Triad Death Match (3 page)

Jane shot Jack a look of daggers. "It's al lright," she said, showing him her badge. Immediately Jack wanted to know where on her body she'd been keeping it. He couldn't see anyplace big enough on the dress to conceal it.
 

"Really?" he asked.
 

Another stern look. "I'm with the Bureau," she said. "We just want to ask you a couple of questions."

The fighter looked out the back window of the cab toward the street. No one seemed to have followed them out of the club; the streets were empty but for cars.
 

"I cannot speak on these events. You are outsiders, ones who are not supposed to know."

"And you?" Jack nodded at the smaller man. The cab stopped for a red light just above Union Square. "Looks to me like you're on the outside now, too, after that. Maybe we can all help each other."

This time Jane didn't shoot Jack a nasty look. "My partner might actually have a point," she said. "Maybe if you talk to us, we can get you back into that ring again, if that's what you want."

For a few seconds, the fighter didn't move. The light changed, and the car started forward. He kept his gaze out the window. The streets were filled now with downtown shoppers, tourists holding big bags from Niketown, the Levis store, Macy's. Restaurant doors were propped open, lights shining through the fog.
 

Finally the fighter nodded. "I am Chen," he told them. He turned toward them and then looked out the front of the cab. "This is your hotel?"

A block up, the hotel that Jack called home stood before them. He had only told the driver Union Square, not an exact location. But somehow Chen knew just where they wanted to go.

"Yes," Jane said. "How did you know?"

"It is this way with things. You have anticipation that I can sense. You are ready to get out."
 

Jane told the driver where to stop, and Jack pushed a twenty through the divider. When the car stopped moving, Jane asked Chen not to run. He nodded again, just a small, precise movement that made his intent clear.
 

"I will come inside," he said. "We will talk."

Upstairs, Jane and Chen sat in chairs while Jack perched on the end of his bed. He'd offered a robe to the smaller man, but Chen had declined. For all the cold of San Francisco, he seemed to be comfortable without shoes or a shirt.

"So," Jane began, "tell us what the hell happened back there."

"It is not so easy to say this simply." Chen looked down at the floor. "But let me begin with this: I am a small man, as you can see, and I am a new fighter to the fans of the
kumite
."
 

He spread his arms by his sides. Jack could tell he was small, but there was something different about the way he moved. Jack had seen him run across the heads and shoulders of a crowd.

"Where you from?" Jack asked.

Chen looked up. "Memphis," he said.

Jack wanted to laugh, but he choked on it, kept it down. "Where?"

"Tennessee."

"Graceland, Memphis?"

Chen nodded.

"Really?"

"Man said Memphis, Jack. You got a problem with that?"

Jack shook his head. "No. I guess I don't."

"Memphis, then. Right. Tell us more about the fight game."

"This is first time for me. I have never seen that place before, but I was contacted and flown out here. A man came to Memphis to speak with me, and he offered me ten thousand dollars to fight. I came. What else can I say?"

"You can give us more details. Keep going." Jane settled her dress across her knees. Somehow she managed to look comfortable in a dress of sequins that barely covered her thighs.

She crossed her legs slowly and snapped her fingers. That was when Jack realized he'd been staring. He jiggled his head and turned back to Chen.

"The man who came to find me gave me money and a plane ticket. He brought me to dojo in a different part of San Francisco, and I slept there last night. Tonight a different student of the dojo brought me to a new location–where they held the fight."

"And the man who brought you to San Francisco?" Jane asked. "Was he at the fight?"

"No. I did not see him there. I trained in a small room beneath the arena, and tonight some men came and told me to get ready. Then they brought me out, and I saw my opponent for the first time. I think he was heavily favored."

"Yeah," Jack said. "Everyone in there was pissed when you beat him!"

Chen shook his head. "I did not win. By their rules I was supposed to kill my opponent to be viewed as the victor."

"Kill him?" Jane pulled back in her chair. Thin cords stood out on the sides of her neck. Her triceps stood out, flexed beneath her shoulders, as she gripped the arms of the chair.

Chen nodded. "I was told if I would win they would give me thirty thousand dollars. This is why I came. Not that ten thousand wasn't a good push. But they did not tell me the terms of winning until just before the match."

"Those are some terms." Jack stood up from the bed and paced the floor. "You want some water or something? A drink?"

Chen shook his head. He stood and crossed his thin arms. "I must get back to the location of the fight. That is where I left my things. That is where I left the money."

"Oh, you're not going back there
tonight
," Jane said. Now she was on her feet. She walked toward the bathroom, already pulling her dress up higher on her legs. "Watch him, Jack. Don't let this guy go anywhere."

Jack watched her disappear into the other room without closing the door. He could hear her slam the toilet seat and then sit down.
 

Jack turned away from Chen. He hated hearing the sound of other people urinating, especially a woman. But Chen didn't seem to be embarrassed or even to care. He eyed Jack like he was more concerned about the fact that Jack stood between him and the door.

When Jane came back after washing her hands, neither of the men had moved.
 

"So here's the deal," she said. "We don't make another move tonight. Chen, I can get you a room here at the hotel, and we'll watch you there or you can sleep on the couch in here. But I'm not letting you out of my sight. This case belongs to the FBI, and I've got more than enough info from you already to hold you in custody as a witness to gambling and conspiracy to murder.
 

"I don't want to bring you in, but I will if I have to. So it's really your choice for tonight: here or behind bars."

Jack looked at both of them. He had no doubt Chen could go through him to get out the room's door. Even if Jane pulled a gun, he knew the two of them couldn't keep this man anywhere he didn't want to be.
 

So he was surprised when Chen nodded. He bowed his head and stepped forward to Jane, agreeing to what she'd said.

 
The next morning, they had breakfast delivered up to the room. By the time the food arrived, Chen had been doing slow Tai Chi and stretching his limbs for close to an hour–at least as long as Jack had been up.
 

Jack watched Chen's chest as he breathed through his movements, his whole body tensing and slowly relaxing as he moved. It was a thing of beauty, these movements, these exercises, and Jack wished he knew how to do them himself. It wasn't hard to imagine that this practice would teach a man to fight the way Chen fought in the ring and
 
to see that the faster movements were a natural extension of this slow, careful practice.
 

Jack wondered if he could even learn to fight this way or move more nimbly with some training and a daily routine that started this way.
 

But here he was, sitting in front of a rolled-in table, eating scrambled eggs and hash browns, drinking coffee, and wishing he had a cigarette.
 

Chen breathed out, his eyes closed. In front of his chest, he extended both hands, palms facing Jack and fingers clenched. His index fingers pointed straight up, slightly bent, and his other fingers were bent at the first and second knuckle. His breath left his lungs in time with his arms.
 

As he stepped forward, he dropped his body lower toward the ground, bending his knees farther.
 

Jane came in wearing one of the hotel's white robes and drying her hair with a towel. She took a piece of toast off Jack's plate and bit off half of it with one chomp.
 

Chen turned to Jane. "You want to know who runs these contests in Chinatown. You want to go back and see who will fight, see how much money is changing hands and where the fighters are brought from. You want to know if there is actually death in that ring."

"And what about you?" Jane asked, still holding her toast. "What do you want?"

"I want my money and the chance to know if I could truly kill a man in the ring to earn it. I hope it does not come down to this, but if it does, then I would like to know this about myself. I want to know my own fate."

Jack moved hash browns on the plate with his fork. They tasted good–salty and buttery–and he wanted to finish them all. But he also wanted to drop a few pounds and get into fighting shape. He wanted to know he could handle himself like one of Chen's boys if push came to shove.

"So we'll go back," he said, pushing the table away from him and standing up. "We'll go back, but first I want you to show me how to do one or two of those moves you do, my man."

Chen smiled, and Jane laughed out loud.

"You really ready to stop smoking those cigarettes, Jack?"
 

Chen nodded and stepped forward toward Jack. He started throwing a too-slow punch with his right hand, already grabbing Jack's elbow with his left and moving Jack's arm into a block.

A few times over the following weeks they went back to the spot in Chinatown with the big Zanzibar door and knocked on it, but at no time did anyone answer. Nor did the door budge.
 

No one in Chinatown would talk to them about the
kumite
or gambling or any fight game at all. Not even chickens. No matter how they dressed or waved money, it was as though the whole population had seen pictures of Jack and Gannon and been told they were outsiders that no one should trust.

Chen refused to return to Chinatown. He said that he'd know when it was time for the next fights and that they'd be contacted. He worked out every day in the morning and night, and spent the afternoons teaching Jack how to do some of the slow Tai Chi movements. Jack wanted to do more–to spar and try faster movements–but Chen refused to be a part of this.

So Jack started looking for a place to train, a San Francisco dojo or fight gym where he could learn more. He wanted to know he could handle himself. For too long he'd had to rely on others to watch his back.

Jane moved out of the hotel room for days at a time. Her daughter would return from Jane's parents', and Jane would want her to sleep in her own room. Any stability in a storm, she said. Then, when her daughter went away, Jane came back.
 

They waited for a phone call from the man in the dark Mercedes. That, or Chen's sixth sense to go off and tell them it was time for the fights again.

In the end, exactly one month later on a Thursday night, a phone call told them that the fights were resuming. A message left on Jane's voicemail said just five words:
Fight tonight. You will come.

In the taxi up to Chinatown, Jack put his hand on Gannon's knee. She wore a red dress this time, cut tighter than the silver one with the sequins and shorter.
 
It covered even less of her thighs. Chen sat in the front wearing a full karate suit, black with white trim on the sash and on the flaps that covered his chest.
 

When they got to the Stockton tunnel, Chen told the driver to stop and hopped out.
 

"We are not together," he said through the window. "You two have your cover, and I will try to make my entrance with guile." He patted the top of the car and walked off toward the street.

"With guile?" Jack asked.

"Keep going," Jane said to the driver. "That's what he said, Jack. Our man is a guile-ful motherfucker."

Jack turned to look out the window at the tiles of the tunnel and the thin, smoky walkway along its side. He had to act the part of a big time Vegas gambler again, and he felt himself getting into the roll. "I think I can win me some money tonight," he said to the air.

They pulled up in the same place as the last time and made their way through the alleys to the door. This time, the bouncer on the inside didn't need convincing; he saw Jane and stood off to the side right away, ushering them past with a wave of his hand.
 

"Good fight tonight," he said. "The champion will be crowned."

"Champion?"

"Come on, Jack." Gannon pulled him by the arm into the inner door and down the stairs.
 

In the large interior room, the crowd looked thinner than the last time, and the fight had yet to begin. The crowd around the betting tables looked more manageable, like Jane could actually place a bet. She started in that direction, and Jack followed.

In the stands, men talked softly in Chinese, smoking cigarettes or drinking coffee out of small paper cups. Above the floor, attendants swept the ring. The stage behind the betting tables was empty: no elders in silk robes, no sign of the guys from the black Mercedes.
 

Jack wasn't sure whether they were here to find out more or to shut things down. Either way, he knew it wasn't supposed to get as crazy as it had the last time. Somehow, Chen was the key to all that, but Jack still wasn't sure quite why.

The program that Jane brought back from the betting table showed three fights planned for the night. On a single sheet, pictures of the fighters lined the sides of the page, with their names, Jack guessed, in Chinese characters. All of the fighters looked Chinese, and the card looked to be all in Chinese lettering. The only thing Jack could make out was the faces. In the upper right-hand corner, he recognized one of the opponents in the main fight: it was Chen.