by Todd Borg
JJ’s shiny green Infinity all-wheel-drive came bouncing down the dirt road across the meadow, turned down the highway toward Incline Village, and raced by me. I followed.
The guy drove way too fast. I could drive fast, too. I saw him put a phone to his ear. His driving wavered, but didn’t slow. He suddenly hit the brakes hard, turned off onto the overlook parking area above the lake, and stopped near the guardrail. There were no other cars.
I pulled up at an angle behind him, blocking his exit.
He got out, red-faced, shouting into his phone.
I walked up, grabbed his phone, and threw it over the edge into the woods.
“The hell you doin, man?! I knew you were an imposter.”
I took a good grip on the front of his designer sweatshirt and pushed him back against his car.
He fumbled in his pocket.
“Go ahead, push your panic button. I’m happy to explain to the world about how you sold out corporate secrets. When you get out of prison, no company will ever hire you again. You can do volunteer work as a street sweeper.”
“I...I didn’t do anything wrong. Stockholders have a right to know what goes on.” Jason stuttered his words.
“Your boss is Ryan Lear. You didn’t bother to even mention your discovery to him.” I twisted the fabric at his chest, lifted him up a bit.
“I was going to. Honest. The...”
I cut him off. “How much did Preston pay you?”
“I don’t know what you mean, man.”
“HOW MUCH!” With my other hand, I grabbed the fabric and belt at the front of his pants and lifted him a foot off the ground. “Tell me how much or I throw you over the edge.”
He strained to look down at the precipice behind him, eyes wide with fear.
I brought him back as if to swing him out over the guardrail, took two quick steps forward.
“WAIT! I’LL TELL YOU!”
I stopped my swing and released my grip. He fell to the asphalt and curled up in a fetal position, whimpering.
“I’m waiting.” I took out my phone and set it to video.
When Jason spoke, he whined like a little kid who got pushed over on the playground. His face was tucked into his hands making it hard to understand him.
“Sit up so I can hear you,” I said.
He slowly pushed himself up and leaned against the guardrail. I pressed the button on my phone.
“Mr. Laurence was going to make me a vice president after he got control of the company.”
“You sold out your boss for a title and raise in pay?”
He whimpered louder. “I’d have my own division. And I’d get to go on Mr. Laurence’s yacht. He said I could even bring my girlfriend to his horse ranch. She loves horses.”
It took control not to kick him over the edge.
“What was your discovery?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“I’m not asking you again.”
“Telomeres. Telomeres are the tiny components in cells that determine how cells age and when cells die. We don’t yet know what the driving mechanisms are for how telomeres behave. But we found something unusual in how they respond to high altitude. It suggests how the underlying mechanisms function. If we can use this to tease out how telomeres...” His breathing increased to shallow, rapid pants as panic set in.
“You might learn how to control aging,” I said.
I turned off my phone and left JJ at the overlook.
My case was going in multiple directions. I decided to concentrate on a single component and see if I could make some progress.
I called Street at her lab as I drove back down the East Shore. We talked a bit, then I told her about the lab report on Jeanie’s hair.
“Ryan has lost a good part of his world,” she said.
“Yeah. I also found out that the little piece of leather was kangaroo hide. Does that ring any bells? Have you heard of any clothing line that uses kangaroo leather? Or any other product made of kangaroo?”
“No. I didn’t even know that kangaroo hide was turned into leather. Of course, it’s obvious once you say it. But it never occurred to me before. Maybe try Diamond.”
I got Diamond on the phone and asked him the same question.
“No. Sounds exotic. You should ask Maria. She might know.”
“They have kangaroos in Southern Mexico?”
“Not the last I checked. But Maria... muy inteligente. Never know what she comes up with.”
“Cortez’s horses,” I said.
“As I said.”
I called Maria.
We chatted about Mustangs for a bit. Then I said, “Diamond probably told you about the body below Genoa Peak.”
“Sí.”
“I found a little piece of leather up there, bright red, small, like a piece of confetti. I sent it to a lab and they said it was kangaroo leather.”
“Kangaroo?” Maria said. “In this country. How strange. But then you said it was red. It must have come from someone’s clothes.”
“Yeah. I was wondering if you knew anything about kangaroo leather.”
“Me? Kangaroo? Owen, you are a funny man. I run a little horse boarding ranch on the other side of the planet from kangaroo country. What would I know about kangaroo leather?”
“I just thought it might be something you’ve heard of. Like maybe it was an equestrian thing, or perhaps backcountry people wear a certain something that is made of kangaroo leather.”
“No, Owen. I’m sorry. I’ve never known of any clothing or riding tack that comes from kangaroo. In fact, the only time I ever even heard of kangaroo leather was from when I was a little girl in Chiapas.”
“What was that?”
“It wasn’t even about clothing. The ranchers used bullwhips. They used to say that the finest bullwhips were made of kangaroo hide. So I’m very sorry that I can’t give you any more help.”
I thanked Maria for her time and hung up.
Bullwhips. I’d never even seen a bullwhip except for when the actors in Virginia City, re-enacting 19th century customs, fired their six-shooters and cracked their whips up and down the main street to the delight of the tourists.
Outside of acting, I had only a vague sense that bullwhips were made for driving cattle into pens and such. There would be no need for a bullwhip up on Genoa Peak.
When I got back to Ryan’s house, I went online and typed in bullwhips. On the second page of links I saw something called FMA. I clicked on it and went to a website about Filipino Martial Arts. They stressed the discipline of being able to use all kinds of different objects as weapons, from sticks to poles to bullwhips.
I looked around a little further and found that there was an FMA school in Reno.
I called and was told they had an evening class at 6:00 p.m. The man on the phone said I was welcome to stop by and discover my future of fitness, discipline, and self-defense.
FORTY-SIX
The FMA school was near the airport in Reno. I got off the freeway on Plumb, and turned east. Just before the airport entrance, I went north again and drove around the far end of the airport where the runway begins on the other side of the tall fence. A huge purple jet floated in out of the north, looking like a big boat that had slowed just to the point where it would drop out of planing mode and settle down into the water. It felt like the plane was 28 or 30 inches above the roof of the Jeep as it went by, and I resisted the urge to duck my head. The jet cleared the airport fence with several millimeters to spare, and its wheels puffed smoke as it kissed the tarmac a few seconds later.
As always, I marveled that such a big, ponderous, and complex machine could get off the ground. Yet even an ordinary guy like me could understand the bits and pieces of a flying machine, along with the principles that allowed it to get up into the atmosphere.
Although our ancestors would be astonished to see modern aircraft, creating and flying jet planes is relatively simple compared to manipulating DNA and the very essence of life�
��s processes. The new frontier didn’t look as flashy as big shiny jets, but it hinted at possibilities that would make flying machines seem mundane.
The address on my Post-it note belonged to one of six large commercial units in a long warehouse building. They each had oversized garage doors next to glass walk-in doors. A small sign said FMA OF RENO. The garage door was up.
The inside of the cavernous space was carpeted. A dozen people stood in three rows of four, facing a wall of mirrors. All but one wore a gi, the white robe that seemed to be universal to all of the martial arts.
Two of the students were women, and one was a boy of maybe 13 or 14. All had what looked like bamboo sticks, but colored dark brown, and they held them out in front of them at 45-degree angles.
The instructor stood with his back to the mirror. He too had a stick. As he called out commands, he demonstrated different positions with his body and with his stick.
I walked past the open garage door, opened the glass door, and entered a small office. The walls were unadorned concrete block painted cream, the floor was gray concrete with a large throw rug in garish colors that looked like a Walmart version of Persian.
A young man wearing a gi sat at a gray metal desk, eating a candy bar, talking on the phone. He nodded at me, and raised his index finger. Behind him was a window that looked out onto the dojo. The students all stepped into a new position, their left foot forward. They shifted their sticks to a new position. They moved mostly in unison.
“Yeah,” he said into the phone, his mouth full. “Yeah,” he said again. “Look, I got a customer. Gotta go. Right. Luv ya.”
He hung up, looked up at me, taking in my height, maybe wondering if it would be an advantage or disadvantage in FMA.
He finished chewing and swallowed. “Hey, man,” he said.
“I’m Owen McKenna,” I said. I handed him a card. “I’m working on an investigation that may involve your brand of martial arts. I’d like to ask a few questions about it.”
He studied my card. “McKenna Investigations. You’re a private detective?”
I gave him a polite smile. Ever gracious.
“Owen McKenna, private eye. Cool,” he said. “So what’s the deal? Did someone get killed?” He jerked his head toward the window and the class beyond. “Jimbo stresses non-violence to all of his students, just so you know.”
I nodded. “I’m sure he does. Is Jimbo the owner?”
“Yeah. I’m his assistant. I can tell you right up front, we’re not allowed to give out info about our students. Privacy. Plus, some of our women students are probably keeping their martial arts secret from their men. Maybe they got boyfriends slap ’em around, and they want it to be, like, surprise kaboom, guess you shouldn’ta slapped me one more time, right?!”
He looked at me for reaction.
“Right,” I said.
“Like to be there when that happens,” he said. He peeled back the wrapper from the rest of his candy bar, and popped it in his mouth.
“I understand that some types of FMA involve bullwhips,” I said.
“Kali,” he mumbled, chewing.
“Kali?”
His cheeks bulged with candy, made him look like a hamster. “Yeah. Jimbo got introduced to it in Manila. But he didn’t really pick it up until the school in LA.”
“LA a good place to learn Filipino Martial Arts?”
“Yeah. It’s actually in Long Beach. They got the best school for it in the country. Hands down. But they don’t teach bullwhips much from what I heard. Not like someone’s going to carry a bullwhip down the street. But Jimbo does a bullwhip segment in some of his classes. One of the principles of Filipino Martial Arts is using any object as a weapon. Impromptu weapons. You go up against a Kali expert, you’re not gonna figure out how he’s coming at you. A chair can be used in awesome ways. I spar with Jimbo often. And I’m pretty good. But Jimbo pretty much kicks my ass every time. You want to learn Kali, he’s the best teacher. You got a gi?” He chewed and swallowed.
I shook my head. “No.”
“Kali doesn’t require a gi. Kind of unusual that way. Not like Karate and other disciplines. But Jimbo’s personal rule says everybody’s gotta have ’em. He says it puts students in the right mental state. Martial arts are mental as much as physical. We sell gis, but you’re one long dude. You might have to go across town to the Korean Karate school to pick up a gi your size. But I can sign you up, now, anyway.”
“I’d like to watch a class first, if that’s okay.”
“Sure.” He pointed out the window. “Be my guest. Or, you might want to come back tonight and see a session on bullwhips...” he ran his thumb down the schedule, “Jimbo’s got his all-weapons class at eight o’clock.”
“Maybe I’ll do that. Tell me, do they ever make bullwhips out of red leather?”
“Never seen one up close.” He ran his tongue around his teeth, searching out hidden bits of candy. “But I’ve seen pictures of whips with red ends. Like they were dipped in blood. Makes them look like serpent tails.”
I thanked him and left, got some dinner, was back at 8:00.
The warehouse garage door was still open, letting fresh air in and helping the dojo cool down in pace with the natural cooling of the desert in the evening.
In the center of the far wall stood Jimbo in his gi. He held a bullwhip in one hand, the long tail portion coiled up next to the stiff handle and held by his fingers. About twelve or fifteen feet in front of him was a pedestal with a candlestick on it. The candle burned with a small flame, nearly invisible in the bright light of the dojo space.
Four students were spaced out as far as the big space would allow. They faced him, their backs to me. They too held bullwhips the same way, in their right hands. Two of the students were small and had their hair tied up at the backs of their heads.
I hung back at a good distance.
Jimbo spoke to them. “You don’t snap a bullwhip. You project it with a smooth throwing motion. With practice you will be able to project the whip exactly where you want it. The power of the bullwhip is in its speed. The intimidation of the whip is in its sound. The crack you hear is the tip of the whip breaking the sound barrier. In fact, the upper speeds of bullwhips have been estimated to approach one thousand miles per hour. This is bullet territory. So even though the end of the bullwhip has very little mass, you can imagine that it can inflict great injury. Small bullets have very little mass, too, and we all know what they can do.
“So take great care when practicing your whip thrusts. Until you are an expert, it is hard to predict where the whip will strike. And always remember that if you were to actually hit a person with your whip, you would create a serious wound. Without much effort you can take out a person’s eye. With a little more effort, you can take off a person’s ear or even their nose. If you were to strike a person, whether by accident or not, a prosecutor could treat it just as if you’d fired a gun at them. Using a bullwhip on a person is considered assault with a deadly weapon. There are situations where it may be justified. But like using a gun, you’d better make certain that you are in mortal danger, and you have no alternative. Do I make myself clear?”
None of the four students said a word.
“Okay. Here is a basic thrust.” Jimbo opened his fingers. The long end of the bullwhip dropped to the ground. He brought the handle back, then arced it over his head, thrusting it forward and down almost like a fastball pitch. The leather whipped through the air, and snuffed out the candle flame with a crack that sounded like a .22 revolver.
Jimbo said, “Please step up to the candle.”
The four students converged on the candle.
“You will notice that the wick is still in place, and the candle has no cuts in it. That indicates that my whip didn’t touch the wick or the candle. It merely cracked the air a half inch away from the wick and blew out the flame. Now return to your places.”
The students went back to the edges of the room.
Jimbo left t
he candle unlit, and returned to his earlier position. This time he thrust the bullwhip at a slight angle. The crack was less intense. The main portion of the candle and candle holder flipped off onto the floor. The pedestal wobbled. The top two inches of the candle rocketed through the air like a slap-shot hockey puck and smashed into the wall between two of the students. They both jumped back, flinching.
“That is what happens if you strike an object,” Jimbo said. “Now watch again as I move my arm in slow motion.”
He ran his hand and arm through the arc in slo-mo, the limp whip dragging on the floor.
“I want you to practice running your hand through the throwing arc. Do it real slow. Go ahead. Ten times each.”
They each mimicked his motion, at slow speed. Jimbo walked over to the person on the right rear and helped him, holding his arm, demonstrating the position.
He returned to the front of the room.
“Now I want you to try to crack the whip. Same exact motion. But faster. Remember, you don’t snap the whip. There is no jerking back with your arm. Just a forward throw. Don’t worry about your aim, although be very careful to throw directly in front of you. You are each separated by enough distance that there will be no danger. Your goal is to use a smooth arm motion and to make the whip crack loud and clear. Okay? Give it a go.”
The students all did the throwing motion, some fast, some jerky. Only the woman in the left front corner made the cracking sound on the first throw. Her motion was smooth as if she’d done it a thousand times. The others struggled, their whips hitting the floor. One accidentally let go of his whip, and it flew through the air and hit the end wall next to Jimbo. Jimbo picked it up, carried it back, and spoke in low tones, demonstrating how to grip the whip.
The woman at the left front cracked her whip over and over, each crack louder than the last. The other students watched her success, mimicked her motion, began to crack their whips, too.