by Chris Bauer
Philo’s assessment: Mifumo should be unconscious with the punches he’d delivered to his temples, chin, and cheeks, but he wasn’t. More of the same might not be enough.
While Mifumo shook out the cobwebs, Philo loosened his belt and stepped out of his jeans.
“Philo! Get on him!” Lanakai screamed, Magpie and Patrick pleading as well. “Don’t lose him…”
Philo instead kicked his jeans in Patrick’s direction, talking to himself. His muscular thighs and calves, now exposed from the bottom of his black boxer briefs to his ankles, bore tattoos in brilliant colors—some reds, blues, greens, yellows, but predominately black. Beautiful artwork showcasing symbolism that Patrick was the first to appreciate.
“Whoa,” Patrick said, awestruck.
On Philo’s right calf in black, the kouf-mem open circle for the Hebrew letters kouf and mem, logo for the elite Israel Defense Forces’ self-defense system known as Krav Maga. On the left calf, the Navy SEAL trident logo. His calves and thighs had enough definition to make the tats really pop. Philo stripped off his sleeveless tee, showing a buff upper torso. Tattooed in black around his waist, including a 3D image of the cloth knot, was a martial arts black belt.
Philo would now fight shirtless and in his underpants, his only real protection the steel cup inside his jock.
Mifumo, pacing, his wits returned, took notice. “The honors that your ink showcases… they pale in comparison, Trout,” he said, panting, “to jiu-jitsu. Jiu-jitsu will always reign supreme…”
“A lot to be said for that, Jerry. A lot to be said for this, too—”
He marched across the floor, fists raised, bobbed left then right, then came up underneath Mifumo’s forearms with an uppercutting fist to his chin with more bad intention than the one he’d thrown at Magpie during their sparring session. It connected, snapping Mifumo’s head back, but the man stayed on his feet.
Well that’s not good, Philo told himself.
Mifumo was on him, arms around Philo’s waist, bearhugging him, lifting him, slamming him onto the cement floor, onto his shoulder, where he heard and felt a pop.
That’s not good either, damn it…
Mifumo heard it too, plus Philo’s pained grunt, and the close-in grappling began, Mifumo swiveling around Philo, lifting him by the waist from behind, off his feet…
A shoulder separation meant the match was over, or could be over, if his opponent saw it the same way. Philo was left to count on Mifumo’s killer instinct, that he would instead go for the pain, not the win. Mifumo twisted Philo’s torso while raising him up and overhead, would go for a throw-down against the shoulder, maybe snap a clavicle…
Pain rather than win. A bad choice, and the opening Philo needed.
He twisted in midair and jackknifed a leg around Mifumo’s neck, an acrobatic move that snagged his opponent’s raised arm while overwhelming his head. A tuck of Philo’s foot behind his knee locked his leg around Mifumo’s arm and neck together. When they slammed into the floor, Mifumo’s face took the brunt, not Philo’s shoulder, with Philo maintaining a submission chokehold. Mifumo shook, rolled, twisted, pinched, punched, and scratched, wiggling on the floor like a flounder, but like a hooked fish on a boat deck, he was unable to breathe with Philo’s locked leg around his neck, applying pressure. Mifumo was losing consciousness. His hand went out, clawed at the cement floor, then he pounded it, signifying his submission… the fight was over…
Philo ignored the signal, tightened the leg lock on his neck and arm, couldn’t be sure this wasn’t a trick. “I hate this fucking blood sport!” he shouted at the fading Mifumo, “but I’m told… I’d be good at it…”
Yabuki’s men screamed, pushed forward from behind their leader, intending to rush Philo, to make him unclench, but Yabuki’s arm went up as a stop sign to keep them from interfering. He shouted at them in Japanese until they all quieted and retreated. Stone-faced, he watched Philo as he squeezed the life out of a subdued man, Yabuki’s black, dead eyes telling him to finish the job…
…which made Philo unclench his opponent’s neck. Mifumo remained on his back, unconscious but alive. Philo rose to his feet in torn briefs, panting, one shoulder drooping, the shoulder separation real and painful as hell.
Yabuki waded in, stood over Mifumo, spoke to Philo. “You chose to spare him.” He eyed the defeated fighter at his feet. “But I will not. Get my fighter out of here,” he shouted at his men.
Mifumo coughed and sputtered groggy apologies as two Yakuza dragged him off, exiting the room.
“About our agreement, Lanakai—” Yabuki said, his bodyguards with their hands inside their jackets.
Wally’s own muscle surrounded him, all of them already on the move, arriving center ring, Magpie on the periphery, a phone to his ear while he eyed Wally. He nodded at his boss and Wally nodded back.
“Where the hell is she?” Wally grunted at Yabuki.
Philo joined Patrick in the back of the room. “Get all our stuff now, bud… we can’t be in here…”
Yabuki inserted his fist between his and Lanakai’s middle-aged, angry faces, and turned his thumb down, the gesture slow, dramatic. “I never had any intention of releasing her. She and her body parts will now sleep… with the chickens. Similar to everyone left on that island…”
He barked an order in Japanese. His men showed their guns. Lanakai’s men reciprocated.
“Go, Patrick, we need to get out…”
Gunfire erupted, Philo and Patrick making themselves smaller, less of a target in their retreat, and not looking back. They reached the loading dock, peeked out a door, scanned the parking lot. The two Yakuza protecting the vehicles were now rushing the steps keen to the gunfire, to enter the building through a different door.
“Go! You drive!” Philo said, pushing Patrick.
“What about Kaipo, sir?”
“I know. Just get in the car…”
“He said she’ll now sleep with the chickens, sir…!”
“I heard, Patrick! Close the goddamn door!”
Patrick backed the SUV up, slapped the transmission into drive, spinning the tires in the dirt until they caught traction, the vehicle rocketing into the tire ruts as it headed back into the jungle.
33
The SUV idled in a clearing. Philo pointed. “This one. Go up here.”
They were running out of farm property to investigate. Fifteen minutes post-fight, he was sure they were near the property line, could hear street traffic. He had his jeans back on, his socks, and his footwear, was now negotiating his shirt around a throbbing shoulder that needed medical attention.
“Seat belt back on now, sir,” Patrick said, turning where Philo pointed. “This trail looks really bouncy…”
It was one of a few offshoot tributaries they’d passed on their way to the chicken slaughterhouse that had been the fight venue. The vegetation grabbed at the SUV’s raised undercarriage and the side mirrors, stalky, heavy, with scraping noises against the car’s frame and the side panels, but a little less of it because they were inside tire ruts. Choking, enveloping vegetation that smelled like what it was, photosynthesis at work, leafy, dusty, sneezy, and chlorophyll-laden. Philo hit his head on the roof with the vehicle dipping into and out of the ruts—“owww!”—until he’d finally harnessed himself into the seat.
“There, up ahead, Patrick. What is that?”
“Dunno, sir.”
It sank into the hill, a landslide against one side of it. Another long building, this one spreading out left of where they sat. The landslide had reached the metal roof and nearly devoured it, the building underneath. This could not have been the main entrance, yet they couldn’t see the other end, the building disappearing into the jungle, although this jungle shrubbery seemed to border the developed parts of Kauai. The door leading inside the building was gripped by aggressive, advancing vegetation, was open, but barely. Could they even fit through…?
“We’ll check here, Patrick,” Philo said, exiting the vehicle. “You n
eed to take this.” He stuffed a gun into Patrick’s hand, one of his Sigs, then stuffed his own Sig behind his back, under his untucked shirt. “Point and shoot, bud, if you feel the need.”
“Point and shoot, Philo sir.”
Patrick gripped the edge of the building’s exterior door, moved it enough to shoulder it open, bettering the vines that held it in place. They both slipped inside.
Sunlight through a skylight, then additional sunlight through the side windows of each room they investigated. No evidence of recent human activity here, a room with desks that looked like an abandoned office, dusty, drafty, but with leftover human detritus: shelving, an old icebox, shoes, dressers, and slatted bunkbeds.
“Philo sir.”
“Yeah?”
“In the corners, sir. Nests.”
“Yeah.”
Along the edges of the room and in the corners, loose twigs, branches, and wispy things that floated as their shuffling feet kicked up the dust. Whatever animals had found homes in here—mice, rats, stray dogs, cats—they hadn’t had far to look to make their digs comfy. The wispy things were feathers, the room lined with them.
Patrick stopped in his tracks.
“What is it, bud?”
“My mother.”
“What?”
“She was Japanese. She said her mother lived with the chickens…”
Patrick was recovering a memory, Philo realized. His eyes bulged, a PTSD moment hitting him, unexpected, showing him no mercy. “Here. In Hawaii, in… in the…”
Internment camps, Philo finished for himself.
“What if she was here—”
“Patrick. We can’t do this now, we need to check the rest of this place out, see if Kaipo is here, get her out…”
The farther they moved inside, room by room, the more artifacts they found on the floors and the shelves. Bowls, dishes, Japanese dolls, “geisha” hair pins and other hair ornaments, bolts of cloth, chopsticks. And a sampler, on a shelf: an embroidered American flag, a heavy layer of dust covering it. Philo kept walking. Patrick picked up the sampler in his wake, blew off the dust, held it up close to his face.
“Patrick. C’mon, bud, move it—”
Patrick put it down. “Sir, forty-eight stars, sir. I counted them.”
“Fine, keep it, put it in the bag, but let’s go!”
The artifacts trail ended at one large, vault-like door, ajar. They squeezed through sideways, Philo’s shoulder protesting, him grunting under his breath.
On the other side, a voice beyond a wall. Male. They halted, held their breaths to listen. It was a one-sided conversation in Japanese. When the voice stopped talking, no other noise filled the void.
Until something mechanical started up.
A generator, Philo mouthed silently to a nodding Patrick. Philo retrieved his gun. Confrontation time. He poked his head out far enough for one eye to see around the corner.
One man, hazmatted, his headgear in place, his tools and other paraphernalia scattered about him, needles, clothing, saws, tarps; a scalpel in his hand. A cell phone sat on a separate table, a handgun next to it. Plugged into the generator was a circular saw. Beyond him, a woman lay strapped onto a conveyor belt.
Kaipo Mawpaw.
Sunlight showed her face, her head, her hair. Cornrows. Not how he remembered her, but it was her. She did not seem awake, her eyes closed, yet she wasn’t attached to anything. Then he saw the blood. It dripped from an open wound in her abdomen, onto the conveyor belt, then onto the floor. A bloodied Sleeping Beauty, maybe already dead…
Patrick sidled up next to him to spy on their target.
Philo whispered, “See anyone else in here, bud?”
A headshake.
“On three, then.”
They rushed their man after the countdown, Patrick taking him out like a linebacker does a defenseless quarterback, putting him on his back. Philo arrived, leaned in, ripped off the guy’s headgear, stuck his Sig in his face. “If she’s dead,” he groused, “you’re dead.”
Their prey stayed mute with no attempt to retaliate, instead glanced past Philo’s drooped shoulder at additional company now in the room.
“Put your gun on the floor,” came the order.
Behind them, three Japanese men leveled multiple guns on the two undesirables who had crashed their torture party. Philo placed his weapon on the floor.
“Raise your hands.”
Their hands went up, three hands at least, Philo having trouble raising the fourth.
“All the way up!” the Yakuza said, but Philo couldn’t comply, groaning in his attempt. “No? Then I will do it for you—”
“Stop!” a loud voice boomed. From the rear, a recovered Jerry Mifumo powered past Yabuki’s guards to move front and center in confronting Philo and Patrick. Loose workout pants, a comfy sweatshirt, and a duffle bag across his shoulder hid the man’s magnificent physique and, Philo supposed, his shame.
“I separated this man’s shoulder,” he said, addressing his associates, but his interest lay solely in Philo and Patrick, “before this man separated me… from my dignity. Three raised hands will have to do.” He looked skyward and spoke a quick Shinto prayer in Japanese, ending it in English. “I have been given the chance to remedy this. Thank you, ancestral warriors…”
A closer look at Mifumo’s duffle. It resembled what baseball players carried to their games, with long side pockets for baseball bats. In use was one side pocket only, a black bat handle exposed. Mifumo gripped it and slid it out. Not a bat. A Samurai katana sword.
An exaggerated, noisy, metal-against-metal release separated sword from sheath. The Yakuza cavalry mumbled among themselves. Then came the nodding and the smiling.
“Quiet, please! You are all dismissed. I will take it from here. You, doctor-san”—he addressed the hazmatted man standing like a statue in a corner—“you should stay.”
The soldiers snickered, their arm gestures mimicking chopping, endorsing this as an outcome, then they filed out of the room.
Mifumo dropped the sheath, circled behind Kaipo, who was still horizontal and still not moving. Seeing the exposed blade, Philo started forward.
“Oh, you fear for her,” Mifumo said. “I wouldn’t, Trout. All that blood, she looks dead already. And this isn’t for her. Please keep your distance.”
“Where’s Yabuki, Jerry?” Philo said, refocusing him, advancing a step.
“The oyabun? He’s arranging a… surprise.” On stealthy feet, Mifumo neared the door the men had used to exit the room. He gently closed it, placed a chair under its handle, then faced Philo again. “Just like I have a surprise for you.”
Philo, Patrick, the Japanese doctor-slash-executioner, and Mifumo were left to assess each other, Kaipo Mawpaw in repose.
Mifumo raised his sword with a flourish, brought it near to his face to admire it. “There are notches on this handle,” he said. “This katana is generations old. Hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of years old, handed down from Samurai to Samurai. How many have been beheaded by it, I’m not really sure, but I suppose the notches would tell the story if we cared to count them, there are so many. And now—”
His examination of the handle ended. He bowed dramatically toward Philo. He presented the sword to him, handle first. “You must do me this honor, Philo Trout-san. The victor… must vanquish the defeated.”
“I’m not doing that, Jerry.”
Rebuffed, Mifumo laid the sword on the floor. He began disrobing. Shoes, socks, shirt, pants, leaving himself in his gym trunks only. He dropped to one knee, leaned forward, and bowed to expose the back of his neck.
“Pick it up, Philo-san. I would rather you, my conqueror, restore my honor than suffer more scorn at the hand of the oyabun. Please. Do this for me. A warrior like you. Pick it up… use it…”
Philo eyed the sword, then eyed the gun he’d discarded, then came back to the sword. Patrick and the doctor didn’t move.
“Jerry, no.”
“So be it.
” Mifumo reached into his bag and found his small tantō knife. “Philo Trout, I bid you good-bye… as a true Samurai.”
The tantō blade entered Mifumo’s abdomen with a hard, two-handed push and a soft “unhhh,” the Samurai warrior muting his scream, his eyes widening while he rotated it internally to do maximum damage. As his insides spilled onto the floor, he fell forward onto them and the tantō, pushing it deeper, apologizing through the pain to his ancestors in Japanese.
A distraught Patrick moved to Kaipo, hovered over her body, assessing the damage from a scalpel to her midsection. The Yakuza doctor rushed to Mifumo, a helpless, bloody mess.
Philo pocketed his gun and reached for Mifumo’s sword, one-handing it off the floor, its heft considerable. “Hey, Doc,” Philo said to the Yakuza doctor, the sword by Philo’s side. “C’mere…”
A new plan. The room was about to get a lot messier.
34
The door kicked open and the Yakuza soldiers streamed into the room with the chicken slaughterhouse conveyor. A man speaking on a phone trailed them, walking swiftly to make his entrance behind a bevy of drawn handguns. A collective gasp plus groaning and gagging rose up from the room’s newest occupants.
The man spat on the floor, trying to rid his mouth of the taste of death, then spoke into the phone again. “We are, um, here, Oyabun…”
A voice blasted through the phone’s speaker. “Is the doctor finished?”
Yabuki’s man surveyed the room. “Are you?” he said to the room’s only occupant, their grim-reaper executioner contractor who was hazmatted head to toe, and who answered with a muffled “yes” and a thumbs-up.