by Laer Carroll
"Training took over. As soon as I had disarmed and immobilized him I did look around to 'see what was going on.' In hindsight that was still the wisest course of action."
"Without even seeing whether you could prevail over your opponent you still fought him?"
Sasha's attorney, Mr. Jellicoe, coughed and said, "Ms. Canaro is the reigning world champion in Judo. There is probably not anyone in this city she couldn't prevail over."
The grey-haired detective said, "Champ only in her weight class. Against a larger equally trained opponent..." He shrugged his very nice shoulders.
Amusement, and just a bit of erotic interest, briefly over-shadowed Sasha's pique. "Are you volunteering to..." She put a bit of purr in her voice. "...test that theory?"
He smiled at her and shook his head.
The ADA said, "If we can keep on track?"
After a pause she said, "Next you shot a man in his upper arms. You crippled him for life."
Jellicoe said, "I don't think anyone with a brain is going to try to defend a career criminal, as Mr. Smithson is, who was wounded in the course of a robbery in which he offered grievous and deadly harm to innocent civilians."
The ADA snapped, "There are plenty of attorneys who have more ambition than brain."
Jellicoe's voice was dry. "Why, yes, that has been my experience, too."
There was just a hint of a flush to the ADA's cheeks.
"Did you even consider that you might miss and hurt someone else?"
Jellicoe said, "Ms. Canaro is also the reigning world champion at shooting. And there are no weight classes in that."
The grey-haired man raised a dismissing hand. "Champ at a very formal sport, some of it timed fire. "
He seemed to be arguing more for a whim than to make a real point. Or was he teasing her the way little boys teased girls they liked? Sasha did not smell more than mild sexual interest from him, or for that matter from the other men in the room. So if he was flirting it was more as a game than in earnest.
The ADA said, "Did you even consider you might miss? And hurt someone."
Sasha was getting angry again. "I don't miss. Not at those distances. And I made sure there was no one and no window behind him when I aimed."
The grey-haired man made a dismissive sound. Sasha turned to him, "I'll be happy to shoot in any 'real-world' scenarios you and your friend want to devise. But only if you shoot in them too."
She paused. "I should tell you that I routinely shoot a dozen quarters out of the air at thirty feet. With an off-the-shelf Glock."
The plain/elegant detective had seemed to be bored until now. She glanced at—her partner?—with a slightly malicious smile on her face. "Why, Trent. I would love to see that. If you shoot in it."
The captain said, "Ladies. Gentlemen. Let's proceed a little more briskly. I would like to get out of here before midnight."
The ADA looked up from her yellow pad. "When you pursued the third bank robber outside did you ever consider what might happen to innocent civilians in a gun fight?"
"That is exactly why I pursued. That man was carrying a fully automatic weapon. For all I knew he was going to spray everyone in sight. I needed to be available to prevent that if I saw it was likely."
"But then he just got into a get-away car. Without committing an atrocity."
"I had no idea what he might do if he got a hundred yards down the road and decided to take out his anger on the people there. Or for that matter whether he might just go around the block and shoot at the bank. Those big glass windows would not stop bullets."
"And then you did get in a gun fight."
"Not really. When he got out of the van I put a bullet in his brain. No brain, no trigger-finger action."
"He might have twitched when he died."
Sasha's defense attorney said, "If this gets to a court I would bring in a neuro-psychologist to confirm that Ms. Canaro's estimation of the situation is the correct one."
The ADA checked at that. She visibly calmed. Then she looked down at her yellow pad and aside at a printed form of some kind. She nodded decisively and made a check-mark with a pen on the form.
"After due consideration of all the facts this office concludes that there are no reasonable grounds to pursue a charge of reckless endangerment against Ms. Sasha Canaro. The Office of the District Attorney of the city of Brooklyn, New York, thanks Ms. Canaro and everyone else here for their co-operation in this matter, and hopes you will believe that any contentious language was necessary in the pursuit of justice."
She relaxed back in her seat and smiled at the captain. "I think it's well before midnight, sir. Perhaps we could adjourn?"
The sharply dressed black man nodded at the ADA. "Not just yet, Ms. Laughton. But the rest is just some minor police business. Have a good evening."
The ADA shuffled together her few items and stood up. Coming around the table she approached Sasha and held out her hand. "Don't you dare quote me. This is just my own opinion. Good job getting rid of those scum bags."
Sasha shook the woman's hand and nodded at her as she left. The ADA had seemed genuinely angry at times. Maybe she had indulged in a little bit of Method acting? For now the woman seemed relaxed, and the biological symptoms which her skin contact relayed agreed with the appearance.
When the door to the conference room closed the Captain turned to Sasha.
"I want you to know that the department does not approve of vigilante action. This time you got away with it. But the next time you may not be so lucky."
With that he got up, nodded to Mr. Jellicoe, glanced at the two detectives, and left. The master sergeant followed without a word.
Jellicoe said, "That went pretty well the way I anticipated. Now, if you'll excuse me Ms. Canaro, I've got a none-too-happy wife to get back to. May I say, with all good will to your mother, I hope you never need my services again?"
Left with the two detectives Sasha waited, looking at them. The two moved into the ADA's place. They reached across and shook her hand. The man introduced himself as David Trent, the woman Alice Love.
"And don't think a woman with the name of Love doesn't get a lot of jokes about her name."
Trent glanced at her then back at Sasha. "That lasted until she got a chance to go one-on-one with them in hand-to-hand training. She's pretty good at weird martial arts."
Alice said, "It's a hobby. I actually watched all your matches at the Olympics. Which brings up something—"
David had been shuffling some papers. He fanned out one set on the table in front of Sasha and pointed at two places on one form and three on a second. They would release her from the police station. Sasha read them carefully while the woman detective waited for her to finish.
After signing the papers she looked back up at the woman.
"—something I'd like you to do. Come in to one or two of my hand-to-hand sessions and show us some pointers."
Sasha considered. She did have plenty of time, maybe too much after word of this got around.
"I'd like that. But I've got to see what my work schedule is like after this. My guess is the publicity is not going to sit well with a lot of my clients."
Alice looked troubled. "If you get to hurting—"
"No, no. I'm way ahead of the game. You wouldn't believe the endorsement and spokesperson offers I get. I had to turn down lots of them."
Alice relaxed, leaving David Trent an opening. "I'd still like to see you shoot down those quarters."
Sasha grinned. "I lied about that."
Trent was silent, suspicious. With reason.
"They were fifty-cent pieces."
It did not surprise Sasha the next day to find that she was on the front page of the local section of the New York papers. An enterprising reporter had bribed a bank employee to copy the bank security tapes. They had extracted a shot of her disarming one robber and shooting the second. Thankfully no enterprising citizen outside the bank had photographed her killing the third robber. Though there was no gu
arantee that such a photo would not turn up.
The old "Deadliest Woman on the Planet" title had been resurrected and used by more than one writer.
She spent a good deal of time talking to her family and friends on the phone and via email, mostly reassuring them she was all right. She also contacted Judy, her agent at Felice, and they worked out a brief press relief which said that she was home recuperating from the shock of her experience.
She stayed home that day and Friday and Saturday and only went out for groceries on Sunday afternoon, wearing a baggy sweat suit and her skin a nice toasty brown. No one recognized her, of course.
On Monday she arrived at the Felice Modeling Agency after calling to be sure her agent would be available. The woman had bad news and good news. Some upcoming appointments had been canceled, but several clients wanted her specifically. Taking Judy's advice Sasha accepted only two of them. The rejected ones all were trying to exploit her newly sensational reputation.
Judy and she also discussed Sasha taking up residence in Paris for a month or two. The French were not as plugged in to American sensationalism as Americans were. But finally Sasha decided to weather the storm in New York.
She was glad she had done so mid-week when she got an invitation from Detective Alicia Love to participate in a hand-to-hand class.
"Today we have a distinguished guest. Sasha Canaro as some of you know is the reigning World and Olympic Judo Champion. Here is her final competition in the Paris Olympics."
The image was projected onto a smooth white wall of the downtown Brooklyn gym used by the Martial Arts Club twice a month. The room was an old ballroom with padded exercise mats laid out on the floor and tied together. The room was long enough that only half of it was in use. The other half was unlit, so the white exercise mats seemed to glow in the bright overhead lights.
About three dozen women and men stood or sat facing the image. They were mostly in their twenties and thirties with a sprinkling of those over forty. Their clothing ranged from martial-arts gis from several disciplines and levels to exercise clothes both decorative and utilitarian to jeans and t-shirts.
Some students had stared at her when she had come into the room with Alicia Love. Some had glanced at her and kept on chatting or bending and twisting and doing sit-ups and the like. Sasha had stared right back, studying them. At her regard a few had shot back hostile glances and a few others had nodded or smiled briefly.
Now Sasha turned her attention to the makeshift screen. This was the first time she had ever seen a video of the match. It was strange watching herself from the outside, remembering some of the decisions she had made. It had been a real challenge to exactly match her opponent's level of ability so that her very last match ever balanced on a knife edge of win or lose. In the end she had won the gold medal by only a tiny margin. She would have been just as happy to have taken a silver.
Most of the class watched intently. All of them were here voluntarily, having passed the minimal qualifications the Brooklyn PD required them to have in this activity. Some were long-time practitioners of a martial art. A very few appeared bored.
When the video was done there was a brief smattering of applause.
Alicia turned to Sasha and spoke loudly enough for everyone to hear her. "Would you like to say something, Sasha?" Everyone in the class was supposed to use first names or nicknames to de-emphasize the differences in rank, which were considerable.
Sasha came forward. She was dressed in sky-blue exercise shorts and a matching sports bra and was barefoot. Her platinum hair was caught up in a pony tail.
"Thank you, Alicia." She turned toward the class. "And thank you for having me. I am honored to be here. I have an idea of what a hard job you have to do, day in and day out, no matter what.
"A few comments. First, I am the winner of only one of seven Judo weight classes. So I am not THE reigning champ. Second, I won that last match by only three points." She held up a hand showing three fingers. "So I am NOT the Deadliest Woman on the Planet, pleasant as it is to be called that." Her voice was conspicuously sarcastic.
There was a smattering of laughter. Sasha smiled with them. She could see most of the class relaxing, beginning to accept her as one of them.
"Third, there's not much I can teach you. For one thing, Judo competition has a lot of rules and conditions to make it a sport rather than a practical activity. Not that it doesn't have some practical applications." She caught the eye of three students in turn who were wearing Judo gis. The belts were all plain black, which Alicia told her was part of the practice to de-emphasize ranks. But the style of at least one of them was a fifth dan, which was fairly high.
"A fourth and final point. As many of you know, after you master the basics you begin to learn advanced techniques and subtleties. Then there comes a point when you have pretty much learned it all. You discover there are no more secrets or subtleties or more advanced techniques.
"That's when you begin to be really good. You start over, focus on what you already learned. You refine it and trim away excess motion and excess E-motion and thought. You approach pure art."
She stopped. She had said all she wanted to say.
There was silence. Some students were nodding, a few even in what she believed was real understanding. Some were frowning. Some merely waited for whatever would come next.
And as always there was a doubter or maybe just a trouble maker.
"Yeah, but we're here to learn practical stuff. Not all this art garbage."
Sasha bowed her head in fake humility.
Alicia had foreseen this and spoke, as the two of them had planned.
"Fine, Ferris. Come up here. And you, Georgie." She mentioned three more names. The ones sitting down stood up, and all five wandered warily over to Alicia. She handed three of them a rubber knife, a second a purple plastic baseball bat, and the last a plastic chain weighted at one end.
As planned Sasha moved into the center of the exercise area and stood, feet a bit apart and her hands raised almost in prayer in front of her, finger tips together, head slightly bowed. She did not bother to go to slow-time.
The five students came and gathered around Sasha. They stood staring. Finally Ferris focused his eyes on the person behind Sasha, whom she could not see.
She did not need to. She heard the slight scrape of feet behind her and pivoted out of the way, turning toward the large man rushing toward her raising the purple bat. She spun her arm closest to him so that it wrapped around the bat arm and slid her cupped hand down to his wrist, capturing it.
At the same time she was continuing her turn so that she came up behind him. Her free hand pushed him in the direction of his rush, straight into Ferris who was leaping to stab Sasha in her back. Ferris tried to side-step but it was too late. He was knocked flat on his back and the big man fell on top of him.
As the big man went by her Sasha had applied enough pressure on his elbow that he let go of the bat. She snatched it and stepped backward. The three other "attackers" were standing in front of her now.
She grinned at them and faked a downward strike at one of them. He ducked aside but she continued her movement to extend like a sword fighter and poke another in his belly. He doubled over. She had not been gentle, merely judicious.
Nor was she done. She advanced in a skating motion on the last opponent, captured the chain with a corkscrew motion of her bat, jerked it out of his hand, and slung it skittering off into a corner of the room. She spun in a circle, dropping to the floor onto her free hand, pivoted on it, and thrust her feet out to capture the weapon-bereft man's ankles with hers. She dumped him onto the floor, skipped by him, rapping him lightly on his head, and took out the man who had ducked aside and was returning to attack with a knife.
Then it was time to lightly strike Ferris over the head and the big man in his belly.
Then she spun the bat like a baton to rest under an arm and stopped dead and froze.
The five men began to pick themselves up and
stand, hands pressed to various parts of their anatomy.
"That wasn't fair!" said Ferris. "She didn't use Judo."
"There was a little kendo in there, too." Said the Judoka Sasha took for the fifth dan. "Perfectly fair. And if that stick had been a sword you'd be dead right now."
"We demand a re-match!"
Alicia cut in. "On the street you don't get re-matches. You just get hospitalized. Or 'morgued'." And on the heels of her words the Judoka said, "The results would be the same. Except this time she would not be gentle."
"Gentle!" Ferris's words were drowned out by scattered laughter and words of praise for Sasha. Apparently Ferris was not very popular in this group.
Alicia called the class to order. "Now that we've had a little entertainment it's time we got the class on track. I hope Sasha will stick around and give a few pointers here and there. For now, please join me in thanking Sasha Canaro for her time."
With that she began to applaud. First a few and then more joined her, then more, finally Ferris and his cohorts, grinning as if they and Sasha had conspired to put on a show. Which was, in a way, the truth.
Sasha did indeed stick around. But first she approached the Judoka who had spoken out. She bowed.
"Sensei, thank you for what you said."
He returned her bow. "It was only the truth."
"Is it possible we know some of the same people?" She mentioned a few, as did he, and they chatted for a short time. Then they turned to the class and joined in.
Sasha came to the next class, then skipped a few, and returned now and again. It became an irregular part of her life and she made a number of friends.
She met with David Trent at the Brooklyn PD firing range and he introduced her to a few other officers. A couple were not happy with her for dealing with the bank robbers rather than leaving that to police. Most however approved or did not care.
Of course, even dressed roughly she was still gorgeous. She could be forgiven much by the men and the one Lesbian police officer .
Her beauty might have stirred the jealousy of some of the women, but her ability with firearms and the fact that she was on good terms with Alicia Love was good enough for most of the other women shooters. By the time the evening was over she was invited to a bar with Trent and some of the others. Where she had to drink soft drinks, not having reached 21 years of age.