by John Donohue
A polite rippling of applause made me sit up a bit straighter and open my eyes. A press conference like this is well scripted, and Dean Ceppaglia had briefed me carefully on my role. The notoriety of the case—complete with a string of murders, the almost fatal attack on Art and his long, slow climb back to health as well as the violent showdown at Samurai House—was too good to pass up. Like a shark smelling blood in the water from a great way off, Domanova and his cronies had carefully crafted the event we were currently attending. It served as a way to link the university, the fruits of capitalism, and the triumph of good over evil in one neat photo opportunity.
If Domanova had his way, I would have been nowhere in sight. But the showbiz potential of the “battling professor” getting his reward was too good for anyone to ignore. I had spent my convalescence fending off moronic reporters asking questions like “Is the pen really mightier than the sword?” Now this.
But I rose on cue and Mr. Takano, a prominent lawyer representing the Japanese sensei, presented me with a ceremonial katana. The dark scabbard glowed with a somber light. Takano was a thoroughly modern Japanese executive, but he held the sword with respect anyway and turned it over to me in the prescribed manner the Japanese have for sword handling. I received it with equal gravity and wrapped it in a brocade bag.
Domanova watched impatiently, petulant at being off center stage and eager to move on to the central act in the play. He sprang up from his seat when we had concluded. With a flourish, the president announced the creation of an institute for Asian Studies at the university. His relentless trolling for wealthy patrons in the turgid waters of the Samurai House reception had paid off. Through a convoluted and, I hoped humiliating, courtship, the Mad Leader had seduced Randall C. T. Ong, a local software magnate, into endowing the institute.
The deal had been brewing for weeks. Joseph Ceppaglia, whose new hobby was serving as my guardian angel, had gotten wind of it. The dean knew that the sudden gush of money would present opportunities. The president would briefly spew goodwill, scattering minor favors like feudal indulgences. So Ceppaglia pulled strings and whispered in ears, finessing the obscure process of memo, elliptical conversation, and counter-memo that is academic decision making. The dean is not a bad guy. At the end of it, he had come away with exactly what he set out for while convincing everyone else that they had gotten what they wanted instead. I had to acknowledge that Yamashita was not the only master present that day.
Ceppaglia was sitting on the other side of me. He smiled placidly as Ong was introduced and the gift acknowledged. I shifted slightly in my seat-the hairline fracture in my thigh and the muscle damage was about healed, but I still got stiff now and then. As I moved, the letter in my breast pocket crinkled faintly. The dean had handed it to me earlier in the day with a big smile. In the round, pretentious prose that was his hallmark, Domanova had written to appoint me academic coordinator for the institute. What relation the title had to anything I would actually do was anyone’s guess.
“What it means,” Ceppaglia had said quietly, “is that you now have a job. A real job. Don’t screw it up.”
As Ong spoke, I looked around at my new colleagues. Ceppaglia chewed gum furiously and threw significant looks my way, convinced that through superior scheming he was responsible for everything going on. Domanova was scanning the crowd, mentally noting who was present and who was not, amending his black list accordingly. Members of the faculty sat there, stone-faced and outraged at Domanova’s good fortune, seething ineffectually and dreaming of assassination.
When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.
The long ritual of institutional congratulation and shameless self-promotion eventually petered out in a champagne reception. We walked, squinting in the afternoon sun, and reached the awninged shade of the presidential manse. Yamashita stood to one side with the lawyer. The two men stared into the crowd and talked quietly in Japanese. They looked like zoo visitors watching gorillas, alternately fascinated by the species similarities and secretly revolted by the thought that they were closely related.
We stood by the bar for a while. Art leaned on it. They can do amazing things with microsurgery, but I still couldn’t believe that they reattached his hand. Even in the afternoon sun, I got a chill. For a moment, I could smell the damp and blood on the subway platform. I could see the stump of Art’s wrist pulsing fluid.
I gestured at it. “How’s the therapy going?”
He gingerly rotated his hand and wrist, watching it critically. Then he grinned up at me. “Slow. But it’s better than looking like Captain Hook.”
“Almost worth it to see Mick in a pair of green tights,” I said.
Art sipped appreciatively at his champagne. “True. He never did grow up.”
Micky didn’t have a comeback for once. He just looked at us with a disgusted expression on his face.
I was identifying the key players at the reception to my brother and Art when Yamashita introduced the lawyer, Takano, to us. The man had absolutely no accent: his English was fluid and precise. He still bowed slightly when we were introduced, however. Some things are hard to change.
“Mr. Burke,” he said as he unzipped his little folder, “I am pleased to be able to present you with the reward for the return of Ittosai’s sword.” He wasn’t really pleased, of course. No one likes to give away $25,000. But he hid it nicely behind gracious formality.
I nodded, equally gracious, and fished a piece of paper out of my pocket. “Takano-san,” I replied. “It was nothing. I am honored, but I would be grateful if you would have separate checks made out in three names.” This attracted at least one person’s attention: Bobby Kay floated in the background, drawn by the scent of money.
Takano took the paper I gave him and frowned. Yamashita murmured something and Taka no’s look cleared. Then he placed his folder down on one of the cocktail tables and carefully filled out blank checks with the names. Bobby edged in closer for a peek. Takano finished writing, made some notes on a form, and asked me to sign to acknowledge receipt of the reward. I did. He zipped up his little folder, bowed to us, and then left.
Cops can’t accept reward money. But a private citizen like myself can share it with anyone he wants.
Bobby Kay staggered away. As he lurched toward the bar, he bumped into Ceppaglia. Smooth veteran of decades of cocktail parties, the dean swerved around Bobby, never spilling a drop from his champagne glass. “That man looks absolutely appalled,” he commented to us as he approached.
“Well,” Micky said, “that’s good. Because he’s appalling.”
“You know,” I said to Micky, “I thought Bobby would make a bigger stink about claiming the reward for himself.”
My brother smirked as he drank some champagne. He closed one eye the way my dad used to do when he was thinking. “Well,” he said judiciously, “I explained to him that a murder is a complicated thing. You don’t want to muddy the waters unnecessarily. It makes people wonder things.”
“Such as?” Ceppaglia asked.
“It makes people wonder things like maybe Reilly’s murder was some half-assed publicity stunt gone wrong. Or that maybe it wasn’t and Bobby got into contact with Tomita later and promised to set you up in exchange for the return of the sword because he cut some corners and hadn’t insured it properly. And that maybe he hired those two goons as his backup if things went wrong. Which they did.
“So I got him to agree that it wouldn’t be good to pursue his claim to the reward money, especially since it might make me ask how come his fingerprints were on the knife.”
“Were they?” Ceppaglia asked.
My brother waved the question away. “Who knows.”
Ceppaglia looked from one of us to the other. “But I thought you said Connor broke Tomita’s neck!” he protested.
“Gee,” Micky said, “I think I forgot to tell Bobby that.”
I looked for a minute at the checks Takano had given me. As a Burke, you don’t see that many zer
o’s associated with money that often, even after the three-way split. Then, with a grin, I handed one to Mick and one to Art. “You’ll notice,” I said, “that they’re made out in your wives’ names. Make sure they get’ em, OK?” I said.
The two men looked at me. For once, my brother seemed at a loss for words. He nodded and said, “Thanks, Connor.”
“Yeah, well .. .”
Yamashita smiled at me. It is a rare event. “You are a good student, Burke.”
From him, it was saying a lot. I bowed in his direction. “I’m a slow learner, Sensei.” Sometimes I still dreamed about the fight with Tomita, and in the torpid unspooling of memory, the scars on my back still burned.
Yamashita’s eyes squinted in that bullet head of his. “No,” he said to me. “Any fool can wield a weapon.” He took a final sip of champagne. “You, on the other hand, have learned honor quite well.” My sensei set his glass down, bowed to us all, and turned to go. He flowed through the crowd and out of sight.
After a while, both the champagne and the conversation began to bubble off I quietly wandered around the back garden, gingerly edged along the hedges, and made it out of the yard without being spotted by the president. I felt like a kid playing hooky.
It was quieter out here, and across the playing fields the campus glowed faintly in the hushed, humid air. From a distance, it seemed like an OK place to be.
My brother came up to me. “What now?”
I shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Whaddaya think,” he prompted, “time for one more drink?”
We looked at the crowd that filled Domanova’s backyard, eyed each other, and smiled, then spoke simultaneously: “Nah,”
“I gotta go,” Micky said. “Barbecue tomorrow?”
“Count on it.” My brother looked intently at me and patted my shoulder. He started to say something, but stopped.
We nodded at each other, a recognition of things shared that are beyond words. Micky went back for Art. I stood for a while, enjoying the sensation of just being alive. Then I wandered off, over the grass and into the warmth of a season still flush with possibility.
About the Author
John Donohue is a nationally-known expert on the culture and practice of the martial arts and has been banging around the dojo for more than 30 years. He has trained in the martial disciplines of aikido, iaido, judo, karatedo, kendo, and taiji. He has dan (black belt) ranks in both karatedo and kendo.
John has a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. His doctoral dissertation on the cultural aspects of the Japanese martial arts formed the basis for his first book, The Forge of the Spirit. Fiction became a way to combine his interests and Sensei, the first Connor Burke thriller was published in 2003. John Donohue resides in Hamden, CT.