Changes (26 page)

78

"Oh, just because they don’t ogle you, they’re gay?" I said.  "Aren’t you being a bit full of yourself?"

She smirked and said, "Randall, I’ve caught our waitress staring at my tits tonight, okay?  I’ve gotten glances from just about everybody here.  Same with the last time we all went out.  It may sound like I think I’m all that, but that’s not it… a girl just learns to feel when people are staring.  Usually, if I show a millimeter of cleavage, I’m dealing with looks all night.  Besides, that’s not what cinched it for me.  Body language, conversation, hell, even Daniel’s Capoeira name…"

"Still," I said, "That doesn’t mean they’re gay, for god’s sake…"

I glanced at Daniel.  He didn’t seem to be paying attention.  "Tell her, would you?" I said.

"What would you have me say, doctor?" Daniel said.

I looked at Tony Lau.  He still stared at the floor.  I looked at Daniel.  I saw myself reflected in his glasses.

"Oh," I said.  

Well, shit.  Some fucking detective I am.

79

We went back to the hotel.  Over coffee, I heard the whole story.  Tony had been hiding, really, his whole life.  He’d been a sickly child, but Jimmy Lau had gone to insane lengths to show the rest of the family - and the Eight Tigers - that his son was strong.  The older Tony got, the more important it became.  To be a future leader of the Eight Tigers, he had to be tough.  He had to be a ‘real’ man.  Jimmy Lau had even threatened to throw several of his ‘brothers’ out of the gang for suggesting that Tony might not be up to snuff.

When Lau arranged for his son’s engagement, many of the rumors ceased.  With Lau’s acceptance and involvement in his son’s art career, the whole point became more or less moot.

Jimmy Lau had protocols in place for choosing a suitable heir to the Eight Tigers.  Unfortunately, now that he was dead, none of the other ‘brothers’ wanted to follow them.  Each had their own claim of seniority; each had supposedly received Lau’s blessing.

For Tony, the whole affair had been painful.  The kid just wanted to live his own life.

Chances were good that he would never truly be able to. 

80

After Tony and Daniel left, Tracy and I sat in the living room area of the suite.  She’d pulled those long, magnificent legs of hers up under herself in the chair and sat sipping cocoa. 

I cracked the top of a bottle of Glenfiddich, poured two fingers worth (if those fingers belonged to The Thing from Fantastic Four), and sat across from her on the couch.

For a long while, we were silent.

Pain still lingered in the room, and it was hard to ignore.  I couldn’t imagine what it had to be like to be Tony Lau, on so many different levels.  To lose your fiancée, your child, and your father in the space of a month; to live a life being groomed for something you couldn’t care less about; to be unable to love, truly love, freely.

I looked at the goddess across from me – with the dot of marshmallow fluff on the tip of her nose from a particularly ambitious gulp of cocoa – and imagined a life in which I had to measure my glances, conceal my touches, and keep my mouth shut.

I couldn’t do it.

Nobody should have to.

"… I love you," I said.  The words surprised me, but they hit Tracy as if I’d fired a gun at her.

"What?" She said.

"You heard me."

"Say it again," she said, her eyes shining. 

I said it again and felt some of the ache in my heart dissipate.  Setting my drink on the coffee table, I got up, went to her, and knelt in front of her.  She slid her legs out, unfolding them, and wrapped them around my waist.  Her hands slid through my hair and intertwined on the back of my neck.  Our lips met, and I felt droplets hit my face.  When I looked up at her, the shine of her eyes had brimmed over, painting crystalline lines down her cheeks.

She sniffled and shrugged, laughing a little.  "Nobody’s ever said that to me before," she said.  "It’s a little disarming."

"Tell me about it," I said.

She wiped at her eyes and leaned back, breathing slowly and deeply several times before saying, "I’ve… never really said that to anybody either."

"It’s okay," I said.  "You should only ever say it if you really mean it."

She was staring down at our hands which had somehow come together.  Her eyes rose to meet mine and she said, "…and you really mean it?"

I nodded and kissed the marshmallow from the tip of her nose.

81

In our moonlit bedroom, with the sounds of the sleeping city beneath us, we laid in each other’s arms, skin against skin.  I listened to the sounds of the wind against the building, the occasional passing car, and the steady tide of her breath.

As I was drifting off, Tracy said, "Randall?"

"Hrmf?"

"…I love you too."

I smiled, kissed her hair, and fell promptly asleep. 

I didn’t dream.

I didn’t need to.

82

After breakfast and a water conserving shower, I kissed Tracy goodbye.  She was off to visit her parents, and I was heading for a morning of punishment.  Master Cheng answered the door in his pajamas – yellow footies with small Howdy Doody heads dancing in random patterns.

"Am I early, Master?" I said.

He blinked at me several times and said, "No, why?"

Before I could answer he turned and disappeared into the house.  He’d left the door open, a sure sign I was invited in.  I closed the door behind me and went through the antiquated kitchen and down the basement steps.  Cheng promptly slumped into his easy chair.

The open concrete floor was filled with his students.  They practiced their various sets without any semblance of order, sometimes crashing together in the cramped space.  Master Cheng said something, and for the first time I noticed the older man sitting in the other easy chair.  As the students labored, the two older men appeared to be playing
Xiangqi
–
Chinese Chess.

I looked around, seeking some small open space in which to warm up.

Cheng immediately said, "Lazy American asshole, get to work…stop wasting my time."

I wasn’t sure how I was wasting his time, since he’d barely noticed me since I’d arrived, but I wedged myself into a small alcove by a metal shelving unit covered with moldy issues of National Geographic and Playboy and began to practice the Silk Reeling exercises.

When I was finished, several of Cheng’s students approached, bowing slightly, and asked to push hands.  I did, feeling beady eyes on my back from the direction of Cheng’s chair.

"Ay, Frankenstein!  What, you eat too much French fry?  Too much Big Mac?  Why so lumbering?  Why so heavy?  Be light, be a crane!"

And, to my partner, "Jiong Lu, do not hang off the American… he is not a meat hook."

As I practiced more, circulating among different students and occasionally stopping for small breaks, I felt eyes on me more and more frequently.  From the corner of my eye, I saw Cheng’s guest rise and approach the class.  Cheng was not far behind.

The man was almost a foot shorter than me.  His hair was severe and short, plastered to his head like a helmet.  His eyes were a pale grey.  He wore the same long, wispy beard I was used to seeing in kung fu movies.

The guest went to one of Cheng’s top students and assumed a deep pushing hands stance.  The boy mirrored him.  Moments after touching forearms, however, the boy was launched from his feet and into several of the other students.  When the boy stood again, he held his arm gingerly.

The guest paid no attention, but went to the next student.  He yielded to the student’s first push, flowing around the kid like liquid, and delivered two knifehand strikes to the kid’s hip, knocking him into a shelf of old newspapers.

Without a word, he moved on to the next student – Jiong Lu, the kid I’d been practicing with.  I pushed the kid back and said, "My turn."

Cheng stepped in and said, "Ay, American asshole-head have no manners.  Pardon, sir, pardon."

The guest just stared at me.

I stared right on back.

He sank into a deep stance as easily as if he were sitting on a chair.  With his thighs parallel to the ground, he raised an arm as an invitation.  I dropped down to his level and mirrored his stance.  As I raised my arm, he made a slight shaking movement with his waist; I turned and yielded, barely avoiding the same
fa-jin
strike that had almost broken the other student’s arm.

I moved in, stepping behind his right heel with my left foot, and pressed into his floating ribs with my forearm.  Without moving, he absorbed the strike and then seemed to puff out like a blowfish.  I kept my footing, and my position, only because I had not yet committed weight to my left foot. 

I withdrew, seeking a more strategic positioning, when, with a violent shake, his arms flew like steel whips at my head and torso. 

In the millisecond given, I had no Tai Chi defense; I simply raised my arms and tried to keep my head down.  The strikes numbed my arms and sent shockwaves of agony through my skull.  I was barely aware of his arms looping around, driving my defenses down, and looping up to strike – with the knuckles of his index fingers – my exposed temples.

Before he struck his target, I saw something slide in, catch his arms, and push him back.

Something hard and gnarled jabbed an acupuncture point in the side of my neck and moved down to stab at points in my chest. 

In seconds, the feeling returned to my arms and the spider webs in my head cleared.

I saw Cheng, his bony fingers still poking me, warding off his guest with a broomstick.

"Cannot have you killing my students, Ang," Cheng said mildly, "Bad for business."

The guest – Ang – showed no emotion.  He turned, as if to leave, and whipped his shoulder back into the tip of Cheng’s broomstick.  The stick cracked and shattered, but Cheng held his position.

Ang mounted the stairs and disappeared. 

I held my chest and struggled through a few breaths before managing to say, "Who the hell was that?"

"Ang Su Chan.  Very famous practitioner from Hong Kong.  In town on business.  I am surprised you have not heard of him.  I invited him as guest instructor… To bruise students is good, to break them is not so good.  Plus he is an asshole."

I swallowed with some difficulty and said, "I think he was
trying
to kill me."

Cheng turned, scratched his belly through his Howdy Doody pajamas, and said, "Of course he was, numb nuts, he is the man you’ve been looking for."

83

"What?" The old man said.

Apparently, I’d been staring. "…What do you mean?" I said.

"Your killer…it’s him.  I find out he’s in town, I invite him, see his technique…" he said, shrugging. "Now I know for certain,"

Spitting a curse, I bolted for the stairs, fumbling for my cell phone as I ran.  I jammed Knox’s speed dial number with my thumb and wove through the house, knocking over stacks of newspapers and crashing through piles of aluminum can-filled plastic bags.  Knox answered just as my foot tangled in a strand of orange twine leftover from bundling newspapers and sent me sprawling across the floor.

"Lee?  That you?" He said.

"Get over here.  Now.  Olive and 82nd."  He knew I wasn’t screwing around, at least.  He hung up and I scrambled out the front door, scanning the street for some sign of the killer.  A huge grey Lincoln pulled out of a side street and made a left onto Olive.  In five minutes, he’d be on the highway and gone.

I thumbed the remote start on my key chain, unlocked the doors, slid into the driver’s seat, and pulled out into a tight U-turn.  I stomped on the gas pedal and flew after him.

84

"So…you - a civilian - pursued a dangerous murder suspect."

"That’s right," I said.

"And at what point, exactly, did you collide with the detective’s car?"

"Oh, pretty much right away," I said.

The captain was enjoying the hell out of this, I could tell.  Agent Janik leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms.  Knox scowled at me.  The bandage on his forehead really brought out his eyes.

Luckily, I was unscathed.  For once.

My new car on the other hand…

Jesus wept.

Guess I’d see just how good that ‘bumper-to-bumper’ warranty really was.  I scowled back at Knox.  His car was a piece of shit. 

Captain Baldy, meanwhile, rambled on for another fifteen minutes about how I should be arrested and how Knox should be yanked off the case.  Janik leaned forward and said, "Not so fast, captain.  Where would we be without the work of these two gentlemen?  Considering the resources at their disposal, I think they’ve done a fine job.  That includes Dr. Lee.  Nobody’s being pulled just yet."

"You’re not pulling rank on me, dammit.  I still say what goes around here," Baldy said.

The vein pulsed once, like an exclamation point.  Dong!

"I’m not even sure what the hell you’re doing here, Janik.  I don’t see how this is a federal matter."

Janik raised an eyebrow and leaned in.  Something in his eyes darkened and changed – this was the face normally reserved for the interrogation room, I imagined.  "Normally,
sir,
I wouldn’t think of pulling rank on anybody, but seeing how your only involvement in this case has been to obstruct, interfere, and generally fuck things up, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.  This is my case, captain, so from now on your presence in these proceedings will not be necessary.  I will email you my progress reports – as a courtesy, you understand – but that’s all the involvement I’ll need from you.  Do we understand each other, Captain?"

Baldy just stared.  I watched the pulsing in his head and remembered my favorite scene from the movie
Scanners. 
Janik took a toothpick from his inner coat pocket, slipped it between his teeth, and began to chew.  After a moment, he looked up at the captain and said, "Okay, obviously not.  Get the fuck out, please."