by Marc Olden
But a half hour later, bubbling and happy, she called back at the dojo, and Decker made a date to meet her in two hours. All of this caused him to want to do something to LeClair. All of it reminded him of the time when his life was not his, when others had ruled him.
Manfred Freiherr Decker (named for Baron Manfred von Richtofen, the legendary Red Baron and World War One flying ace) was born in 1951, in Yorkville, Manhattan’s oldest and largest German neighborhood. His father owned a restaurant amid the beer halls, cabarets and sausage shops of East Eighty-sixth Street. His mother sang at the restaurant and on a local radio show aimed at the city’s German-Americans. When the Korean War broke out, his father, a lieutenant in World War II, was recalled and died near Pusan when a captured North Korean pulled the pin on a grenade, killing himself and the lieutenant. His mother then sold the restaurant and, leaving Manny with uncaring relatives, went to Hollywood to pursue a career in musicals.
At the age of twelve Manny was reunited with his mother. Years of abuse, neglect and bad food had left him weak and sickly, a quiet boy who had not known a day without fear. His mother, having risen no higher than bit player in Hollywood, had returned to New York to marry a talent agent. The agent, obsessed with his clients and his own career, had no interest in a stepson, seeing, him as little more than a nuisance. “He’s made it twelve years without me,” said the agent. “No reason he can’t do another twelve without me following him everywhere.”
In his new Greenwich Village neighborhood, Manny, as he’d always done, kept to himself. And because he was a loner and a new face, because he was thin and physically weak, he became a target. There were fights with Italians, Irish, Puerto Ricans, with a frightened Manny the loser almost every time. Uptown blacks, prowling the Village on weekends in search of easy prey, found it in Manny. Money, a wristwatch, a winter coat, schoolbooks were taken from him by force. By the time he was fifteen, he had been knifed twice. A chest X ray for one slashing revealed that Manny had once contracted tuberculosis. Two small spots were found on his right lung; both were now calcified and apparently harmless. It explained his constant weakness, the fatigue that never seemed to leave him.
It also meant tests to determine whether or not his body had completely healed itself. While the tests proved it had, they also added to the fear that had weighed him down all his life.
“Christ, what do you want me to do?” his stepfather asked Manny’s mother. “Can’t nursemaid him and my clients twenty-four hours a day. Let him carry a knife himself. Lift weights. I’ll pay for it. Send him down to the Y. If nothing else, maybe they’ll teach him to run faster.”
At the local YMCA, it wasn’t weight lifting or running that caught the boy’s attention. On the second floor he paused in front of an open doorway to watch a karate class. Empty-hand fighting. The instructor was an American, small and wiry, with a close-cropped military haircut and the quickest fighting moves Manny had ever seen. Not only were his moves deadly, they were beautiful. Manny couldn’t take his eyes off him.
The class, men and women in gis, went through basic punches, blocks, kicks, then did light sparring and finished with katas, formal exercises featuring prearranged actions and corresponding correct responses. At the end of the class Ran Dobson, the instructor and a Marine sergeant stationed on recruiting duty in Manhattan, teamed with a handful of advanced students to rehearse a demonstration scheduled for a New York high school.
The advanced students, all bigger than Dobson, attacked him with full force, first one at a time, then two, three, four. Defending himself with ease, the small Marine exhibited a beauty and power that mesmerized Manny. The students attacked with clubs, a chair and each time Dobson triumphed. With his hands tied, he defeated three men.
Using a hunting knife, one student rushed Dobson, slashing at his face, knees, driving the long blade toward his stomach; always the little man defeated his attacker, sometimes adding comical touches to the fighting that brought laughter from Manny and the rest of the class.
When the demonstration rehearsal ended to applause, Manny, who rarely spoke to an adult, entered the room to speak to Ran Dobson. All thoughts of weight lifting were forgotten. Manny had found something better.
He studied Shotokan with Dobson for two years. The thirty-two-year-old soft-spoken Marine, a native of Oklahoma, also held black belts in judo, kendo, jujitsu; he was self-educated and, via correspondence courses, was about to complete a third year of college. His sense of irreverence was to rub off on Decker, who idolized Dobson, his first sensei, teacher. Shotokan was demanding, an aggressive and strong Japanese style of karate, which Dobson executed with a precise and lethal grace. Manny practiced that same way: exact and with full speed, full power.
Karate, stressed Ran, was a training of both body and mind, a discipline to be applied to every facet of one’s existence. It was a way of thinking, a plan for living and, above all, a way of developing morality. Lacking these goals, all training was in vain; no amount of fighting skill could ever compensate for a lack of character. “Put a load of books on a donkey’s back and you still got yourself a jackass,” said Dobson. “As for fighting, you do it when you can’t run away, when you can’t talk your way out of it, when you can’t back down. You heard me. I said back down. When you can hurt a man and don’t, then you’re worthy of the skill you carry around. You can be trusted with it and that’s your character, your strength.”
Ran explained the need for power in karate techniques, for attacking precisely and with all of one’s strength. Destroy the enemy with one punch, one kick. “If you hit him once and don’t stop him, he’s going to inflict on you what is called bodily harm. You will then come to resemble hammered shit, assuming you live to resemble anything at all. Put your heart and soul in it. Nobody ever got a medal for finishing second in a fight.”
Manny became obsessed by karate, its techniques, history, philosophy. So determined and persistent was he that often he practiced with Ran Dobson before and after regular workouts. He read the books on the martial arts and Japan recommended by the Marine and he attended practice even when ill or injured.
“You seem to know the first rule,” the Marine said. “Don’t bother unless you want it bad. Real bad.”
Manny did.
As Manny became stronger in body and mind, more confident and skilled than the other students, Ran worked him harder, a reminder that in karate, as in life, one never stopped learning. The training was sometimes done to exhaustion, with Manny being made to practice after the others had finished. Daily workouts, whether in the club or at home, were Dobson’s orders, for he recognized that persistence was Manny’s true talent Having achieved something for the first time in his life and having eased the fear he’d always lived with, the boy gladly did as his teacher asked.
Outside of the dojo, there were encounters that could not be avoided. When a black youth threatened to crush his skull with a chunk of ice unless he handed over his boots, Manny broke three of his ribs with a single side kick. Two members of an Italian street gang, remembering how easily they had once beat him, attempted to rob him at knifepoint; Manny broke the knife wielder’s elbow and knocked the other unconscious.
“You’ve sent out a message,” said Ran. “I think it’s been received.”
The Marine was right; the incident with the gang members marked the last attack on Manny in his neighborhood.
On the day that Dobson awarded Manny his black belt he mentioned his own upcoming transfer back to Japan. A new club was opening in New York, however, to be headed by a sixth dan Shotokan instructor from Tokyo. “I’ve written him about you,” said Ran, “and he expects you in class when he arrives. You’re born to a dojo, so don’t let go. It’ll serve you in more ways than one. Gonna miss you, good buddy.”
They embraced. Trying to hide the tears, Manny turned away. When he looked around again, Ran Dobson was gone. When Manny next saw his sensei, the Marine would be dead.
Recognizing Manny’s dedication and ability,
his new Japanese instructor worked him even harder than Ran had. By the age of nineteen, he had become one of the East Coast’s top tournament fighters, consistently defeating older and more experienced opponents; there was no one in his age group who could compete against him. He won his neidan, his second dan, from the new instructor, who refused to award that rank to anyone but Manny for four years.
Training meant more to him than the liberal arts course he had signed up for at New York’s City College; he’d only done that to avoid serving in Vietnam, having no real idea of what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. Except for karate. In his third year, he flunked out, to be drafted just before his twenty-second birthday. At the induction station, every fourth man was pulled out of line and assigned to the Marine Corps. Manny, remembering Ran Dobson, changed places with the man beside him and was soon on his way to Parris Island.
Karate training and discipline prepared him to survive a brutal boot camp; he emerged as one of the top in his class—his appearance was all creases, spit shines, jarhead haircuts—and was chosen for embassy guard training, assigned first to Okinawa, then in 1974 to Saigon. In Saigon, he worked out with South Korean soldiers, training in Tae Kwan Do for a year and improving his kicking and throwing techniques. The South Koreans, feared by the Viet Cong more than any other troops, were tough, often refraining from pulling punches even in practices. Tournaments were brutal and injuries were common; still, over a period of months Manny defeated seven of the South Koreans’ best fighters without a loss. He was unbeatable. His confidence had never been higher.
And then he fought Robbie Ambrose, a SEAL and the only other American besides Manny to enter the tournament against South Koreans, Japanese, Chinese and Thai fighters. He had never heard of Ambrose, who had been stationed at other Vietnamese bases before being assigned to Saigon. Both .Manny and Ambrose made it through eliminations to face each other in the final bout. Before one thousand onlookers, Ambrose gave Manny his first defeat in years, damaging his collarbone and loosening teeth. The injuries didn’t upset Decker; losing did.
His confidence was shaken. The fear almost returned.
He would clash with Robbie in Vietnam again, this time when Ambrose was with the Englishman Sparrowhawk and another American SEAL, Dorian Raymond. On that occasion Decker would have an M-16, but it would not erase the memory of his defeat at the hands of Robbie Ambrose.
Not long after that match, someone at the embassy decided to pull a surprise inspection at the GR Point on a nearby base. This was the Graves Registration Point, where the processing, embalming and identification of dead soldiers took place. The surprise inspection was to check on a rumor that heroin was being smuggled back to America in the corpses of dead GIs. Decker, because of his karate and proven ability with weapons, was picked to head a three-man escort accompanying two officers on a trip to the base, located just outside Saigon.
At the GR Point he came across the body of Ran Dobson, resting in a reefer, a refrigerated container. The sight of the chilled corpse almost made Decker faint; in death the Oklahoman looked even smaller and surprisingly relaxed, as though he’d figured out the joke but was reluctant to explain it to anyone else. He had arrived in Vietnam yesterday morning and was dead by nightfall, the victim of “friendly fire.”
“American gunship,” said the quartermaster. “One of ours wasted him. Happens all the time. A mistake, is all.”
Mistake. The whole fucking war was a mistake and Decker now hated it more than he had hated anything in his life. Had the grieving embassy guard not met Michi Chihara then, his hatred might have seriously corroded him.
But he lost her, too, and coming so soon after Ran Dobson’s death, it closed his heart against all commitment. Life was faded flowers and the taste of bitter wine, a series of disillusionments one after another.
Back in “the world,” in New York, he drifted into an outsider’s occupation, into police work, where it was well within the rules to get close to no one and to use everyone. And to show that Ran Dobson’s life had not been a waste, despite the manner of his death, Decker trained as hard as he ever had in his life. He also drifted into marriage with a woman whom he did not love; on his part the marriage had been an act of generosity, originating in polite indifference. Sex, the thing that had attracted him to her, was not enough to hold them together for long.
When he was ready, when he once more felt himself unbeatable, he yielded to pressure to again fight Robbie Ambrose. Robbie, a native Californian, had now settled in New York, taking a job with Sparrowhawk and the giant security firm Management Systems Consultants. For Ambrose, who had become an outstanding fighter, this was to be his last point match before switching to full-contact karate, something which had never interested Decker. The match took place in Madison Square Garden before a sellout crowd. Decker had never been better. He could not lose.
He did. And was almost crippled for life.
The fight was action from start to finish, with each man trying to be the first to score three points, theoretically three killing blows. When time ran out, a referee and four judges had the match even, two points apiece. Both men then fought two overtimes; it was in the final overtime that Robbie dropped Decker to the mat with a vicious sweep, taking both legs out from under him, before connecting with a stomach punch, then accidentally falling on Decker’s right knee. And breaking it.
Victory to Robbie. And agony for Decker, who heard and felt the ligaments and tendons rip in his knee and screamed before passing out from the pain. At the hospital, two doctors told him he would never run again. He would always walk with a limp. Karate, or any sport for that matter, was out of the question. Forever.
The fear returned.
And then he thought of Ran Dobson. First and only rule: Don’t bother unless you want it bad. Real bad. Ain’t the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.
In his hospital bed, a drugged Decker, his right leg in traction, slowly punched the air in front of him. When he had done that twenty times, he lifted his left leg in short, slow kicking motions. Training again, Ran. Dog’s fighting back.
It was eleven months before he returned to Nick and Grace Harper’s West Side dojo. By then he had strengthened his knee with weights, therapy, running. In weeks he was training hard. He learned to dodge and shift faster, using lateral movements rather than putting pressure on his knee by moving back to evade attacks. He improved his timing, increasing his speed so that he could get the jump on opponents without having to move much. His hand speed was now the best it had ever been.
He ran daily, jumped rope, lifted weights to keep the knee strong. But it would never be as strong as it had been before the accident. Still, there were those who thought he was better than the old Manny Decker.
Robbie Ambrose had deliberately broken his knee and Decker knew it. Robbie hadn’t forgotten their last encounter in Saigon, when Decker, at gunpoint, had prevented him, Sparrowhawk and Dorian Raymond from walking off with fifty thousand dollars of CIA money. Everyone else saw the broken knee as an accident. Decker, however, knew better.
To retain his newly regained confidence, he pushed all thoughts of Robbie Ambrose into his subconscious. And in time, Decker almost forgot that he still feared him.
Fear. Because of it Decker made love to Romaine in darkness, afraid to see her face and not wanting her to see his. By allowing her to love him, he had become responsible for her. Sex had drawn him to Romaine; her need for love had complicated the arrangement. Who was tonight’s mercy fuck really for? Romaine? Michi? Decker’s career?
Romaine wanted Decker. But the one thing he had to give, himself, was no longer his to give. It belonged to another.
In the darkness she said, “Let’s go away this weekend. I’ve got the money.”
“Can’t,” he lied. “Have a tournament coming up. I’m refereeing and putting on a demonstration.”
“Oh. Well, maybe some other weekend.”
“Maybe. How’d you get so ri
ch, all of a sudden?”
“Dorian. He gave me almost a thousand dollars.”
“Still getting lucky at Atlantic City?”
“No. We had lunch. He wants to get back together again and he told me he’s working on some kind of deal that’s going to make him rich for life.”
Decker held her hand, hating himself. “What kind of a deal makes a man rich for life?”
“He wouldn’t say. He likes to brag, but he kept quiet for a change. He did tell me about some new opening last night he’d gone to. Some auditorium or arena out on Long Island. Lots of celebrities, big names.”
She sat up in bed. “You’re not going to believe this, but you know what he said? He said the auditorium doesn’t have the right number of seats. Some lawyer for the auditorium, some Greek guy, came up with some scheme to cut down on the number of seats but nobody’s supposed to know about it. Dorian thinks it’s real smart what the Greek guy did. He likes those kind of flashy people, Dorian. Me, I think you can be too clever sometimes.”
Decker said, “I’ll go along with that. Sly little devils, these lawyers. And you say this one’s Greek?”
10
TREVOR SPARROWHAWK FELT EXHILARATED, as he always did when the hunt was on. This morning he stepped from a chauffeured limousine and, whistling a bit of Haydn’s “The Seasons,” walked into a Wall Street office building near the Federal Reserve Bank. Minutes from now he would know a bit more about his quarry, the physically adept Michelle Asama.
In the lobby he headed toward a private elevator being held for him by an attendant in a beige and yellow uniform. The elevator serviced only Management Systems Consultants, located on the top four floors of the forty-four-story building. The lobby directory, however, did not list the security firms or the names of any of its officers. An MSC guard, dressed as an elevator attendant, prevented anyone without the necessary coded identification from boarding the elevator.