Giri (20 page)

Fuck you, Golden Boy. Dorian decided to join the Mexicans and root for Quintero.

Round five.

Robbie, in yellow satin
gi
pants, black belt around his waist, shuffled forward slower than he had in previous rounds. To Dorian he seemed gun-shy, anxious not to get too close to Quintero. Quintero, on the other hand, came out smoking, throwing kicks, jabs, wild uppercuts that would have hurt Robbie, had they landed. Somehow they didn’t.

Robbie ducked, sidestepped, evaded, effectively staying out of reach. He made no attempt, however, to counterattack. Quintero’s reaction was to become even more aggressive, to throw wilder punches and kicks. A sold-out arena, over five thousand, cheered the Mexican, urging him on to victory. His padded feet and hands brushed Robbie’s face and stomach, not connecting, but coming close.

For all of the support that Quintero was receiving, he had not hurt Robbie this round. Hadn’t touched him.

And then the two fighters clinched. Contemptuously, Quintero shoved Robbie away without waiting for the referee. Then the Mexican gestured with his hands for Robbie to come forward and fight. Boos from the crowd. Whistles of derision were aimed at Robbie, along with the chant, “
Ambrose sucks, Ambrose sucks.”
Dorian heard someone say, “Fucking East Coast hype, that’s all he is. Dude’s got no balls, man. No fucking balls.”

This wasn’t the Robbie Dorian remembered. The Mexican was kicking his butt. At least until now.

The detective stepped to his right for a better view. Thirty dollars for standing room. Hottest fight in Vegas since last summer’s heavyweight championship bout at Caesars Palace. Right now in the ring, it appeared that Quintero had things all his way, taking his time as he deliberately tracked Robbie from one corner to another, shuffling forward with that demonic stare, trying to get closer to land that one knockout punch or kick.

It happened midway through the round.

Dorian would never forget what he saw. One minute Robbie was backpedaling and getting booed. The whistling, jeers, catcalls. And then—

Robbie lifted his right knee to his chest, a preparation for a front kick. Quintero, hands low, stopped; he leaned back, keeping away from the expected kick. But no kick came. Instead, Robbie kept his right knee up and lunged forward like a fencer, landing a strong right jab in Quintero’s face.

A quick left cross from Robbie followed, ripping into Quintero’s right temple. So powerful was the blow that it spun the Mexican around, leaving him glassy eyed and staggering. And vulnerable. Robbie drove a savage left hook into Quintero’s kidney, bringing him up on his toes. The Mexican stumbled forward, then turned to face Robbie in time to take a spinning back kick to the stomach that folded him in half. Two uppercuts, so fast that Dorian barely saw them, dropped Quintero to the canvas.

In front of Dorian the Mexicans fell silent. Not the rest of the arena. They were out of their seats and cheering the unbelievable turnaround.

The referee’s arm rose and fell with the count. Quintero’s handlers leaped into the ring and dragged him back to his corner. Someone broke a capsule under his nose and the Mexican stirred. His left foot began twitching involuntarily.

Robbie, arms held high in victory, faced two television cameras ringside as the crowd picked up the chant.

“Rob-bie.”

“Rob-bie.”

“Rob-bie.”

Something about the scene around Dorian frightened him. The crowd, the chanting, Robbie’s sudden annihilation of Hector Quintero. Robbie had killed someone in Las Vegas. Dorian didn’t know who or when, but it happened. The fight here convinced him of that. Robbie had been faking in the ring, all along being in control, leading the Mexican on until he found his weakness. Sly son of a bitch. Hiding himself in front of five thousand people. Golden Boy, you are definitely something else.

Dorian left the hotel quickly, anxious to get away before Robbie saw him. He was also in need of a drink and a telephone. Where is she, Golden Boy? Where is that lady you killed, whose blood gave you the strength to do what you just did to Hector Quintero? Gonna find out Golden Boy, and when I do, I’ll own you.

Lake Mead, the resort thirty miles east of Las Vegas on the Arizona-Nevada border. In a two-room cabin near a clump of pine trees, Christina Cholles put the finishing touches on a painting of the beautiful sandstone cliffs, which met the water’s edge on the Arizona side of the lake. She lightened the blue of the lake by adding white, then took a smaller brush from between her teeth and darkened her version of the cruise ship that toured the lake three times a day. The actual lake was more spectacular than any painting. It was 115 miles long, a man-made wonder created by the incredible Hoover Dam, and Christina never tired of it.

Rain had been falling steadily since early morning. She’d had to close the cabin door and windows and could not see the lake itself. No matter. An hour or two more and the painting would be finished. Meanwhile rain was coming through a leak in the roof and dripping onto her bed. William would have to fix that.

Closer to the lake were stores, buildings, the cruise ship, tourists. All the company you wanted if you wanted it. Their cabin was more isolated, within walking distance of one of the canyons in the area that was popular with hikers, backpackers and campers. After working all year in a San Francisco bank Christina preferred the quiet. An hour ago she and William had gone to the store to buy food, then to the post office to pick up mail. He had taken the car and driven to Las Vegas for a dental appointment, leaving her alone with Vivaldi, her painting and her Christmas tree. The tree, small and plastic, was kept lit all year round in her San Francisco apartment. As usual, she had taken it with her on vacation; it cheered her and reminded her of happier times, when her family had been together. Now, her mother was dead from lymph cancer and an older brother had been blown apart by a claymore mine near Da Nang. She rarely saw or heard from a second brother, currently working for an aerospace company in Texas. As for her father, he was old and embittered by a recent leg amputation for diabetes, and too unpleasant to be around.

Christina Cholles was twenty-seven, a thin-faced redhead whose blue eyes were her best feature and who attracted men through a sense of humor and a knack of appearing to listen intently to their every word while her mind was elsewhere. She and William both worked in a San Francisco bank and both liked the quiet of Nevada and Arizona. This was their second vacation together, and, while they enjoyed each other’s company, Christina found herself disliking her job more and more.

She was an assistant manager and had gone as far as she
c
ould. On vacation together this year, she and William would have a chance to talk about their future and about another job for Christina.

This morning at the post office she had received two pieces of mail from the bank. One was a note reminding her that her painting for the bank’s art show was due the first week in December, not that it would be any great masterpiece. She painted because she enjoyed it. The second bit of mail, also from the bank, was a reminder that she was to enroll in an advanced computer program for junior executives. She threw both notes away in the post office trash can and wondered what the bank would say if they knew she planned on leaving early next year even if she didn’t have a new position to go to.

William wanted her to stay at the bank with him; she knew it even though he would not come out and say so. He had a future there and would go far. But if she was to be happy she could not be too concerned with him. It was a thought that upset her.

There was a knock on her cabin door. At first she thought it was William, back early from Las Vegas. “William?”

“No, ma’am. Police.”

She froze, paintbrush held near her ear. “Police? Is anything wrong?” Had something happened to William?

“No, ma’am. I’ve flown down from San Francisco to ask you some questions about a man you work with.”

She sighed with relief. William was all right, thank God. As for the bank, all she could think of was: not again. Three times during the past few years shortages had appeared and always it had to do with computers.

She opened the cabin door. Poor man. He was soaked, his topcoat dark, his hat dripping. Both hands were in his pockets. He smiled and showed her his gold badge. Christina instantly decided that he was friendly, seemed embarrassed.

He stood and waited until she invited him in.

They grinned at each other. “Somebody in your bank’s been at it with computers again,” he said. “Couple million this time. With that kind of money you can only end up in Vegas. I mean, where else can you have big fun twenty-four hours a day?”

It suddenly occurred to her: was he talking about William?

The detective removed a hand from his pocket and took off his hat. As his hand came out of his pocket a folded piece of paper fell to the floor. Christina bent down and picked it up. She started to hand it back to him, then stopped. It looked familiar. And it was creased, as though someone had crumpled it before throwing it away.

Good Lord, it was the note sent to her by the bank concerning the new computer program. Now why had the detective taken that from the trash, where she’d dumped it? Had he been following her?

She looked from the crumpled note to him. He gave her that boyish grin again and fingered a golden stud in his right ear. He wore gloves.

When he kicked the cabin door shut behind him she flinched. It was seconds before she found her voice. “I … I don’t understand.”

He took one step closer. “Doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter.”

T
HERE WAS A TIME
when Robbie Ambrose had not been
bushi,
when he had not been a warrior and invincible. Then he had been weak and women had tried to destroy him. But in the end he had escaped their tyranny.

His Westwood, Los Angeles, home had been ruled by women: his mother, two aunts, a sister. Robbie and his father, a timid history professor at UCLA, were the only males, often at the mercy of the women. For the first ten years of his life Robbie, a blond and pretty child, was made to wear girl’s clothing by a mother who openly spoke of her preference for her second daughter, and made it known that there would be no more children; childbirth was painful and sex repulsive. From then on his mother never again slept with his father. And she and her unmarried sisters made no secret of their preference for a house without men. In the words of one aunt, Robbie was an unwanted mistake.

At twelve, Robbie, urged on by his fourteen-year-old sister, entered into an incestuous relationship with her. Guilt and fear outweighed the pleasure; his sister mocked his fumbling efforts yet forced him to continue by threatening to tell their mother. When an aunt discovered them having sex, Robbie was beaten by the three older women so savagely that he could not get out of bed for weeks. Traumatized, he did not speak for over a year.

Robbie was then sent to a strict boarding school, where even a slight infraction of rules brought down swift punishment from the staff. Pleas from his father allowed Robbie entrance into the house only on holidays and for a limited time during the summer. He was forced to sleep alone, in a room with the door open and a small night-light on. The women had to know what he was doing at all times and the sister had to be protected.

At fifteen he visited his father on the UCLA campus, where the two attended a Japanese historical and cultural exhibition. Here, a spellbound Robbie watched his first karate demonstration. Such men, the
karatekas,
appeared to him as gods. What power they must enjoy from possessing such a skill. Robbie would have given years of his life to be one of them.

With his father’s help he found books on karate, other martial arts and on Japan and studied them avidly. At school he practiced alone for hours, devouring page after page of instruction. When an older boy tried to take the books from him Robbie kicked him in the jaw. A staff member confiscated the books and Robbie set fire to his office to retrieve them. It took four staff members to physically overcome the enraged youngster, but not before he hurt two of them seriously enough to put them in the hospital. The next day Robbie’s family was ordered to remove him from the school.

At home there was a shift in relationships. Robbie was now bigger, stronger, more sure of himself. A new hand was on the whip. The women soon learned to fear him, to know that there was no way they could control him. School was of little importance to Robbie; he lived for the martial arts, for karate, judo, kendo, stick fighting. He trained in Little Tokyo dojos and in clubs in downtown Los Angeles, and when he was not in a dojo he was in a gym, honing his body with weights, running, swimming.

At seventeen he made black belt, fighting in tournaments with a ferocity and savagery that terrified older and more experienced opponents. He was frequently disqualified for unnecessary roughness and lack of control.

But he was rarely defeated. And he was able to protect his father from the women.

When his mother, in a fit of anger, tossed one of his father’s carefully prepared history papers out the window, Robbie slapped her hard enough to drive her jaw out of line. An aunt caught prowling around Robbie’s room had her arm broken. His sister proved more difficult to deal with. When she returned home from college she looked at Robbie not as a brother but as a man. An attractive man. In her eyes he saw the memory of that time and knew that she remembered, too. He saw it in the way she baited him with a word, with the way she cupped her breasts, the way she touched his hard-muscled arms, the way she brushed against him. It was in her knowing smile.

It happened just after his twentieth birthday. His sister waited until the house was empty. Then she came to Robbie’s room, bringing him
lmagawayaki,
the Japanese waffle filled with sweet bean paste, one of his favorite foods. She also brought him drugs and wine. He never remembered how it happened, but happen it did. Both naked, both wanting each other, the guilt and fear rushing back to claim him once more and, above all, the pleasure.