by Chris Bauer
Magpie ushered them into the center of the barn floor, Philo’s only protection a mouthpiece and a steel cup. If Philo had to guess, his sparring partner outweighed him by thirty pounds, plus there was the flak jacket protecting his ribs and the padded gear on his head.
“Mr. Trout, meet Suki-san,” Magpie said. “You’ll go two minutes with him, take a break, do two more minutes, take another break, then a final two minutes. Then you’ll work with me. Consider him your heavy bag for today, Mr. Trout. He’s good for it, but he will hit back. However”—Magpie looked Suki-san in the eye—“nobody throws anything overly hard at the head. Not one punch. Stomach, ribs, arms, make it hurt a little if you’d like, but no headhunting. Got it?”
Philo stuck and ran, stuck and ran, then stuck, ripping off shots up and down Suki’s body, some heavy hands making his sparring partner wince when they caught him in the stomach and ribs, even with the padding. Philo’s approach: leverage, and the snap of his large wrists and hands. Suki retaliated with punches to Philo’s solar plexus that were hard enough to back him up and get an admiring nod from Philo before he waded back in. Intermission, then another two minutes of Philo throwing speed punches at Suki’s padded face, and light head shots designed to help with Philo’s timing, not bombs that could take the man out. Except one did. Suki landed face first in the dirt, shaking out the cotton candy between his ears when he raised himself to his knees.
“Shit. Sorry, man, so sorry. Magpie, I got a lot more in the tank. I thought I was being polite.”
“All well and good, Mr. Trout. Not to worry. He’ll be fine. You can stand down, Suki-san.”
Magpie removed his jacket, limbered his neck. He waved Philo into the center of the square, spoke in a low tone while eyeing his boss Wally, who was preoccupied with his phone.
“So here’s the deal, Trout. Don’t hold back with me. I wanna feel it. I want the boss to see what he’s hitched his wagon to. Because I’m not going to hold back with you. I want your best two minutes, and you’ll get mine. You get the better of me, you’re ready. I get the better of you, the boss maybe hitches himself to me instead. Just so you know, and as a frame of reference, my allegiance to Ka Hui means I will kill for that man. I already have.”
“Look, Magpie, I have no beef with you. C’mon, be reasonable, we can’t be trying to cancel each other ou—”
Magpie’s left hook glanced off Philo’s forehead, but the blow put Philo on notice, like a sledgehammer that had come dangerously close to shattering the bones around his eye socket. Magpie got back into a boxer’s stance as a right-hander and stepped in closer to Philo, about to engage again.
The punch to his forehead had come from the man’s left hand. Philo could ill afford to see the damage the right could do. He backed up a few steps and evaluated a smiling Magpie, who was relishing the respect and admiration that Philo no doubt had to have for the punch he’d just thrown.
That wasn’t quite where Philo was. A calming, inspiring—head-clearing—thought occupied his mind: this guy stands between me and four hundred thousand dollars.
Philo moved back inside, his head tucked between his fists, bobbed, weaved, then delivered an uppercut to Magpie’s double chin that lifted the big man off his feet. It wasn’t the gravity-defying aspect of a punch that raised three hundred plus pounds an inch or so off the dirt, it was the snapping back of the man’s head that did it. Magpie landed on his back outside the square, his wits scrambled, with Philo’s prospect of earning the large purse still intact.
“Was that necessary?” Lanakai said. “Seriously, Trout. This was supposed to be a sparring session. What the fuck?”
Magpie got no further than a sitting position, Suki now attending to him.
Philo looked Magpie’s way. “Sorry, guy, I got carried away.”
Magpie met his gaze, wiggled his jaw to make sure it wasn’t broken. He raised himself and managed a smile at the smaller man who’d just made a believer out of him. “I’ll live, Mr. Trout. Apology accepted.”
“That’s it, gentlemen. Let’s call it a day,” Lanakai said. “Trout. I trust you found this workout useful, maybe removed some of the cobwebs?”
“Sure. It reminded me I don’t miss this sport one bit. Tell me something, Wally: are you in the right ballpark with this fighter?”
“Your opponent? We shall see. Bigger than Suki-san, smaller than Magpie. But more of a killer than both these men combined. That’s the word. I have no choice. If you’re worried about your purse, I promise to pay you win or lose. Or your estate.” He paused. “That was a joke, Trout.”
“Yeah. Funny. But what about Yabuki? Will he honor the outcome after I, you know, KO his guy?”
All eyes were on Lanakai. Tough-guy crime boss, here and on the U.S. mainland. He couldn’t entertain the prospect of an unsatisfactory outcome of the fight. Philo could tell this from the man’s expression, puffy with emotion; could tell that this was serious business, and it was taking a toll.
Lanakai swallowed hard, blinked himself whole again, rallied. His grim, murderous bastard face returned. “You need to win, Philo. It will all be moot if you don’t.”
30
They rousted Kaipo at five a.m. She’d slept in her stretch workout clothes like she did the prior night. No knocking, no request for her to move away from the door. The entry was quick, efficient, and commando-like. Three men; Yabuki’s Yakuza thugs. Two dragged her out of bed, put her in cuffs, and chained her up in leg irons again. “You are moving,” the third Yakuza thug said, his gun drawn. “We have reached the home stretch. Today you learn your unmei.”
“My what?”
“Your fate.”
A push at her shoulder forced her to stutter-step toward the door. “I need to get my things…”
“No you don’t. All you will need is this…”
A cloth hood went over her head, making her gasp for air. She doubled over, put her head into her cuffed hands, tried to pull it up and over her head again, couldn’t get the leverage—
“Stop, you’ll smother yourself. This is not to suffocate you, it’s for travel. Stop fighting it—”
The man’s grip on her head through the cloth bag made her straighten up and quit the thrashing. She calmed herself with deep breaths, then thrashed violently while the men guided her out of the motel room, into the back seat of a car. Someone belted her into the center seat and tugged on the belt to make sure the shoulder harness was secure.
The car moved slowly through the parking lot, then slowly while on the local streets, then accelerated, had to be a highway, but the car was still in no hurry. Respecting the traffic laws, she told herself. To not draw attention. Dawn broke, the car driving into it, the sun lighting up the windshield and brightening the thin opaqueness of her black hood. She was between two men in the back seat, shoulder to shoulder, one taller than her on her right, the other shorter, based on where her shoulders touched his. No one spoke, five minutes, ten minutes, longer. She decided to change that, spoke through the hood.
“Where are we going?”
“Shut up,” the man on her right said.
“Why so nasty and mysterious?”
“Because you won’t like where we’re going. Shut up.”
“The chickens for sure didn’t like it,” the smaller man said, snickering.
The larger thug scolded his associate in Japanese. One word she recognized to mean “idiot.”
“Why are you treating me like shit? Your oyabun—”
“Quiet! We lost a good man because of you,” the larger guy said. “Oyabun… he is old-school Yakuza and Samurai, and does not tolerate people who do not follow orders. This relocation needs to be without incident. Which means you shut up, or we make you shut up…”
Ten, fifteen minutes passed this way, none of them speaking. The car suddenly left the blacktop and turned onto a dirt road, the potholes deep, the car rocking in and out and side to side, the seat belts doing their job. She wondered just how bad the terrain had to be off-road
for on-road to be the better choice, the car moving ten miles per hour at best. Five minutes of this and then the road settled down again, the car accelerating briefly, then an abrupt stop. The four doors opened and they dragged her out, two sets of hands under the arms, hustling her up and over what felt like a grassy knoll, her feet barely touching the ground. She listened to the surroundings to pick up on any sounds, heard little: no barking dogs, no traffic, no horses or sheep or cows, and no chickens, only wild crows cawing overhead. If they were on a farm, it was considerably underutilized.
Her captors pushed her through what sounded like a small gate with a spring, the gate snapping shut behind them. Still no clucking or other animal noises, only wings flapping and leaves rustling as birds took flight from nearby trees.
“Sorry, boys, but I’m not hearing any chickens,” Kaipo said, her breath short. She was now doing more walking but still being pulled forward. Some hutzpah with sarcasm, meant to hide her fear while eliciting information.
“You won’t. Shut up.”
They stopped. Someone searched through keys on a chain, and a minute later she went from overhead daylight to darkness, the air in the space a lot cooler.
Inside a building. A door opened, metal. No, not a door, another gate, this one sounding like chain link fencing. Once inside, the space they’d entered felt large, open. “Hello?” she called, a test, her voice raised. It came back in a short echo, but she did hear it, followed by a cawing crow. Her intuition was right, it was a large, open space, with a ceiling tall enough for birds to gain entrance and find interesting, but with abysmal acoustics.
“Quiet. Let’s go.”
A second entry opened, not a gate, a door, and after they pulled her through, this was where her journey ended. They sat her in a creaky chair with wobbly legs in a room of unknown size with a smell she couldn’t put her finger on, but it was penetrating, pervasive, and gag-inducing.
Then she had it: the stink of death. Her days as a cleaner-fixer for Ka Hui had given her the nose for recognizing it. Rooms large and small, living quarters, kitchens, basements, hot tubs, commercial and industrial buildings, garages, any number of closed spaces where someone or something had died or been murdered and she’d been tasked with cleaning up after the mess. But a very large number of somethings had died in this space, her intuition said, here and throughout the building.
“Hold still, I’ll undo your hood,” the larger thug said, reaching under her chin. “It will feel like it’s just in time, because I’m sure you’ll be losing your stomach momentarily. There’s a bucket in here. Use it when you puke. The restraints will come off later. Don’t get too comfortable.” Her light-deprived eyes adjusted to the change, his sarcastic smile greeting them. “You won’t be here long.”
With the hood off she could see her surroundings. The two unremarkable men in suits who brought her in; a long room, concrete blocks for walls; a smooth cement floor. A three-story ceiling crisscrossed by metal air ducts and the vestiges of electrical lighting, the low-hanging light bulbs on. This was the front end of an assembly line, with sinks, heavy tables, and a rubber conveyor belt. The floor was filthy, splotched black in spots and caked with small, scattered piles of unidentified hardened content that ruined its otherwise smooth surface.
She felt a slight rush of air against her ankles from under the door they’d used, which was heavy, industrial, and metal. The draft entered when another door in the building had opened and closed, stimulating the airflow and providing momentary relief from the accumulated stench. It also lifted dust and detritus off the floor, making it temporarily airborne.
Mixed in with the detritus, feathers. A closer look at the corners of the room, the rafters, the ductwork: more feathers. She was in an abandoned chicken slaughterhouse. How long abandoned? Long enough for desiccated chicken organs and parts to outlast maggots and other insects staining the floor, the piles of detritus way past hardening, on their way to fossilization. But where were they on Kauai? Not a clue.
And the moment that her one abductor had said would come, did: she needed the bucket for two jolting releases of her stomach contents. She’d seen and smelled much worse, knew much worse, some that had come by her own hand. But here, it was less the stench, more her nerves. She was finally getting the picture. The true embodiment of bait for Wally: the potential execution of a promise to gut her, maybe hang her body on a hook somewhere inside this slaughterhouse.
The door to her prison opened. One, two, three, four men entered, filling up the space on both sides of the entry, then a fifth. Mr. Yabuki.
“Ms. Mawpaw,” he said. “I trust your accommodations are quite… discomforting. Such is the nature of things. This is what you should expect going forward. But do not despair. You’ll be here only through the evening hours, until a certain contest is decided. Would you like some breakfast?”
“I want these chains off. I want to know where I am.”
“Nothing to eat, then?”
“Look at this place. You think I’d keep anything else down?”
“Gentlemen.” He was addressing his men but stayed focused on her. “Bring her some jug water. For drinking and washing. Bring two more empty buckets so she can wash and toilet herself. You will be hungry, Ms. Mawpaw. They will bring you something to eat later. Fruits and vegetables, something your stomach should be able to handle. Regarding where you are…”
Yabuki maintained his tunnel vision, which was still directed at Kaipo.
“I can’t bring myself to look at this place. This… prison. It is unholy. A grotesque affront to the Japanese people by your wartime United States of America. That is where you are. Gentlemen, remove her leg irons but keep her handcuffed, and keep her confined to this room. Ms. Mawpaw, I bid you sayonara until this evening.”
31
“Snacks. Where’s the cooler and the bag of snacks, sir?” Patrick said.
“The kitchenette,” Philo said.
The afternoon of the fight. After sixty-five bareknuckle bouts in venues around the country ranging from abandoned grain elevators to parking garages to school basements to closed malls, Philo knew to travel light. He’d arrive in his fighting clothes—jeans, cutoff tee, sneakers; steel cup; multiple mouthguards. Bottles of water for the cooler, plus Gatorade, oranges, bars of chocolate, Advil. His holstered Sig Sauer 9mm handgun, with an extra clip. Patrick found the cooler with the food in the cottage’s kitchenette, Philo’s gym bag next to it. Philo was in the bathroom, the door closed, talking on the phone.
Everything Philo had rattled off was in the cooler or the bag. With him busy toileting, and Patrick’s ear to the bathroom door making sure Philo actually was busy on the phone while toileting, Patrick picked up a nearby kitchen towel and considered it carefully. It wasn’t white, but it was close enough to be symbolic of it. When he checked Philo again he was still on the phone, he and Commander Malcolm synching their timetables. He unzipped a side pocket on the gym bag, folded the hand towel flat, and tucked it in. He whispered a preemptive apology. “I believe in you, Philo sir, but… forgive me. I don’t want you to die.”
Philo emerged from emptying his bladder and completing his phone conversation. “You check us down, Patrick? We have everything?”
“I did, sir. Yes.”
“Great.”
“But I’m confused, sir.”
“About?”
“Commander Malcolm. What you just told him on the phone, sir. A later start time for the fight, and he should go there by himself?”
“Yeah, about that. He’s too close to this bareknuckle clusterfuck, Patrick. He’ll lose his shit all over the Yakuza if he’s part of the fight. These pricks killed his fiancée; Evan won’t abide by any Japanese honor code. If he gets a chance he’ll come out blasting, go right at them. That wouldn’t end well for any of us. So now he’s going to get there too late; it’ll be after everyone’s gone. It has to be this way, bud. Too much of a risk otherwise.”
“I dunno, sir. Maybe he won’t believe you.
Maybe he shows up on time anyway.”
“It’s covered, Patrick. It’ll be fine.” A look through rustling curtains out the cottage window. Lanakai’s gold limo had arrived. “Our Ka Hui escort is here. Let’s go.”
Arriving at the farm, they passed the barn they’d used for the sparring session yesterday and headed into a jungle of trees where Philo’s SUV rental found tire ruts in the dirt. They were one of two SUVS and an RV that followed Wally Lanakai’s limo, the four vehicles bouncing through muddy pocks in the terrain. Philo didn’t have to ask who or what was in the other vehicles behind them. Insurance was the best answer, by way of men with guns. Their mood was somber, reflective, the silence a veil that was on them as soon as they’d reentered the farm property.
“You okay with all this, Patrick?” Philo said.
“I’m okay, sir.”
But Philo knew this barrage of new info that Patrick had learned about his identity had slammed his damaged employee with insights that even a person of average intelligence might struggle with.
“I’m here to help you sort this all out, bud. Mission accomplished, right? At least now you know your origin.”
“Mission accomplished, Philo sir.” After a beat, “I texted Grace about it, sir. She wants me to come home ASAP.”
“I heard from her, too. We’ll head home soon as we see this thing through. Either tomorrow or the next day.”
“You need to come back with me, sir.”
“I will, Patrick.”
“Alive.”
“Patrick—”
“Promise me you won’t do anything stupid, sir.”
A little bit strange hearing Patrick’s plea. You mean beyond what I’m already doing? But the concern was genuine, and it hit Philo in the feels. “Copy that, Patrick. Promise.”
They bounced into a clearing that fronted an unpainted cinderblock building, three stories and long, like multiple military barracks end to end. Other vehicles, Philo counted six, were already there and empty of their occupants. Two Japanese men with long rifles stood guard. Beyond the cars was a dual loading dock with overhead doors, cement steps leading up to them.