Luthecker (7 page)

Camila Ramirez, Chris Aldrich, and Yaw Chinomso playfully kicked, punched and shoved one other as they made their way across the dojo floor.

“Doctor Alex.” Yaw called out, a nickname he had given Alex for what he considered his strange and confusing but somehow really insightful opinions on things.

“Doctor of what?” Alex had asked him, the first time Yaw had called him that.

“Doctor of interesting thought.” Yaw had playfully responded.

“Hey, Yaw.” Alex quietly replied, and the men briefly shook hands and embraced. At over six feet tall and of dark skinned African descent, Yaw towered over the much shorter Alex. With a chiseled muscular physique that weighed in at 240 pounds, he was much stronger as well, but he had a great deal of respect for Alex, both for his dedication to training, and that “strange brain” of his. He knew instinctively that Alex was a man of honor, something important to him, as it was to all of Master Winn’s students. And he was also very wary of Alex when he had a pair of Kali sticks in his hands, the sticks being an equalizer of sorts in regards to their martial arts ability.

“You hangin’ around for class?” Camila asked Alex.

Alex smiled at her. “No.” He replied softly. “Gotta run.”

“Aw, you always gotta run. You have a girl, somewhere, don’t ya?”

Alex smiled.

“Why won’t you let her meet us? We don’t embarrass ya, do we?” She joked.

“Never.” he replied, his voice barely above a whisper.

Camila had always jokingly asked that question, about a girl somewhere, and Alex never answered. He preferred to let himself remain a mystery, and neither she nor any of the others ever pressed him much beyond that.

He eyed her left wrist, wrapped in a bandage.

“How is it?” He asked.

“Broke.” She replied matter-of-factly.

Alex shook his head.

“You try tellin’ her to stay home.” Yaw responded.

Camila, or “C-Ram” as they called her in training, was from Mexico. A fierce warrior, she was an illegal, but she never let that limit her ambitions. She grew up in the streets of Tijuana, literally homeless, and made her way across the border determined to find a better life. She worked hard cleaning homes of wealthy Americans during the day, all in order to train at night.

What Alex knew and she didn’t was that a year and a half from now she would be pregnant, something that would come as a complete surprise to her, but nowhere near as much a surprise as it would be to Yaw.

Alex suppressed a smile at the thought of that. They would be happy. He of course would never tell them, never rob them of their life, but whenever the patterns of a life he saw were good, sometimes he would be tempted.

It took a long time for Alex to recognize where other people’s instincts about one another stopped, and his continued. Most people realized a man carrying a shotgun through a shopping mall was a threat, but few were capable of seeing, or more accurately wanting to see, the anger in the eyes, the resignation in the posture, the degradation in hygiene, the increased social detachment, the growing frustration brought on by the constant reinforcement of a negative belief system that along with countless other details that in Alex’ mind, doomed the man to this fate from the beginning. It wasn’t magic to Alex. It was math. And he simply saw it all very clearly before the man ever picked up the gun. It wasn’t perfect, there was always room for an occasional surprise, but overall it was pretty damn close. And the more dogmatic the life, the easier it was to read.

“Hey Chris.” He added as he looked at Aldrich, not wanting to leave him out of the greeting ritual. Aldrich was a 26 year-old good-looking kid from the Midwest, and with blonde hair and brown eyes he got the attention of many young ladies. Painfully shy he rarely said much, which somehow added to his allure, which in turn made him even more self-conscious. Camila picked on him about it all the time. Even though he was younger than the other two only by a couple years, he still came off as the “baby brother” to the group. He gave Alex a silent smile and nodded.

Alex had never let anyone close to him in his entire life, unable to handle the calculation of their fate in his head for too long, but he’d allowed these people to become closer than any others previous to these few. He still chose to remain a complete mystery to them, only interacting when they trained or for an occasional meal together, but they accepted him regardless. For Alex these people were the nearest thing to family that he had ever had.

One way or another they all lived apart from society’s order, part of the increasing off-grid existence that the current pattern of socio-economic circumstances drove. The one thing that they all had in common were secrets, nothing truly criminal but things that in some way put them at odds with that order, which they wished to keep hidden. In a small way, Alex felt, they were just like him.

There was another thing about his friendship with these people, one recent development that he had never experienced before, that gave him pause. The more he got to know them, the more difficult it was becoming for him to read their patterns. This surprising development actually made him very happy. He shrugged it off as both a result of the discipline of his training, and his complete lack of desire to know.

• • •

Alex watched as the transit bus hissed to a stop in front of him. It was the 11:30pm bus, the last one of the evening, a short ten-block walk from the “dojo”. The doors swung open and he boarded, paid his fair in cash, and took a seat behind the driver.

He closed his eyes, tired, not wanting to look at any of the other passengers. He knew if he did, he would be bombarded with the patterns of birth, death, anger, love, hope, choice, desperation, and countless other physically manifested details of all these strangers lives, and with the level of fatigue from training that currently took hold of his body, with this many people, all at once, it would be too overwhelming to control. It would leave him emotionally drained, as if he had been fed upon by rows of fearful vampires. It was an experience that before the discipline of his work with Master Winn had more than once left him sobbing in seclusion.

“I need you to deliver both a package, and a message for me.” Winn had asked, before Alex left the dojo.

“And they are very important.” He had added.

Not just a martial arts master, Master Winn was also an information broker for those who chose to live off the grid. It was a booming industry. As the number of people who lived off the establishment’s radar grew ever larger, so did the number of people who saw the increasing technological integration of society combined with the continued erosion of rights in America as a threat to their very survival. These people didn’t want their text messages, phone calls, emails, tweets, “Facebook statuses”, postal mailing routines, bank accounts, income statements and spending habits matrixed through and acted upon by a Corporate-Government computer in any way. They came from all walks of life, and they longed to go back to the beginning. Simply put, they wanted to be free.

Master Winn trafficked both information and light packages with a carefully constructed and handpicked network of couriers spanning across Southern California. Be it via handwritten notes passed or as minimal as words whispered, the rules were clear: No electronics whatsoever, under any circumstances. Anything written down must be destroyed upon receipt. No trafficking in criminal information or contraband that was harmful to others was allowed unless the intent was to prevent a specific act that would harm another. Couriers were honor bound to the death to keep all information secret. And all fees were to be paid in cash, as long as cash remained legal.

On the street, Master Winn had earned the nickname “Mr. Fed Ex.”

Alex was Master Winn’s most favored courier. With his unique skills of perception, he had become particularly adept at avoiding detection, and Winn had taken note of this early on in his training. Alex’s “district” was the West Coast, but if the message were important enough and the fee amount agreed upon, he occasionally traveled cross-country. He mostly stayed local however, as for some reason that was never explained, Winn always wanted him nearby. Alex always traveled either on foot or by public transportation, occasionally by cab or hitchhiking if he had the opportunity to read the life of the driver and certify that he was not a threat.

Most messages Alex delivered were benign; birth and death notices for illegal residents, records or receipts for cash transactions and so on, but tonight’s delivery was something different, something far more dangerous.

Master Winn told Alex he was to transport a duffle bag filled with two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash to a recipient in one of the roughest gang neighborhoods in Los Angeles, the notorious Imperial Courts housing project in the city district of Watts.

The Watts housing projects had always been a flash point for gang violence and racial tension in Los Angeles dating long before the Rodney King riots of 1992 and the race riots of 1965. Although a gentrification process that began not long after the 1992 riots had diluted the district’s reputation for violence, it still remained a place where the police rarely dared tread to this day. Both Crips and Bloods had maintained tight control of the area, along with a few other, newer tribes, mostly Latino, which meant a considerable chance of violence against any person who should choose to enter without welcome.

“Don’t you want to know what the money is for? Don’t you want to know why I am asking you to take this risk?” Winn had asked, as Alex picked up the duffle bag.

“No.” Alex had answered.

“Why not?”

“It’s simply enough that you ask, Sir.”

“Put the bag down.” Winn gently commanded.

Alex did as he was told, and looked at the Martial Arts Master.

“To not know what you carry and why you carry it would be the height of carelessness. Always be clear of another’s intentions, Alex, no matter how much you trust them. Otherwise, you put yourself, and therefore others for whom you are responsible to, at great risk.”

“Of course. You’re right, Sir. I’m sorry.” Alex backpedaled, catching himself. He pretty much knew already what was being brokered, and the risks involved, but sometimes he forgot that most other people had to ask.

He looked at Winn intently, allowing him his explanation.

“A deal has been agreed to regarding territorial rights.” Winn began.

“A one block section of 108
^th
Street has been declared free of any violence, prostitution, drug trade, or crime of any sort, for a term of two years. This agreement includes usage rights of this territory as a safe zone for refugees. That message needs to be confirmed. The first payment for this is what is in the bag, and the man who you are delivering it to is the guarantor of the deal. It is very important that he receives this package tonight.” Winn finished, as he pointed at the duffle bag.

“I will see to it that he gets it.” Alex replied, as he picked up the worn grey sack by its fraying hand straps.

“And this is yours.”

Master Winn added, handing Alex one more thing: A letter-sized envelope that held two thousand dollars in cash. The courier’s fee.

Alex briefly set down the duffle bag, took the envelope and stuffed it in his backpack, the one that also held his Kali sticks.

He turned to exit the dojo. He hesitate a second, as if to say something, then thought better of it, and began again towards the exit.

Winn called him on it.

“What is it?” He asked.

Alex turned back.

“It’s just…It may not work out that simple, sir.”

Winn gave him a brief smile.

“Nothing ever is, Alex. Karma is not always set. You cannot always believe what you see.”

Alex looked to the floor
. If he only saw what I saw
, he thought to himself.

He looked back up at his instructor, responded out of respect.

“Yes sir.”

• • •

The hiss of the bus’ brakes woke Alex from near sleep, and he got to his feet as the bus slowed to a stop. The doors swung open and he stepped onto the sidewalk, the cool night breeze providing a refreshing stimulant from the warm air and lull of the bus trip.

He looked up and down the deserted streets as the bus roared away behind him. Still in the black of night, he examined the closed sidewalk shops, black metal accordion gates closing off their entrances, behind them nothing but darkness. He eyed the steel rods and spiral rebar of the Simon Rodia Towers, more commonly known as the Watts Towers, an Italian immigrants rough dream of scrap metal and porcelain that now stood as a national landmark, less than three blocks to the east of where he stood.

He took a deep breath of cool night air to wake himself, and checked his watch. 12:17am. It was still several hours before the hustle of the day would begin. He flipped up the hood of his pullover sweat jacket as he headed north, his destination about a forty-minute walk away.

Alex preferred traveling by night, the lack of human activity being much more peaceful to him, but when acting as a courier, he usually traveled by day. Security cameras and satellite observation networks actually had more difficulty tracking targets during the day, the large and constant movement of people creating an added needle-in-the-haystack level of difficulty. But whenever it was a local delivery in an economically depressed region, he felt safe enough moving in the night. He knew where the few recording cameras were, mostly at revenue generating traffic stops, and he easily avoided them. He also knew that right now, he was being followed.

Although he was perceptive to strong intent, allowing him to sometimes read people moments before he actually saw them, there was nothing but basic human awareness and common sense at work here. He was in a gang neighborhood. It was nighttime. And the gangs provided formidable security for all the local businesses. He was being watched the second he stepped off the bus.

This didn’t concern him at the moment, not just because of his ability to be one step ahead of his followers, or the pair of metal Kali sticks he had strapped to his back, but because couriers always had a “ghetto pass.” If confronted, a simple display of his weaponry, recognizable to all as handcrafted by Master Winn, would be all his would-be assailants needed to see. However he knew it would never come to that. Alex had walked these streets at night many times before, and the leaders of the security detail would know of him, and that tonight, he would be passing through to deliver a very important package.