by Alan Lee
“Don’t be a hero, American,” he said.
“I cannot help what I am, German.”
“I mean, don’t do anything stupid.”
“Of course. I’d hate to get into trouble.”
Ferrari’s voice shook the floor beneath my feet.
Riku was announced first. A smattering of cheers and a cascade of boos. I kept my head down, eyes closed, listening and tugging on fighting gloves.
“Signore e signori. Ora ti presento…” called Ferrari. “Dall’america, Il tuo combattente preferito…”
The crowd had already started.
Yan-kee, Yan-kee.
I took deep breaths, steeling myself as if ready to leap into freezing water.
He announced my name and we walked into the living arena. The crowd had grown, I thought. The volume of bodies looked impossible. And dangerous. Screams and cheers rained down, as did roses and batteries. I kept my head lowered. Focused on my feet.
Ferrari maintained the soliloquy.
The orchestra played. It’d sound like The Godfather except for the electric guitar.
Ernst and Meg chattered in my ear but I didn’t care.
I stopped at the stairs, face to face with the Executioner. His cowl mostly hid his face. From what I could see, he’d applied eye black. I punched him on the shoulder and said, “See you in round two.”
I jumped into the ring and the gate crashed closed.
The sumo wrestler had inexplicably grown taller. Didn’t seem fair. He had five inches on me and fifty pounds, at least. Maybe closer to a hundred. That was hard to do. In my head I kept referring to him as a sumo wrestler, so seeing him sporting a mawashi loincloth was no surprise.
The coiffed master of ceremonies jabbered. I stayed in my corner, hopping, Riku in his. Fights were already breaking out in the throng. Guards ran past the cage and dove up the stands.
The electronic horn sounded.
He made a ceremonial bow and dropped into a traditional sumo stance.
“Riku,” I called. “Don’t you think your superior reach and size puts you at an unfair advantage? Be a sport, put one hand behind your back.”
He didn’t. The black band on his left hand blinked. How much medicine would have to be pumped into that Goliath to subdue him? I’d suggest a two-liter.
I got to the center of the cage first. He came on slowly. A bulldozer picking up inertia.
“Riku. Please tell me you understand English.”
The crowd shouted so loud I barely heard myself.
“Wait. That was uncouth. You can’t say things. Because of they cut your tongue out. Blink once if you understand English, how about that."
For a giant, he moved well. His lunge caught me off guard—a heavy shoulder slamming into my midsection. I went over backwards as before an avalanche.
“Round two,” I wheezed manfully. “Let’s survive until round two. Deal? I got an idea.”
He was on top. Slowly covering up more of my body with his mass. Like being suffocated by two-ton bean bag.
The audience ramped up the delirium.
Yan-kee, Yan-kee, Yan-kee.
Get up, Meg screamed.
Riku’s modus operandi was effective. Lesser men would be subsumed easily. I’d misjudged his weight; he weighed closer to four hundred than three hundred. He laid in a superman pose, me prone beneath. He channeled his weight, focusing on my chest, and rolling—soon he’d be covering my mouth.
Nasty way to go.
If Kix learned his father had died because a fat guy sat on him, he’d never have enough confidence to become a starting pitcher for the Nationals.
I got my hands under his shoulders and essentially did a bench press. I pushed on him until my arms were straight, not easy because he squirmed and pressed at my elbows. But it gave me enough room. I got one leg from underneath his bulk and squirmed free.
I stood, drank in oxygen freely, and decided not to almost suffocate to death in these fights anymore.
Ninety seconds gone.
The flaw in Riku’s plan became apparent. It took the man a while to regain his feet, a period of time I didn’t allow him. Anytime he got one knee up, I was there to knock him down. I rammed him, kicked him in the head, shoved, got behind and punched. No trick in my arsenal was too juvenile.
“Stay down,” I told him. “It’s all gonna be great, Riku. We’re going to laugh about this one day. Round two, okay?”
I badgered him for the remainder of the five minutes. Our bloodthirsty fans wanted violence and they grew irritated.
At four and a half minutes, sudden bursts of noise got my attention—pistol shots. Two of them.
Someone in the stands firing a weapon.
At me.
The cage wall in front of me sparked. The second shot whined angrily past my shoulder, like a bumblebee moving a thousand miles an hour. The bullet tore into the cage’s mat. The shot had originated from the cheap seats.
I circled to my right. No easy and immobile target, I.
This never happened to Tom Brady or Maximus.
Ferrari ran across to the stadium, shouting into the microphone. He pointed high towards the Yakuza section. More gunfire. His chief of security charged. The spectators there contracted and expanded like a living thing. I hoped for mob justice.
The electronic horn sounded. Round over. And then Riku decked me from behind. An illegal sucker punch.
I staggered forward, dazed. Two enormously strong arms wrapped around me. Pinned my arms and lifted me off the ground.
Oh crud. The squeeze of death. Like a blubbery vice clamping.
The first thing to break would be my humerus. Both of them. Or maybe ribs? Hard to pinpoint the agony.
Or maybe my head would pop off.
The Executioner watched this with mild interest but he made no move to intervene. Not a stickler for the rules? The round was over. And someone had shot at me.
“Riku,” I said. But no sound was created.
I jerked my head backwards. My skull connected with his nose. Cartilage crunched. Again and again. He couldn’t evade the battering because his fat shoulders, holding up his arms to suspend me, created a valley in which his head was trapped. He rotated his face side to side but not enough.
No one came to stop the fight.
I kept hammering.
No air. I grew weary of suffocation. Though I supposed it was the simplest way to terminate a life without tools.
I got him again. His nasal bone broke. His sinuses and turbinates had to be filling with blood. Soon his face and gums would be pulped enough that he’d start losing teeth. The pressure on my arms had stopped accumulating.
Even if my skull cracked, I’d keep punishing him. I had no choice. And I had no more than a few seconds anyway.
The orchestra wailed, and the electric guitar screeched, somehow making it worse. How I hated them.
I hit him again. Felt like his face caved inwards.
He didn’t want to release but pain caused his strength to abate just enough. I twisted and dropped free. Crawled to my corner.
Riku’s face was ruined. He knelt in the middle, hacking. Beneath him, a spray of red.
“Mackenzie,” cried Meg. I heard her as if in a tunnel. She pressed a bottle of water through the small opening in the cage mesh. “Holy shit, Mackenzie, I thought you were dead.”
“Give me time. I can still manage it.”
I drank some. Squirted some on the back of my head. Tender and bloody.
The Executioner stood in the cage, baring the axe. I hadn’t seen his entrance. Took him long enough. He seemed satisfied that Riku and I had come to an understanding that round one had concluded.
Ferrari babbled.
The crowd seethed and Riku splattered.
Ernst was listening to Ferrari. He said, “Careful, American. The fence is turning on.”
Meg stepped back.
I felt the charge. It sort of ignited the air with a corporeal hum. Like listening to air molecules
melting. The speakers blared fake crackling, a crowd pleasing indication that the electricity had activated.
“It might kill you,” Ernst reminded me. “But if it doesn’t, Riku will.”
The Executioner grabbed the cage door, stepped out, and pulled it after him.
So the cage door wasn’t electrified. Interesting.
I panted. “This is no longer fun.”
“Was it ever?”
“The amount of things which are illegal yet permissible in Naples is breathtaking.”
The horn sounded.
Round two.
Riku hadn’t bothered to retreat to his corner. He stood in the middle, a nightmare with no nose.
“Hope this works,” I told the cosmos.
The cosmos intimated maybe I shouldn’t have blindly followed the cute restaurant entrepreneur down the stairs a week ago. Or before that, not threatened to kill Darren Robbins.
He who lives by the sword.
“Let’s end this, Riku,” I said.
He came. I kept my feet going sideways, step over step, circumnavigated the humming wall. The hairs on my neck raised. He closed the distance, following me and inching nearer.
I slipped.
Or I pretended to slip.
His eyes sharpened. Sensing opportunity. He charged. Heavy steps, intending to fall on me. But I hadn’t lost my balance, merely a ruse. I dove at his feet. He stumbled over me, his momentum out of control. Hard to stop four hundred pounds of blunder.
He roared. Put up his hands. Plowed into the fence.
There was an audible snap. His connection flared a brilliant white. The black wristband exploded off his wrist, corkscrewing over the cage’s wall. I felt the discharge in my bones.
The audience gasped. Inhaled disbelief, exhaled approval.
Riku’s body slumped away from the metal fence. An electrical burn was already raising on his hands and face.
He moved not. It hadn’t been a graze with the fence—it had been a big time connection.
The stadium shook.
Yan-kee, Yan-kee, Yan-kee.
That’s right. Say my name. It was growing on me.
I sat crisscross at his feet. Close enough to the wall to tingle. Two steps from the cage’s gate.
“American,” cried Ernst. “You must—”
“Nope. I won’t.” I shook my head. Stayed seated. Head bowed. Tugged off my gloves.
Ferrari waited. So did the Executioner. Watching…
Men in the Yakuza corner shook their heads, shoulders slumped.
Riku wouldn’t rise soon. And if he did, I’d push him into the fence again.
Three heartbeats later, Ferrari’s voice erupted from a hundred speakers. Our spectators responded.
I was declared the winner.
I gulped. This part I’d been dreading.
Meg looked as though she wanted to collapse. Ernst nodded with grim approval. Still I sat. As serene as Gandhi, I hoped.
The Executioner ascended with heavy steps. He threw open the gate. His axe rested on his left shoulder, gripped tightly in his fist.
Dear Lord. Let me live.
He stepped into the cage. The Grim Reaper himself, come to finish the grisly job.
“Not sure you deserve this, Riku,” I said.
I slapped my left hand against the exposed flesh of the Executioner’s right ankle. With my other, I grabbed the metal mesh of the cage.
Pow.
A brief sensation, like snatching hold of a category five tornado. The Executioner and I both jolted. Immense pain.
My black bracelet burst.
My bones started to shake apart.
The breakers in my mind tripped and the world reset…
16
When I came to, I was crying. Or I felt like I had been.
I sat in a chair. Back in my room. My bed had been removed—more punishment from Duane. My arms were shackled and stretched tight to either side.
Meg was on her knees, applying cream to my blistered right hand.
“Am I crying?” I asked.
“Hello sleepy head,” she said. “Crying is common for a victim of electroshock. Energy overwhelmed your nervous system.”
“Am I naked?”
“You are.” To Meg’s credit, she blushed. As one should. “Mr. Chambers is angry with you.”
“You’re got’damn right I am,” Duane said. From somewhere. “You electrocuted the fucking Executioner. The Executioner, August. The hell were you thinking.”
“Was thinking it might prevent a beheading.”
“You heart went into arrhythmia. I restarted it, to be safe,” she said.
That is a hell of a thing for one human being to casually say to another. I shook my head, tried to dislodge cobwebs.
“You can’t attack the Executioner, August.”
“The heck I can’t. He cuts people’s heads off, Moneybags. What happened with Riku?”
“Riku? The Yakuza champion? Got no idea. Who cares,” he said.
“Me. Obviously. Did they kill him?”
“No,” said Emile. She stood at the door, rubbing her thumb across the screen of her phone. “I saw him walking away.”
Duane said, “He lost. Should be dead. They won’t kill him?”
Emile shrugged. Sighed. “I don’t know, my love.”
“The back of my head,” I observed. “Feels unhealthy.”
“I sewed up a small gash,” said Meg. “The subcutaneous fat and fibrous tissue are pulverized. It’ll hurt for a week, at least.”
“Hurts less than the Yakuza’s face, though. Or at least it better.”
“A nice trick, August.” Duane shook his head and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. “You knew. Knew the Camorra wouldn’t punish us now, even if you zapped the Executioner. They’d have no final fight, if they did.”
“I leveraged my popularity, yes.”
“Speaking of popularity,” said Emile in a purr. “Mackenzie set a tournament record.”
Tattoo Neck stepped into the room. Handed Duane a phone. He read a message and handed it back. Said in an aside, “I don’t wanna talk. Not now. I’ll call tomorrow.” Then, to his wife, “Record? What record?”
“A woman bid a large amount of money for Mackenzie.”
“Oh yeah. Good. A record? Jesus, that smoothes things over. Hear that, August? You’re getting laid again. Aren’t I generous.”
“Send her away. I reject your largesse.”
Emile kept purring. “Mackenzie was not intimate with the previous woman, my love. His sexual frustration must be…significant.”
“Instead of a woman, I’ll accept food. I’m jonesing for an aprés-fight snack.”
“A snack,” said Duane. “Whatever. The girl isn’t gonna get her money’s worth, anyway. I won’t release his chains. She’ll have to do her best with a date that can’t move.”
I said, “There’s a moral allegory in there somewhere.”
“Mackenzie needs calories, Mr. Chambers,” said Meg, my villainous caretaker. “Nutrition.”
“The chef’s got him some food prepared. Maybe you feed him.”
Meg muttered about her medical degree.
“I’m going to Rossi’s party,” said Duane. “Don’t wait up. Nice job, tonight, August. Kinda. Get some sleep. After you’ve had your fun.”
He left. Without a backwards glance. Emile arched an eyebrow and watched him leave.
Meg cut up some fish and an apple with quick strokes that made me think she’d done a surgical rotation. She fed me, talking about the unrest in Naples, and then she went to bed.
My boy Gennaro brought more champagne but Emile ordered it left in the adjoining room. He shot me a thumbs up before going.
I sat and ignored the burning in my right hand and the dull throb in my head. Wondered what day it was. Wondered who the Cowboys would play this Sunday. Wondered if my grass needed to be cut again before the winter set in.
I refused to think about Kix or Ronnie. Not yet. I’d get
out soon. And then…
Voices in the other room. Emile forcing Ernst and the other guards to wait outside.
She appeared at my doorway with another woman. A young girl, maybe twenty. Japanese, dressed in a gossamer white dress.
I said, “Send her away, Emile. Not interested.”
Hard to give orders convincingly, arms pinned out and backwards.
Emile smiled lazily. “This is Himari. She bid a fortune for you, Mackenzie.”
“Offer a refund. I’m sleepy.”
“Himari, please wait in the next room. Do not leave until I return.” She spoke to the girl but kept her eyes on me.
Mackenzie August, experiencing trepidation.
Himari made a small bowing motion and left. Emile closed my bedroom door, sealing us in.
She said, “The average champion earns twenty thousand dollars for an hour with a woman. Two years ago, the Prince earned forty. Tonight, an unknown woman bid fifty for you. Fifty thousand, Mackenzie. In order for Himari to win, she was forced to bid fifty-five.”
“Aren’t the auctions silent?”
“I have my ways.”
“You gave Himari the funds,” I guessed. “She’s a surrogate bidder for you.”
“Yes. A way to bid anonymously. Do you know what my husband is doing? Going to an old man party where he’ll pick from provided woman and have fun.”
“This is revenge.”
“Indeed,” she said. She stepped out of her heels.
“It won’t help.”
“Duane thinks he’s making a fortune off you tonight. Little does he know, the arrogant and limp old man, he’ll be paid with his own money. So tonight I have double the pleasure.”
“I have serious doubts about the stability and longevity of your marriage, Emile. You’re less chatelaine and more courtesan.”
“It was I who suggested you not be given clothes.” She lowered to her knees in front of my chair. Placed her hands on my thighs. “As punishment.”
“You’re a pretty lady. You could go upstairs and find a willing partner.”
“Here’s some information my husband hasn’t told you. Darren Robbins, the American attorney, heard that you were pardoned. He heard that, should you win, you’ll be a free man.”
Damn it. I’d been hoping he wouldn’t learn until I returned to the States.