I
was hungry. An evening stroll through Chinatown can do that for you, proof that life exists after a murder trial. Especially when you win.
Every other shop on the street was a restaurant, with chickens or ducks or a collection of unidentifiable animal parts roasting on spits in the storefront windows. The commingled aromas of exotic food permeated Chinatown like no other section of San Francisco. With the stress of my prosecution, recent meals had not been memorable. We were on our way to meet Daniel for dinner. I hoped this one would be different.
Felix was still missing, but I didn't care. I didn't miss him, I didn't need him, and I hoped that Daniel would release him now that he was back home and I was a free man.
Albert Chen met Angelica and me in the lobby of the Mark. It being a pleasant night we decided to walk. To be honest, I had decided to walk. After incarceration in a variety of gray bar hotels, enforced attendance in a dank courtroom without windows, and dodging the bullet of San Quentin and all that implied, John Caine was ready to stretch his legs and exercise his freedom.
Physically, I felt good for the first time since I had been shot. Truly good. I could feel my body healing. There was a spring in my step. I almost felt young. Angel had helped me celebrate my freedom in a way I might never have again had things gone the other
way. It made me grin. I had to catch myself. Several times I caught myself wearing a foolish-looking grin on my freshly shaved mug, certain that a casual observer might think I'd gone daft.
The neighborhood was typical Chinatown, part city, part suburb, and all shops. Besides the aroma of food, both cooked and raw, the city air smelled of fog and exhaust, fresh flowers and aged garbage. Tomorrow, I gathered, would be trash day. The sidewalks were lined with old galvanized trashcans, filled to overflowing. Some of the cans had lids, most did not. Some were so pungent you had to hold your breath and walk a little faster when you passed by.
Not good for the appetite, but excellent for conditioning.
When we decided to walk, Mr. Chen went to his car and returned with a stout black cane topped with a heavy silver knob. “I have had it for years,” he explained. “Purchased it on a whim from an antique store in London. And when I walk the streets of San Francisco I always feel better when I have it than when I do not.”
“You have a sword in there, Albert?”
“Nothing of the sort. It's ebony and silver. Solid silver. They told me it once belonged to a British gentleman who had it made for himself in India some time in the last century. Or was it the century before last?”
“Does it matter?”
“Not really. It is just a concept to which one must now become accustomed. We are in a new millennium. I understand that it is only numbers, and therefore artificial, and that the experience of our living in these times is a mere accident of birth. But by turning over into the two thousands, we are further cut off from the past. Not only into a new century, but into the next millennium. We now live, it seems, in the future.”
“We live in the now,” I said.
“Indeed, Mr. Caine. That's your Zen talking. But I read a great deal of history, and I often delve into the past. To them, we live in the future.”
“Not that they care.”
“My, you are definitely into the Zen this evening. But you're correct. When our time is over, it is over, and it doesn't matter if we have been gone for one second or two millennia. The children you saw this afternoon are the future of Jackie Chang. Her grandchildren will live on.”
White and Chen had driven me to the exclusive private school where the Chang grandchildren were boarded and educated, their scholarship provided by an anonymous benefactor. He didn't have to tell me that Chawlie paid the bills. I already knew that. I think he wanted me to see that they were well off and protected, their lives enriched instead of impoverished. Chawlie could not make up for the loss of their grandmother. She could never be replaced. But their lot could have been worse. Given the circumstances, I wondered if it could have been better. Their future seemed assured.
As much as anybody's future is assured. Money and prestige cannot guarantee security. Ask Diana. Ask John-John.
Hell, ask any of the Kennedys.
“So you feel safer with the cane?”
“It is now a habit when I walk. The streets here are gentle nowadays. It wasn't always that way. The cane is not a necessity, but I still like having it.”
I smiled. I knew all about having a friend. The Buck knife was back on my belt, hidden in its snug little sheath beneath my coat. I had carried the Buck for decades. I'd had it so long it was now an extension of my person. I did not feel whole without it. Much better than having a firearm, the Buck had been my constant companion in many parts of the world. Sometimes my only friend.
“Where are we going?” asked Angelica. She had been silent during our conversation, although I knew she had much to say. The woman was a gentle goddess, wise and intelligent, playful and dignified. I still had not sorted out my feelings for her. All I knew was that I enjoyed her company. She had made me realize that I still lived. And she was easy on my eyes.
“Daniel will meet us at The Jade Palace. A friend of Mr. Choy owns it. They are preparing a celebration.”
“I hope there will be a lot of food,” she said, squeezing my hand. For a tiny woman, Angelica had huge appetites.
“You need not worry.”
I heard quick footsteps and realized, too late, that the street was deserted. I released Angelica's hand and spun around just in time to deflect the blow that had been aimed at the back of my head.
A blunt force smashed into my forearm, numbing me from wrist to elbow.
The second attacker ran headlong into me, taking me down to the concrete. He pinned my arms to my side while he sat on my chest.
He struck me twice in the face with his fists.
I wiggled out from under him and rose to a half crouch, only to be struck in the back by an unseen assailant.
Pain exploded in my kidney, a bright red blossom of agony.
I staggered, blocked another strike with my forearm, elbowed the man behind me and felt him go down.
I sensed that Albert was occupying one of the attackers with his cane.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Angelica lying in the gutter, her silver party dress hiked above her knees.
One of my attackers carried a pair of sai, the Chinese fighting irons that could inflict a huge amount of damage.
I reached for my knife.
Before I could get it open, the sai fighter attacked with an overhead strike.
I leaped out of the way, diving between two parked cars, and rolled into the street.
He followed, flowing over the ground like a ballet dancer, effortlessly pacing me.
His companion circled somewhere behind me, an unseen threat.
I felt as if I had been attacked by a pride of lions. They didn't go for the immediate kill. At once aggressive and then shy, their on-again, off-again style of combat a function of time and teamwork.
Functioning together, they seemed to have all the time they needed.
The small dark man with the sai was in superb condition and he seemed to be enjoying himself. He had drawn first blood. Sensing that he was one of those who would wish to draw out this combat, I began looking for my response.
There weren't many.
There was one. He would toy with me first. He'd had his chance. He could have finished me quickly.
But he didn't.
His hand came up to warn off his partner behind me. He wanted to take me on his own.
That told me all I needed to know about the flashy asshole.
My kidney felt as if it burned with a white-hot flame. Pain grew and became a living entity all its own. It consumed me from the inside. The fire grew hotter every moment, and as it grew hotter, I grew weaker.
I flicked the blade of my knife open.
He advanced, holding the fighting iron level with my chest in a feint thrust. When I parried with the Buck, he swept the trailing sai past my head, whipping the air like a bullwhip.
I ducked, and he kicked where I would have been had I not reversed course and leaped the other way.
Off balance, he whirled and circle-kicked me high in the shoulder. I went down on one knee, then rolled, continuing in the same direction. When I rolled, his leg went over the top of my head, his foot so close the hard end of his shoelace snapped against my cheek.
I kept rolling and came up again on my knees and blocked another kick with the brass pommel of the knife, striking his ankle, sweeping his legs out from under him.
He fell, then jumped to his feet before I could catch him, apparently unhurt.
Black spots appeared in front of my eyes; my body vibrated with pain. Something had gone terribly wrong with my kidney. I didn't know how long I could continue this fight, let alone stand.
It would be easier to let him kill me.
Not yet.
Not tonight.
Glancing to my right, I saw Mr. Chen giving as well as he was getting, the heavy cane inflicting some notable injuries to his opponent. The third man retreated into the alley across the street. He stood in the shadows watching the fight. For a brief instant the street light illuminated the side of his face, and I thought I recognized him as the face from my nightmares, the long-dead soldier who had come to kill me on that distant hill so many years before.
The sai fighter attacked again, striking me in the right side with his iron.
I fell to the concrete, nearly spent, but my mind refused to let me give up. We had work to do, places to go, people to see. Somewhere out there people needed us. Needed me.
I wanted to see my Islands again.
I rose to my feet and he attacked again. I ran and crashed into an empty trash can, rolled over the top of it, sprawled across the sidewalk, came up with the metal lid and thrust it into his face. He backpedaled and I came at him, the metal lid my shield, my knife at the ready.
It was ancient combat. With my shield and my knife, he could not gain access to my body with those deadly sai without getting the lid shoved in his face or suffering cuts on his arms from the razor-sharp blade of the Buck.
He tried for my head, and I blocked the strike with the lid.
He thrust hard with his left and I met it again. The thrust strike pushed me back, nearly knocking me over, jarring my teeth.
He tried a low strike, but I protected my body with the lid and attacked with the knife, slicing his bicep, drawing blood.
We were at a standoff, but time was on his side. With every thrust and parry I got weaker. Every beat of my heart throbbed with pain. Every pore of my skin screamed for relief.
He wore me down with a frantic rush, banging on the garbage can lid with both sai like a mad drummer. He forced me back until I tripped over the curb and sprawled into the street.
I lost the lid, rose to my feet and stabbed blindly at him, knowing it was a fatal mistake.
He parried my thrust, slapped me easily on the side of the head with the tang of the sai, and sent me crashing to the ground again.
I lay there stunned, unable to move.
Putting everything I had left in me I tried to rise.
He brought the sai down onto my left arm and I felt something break, crushed between the concrete and the steel. More agony exploded through my body. My world grew smaller. I could only see through a dark narrow tunnel. If I focused I could barely make out the man who would be my executioner.
He kicked me and I rolled away. He followed, giving me the opening I wanted.
I lay on my side, blinking from the pain.
He stood over me, panting.
“Good-bye, John Caine,” he hissed, a whisper of hatred only the two of us could hear.
I jackknifed off the ground and thrust the Buck into his groin with all my remaining strength, slicing muscle and grinding bone, burying the blade to the hilt, twisting as I stabbed him at the fork of his legs.
He screamed, doubled over, then righted himself and fled across the street, wrenching the knife from my hand.
Albert struck his assailant when the man turned his head toward his partner's scream. The man fell, then got up and scampered toward the alley, where the third man stood in the shadows. When the two men disappeared, the third man backed away, still facing us, until he, too, vanished. It was as if he had faded into nothingness. If I believed in ghosts or vampires I would have believed him one of those creatures of the night.
He was scary enough just being flesh and blood.
He looked familiar, but if it were the Vietnamese soldier, he would have been a ghost. I had killed him on that muddy hill, killed him as certainly as he had killed me.