Sensei (13 page)

Art's voice crackled over the two-way radio. "Mick," he hissed cautiously. Then louder, more urgently, "MICK!"

My brother jerked the car to a stop and sprung out, the door hanging open. My window was closed but the sound of the gunshot was clear as it punched its way up from down on the old platform. It cut through everything and snapped my head in its direction.

My brother sprinted around the front of the car and headed for the subway turnstile at a run. His gun was out and he was calling into his radio: "Art? Art?" As if contact would put things right again. But he was wrong.

I sat for a moment, watching things unfold with a bewildering rapidity. I popped open the car door, unsure of what to do next. The engine was still running and the keys glinted in the darkness, dancing with vibration. The radio mounted on the dash chattered. I got out of the car and headed toward my brother. Micky hit the entranceway and, from down in the trench, a muffled string of concussions thudded into the night.

Things were bad. They were about to get worse.

The turnstile entrance was dark and the metal moaned as I moved through it. The brief corridor smelled of damp concrete and urine, and I hurried onto the stairs leading down to the old

station.

A hundred yards to my left toward Eighth Avenue the platform was brightly lit. But here, it was dim. I took the stairs as fast as I could, but it was awkward in the Japanese clothes. The steps were slick with dead leaves and old newspapers and the thick wet stuff that subway floors secrete like mucus.

I don't know what I expected. Movement, I suppose. Some kind of action. But it was still down there, and it scared me. There was just enough light to ruin whatever night vision I had, but I could sense faint forms huddled at the bottom of the landing.

I could also smell the residual scent of gunfire in the air. And the damp. And something else that I couldn't identify yet. You could hear the faint hum of the traffic in the distance, the pulse that never really stops in Brooklyn. The high whine of tires on the expressway floated above. Then I picked up the odd zzzing noise carrying through the metal rails on the subway tracks that told you a train was approaching. But there was something else as well, another noise I couldn't immediately identify.

As I got closer, cutting through the background noise, small, liquid gasps floated up into the night air from below me on the landing.

A Manhattan-bound train pulled in at the Eighth Avenue stop, three hundred feet to the east. Its light washed the scene. Asa crouched in a corner, gripping the handle of his sword like a talisman. His face was an angry mask, rigid with the intensity of emotion. He tried to say something as I slid down the stairs, but the noise of the approaching train swallowed it.

The light intensified as the subway train got closer. The roar of its approach grew in volume as I reached the last step. The train shot by, a fierce explosion of light and speed and noise. Then I knew what I smelled.

In the strobelike flutter of the light from the train cars, Micky knelt in a black pool of blood that washed across the platform. In his arms, Art lay stretched out. It was dark, but I could see the stump of a wrist where blood pulsed out onto the concrete. His shirt was dark and slick from the gash across his torso. He was sliding deep down into shock and gazing up frantically as if trying to pierce the night sky for a last glimpse of the world. His face was straining in the effort, a response to some inner prompting we could only guess at. Art gulped spasmodically at the air, his lips working in frantic haste.

The noise of the train passed and I could hear Micky screaming at me "Put some pressure on it, Godammit!" and jerking his chin at the gushing arm. Then into his radio: "Officer down! Officer down!" In the rapid pattern of dark and light thrown by the train, he looked wild, caught up in a mix of rage and frustration and despair.

Ronin was nowhere to be seen. In the distance, a siren whooped, its frantic call a faint offer of hope.

I knelt across from my brother and pressed down hard on Art's arm as if sheer diligence could set things right. "Hang on, buddy," Micky was telling him. "Hang on." Micky was rocking back and forth, cradling Art's head in one hand, working the radio with the other. The force in his utterance was like something palpable: a rope to bind Art to us, a light in the dim, wet valley we huddled in. A prayer against the night.

The sirens got closer. I could hear shouts. People were moving cautiously down toward us from the lighted platform.

Art seemed to seize up; his back arched and he made a glottal, choking sound. Micky dropped the radio and held him tight.

Art's face calmed a bit as if reassured. It was hard to tell at that point if he was even aware of us. I felt like something essential had just been wrenched from me, deep down in my guts. I looked about in that dark place, searching for help. It seemed to take a long time to come. I turned back to face my brother.

Even in the washed out light of that place, the tears in Micky's eyes glittered like the last sparks of a dying star.

When Art married Marie, he converted to Catholicism, so amid the tubes and beeping machines of the I.C.U, there were the whispered implications of the Last Rites. The priest was youngish, with that well-fed and sincere look priests get before the hard life they choose drives them to furtive sins and quiet resignation. For now, he sat uncomfortably with us in the waiting room, pink-faced and round, ready to speak, eager to comfort. But he took a look at Micky and the other cops who had come to be with the family. They were hard-faced men. The priest wisely squashed his impulse to tell us all the Good News. No one was in the mood for it.

Marie sniffed once or twice but held it together. Dee sat with her. Art's daughter, red-eyed and washed out, stared at a world that had been blown apart and revealed as the uncertain place it really was. It was a hard thing to learn. At any age.

They couldn't say whether Art would make it. We waited around the hospital, not saying much. It was a busy place, and each group keeping vigil thought they were somehow special, but we were all the same. For every red-eyed cluster, the universe had contracted into a tight knot of people hesitant to come to grips with the grim possibilities before them. It had been a long night, but it seemed like there were better things to do than just wait.

The cops arranged shifts: some stayed; some went back out on the streets. After a while, I emerged into the bright sunlight, blinking with the suddenness of the glare and the harsh, relentless way of the world.

The ride home was a leaden progression through different mental landscapes. The growing summer heat beat in through the windshield, fighting with the air conditioner for dominance. It added to the general feeling of impending disaster. For distraction, I watched the scenery rush by, but it didn't work. My eyes were open, but I was really just seeing the aftermath of that night.

There is nothing so frantic as the scene where a policeman has been taken down. A transit cop at the Eighth Avenue station had heard the shots and called for backup the radios Micky and Art were using were encrypted stakeout sets that couldn't reach the police communication network. A cruiser from the local precinct was the first on the scene, both cops nervously waving guns and lights around until they were sure who all the players were. By that time, Asa had joined us by Art's side, which was a good thing; if he'd still been crouched in the corner with a sword, the cops would have drilled him for sure.

The ambulance got there at about the same time. Two beefy guys in tightly tailored uniform shirts snapped on latex gloves and got to work. They surveyed the scene and knelt down across from Micky.

"Shit," one breathed. He was looking at the mess of Art's chest and his stump, trying to figure out what to do first. You could see the judgment register in his eyes like a shutter flickering, but his hands never stopped moving. "Shock suit," he told his partner.

Micky's voice was flat and far away. "He's already bled out."

The EMT nodded in acknowledgment. "Maybe. Maybe not. We gotta try, man," he said gently. "Hey," he shouted to one of the cops, "put that piece away and find the hand. Then bag it in ice." The cops holstered their guns sheepishly and did what he said. "Make yoself useful fo' a change," the EMT mumbled under his breath.

Then he began with the arsenal at his disposal. Tubes. Shock suit. Blood expanders. They trundled Art out of that trench and away with grim, firm moves, a ritual of succor performed in equal parts for victim and witnesses. The ambulance whooped away into the night.

Then Asa and I got hustled off the platform and back up to street level. The area was thick with cars. Red bubble lights were strobing around the site. Radios crackled and sputtered and cops rushed back and forth, frantic to impose some sense and order on the jumble of witnesses and blood and darkness.

We went to the Sixty-Eighth Precinct. No one there was happy to see us. A cop walked us into the main foyer, they buzzed us through a door, and the patrolman silently put Asa's sword on a desk. It was wrapped in brown paper and tagged. Then Asa and I were split up and the desk sergeant told someone to put us in interrogation rooms. They let me change into regular clothes. There were dark smudges on the ha kama I'd been kneeling in blood and was glad to get the smell of it away from me. I'd seen enough of the stuff.

Micky arrived in a separate car. He was covered in dried blood too, and the desk staff fussed about him, repeating all the blood-borne pathogen stuff that the age of AIDS has made a daily reality for cops. I heard his voice in the hall asking where Asa was. The door to my room opened and he stuck his head in. His face was closed and hard. His only comment to me was "What a cluster fuck." Then he was gone. He must have ID'd us to the people at the precinct; things got a little less tense. But a cop was down, and the fluorescent lights did little to dispel the dinginess of the station or the somber tone of the interrogation.

Asa was still gray faced and silent when they led him away. After I had my statement taken, a series of different detectives came in and asked me the same series of questions all over again. They had a real knack for making you feel like you were lying, even when you were telling the truth. You know why they do it, of course, but it doesn't make things any easier.

It was after two A.M. before I saw Asa again. He looked old and remote. His face was a wall; only the eyes moved behind it. The sensei sat in a chair with his hands cupped in his lap, palms up. It's the tnuira hand gesture used for meditation in swordsmanship. But his mind was still on the platform, not in the dojo.

I sat next to him and watched the ebb and flow of a station house at night. I didn't look at Asa among the Japanese, you don't look directly at higher ranks in tense situations although when he spoke his voice was so low that I had to resist the urge to look at him so I could read his lips.

"He was waiting there," the sensei murmured, as if picking up the thread of a conversation already underway. "In the dark. The note I received said he would be." He took a long breath in. "I was not sure it would be so."

"It was a narrow space." His right hand stirred faintly in his lap, as if coming alive with the retelling. "Dark. Dirty. I said it was not a place ... of honor."

What did he say, I wanted to ask. But I was afraid the sound of my voice would shatter the spell. Asa's eyes weren't focused on the room, but looked back into the trench.

"He told me it was regrettable but could not be avoided." A pause while the wheel of memory turned for Asa.

"I told him I was there to accept his challenge. He seemed surprised. But he understood courtesy, that one. We bowed. It was a narrow place ..." he said again, as if stuck on that detail.

"I circled away from the stairs toward the wall. It was dark, but I could feel him watching me. By the wall, I could look out and the light around him made him a better target." He smiled tightly. "Heiho. We drew our swords. His nukitsuke was strong, Professor." It was the only indication I had that Asa was even aware of my presence. For him to classify Ronin's sword drawing as strong told me volumes.

"Then the policeman came. The big one. I do not believe he even saw me in the shadows. He came down the stairs so fast, he had little time. Just some words in the radio." He took a breath to continue, then paused as if editing his thoughts, "The stairs were slippery. The platform too. I called out a warning to the policeman..."

"The ... man ... he turned on the policeman. The gun went off." Asa paused as if the memory of the shot punctuated his narrative. "I saw the rage in his eyes by the light from the guns flash. It was like the heat of a furnace, his anger." He paused. "The old warriors must have known this feeling: 'relentless as fire."" It was a reference to an ancient samurai battle slogan.

Asa sat forward with the tension, then subsided. "He struck kote" the old man said simply. The wrist cut is one of the most common used in kendo. "He cut at the right hand. In the dark, it looked as if the policeman had a gun in it." But Art was left handed.

Asa continued. "The first shot came as the blade sliced down." I could imagine the flash of gunfire and the glitter of the blade's arc. "It froze the ronin for a moment." And that fractional pause was probably why Art was clinging to life.

"But he recovered. He was quick, that one." He stopped again, caught in the vividness of his memory. "I began to move, but he had already crossed to the other side. I could not get a clear strike... It was irimi" he said flatly. An entering technique that brings you to your attackers side for a counter. "He moved in," Asa spat.

"I am not sure what technique he used then," he said apologetically, as if identifying the simple mechanics could change the ultimate outcome of that night.

"But he took the pistol away from the big one. Close in." Asa seemed to bring himself back into the room with an effort. "The rest you know."

We sat in the white noise of the station, in the time before dawn when the unconscious mind works hardest, and listened again to the memory sound of the shots, a string of muffled blasts that Ronin squeezed off, the pistol muzzle searching for Art's side like an open mouth.

I nodded. The rest I knew.

Later that day, after the vigil at the I.C.U, I drove out to Micky's. I had spoken to my brother in private only briefly since the night Art was wounded. He was monosyllabic and distant, on administrative leave until Internal Affairs had investigated the incident.

Even as night approached, the sun hammered down on the Island, not letting up. Micky's kids were in the pool, paddling around and playing with face masks and little plastic boats. They were subdued, but the cooling effect of the water had begun to revive them a bit. Dee was out there, a faint sheen of perspiration on her flushed face, trying to keep them quiet.

I came through the fence and around the house to the pool side.

"Hey, Dee," I said. She smiled wanly at me and the kids waved. We watched them splash around for a bit. "Mick around?"

She looked at me. Dee looked beat too, but sunburn made her high cheekbones stand out with a type of false vitality. "Sort of," she said. "He's in the family room." She picked up a glass and sucked at a straw and watched me walk up to the sliding doors.

The room was dark. I put my face up to the screen and peered in. I glimpsed a suggestion of motion and heard the faint clink of ice cubes. The thunk of a glass being set down on a wooden table.

"What." His voice was raspy. I slid the screen over and stepped inside. Micky was holed up in the gloom like an animal in a cave. I pulled a chair over and sat down without saying anything. He got up and fumbled in the dark, set a glass down on the table in front of me, palmed some ice cubes in, and poured me a drink. In the dark it was hard to tell, but as I lifted the glass up I could smell the Irish whiskey.

He settled back in the chair like an old man and tipped his glass at me in a toast.

I swirled the glass around, making the cubes clink. I took a sip and watched him. "You been in here long?" I asked.

"A while." I listened to him carefully, you can only drink so much of this stuff before it hits you. But Micky was doing a good job getting his tongue around the words. He was stone-cold sober.

"Got a plan?" I asked.

He reached over and turned on a light. My brother's eyes are a bluish gray and they seem to lighten or darken depending on the mood and his surroundings. At that moment, they were dark, like pieces of rock.

"Course I do," Micky said. "I'm gonna squeeze your man Yamashita until he pops."

"What!"

Micky took a hit of his drink. You could hear him inhale as he brought the glass to his lips. He squinted at me as the whiskey went down. "I told you there was something goin' on with those Japs."

He says things like that just to get a rise out of me.

"You got anything that proves it?" I demanded. "I mean, other than some hunch?"

"My hunches pay off, buddy boy."

"Hey, Mick. Just because you're comin' up empty doesn't mean that Yamsahita or any of the other sensei are involved."

"Oh no?"

"No," I said.

"Well you tell me how this fits together." He sloshed some more whiskey into the glass. The lamp glowed through the green of the Jamesons bottle, like luminescence from the bed of the ocean, "You got a major homicide here. One in LA and another in Phoenix. Same martial arts MO. Cryptic messages on the walls at the crime scenes. In Japanese. Also martial arts related. Then, last night, who gets a meet set up with the guy? Your teacher." He glared at me.

"Whattaya mean? It was Asa who got the note."

Micky gave me a hostile smirk. "You dope. Your teacher was scheduled to do the demo. The note was for him. Asa picked it up by mistake."

I thought for a minute. "OK, when you string things together like that, it sounds plausible," I admitted. "But, look, we know that whoever's doing this has some sort of martial arts fixation. I mean, the whole "Ronin' thing... the theft of the bokken. Don't you think it's possible that Yamashita got singled out just because he's a prominent martial arts sensed"

"You still working that celebrity stalker angle, Connor? It's thin."

"No thinner than you trying to pin Yamashita for something he's not involved in."

Micky looked hard at me. "Ydu sure of that, Connor?"