just wandered by. Nothing against the law about being a Good Samaritan. Cop work is an exercise in triage: you identify the crimes you’ve got a good chance of solving and pretty quickly get a feel for what you can’t. The cops would take my report, make mooing noises at me, then file it and forget it.
But I had some questions I wanted to pursue. “What’s the deal with this Xochi guy?” I asked.
Charlie stared off at a wall. “Ah, our friend Rosario. He’s been kicking around the university here for a while. Picked up master’s degrees in Native American Studies and Cultural Ecology.”
I shook my head. I never understood why anyone in their right mind would get
two master’s degrees, when in academic circles a doctorate is the only really acceptable degree. “How long’s he been on unemployment?” I asked sarcastically.
“Oh, he seems to do pretty well. He’s big with promoting Native rights and moaning about the Anglos destroying indigenous culture. Works as a counselor at the university part time. And he’s developed a pretty good business taking tourists for desert hikes.”
“So he doesn’t like Anglos, just their money,” I commented. Charlie grinned but said nothing. “He spend a lot of time out there in the desert?” I continued
“A bit,” he said cagily.
“So what’s that suggest to you?”
Now he had his poker face on. “What do you mean?”
I leaned forward. “Come on, Charlie. Those guys I met yesterday weren’t out for a nature hike. They had binoculars and a radio and were waiting for something. What do you wait for out there?”
He shrugged. “Lots of things. People. Drugs. Whatever’s coming over the border.”
“That’s right,” I said. “And what does it tell you that this Xochi fella got those guys all calmed down long enough for me to get away? Seems to me that it suggests he may have some involvement.”
“You could be right, Burke,” he said quietly. “You hear things. The Homeland Security people have tightened the net in a lot of spots. We’re seeing more activity in some of the rougher border areas around here.”
“And Xochi?”
He held up his hands. “The guy’s plugged into a lot of different groups with ties on both sides of the border. He’s an expert on the desert. ”
“Did you run a check on him?” I asked.
“Didn’t get as far as I’d like,” he admitted, and sighed quietly.
“Why not?” I demanded.
He bridled a bit at my tone. “Hey Burke, don’t you think I know my job?”
“Seems to me that your job is to do a thorough check on your employees, Charlie.”
