Changes -- A Randall Lee Mystery Read online

  But then, that was the point, of course.

  I got tagged a few times – the left forearm, the right bicep, the left thigh – each time cursing to myself. The injuries hurt more than they should, and they dripped…never a good sign. I was losing blood. I was running out of appendages to defend myself with.

  He swiped at my face, his fingers pulled back, manicured nails aimed at my eyes. I ducked it, and put my index finger on the back of his hand. When he pulled back his arm, I stuck to him, following the movement and redirecting it. I trapped his arm to his chest and drove a fa-jin palm strike through his hand and into his solar plexus. Daniel rolled with the strike and used the folding motion of his torso to drive his forehead through the bridge of my nose.

  I invented several new curse words.

  My leg buckled as he shin-kicked the side of my thigh. He swiped again with his other hand; I raised an arm to deflect the attack, but the arm collapsed upon impact.

  I was getting weak from the cuts. My vision swam.

  Before Daniel could move in for the kill, though, there was a ding and the doors slid open. I can only imagine the expressions on the faces of the wealthy patrons as they looked into our little war zone and said, "…Uh…We’ll catch the next one…"

  Y’see, I didn’t look.

  Daniel did.

  I took the opportunity to stomp on his instep, hard, and I sank into his ribs with the technique Ji or ‘Press’. It compressed his lungs, knocked the air out of him and put his head through one of the only remaining unbroken panels of mirror on the wall.

  Cheap? Sure, but what do you call slicing somebody up with your feet? Besides, as my teacher always said, history really is written by the victors so don’t be afraid to fight dirty when necessary.

  Later, I planned to make up a story that would make me sound really tough and cool to Tracy.For now, though, I gripped a Chin Na pressure point on the back of his tricep and forced him to the floor.

  When the elevator doors opened again - this time looking out into the main lobby - a horde of police were waiting, weapons drawn. Tracy was with them. So was Knox.

  I stood there, holding Daniel and bleeding profusely, for a moment. Once I’d caught my breath, I said, "Book ‘em, Danno."

  Just before collapsing.

  So much for looking cool in front of Tracy.

  55

  Hospitals make me grumpy. Especially when I need stitches. Especially when the person responsible for me needing stitches shares a room with me.

  "I don’t like you," I said to Daniel.

  "Told you already," Knox said, "he checked out… he’s clean."

  "Boys are dumb," Tracy said. "You two couldn’t just talk it out?"

  "He fucking hit me before I could say anything," I said.

  "You hit me when I was not looking," Daniel said.

  "Well? You’re in the middle of a fight. Pay attention," I said.

  The Brazilian just laid there in his bed, looking smug. He already had another pair of sunglasses on. For some reason, this made me irrationally angry.

  "All just a misunderstanding," John said. I could tell he was enjoying this. "Daniel here thought you were the one who killed Lau."

  What?

  "If I was the killer," I said, "why would I have bothered trying to save Samson?"

  "Diversion," Daniel said.

  "Yeah, well, if I wanted to kill your boss, I could have done it in San Francisco," I said.

  "Perhaps," Daniel said.

  "Why’d you fight back, Lee, if you knew he wasn’t the killer?" Knox said.

  "I didn’t know for sure. And Mr. Flippy-kick here didn’t give me much of a choice. Besides, the fact that he knows Capoeira doesn’t mean he couldn’t know Tai Chi too. Actually, I just kinda figured he was covering up for his boss. I thought maybe Tony might know who the real killer was."

  "I would not waste time with that geezer’s art," was all Daniel said.

  "Have I mentioned how much I do not like you?" I said.

  56

  With the numerous wounds on both of us, the doc – who I knew on a first name basis from my last stay – insisted that we both stay overnight for observation. This thrilled neither Daniel nor I, but being forced to lie around and watch TV wasn’t a horrible thing, especially after taking a beating. I needed a couple stitches, a re-set nose, and a few bags of the red stuff to top me off. Daniel had a pair of broken sunglasses, a few deep tissue bruises, and a cracked rib.

  Whoopidee-doo.

  Tracy left to feed Tito and take a long hot bath. I told her I was sad that I wouldn’t be there.

  Lau came to visit Daniel late in the evening and pulled the blue plastic curtain, separating them from me; I could see their silhouettes projected along the plastic partition, and heard whispers, but none of this taught me anything. I flipped on the TV and caught an episode of E’s True Hollywood Story. This didn’t teach me anything either.

  When Lau left, at the end of visiting hours, it was just me and Daniel, a deck of cards borrowed from the nurses’ station, and whatever change we had in our pockets. With our dining tables slid together between our beds, we had a halfway decent playing surface.

  I was rusty at Pai Gow Poker, but Daniel knew enough to refresh my memory; it wasn’t like we were really interested in playing anyway. I looked at my cards and said, "So…Capoeira. How’d that come about?"

  "How did I learn, you mean?"

  I nodded.

  He played his hand, a three-of-a-kind, and said, "My grandfather was a Mestre in Sao Paulo. I paid attention. You?"

  "I took an eight week Tai Chi class at the Y," I said.

  The barest hint of a smile played at the corners of his mouth.

  "You playing?" He said.

  I laid down my cards, a hand I like to call five-of-an-individual – also known as Crap, and he scooped up the pot of seventy-five cents.

  "I read somewhere that Capoeira-guys…"

  "Capoeiristas," he said.

  "Right…" I said, "…that those guys used to use straight razors held in their feet. Never heard of using pieces of broken mirror, though."

  "Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention."

  "Oh, so you felt threatened by my… what was it? My ‘geezer art?’"

  He did that slight smile again and said, "Perhaps. Or perhaps it was my belief that you were Mr. Lau’s killer that filled me with unnecessary fear."

  He dealt a new hand; I relished the fact that he was askeered of me.

  "At the gallery you told me to back off. Why?" I said.

  He peered at his cards and said, "Because Mr. Lau was innocent."

  "Yeah, but how’d you know that?"

  He said nothing, but threw a handful of pennies into the pot. We played cards; conversation was getting us nowhere.

  On the bright side, I ended up a sweet forty-two cents richer.

  57

  By nine-thirty in the morning I was out of the ass-less paper gown and into a new pair of jeans, thanks to Tracy. Daniel and I went our separate ways, with the agreement that we would meet again under more pleasant circumstances.

  My arms hurt. A lot.

  My face hurt more.

  We went down to Delmar; Tracy drove. After perusing a few bookstores, we had lunch at one of the many sidewalk café-type joints that lined the street. It was a beautiful day; seventy-two and clear on a late-October day in St. Louis is not unheard of, but it usually signaled the last gasps of good weather for the year. Things would get ugly fast, so we decided to make the best of it.

  I ordered a cheeseburger and steak fries. Tracy did the same. We both drank beer; I’d spent less than a day in the hospital, but I still felt the urge to rebel, to disobey, to be bad. I’d likely order some obscene chocolate cheesecake at the end of the meal, and that would really show ‘em.

  I ate carefully. As much as I hated it, I felt loosely sewn together and didn’t want to risk jarring any of my stitches by moving stupid. I caught Tracy wincing as she watched
me.

  "You doin’ okay?" She said.

  I thought about asking her to cut up my food in little pieces for me, but that was just excessive. I nodded instead.

  "Randall…why are you doing this?"

  I looked up at her. I didn’t like the concern in her eyes, but the rest – the wisps of black and pink and blonde that framed her face, the orange and yellow leaves on the tree behind her, the way her perfume mingled with the dying leaves – those things were just perfect.

  "Because… I am hungry?" I said.

  "You know what I mean. Do you even know why you’re doing this? When do you give it up? When do you call it quits and stop getting hurt and just leave it to Knox and the people who do this stuff for a living?"

  "Didn’t anybody ever tell you that quitters never win and winners never quit?" I said.

  I wasn’t getting off that easy.

  "You didn’t even know this girl, Randall. You didn’t know any of these people, not really. Why risk getting blown up? Or cut up? Or killed?"

  I wiped my mouth, smeared a bit of A-1 sauce into the cut on my cheek, and tried not to pass out. When the crisis had passed, I said, "Okay, in fairness, I got cut up by one of the supposed good guys. As for the rest, what can I say? I’m a big fan of truth, justice, and the American way."

  Tracy dug around in her purse – a black tin lunchbox shaped like a grumpy Japanese cartoon character called Batz-maru – and found a pack of clove cigarettes. She lit one, took a drag, and rubbed her forehead as she exhaled. I heard her mumble, "…are you doing it for them or is this all just about you?"

  "What’s that supposed to mean?"

  "Just what I said. She’s gone, y’know. There’s nothing you can do about it. And the worst thing, the part that really eats at you, is that somewhere, deep down, you know that none of it was your fault."

  I took a sip of beer. It tasted like ash in my mouth. I set the bottle down and watched an ant crawling on the sidewalk.

  "…Like you said, I didn’t even know her," I said.

  Tracy set her cigarette down in the ash tray and said, "Randall, sweetie, I’m not talking about Mei Ling Zhao and you know it."

  I ate a fry.

  "When you told me, you made it out as though everything was your fault."

  "Yeah."

  "It wasn’t, though," she said.

  "No. It was Miranda, too. She and I grew up the same. Get a job, get married, start a family… that’s what you’re supposed to do. Nobody tells you what you’re supposed to do then, though, do they? Miranda tried, but she didn’t know how to be a wife. She didn’t know how to be a mom. It’s easy to point fingers, but what was I doing? Working. That was what I knew how to do."

  "You did all that you could." Tracy said.

  "No, I knew I was blowing it, even then. When Miranda was pregnant, I read all the books I could. When Grace was born, I was the one who fed her, changed her diapers, the whole deal. When she got older, though, and not everything could be solved by shoving a bottle in her mouth or putting her to bed, that’s when I got lost. I always thought I would figure it out, that we both would, in time. We didn’t get a chance, though."

  Her hand was on mine, and I didn’t take it as a comfort. It felt like something heavy, something holding me down.

  "Listen to me, Randall - it’s not your fault. Sometimes bad things happen and we can’t control that," she said. And in her eyes, the look, the pity.

  "You don’t know… I should have been there. That is my fault. What’s the point of being a father if you can’t protect your child? I wasn’t fucking there. By choice. I couldn’t deal, so I hid in an office… I got paid and I worked by the book and I ignored them. Both of them.

  "That’s why she was taken, that’s why he… did what he did to her. Because I fucking failed. Don’t you see that? And that fuck, that piece of inhuman shit, took a shot to the temple and went to sleep. After all the things he put her through… What were her last hours like, Tracy? How long do you think she fucking cried for me… to help her… and I wasn’t there? And he just gets to go to sleep?"

  I knew I was yelling. It was Tracy’s eyes, brimming with tears, that made me stop. I didn’t give a damn about everybody else looking at us. Screw them.

  "You…wanted him to suffer," she said.

  "I wanted him to pay," I said, quietly.

  "He got off lucky," she said. She wouldn’t look at me.

  "You’re damn right he did."

  When she did look at me, the force of her gaze was unnerving. "So this is how you make amends? By finding this guy? Then what, Randall? You gonna kill him? You gonna make him suffer? Make him pay for the actions of a dead man?"

  She was right. I knew she was right.

  But that didn’t stop me from being an idiot.

  "Please don’t lay the whole ‘don’t stoop to their level’ crap on me, Tracy. Just because you took a psychology class once, that doesn’t mean you actually fucking know anything. Don’t pretend to understand this, okay? Because you can’t, and you don’t want to. Who have you lost, huh? Nobody. You’re just a fucking kid."

  She was hurt, I could tell; a part of me was even glad for it. The tears flowed freely from her eyes, but she smiled. It wasn’t a pretty smile.

  "You’re right, I don’t know anything. I’m just a kid? Well I know this – you can’t live with this hate, Randall. It will kill you. Because in the end, it doesn’t change the fact that your daughter is dead. Or that her murderer is dead. It’s over, don’t you see? Stop carrying this around with you, goddammit. Let it go."

  "Easy for you to say," I said.

  "She’s gone, Randall. And you know what? She’s okay. I don’t know if you believe in an afterlife, or if you don’t believe in anything at all, but either way, Randall, she’s okay. He can’t hurt her anymore. And she wouldn’t want you carrying this burden. Not for her."

  For a minute, I thought she was going to leave. To her credit, she didn’t. However pathetic and unworthy the old bastard in front of her was, she wasn’t ready to give up on him yet. Maybe somebody had told her the quitters never win thing…

  After awhile, she said, "Could I see her?"

  "Grace?" I said. The question took me off guard.

  "Yes," she said.

  "I don’t- "

  "You don’t carry any pictures of her in your wallet?" she said.

  "No," I said.

  "Why not?"

  I sighed, picked up her cigarette, took a drag off it, and said, "For the same reason I don’t keep my acupuncture needles in my underwear."

  She frowned.

  "It would hurt," I said. "Bad joke."

  She patted my hand on the table.

  "I’d like to see her someday," she said.

  I nodded. "Me too," I said.

  58

  That night I stayed in my apartment. The super had finally replaced the front door. My shop window was still a big, graffiti-marred piece of plywood, though. Ah, well… Rome wasn’t built in a day (probably due to slack-jawed dipshits like my super).

  Things with Tracy could’ve been better, but we would survive. For two independent people always up in each other’s business, I was surprised we’d gotten along as well as we had.

  I climbed the stairs with nagging protest from my stitched up leg, and unlocked the door to my apartment. I pushed it open a half inch and peered inside. I checked floor level and around the knob, no tripwires. I gave the door a shove and covered my head with my arms.

  Nothing. No explosions, no surprises. Just a drab, empty apartment.

  I stood up and brushed myself off, wondering if I looked as foolish as I felt, and went inside. The hiss and clank of the radiator seemed loud in the stillness of the place. I walked into the kitchen, my footsteps echoing in my ears. The fridge held a half-empty six pack of Tsing Tao, some pizza that had long ago gone gently into that good night, and a shifty looking bottle of no-name ketchup.

  It occurred to me that, on a long shot, my would-be assassi
ns could have possibly corrupted my water supply, so I cracked open a beer. I took a sip; it was cold and bitey and better than ninety-five percent of the rest of my life at the moment. I swallowed half of the bottle in one go, grabbed the cardboard carrier with its two lonely brothers, and took it with me into the living room.

  An ironic name – living room – for such a cold, empty place. I set my beers down and flipped on the stereo. All across the radio dial, nothing but crap. I checked the CD player and found it occupied by a disk of Tracy’s. I turned it on and sat and drank. When the first bottle was finished, I drank the second. The third was gone before I even realized it was the third. I went back to the fridge and double-checked it for more beer. Then I checked the cabinets for any liquor, but I was dry.

  With the music on and the alcohol gone I sat on my worn couch and watched the lights from passing traffic paint the room in shadows and shades of blue and yellow. After awhile, even that slowed and more or less stopped. And there I was in darkness, clutching the useless, empty glass bottle and listening to unfamiliar familiar music.

  And when it was finished, and the vacuum was too intense, I closed my eyes and let the emptiness carry me away.

  59

  I woke in a deep blackness; the only way I knew my eyes were open at all was the blinking red light of the answering machine across the way. I fumbled around for a lamp or a light switch, but I only succeeded in knocking one of the empty Tsing Tao bottles to the floor where it shattered into a billion slivers, all of them hungry for a taste of my foot.

  Knowing this, I perched on the edge of the couch and leapt in the direction of the red light. It seemed like a good idea at the time. It wasn’t.

  I flew over the bits of glass, resisting the urge to stick out my tongue as I flew by overhead, and nailed my forehead on the doorway that separated the kitchen from the living room. I fell backward, marveling at the bright starbursts that flashed before my eyes, and must’ve flailed my arms in an attempt to catch myself. I pulled the answering machine off the end table and both of us hit the hardwood floor with a thump. As the machine hit, it jarred something and I heard the tape rewinding. As the message began to play, I heard, "Hey? Hello? Asshole! Hello? Say something. I know you’re there, you pick up the phone. Hello?"