“Well . . .” Tozzi wasn’t sure how to word this. “There’s this person I’m investigating. He’s pretty aggressive and very dangerous, and I . . . I have a feeling I’m going to meet up with him sooner or later. I was, ah, thinking that maybe you could show me a few moves that I could use on him. Nothing esoteric, just some basic practical aikido.”
Neil closed his eyes and shook his head.
“Look, I realize this must sound pretty offensive to you. Here I am, a beginner, I’ve only taken two classes so far, and I’m asking you for shortcuts. That’s stupid, I know. But I really need your help.” If you saw what Mashiro did to Gibbons, you’d understand.
Neil shook his head.
“You don’t know what I’m up against, man. This guy is a . . . a samurai when you come right down to it. He’s a fifth-degree karate black belt and a formally trained swordsman. He’s already hurt my partner, and I have this gut feeling that it’s only a matter of time before he finds me. I need something if I’m going to go up against this guy.” Come on. Don’t let me down. Please.
Neil nodded thoughtfully. “How fast can you run, Mike?”
“Come on, I’m being serious here.”
“So am I. Because unless you can run away from him, you haven’t got a chance against a trained bushi.”
“What’s that?”
“A ‘martial man.’ A samurai.”
“Isn’t there something you can show me?”
Neil’s face turned to stone. “You’re insulting me, Mike. You’re insulting anyone who practices a martial art. It would take years of dedicated study to hold your own against someone as accomplished as you say this samurai is. I’m a second dan black belt. I’ve been studying aikido for eight years. I’m not sure I could hold my own against this guy.”
Tozzi pinched the bridge of his nose. Shit. After another awkward silence, he looked Neil in the eye. “I’ve had it out with plenty of people in the past. Gun fights, fistfights, knife fights, you name it. I’ve had to face killers, mobsters, drug runners, psychopaths, sociopaths. But you know something? This is the first time someone’s ever spooked me before I even met him. I don’t want to be an instant black belt. I just don’t want to be scared when I meet up with this guy. Because if I am, I’m sunk. That’s what I was hoping you could do for me. Just show me a few things that will make me believe it might possibly be an even match. Please, Neil, I’m asking you.”
Neil rested the tip of the bokken on his shoulder and scratched his beard. “Aikido teaches you how to remain calm in the face of an attack. It shows you how to extend ki, how to use your attacker’s aggressiveness back against him. It shows you how to be aware of everything around you, and how to anticipate your opponent’s intentions. I could teach you some of that. But not tonight.”
“Because that takes years,” Tozzi said. Yeah, yeah, I know.
“That’s right. You’ve got too many bad habits to break before aikido can work for you. Rule number one: You never fight in anger. In the West, that’s the only time people ever fight. You have to learn how to be calm, how to center yourself, not just in a fight but all the time. I can tell just from the way you talk that you’re very aggressive and combative. You want to cold-cock the son of a bitch before he even gets near you. That’s not aikido. You have to wait, be patient, let your opponent commit himself first so you can use that first strike against him. This goes entirely against the grain of your natural instincts, doesn’t it?”
Tozzi pressed his lips together and nodded. “But isn’t there anything you can show me? Anything at all?”
Neil stared at him for a long moment. “How late can you stay tonight?”
Holy shit! Tozzi broke out into a smile. “As late as you want.” He remembered his promise to Roxanne, but this was more important. He hoped she’d understand that.
“Basically I can begin to show you how to get out of the way. And we’ll only be scratching the surface.” Neil sounded doubtful.
“Great. Fine. Anything will be more than I have now.” Tozzi didn’t like the doubt in Neil’s voice. He deliberately tried to ignore it to keep his hopes up. He had to prove to Neil that he was really interested, that he wanted to learn. “You couldn’t also show me that technique where you throw the attacker who’s chasing you with the bokken, could you?”
“Which one is that?”
“I don’t know what it’s called. It’s the one where the guy is chasing you, trying to bop you over the head from behind and you turn quickly to face him. You get out of the way, and as the sword comes down, you somehow grab his hands and flip him over on his back and take the sword away, too. I saw you do it the first night I came here.”
Neil looked unsure. He handed his bokken to Tozzi. “Show me what you mean.” He turned and started to run across the mats.
Tozzi quickly kicked off his shoes and left them by the tan sandals, then immediately started to run after him, circling back around the mats until he managed to catch up and get within striking distance. “You remember this one?”
“Go ahead,” Neil shouted. “Strike.”
Tozzi raised the wooden sword over his head as he ran, hesitated a moment, then brought it down toward Neil’s head. Suddenly Neil stopped short and faced him. The next thing Tozzi knew he was flat on his back staring up backwards at him. His eyes went out of focus for a second.
“Shomen Uchi Kokyu Nage. Is that the one you meant?”
“Yeah . . . that one.” Ooow. Not bad.
Tozzi hauled himself to his feet, breathing hard but still smiling. “So . . . shall we get started?”
Neil shrugged and nodded. He had that funny little grin again.
Tozzi took a deep breath, prepared to put in a long night. He felt better already, though, just standing here with someone who knew so much and was willing to share it. If he had to face Mashiro when he walked out of here tonight, he’d still be very very wary of the guy, but he wasn’t going to let the bastard scare him. No way.
TWENTY-FIVE
NAGAI LEANED OVER the stack of Gatorade boxes and peered down at the tiny screen of Mashiro’s Sony Watchman TV. The obnoxious emcee in the inflatable tuxedo stood in front of the line of finalists, smiling like a fool at the girls, tugging on his black bow tie with the microphone under his arm, acting like a rooster. The girls looked alike to Nagai—a solid wall of cleavage, sequins, ugly puffy hair, anxious eyebrows, and toothpaste smiles. The emcee continued to preen as he leered at the girls. He reminded Nagai of D’Urso, the son of a bitch.
Nagai glanced up from the TV at Mashiro sitting seiza, motionless in the shadows, doing his meditation. He looked at his watch and frowned. Come on, Mashiro. Hurry up. Johnny Carson is almost over on Channel 4. He scratched his scalp behind his ear and looked down at the TV again. Sometimes these fucking samurai rituals were a pain in the ass.
The emcee looked down at the envelopes in his hand. “Here we go, girls.” Now he had a toothpaste smile, too. “Our third runner-up for the title of Miss Galaxy is . . . Miss Canada!”
Nagai grunted at the tiny moving figures. They were like the bugs on a Raid commercial.
The emcee opened another envelope. “Our second runner-up for the title of Miss Galaxy is . . . Miss Ecuador!”
More tears and commotion. Nagai glanced over at Mashiro again. He hadn’t moved in the last half-hour. Why must this take an eternity? Come on. He turned back to the TV.
The emcee turned sideways to the camera and faced the last two girls who stood shoulder to shoulder now, clutching each other’s forearms. They looked like they were about to face death. “A little nervous?” the rooster asked with a stupid chuckle. The girls nodded like monkeys.
Hurry up, hurry up.
The orchestra held a note of suspense as the emcee opened the last envelope in his hand. He smiled, took a deep breath into the microphone, rolled his eyes at the girls. “Our first runner-up, whose duty it will be to carry on the title in the event that the reigning Miss Galaxy cannot continue to wear her crown
, is . . . Miss Egypt!”
Panic and confusion. Like a bomb scare.
“Our new Miss Galaxy is MISS HONG KONG!!!”
The girls hugged and cried. Noise and more confusion. The other girls put a crown on Miss Hong Kong’s head, a fur robe over her shoulders, roses in her arms. She cried and walked and waved.
Nagai smirked. Good choice. But he still wondered what happened to Miss Japan. He’d tuned in late.
As the music swelled and the credits rolled over teary Miss Hong Kong, Nagai noticed Mashiro stirring, the stone man coming to life. “Mashiro,” he called to his samurai. “We’ve got trouble.”
Mashiro got to his feet and pulled the ends of his black belt tight around his gi jacket. He approached Nagai and bowed his head. “What trouble?”
“Reiko called me tonight.”
“From D’Urso’s house?”
“Yes, from D’Urso’s house.” Nagai rubbed the back of his neck. “They’re going to do it soon, she thinks.”
Mashiro nodded. “You seem unsettled. Is there something else?”
“That punk Francione has a new gun. She says he threatened her with it. He was drunk, calling her Antonelli and pretending to shoot her. The son of a bitch.”
“Did he hurt her?”
“She says no.” Nagai was suspicious, though. D’Urso was dying to get into her pants. The punk probably wanted her too, just because his boss wanted her. Nagai wondered whether Reiko would tell him if they tried anything with her.
Mashiro walked over to his futon and picked up his sword. He cradled the weapon in his palms and bowed to his lord. “He has dishonored you. Shall I go kill him?”
Nagai considered it for a moment, then finally shook his head, disgusted. “She told me the drunken bastard was talking nonsense. In his craziness he said something about splattering brand-new cars with Antonelli’s blood and watching it run down into the water. The new car lot down at the docks—that’s what he was talking about. That’s where they must be planning to shoot their boss.”
“When are they going to do this? Did she say?”
Nagai shrugged. “He didn’t say. Bastards. All she said was that Francione and D’Urso are both in the house now, sleeping.”
“I can go right now. Dead in their beds by morning.”
Nagai shook his head again. “We can’t do that. It’ll make us look bad. We can’t operate like ninja. Hamabuchi would never let us get away with that.”
Mashiro scowled. Nagai forgot. The samurai hated the sneaking, cowardly ninja and didn’t like being compared to one.
“But we have to save Antonelli,” Mashiro objected. “All your dreams sail on his pulse. If D’Urso succeeds, your hopes will sink. Let me kill them before they make their attempt.”
Nagai was annoyed with Mashiro’s fancy imagery. He sounded like Hamabuchi. “No, we can’t kill them at home. We have to catch them in the act.”
Mashiro dropped his sword to his side. “What do you want me to do then?”
Nagai reached into his pocket for a cigarette. His lighter flared in the dimness and he took a long, deep drag. “Be down at the docks before dawn. Stay out of sight and just be ready for anything. In the meantime, I’m going to try one more thing to persuade D’Urso to reconsider making his big move.”
“Why are you being so nice to him? He doesn’t deserve another chance.”
Nagai sucked on the cigarette and made his lips pop. Smoke filtered up to reveal a sly grin. “He may listen to me if he has something to lose. Something the son of a bitch cares about.”
A small grin appeared on Mashiro’s face. He could guess what Nagai had in mind.
“Get some rest,” Nagai said. “If we’re lucky, nothing will happen. But be there anyway, just in case. Perhaps the punk will do something stupid and give you a reason to introduce him to your blade.”
“Hai.” Mashiro’s grin stretched wider. He turned and gazed up at his ancestor’s armor hanging on the wall. It was like a floating spirit in the shadows.
“In the days when my ancestor Yamashita fought for his lord Nagai,” Mashiro pronounced, “a samurai made his lord powerful and powerful warlords made the shogun supreme. It was the magnificent invincible fabric of the greatest warrior society of all time.” Mashiro’s broad chest heaved as he took in a deep breath. “I am in that tradition. Your power will flow on like the river, my lord. I will not fail you.”
Nagai dropped his cigarette on the floor and twisted his toe over it. “Right . . . I know I can depend on you.” He never knew what to say when Mashiro gave him all this tradition stuff. “I’ll see you tomorrow then, Mashiro.”
He turned to go, then remembered the Watchman. “By the way, I left your TV on that stack of boxes over there.”
Mashiro bowed and Nagai turned to go. His footsteps clicked on the concrete floor. He looked over his shoulder as he walked and saw Mashiro going over to retrieve his TV.
He stared at Yamashita hovering over the scene. The protecting spirit. Nagai shrugged and headed for the door. Who knows? Maybe he was.
As he passed the long dark aisles of palettes stacked high with boxes and crates, Nagai suddenly thought he heard something, a faint voice coming from behind. He stopped and listened, then glanced at his watch. Ten minutes to one. Yes, of course, who else would it be? Mashiro liked Letterman. Lots of good fools on that show, he always said.
TWENTY-SIX
LORRAINE RUSHED down the incline of the sidewalk, a stiff wind pushing from behind and blowing her hair in her face as she looked for numbers on the storefronts, searching for #49. All around her there were people going about their suburban Saturday morning business, lots of activity around the supermarket and the hardware store. A pack of boys ran past her like banshees, the bunch of them pushing and shoving to get through the door of a small variety store up ahead where dozens of plastic and rubber Halloween masks hung in the window. She stopped and looked. Most of the characters were new to her, but she did recognize a few. Dracula, Fred Flintstone, Skeletor, the Smurfs, Charley Brown and Lucy . . .
Damn him.
She refocused on her own reflection in the glass. The wind blew strands of hair across her sagging face. Her eyes were rimmed, and she looked as tired as she felt. She was wearing a pair of baggy jeans that should’ve been washed last week, and her shoulders slumped with fatigue under the old black-and-white buffalo-plaid lumberjack shirt she just threw on this morning when she got the idea to come up here to Maplewood. She stared at her forlorn condition against the background of all those gruesome plastic faces, and she saw herself as the Wicked Witch of the West. If she was a witch, it was his fault. Gibbons was turning her into an old hag, the son of a bitch.
A little girl with short red braids came out of the store, holding her father’s hand. She was wearing a wide-brimmed, straw Chinese coolie hat, pressing it to her head against the breeze with her free hand. Lorraine couldn’t see her face, only the braids. The girl was whining that the wind was going to blow her away, but her daddy reassured her that he wouldn’t let that happen, just keep walking. They paid Lorraine no mind as they walked around her.
She looked across the street and gazed at the storefronts over there, looking for a number. She squinted at the Christian Science Reading Room and the stationery store next door, and then she spotted it, #49, on the glass door between the stores on the ground floor of that two-story yellow-brick building. She dug into the breast pocket of her lumberjack shirt and pulled out the scrap of paper with the information she’d scribbled down from the phone book: Eastlake Academy, 49 Main, Rm. 22.
Lorraine pushed the hair out of her face and dashed through traffic, heading for Room 22. She chewed her lip as she ran. Please be there.
She pushed through the glass door, climbed the stairs, and followed the arrows to the Eastlake Academy. When she got to the door, she could hear music inside. It sounded like a Vivaldi concerto, very bouncy and determined. She knocked on the door, waited, knocked again, then let herself in. She wasn’t
going to be put off anymore, not by anyone.
The waiting room was empty. She followed the music to the next room where Roxanne was sitting behind her desk, staring out the window with her feet up on the radiator. The music was coming from the stereo nestled in with the books on a high bookcase.
“Hello.”
Roxanne’s head whipped around, her eyes wide with alarm. She stared at Lorraine for a moment. It wasn’t a very welcoming stare.
“God, you scared me.” Roxanne got up and turned off the music. She looked like she wanted to be alone.
“I apologize for barging in on you like this, but as you can probably see, I’m at wit’s end.”
“Is there something wrong, Lorraine? Can I help?” There was chilly formality in Roxanne’s voice, a kind of clipped detachment she must use with her clients. Not the tender doe Lorraine met at the hospital. Something was bothering her.
“I don’t mean to bother you, Roxanne, but you’re my last hope.” Lorraine sat down on the edge of the burgundy leather sofa. She’d been up most of the night, and she was exhausted. “What’s wrong?”
“Gibbons. He’s the only thing that’s ever wrong.”
“I don’t follow you.” Roxanne sat down behind her desk. She sat very straight and proper, still very cold. Lorraine decided to ignore it. For the moment, she had her own problems to deal with.
“He was released from the hospital yesterday. Yesterday! He’s supposed to be resting, for God’s sake. But where do you think he is right now? Out on a plant with Michael.”
“A plant?”
Lorraine sighed. Roxanne didn’t know the jargon . . . yet. “That’s what they call it. A stakeout. Michael told me last night on the phone.”
“I talked to him this morning. I was supposed to see him last night, but he got tied up with something important, he said. He said he was going to be working this morning, but he didn’t give me any details.”
Oh, so that’s why the cold shoulder. Michael stood her up last night. And Michael’s cousin must be culpable by blood, no doubt. Lorraine sighed. She was tempted to say something to Roxanne, give her the voice of experience, but what good would it do? It’s like the college professor telling the bright-eyed student that pursuing a career in academia might be a mistake, that there’s no future in it. They already have their minds set. They never listen.
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