by Jason Frost
4.
Eric splashed the cold water on his face. It sent a little jolt down his spine and he felt better. Refreshed. He reached up blindly, yanked a paper towel from the shiny holder and wiped his face, harder than necessary. The skin turned red from the rough treatment, except for the scar. When he rubbed over that he felt nothing, no sensation whatsoever. DMZ. That's what the army surgeon in Nam had called it. Dead Meat Zone.
He heard the door open behind him, the hydraulic rush and sigh as it started to close again. He caught a glimpse of the two husky men in the mirror as he balled up the soggy towel and tossed it into the trash can.
Then he heard the popping of briefcase snaps and he knew there was trouble. He spun to face the two men.
"You caused us some trouble on this one, Ravensmith," the tall blond man drawled. "Had to shave my beard and all. Even borrow me a three-piece suit so's I'd look like one of the monkeys what usually hangs around here."
While the blond talked, his partner pried open his briefcase and pulled out a pair of heavy wooden nunchakus. He grasped them in one hand and balanced the briefcase on the sink.
"Not only that," the blond continued, scratching the red bumps under his chin where he'd shaved, "but they got goddamned metal detectors in the fucking lobby. Can't hardly get a fingernail clipper past them, let alone a decent gun. Believe me, Ravensmith, we'd have rather used a gun than this slant gizmo, but we ain't got much choice."
"And neither do you," his partner grinned.
The blond was the bigger of the two by four inches and twenty pounds, so he went over to the door, grabbed the handle, and wedged the toe of his penny loafer under the door, leaning his weight forward to prevent anyone from coming in.
"Make it fast, Sam," he told the smaller man. "I still gotta pick up my old lady from the fucking dentist."
Sam crouched slightly, his legs apart for balance. One handle was draped over his shoulder, the other gripped firmly in his right hand. The short length of chain that connected the two hunks of wood lay on top of his shoulder. All he had to do now was snap his wrist and the rear handle would come flying at Eric with a lethal velocity.
Eric quickly whipped off his tie, grasping an end in each hand. He held it taut in front of him, ready to parry. At best it was a temporary defense, good enough to withstand a couple blows, but not nearly enough to save his life.
Sam did not grin or smile or look smug. His small dark eyes shone with concentration as he moved forward. His short, black hair bristled from the air-conditioned breeze blowing in through the overhead vent. When he finally moved, everything was a blur of whirling action.
First he spun the nunchaku from over his left shoulder, swinging it in a wide arc and catching the handle with his left hand. Eric surprised himself by remembering the name of the movement. Kata-Sukashi. Reverse shoulder swing. After that Sam went through a series of impressive movements. Cross swing and change (Suihei-Gaeshi). Figure eight swing (Hachiji-Gaeshi). Cross back swing (Fudo-Gaeshi), And a couple more that happened so quickly Eric couldn't identify them. But one thing was certain, Sam knew what he was doing.
"Stop fucking around, Sam," the big, blond man said with disgust, scratching his neck again. "This ain't no movie and you ain't no fucking Bruce Lee. Just kill the sonofabitch and let's get the fuck outta here."
"Right," Sam said, allowing himself a little smile now that he'd shown his stuff.
Then he started after Eric.
Fisher calculated that, considering withholding tax, Social Security, union dues, and stuff like that, he could probably buy the Sony Walkman by next week. It meant working a few more hours to get it, but he knew what he wanted. None of those pissant Sanyos or Panasonics. It had to be a Sony. The One and Only.
He wondered if there was a way to hook it up so he could listen to it while on duty. Not with the headphones or anything so conspicuous, but maybe run an earplug down his sleeve so he could just put his palm next to his ear, like he was thinking or something, and listen to the music.
" 'Wko-o-oa, listen to the music,' " he sang quietly. He liked it when real thoughts were the same as lyrics. It was neat to sing your thoughts instead of just think them.
He hummed a few more lines from the song while he watched another guy in a three-piece suit try to go into the men's room, but unable to budge the door, give up and head for the elevator.
"Wimp," Fisher said, tried to think of a song with wimp in it, couldn't, went back to humming "Listen to the Music."
A couple seconds later another man tried the door. This guy was pretty husky, wore a ratty sports jacket and white socks with black slacks and black scuffed shoes. Obviously a defendant, Fisher grinned. B amp;E, maybe, or Grand Theft Auto. Needed to take a leak before he spilled his guts to his PD, probably some young Jew who drove a Porsche, paying his dues before joining his Dad's big Beverly Hills law practice. Those people had it wired, man. Not that Fisher had anything against Jews, hell, he almost screwed one in college. But you had to wonder about them.
The husky guy shook the door, bumped it with his shoulder, kicked it with his foot. Still it wouldn't budge. Finally he kicked it again, swore, and stomped off to the stairs.
"Jerk," Fisher mumbled, then went back to humming. Yet it was odd. The door being stuck. Hadn't he seen that Ravensmith guy go in a minute ago. And he seemed to remember somebody else going in too. Maybe they were stuck inside. He could go over and check it out, but he really shouldn't leave his post. Besides, stuck doors was a janitor's job, not his.
Still, it was funny.
"Quick kill, damn it, Sam!"
"It will be."
"Then do it. I wanna get home for the second half of the Lakers-Celtics game." The blond shifted his bulk, exchanging feet under the door. "That's the second bastard who tried to get in here. I'm not gonna be able to keep the whole fucking floor outta here."
"Just a few seconds more," Sam assured him, sliding toward Eric, one handle of the nunchakus tucked under his right arm.
Eric backed up a few steps, the ends of his tie still wound around each hand and stretched out in front of him like a clothesline. That the man called Sam was obviously well trained in martial arts didn't disturb Eric too much. He too had been trained in various fighting disciplines, though he'd never enjoyed martial arts. All that bowing and waiting and kneeling seemed to Eric just another kind of army rules, only the uniforms were white and you got to wear a colored belt. Besides, those karate and kung fu masters lacked any sense of humor. They took themselves so damned seriously, not like the Hopis who'd taught him Indian fighting. He could see the attraction, though, for a lot of the guys. The rigid rituals, the feeling of belonging to an elite group. It's the same technique Fallows used with his men, turning them into a kind of religious cult.
In the Green Berets every martial arts teacher had hollered at Eric for sloppy form and technique. Though he defeated every opponent, they never let up on him, trying to force him to do it "the proper way." The hell with that, Eric had told them, they weren't there to perfect an art, but to learn how to protect themselves. It didn't matter how perfect your form was, just who was left alive at the end.
Toward that end he'd developed his own way of fighting. A potpourri of various combat skills that combined the oriental martial arts, western boxing, and Indian fighting methods. He borrowed a little from each, altering, combining, changing into a form that maximized his strengths and minimized his weaknesses. Big Bill Tenderwolf had seen it at work once in a Santa Fe barroom brawl and instantly dubbed it the Retreating Attack.
Eric hadn't thought of it in those terms before, but that was as close to describing it as two words could come. It required intense concentration to master, but the premise was simple. Eric merely imagined that he and his attacker were attached at the navel by a cord within arm's reach of each other. Therefore, when the opponent attacked, Eric could dodge the blow, but he had to maintain that arm's distance between them. No more than that. Which meant any move to avoid a blow had t
o end up in an attack position, culminating in a blow returned. "Don't give me none of that fancy talk," Big Bill Tenderwolf had shaken his huge, grinning head when Eric had tried to explain it. "It's a simple enough idea: No aggression goes unpunished. Tit for tat."
And once again, the Hopi chief with his M.B.A. from UCLA had understood even better than Eric. Make the attacker pay for every miss and he will become hesitant, tentative. Afraid.
But those moves required split-second timing, excellent conditioning, practice. Eric Ravensmith was still in good shape, but he hadn't hit another man in twelve years. All his speed was used to chase tennis balls that Annie blasted out of the court with her wild backhand.
"Don't make this harder on yourself than necessary," Sam told him, inching closer, "Just let it happen. One whack with these and, pow, it's all over."
The blond nodded sadly, as if they were discussing a great retiring athlete. "It's gotta be, man."
Suddenly the heavy wooden handle was flipping through the air, tumbling toward Eric's face. He slipped to the side, raising his hands, trying to snare the handle with his tie. But he was too slow. The handle glanced off his wrist, immediately numbing it. The pain rattled up his arm like an old locomotive, ending with a throbbing pain at the back of his neck.
His wrist went from numb to burning, until he hardly had the strength to hold the end of the tie with it. But somehow he did, gliding back against the tiled wall as the long wooden handle somersaulted toward him again.
Eric ducked, heard the loud crash as the heavy wood bounced off tile. Felt some of the plaster grouting sprinkle down on his head. Then he heard the whoosh of the handle again and felt the sudden pain on his back like a building collapsing on him. Eric dropped to the floor, butt first.
"I got him," Sam exclaimed. "I nailed the sonofabitch."
Eric looked up, saw everything as if through thin gauze. Recognized Sam hovering over him, about to snap those damn things into his head.
Somehow he found the strength, almost as if he wasn't even doing it himself. As if there was some part of Eric that was operating on its own, on automatic pilot. Like in Nam. Whatever part it was, Eric's legs suddenly swept in a wide arc and knocked Sam's feet out from under him. Sam's arms flew up, sent the nunchakus sailing into a mirror with a loud, shattering crash, and Sam finally slamming onto the tiled floor in front of Eric. Close enough for Eric to thrust his heel into Sam's chin and watch Sam's head crack against the floor.
The burly blond man at the door came running. He snatched up the nunchakus as Eric struggled to his feet, inching his back up along the wall.
"Fucking bastard," he growled, lifting them like a club over his head as he charged Eric.
The hydraulic rush sounded as the door opened and Daryl Fisher walked in. When he saw Sam sprawled out on the floor, the broken glass, the big blond man wielding nunchakus, and Eric Ravensmith holding a tie in front of him, he could only gape and mumble, "What the hell-?"
They were his last words.
The big blond whirled around, flinging one handle of the nunchakus out, still holding the other. The handle whipped around with a sizzling hiss, then thunked into the back of Fisher's skull. Fisher's eyes went wide as his body arched backwards, stayed suspended a moment, then fell face-first against the hard tile floor. A dull crack echoed through the room at the impact as Fisher's nose splattered and his broken teeth scattered across the tiles. Blood erupted like lava out of his collapsed skull, streaming down the back of his neck and onto the white floor, washing a chip of skull away like a tiny white raft.
The blond man spun back toward Eric. "Before it was for Fallows, Ravensmith. Now it's for me." His clenched teeth glistened with saliva, his eyes shone with hate. He charged forward, the nunchakus spinning over his head like a helicopter blade.
Eric felt the urge to panic. Could taste panic bubbling up in his throat, a bitter oily taste. It made him want to run, make a desperate dash for the door, or yell at the top of his lungs. But that would do no good now. He had to fight. And to do so he had to be in control of himself, remember how he used to do it.
He quickly reached down and snatched a jagged hunk of broken mirror from the floor. The blond man took a swipe at Eric as he stooped, but Eric easily dodged the blow. As he straightened up, he wrapped his tie around half the piece of mirror, forming a handle that he grasped firmly in his right hand. The piece that protruded was six inches long, hooked like an eagle's beak.
The door pushed open.
"…the same old shit, I told him. And he turns to me with that ass-kissing grin of his and-" The man doing the talking looked at the scene in front of him and swallowed something hard. "J-Jesus, Bill."
Bill winced, grabbed his friend's elbow and yanked him out of the room. The door sighed shut.
"They'll bring help," Eric said quietly. "In a couple minutes cops will be blocking every exit. You've had it, man."
The blond man nibbled nervously on his thick lower lip, the nunchakus losing some velocity as he considered his problem.
"Just leave now," Eric coaxed. "I won't try to stop you."
"Like hell you won't."
"I mean it. Why should I? It's Fallows I want. Besides, why should I risk it?" He shrugged contemptuously at the small piece of mirror in his hand.
The blond blinked rapidly.
"Come on, there's not much time."
"You give me your word?" the blond asked.
"You've got it."
"You won't try to stop me?"
"I gave you my word."
The husky blond dropped the nunchakus and burst out the door, hurrying down the corridor toward the stairs.
Eric scrambled across the unconscious body of Sam, tugged free the gun on the dead body of Fisher, and leaped out the door after the blond.
The blond man was nearing the stairs as Eric shouted his warning, "Stop, or I'll shoot." It was a shout intended less for the blond man than for the people walking along the corridor. They looked at Eric, saw him lowering the gun, and immediately dropped to the floor, some of them screaming for help.
The blond man glanced over his shoulder, saw Eric crouching, both hands gripping the handle of the.38 S amp;W, and tasted that same bitter flavor of panic Eric had. He paused a fraction of a second, considering his options. To surrender or bolt for the stairs?
It was during that pause that Eric shot him.
The screams increased at the sound of the explosion, then at the sight of the huge blond man stumbling forward. The bullet had only hit his hip, ripping flesh before glancing off the pelvic bone. He was hurt, but he was still moving toward the stairs.
Eric squeezed the trigger again. Click. Again. Click.
"Damn!" Click, click, click.
Fisher had only loaded the gun with one bullet, a sloppiness Eric should have suspected from the kid. He dropped the.38 and took off down the hall at full speed, his shoes whacking linoleum with a fierce rhythm.
The blond was at the edge of the stairs now, limping, dragging his left leg as blood soaked his gray pants with black stripes. He steadied himself on the brass railing as he maneuvered the first step.
But Eric was already there, leaping through the air with a flying kick that caught the blond on the shoulder and sent him toppling roughly down the marble stairs. Eric chased after the bouncing body, jumping three, four stairs at a time. Finally the blond man's arm hooked through the railing. The momentum snapped the forearm, but the broken limb remained wedged in the railing.
Eric yanked the arm free and dragged the groaning blond against the wall. The man's pudgy face was crumpled in pain as he panted, desperately sucking air. His face was torn and lumpy from the fall, his broken arm twisted at an impossible angle.
One eye was swollen shut. He squinted at Eric through the other. "You promised," he gasped. "You gave your word."
Eric's face remained expressionless, remote. "I lied."
5.
"Case dismissed!" The judge whacked his gavel three times, a look of reli
ef spreading across his heavy face as he sprang for the door to his chambers.
Several reporters bolted for the exit door, elbowing their colleagues to the side. The sketch artist from Channel 7 Eyewitness News dropped her Staedtler Mars-Lumograph 3H pencil and watched it disappear under two rows of trampling feet before someone stepped on it. Just as well, she thought. That was the one she'd used to sketch Dirk Fallows, and she had a strict rule, a superstition really, about such things. Once she sketched a man like him with a pencil, she never used it again. Actually threw it away as soon as possible. Silly, maybe. But she looked at brushes, pens and pencils as some kind of spiritual antennas, receivers of the spirit. And she didn't want Fallows' spirit any where near her. She gave a brief shiver and marched briskly toward the doors.
A thick shoulder from Steve Jennings at Channel 9 nudged her in the back and sent her tripping forward. Her hands groped ahead as she started to fall, her briefcase flying from her shoulder, the contents spilling beneath urgent feet.
Then a hand was holding her firmly by the shoulder and she was falling no more. The hand came from behind and at first she thought it was Jennings. But no, there he went out the door, bullying past the Times Metro reporter with as much grace as a waltzing lumberjack. She turned to thank the man, gasped slightly when she recognized him.
"Uh… I mean, thanks… uh, thanks, Mr. Ravensmith."
Eric didn't answer. He stooped down and somehow created a circle around her spilled briefcase. He didn't say anything to anyone, didn't touch anyone. His face wasn't threatening. Gentle, really, though after sketching him for two months, she knew that he was feeling anything but gentle right now.
He straightened up, carefully slipping her sketch pad back into her briefcase. "I'm afraid there are some footprints on the one of the coroner," he said.
"How'd you do that?" she said.
"Do what?"
She made a stirring motion with her finger. "You know, get these animals to walk around you."