by Stuart Woods
“I live in the house my folks built before I was born,” Larsen said. “In an old Santa Monica neighborhood.”
“I thought you told me you lived in an apartment.”
“Well, I do, in a manner of speaking. I divided the house and made two apartments upstairs, and I live in the downstairs. I guess that’s an apartment instead of a house.”
“Is it nice?”
“It’s a little old-fashioned, but it’s my principal asset, so I’ve hung on to it.”
“Your parents are dead?”
“Eight years ago, within a week of each other,” he said. “Mother died of cancer, and Dad had a stroke a few days later; never regained consciousness. I’ve always thought he just couldn’t go on living without her.”
“That’s very romantic.”
“I suppose it is,” he said. “What about your folks?”
“Both still living, back in my hometown.”
“Where’s that?”
“A little place called Delano, Georgia.”
“Your accent isn’t southern.”
“Ah kin do it if ah feel lak it,” she replied. “They beat it out of me in acting school, in New York.”
“Do you get home much?”
“I was there last year for a few days. People make such a fuss it embarrasses me. They just can’t believe that a Delano girl made it into the movies. My folks come out here at least once a year, though. I haven’t told them about my accident; they’d be out here like a shot.”
“I’m glad you still have your folks,” he said. “I miss mine; they were good people.”
“Is Larsen Swedish?”
“Norwegian. My grandfather came to L.A. in 1911 and worked as a carpenter; did well enough to get my father through law school. He did most of the work on my folks’ house after they were married, as sort of a wedding present. He died when I was twelve, so I remember him well.”
“I would like to have known you when you were twelve,” she said.
“No, you wouldn’t have; I was hopeless with girls.”
She reached out for his face. “You’re doing okay now,” she said, kissing him.
This was the second time she’d done that, Larsen thought, and he’d better give the girl some help. He kissed her, and they lay back on the blanket. Larsen was getting excited now, and so was the young woman in his arms. She wrapped a leg around his and pulled his thigh between her legs.
There was a loud noise, and Larsen looked up to see a substantial piece of Sheetrock bouncing off the boulder next to them. He looked up in time to see the stairs from the deck being pulled up. “Stay right here,” he said, “I’ll be back.”
“What was that noise?” she asked. “Where are you going?”
“I promise I’ll be right back.”
By the time he found a way around to the front of the house, there was no one there. He looked into each room, and when he came to the master suite he saw that Chris’s clothing had been scattered around the room. When he gathered it up, he saw that her underwear was gone.
Larsen gathered up her other things, got his own clothes from the guest room, then went back to the deck and lowered the stairs.
She heard him coming. “It was him, wasn’t it?”
“Could be.”
“Let’s get out of here.”
He handed her her jeans and T-shirt, and she quickly put them on over her bikini. He got into his clothes and handed her her shoes. “I’m afraid he took your underwear,” he said.
Chris gave an involuntary shudder. “Ugh,” she said. “I’m sorry to end such a nice day, but…”
“I understand,” he said. “We’ll go somewhere for lunch.”
“Forgive me, Jon, but I’d rather be alone for the rest of the day.”
“Alone?”
“I’m sorry, I meant at home. We’ll have our sandwiches there.”
“All right.”
He led her back up the stairs and through the house, looking around at the nearly completed dwelling. The workmanship looked very good, he thought. Everywhere wires stuck out of the walls where electrical outlets and switches would be. Next to the front door was a plastic box with a light-emitting diode panel at the top. He felt around it, and the front panel opened to reveal a keypad. The alarm system looked nearly installed.
Back in the car and headed toward Bel Air they were quiet for a while, thinking their own thoughts.
Larsen was the first to speak. “Your builder’s name is Moscowitz?” He had seen the sign.
“Yes, Mike Moscowitz.”
“How did you find him?”
“He did some work on the Bel Air house when Brad and I first moved into it. At that time he was doing mostly remodeling, but by the time I started thinking about building, he was doing new houses. I liked what he had done at the other house, and my architect liked his bid, so I gave him the job.”
“Are you happy so far?”
“Very. He’s been very good about my not being out here to look at things.”
“Do you like him personally?”
“Yes. He seems like a very nice man. I’ve never had a conversation with him, though, that wasn’t about building.”
“I’d like to talk with him. Do you mind?”
“Mike doesn’t know anything about this Admirer thing, and I’d prefer to keep it that way. The more people that know about it, the more likely it is to end up in the tabloids, and God knows I don’t want that.”
“Sure, I understand.” He didn’t mention it again.
CHAPTER
28
Chris sat on a cushion, sipping a strange oriental tea and listening to Graham Hong talking about not much of anything. He seemed to sense that she was nervous, and he was trying to put her at ease.
“Well,” he said finally. “In all my years in this town I’ve had students with all sorts of motives. I’ve had ninety-seven-pound weaklings who wanted to prove themselves to some girl; I’ve had studio executives who wanted to intimidate their competitors; and, of course, I’ve had movie stars who wanted to look lethal in their next film.” He sighed. “But you, my dear, are the first student I’ve ever had who came to me because he actually wanted to kill somebody. Are you absolutely certain about this?”
“I draw the line when somebody starts stealing my underwear,” Chris replied.
“This is a serious matter, Chris, and you should take it seriously.”
“Graham, I’ve told you about this man and what he’s been doing to me. I’ve done everything I can to stop him; I’ve called the police in, and they’ve done everything they can. Nothing has worked. I’m convinced—and you can say I said this if you have to testify in court—that he’s eventually going to kill me if he can, and I’m determined not to just sit around and wait for that to happen. I have a good life, my vision is improving, and I’m not going to let this bastard take it away from me.”
“I understand how you feel,” Hong said. He helped her to her feet and escorted her into the large studio room. “Now,” he said. “There are a number of ways to kill someone quickly with your hands, but because you cannot see your assailant, most of them are not available to you.” He stopped.
“Go on,” she said.
“Come to think of it, perhaps none of them are available to you. All these techniques rely on a quick strike to a vulnerable area, and most of them rely on having the room to achieve some velocity with your hand.”
Chris felt his fingers at her throat.
“For instance, if you aim an edge-of-hand blow at a man’s Adam’s apple, if you take a full backswing, step into the blow, and swing through the neck you will crush his trachea, and unless someone immediately performs a tracheotomy, he will die. But consider the problem; in order to perform this attack you must step away from your opponent and strike a very small spot, and you cannot do that. Nobody can. Oh, there may be some Zen monk somewhere who could do it, but I couldn’t, and neither could you.”
Chris felt he was speaking as much
to himself as to her, and she remained quiet.
Hong sighed again. “On reflection, I think it is not possible for you to kill a strong male opponent with your hands. You might be able to strangle another woman or a child, but not a man.”
“So what can I do?” Chris asked.
“You can hurt him so badly that he will break off his attack. Most people don’t understand the role of pain and shock in a fight. They go to the movies, and they see the leading man hit a dozen times by three bad guys, and then, suddenly, he gets mad and wipes the floor with them. That’s not the way it works. Pain is immediately debilitating; it makes you want to curl up into a ball and lick your wounds. Professional fighters are trained to go on fighting in spite of the pain, but even they will eventually succumb to it. So what you must do is inflict as much pain as possible as early in your struggle as possible.”
“And how do I do that?”
“First, you must wait for your opponent to make the first move; you must wait for him to close the distance between you, because you can only operate close, when you can feel him.”
Chris gave an involuntary shudder.
“Exactly,” Hong said. “The idea of having him close to you is repugnant, but you must overcome that, because it is your only chance. Remember the black widow spider, who lures the male into her presence so she can kill him. She must be your model.”
He stepped close to her. “Now, reach out and put your hands on my shoulders.”
Chris found his shoulders quickly.
“Now you know where I am, so you can hurt me.” He reached down and pulled her knee into his crotch. “If you hit me here, hard, while placing a hand at the back of my neck and pulling down, you can disable me for anywhere from half a minute to ten minutes, depending on how determined I am. But the crotch is a difficult target, because it can be defended so easily by turning or blocking a blow. Your best bets are the head and neck.” He took her left arm and placed it around his neck. “If you can achieve this position you can inflict great damage on your opponent.”
“I’ve never had any trouble achieving this position,” Chris said wryly.
Hong laughed. “Yes, but I hope not with such murderous intent.” He became serious again. “With your arm around my neck you can find my throat, my nose, and my eyes. Make a fist.”
Chris made a fist.
Hong placed her fist at his throat. “A hard punch here will be very discouraging to your opponent. And I mean hard. As hard as you possibly can.” He took her left hand and placed it on his face. “Now you can feel where my nose and eyes are. A hard punch to the nose will break it, and sometimes…” he opened her fist and placed the heel of her hand against his nose “…a hard drive upward can drive shards of bone into the brain. A broken nose will bleed a lot, and the sight of his own blood can often frighten an opponent quite badly.”
Chris felt for Hong’s eyes.
“Yes,” he said. “That is his most vulnerable point. Every human being is terrified of damage to the eyes. If you can hold his head with your arm and drive your thumb—hard enough to break it—into his eye, you will blind him in that eye, or, at the very least, make him believe that you have blinded him, and that, in itself, may make it possible for you to overcome him.”
Hong put his arms around Chris and pulled her close to him. “This may be your best position of all. He is holding you; both your hands are free to inflict pain, and you know where he is.”
He put her arms around his waist. “So,” he said, “I have two hands free.” He cupped his hands and placed them over her ears. “Strike here with both hands cupped, and you will momentarily increase the air pressure in his ear canals so much that the eardrums will burst, and that is excruciatingly painful. He will let you go, I promise you, and he will not be able to do much for a minute or two after that except hold his head while you do other cruel things to him.”
“What cruel things?”
Hong demonstrated. “Grab his hair and bring his face down to meet your rising knee; bring your knee up into his crotch; break his nose with your fist; put your thumb into his eye. Don’t be content to hurt him once—keep on hurting him. Something else, even if he pins your hands to your sides, you are not helpless.” He placed his palm above her forehead at the hairline. “This is the hardest place on your body; if you pull your head back and strike him hard in the nose, his nose will break, but your head will not. That should make him let go of you.”
For an hour Hong made her practice hitting him, then he gave her a sand-filled dummy of a man’s upper torso. “Take this home and practice hitting it as hard as you can; it’s important that you know how hard you can hit. This will give you confidence.”
Chris hit the dummy. It hurt.
“Remember,” Hong summarized, “lure him in close; grab him or let him grab you; then go for the eyes, nose, or throat. And always hit hard.”
CHAPTER
29
Larsen sat at his desk and waited for paper. There was a time when he would have had to do a lot of legwork to get this information, but today all he had had to do was make a few phone calls and wait. He heard the distinctive ring of the fax machine.
Larsen got up from his desk and walked down the hall to where the big machine sat on its cart. He stood and waited while it whirred and ground out a sheet of paper. A cover sheet; he threw it away and forced himself to wait until the machine had finished. More than twenty sheets of paper waited for him in the bin. He picked them up and went back to his office.
The California Department of Motor Vehicles had sent him a computer printout of every Ford van registered in Los Angeles County and its neighboring counties during the past two years, sorted by model name. A quick glance through the stack of sheets told him there were several hundred, and color was not mentioned in the record.
Most of the vehicles were owned by companies, and he skimmed through the list, placing a check mark next to those registered to individuals. A little more than halfway down the list, he stopped. A van had been registered in August of the previous year to the Moscowitz Construction Company, Inc., of Los Angeles. He made an effort to keep his pulse down as he continued through the list.
When he had finished he had, in addition to the Moscowitz van, vehicles registered to four individuals whose first or last name was James. It was a start, and he wasn’t about to waste time trolling through all the company-owned vans. He looked up a number and dialed.
“Moscowitz Construction, this is Jenny.”
“’Morning, can I speak to Mike Moscowitz, please?”
“He’s over at the Santa Monica site; I’ll give you the number there.” She gave him the number.
“I’m on my way to Santa Monica right now,” Larsen said. “Can you give me the address?” He scribbled her answer. It was no more than four blocks from his house. “Thanks very much.”
“Can I say who called, in case you miss him?” Larsen hung up and grabbed his coat, then hesitated. He had gotten into trouble last time for not requesting backup. That had been in his jurisdiction, which would have been easy, but this was Santa Monica, and asking for backup would be more complicated. The hell with it, he decided.
Moscowitz’s project was an old two-story house not unlike Larsen’s own, and it seemed to be undergoing a thorough renovation. Larsen cruised past the place slowly; the gray Ford van was parked outside, and, checking the license plate against the printout, he saw that the right plate was attached. There was no sign of anybody, but hammering and sawing could be heard from inside the house.
Larsen parked the car and walked slowly back toward the house. He was at a disadvantage, he knew, because if Moscowitz was Admirer, he would know Larsen on sight. As he climbed the front steps, Larsen unbuttoned his jacket to make his weapon more accessible.
As he entered the open front door Larsen saw a man of medium height and weight standing at the bottom of the stairs speaking to a worker on the landing. The man was holding a black plastic briefcase in his left hand
and wearing a baseball cap. Larsen waited until the man stopped speaking.
“Mike Moscowitz?” Larsen said, tensing.
The man turned and looked at him.
Larsen waited, ready for anything.
The man smiled. “That’s me,” he said.
No apparent recognition. “I wonder if I could have a few minutes of your time,” Larsen said.
Moscowitz didn’t budge from his spot. “That depends on what it’s about,” he said.
“It’s about renovating a house,” Larsen said.
Moscowitz smiled more broadly and walked toward Larsen, his hand out. “In that case I’ve got all the time in the world.”
Larsen shook the man’s hand. “My name is Jon Larsen; I own a house something like this one a few blocks from here, and I’m thinking of having some work done. I’ve noticed the work going on and I wondered if I could take a look at what you’re doing here.”
“Sure, glad to show you around.” He waved a hand. “This place was built right after World War II, just as soon as materials became available. It was built right, and that sure helps when you start to renovate. What about your place?”
“Early fifties; it was built right, too. In fact, my grandfather did all the carpentry and a lot more.”
Moscowitz looked at him. “Larsen? Was your grandfather by any chance named Lars?”
“That’s right.”
“My grandfather was named Lenny Moscowitz. He used to play chess with your grandfather all the time. Grandpapa would take me over to Lars’s house with him. I think Grandpapa did some work on your house, too, although that was before my time.”
“Well, that’s something,” Larsen said, laughing. “So you’re, what, the third generation of Moscowitzes in the building trade?”
“Fourth. My great-grandfather was a carpenter in Russia, and that young fellow up there on the landing is my oldest boy, Lenny, so he’s the fifth.”
This guy can work on my house anytime, Larsen thought. “A family operation.”
“Well, that’s putting it a little strongly when one of the family is a teenager,” Moscowitz said. “I catch him gazing into the middle distance two or three times a day.”