Hook and Shoot (10 page)

Burch was on the other side of that glass somewhere, squinting at me and thinking British insults. I countered with American indifference, put my feet on the table and got my phone out.

“Tell me you're on your way here,” Gil said.

“Sorry. What's the word on Zombi?”

“Cryptic.”

I waited. “Okay, and? I know what it means. You don't have to demonstrate.”

“Found some video of his judo competitions,
typical Japanese stoicism, but this guy takes it to another level. His face never changes, whether he's bowing, tossing somebody over his head, or getting his elbow dislocated.”

“Who did that to him?”

“Some Ukrainian in the World Judo Championship from a few years back. Guy's pulling like his kid is drowning; Zombi's arm goes the wrong way. They scramble. Zombi ends up using the broken arm to choke the guy out.”

“Jesus.”

“And that's without being able to strike. I got some grainy footage of his first MMA fight. It's from two years ago and his stand-up was shit, but he won. Fought a kickboxer, waded right through the guy's offense and put him to sleep.”

“This is starting to sound bad.”

“Well, the kickboxer's neck was longer than yours.”

“The hell does that mean?”

“More neck, easier to choke.”

I pulled my shoulders up to see if it made sense. “So what's the verdict?”

“From what I've seen, he's a bad matchup for you. Got a head like a cinder block and takes punishment for days looking for a window, then he pounces. Basically he's you, only with much, much better grappling and he doesn't bleed all over the joint.”

“So if you throw in the towel now, will the ref see it?”

“Don't be a baby. There's a way through him. I just need more information. And that's the fucked-up part. I do a search for Japanese catch wrestlers and get video on everything from professional matches to teenagers jumping off garage roofs onto each other but hardly anything on Zombi.”

“Huh. I told Eddie to get me everything he can. We'll see what he comes up with.”

“And tell him and that Burch prick I'm training you in Eddie's bathroom if I have to. There's no way you're going against this guy without me.”

“I know.” I moved the phone away from my ear, just in case. “Oh, and we might be fighting him at an Elite Combat event instead of Warrior.”

The line hissed. “Of fucking course. Listen to me. It doesn't matter where the cage is or whose name is on the canvas. What matters is the man across from you. Let me handle everything else.”

“I appreciate that. Listen, what would you say if I walked away?”

“From what, Eddie and his drama? I'd say hip-hip and you know the rest.”

“It would mean I'm done in Warrior, no matter what happens to him.”

“That doesn't mean you're done fighting. Plenty
of other promotions out there.”

“Yeah. But this contract will put us over the hump. I don't go for it, I'll get eaten up wondering what if.”

“Don't do any of this for me or the guys here. You never have to ask what if about us. You want to come home right now, do it. You decide to become a professional juggler, we'll wash your balls. That came out wrong.”

“I hear you.” The pool area was blurry. I wiped the sweat and other things out of my eyes. If Gil wasn't worried, neither was I.

About that, anyway. I caught movement in the reflection of the landscape behind me and watched one of the statues step out of the shrubbery and follow the path toward the pool. He was young and Japanese, and he carried a four-foot samurai sword.

“If I don't call you back in ten minutes, tell Marcela I love her.”

I'd never fought a guy with a sword before, holding or facing. I don't count the little bulldog from Eddie's limo—he wasn't fighting me.

I picked up one of the chairs and walked along the table from the guy's right as he came off the path onto the concrete. The chair was much heavier than
I'd expected, some kind of weighted base. I put in the work to make it look light.

He held the sword at a forty-five-degree angle toward the ground. Relaxed, just out for a stroll. He wore wraparound black sunglasses, black pants, and a white tank top. A full spectrum of fish and feudal Japanese scenery tattoos covered his arms and chest.

What do you say to make a guy like that stop in his tracks, rethink what he's doing, scamper off into the weeds?

“Hold up,” I tried.

He didn't even glance at me. “You got our note. Why are you still here?” His English was unaccented. Locally grown or an early transplant. He wandered to the edge of the pool, stuck a hand in the water and slapped it against the back of his neck.

“Put the sword down.”

“Or what, you'll chair me? That looks heavy.”

I ran through it: throw the chair, watch it go two feet and bounce toward him. Maybe he jumps into the pool, cramps up, and drowns.

“It is heavy.” I put the chair down. Took my jacket off and draped it over the back. The sun evaporated the sweat on my thin white shirt and started making more. Where the hell was Burch? “What are you doing here?”

He looked at the sword in his hand, the mirrored
wall of Eddie's house. Turned to me with a little smile. “Selling Girl Scout cookies.”

“Hey, I'm just trying to stall.”

“I know. Doesn't matter. I'm still wondering why you're here. Our message wasn't clear enough?”

“It said midnight.”

“Let the others wait. I want this now. And it's midnight somewhere.”

I didn't know if that was true. “Was that your buddy in the freezer?”

“My brother.”

“As in gang brother or real brother?”

“Blood brother.”

I still wasn't sure. “I can't let you kill Eddie.”

“You don't really have a say in it. You should go. Now.”

“What about the other ten guys in there?”

He smiled again. “You mean Burch? He thinks he's worth ten. He should stay. And the woman. We don't want to chase them, waste more time.”

Vanessa's inflatable raft bumped against the pool's edge at his feet. He looked down at it and touched the tip of the sword against the vinyl. It went through like a torch through cobwebs. The raft sagged.

Burch was on their list too. Explained why he didn't consider leaving Eddie; it wouldn't change a thing for him. “Why do you want them dead?”

He watched water seep over the raft. “They didn't tell you? No surprise. You knew, you would have left already. Maybe killed them yourself on principle.”

“My principles don't align with most.”

“We know. We also know you understand dishonor. If I tell you why Eddie and Burch have to die, you'll know of my family's dishonor. Then I'll have to kill you too. Which is fine, but unnecessary. So go.”

“You're so ashamed, why don't you kill yourself? What's it called,
seppuku?”

He turned from the raft. I had a good idea how his eyes looked behind those sunglasses. “Watch what you say to me.”

“Isn't somebody supposed to help, slice your head off after you disembowel yourself? I've never tried that, but I'll do my best.”

“Would you leave if I told you we have people in Brazil, watching Marcela?”

The sweat on my back froze. “You don't.”

“I'm sure your woman will understand why she has to suffer so you can try to protect these doomed men. These ghosts.”

“My woman. That's enough to get you a broken arm, she hears you say it. Send your boys in. She's surrounded by the entire Arcoverde clan. It'll make for a nice family reunion.”

Maybe we were both bluffing. The phone was
heavy in my pocket, tugging me to call and warn her.

“Her family against the Dojin-gumi.” He shook his head. “What's Portuguese for ‘They're slaughtering us'?”

“They don't have a word for that. What's Doe Gin Goomi? It sounds spicy.”

His knuckles turned white on the sword handle. “You're exceptionally stupid.” He squared his shoulders to me.

I picked the chair up again, jacket and all.

“I am going to tell you why they have to die. And right after, I'm going to cut your fucking head off and take it with me. So I can always look at the expression on your face: regret for defending dishonorable men. Your last thought will be, ‘My life was wasted.'” He slid his left foot forward, brought the sword up, and held it vertically behind his right shoulder.

I lifted the back of the chair frame level with my neck.

He said, “You're going to die because Eddie—”

The shot sounded like a cough. The black sunglasses split in half above the bridge of the guy's nose and flew away from his face. The skin on his forehead and around his eyes flapped out and snapped back like a fish's mouth. He dropped the sword.

Two more coughs as Burch strode out of the sculpted shrubs between the patio and the wall along the side of the property, a long, dull gray suppressor attached to his pistol. He wore a long-sleeve tan shirt
and suit pants, dirt on the knees.

The guy was already dropping when the two bullets hit center mass, went through and past me into the backyard. His knees cracked against the concrete. He fell face-first into the pool, landing on Vanessa's limp raft. It wrapped around him and they both floated toward the middle of the pool with red ribbons spreading underneath.

Burch still had the pistol up, scanning the area. “He's alone, correct?”

I put the chair down. It had beaded drops of blood on it. So did the lapels of my new jacket.

“Woody.”

“Fuck you.”

That brought him around. “Say again?”

“That asshole was here for you too, not just Eddie.”

“Looked to me like he wasn't discriminating. I believe that sword was headed for your spine, no?”

“It wasn't going to touch me.”

He glanced at the chair, the sword. I don't think he did the same math as me. He kicked the sword into the pool. “Regardless, you're welcome. Goddamn ingrate. I need to sweep this area. Go inside and get the boss and Vanessa ready to move. We're not safe here anymore.”

“I'm not doing anything until you tell me what he was about to.”

“Having a chat, were you?”

“I think you heard most of it.”

“Don't worry about it. Go inside and get them ready.”

I didn't move.

Burch pointed the pistol at my left knee. “Go.”

“I will remember this moment.”

“Please do. Every time I give you an order.”

I lifted my jacket off the chair and walked between the pool and Burch, who backed toward the path and kept the gun on me. I watched him in the house reflection. When I was close to the kitchen door he turned and drifted off the path into the landscape and disappeared.

I stepped into the coolness. Vanessa was by the table, staring past me with her hand over her mouth.

“There's blood on my jacket.” I left it hanging on her shoulder. “Where's Eddie?”

“Burch put him in the panic room.”

“Where?”

“It's, ah, it's off the master suite. That man is dead.”

I headed for the stairs. “Keep those words handy. You'll need them again.”

I chewed up the stairs and cut left, saw Eddie's double doors closed. Maybe they were unlocked, but I had a good thing going and put a foot between the knobs
shaped like sword pommels. The doors split open, and something metal flew off, tumbled across the room, and hid under the bed. I got two steps into the room and froze.

Statues stood along every wall except the glass that overlooked the pool and garden. Twelve of them, geared up in everything from Spartan greaves and helmets to a Knight Templar with longsword and banner, starched in mid-ripple. The walls behind them were draped with dark fabric, making the room feel like a commander's tent. The soldiers were all posed at ease, and in the periphery they seemed to be nudging each other about what they were looking at, which was Eddie's barge of a bed.

A custom piece, built in place because no door in the house would have let it through. The headboard was white marble, carved into tiers of miniature benches with arches and sunshades made of wood and canvas at the top. It curved around the corners of the bed and blended in a smooth slope down to rounded nightstands on each side, bronze gauntleted hands rising out to hold torches with LED flames. It was a very accurate model of the Roman Colosseum, right down to the sand-colored pillows and bedspread with the Warrior logo embroidered in rusty blood.

“Eddie.”

No answer. There was a closed door in the far
corner. I booked a flight around the bed, opened the door to Eddie's bathroom. It was bigger than it had looked on the security camera. Eddie wasn't in the shower or on the toilet.

I stood in the doorway and wanted to smash something, but everything in the room was built to smash back. I settled for messing up Eddie's bedspread and must have tripped a sensor—a raucous crowd cheered me from hidden speakers, then faded.

“If you don't come out right now, I'm going to tell people about that.”

Nothing.

Burch hadn't said anything about a panic room during the tour. Operational security, he must have figured. But he did say there was access from his room to Eddie's through a closet. I went to the corner where the glass wall met the wall shared with Burch's room. There was space to walk behind the statues. I knocked through the fabric—solid, solid, hollow—and pulled the cloth aside to reveal another door, plain wood stained a dark cherry. It was locked.

“Eddie, if I have to break this door down, I'll use the pieces to make your funeral pyre.”

Silence.

I pushed the fabric away from the wall, hooked one side over a grim centurion and the other over a wild-eyed Zulu, stepped between them, and set my
feet. Took a breath and tensed my core and stopped.