Sensei

by John Donohue

  “It’ll be a few days,” I said evasively.

  “Sometimes, Connor, I don’t get you at all,” he grumped. “OK,” he sighed, “I may need to reach you there. Give me the number.”

  The muscles down in my right calf near the Achilles tendon were starting to tighten up. I felt like I had tightly strung cables in my legs and was trying to ignore it and listen hard to the inflections in his voice. He knew something was up.

  I gave him the number, said good-bye, and sat there with my eyes closed. Idiot, I thought. You should have told him. He’s had enough of people holding out on him.

  “Your conversation was upsetting.” My eyes snapped open. Yamashita had slipped into the room and sat across from me. His face was impassive, but his eyes were alive.

  I exhaled slowly and nodded.

  “Your brother does not understand what is going on?”

  “No.” I shook my head guiltily, reliving the phone call.

  “Burke,” he said, sitting forward, “listen to me. You are wise not to involve him. A ring of danger surrounds us here. When you bring people close to you, they will be imperiled.”

  Not many people use the word imperiled any more. When Yamashita said it, it didn’t sound quaint.

  “You Americans,” he continued with that tight smile of his. “You want all things that are good to also be easy. Now I will tell you something, Professor. It is obvious you care for your brother. And you are wise not to inform him of your plans. If you can shield him, you must do so. Even if it means that he will be upset.”

  “I know, Sensei, but . . .”

  He held up a hand, palm out. It was a small hand, but the palm was broad and the fingers were thick. Yamashita’s hands looked, in fact, much like the rest of him: they were hard and capable parts of a fierce, focused human being. Even his words of comfort had a brutal tinge to them. “But nothing, Burke,” he said. “Which is better, that your brother feel hurt for a time because he does not fully understand your motives, or that you gush out your secrets and he runs to your side, with all the danger it could bring? He has already suffered enough.”

  I nodded as he scolded me.

  “If you pull him close at this moment, you will place him within the dark circle. He is, I am sure, a good policeman. But he has no place here.”

  Yamashita looked up and gazed out the window. Lights fought the darkness, cutting at it, beating it back in spots, but ultimately, on the edges of light, the brightness bled away, surrendering to the infinite strength of night. Yamashita’s eyes were unfocused, as if he were intent on something beyond mere sight. For a moment, in the lamplight, I could see the toll of years on him. Maybe, in his own way, he was trying to explain why he had kept things from me for so long.

  “Make no mistake, Burke,” the old man said. “Tomita is coming. I can feel it.”

  In the night, I slept fitfully. Outside Yamashita’s dojo, cars rumbled by, radios pounding. Distant horns sounded. Sirens shrieked and died away. I drifted into a drowsy half-sleep. My body jerked involuntarily as muscle tension began to dissipate. I didn’t think I slept, but the sensei startled me when he woke me.

  “Get up, Burke. It is two-thirty.” I stood and focused on his stolid silhouette beside me in the dark.

  “Time to train,” my teacher said.

  16. Forlorn Hopes

  The heavy fire door boomed open, echoing in the empty dojo. Yamashita and I had rested at dawn, and Mori and his hired help had arrived shortly afterward. The two senior men conferred quietly, while the thug waited in the shadows for something to happen. The first floor practice room was empty of students, but Mori’s watchdog scanned the empty air with an idiot vigilance.

  Mori had a flat, reserved face that gave you the illusion of total control. But he was not as cool as he pretended to be: he looked up sharply at the sound when the door banged.

  I went to see who it was. It was one of those automatic things you do for your sensei. Before I could even get to the foot of the stairs, however, the thug had jumped in front of me. His pistol appeared in one fluid motion, almost like that of a magician pulling a bouquet out of the air with a simple flourish.

  He glided across the floor ahead of me, the gun’s muzzle a black snout cutting through the space. Yamashita followed me down but said nothing, watching the action with professional dispassion.

  The intruder stood with hands on his hips and regarded the watchdog. He looked at me, then back at the man with the gun, and clearly felt the need to defuse the situation.

  “Take it easy, you dickwad,” he said. ‘’I’m a cop, remember?”

  My brother had come visiting.

  Looking at him, you could almost forget he was a policeman. Off duty, he looked like any other tired guy in rumpled clothing. He had the cop eyes, of course, but from a distance he looked just like the person I had grown up with. He had been through a hard few days, though, and as I got closer it showed in his face. But I was glad he had come. When Micky pushed open that dojo door, he let in street sounds, heat, and the almost palpable tug of memory. All the drills and lectures and mantra had begun to make me feel like a man in suspended animation. We may have been setting a trap, but I was the one who felt imprisoned, set off from the real world. Micky restored my sense of connection. I could guess that Yamashita thought my brother’s presence was bad for the training he was trying to accomplish. I, however, grinned like an idiot.

  My brother stood there dressed in sneakers patched with duct tape, pair of old khaki pants, and a dark blue NYPD T-shirt with a little yellow badge on the breast. He looked at Mori’s hired gun with that placid expression he used to calm dangerous people. Or lull the unwary. He gingerly held his empty hands out at his sides to show he had no weapon.

  “Hey, c’mon,” I said. “We’ve been through this before.” Eventually, the thug relaxed, although he looked annoyed that he hadn’t been able to shoot anyone. Micky glared at him silently, came upstairs, and said hello to Yamashita. It wasn’t a warm greeting. I held my breath. My brother had a long memory and a short temper. From his perspective, Yamashita was partly to blame for this mess. And Micky felt there were still things he wasn’t being told. He was right, of course, but now I was the one holding out on him.

  Mori didn’t say much when Micky showed up. The two men eyed each other warily, but Micky didn’t even acknowledge him. Instead, he looked at Yamashita and said, “I came to take him off your hands for a while, Yamashita.”

  Yamashita looked at me like he was judging a prospective meal. He turned to my brother and nodded. “He has been behaving. Enjoy the afternoon.” My teacher gestured toward the street like he was inviting us to explore Xanadu.

  What we got to see instead was the brick and blacktop of Brooklyn baking in the sharp summer glare. We drove up to Fifth Avenue and headed through Sunset Park. Both sets of grandparents had lived around here, and we had spent an awful lot of childhood Sundays visiting the area, watching relatives decay and the neighborhoods change. Fifth Avenue was different now from the street of our childhood, but it certainly was lively.

  People were wandering in and out of local bodegas. Racks of summer dresses and T-shirts were on display on the sidewalks. Even though we had the car windows closed and the AC on, I could hear the Latin music that the merchants piped out onto the street.

  “How you doing, Mick?” I asked. His face had that tired, drawn look crash survivors have. But his eyes were clear.

  He nodded. “I’m OK. You, on the other hand, look like hell.”

  I hadn’t paid attention to a mirror in a while, but I imagined that all the training with Yamashita showed. I said nothing and let him drive. There was a point to the visit, and Micky would get to it when he was ready.

  “Hey, look,” Micky said. “OLPH.”

  The parish of Our Lady of Perpetual Help was marked by a large church complex looming over one whole block. Down Fifty-Ninth Street, the school building was tucked away in the back. Micky parked in the driveway entrance to the sc
hool parking lot. Perverse creatures, schools hibernate in the summer. The entrance gate to the lot was chained shut—Property of the Diocese of Brooklyn, Violators Will Be Towed—and the building was dark and silent. Micky tossed his NYPD card on the dashboard and walked away without a second thought. It was one of the great things about being a cop: ordinary parking rules did not apply. Then again, my brother was in a line of work where Kevlar vests were considered appropriate Christmas gifts from your loved ones, so the trade-off was probably even.

  The church itself was a huge, sandstone-colored building with a red tile roof Its large arched entrance doors faced the avenue, an imposing multistory presence built of stone and old wood and leaded stained-glass windows of deep-sea blue and red as rich as blood. The old locals called it “the Basilica.” The cavernous hall of the main church, up one flight of stone steps from the street, was dark and locked, but the smaller lower-level church was open. My family had baptized, married, and buried three generations in this church, and it was familiar ground for both of us. As kids, we had spent what felt like an eternity at a host of rituals there. They didn’t do much for our piety, but they did create our immense capacity for tolerating boredom. We also developed the ability to sit very quietly for long periods of time. They also taught us endurance.

  Micky went in, and I followed. Working with Yamashita had put me in a heightened state of suspicion and sensitivity. I didn’t think it was likely Tomita would be anywhere near at this time of day, and he certainly wouldn’t be interested in me. But, as my sensei kept drilling into my head, awareness was the key to survival. I took a hard look around.

  The ceiling in the lower church was not very high, nothing like the soaring vaults one story up, and the view of the altar was blocked by the pillars that supported the floor of the church above. It broke up your line of sight, and the feeling was that almost anyone could be lurking there. Maybe even God. I scanned the room. An old man was slowly shuffling down the center aisle toward the doors. To our right, a woman knelt, obscured in a kerchief and dark blue raincoat. Her eyes were red-rimmed and moist. Her lips were dry and worked in a constant, mumbled litany. Beads made faint clicking noises. It was the sad cast of characters you find in any church in the daytime.

  The room smelled of wax and the memory of incense. The pews were old and dark, polished by the friction caused by generations of human emotion and ritual choreography. Gaudy statues of saints lined the walls, and banks of candles flickered in front of them like whispered entreaties.

  My brother walked slowly into the church, like someone just awakened who was trying to remember the details of a particularly vivid dream. I followed him to one of the side altars where a statue, dark with age, was located.

  Most of the statues in the church were the smooth, pious, type. Bland, sightless eyes were set in creamy complexions, and tidy robes with flowing lines helped obscure the awareness that any of these figures had been corporeal at one time. They were neat but not particularly powerful figures.

  Micky made his way to a dark corner where a different type of statue stood, obscured in shadow. It was unpainted, a monochrome presence that glowered there, all angles and force. Someone knew what he was doing when he made it. Most of the statues in that room looked faintly ridiculous and anemic, like porcelain tarted up to distract you from their lifeless essence. But the form Micky stood before was fierce.

  It was a dark cast-bronze figure. The dull luster made you want to reach out and feel the hard surface. One booted foot, closest to the rank of candles, had been rubbed shiny by decades of supplicants unable to resist the impulse. The winged form was armed with a sword and a lance. The shaft pierced a writhing form, half snake, half dragon, while the stern face of the saint gazed upon the world as if trying to judge whether it was worth all this effort. He was supposed to be a holy man, but he looked more like a warrior.

  Michael. The Archangel. God’s champion.

  My brother’s namesake.

  Micky stood staring at the form for a while. Then he turned and went outside without saying a word. I touched Michael’s foot before I followed. The weepy lady in the back looked right through us.

  We walked slowly around the perimeter of the church. The sidewalk was wide, and there were young trees planted in large squares of earth at regular intervals. They didn’t do much to cut the suns glare. Small, bronze plaques were set into the pavement near the trees. The metal was a dark blue-green with age.

  As we walked, my brother looked down at the plaques.

  “You remember Dad telling us about these trees?” he asked. “Well, not these trees, exactly. These are replacements. But the originals?”

  “No. Not really,” I said.

  He went right on, the older brother determined to pass me this piece of family lore. We walked down the long block toward Sixth Avenue, past the rectory entrance as he spoke, still with that far-away look in his eyes. “There was some retired army guy who started a marching band in the parish. I forget his name. A big deal for the neighborhood. A working-class boy makes good. Becomes an officer.

  “Well, he retires and comes back to the parish. Gets this marching band going. Uniforms and music, fifty, maybe a hundred boys. The pride of the parish. Then the First World War breaks out. The guy pulls some strings, gets back on active duty, and organizes a volunteer brigade. All those boys who grew up marching to his orders and trusting him . . .”

  It was hot and the light color of the sidewalk threw up glare. It was hard to see Micky’s expression very well. His voice was flat.

  “So off they go to the Big War. They get a huge send-off here. Flowers and speeches. The pride of the area, all those kids, all dressed up and eager to go . . .”

  We rounded Sixth Avenue at the rear of the complex. Micky had been looking at each plaque as we passed. Now he looked up and stared into the distance, down the long avenue that led south to the sea.

  “Most never came back, Connor. They were used to marching band stuff: moving in step, colorful uniforms, patriotic speeches. They got over there and what they got was interlocking fields of fire, machine guns, and artillery barrages. They were churned into mud.”

  Coming up Fifty-Ninth Street, he continued. “It destroyed the parish. They never forgave the commanding officer for taking their kids off to that butcher’s yard. There’s a tree planted here for each boy lost.”

  “That’s some story, Mick,” I said quietly. We were at the car again and stood facing each other across the hood.

  “Yeah, but do you get the point?” He asked. We got into the car and sat there in the stuffy quiet. Micky stared out the windshield for a minute, then let out a thin stream of air from pursed lips and turned to me.

  “Look, Connor. You’re different, all right? Even as a kid. Interested in weird things. Mom and Dad knew it. And you were stubborn . . .”

  “Still am,” I smiled. It didn’t make a dent in Micky’s seriousness.

  “You, always have to do things your way. On your terms. Look at graduate school. Yamashita. The way you make a living.”

  I said nothing, waiting to see where he was going with all this.

  “But the point is,” and here he turned to look right at me, “this is different. Let me be the cop here. We’re searching for Tomita right now. It’s just a matter of time.” I stayed silent. “I know what you’re up to,” he prompted, “You think you’re gonna trap him.”

  He said it with such finality that I knew there was no dodging the accusation. “We’ve got a good chance,” I protested, but he cut me off.

  “No. You listen to me. For once in your life, listen.” He was angry, but it wasn’t the usual loud anger. This was quiet and white hot, with a voice focused and sharp.

  “You can’t deal with this on your terms. This is not some fucking game or contest. The guy is a killing machine. He kills because he can. Because he has to.”

  “’Only where love and need are one,’” I quoted.

  “What?” He hissed.

&nbs
p; “ A line from a Robert Frost poem,” I said.

  He exploded. “Will you cut that shit out!”

  The air in the car was stifling. We were both sweating, but it was more than the heat.

  Micky paused a minute as if trying to contain himself. “Look at the trees out there,” he began again. “Every one of those kids thought he was going out to fight on his terms. Some romantic battle. Good and evil. Most never even came back in boxes. They’re bits of bone that get plowed up by farmers in Belgium.

  “You think all this martial arts stuff is gonna help you stop this guy? It’s not.”

  I started to protest, to tell him that the idea was to entice Tomita into a trap where we could deal with him. Besides, I explained, even if all else failed, there was Yamashita . . .

  Micky started the car and the air conditioning began to wash some cool air over us. It seemed to leech some of the tension from the atmosphere as well.

  “Connor, this martial arts stuff,” he said. “It’s a hobby. You’re good at it, but it’s a hobby. A sport.”

  “It’s more than that, Mick,” I said quietly.

  He waved that point away and swung the car out onto the road. We stopped at the light and watched the summer pedestrians.

  “How many people have you killed, Connor?”

  I said nothing.

  “Tomita’s killed two we know of. He tried to kill my partner.”

  The light changed and we rolled on. Micky stared straight ahead. “I don’t want him killing you.”

  We were quiet for a time. The familiar rhythm of driving acted like a tranquilizer: the whoosh of the air conditioner, the faint bumping of the tires as they hit road seams, the syncopated click of the turning signal. We watched the other cars and other people as if their presence were a guarantee of normality.

  Finally, Micky asked, “OK, what’s the plan? How do we do this?”

  “We?” I said.

  “We. You think I’m showing up at Mom’s with the bad news that some lunatic killed you?” He smiled a little at the thought of it.