The big American was up on his feet again, hugging his broken finger close to his chest. He came in with a wild, looping hook punch from his good hand. I caught him with open palm strikes to the elbow and nose simultaneously. He decided to lie down.
One of the two remaining guys issued some kind of war cry and dove at me.
I guided him by and kicked him in the back of the skull as he passed. He skidded across the pavement with his face.
The last kid tried to run, but I snagged the back of his jacket and threw him to the ground. I grabbed him by the face and said, "Go tell Jimmy that he’s not fooling anybody. I know what he did, and when I can prove it, he’s gonna go away for a long, long time."
Okay, so that was a bit of a Good Guy 101 line, but I was so happy to actually be the good guy that I wasn’t going to give myself too much shit about it.
The kid nodded, wide-eyed and I let him go.
We both left the rest to squirm and cry on the ground, and I went back to the hotel for my bag. I had a plane to catch, after all.
28
The flight was terrible. We hit some turbulence from a thunderstorm, and the kid in the seat next to me spent half the time tossing his cookies. A little acupuncture would’ve done the trick, but the kid’s mom wasn’t about to let me stab her son with needles, no matter how much I tried to convince her.
What a beautiful ending to a lovely trip. Upon arrival, no one leapt into my arms. No one showered me with kisses.
Tracy hadn’t come. And to top it all off, the airline lost my bag.
I walked to the long-term parking lot, picked up my car, and went home. The apartment was smaller and dingier than I remembered it being. Cold shadows huddled in the spaces untouched by piss-yellow streetlight. I took a beer from the fridge and went to the bedroom. I turned on the TV as a diversion, but there was nothing on but more infomercials. I was not in the mood for any bouncy exercise pitch men, so I just turned the damned thing off. The silence and emptiness were worse.
I went into the living room, and turned on the stereo. The music I heard was not mine, but it was familiar. One of Tracy’s CD’s. She must’ve left it. I turned it up and went back to bed. After I finished my beer, I turned off the lights and stared up at the cracks in the ceiling.
29
The next morning, I walked down to the park and practiced a little. When I was finished, I called Knox on my cell; he’d left a few messages on my machine while I was gone.
"Where you been, Lee?"
"Meditation retreat. What’s new?"
"Lots. I spent a good portion of my weekend sifting through financial statements and a shitload of other paperwork. Taste of Asia, as we know, is run by Lau Enterprises. Lau Enterprises is, of course, the business front for Jimmy Yi Lau, head of the Eight Tigers and his son, you ready for this…"
"Was engaged to Mei Ling Zhao," I said.
"How the fuck’d you know that?" he said, sounding deflated.
"Ancient Chinese secret," I said. "Does Lau Enterprises have any other interests in this city?"
"We’re looking into it."
"You and the mouse in your pocket?"
"Pretty much. You got anything else you want to tell me?"
"Nothing solid."
"At this point I’ll take liquid or gas."
"No, that’s pretty much all I know for sure," I said.
The line went silent.
I could hear the gears in his mind turning. They could use some oil.
After a minute, he said, "This is getting considerably more fucked up. You know that, right?"
"Mm-hm."
"If any other flashes of insight come to you in your meditation, pick up the goddamned phone, alright? I’m the cop and you’re the civilian. Keep that in mind."
"Just doing my civic duty, officer. Keep me posted."
We hung up.
None of my clients knew I was back yet, but that was just as well.
I thought about calling Tracy, or even just stopping by the bar, but I didn’t.
Again, male pride.
Instead I just walked back home.
To pout. All by myself.
I saw her black cavalier parked out front from a mile away. It was easy to recognize from the roughly ten thousand bumper stickers on the back. The faded, neon pink Vintage Vinyl, the orange and black Nine Inch Nails logo, the Misfits… a collection of bands and stores and sayings that reminded me of just how old I really was.
I opened the door to the stairwell that led up to my apartment and saw her at the top of the stairs, by my door. She was leaving a note, from the looks of it. When the door closed, she turned and saw me.
I met her halfway, on the stairs. Her hands cupped the sides of my face; her lips smashed into mine with almost enough force to shatter my teeth and knock us both down the stairs. I guessed that she’d missed me too. I lifted her and carried her up the stairs. At the door, I fumbled with the lock while she made soft sounds against my neck that caused my brain to boil in its own juices.
We made it inside, but only just.
Boy, was it good to be home.
30
She hadn’t eaten, and by nine-thirty I had a bit of an appetite, myself.
We ordered pizza again. It seemed the safest choice. Through some universal anomaly, we both found ourselves unable to stay away from each other. In public, things could get ugly. In the aftermath of our lovemaking (there was no ‘glow’… just a lot of gasping and sweat and, well, bruises), I saw that she’d dyed her hair. Parts of it, anyway. Her normally inky, purplish black hair was now accentuated with intermittent streaks of platinum blonde and pink.
"Do you like it?" she asked.
I nodded. It was different, but it suited her. She could probably staple dead marmosets to her scalp and still be sexy as hell.
"I stupidly got it done Friday night, knowing that I was spending the rest of the weekend with my parents."
"I take it they don’t like it?"
"My mom says I look like a hooker."
"Thanks, mom."
"I know, right? Anyway, that’s why I didn’t know you were coming in…I hadn’t been home. Sorry."
"I figured maybe the quarterback of the football team swept you off your feet or something, and you realized that you didn’t have to be with an old fogey like me."
"Okay, first thing? Ew. Vomit. Secondly, old fogey, my ass. Though I did have an interesting conversation with my parents about you…"
"Oh?" I said. My voice actually cracked.
"Yeah. They were all happy at first, when I told them that I’d met someone and that I liked that someone very much… My mom said she thought that I was coming out."
"Coming out of what?" I said, genius that I am.
"The closet, Randall. My mom thought I was a lesbian. And preferred that possibility, actually."
"Oh."
Master of conversation, that’s me.
"I told them everything. And I ended up having to remind them that I’m twenty-six years old and that I’m not retarded…"
I watched her. This was bothering her. I figured she’d work it out, or not, but I clearly had nothing witty to say, so I stayed quiet.
"My mom, in turn, reminded me that she’s forty-seven. I got a whole lecture on wants and needs and how I’m going to want to get married and have kids and blah, blah, blah."
"Do you?" I said.
She looked up at me and shrugged. "I don’t know what I want, Randall. Mostly, I think I just want to be happy, and you make me happy."
"Then why do you look so sad?"
"Because none of this should fucking matter, and I hate that it does. I mean, I look at you and everything makes sense, but when I’m alone…I have these stupid thoughts. Like, that you were learning to drive when I was born. You know?"
I nodded.
There wasn’t anything to say. There was nothing that either of us could do to change this. I wanted more than anything for us to just let all this go, but the truth was
that her mother’s ideas were nothing new to me; I’d thought similar things each time Tracy and I saw each other. What was I doing? What was I taking, stealing, from her? There was so much of life that she could be experiencing, but she was hanging around with a schlub like me.
And then there was marriage.
And the issue of children.
Christ.
In the end, it was something too big to deal with. We ended up watching The Maltese Falcon on channel nine and eating our pizza in relative silence. She fell asleep in my arms.
For now, this was enough.
31
Morning came and with it, breakfast – hot coffee and cold pizza. Tracy, being environmentally conscious, decided to conserve water by inviting me in to shower with her; I put aside my typical modesty and acquiesced.
This was the fate of the planet we were talking about, after all.
The heaviness of the previous evening was forgotten, or so it seemed. For the moment, we were content merely to fill each moment with each other.
If there is a deeper purpose to life, I have yet to find it.
When at last we dressed, t-shirts and sweatpants were the order of the day for both of us. Mine was the standard plain black. Tracy wore a brilliant yellow Descendents concert shirt with a stick figure drawing on it and the words, "I don’t want to grow up." It fit her, in more ways than one.
"Do you have appointments today, or are you playing hooky and doing the amateur sleuth stuff?" she said, slipping on her t-shirt. Watching the cloth descend over her abdomen, I felt the same sadness that I always felt every time she got dressed.
"Neither," I said. "I’m spending the day with you, if you’ll have me."
"Whatever shall we do?" she said with a grin.
"Anything you like."
"Can we go to the art museum and stare at all the neo- post- modernistic- alt- impressionist- destructo- metal pieces?" she said, falling back onto the bed.
"If we must," I said.
"Can we get sushi for lunch?" she said, rolling over onto her stomach and leaning her head on her hands. She looked like a punk Gidget.
"Sure."
"Will you kiss me even with unagi and wasabi breath?"
"Definitely."
"Can we go to Six Flags? Will you win me a big, gigantic, useless, probably made-in-Taiwan stuffed animal?"
"Even if it takes me all day," I said.
"Yay! You, sir, are the best boyfriend ever!" she said, sliding up onto her knees and grinning as she bounced on the mattress.
I was slightly dumbstruck at the idea of being someone’s ‘boyfriend.’
32
At some point in conversation, I’d made the mistake of mentioning to her that I’d been slacking in the practice department, so she insisted that I do the form. She wanted to see it, she said.
It was a picture perfect October day outside, so we walked a few blocks to Millar Park. There, amidst the fallen leaves and skeletal trees, I assumed the beginning posture.
"You sure about this? The whole thing takes a long time…you’ll be bored out of your mind."
"I’ll deal. Do it," she said.
I sighed and became still. As I began the form, I let myself focus only upon the movements. It wasn’t easy, even with the years of practice. I felt like a nervous kid around Tracy, and I was terrified of screwing up. It was stupid, I know. I managed to make it through without accidentally tripping myself in slow motion, and was surprised to see that not only Tracy was watching. A small group of young Chinese men and women stood back, seemingly assessing my skill.
When I finished, Tracy applauded.
One of the group, a scrawny kid who looked to be in his early twenties, approached me and said, "Your Yang style is very good."
"Thank you," I said.
"Who is your teacher?"
"Sifu Wu Cai."
He nodded and said, "Would you like to push hands with us?"
I started to apologize and say that we had to leave, but Tracy said that she’d like to see the practice. The kid stepped forward into a bow stance and raised his right arm. I mirrored his stance and placed the palm of my hand against his forearm. This was Tui Shou, ‘Pushing Hands,’ a two person practice that was allowed each practitioner to gauge the others balance, as well as their ability to diffuse and deflect - as well as issue - attacks.
I pushed into his center, he effortlessly rolled back, guiding my energy aside and counter-attacking with his own push. I redirected his energy and pushed again, lower. The kid was good. There was nothing stiff or wooden to his movements, and I was really pushing him. He didn’t anticipate my movements; he waited, listening and interpreting each strike anew. After a few seconds, we shifted into the two-handed practice. Before long, we were free fighting, moving from technique to technique, alternately attacking and diffusing each other’s attacks. His classmates showed no emotion, they only watched with detached interest.
While I was stupidly distracted watching the others, the kid pressed his fingertip into the soft tissue of my wrist, at an acupuncture point called jingqiu, and issued fa-jin, the explosive, intrinsic energy used only during combat, when you‘re really out to hurt somebody.
The power of the strike numbed my arm and made breathing difficult. He was already moving in with a follow up hit, though, so I couldn’t just stand there.
I coiled my arm around his and shifted backward, pulling him forward into a palm strike to the face. He moved to counter, but, with my weight sunk into my rear leg, I kicked him in his right hip with my left heel. He was spun like a top into my waiting arms, which snaked around his throat and head; I applied the choke, and within seconds the boy was out.
I dropped him and looked to the others. Nobody else seemed anxious to get frisky, so I shook out my arm and tried to rub feeling back into it.
Tracy stared at me like I’d grown a second head. What had probably looked perfectly civilized to her had turned ugly in less than an instant, and chances were that she hadn’t even seen the kid attack me.
Before I could explain myself, an ancient looking Chinese man knelt at the boy’s side and jabbed him in the chest until he regained consciousness. While the boy staggered to his feet, the old man faced me and scowled.
He wore a tan windbreaker and a pair of blue jeans that had been pulled up almost to sternum height. A green stocking cap sat in a lumpy cone upon his head, and tufts of his grey eyebrows peeked out from beneath it like a couple of chilly caterpillars.
"You deserved that," he said. "Sloppy. Very sloppy."
"And him?" I said, gesturing to the boy.
"He’s a freaking idiot."
"His Tai Chi Chuan is very good," I said.
The old man waved his hand before his nose, as if he smelled something foul, and said, "His Tai Chi is donkey balls. His Tai Chi does not deserve to smell my shit!"
I didn’t know what to say to that. Tracy looked at the hunched old man with an expression of curious disgust.
"Would you do me this great honor, sir?" I said, raising my arm to push hands with him.
He slapped my arm down and shouted, "You Americans all move like goddamned Frankenstein’s monster…imagine the arrogance of some bignose such as you aspiring to the supreme ultimate… Bah. You aren’t worth my time, shithead."
With that, he turned and walked away to his apartment on the far side of the street. His students followed. Tracy watched them go before saying, "Who the hell was that guy?"
"Master Cheng Xing."
"The guy you wanted to check out? Well, he didn’t have to be a dick."
"When you’re as good as him, you can be however you want to be."
"What are you talking about? He’s a total feeb. He can’t even stand up straight… I bet you could totally kick his ass."
"If Master Cheng had wanted a fight, I wouldn’t be standing here now. Appearances, especially in Tai Chi, can be deceiving. Don’t forget that."
She seemed unconvinced.
I rubbed my wr
ist again and suggested that we go. I wasn’t going to wait around in case Master Cheng changed his mind.
33
During lunch at a beautiful sushi place on Delmar, Tracy asked about the latest developments in the case. I told her about Tony Lau. She knew the name.
"He’s an awesome painter," she said. "He’s going to be huge."
"Really?" I said.
She nodded enthusiastically.
"They got a few of his pieces in the contemporary galleries at the Art Museum. Really cool stuff. God, that’s so sad that she was his fiancée."
I agreed that it was and had a glass of sake.
"You really think his dad did it?" she said.
"Well, I think his dad arranged it."
"Why would he do that?"
"Maybe she stole the money from him… maybe she was blackmailing him… I don’t know." I looked over at the sushi chef, watching him work. He deftly sliced a thin piece of raw tuna.
"If you don’t know, then how can you be sure it’s him?" Tracy said.
"Well…he sent those guys after me in San Francisco."
"Yeah, but you said those guys were nancy-boys."
"So?"
"So you said the guy that killed Mei Ling was like a kung fu master or something. If the Eight Tigers did it, and they knew that you knew, wouldn’t they send that dude to do you in?"
"Unless that ‘dude’ is from St Louis," I said.
"You mean like that old Cheng guy."
"Somebody like that, yeah."
"What does he have to do with anything?" Tracy said, picking up a piece of spider roll. She picked out a bit of the soft shell crab and popped it into her mouth.
"Mei Ling was killed here. Maybe her murderer was a local, too? And if he’s a local, I thought Cheng would probably know any decent martial artists in town."
Tracy frowned. "Doesn’t that kinda blow your other theory, though? I mean, unless Lau went through the trouble of finding and paying the guy all the way from San Fran or something… I dunno, I just don’t see how all of this fits together."
Changes -- A Randall Lee Mystery Page 9