The Black Stiletto (9 page)

After six months, Soichiro moved me into a more advanced
karate
class because I was better at that than at
judo
. I started learning what the sensei called
kata
, which consisted of very formal movements representing attack and defense postures.

Eventually I moved on to
kumite
, which was actual sparring with opponents. I had to practice at home, conditioning my hands and feet on blocks of wood and stone to toughen them up. It hurt like the dickens in the beginning, but I developed very hard calluses on the edges of my hands. Not very ladylike, but I didn’t care. I wore one of those white robes, too, with white pants. They were similar to pajamas, I guess, and in fact the word for them,
karategi
, means “karate pajamas.” In reality they are kind of a kimono and pants. Students advanced in rank denoted by the color of the belt worn with the
karategi
. I started with white, of course, which was the lowest rank. In six months I had gone through yellow and was working on green. It would take another year to get a blue. It was very hard work, but Soichiro told me privately that I was a better student than many of the males in his classes. I felt proud and pleased.

I remember one class very distinctly. It occurred in January 1956. I was eighteen years old.

For some odd reason, I was the only one who showed up for class. I found out later that Soichiro wanted to give me a private lesson, but at the time he pretended shock that no other student “bothered to show up for his honorable class.” Anyway, Soichiro wanted me to learn some advanced self-defense moves, specifically because I was female. He told me, “In this world, men take advantage of women.” Ha! I could’ve told
him
some stories about that. At any rate, he picked up a billy club and told me to think of him as an attacker on the street. How would I defend myself? I went through everything I’d been taught so far, but he always managed to break through my defenses and almost hit me, but he’d stop just before the club actually struck. It was very frustrating. Finally, Soichiro stopped the attack and told me to relax and breathe. He was
very
insistent on relaxing and breathing. I heard those two words a million times in his classes. Anyway, he asked me, “You know where one of most vulnerable spots is on man?”

Dumb me, I went, “Huh?”

“Kick him in private area.”

“
Excuse me
?”

Soichiro stood in front of me with his legs wide apart. “Look how I stand. Easy to kick between legs. Just aim and kick. You disable opponent.”

“But, that’s against the rules, ain’t it?” I asked, embarrassed and not a little shocked.

“No. On street you defend yourself best way you know how. In real situation, no rules. Now try.”

“What?”

“Try kick me.”

“Sensei, I can’t do that. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Do not fear. I will block. Come.”

I prepared myself and he raised the club. He came at me. I eyed the apex where his legs met and lashed out with my long leg. Soichiro raised his right knee so quickly that I barely saw it. He slammed it into my calf, knocking my leg off target. It really hurt, but I got the idea.

“No one on street know that block,” he said. “You not miss attacker on street.”

Nodding, I rubbed my leg.

“Lesson over. See you next week.” And he bowed.

By the fall of 1956, I was a blue belt. That was pretty high. I just needed to get through brown and advanced-brown, and then I’d get my black belt. That was the highest you could get—except there were also ten levels of black belt, ha ha.

One night after a lesson with Soichiro, I set out on the walk home to the gym from the West Village. I usually walked the distance between Second Avenue and Christopher Street, which was where Studio Tokyo was located. It was a nice hike. Anyway, it was dark but not very late, not even ten o’clock. I headed toward
Washington Square Park, my usual route. Just before I reached it, three hoodlums appeared out of nowhere and confronted me on the street. They wore black leather jackets and looked like characters from that Marlon Brando movie,
The Wild One
. Probably in their early twenties. White guys.

“Hey, baby, where you goin’?” one jeered.

I tried to ignore and push past them, but they surrounded me and wouldn’t let me through.

“What’s a pretty girl like you doin’ out so late? It’s dangerous on the streets. You might need us to protect you,” another goaded.

“Get out of my way, please,” I said. My nerves were setting off alarms, that animal instinct of mine was going nuts. Danger, danger! I felt my adrenaline soar through my body—I was ready for fight or flight, and I knew it was probably going to be fight.

“How ‘bout a kiss?” the first guy taunted. He leaned closer to me—and I let him have it with a right hook, just like when I hit Mack on the nose that time. Well, it surprised the guy. He yelped and pulled back. The other two couldn’t believe what I’d just done.

I assumed a fighting stance. Suddenly, though, I wasn’t sure if I should go for traditional boxing or try some of the
karate
I’d learned. For some reason, I didn’t feel as confident with the martial arts as I did with boxing. So I put up my dukes and prepared to jab and cross.

“Look, Stu,” one said, “she thinks she’s Jake LaMotta!”

The one I’d punched—Stu—spat and pointed. “Get her!”

They attacked.

Training and sparring in the gym or studio is practice. Sure, you can get hurt, but you’re not going to
die
. In a real-life situation like the one I found myself in, anything can happen. I was fighting for my life—and suddenly everything I’d learned went out the window. I couldn’t think straight. I just punched and kicked
and fought like a banshee. I knew my blows connected, but some of theirs did, too. The pain was terrible. For a few seconds I had no confidence.

And then some of Soichiro’s words came back into my head. I assumed a traditional stance and applied the techniques I’d been taught.
Relax. Breathe.
The boxing jabs became knifehand chops. Instead of girly kicks, I performed perfect
karate
front kicks—
mae geri
. A roundhouse kick—
mawashi geri
—actually knocked one opponent to the ground. And a side kick—
yoko geri
—caused one guy to double over and vomit! That left Stu, the leader.

He produced a switchblade out of thin air.

“You’re gonna die, bitch!” he hissed.

The sight of the weapon surprised me so much that I froze. He jumped forward, his arm swinging. I felt the blade strike my shoulder and slice through the front of my shirt, just over my right breast. It penetrated the skin—deeply. I cried out in pain and leaped backward. He kept coming, though, wildly swinging the knife in unpredictable directions. This was where my boxing training came in handy—I danced around him, barely avoiding being cut again. But then he backed me against the wall of a building. He stood a few feet in front of me, legs apart, the knife pointed at my belly.

I saw my opening and unleashed a vicious front kick to his groin.

Stu’s eyes went wide as he bellowed in agony. The blade dropped to the ground. He fell to his knees and then rolled over into a fetal position.

All three guys were down.

I ran.

When I got to the gym, Freddie took one look at me and almost started crying. “Judy! What happened?”

There was a big mirror near the punching bags, and I saw the
damage. My nose was bleeding and my upper lip was busted. There was a big red welt on my left cheek. Worst of all, though, my shirt was drenched in blood.

Freddie helped me take it off. There was a six or seven-inch cut that went from my right shoulder down to the top of my breast. It was deep, too.

“Judy, we gotta get you to the hospital. That has to be stitched.”

“No,” I said. “I’ve seen you stitch up some of the guys here. You do it.”

“Judy, I can’t do something like this.”

I didn’t want to go to the emergency room. I don’t know why, but I was afraid of hospitals. Besides, I didn’t want to go through having to talk to the police.

“Yes, you can, Freddie. Just do it. I’m gonna wash my face. You get the stuff.”

“It’ll leave a bad scar if I do it.”

I didn’t care. “Now, Freddie!”

And so Freddie stitched me up. It hurt like hell—I guess I can say that word now, I’m a big girl. I drank a quarter bottle of Jack Daniel’s while he was doing it. By the time he was done, I felt great. It sure was ugly, though. I tried not to think about that as I put on a robe to cover myself.

I still have that scar today. I’m still self-conscious about it and try to hide it—no bare shoulder dresses for me.

Freddie made some scrambled eggs and bacon for me. It hit the spot. I was pretty looped and exhausted from the adrenaline rush, but I gave Freddie a hug and thanked him.

Before retiring to my room, the idea came to me. It wasn’t a foolish notion wrought out of liquor, either. I meant it when I said, “Freddie, next I want to learn how to fight with a knife.”

7
Martin
T
HE
P
RESENT

I shut the diary at that point and sat there on the front stoop of the house.

Dumbfounded.

My mom? Boxing? Taking
karate
?

Holy shit.

I glanced at my watch. The afternoon was gone. The last several hours had vanished. I was due back at the accounting firm where I worked in Deerfield long ago. My cell phone had rung two or three times while I was glued to the pages of my mother’s confessional, but I ignored it. I pulled it off my belt and checked the caller IDs. Yep, the office called twice and my daughter once. I listened to my voice mail messages—nothing urgent, the boss was just wondering where the hell I was. Gina had gymnastics practice that afternoon and wondered if I could pick her up at school later. Her car was in the shop and Carol—my ex—was busy.

Gymnastics
.

Geez, did this stuff run in the family? I wasn’t athletic in any way. I was more of a pencil pusher, all my life.

Come to think of it, Gina was very athletic and had been since she was a toddler. I remember my mom watching Gina closely with a smirk on her face. Was she secretly proud? Had she seen
herself in her granddaughter? Now Gina was a senior in high school, having participated in every sport imaginable while she was growing up. She was also into the drama and acting thing, which was a little weird, so go figure.

I called the office back and let them know I wouldn’t be back in today. Then I called Gina and left a message on her cell to say I’d pick her up at seven, as requested. Then I pondered what my next course of action should be. My brain was fried and I felt emotionally drained. I couldn’t think straight.

Nevertheless, I had the presence of mind to decide I shouldn’t leave any of Mom’s stuff in that secret room. I had to get it out of there and store it somewhere safe.

Hell, it had been safe where it was!
I just didn’t want to leave it in a house that might someday be sold.

I went back inside and down to the basement. Among the empty cardboard boxes that were still there, I found one that would work as a container. First, I lined the bottom of the box with the remaining diaries, the comics, newspapers, and the gun. I then carefully removed the costumes, mask, knapsack, and knife from the wall and placed them on top of the other stuff. The boots went on top. The lid closed, just barely. I locked the secret door with my keys, picked up the box, and carried it upstairs. There was some packing tape in the kitchen—I used that to seal the carton. The diary I was currently reading—1958—I stuck in my pocket.

Making sure the house was locked and secure, I drove away and then realized I had no idea where I was going to put the stuff. I didn’t really want to take it home. I’m not sure why. It felt, I don’t know, somehow kind of sleazy. I still couldn’t get around the knowledge that my mother was famous—or rather, infamous.

As I drove along Euclid Avenue toward Route 53, I passed the bank that was once my mother’s. We had closed all her accounts
when she moved into the nursing home, but I knew they had safety deposit boxes there. On an impulse, I turned into the driveway and parked.

They knew me at the bank. It didn’t take long to rent a large box. The carton fit neatly inside the bigger container and was then locked safely in the vault. I put the key on the same ring with the other two that had come in mom’s surprise package.

As I left the bank’s parking lot, I felt the diary practically burning a hole in my jacket pocket. There was something I needed to do before heading back home.

I had to see Mom.

Turning the car around, I got back on Arlington Heights Road and headed north, through Buffalo Grove, and then turned east toward Riverwoods. Woodlands North was located on Deer-field Road, just east of Milwaukee Avenue.