Luthecker

by Domingue, Keith

  Inside the conference room, a visibly shaken D’Ammano, Kusch, and Kittner waited.

  “We are so fucked.” D’Ammano said, looking straight at Nikki. She ignored him and turned to Kittner.

  “We’re down over seven billion and counting. We’re losing everything.” He said, a noticeable waver in his voice.

  “Dear God…” was her only reply. They silently watched the carnage as it unfolded via the wall mounted television monitor for several moments. It showed a ten acre mass of silver pipes in the middle of the desert that were blown apart at all angles, broken, spewing oil, along with raging fires and random plumes of thick, black smoke billowing into the air. A split screen shot showed a half sunk supertanker still in its moorings, with a disturbing view of tarp covered bodies laid out in rows on a pier.

  “The clients are furious.” Kittner added.

  “We couldn’t have seen this coming. No one could’ve. It’s not our fault.”

  “Tell that to the lawyers.” Kusch chimed in.

  Nikki couldn’t stop looking at the images of the bodies being lain out. They numbered well into the hundreds.

  “We’ll be looking at several lawsuits by the end of business today. If there’s ever an end to today.” He added, never looking at her, eyes glued to the television, unconsciously shaking his head in disbelief.

  “I need to speak with you in my office.” Kittner said to Nikki as he slowly turned and exited the conference room.

  She didn’t move, her eyes still locked on the horror playing out on the television screen.

  She finally looked back and forth to D’Ammano, Kusch. Neither would meet her gaze.

  D’ammano finally looked at her.

  “I fucking told you.” He turned back to watching Saudi refineries burning, bodies being pulled from the ship wreckage. “I fucking knew it.” He continued. “Fucking software. Fucking incompetent. We’re so fucking fucked.” He rambled.

  Dazed and a bit disoriented, Nikki slowly made her way to Kittner’s office.

  • • •

  “If we’d been on the other side of this, we’d be up billions.” He said to Nikki as she stood across from his desk.

  “You do realize hundreds of people were killed, don’t you…?” she whispered under her breath, still trying to make sense of what had happened.

  “Instead, we’ve been wiped out.” He continued, ignoring her comment.

  She finally looked at him, suddenly realizing where he was going with his argument.

  “Are you blaming me for this?” She said, incredulous.

  “No. I’m saying, the clients are furious. We sold them on a short strategy, your strategy, and they’ve been wiped out. They want someone to be held accountable.”

  “They want someone’s head on a stick. And you’re going to give them my head. And somehow that’s going to make it all better. Is that it?” She responded.

  “You know how this works.”

  Nikki tried to keep steady. Tried to think her way out of this.

  The question hung in the air, and Nikki finally put a voice to it.

  “I need to know. Does your firing me have anything to do with last night?”

  She tried hard to keep her voice from wavering.

  He didn’t hesitate with his answer.

  “Absolutely not. This is strictly business. It always has been.”

  The ice in his voice hurt her more than the words. He continued.

  “If I’d listened to D’Ammano, we’d be riding high right about now. Instead, we’re looking at huge debts and more than likely a wave of lawsuits.”

  She just looked at him, too stunned to speak.

  “They all know I bet on you. And as of this morning, it was the wrong bet.”

  “I can’t believe you’re saying this.” She finally managed to reply.

  “The bottom line, is the clients want you gone…” He started.

  She waited for him to finish his thought. To see if he’d actually say it to her face.

  “And that means…you have to be gone.”

  “Michael…”

  “I’m sorry. I really am, Nikki. But we have to cover our asses here; and to do that, there’s no way we can keep you. It really is just business. Just lay low for a couple months and I’ll find you something.”

  “So this is how you really are.”

  “This is how the world is, Nikki.”

  “I’m glad I found out now.”

  “You have until noon to clean out your desk.”

  He picked up his phone receiver, and spoke without looking at her.

  “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some very difficult phone calls to make.”

  She stood there a moment longer, looking at him, in complete shock. She fought off a strong urge to break down right in front of him. She quietly wheeled about, and exited his office.

  She made eye contact with no one as she made for the elevators. Stunned and confused, she had no idea what she would do next. She couldn’t believe everything had changed so drastically in less than twenty-four hours.

  She waited what seemed like an eternity for the elevator doors to open. She entered an empty car, and as the doors closed in front of her, she finally burst out in tears.

  THREE

  ALEX

  Alex Luthecker carefully circled his opponent, ignoring the pain in his forearm where the Kali stick had just struck. He kept back a smile, the pain both friend and reminder to him of the joy of the unknown. He quickly dismissed the thought, dismissed all thinking, returning to instinct and moment, and staying in the moment, no past, no future, only the now, the most important part of the exercise itself.

  He eyed his instructors’ “Gi” uniform, a dark grey cotton garment worn and faded from countless battles. The sweat of Master Winn’s body had absorbed into the fabric via the same exact Rorschach like pattern as it had done innumerable times before, almost as if it knew exactly where to go. Of Chinese and Filipino descent, Master Winn was a dark skinned Asian, and much of his arms and shoulders were covered in tattoos, Chinese lettering and elegant cryptography that reflected both his Eastern heritage and commitment to his Art. His decades of constant training made for a thin and wiry musculature that belied his 51 years of age.

  Both men continued to spin their respective one-meter bamboo sticks they held in each hand simultaneously, waiting for the other to make a move.

  Master Winn’s left hip dropped ever so slightly and Alex knew what was coming. He quickly raised the stick in his left hand to block the high arching vertical strike from his instructor that aimed for his head, and simultaneous to the cracking sound of the colliding sticks he swung low in the direction of Master Winn’s knee with the stick he held with his right, which in turn was quickly parried by his Martial Arts mentor. Master Winn immediately countered that move with a quick spin of the stick in his left hand aimed at Alex’ right wrist, a potentially bone-shattering blow, which was immediately blocked by Alex, who in turn flipped the same stick back towards his opponents’ head with a horizontal swing, which the Martial Arts master barely evaded by ducking below it.

  Master Winn smiled at his student as the men broke off the less than three second engagement and continued to circle one another, both men continuing to spin their simple weaponry with a coordinated and symmetrical display of lethal skill.

  The speed of Kali stick fighting, the fast and constant strike / counter strike rhythm of its movements allowed no time for thought, and instead relied completely on instinct. This gave Alex both a moment of refuge from his unique abilities, and at the same time training them to be razor sharp, the paradox of which he knew he would need to discipline when he decided to return to Los Angeles nearly two years ago.

  Forced to flee the city after what in his mind had been an arrogant and careless moment in the Los Angeles Metro Police Precinct three years earlier, Alex had searched for ways to control the constant barrage of images and details that shot into his head every time he met someone, and
Martial Arts had been one of those ways. It trained him to control his ability to singularly view people’s entire lives and in the same moment give brief rest from it by forcing him to clear his mind of all thought. Master Winn had inadvertently shown the path to this, not having any idea what Alex was truly capable of, by sharing with him early on in his training his simple Buddhist philosphy: that existence and non-existence are simultaneous in all things, an extension of the principle of cause and effect, life being created at the center of that paradox. This principle had been defined thousands of year ago and interpreted by a Buddhist monk named Nichiren Daishonin, whose teachings Winn had followed, and the Monk had referred to it as The Middle Way. A difficult paradox to grasp in meaning, let alone to live by, the philosophy became clearest to him most when he trained: although Alex knew exactly when and how Master Winn would die, when he fought him, the thought of it never entered his mind.

  The sound of a buzzer interrupted their movements, and both men immediately stopped, bowed to one another, and shook hands.

  “Excellent work.” Master Winn commented, catching his breath. “Your dedication is really beginning to pay off. I’ve never seen anyone learn as fast as you.” He said with noticeable pride.

  “Thank you sir.” Alex replied, wiping the sweat from his forehead.

  “I have to get ready for the next lesson. See me before you leave.” Master Winn said.

  “Yes sir.” Alex replied, and the men briefly bowed to one another before Master Winn abruptly about-faced and walked off the fraying matt and onto the well-worn concrete floor. Alex turned in the opposite direction, stepped off the mat, and approached his gear bag lying in the corner. He rummaged through it for a bottle of water. He moved aside his tempered aluminum sticks, the ones imprinted with Master Winn’s original insignia, given by him only to his top students. They were both sturdier and lighter than the bamboo practice sticks, handcrafted works of art designated for true combat situations only.

  Finding his bottle of water, Alex sat down, leaned back against the wall, and carefully re-hydrated.

  Master Winn’s dojo was more a combination of philosophy and loyal students than it was an actual location, as it was constantly on the move. A true believer in “The Impermanence of All Things,” Master Winn not so secretly enjoyed keeping his handful of students on their heels, unsure of where they would be next, never teaching in one place for more than a month. One week it could be a mountaintop, the next, a junkyard. And with Master Winn, there was never an explanation for the choice or timing. It was a true underground training system, purposely very difficult to find. This also made it very difficult to track, something that was very important to Alex. He had discovered it all with an initial glance rather accidentally, when a student of Master Winn’s had sat next to him on a bus, smiled and nodded at him. The man didn’t notice the movement of Alex’ eyes, and in an instant of observation beyond the bruised cheek and gear bag to the countless patterns of this man’s life, Alex knew everything.

  After that, he simply asked the man a series of non-threatening questions that led to what Alex had wanted, an invite to observe a class and meet Master Winn.

  Master Winn had greeted Alex with a big smile, pausing briefly before shaking his hand, as if he instinctively knew there was something very unique about the young man who had found a way to him, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. And if it were up to Alex, and it was, Master Winn would never know exactly what it was that made him different. That initial conversation dealt mostly with personal philosophies and belief systems, of which it was clear Alex was to be the learner. It was then that Alex knew Master Winn had his own albeit not hyper-extraordinary perceptive nature about people. During the conversation Alex never asked to join the group, and Winn didn’t offer. He casually wove a day, place, and time into the conversation, and Alex was wise enough to show up. The Master never asked any questions about Alex’s background. Alex knew the man’s instincts were strong and thus he wouldn’t need to. Alex had been a loyal student ever since.

  The current location of just two weeks was an abandoned warehouse with crumbling walls and cracked concrete floors built next door to a long defunct meatpacking plant, the ghostlike slaughterhouse smell still a faint trace in the air. The aroma took a bit to get used to, and could be quite distracting. Alex looked at dealing with the smell as just another a part of training. He also looked forward to moving to a new space soon.

  He changed out of his sweat-drenched Gi and into a pair of old warm up pants and a T-shirt. He turned at the roar of the metal garage door entrance being rolled half-way open, three of Master Winn’s other students ducking underneath before forcing it down with a decisive bang and locking it shut behind them.

  Camila Ramirez, Chris Aldrich, and Yaw Chinomso playfully kicked, punched and shoved one other as they made their way across the dojo floor.

  “Doctor Alex.” Yaw called out, a nickname he had given Alex for what he considered his strange and confusing but somehow really insightful opinions on things.

  “Doctor of what?” Alex had asked him, the first time Yaw had called him that.

  “Doctor of interesting thought.” Yaw had playfully responded.

  “Hey, Yaw.” Alex quietly replied, and the men briefly shook hands and embraced. At over six feet tall and of dark skinned African descent, Yaw towered over the much shorter Alex. With a chiseled muscular physique that weighed in at 240 pounds, he was much stronger as well, but he had a great deal of respect for Alex, both for his dedication to training, and that “strange brain” of his. He knew instinctively that Alex was a man of honor, something important to him, as it was to all of Master Winn’s students. And he was also very wary of Alex when he had a pair of Kali sticks in his hands, the sticks being an equalizer of sorts in regards to their martial arts ability.

  “You hangin’ around for class?” Camila asked Alex.

  Alex smiled at her. “No.” He replied softly. “Gotta run.”

  “Aw, you always gotta run. You have a girl, somewhere, don’t ya?”

  Alex smiled.

  “Why won’t you let her meet us? We don’t embarrass ya, do we?” She joked.

  “Never.” he replied, his voice barely above a whisper.

  Camila had always jokingly asked that question, about a girl somewhere, and Alex never answered. He preferred to let himself remain a mystery, and neither she nor any of the others ever pressed him much beyond that.

  He eyed her left wrist, wrapped in a bandage.

  “How is it?” He asked.

  “Broke.” She replied matter-of-factly.

  Alex shook his head.

  “You try tellin’ her to stay home.” Yaw responded.

  Camila, or “C-Ram” as they called her in training, was from Mexico. A fierce warrior, she was an illegal, but she never let that limit her ambitions. She grew up in the streets of Tijuana, literally homeless, and made her way across the border determined to find a better life. She worked hard cleaning homes of wealthy Americans during the day, all in order to train at night.

  What Alex knew and she didn’t was that a year and a half from now she would be pregnant, something that would come as a complete surprise to her, but nowhere near as much a surprise as it would be to Yaw.

  Alex suppressed a smile at the thought of that. They would be happy. He of course would never tell them, never rob them of their life, but whenever the patterns of a life he saw were good, sometimes he would be tempted.

  It took a long time for Alex to recognize where other people’s instincts about one another stopped, and his continued. Most people realized a man carrying a shotgun through a shopping mall was a threat, but few were capable of seeing, or more accurately wanting to see, the anger in the eyes, the resignation in the posture, the degradation in hygiene, the increased social detachment, the growing frustration brought on by the constant reinforcement of a negative belief system that along with countless other details that in Alex’ mind, doomed the man to this fat
e from the beginning. It wasn’t magic to Alex. It was math. And he simply saw it all very clearly before the man ever picked up the gun. It wasn’t perfect, there was always room for an occasional surprise, but overall it was pretty damn close. And the more dogmatic the life, the easier it was to read.

  “Hey Chris.” He added as he looked at Aldrich, not wanting to leave him out of the greeting ritual. Aldrich was a 26 year-old good-looking kid from the Midwest, and with blonde hair and brown eyes he got the attention of many young ladies. Painfully shy he rarely said much, which somehow added to his allure, which in turn made him even more self-conscious. Camila picked on him about it all the time. Even though he was younger than the other two only by a couple years, he still came off as the “baby brother” to the group. He gave Alex a silent smile and nodded.

  Alex had never let anyone close to him in his entire life, unable to handle the calculation of their fate in his head for too long, but he’d allowed these people to become closer than any others previous to these few. He still chose to remain a complete mystery to them, only interacting when they trained or for an occasional meal together, but they accepted him regardless. For Alex these people were the nearest thing to family that he had ever had.

  One way or another they all lived apart from society’s order, part of the increasing off-grid existence that the current pattern of socio-economic circumstances drove. The one thing that they all had in common were secrets, nothing truly criminal but things that in some way put them at odds with that order, which they wished to keep hidden. In a small way, Alex felt, they were just like him.

  There was another thing about his friendship with these people, one recent development that he had never experienced before, that gave him pause. The more he got to know them, the more difficult it was becoming for him to read their patterns. This surprising development actually made him very happy. He shrugged it off as both a result of the discipline of his training, and his complete lack of desire to know.