The Man Who Fought Alone

by Donaldson, Stephen R.

  I’d already had more water than I knew what to do with. But this was hot, and it stung my skin like needles of bliss.

  While I soaked away my chills, I heard the door open and close as Deborah retrieved my clothes. When I finally emerged with a parboiled blush on my skin and a towel clamped around my waist, she had a steaming cup ready for me. The coffee smelled like nectar.

  On an ordinary day Ginny’s coffee was sludge. On a bad day it tasted like turpentine. I’d done most of the cooking so that we wouldn’t have to get our stomachs pumped after every meal.

  If Deborah wanted to seduce me out of my senses, render me too stupid to think, she had the right approach.

  She appraised me frankly for a moment, then nodded approval. “That’s a definite improvement.” Her mouth twitched into a grin. “Lose the towel, and it’ll be flawless.”

  Luxurious amber filled the glass in her hand. It smelled like Macallan’s, an old revered single-malt Scotch, more costly than blood. Against the stifled backdrop of the storm, I heard a dryer rumble softly.

  Sipping coffee to disguise my yearning, I tightened my grip on the towel.

  “Don’t rush me. Us Knights Errant are supposed to be shy. It’s in the manual.” Unsteadily I added, “You didn’t finish answering my question.”

  She treated me to a perplexed frown, as beguiling as a summer’s day. “Did you ask me a question? The last thing I remember you saying was about warmth.”

  “Back at the restaurant,” I explained. “I asked you where you and Lacone and Sternway were standing. In the lobby on Saturday. I want to know what you remember.”

  If she resisted, it would mean—

  I didn’t know what. Surely it would mean something or other.

  “That’s right.” She seemed to give herself a shake. “You asked me which direction I was facing.”

  I nodded dumbly.

  “And I said I’d tell you everything I could remember.” She looked me up and down. “Now?” she countered almost wistfully. “Can’t it wait?”

  I swallowed hard. “Now. Later I won’t remember my damn name, never mind Saturday.”

  And Bernie. And Hong.

  She sighed. “All right.”

  Deliberately she shut her eyes. For a moment she frowned in concentration. Then she turned to face away from me, toward the wall of her bedroom. “I’m in the lobby,” she murmured through thunder and rain. “The main entrance is there.” She nodded at the wall. “I arrived before Alex did. He’s usually late, I knew that. But I hoped I’d see you, so I came a few minutes early.”

  Fortunately she didn’t look at me while she spoke. The lines of her back and neck were alluring enough. Her eyes might’ve made me lose myself completely.

  “There aren’t very many people in the lobby. You aren’t one of them, and I don’t recognize anybody else.” Her tone sounded dreamy, distant with recollection. “I find a place to wait where I can watch the front doors and the hallway to the convention center, just in case. When Alex arrives, I turn more toward the doors.

  “He starts his usual flirting. I smile and talk without playing his game. He stands close to me, on my right, so he can touch my arm and stare at my breasts.”

  I visualized the lobby with her, tried to see what she saw. The registration desk at 10 o’clock. The doors at noon. Alex leering at 3. The convention center hallway at 7:30 or 8.

  The short corridor toward the restrooms at 8 or 8:30.

  “Eventually Anson joins us. He comes from the convention center. He stands two or three feet away on that side, facing Alex.” 9 o’clock. “Alex stops flirting. We make small talk.

  “Occasionally I glance behind me. I see you leave the hallway. I smile at you, but you don’t respond. You hesitate, looking around. Then you head for the men’s room. You’re almost running.” She chuckled softly. “I wonder if you’ve eaten something that doesn’t agree with you.

  “How am I doing?”

  “Don’t stop,” I warned her quickly. “Keep your eyes closed.”

  She continued to face her bedroom wall.

  Keeping my voice low so that it wouldn’t shake, I asked, “Did you see Sternway leave the convention center? Or did he just show up on your left?”

  Had she simply assumed—?

  Without hesitation, she answered, “I didn’t see him at first. Alex glanced in that direction, and I turned my head. He was ten or fifteen feet away.”

  “So you didn’t actually see him leave the convention center?”

  “No,” she admitted dubiously. “I guess not. But where—?”

  “As far as you know, he could’ve come from the men’s room?”

  Abruptly she turned back to me. Distress filled her eyes, darkened them until they looked bottomless. Her hands held her glass as if she’d forgotten it.

  “Brew—” she began, then bit her lip. “I don’t want to say that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” she protested, “it sounds like I think he could have killed Bernie Appelwait. And I don’t.

  “My God, Brew, he’s the Director of the IAMA! He’s had his own school in Carner for fifteen years. Every martial artist I talk to thinks he sits on the right hand of God.”

  I knew what she meant.

  “I know I called him a coward around women.” She might’ve been pleading with me. “But that doesn’t make him a murderer. The world is full of men who are terrified of women, and they don’t go around killing hotel security guards.”

  As she spoke, slow relief eased into my heart. One small muscle at a time, my distrust began to let me go. She didn’t plead for him personally. My nerves were sure. Instead she pleaded for her reality. In her world killers were people she didn’t know and couldn’t understand, men and women driven by demons that her mind refused to acknowledge.

  A different heat rose along my pulse.

  Of course, I ached to believe that she was exactly and only what she seemed. I couldn’t hide that detail from myself. It affected my own reality. As a general rule, however, crooks who needed to protect their accomplices didn’t try to convince me that other potential suspects were innocent.

  But I still had to be careful. Distrusting her was one thing. Distrusting myself was entirely another. Quietly I asked, “Did you say any of this to that cop, Detective Moy?”

  Deborah frowned like a wince. “No. He didn’t ask. I mean, his questions weren’t that specific. And I didn’t think of it. I was so shocked by what had happened—

  “Is it important?” she demanded. “Do you actually—?”

  I gave her a thin smile. “Relax. It’s my job to be suspicious.” Gripping my towel, I shrugged awkwardly. I hadn’t pursued all this with her because I distrusted Anson Sternway. “I’ve known too many people with blood on their hands.”

  I was one of them.

  “The fact is,” I continued more easily, “I like Sternway as a suspect. He pisses me off every time I see him. But murder isn’t just means and opportunity. It’s also motive. And for the life of me I can’t imagine why he’d want Bernie dead.”

  Even the bizarre fact that Ginny had found Hardshorn’s bag in Mai Sternway’s house didn’t shed any light. Ginny believed Mai wanted to frame her husband so that she could extort a fat divorce settlement. If Sternway went into that men’s room to protect Hardshorn, he was cooperating in his own financial castration.

  “I’ll tell Moy what you’ve said the next time I talk to him,” I added. “He’ll follow up on it if he thinks it matters. Until then—” I gestured hopefully with my coffee cup. “You’ve answered my question. I’m done.”

  All at once she raised her glass to her mouth and drained it. The Scotch brought tears to her eyes, made her breathe open-mouthed as if she’d swallowed a lump of fire.

  The rain sounded like scrubbing outside her windows, a storm to scourge away every doubt I had.

  Dropping her glass on the carpet, she wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands. When she could take a normal br
eath again, she lifted a tentative smile toward my face. “Well, if you’re really done—”

  I did my best to grin for her. “With questions, yes. Absolutely.”

  For the second time, she jumped at me. I caught her in both arms, forgetting all about the towel.

  We kissed like we were trying to drink each other down. And after that I forgot about any number of things.

  24

  I didn’t go to sleep. I was determined not to. Stretched out and deeply comfortable on Deborah’s bed with my arms around her, I didn’t want the night to end. I’d arrived at a place of peace that simultaneously soothed me and left me hungry for more. The ceaseless rain outside and the thunder bombarding the city like an exchange of Howitzer shells seemed to make staying where I was the most desirable thing in the world.

  But I must’ve drifted off without knowing it. And my dreams must’ve disturbed me, gnawing like beasts at the marrow of my bones. Otherwise I wouldn’t have gasped and fallen out of bed when the phone rang.

  For a moment I couldn’t get my bearings. Where was I exactly? And whose phone was that? It didn’t sound right—at once too distant and too piercing to mean anything except disaster.

  Deborah didn’t stir. Her nerves weren’t attuned to intimations of ruin—

  Lightning drove back the dark. I sprawled on the carpet in an unfamiliar bedroom, craning my neck toward an open doorway.

  The phone rang again. The sound didn’t come from anywhere around me. The phone wasn’t in the bedroom.

  The living room? The kitchen?

  When it rang for the third time, I recognized it.

  My cell phone. Which I’d left in Deborah’s small foyer.

  How long would it ring before it switched to voice mail? I didn’t know, so I jumped to my feet and ran, waving my arms blindly to fend off obstacles, collisions. Remnants of dreams confused my steps, hounding me like nightmares.

  Somehow I located a light switch on the fourth ring. Snatching up the phone, I thumbed the button to accept the call and panted, “Yes. Hello?”

  “Axbrewder?” a man’s voice demanded. “It’s about damn time.”

  I didn’t recognize the voice, but it dug into me, gouging too deep for such a small sound.

  “What—?” I stammered, floundering. “Who—?”

  “You’re in serious trouble, boy. You better get your ass on down here, and I mean right now.”

  The voice—“Moy?” I asked. “Detective Moy?”

  “You were expecting maybe your parish priest?” he retorted. “Where the hell are you? You’re supposed to be working.”

  Finally his tone worked its way through the scraps of my dreams. Edgar Moy, no question about it. I’d left my phone number on his voice mail. He didn’t ordinarily sound this exasperated.

  Back in the bedroom, a light snapped on.

  “I was asleep,” I explained uselessly. “Where are you? What’s going on?”

  “Martial America.” He paused, then added harshly, “There’s been a murder.”

  Abruptly the storm no longer raged outside. It crashed in my head, lashing through my skull like the wrath of the Almighty. Confined thunder knelled at my ears. But I could still hear him.

  “The guy who runs Traditional Wing Chun. Hong Fei-Tung. Looks like somebody broke his neck in his sleep.

  “Isn’t security here supposed to be your job?” Moy finished sweetly.

  Deborah emerged from the bedroom wearing a robe that would’ve been sheer in better light.

  I dropped to the floor like I’d had my hamstrings severed. “I tried to warn him,” I told the phone. But my voice was so small that Moy probably couldn’t hear it.

  “The way I see it, Axbrewder,” he informed me with a touch of his familiar disinterest, “there’s a whole shitload of stuff going on here that you haven’t told me about.”

  Hong. Hong.

  Christ!

  I’d tried to warn him, but on some level I’d known that wasn’t good enough. I should’ve protected him myself. But I hadn’t trusted my instincts.

  “Brew?” Deborah asked. “Brew? My God, what’s going on?” She sounded stricken.

  I trusted them now. Now that it was too late. I’d have Hong’s blood on my hands for the rest of my life.

  I swallowed at a knot of grief or fury. As clearly as I could, I announced to Moy, “I’m on my way. I’ll get there as fast as I can.” As fast as the storm allowed. Then I hung up.

  Deborah dropped to her knees beside me. “My God, Brew.” She put her hands on the sides of my face, forced me to look at her. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

  The cannonade in my head needed to break out somehow, positively required an outlet, but I could hardly form words, nothing that I could ever say would carry enough force to release what I felt. I had to whisper. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to speak at all. Not without screaming in her face.

  “Sifu Hong has been murdered.”

  As soon as I said the words, I knew who did it. Lightning etched the truth out of the tumbled chaos in my head.

  And I was responsible. Absolutely. Hong would still be alive if I hadn’t talked him into appraising the chops.

  It hurt so bad that I almost wailed aloud.

  She retreated with a gasp. “Oh, Brew.” Horror and tears filled her eyes. “Sifu Hong?” Her mouth trembled. “That’s terrible.”

  She didn’t ask, How did it happen? She asked, “What’re you going to do?”

  If I hadn’t wasted so much energy doubting her, I might’ve been able to do something in time.

  If I’d trusted myself—

  Thunder goaded me to my feet. Every blast and flail of the storm brought more into my head, pieces of the picture like shattered bones and streaming veins. I almost had it all, I was close—I still didn’t know why. Not exactly.

  But I knew exactly what I was going to do about it.

  Deborah rose beside me. She wanted an answer. Maybe she needed it. But I wasn’t ready. I had to know—

  As fast as I could with sheets of rain confusing my fingers, I dialed the number for Essential Shotokan.

  What time was it? 2:00 in the morning? That felt about right. I didn’t have my watch on.

  The number rang until I thought it would break my heart. Then Hideo Komatori answered warily, “Yes?” I heard vestiges of sleep in his voice.

  “Hideo, it’s Brew.” I couldn’t muffle my fury. It must’ve sounded like an attack. “Check on the chops.”

  He recoiled. “Brew-san? What do you mean? The chops are safe. We moved the case into my apartment this evening, as you advised. I passed it as I came to the phone.”

  No! I wanted to scream, the chops aren’t fucking safe! Somehow I stifled the storm. “Take another look,” I insisted. “Please.”

  A pause. “Very well.” The connection conveyed a dull thunk as he put down the handset.

  Deborah tried to get my attention. “The chops, Brew? I thought you said Hong—Has something happened to them?”

  I ignored her. With everything I had, I clung to the phone.

  “Brew-san?” Komatori’s tone had changed utterly. Now he sounded like he was fighting for his life. “They’re gone.”

  Of course.

  “The case is intact,” he went on. “But it’s been opened. All the chops are gone.”

  Of fucking course.

  “Brew?” Deborah pleaded.

  “Don’t ask me any questions,” I told Komatori. “I don’t have time to explain.

  “Sifu Hong has been murdered. Detective Moy is already there. I’m on my way, but I won’t be able to stop him. It’s only a matter of time, minutes, before he comes for Nakahatchi sensei.” Naturally. Who else would T’ang Wen accuse? “When Moy hears the chops are gone, he’s going to arrest your master.”

  Because of course Moy would assume that Nakahatchi had found the chops gone, believed Hong stole them, and killed Hong to get even. The fact that the case was in Komatori’s apartment wouldn’t
mean anything to Moy. Hideo had already demonstrated that he could sleep through the theft. He could’ve slept through a visit from his sensei as well.

  “You must explain,” Komatori put in. “Can this Detective Moy believe that my master killed Sifu Hong? That is insane.”

  “I don’t have time!” I shouted back. “Just wake up Nakahatchi. When Moy gets there, tell him about the chops. Don’t hide anything. And don’t resist. I know your master didn’t do it. I’ll clear him as soon as I can. Right now I have to go!”

  Before he could object, I hung up.

  Deborah stared at me wide-eyed. As I lowered the phone, she breathed, “The chops are gone.” She looked smaller, diminished by the sheer scale of the disaster. “Oh, God.”

  “Listen to me,” I demanded. As if I thought maybe she wouldn’t. “I have to get to Martial America. I don’t have time to talk, and I do not have time to explain.

  “I need directions. And I need you to make some calls for me. I can’t stay to make them myself, and once I’m outside I won’t be able to hear myself think.”

  “I have to call Sammy,” she offered in a small voice.

  “Do that last,” I ordered. Knowing Posten, he’d reach Martial America before I did. He’d teleport if he had to. If he weren’t already there. “First call Marshal Viviter. Professional Investigations. Tell him what’s happened. I have his cell phone number.”

  I recited it like I expected her to memorize it on the fly.

  She nodded gravely. Either she didn’t have any trouble remembering phone numbers, or she wasn’t listening at all.

  “Then call Ginny Fistoulari. My former partner.” I repeated her cellular number. “Tell her not to answer the apartment phone tonight. Not. Tell her to let the machine get it.”

  Our answering machine was one of the old-fashioned tape models. Once it started to record, it would keep going until the caller hung up. Or until it ran out of tape.

  Deborah nodded again. I had the sensation that I’d lost her, but I couldn’t afford to stop.

  “Then call Parker Neill.” I gave her a third number to remember. “Tell him what’s happened. Tell him I need him at Martial America. As fast as he can get there.”