Hook and Shoot (16 page)

“What about guys he's fought?”

“Dead ends. Anybody out of Japan, I say the name Zombi, I get a dial tone. Figure your friends with the darts told everybody to shut the hell up. I'll call around to the guys he went against in the Olympics if I have to, but that was judo. Might help. Might not. Shit. I'll call 'em.”

I nodded and gulped water, tried not to think about how this was all supposed to keep me relaxed, focused on tactics instead of fighting. The recipe instead of the meal. It wasn't working so far; since waking up and having some time to think about it, I'd tried to picture how the man across from me would look, act, move. He was just a black shape, a ghost. I put faces and poses on him and they just fell off, made a nice soft
pile for me to land on when he finally came to life.

“I will guarantee you this,” Gil said. “No matter what Zombi brings into the cage, you'll be stronger than him and your gas tank will be bigger. That's the fight right there, anyway. Where it's won or lost. Mostly.”

“Okay.” I watched him nod to himself and realized he needed the game plan as much as I did. It gave him control over something up until the cage closed and the bell rang. He was staring at a ghost too, but he couldn't give it a smack. At least I had that.

“See you out back. Five minutes.”

“Hey, there might be guys out there watching. You know, the killers.”

“Nice try. Anybody shows up to kill you, drop the tire on him.” He muttered into the hallway and turned left toward his office.

Maybe it was the gym, this altar of suffering we all knelt before, or the ridiculous amount of testosterone ground into every surface of the place, but it seemed normal to joke about death threats.

Impending doom? Yeah, we did that workout yesterday.

But I was worried about Gil. He and I had arrived at this point from opposite directions—me dropping down from a couple days of adrenaline and paranoia, unfamiliar faces and places, Burch and his mouth.
Gil had to ramp way up out of his comfort zone, personally and professionally, his sanctuary turned into our safe house.

If he latched onto strength and conditioning as his anchor, drilled it too hard, I'd limp into the fight with no reserves and a fried central nervous system. He knew better. Least he did when we knew who the hell we were fighting and could develop a strategy.

Fucking Eddie and his pep talk.

Summoned by the curse, Eddie stuck his head in. His hair looked a little better. “Burch is awake.”

I followed Eddie into the Hole. He had his papers and laptops spread over the card table, covering a playground with manure. I glanced at the screens—multiple chat windows scrolling and blinking, stock charts, a database. Combined, it looked like the instruction manual for going cross-eyed and having a seizure.

Eddie dropped into a chair and pointed toward the couch, then leaned into a screen and attacked the keyboard.

Burch was sitting on the couch with a mug of steaming water held near his chin, the water trembling a bit. His eyes were bloodshot, sucked back into his head, his skin like damp wax. Denny sat on the table with his hands hovering above Burch's knees,
whispering to him.

“Morning, Burch,” I said. “You look like dog shit.”

Denny frowned. “Please, no negativity.”

“You look like living dog shit.”

Denny closed his eyes, waved at the air around Burch's head.

“Will he be okay for a few minutes if you go get some tea or something?”

“He's stable,” Denny said. “What are you going to do?”

“Just talk. Thanks for keeping him alive, really.”

Denny nodded. “You can't touch him. Like we talked about, his nerves are wide open right now. One finger will feel like a gunshot.”

“How come he can touch the mug?”

“He's
touching
it,
not the other way around.”

I suspected nonsense.

Denny looked at Burch. “Remember: breathe in, hold, release. Feel it in your genitalia.” He picked up the drainage bucket and carried it to the kitchen, the weight or smell of it making him lean away.

I took his place on the table. “How you feeling?”

Burch sipped his hot water, those bloodshot eyes waiting for a question worth answering.

“I talked to Eddie last night. Found out about Vanessa, her father. The Dojin-gumi, all that. If you know why they want to kill us, you need to tell me.”

Burch cleared his throat. Sounded like concrete sliding down a metal chute. “You think I'm keeping secrets after this?”

“So who do we need to talk to?”

“We tried that route. Silence.”

“Told you,” Eddie said without turning around.

Burch shuddered. A drop of water fell out of the mug and landed on his chest. He gasped and made a face like someone had jabbed him with a red-hot poker, glared down at the drop as it rolled between his ribs.

Without thinking I wiped it off.

Burch's eyes rolled back in his head and he went rigid, spittle frothing out between his teeth.

“Shit, sorry. Ah, breathe. Genitals.”

Eddie peeled away from the laptops. “What'd you do?”

“Nothing. We're good here.”

Burch spasmed and blood fell out of his nose. More water slopped onto his chest. He rocked forward, then stuttered back.

“Goddamn it. Denny.”

Denny ran in with his kimono flapping behind him. “Did you touch him? I told you not to touch him.”

“Water fell. I wiped it off and—”

“You need to get that cup away from him.”

“Can I touch him?”

“Try not to. Try, try, try.”

Burch had the mug clamped in both hands under his chin. I hooked two fingers from one hand over the rim and got two from the other underneath, tried to pull it away. No good.

Water fell. Burch started to hiss.

“Well,” Denny said and slapped Burch's stomach with both hands.

Eddie's gasp was loud enough to cover mine.

Blood sprayed out of Burch's nose and he went limp, passed out from the shock.

Denny caught the mug as it fell and handed it to me. “You can go now.”

I carried the mug and a good helping of shame toward the kitchen.

Shaking his head, Eddie turned back to the screens.

I dumped the water in the sink and watched it fall down the drain. A black hole, plenty of room down there for me and Gil and the rest of the gym. Eddie, Vanessa, Burch. Or Burch's body, if I kept trying to help.

One by one or in a big thrashing clump, we'd get pulled down.

I left the kitchen, leaned on the table next to Eddie. “Any good news?”

He didn't look away from the screens. “Oh yeah. I just approved the concessions contract for the next Warrior event. Now we're gonna have hot dogs as well as hamburgers. Pretty fucking exciting when you're
fighting for your life and guys are passing out from water drops, right?”

“Yeah, thrilling.” I walked back into the kitchen, scratching my stomach to keep Eddie from seeing his phone in my hand.

I ducked into the gym, found my phone near the cage and scrolled through Eddie's call list. A bunch of names I didn't recognize with the same phone number and different extensions—had to be drones at Warrior's corporate office.

I checked times, got to Saturday night after the meeting with Lou, the one at the restaurant when he hadn't been dead. A few numbers around then with no names attached. I punched one into my phone, listened to it ring while I checked the hallway: clear.

“Thank you for calling Elite Combat Sports. If you know your party's extension—”

I killed it and tried the next number. I could hear someone banging around in the kitchen, willed whoever it was to stay there.

“Law Offices of Argo and Taylor, how may I help you?”

Who and who?
“I'm trying to reach the management team for Zombi.”

A pause, the woman on the other end either confused or stalling. “I'm sorry?”

“Zombi, he's a fighter. I need to talk to whoever's
in charge of him.”

Another delay. Then: “Who's calling, please?”

“Woody.”

“Woody?”

“Aaron Wallace. I'm the guy he's fighting a week from Saturday.”

“We don't handle attempts at promotion through this office. Please have your management—”

“Can you keep a secret? You tell whoever runs Zombi I'm on the phone, and I want to talk about taking a dive.”

Roth and Terence squatted against the fence in the parking lot behind the gym under a ragged tree that drooped over from the property next door. The single oasis of shade was sliding toward their shoes and would soon be gone for the day.

“Question,” Roth said.

I squinted in the heat blasting up from the asphalt, checked the lot and fence line for Japanese guys trying to look casual, twirling their blowguns. “Go ahead.”

“Is that Banzai Eddie sitting at our card table?”

“Yes.”

Eddie had his phone back, slipped under a pile of papers on my way past while he was cranked around watching Denny feed leaves to Burch.

Roth said, “Probably makes that his limousine.”

“Correct.”

He and Terence mumbled to each other, conspiring.

“Ask him,” Roth said.

Terence looked at me. “Is he here to scout our gym? Us?”

“Act like he is. Maybe that's what it'll turn into.”

Roth got a sour face. “The hell kind of answer is that? And who's the asshole in there chanting with Denny, taking up the whole couch?”

“Don't worry about it.”

“Oh. Hear that, Terence? Woodrow says don't worry about it. It's just our careers, livelihoods, and such.”

“I ain't worried.”

“Nor I,” Roth said. “Just curious about why the president of Warrior and some guy who looks half-dead are hanging out at our gym.”

They'd earned the right to know everything that happened inside those walls. At the same time, they didn't deserve the trouble that came with this. “Eddie's putting a fight together for me, a Japanese guy named Zombi. Ever heard of him?”

“Awesome fucking name, but no, we haven't, have we, Terence?”

“Nope.”

“And I doubt very much that Eddie makes house calls for the men he pays to fight. I imagine those men go to Eddie.”

“You do, huh?” I nodded, squinted some more.
“Let's get the tire out.”

Roth gave a low whistle. “This must be very serious if you'd rather play with Gil's tire than talk about current affairs.”

I couldn't look at them, sitting there hoping this could be their shot at catching Eddie's eye, needing it to be, when I was already in and rising and I'd just talked to a man about throwing it all away. “It is serious.”

Roth was silent until Terence nudged him. “How can we help?”

Jesus, these guys. These brothers of mine. I blinked a few times. “If you can, just act like everything's normal.”

Gil opened the gym door and saw us huddling around the shade. “Assholes. Where's the tire? Where's the sled?”

“Fuck me. The sled too?” Roth stood and clapped me on the shoulder. “You wanted normal. Misery awaits.”

I don't know how long the workout lasted.

It started with me and Terence taking turns flipping the four-hundred-pound tractor tire, then jumping on, off, while Roth dragged the steel sled with three hundred or so pounds of steel and concrete piled on across the parking lot and back.

When Roth touched the fence he sprinted over and tagged me, took my place on the tire while I ran
to the sled and started pulling. When I got back I tagged Terence, both of us already forcing the jagged asphalt air in and out.

At the beginning I focused on how the tire carried over to takedown defense, stuffing the shot and lifting, opening my hips and popping the guy back. Then the jump—exploding into a counter, feeling the burn in my lungs and legs and fighting through it, dropping into my stance and sidestepping to keep my feet from getting crushed by the next flip.

The sled was a grind, weathering a clinch or driving the other guy back, constant tension, working, working.

After a while I stopped thinking and just worked.

Flip. Jump. Step.

Breathe.

Flip. Yell. Jump. Move.

Tag. Run. Pull.

Pull. Dig. If you stop you have to start all over again.

Sweat in my eyes, burning, boiling in the sun, and heat blasting up from the ground. Squeeze them hard enough to wring it out, spots skittering across the blacktop.

Chase them.

Touch. Sprint. Tag somebody, just a hand sticking out.

Flip. Jump. Scream.

I couldn't think about anything and it was beautiful.

I left the showers feeling good, comfortable. The kind of tired I was used to and liked, instead of Eddie's brand. He was still at the card table, his laptop screens pinging and flashing.

Burch was sleeping on the couch with his legs straight, arms tight against his sides, his chest making small dips and rises. No sign of blood or spasms. Denny wasn't around.

“You have to go get Vanessa,” Eddie said.

“And take her where?”

“Here.”

Someone in the showers—Roth by the violence of it—blew a snot rocket.

Eddie jumped. “Jesus.”

The other nostril went, louder than the first.

“Vanessa knows she's coming here?”

“She just doesn't want to be alone.”

“Anybody trying to get into the penthouse?”

“Not yet. But she says they're watching it.”

“How does she know?”

“Just do it. And Dorian called. Your suits are ready.”

I thought about the one hanging in Gil's office, my first: I won't forget you. What we had. “Do I need them?”

“They're paid for. You don't want them?”

“Just don't know when I'll wear them.”