Sensei (4 page)

He shot back in his chair. If I did that in my office, I would go flying backward and end up on the floor. The president's chair was made of sterner stuff, however. Leather, with those tasteful little studs along the edges of the seams.

"So," he said finally, indicating the snappy repartee was about over, "I assume Dean Ceppaglia has described the nature of the assignment?"

"You need someone with expertise in the martial arts and Japanese culture to develop some descriptive material for an art exhibit being run by a potential donor. I don't see a problem, sir."

"Yes." Something shutter like flickered in Domanova's eyes. "You understand that remuneration will be arranged with the client and not the university?" I nodded, but I don't think he was even watching for the prompt. The presidential close was coming. "Fine. My secretary will provide you with the name of the individual. Good day."

And just like that, it was over. He shot back into his seat and whirled away to gaze out the window. Like posing for a portrait: Brooding Intellectual Surveys His Domain. The afternoon sun lit up his craggy face and the shoulders of his expensive suit. For a university president, he had an awful lot of dandruff.

The name in the file I got from the president's office was Robert Akkadian. The martial arts universe is not that large, so I had heard of him. Akkadian, or Bobby Kay as he was known on the street, had been an early promoter on the New Ifork karate tournament scene. He saw the business potential in the arts. Over twenty or so years he had gradually gotten his fingers into every piece of the martial arts pie he could. He was doing pretty well by now. I was surprised that he was rubbing elbows with Domanova, given his semi sleazy origins.

Then again, as the Chinese say, money has no smell.

Akkadian had gone upscale, with an office in Manhattan that was part of his Samurai House art gallery. I strode through the glass doors off the street and entered the lobby. It featured an eight-foot waterfall splashing down a black rock face. The waterworks bifurcated the lobby into two halves one devoted to the gallery and the other to offices. I wandered over to the right to the office suite area. It was sedate, with muted tans and greens, bleached wood wainscoting, and appropriately innocuous prints that Westerners would think of as vaguely Asian in character. The receptionist was blonde, with that shiny, brittle look you get from spending too much time worrying about how well your cheekbones are showing. She gave me a smile, though, and ushered me into Akkadian's office.

Bobby had a horsey face and a mane of longish hair that looked like it was dyed to match the expensive camel-hair jacket he was wearing. His office was dominated by an expanse of U-shaped desk with the cyclops monolith of the desktop computer squatting in the corner every modern executive's little electric shrine.

The desk surface was uncluttered. Some papers were fanned out in front of his chair the way a magician spreads out a deck of cards before beginning the act. I wouldn't have been surprised to find out they were glued together to make that display. The whole office didn't really feel like it was an actual work site. It had all the qualities of a replica showroom labeled "Important Executive."

The Important Executive came around to greet me. "Hello, Professor, thanks for coming by." He shook my hand and I noticed him taking a look at it. I was probably something of a disappointment. I'm not really big and I don't look particularly dangerous. Akkadian was checking to see whether I had the signs of hand conditioning you see in some karate students: enlarged knuckles, calluses,
etc.
My fingers are a bit thick. Weird muscles have also developed in my forearms, but the only sign of advanced training in my hands is the bulge in the web between my thumb and forefinger I've developed from all the sword work with Yamashita.

He motioned me to a small sitting area of low chairs and we sat. Bobby and I chatted pleasantly, mostly about his experience training and deep love for the martial arts. He knew something of my background and I talked a bit about Yamashita.

"You know," he smiled, "despite appearances, the Manhattan martial arts scene is a pretty small world."

I nodded. "Seems that way sometimes."

"But I don't hear much about Yamashita Sensei," he commented. Which was true. My teacher is almost as secretive as he is selective. "It would be fantastic to be able to visit the dojo. He really sounds impressive."

The subject of visitors was not one I cared to bring up with my teacher just now. I smiled noncommittally and nodded again. I noticed I was doing a lot of it lately. After a while I said, "I hope I can be of some help to you. You need some PR pieces done for a sword exhibit?"

That got him back on track. "Yeah. Let me show you what we've got planned." He gestured me toward the desk. It looked like it was made of marble.

We wandered over to the desk and he pushed the fan of papers to one side. To my surprise, they actually were unconnected. He ruined the display effect, but the creature outside would probably come in later and restore it. "I've managed to get some fantastic blades for this show. You would not believe what a pain the Japanese have been about letting this stuff out of the country. The security bond alone is killing me."

He opened a manila file and spread out some papers. "What I'm putting together, Professor Burke, is a display of rare Japanese weapons, all of which have a documented association with some of the most famous warriors in martial arts history."

I looked at one sheet of paper. It listed a series of weapons types, descriptions of individual pieces, and estimated value. There were katana the long sword of the samurai as well as short swords and knives, the spears known as yari, and naginata long poles with wicked curved blades used to hack riders out of the saddle. They would interest any martial arts freak, but what was really fascinating were the names of the original owners of these items.

"Wow," I said, looking at the list.

Akkadian looked pleased, "You bet. Some of these pieces are being allowed out of Japan for the first time. Some of them, as a matter of fact, are already here. And every one of them linked to famous warriors."

He read aloud from the list: "Yagyu Munenori, Yamaoka Tesshu," he paused significantly, then continued, "... Miyamoto Musashi."

I could feel Bobby eyeing me for a reaction. He's famous, but Musashi had never been one of my favorites. He's known as the "sword saint," but it was a funny kind of sainthood. He was a minor seventeenth-century samurai whose single-minded pursuit of dominance in swordsmanship carried him through untold duels. Musashi pioneered the simultaneous use of two swords in

Japanese swordsmanship but often faced his opponents armed with nothing but a wooden weapon. Once he used a carved-down boat oar. Whatever weapon he used, the results were always the same: a crumpled form in the dirt and Musashi stalking away, never satisfied, always hungry for another opponent. He always struck me as a man with something to prove.

He's known today for writing A Book of Five Rings, a treatise on strategy in swordsmanship. It's been touted as some sort of major work on strategy for today's businessmen, and deluded MBA students read it, thinking a tough merger negotiation is the twentieth-century equivalent of a sword duel. The dust jacket claims it's the secret guide to strategy for Japanese executives, but if you go to Japan, it's hard to come by and only antiquarians are familiar with it.

But I had to admit that it was a brilliant move. The weapons assembled were bound to draw a crowd.

Which was pretty much how he laid it out and where I came in. Bobby was a bit of an egotist, but he was also shrewd enough to know what he didn't know. A show like this would have martial artists as well as scholars coming out of the woodwork. Some in both groups would be lunatics, but a significant number would be fairly well informed. As a result, Bobby needed to make sure that his display hype was historically accurate. He could have tried to get some reputable name to do it, but Bobby was not really connected with those circles.

Domanova, like a shark smelling blood in the water, had sensed that Bobby was rapidly emerging as a successful and wealthy entrepreneur in search of some respectability. If I could do Bobby a favor on the cheap, the relationship with Domanova would grow and everyone would be happy. The president would give him a patina of respectability. Bobby would be slowly courted and stroked you could imagine the dorsal fins circling and eventually cajoled into making a sizable donation to the university.

It was a very finely choreographed dance where need, ego, money, and illusion swirled together. In higher education they call it "institutional development."

I don't pretend to understand all that, but my role in the process was pretty straightforward. Bobby called in his shiny receptionist to make copies of the documents in the folder and asked me to come up with some stuff on the different historical figures and their role in Japanese warrior culture. "Nothing too complicated, now, Professor," he reminded. "A little blood, a little guts, a little budo..." he grinned at me with that long horse face and I felt the urge to grin back. Bobby was not my kind of person, but it was hard not to respond to someone who was so obviously having so much fun.

"You ever been to Samurai House before, Mr. Burke?" I shook my head and he headed for the door, giving me a "come along" jerk of the head.

"I've been working on this place for years. Started as an Asian antique center. Ydu know vases, lacquer screens, that kind of stuff. I got a sense, though, that this martial arts thing was going to be big. So over time, I've been adding things a mail-order house here, videos, a gallery for traveling displays ..."

"Diversification," I commented.

He smiled. "It's a beautiful thing. My latest thing is the training and exhibition hall. Check it out."

The office suite was tucked away in a corner of the business part of the complex. From the other side of the lobby waterworks, you entered the public area through large wood doors that matched all the furniture in the office suite. On this side, instead of an office reception area, there was a rock garden, you walked around it and could then access the training and exhibition hall. "Some of the stuff's in there now," Bobby said as we walked past the garden. "Got a special security detail to watch it."

We went in through those sliding paper screen doors the Japanese call shop. The dojo was bright and airy, with a good, hardwood floor and tasteful decorations. Of course, in a real dojo there are no decorations, but this was America. I had seen worse a lot of people fill their schools with all kinds of Asian schlock and they end up looking like bad Chinese restaurants.

He watched me as I took a look around. "Pretty nice, huh?"

I had to admit that Bobby (or his interior designer) had done a good job. It was impressive. "Looks like you've got it all figured out," I commented

He grinned again, "you bet. And, as a perk, I get to work out here."

"You still train?" I asked. What with all the diversification.

"I try to keep my hand in," he said with the false-modest smirky kind of reply people use in the martial arts when they want you to understand that they are good. "I'm training with this guy now; he's incredible."

Bobby glanced at his watch. Was that alligator for the band? "As a matter of fact, it's about time for my workout. Would you care to watch?"

And on cue, Mitch Reilly walked in to the dojo.

In street clothes he looked almost normal, although the tight polo shirt stretched across his torso gave the impression that this was a man who spent a great deal of time lifting weights and looking at himself in the mirror. He probably got along pretty well with Bobby's receptionist. Reilly came up short when he saw us and glared at me for a minute.

"Mitch," I said, just to annoy him.

He looked at Akkadian. "What's going on here, Bobby?"

Bobby Kay did not get where he is by being dense. He looked at me, then at Mitch, and realized that what he had here were two unstable elements in very close proximity. He moved in so he was at least partly between us. "Professor Burke is doing some consulting for the gallery. I didn't realize you knew each other."

"It's a brief acquaintance," I noted.

Mitch muttered something under his breath. It sounded like "asshole."

Bobby didn't pick that up. "I had just invited him to watch our workout."

Reilly bristled. "I don't like outsiders watching me train, Bobby." Akkadian looked a bit put out.

I jumped in. "It's OK, Mr. Akkadian. Maybe some other time." I held up the file he gave me. "I'll get to work." For a minute, I had the urge to tell him to get someone else for his trainer. But, hey, he was hiring me to do some writing, not to manage his business affairs.

As I walked out, Bobby Kay looked a bit disappointed. But I figured he wasn't half as disappointed as he would have been if I told him the last time I saw Mitch Reilly, Yamashita had knocked him out and Mitch had wet his pants.

Owl's Head Park is in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and looks out over the Narrows leading into New "fork Harbor. It's one of the few parts of the borough left where you can still see how hilly it was before all that building effectively erased any of the land's texture. Every morning I run up the hill in Owl's Head, down the other side, and onto the pedestrian walk that borders the choppy gray water that churns between Brooklyn and Staten Island. It was almost summer, and I was praying for an offshore breeze. They built a sewage treatment plant right near the park in a fit of excellent urban planning and now it pretty much smells like you think it would. It helps when the breeze blows in from the ocean.

Yamashita's a big believer in running. He thinks it aids the cardiovascular fitness of his advanced students, and he's right. Once you get to a certain level in martial arts training, the physical effort sort of peaks out and technique takes over. What makes a novice collapse in a sweaty heap, gasping for breath, does not have the same effect on you. But Yamashita insists that we stay fit, which means some sort of cross-training.

One of his favorite stones is the one about the American who goes over to Okinawa to live out a life-long dream of training with this karate master. The guy gets there for his first day of training and the master asks him, "What's the best self-defense technique?"

The American is pretty pleased with himself because he knows the answer. "Run away, Sensei," he says.

The old master nods sagely. "Good." Then, he adds, "Start running."

The American is absolutely perplexed.

The master repeats. "Start running. If I can catch you, I will beat you up."

And off they go, the student tearing down the street, running for his life, while this ancient karate teacher chugs relentlessly after him.

I'm not even sure whether the old guy catches the student, but Yamashita thinks it is tremendously entertaining. Like most things he tells us, the story has a point: a good martial artist needs to stay in shape.

So I run.

I hate running, even after all this time. I use it as an exercise in concentration and breath control. I tend to make up little chants to keep time with the flopping of my sneakers. I know the scientifically engineered, dayglow, roll bar-equipped and heel-cup-enhanced productions I wear are more properly referred to as running shoes, but I grew up calling them sneakers and I like to keep the memory alive. When I was a kid, you rooted around for these things in bins that smelled like inner tubes and contained hundreds of mismatched pairs. They cost seven bucks then, which is why I have a minor stroke every time I buy new ones today.

Mostly, I use the rhythm of exercise as an aid to thinking. It helps focus me, like the repetitious chants used in Shinto ceremonies that are believed to get the attention of the spirits. And, of course, when I think, I'm no longer dwelling on how much I hate running.

All the research I had been doing made me think about Yamashita, the closest I had ever come to a true master. I had presented myself to him years ago, with formal written recommendations from highly respected teachers. I knelt on the wood floor in the formal position, bowed, and offered him the neatly brushed testimonials with both hands, which is a sign of respect. I waited.

I knew that there was something missing from the training I had received up to that point. It was a quiet but insistent urging. My teachers could see it in me, revealed in my technique: it's hard to be focused when you're craning your neck to see around a bend. Whatever I was looking for, they knew they couldn't provide it. It must be a hard realization for any teacher to come to. So they passed me on to a higher level of intensity.

I knew a bit about Yamashita, even then. His prowess in swordsmanship, as a fighter with or without weapons, was grudgingly admitted by the more mainstream teachers. Stories about the rigor of his training were used to scare cocky black belts into a type of humility. So when I came before him that day, I looked at him carefully to see what part of my future was revealed in his form.

He was stocky and about average size for a Japanese man of his age. I'm not much bigger, but Yamashita radiated a type of power that you could feel. His hair was cut so short that from a distance he appeared totally bald. His eyes were hard and dark, and the expression on his face was one of total reserve. The fingers of his hands were thick and strong looking as they reached for the introductions I brought.

Yamashita glanced once at me, read the letters, and grimaced.

"So," he said. "Return tomorrow. We will see."

You couldn't tell whether he was pleased, annoyed, or optimistic. And in the early days of working with him, I despaired of ever finding out. But over the years, as I passed from one level to another, a subtle form of communication began to take place. I don't know whether it was just that I got more used to the nuances in him, or whether his training was making me more perceptive, but there it was. And, as I persevered on the hard course he charted for me, there were times when I swear I could see a glint of approval or satisfaction in his eyes. And just that hint was enough to keep me going. He was my sensei, after all.

In the last few days, there had been a subtle increase in the intensity of training. Not that things weren't normally pretty intense. But there was a pattern, a flow to the logic of what my teacher did. The years with him ingrain the pattern in you. And what we were doing lately seemed somehow out of synch. You could sense it in the nature of his comments to his students, in the stiff set of his back as he stalked the dojo floor. I wondered what Yamashita was up to.

Any sensei is a bit mercurial at times they do it to keep you guessing. Part of the mystery of a really good martial arts teacher is the way in which you're perpetually surprised by things, kept just slightly off balance. I had a karate teacher years ago, and every time I thought, OK this guy has shown me just about everything he's got, he would waltz in and do something I had never seen before. Then he would look at me like he could read my mind.

Yamashita was a master of this type, but even more so. You could glean clues of the inner workings of the man from the comments he would make after training. The students sit, row after row of sweaty swordsmen in dark blue, slowing their breathing and listening to the master. When he was pleased, Yamashita would offer parables that reinforced an important lesson. At that point in the training session, you're so used up that the mind is extremely open. As a result, the stories and advice are imprinted in your memory in a tremendously vivid way.

But there was none of that lately, just gruff admonitions to train harder. In response, each of us came back for more training even though its purpose was a mystery.

I slogged on in the rhythm of the run, mulling the situation over. There was nothing to be done. My teacher would reveal his purpose in time. Or not. It was his choice. He was the master. I thought about something else.

I had finished up Bobby Kay's project. It was not exactly a brain teaser. I e-mailed the file and mailed a disk and a hard copy to him just in case. Now I was waiting for the check. The school semester was ending. It was the beginning of the lean season for all part-time college teachers like me, and Bobby's payment loomed large in my imagination. So I made up a little chant that kept my mind off the sheer boredom of running: Bobby Kay. Yau must pay.

I was on the hundredth repetition of my little mantra: Bob-by Kay. You Must Pay. It went well with the in and out of my breath. People were passing, going the other way, runners or people on mountain bikes, and I noticed after a while that I was getting some funny looks. Couldn't have been the sneakers; they were as high tech as everyone else's. I was also pretty sure that I hadn't been actually chanting Bobby's name out loud. Then I started to pick up the crunch of car tires slowly approaching me.

The unmarked cop car came grinding up behind me with its light flashing and gave me a quick bloop on the siren just for kicks. I was glad for the breather.

There were two of them, and they had that cop look about them: faces that told you everyone is guilty of something, everyone lies. The driver was sandy haired with a clipped, military-style mustache. The other guy had a shock of dark reddish brown hair with a two-inch white streak to one side of his widow's peak. They were in shirts and ties, which told me they were detectives, "You could eye their shoulder harnesses and hardware (gun belts being a pain in a car). I peeked m the back. Their sports jackets were neatly folded in the backseat, and the floors were cluttered with paper wrappers and empty coffee cups. I didn't look too hard, though. Cops get nervous when you appear too focused.

The drivers window geared down. I took one look and tried the time-honored civilian opener.

"What seems to be the problem, Officer?"

The driver eyed me silently, then looked at his partner. "How original."

"You don't get conversation like this just anywhere," the guy with the white streak commented.

Mustache continued. "Burke." It was a rhetorical question: they weren't nosing pedestrians to either side of the path just for fun. They were looking for someone in particular. I nodded.

"We're looking for some information. Could you come with us, please?"

I knew I hadn't done anything. But there's something about the Law. I got that feeling in my stomach. Like I had just gotten on an elevator that suddenly lurched down.

A black guy shot by on some in-line skates. "Hey man," he called, "don't let them roust you without ID. Could be anyone down here, know what I'm saying?" He had turned around to deliver this advice, skating backward. A few bicyclists swerved madly out of his way, and he spun forward and rolled on without giving us another look.

"I suppose I should ask for some ID." I'm not proud about some things: I took the skater's advice.

The driver made a show of patting himself absently and muttered, "Hmmm ... badges ... badges."

His partner chimed in with a really bad Mexican accent. "Badges? Badges? We don't need no stinking badges." I tried to place it. Treasure of the Sierra Madrel I always get those bandits mixed up with the ones from The Magnificent Seven.

They both chortled. Cop humor. The driver with the mustache flashed a detective's shield.

'"You want me up front or in the back?" I asked. The sweat was beginning to pop out now that I had stopped running. I was hoping all the crud in the back of the car wouldn't stick to me.

"You sit next to me, Bruce Lee," the driver said.

His partner got out, eased the jackets over and settled into the backseat. It was an oddly fastidious motion. The jackets looked clean and pressed. They were the only tidy thing in the vehicle. I got in, bumping my knee on the radio console mounted on the dash, and we rolled slowly down the path until they could exit and we headed back onto the streets. No one said anything. The radio made soft gobbling noises. I asked if I could roll down my window. The driver eyed me and, deciding I wasn't about to make a break for it, rolled it down with the power console on his left. I turned to look over my shoulder at the cop with the white streak.

"So Mick," I asked, "how's Mom?"

My brother, with the inevitability of salmon spawning and other inherited urges, was the latest product of the Brooklyn Irish diaspora who had flowed in childhood to Long Island and ebbed back home to the NYPD. He had been a rambunctious kid. He grew into a quiet adult who seemed to smother some deep, unanswerable anger and keep it under control only with a minute by minute exertion of willpower. He's like a lot of cops I know: a basically good guy who has seen too many bad things and is baffled, frustrated, and personally affronted by them and who, at a moment's notice, could go off like a rocket.

The family is mostly relieved he has found a constructive outlet for his energies. Micky is generous to his friends, an accomplished carpenter in his spare time, and a good husband and father. He also tends to wander off at family parties and stare vacantly into the distance while sucking on a Marlboro, seeing things the rest of us don't. Or don't want to.

It's a measure of his self-control that he's made detective. Since he essentially gets to wander the city with his partner, Art, tracking down criminals from the mobile trash bin they call a car, and doing it relatively free of supervision, Micky likes his job and is good at it.

Art Pedersen is a stockier version of Micky. He's also a little less gloomy. Art gets to play Good Cop most of the time, although I imagine that when the two of them begin to really work on an interrogation, it's probably hard for the perp to tell the difference between the Good Cop and the Bad Cop. Art is a movie buff, and after years of traveling together, the two of them have developed this annoying habit of recycling old lines of film dialogue into their conversation. They find it tremendously amusing. Many criminals, not as steeped in cinema, find it totally baffling.

Now I was treated to some of their patented charm. My older brother didn't rise to the bait of my question. He just eyed me and said flatly, "What have you been up to, you moron?"