Sensei (12 page)

Yamashita was not used to being addressed like that, either. I saw it in his eyes, but he went on. "Asa Sensei apologized and told me that he had received a note. And that he hoped to be able to redeem our honor tonight."

The only reason we were able to catch up with Asa at all was that he took a while to fold his formal uniform. Even with all that was on his mind, Asa Sensei was a methodical man. His ha kama would be neatly folded, his other items carefully packed. He had spent a lifetime learning not to cut corners and that night was no exception.

We spotted him as left the dressing room. He was less conspicuous in his street clothes, as if they were designed to shield the world from seeing his true nature. He threaded through the crowd and headed out the door. I ducked into the dressing room, grabbed my clothes bag, and headed out with all the speed that I could. Running in sandals is tough work. Besides, I had watched men like Asa move for years and knew how deceptive he would be when he got going.

The car, with its NYPD card on the dash, was pulled up in a No Parking zone close to the Samurai House entrance. Micky and I piled in and we shot down the street.

"He just entered the parking garage." Art reported as he ran back from the corner and then thudded into the seat beside my brother. Micky had the car in gear before Art's door was even closed.

"Where's the exit?"

"Around the block." Art picked up the radio handset and asked for a record check for auto registration.

"Right or left?"

"Left."

"Thank God." The streets here were one way, and Micky was afraid we'd lose Asa if we had to circle around the block.

Micky raced the car across the traffic. His high-speed turn made tires squeal; some of them were ours. The maneuver drew a few cranky horn blasts from a cruising cab and threw me up against the car door. Art worked the radio like nothing was happening. He seemed to be glued to the seat. "How do you spell his name?" he asked me.

"What's he drive?" Micky demanded.

"A Toyota."

My brother grunted. "Figures."

The radio came to life. "Camry four-door," Art told Micky. He gave him the tag number and they scanned the road ahead. The garage was one of those multilevel affairs buried in the wall of buildings that lined the street. Cars sprung out of the gated exit directly into traffic, like rabbits from a hole. The night road ahead was flecked with red taillights. From the backseat, I couldn't see their expression, but you could almost feel the eye strain as the two men peered into the distance to try to spot Asa. The tension evaporated and they both settled back into the seat with relief as the Toyota exited the garage.

"OK," Micky breathed, "here we go."

We trailed Asa through Manhattan's night traffic.

Micky was cursing softly under his breath, trying to stay close but not too close to Asa's car and avoid the vehicles that passed by. Art quietly narrated their progress across town. I noticed that they didn't bicker at all.

We were headed down the East Side.

"He live down here?" Art asked me. I shook my head no. "OK," he said quietly. "Is he heading for the bridge or the tunnel?"

"Please God," Micky said, swerving around and then ahead of a bus that lumbered into our path like a whale breaching, "let it be the bridge."

Roebling's bridge is an architectural wonder, even after all these years. It was built in an age when aesthetics and technology hadn't been split apart. At night, the Brooklyn Bridge is lit up, a brick-and-cable causeway spun across the oily churning of the East River. It could be seen as the initiate's path to the mysteries of Manhattan or as an escape hatch from the menace of the urban beast. It's hard to tell. Traffic goes both ways.

"So what's in Brooklyn?" Micky mused. "Asa have a school there?"

"No," I replied.

"And he doesn't live there?" Art reconfirmed. All I could do was shake my head no. "OK. No problem; I got the address," he said.

My brother shot me a quick look of pure fury. "Fuck, fuck, fuck," he breathed. "I told ya these guys were holdin' out on us, Art."

"Maybe he's headed for Little Tokyo," I suggested lamely. There was a growing Japanese and Korean community in Queens.

"Seems a roundabout way of getting there," Micky commented with acid in his voice.

He edged a little closer to the Camry, muscling his way through the close-packed lanes. The exit ramp from the bridge was a bit dicey and he didn't want to lose Asa. The traffic squeezed in as we reached the Brooklyn side, the drivers getting ready to head north to the Long Island Expressway or south to the Gowanus.

The blacktop was uneven, with seams and holes that made the car grumble. Micky was jockeying around in the middle lane, swinging his head quickly over his right shoulder to check the blind spot in case we had to go in that direction. The exit ramp from the bridge was coming up. "So whattaya think, Art?" my brother asked quietly.

"I think if he was heading to Queens he would have taken the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge. I don't think he's going home. I think he's got a meet set up."

"Me too," my brother said.

"Why?" I asked. I swallowed when I said it and the word came out with an odd, strangled sound to it.

Micky let out a breath. Then his shoulders shrugged. "Think about it. If you were gonna try to catch this guy, where would you look, Connor?"

"I guess I'd stake out a dojo"

"Correct," Art jumped in. "And why is that?"

"Well, because... I guess because the other murders took place in dojo. Or places like them."

"Right." Micky jerked the car over and followed Asa through the exit toward the Gowanus Expressway. We passed the silent group of warehouses and refurbished office buildings that cluster around the foot of the bridge, and drove along the waterfront for a time. A navy destroyer hulked, a gray form in the grayer expanse of urban night. Then we drove up past the plaza where cars clustered before entering the Brooklyn Tunnel to Manhattan and we moved onto the expressway proper, which led through the Red Hook section toward Bay Ridge. "And the one thing that trips most murderers up, Art?" Micky continued, as if the intervening silence had not existed.

"Pattern. Predictability," his partner responded.

"So, buddy boy," Micky continued, "We got your teacher's pal shootin out of the reception like his tail's on fire. A mysterious message that obviously got to him. And now he's headin' somewhere. Not home. My guess is something's goin down."

"Maybe," I said grugingly. I was still trying to digest the swirl of action that hadn't seemed to let up since Asa and I crossed swords for the kata demonstration. It felt like it happened a month ago.

The expressway was a bland, brightly lit stretch of elevated concrete, Yeu got occasional glimpses of the upper stories of brick row houses that piled up in clusters right in the shadow of the roadway. Church spires stuck up out of the sea of tar roofs Brooklyn is the borough of churches. Billboards advertised for car dealerships. Up ahead, the sky looked dark, but the stars were washed out from the ambient light. Soon the road would arc left to lead to the bridge to Staten Island. The traffic had eased up here and everyone was more or less in their own lanes. It reduced the tension and the two men were more willing to talk.

"Ronin has got to know someone's looking for him," Art commented.

"And our basic assumption is that there's something he's after we don't know about. So he may be crazy," Micky said.

"But he's not dumb," Art finished.

"So, after all the publicity in the papers, he's got to find another spot to get at his victim. Now that ya think about it, maybe the whole Samurai House reception looked to him like a great way to get us lookin' in the wrong place."

"Sure," Art nodded sagely. "And while we're all tied up there, he sets up another location."

"But he's got to have a way to lure someone to the meet. I wonder what he's got?" My brother had been giving this some thought.

"Gotta be some powerful mojo," Art commented. "He's already used it on two others."

I grunted in affirmation. Part of me was wondering whether my brother hadn't been right all along: the sensei knew something they weren't telling. I had the sickening feeling that maybe my sensei knew something. But at that moment, I was trying to figure out some way of getting out of the ceremonial outfit I was still wearing. I had anticipated changing into a suit after the performance. But not in a car.

The ha kama and other clothes are not easily disposed of. I finally gave up and just pulled on the shoes I had in the bottom of the bag. The zori would be useless if we had to go anywhere on foot.

As I looked up, the Camry exited onto Fourth Avenue and we kept pace.

"Mr. Man, Mr. Man," Micky murmured under his breath, "where are you heading?"

He was heading south. But we couldn't figure out where. Down Fourth Avenue, Asa took a left. It led along a strip of park that served as a buffer between the neighborhoods of Sunset Park and Bay Ridge. It was lined with trees whose bark was mottled like camouflage. The chain-link fencing around the playground was ten feet high and iron swing sets and monkey bars made odd shapes in the darkness. A squat brick Parks Department building hulked in the middle of the grass strip. Passing headlights picked out the fluid wash of graffiti.

A left again, and we were heading north onto Sixth Avenue. We passed under the expressway, and the Camry's brake lights flashed as Asa turned right onto Sixty-second Street.

At this spot in Brooklyn, the subway comes up for air. The R and N lines run out here from Manhattan. The R continues south to the tip of Brooklyn, which is capped by Fort Hamilton. At Fifty-ninth Street, the N line turns east and emerges from its tunnel into a trench that rises slowly until the subway becomes elevated and you get to Coney Island. A growing Chinese population was moving into the area around the point where the trains come out of the tunnels. New immigrants got simple directions to the first stop the N makes after it bursts from darkness: get off at Blue Sky. For the local Chinese, the Eighth Avenue stop on the N is known as the Blue Sky station.

Asa slowly rolled down Sixty-second Street, which goes one way, east, and parallels the N train's trench. Small factories and warehouses dotted the street, shuttered tight and washed in the odd light of sodium lamps. There were narrow garages here as well, former stables from the 1920s that had been converted for cars. The block ended ahead, where it met Seventh Avenue.

The subway lines themselves were dug out here early in the last century. The token booths and entrances get an occasional facelift, but if you walk far enough down any subway platform in New York, you come face to face with the thick riveted girders and arched struts that generations of New Workers have stood near, glancing impatiently down the track for the light of an oncoming tram. On the block where we were trailing Asa, the old stables were a reminder that, a short sixty or seventy years ago, horses were still lugging ice through Brooklyn's streets.

"What's the deal here, Connor?" We weren't too far from where I lived and Micky was relying on me for some information.

"Seventh Avenue's coming up," I said. "The street dead-ends. Not much there. A few shops around the corner. More people closer to Eighth Avenue."

Asa pulled over and we nosed into the curb, farther back on the block. Micky dowsed the headlights and we watched.

The Camry's lights went out. Asa got out of the car. He took a quick glance around, sweeping the shadows. His eyes were dark slashes in the sodium wash of the streetlight. I felt myself shrink back into the seat almost involuntarily. With anyone else, it would have been foolish. But I knew this man and what he was capable of. I felt as if he had sensed our presence. But it didn't seem to bother him. He popped the trunk and removed something long and narrow from the car, and began walking toward the corner.

Micky gestured. "What?" he asked me quietly.

I let out a tense breath. "It's a sword bag."

"OK," Micky's voice was sharp with excitement. "It's happening. What's there?" he pointed as Asa turned right at the corner.

"Nothing," I said. "The overpass is blocked off for construction.

"C'mon, ladies," Art urged, "time's wastin'. Something's there."

"Nothing," I insisted. Then it came to me. "Wait." I sat forward to peer through the windshield into the murk. There's an old entrance to the Eighth Avenue subway stop."

"In use?" Micky had already started to roll the car forward.

"No. It's closed down."

They looked quickly at each other. "Perfect," Art said. He reached under his coat and checked his pistol. Micky handed him a two-way radio and Art squelched it for a test. "There's an exit further ahead on Eighth?" he confirmed.

"Next block." Things were beginning to speed up and the conversation, the movements, everything had the feeling of getting tight.

"OK." Art was doing three things at once. Checking his gun. Handling the radio. Undoing the seat belt. His brain had to be racing. "I go in here. You block the other exit?" He looked at Micky for confirmation.

Micky nodded in agreement and we rolled ahead to the corner where Asa had turned right. Art launched himself out the door. Asa was nowhere to be seen. On the east side of Seventh Avenue, the closed subway entrance was dark. An old sign, dirty with time and neglect, hinted faintly at the old platform's presence. One of those old metal turnstiles marked the entrance. It was essentially a cylindrical cage that was about seven feet high. Part of it rotated to permit access. In the dark it looked like a torture machine from a medieval castle. At one point, it had been chained shut. Art shined a flashlight on the entry. He held it like a club, with the shorter, light end projecting from the bottom of his fist. The chain hung, swaying slightly. The light picked up the fresh cut where the links had been severed. Art gave us a last look,

nodded, and followed Asa into the shadows that led down to the trench.

"Shit, Art," Micky said to the night where his partner had been, "shoot first, will ya?"

Micky started to wheel the car into a left turn to get to Sixty-first Street and head to the other end of the station, but never made it. The sequence that followed is jumbled in my mind, even now.