Changes -- A Randall Lee Mystery Read online

  Knox called and told Tracy that a car would patrol the area from time to time in case any of those ne’er-do-wells decided to try again. This was pretty comforting to me, because at the time I would’ve lost a bout to Misty’s jello, let alone some mad Triad bomber or our infamous Dim Mak killer.

  So we rented a truckload of movies and spent a lot of time together on the couch watching them and, occasionally, making out like rave kids. A perfect combination of casual hang-out, slumber party, romantic getaway, and excruciating, mind-numbing pain. Still, it was the most fun I’d had in a while, what with getting blown through my car and all.

  I went to see it in the police impound lot. I had to say goodbye. Looking at the twisted wreckage, I had to admit that I was pretty impressed with myself for surviving the whole ordeal, but still… I loved that car.

  It was going to take a lot of getting used to, being a pedestrian.

  47

  The old man took a pair of reading glasses from the pocket of his flannel shirt and slid them on, blinking with magnified eyes as he got used to the change in vision. He leaned forward and peered at the photos laid out on the table, clucking and shaking his head occasionally. I looked at them too. The photos had been taken after Mei Ling’s body had laid long enough for the blood to pool from her tissues. Her skin, in the photos, was no longer blue but a pale olive. The only obvious discoloration on her body was in the area from the tops of her breasts to her ribs – the areas she’d been struck.

  It looked almost as if someone had dipped mittens in black paint and tried to feel her up.

  When Knox said something about the dark bruising, Master Cheng said, "Poison blood collect there."

  Knox waited for a minute to see if the old man was going to explain further, but he didn’t. Shaking his head, the cop went out to get more coffee.

  Master Cheng perused the rest of the photos and grunted. Then, sitting back in his standard issue uncomfortable police department metal chair, he folded his hands over his round belly and closed his eyes. Within seconds, he snored softly.

  When Knox returned with coffee (and a tea for Cheng), he looked at the old man and said, "Jesus."

  With a dry lip smack, Master Cheng said, "Flattery will get you nowhere, Detective."

  His eyes were still closed, his posture remained the same, and his breathing was slow and even.

  Knox leaned on the table and whispered to me, "Find anything out?"

  I shrugged.

  "Two different styles," Cheng said, still seemingly asleep.

  "I’m sorry?" Knox said.

  The old man opened his eyes and said, "Do not be. Like your lumpy-headed friend, you cannot help that you were born into a hairy, brutish, ape-like American body. To the list of your nation’s failings shall I add hard of hearing? I said these were two different styles."

  I frowned and looked down at the pictures.

  "What do you mean, master?" I said.

  "I mean just what I say."

  I picked up several of the photos and studied them.

  "Are you saying they fought?" I said.

  "Who?" Knox said.

  "The girl and her murderer. Pay attention," Master Cheng said.

  Knox took the photos from me and flipped through them.

  "The full story is there for one with eyes to see. Look at the girl’s hands. Carefully. Are they the hands of a young girl?"

  "Her hands look delicate, Master," I said.

  "Look at her knuckles – she has undergone conditioning training," Cheng said.

  I looked at the photo. How Master Cheng could tell anything about her hands from these pictures, without a magnifying glass at least, was beyond me.

  "Her build, the condition of her hands, the injuries she sustained… I would guess that the girl practiced some type of Shaolin martial arts. Her killer, if my intuition is correct, is a practitioner of Chen style Tai Chi Chuan."

  "How could you know that?" I said.

  "I cannot know it, but the bruising along the insides of her arms, especially in the areas of the Chize and Kongzui points, bring to mind certain tactics I’ve known some Chen practitioners to use."

  I looked at the photos and for the first time caught the faint, brownish, smudge-like bruises in the crook of her right elbow and forearm.

  "Additionally, though we cannot tell from these photos, I would not be surprised to find similar bruising on her hand, in the Taiyuan. If this is the case, the utilization of the An strike as a deathblow was, in actuality, a mercy."

  "What are you guys saying? Lee, you’re the translator. Translate," Knox said.

  "Ah, it’s acupuncturist talk, mostly," I said, which was only a whitish lie. "The fight was brutal enough that killing her with such a swift blow was a kindness."

  "Brutal? She’s got barely a mark on her…"

  "The killer is sloppy. Too skilled to be an American, surely, but still an amateur. If he were expert, she would have no mark on her at all. Only her organs would show the extent of the damage," Master Cheng said.

  "So any idea how we catch this guy?" Knox said.

  Master Cheng stood and slipped on his windbreaker.

  "Not my department. You are the cop," he said, standing.

  "Yeah, that’s what you two keep telling me. Whoa, pal, where are you going?" Knox said. "I still have a lot of questions."

  The old man shuffled out of the room and said, "I have no more answers for you. I must take a piss and then it’s home for a nap. Tomorrow, Lee. Six o’clock."

  With that, he left.

  Barnaby-freaking-Jones, indeed.

  48

  "Stop, stop, stop!"

  I froze, holding the stance, expecting some sort of correction to my form. Instead, he gestured to a chair.

  "Sit, dummy. Your footwork is fine…perhaps even good. It’s when you move that is shit."

  With the grey skies threatening to unleash sheets of rain and ice, Master Cheng had decided to hold our first class in his living room. Though the room was small and filled with clutter – stacks of old newspapers, TV guides, and dog-eared issues of Prevention magazine covered every available semi-flat surface – Master said this was ideal. Tai Chi Chuan, he said, should be practiced not only in wide open spaces but in small, cramped spaces, hills, anyplace with uncertain terrain. The key, he said, was being fluid and adaptive.

  Part of my adapting included practicing one-handed. Though my injuries were mostly healed - miraculously so according to my doctors - I still had to keep my arm in a sling to immobilize my collar bone. I would occasionally forget myself and start to use the arm - proof, Master Cheng said, of my lack of mindfulness – but pain is an excellent teacher.

  When I sat in the easy chair, its plastic cover crackling a protest beneath me, I was glad for the break. My hips and lower back ached in ways they hadn’t since I was a child. Master Cheng’s training involved lower stances and smaller movements; he said my large frame style was fine for "children and geezers."

  Master sat across from me and sipped Coke from a McDonald’s cup.

  "When you practice, you visualize your opponent," he said, wiping his chin with his sleeve.

  "Yes," I said. It was a classical training method that taught the mind to move the chi through the proper meridians and to the proper body parts for each combat application.

  He nodded and said, "Watch. This is my Tai Chi face."

  Without any change in expression, he stared at me blankly for probably thirty seconds.

  "This, dummy, is your Tai Chi face."

  He immediately grimaced, eyes glaring, teeth clenched, and held his breath until his face was red.

  He said, "I presume much, but hope that you see the difference."

  I nodded and kept my chin down, hoping to hide the grin that threatened to overtake my face each time I remembered "my Tai Chi face."

  "When you are visualizing the opponent," Cheng said, "your mistake is to imagine fighting."

  This puzzled me a bit. It must’ve showed, b
ecause the old man stood and assumed a stance; I knew from his position that he meant for us to push hands.

  I stood, mirrored his stance, and placed my forearm against his. As we began to move, his push neutralized by me, my push neutralized by him, he said, "Do we fight now?"

  "No," I said. Pushing hands was primarily an exercise to develop sensitivity and nian jing or ‘sticking energy’. Only by relaxing completely can one interpret the incoming push and properly yield to it; fighting or struggling is counterproductive.

  "Find my center, boy… c’mon, get me!"

  When I pushed against him, it felt like pushing against a revolving door. It was surprising, because practicing with Master Cheng’s student had been like trying to push against smoke. Perhaps the master was getting too old and inflexible to follow his own teachings.

  Out of respect, I did not want to exploit the weakness, but I knew that if I didn’t really go after him that could be seen as an insult to his skill. So, after neutralizing his push I slowly found his center of gravity, his root, and trapped it; I pushed in until he could not yield any more. At the last possible second, before pinning his arm to his chest, I felt his weight – the revolving door I’d managed to lock into place – dissipate.

  I managed to avoid hitting the coffee table with my face, but that meant that instead my full weight fell on my shoulder, sending neon-bright mushroom clouds of pain from my collar bone to my brain. I rolled over, panting from the effort of it, and looked up at the old man.

  He still stood in the same place, his feet never having moved, and giggled.

  "See? This is the game of Tai Chi Chuan… pushing me is like pushing a beach ball in the water. Just when you think you’ve sunk it, it just rolls out from under you."

  I nodded and staggered to my feet, half of my body numb with pain.

  "In defense, you must be like the beach ball, you see? In attack, you must be like the whip. A whip, you understand?"

  He mimicked snapping a whip with one hand.

  I nodded.

  "A whip is loose, fluid… a rigid whip is nothing but a club! Clubs bend and break; the whip entangles, it flows around, and at the last second, it snaps against its target and transfers the built up force. This…" He performed a movement called ‘Brush Knee and Twist Step’ slowly, calmly. "…is the whip. This…" He did the technique again, but wearing the grimace he’d worn earlier. "…is a club."

  The pieces came together in my mind and I finally understood. Or, at least, I thought I did.

  "When you practice, visualizing an opponent is good. Your attitude, though, must not be one of fighting…it must be one of mischief. Your goal is not to strike or break or maim or kill. Your goal is to tag and trap and lure… to play with them as a cat plays with a mouse."

  "I understand, Master, but…"

  He smiled and said, "But you know in your head what each movement is really for, yes?"

  "Yes," I said. Most of the postures in the form illustrated techniques that, when done correctly, were not only lethal, but brutally so.

  "This is not your concern. Your concern is to practice correctly, in the spirit of play. When we play, we are as children. We relax, we smile, we enjoy. When we fight, there is tension. Tension is not Tai Chi Chuan.

  "When I practice ‘Brush Knee’, all that I am is ‘Brush Knee’. This is Wei Wu Wei, to do without doing. When I am ‘Brush Knee’ or ‘White Crane Spreading Wings’ or any other movement, I am like a child. The person who steps outside of nature’s harmony to strike me will find that I am as formless and soft as a cloud. I only move – no attack or defense – only move; if they are broken or injured within my movement, well, they had no business being there. A person who jumps in the ocean should not be surprised to get wet, yes? This is his problem, not mine. I will not fret about this; all that I do is in the spirit of play."

  It had been a long time since I had practiced just for the joy of it, since I had kept a spirit of play. Too often, my shadow opponent took on a face.

  Too often, my practice was stiff.

  It had been a few years since I’d truly practiced Tai Chi Chuan; all this time, I’d been fantasizing about a revenge I could never have.

  49

  When the day’s lesson was finished I walked across the street, through the cold rain, and unlocked Tracy’s car. She’d handed me the keys when she’d stumbled in, bleary-eyed from work, at five in the morning. Before falling into bed and passing out, she told me to wake her by two o’clock so we would have enough time to eat and shop before we had to get ready.

  With all the excitement, I’d nearly forgotten – Tony Lau’s exhibit.

  On the way home, I took a brief detour to drive past my place. The police tape was gone, but the doors and my shop window were still boarded up. The landlord still hadn’t given me a time or date for the repairs. I thought about relocating, but I’d just started building a client base and moving now wouldn’t be great for business.

  Of course, one had to be open for business to have a business, so there I was back to square one. Depressing. Really damned depressing.

  I was too sore to practice and it was too early in the day to get drunk, even for me, so I did the only other thing I could think of to shake the blues – I went back to Tracy’s.

  After a shower and a turkey and swiss on wheat, I crept into the dark bedroom and slid into bed next to her. I laid there and felt her beside me - the soft curve of her chest, rising and falling, in a thin cotton tank top. The long, elegant line of her legs. The heat of her breath.

  Somewhere in the midst of that perfection, I slept.

  50

  Parking was hell, but we still made it in time to meet Knox and his wife, Marta, at the entrance to the museum at quarter to eight. Marta was cute. Short blonde hair, green eyes, tasteful red gown that still managed to show off some cleavage and leg, both of which were very worthy of display. Everyone was introduced to everyone and we all went inside.

  The museum was specially decorated for the exhibit. Long silk banners emblazoned with Chinese calligraphy and I Ching trigrams hung from the ceiling in the sculpture hall. Classical Chinese music played, and waitresses dressed in silk brocade cheongsams wandered the hall, offering champagne and appetizers. Tracy and I grabbed some champagne and I picked up a program from a table by the door.

  ‘Changes – Elements of the I Ching’ it read.

  Apparently, each of Lau’s sixty-four paintings depicted a different hexagram from the book of changes. The pamphlet gave a short bio of the artist, conveniently leaving out anything about the family business, of course.

  "Holy shit," Tracy said, smiling slowly.

  "What?" I said following her line of vision to a small dj booth set inconspicuously in the corner and the bored kid working it.

  "Chucky. He used to dj at the bar," she said, heading in his direction. I followed; in the long black evening gown she wore, being behind her was an enviable position.

  "Yo, Chuck," she said as we approached. A few older, artsy types in the vicinity cast snotty glances our way – apparently they didn’t think enthusiasm or excitement belonged in a museum – but Tracy never noticed and, thanks to my rough-and-tough demeanor, the uptight busybodies decided it was best for them to mind their own damned business.

  "Bunny? Christ, what brings you here?" The kid said. I felt no warm fuzzies for ‘Chucky’ right from the start. Maybe it was the shaved head, or the neck tattoo half hidden by his collar, but I like to think it was his eyes that clinched it. To be more specific, they were all over my girl, and in a mighty familiar way.

  "…’Bunny’?" I said. If luck was with me, that didn’t come out half as snotty as it sounded in my head. Tracy gave me a look. Whoops, no such luck. Her tight-lipped smile spoke volumes.

  "Randall, this is my friend Chucky. Chucky, this is Randall."

  Chucky grinned and threw his hand my way. I shook the thing with just the right amount of firmness and for the right amount of time. Big hands on that kid; long
fingers.

  Tracy nodded to me, clearly happy that I was playing nice.

  Screw that. I was pretty proud of myself for not immediately chiming in with, "Yeah, I’m Randall…Tracy’s boyfriend."

  "So, what brings you here?" Chucky said, turning back to Tracy. Clearly he was done with me. I slid a half step closer to Tracy, keeping well within the kid’s peripheral vision. Childish?

  Sure.

  Was I going to keep it up?

  Damn skippy.

  "Ah, the artist is a friend of Randall’s," she said.

  To the kid’s credit, he didn’t say ‘who?’ like I would have in his place.

  What he did say was, "Wicked. Guy does cool stuff. I mean, y’know, I prefer our work…"

  He smiled. Perfect teeth. Tracy looked down at her champagne as if it suddenly had colonies of sea monkeys in it. Her cheeks had a healthy tinge of pink to them.

  "What work would that be?" I said. To the untrained ear, you really couldn’t tell my teeth were clenched or anything. Tracy still meditated on the tiny bubbles; Chucky said, "Oh, we worked on a painting a while back."

  I gave the appearance of detached interest, I hope, as I said, "Really? Sounds great."

  "Oh yeah, man, Bunny’s the best model I’ve ever worked with."

  The sound I made resembled "Hm" but really meant "I want to feel your corneas squish between my fingers."

  Our eyes met, he and I, and there was no mistaking it – we understood each other just fine.

  "So how did you manage to land this gig, Chucky?" Tracy said brightly.

  Before Chucky could turn, I said, "This little nickname…Bunny…What’s that all about? Where’d that come from?"

  Tracy’s hand was on my elbow. She said, "We’re losing John and Marta…Randall?"

  Still looking at me, Chucky laughed and said, "Remember that old commercial with the bunny? ‘It keeps going…and going…and going…’? That’s my Bunny."