Micky’s shooting stance was all intensity. It wasn’t that he was stiff. It was a quality that gave you a sense, for the brief moment between the thought and the pull on the trigger, that all of Micky’s energy was focused on that one thing. I believe, if he could, that my brother would race along with the bullets he shot so he could pound them into the target by hand.
His partner Art stepped up to the line. The interesting thing about watching different people do any sort of similar physical activity is the degree to which their idiosyncrasies are revealed in the act. I see it all the time in the dojo. The same technique is rendered unique in different people by the ball of quirks that make up our personalities.
Art’s a lefty, so there’s a certain awkward appearance to his shooting. It’s an illusion caused by the dominance of the right-handed perspective. He took his time placing his shots. His pistol let off a slow series of cracks, and Art’s mouth tightened occasionally as he monitored his performance. It took a while. The Glock Seventeen is aptly named: the clip holds seventeen 9 mm bullets. And one in the chamber.
But I wasn’t thinking about the technical details of the firearm. The most deadly thing about a pistol is the person who holds it. I was watching Art struggle with his marksmanship.
Cops qualify a few times a year with their pistols. Art’s microsurgery had repaired his right hand, but I knew he was still going to therapy to regain a full range of use. In the two-handed shooter’s stance, one hand grips the butt of the pistol; the other is cupped underneath to steady the aim. The lingering awkwardness of the right hand was bothering Art. You could tell.
There’s a focus and a connection between all the parts of the body when you’re doing something right. The head gives you away. If you’re too overly conscious of what you’re doing, if you’re nervous or scattered, the head looks like it’s rising up and losing connection with the rest of you. In training we say that you “float.” People who float are easily identified in the dojo. They’re usually the people getting knocked down.
I saw the telltale signs of floating in Art’s posture. It wasn’t just the grimace on his face or the obvious hesitation in his right hand as it scrabbled for a grip at the base of the pistol. He was thinking about it too much. Worrying. It created a break in his stance and his coordination. And when the target reached him, the shots were mostly scattered outside the primary target zones.
Art grimaced as he took off his ear protectors. “Shit.”
I was standing next to Micky. “It’s gonna take a while for him to get full control back,” I murmured.
My brother bristled. “Hey, you put enough rounds into anyone, they’re goin’ down.” Micky moved toward his partner and shrugged. “Don’t worry about it, Art.”
Art’s face was twisted in annoyance, and it washed over us as he looked up. Cops take pride in their abilities. I could understand that. In many ways, Micky and Art lived in a very different world than I did. But we shared things.
I’d come along with these two to the pistol range as a lark. I spend my time with simpler weapons. But I was also there because we found something in each other’s company that was deeply reassuring.
Danger shared creates its own odd connections. Sometimes, I still dreamed about the wash of blood and fear, a swirl of shadows and faces and struggle. We three had come through that ordeal, hoping that things would be like they were before. But it was a vain hope. Events had changed us in ways that were both good and bad. And there were reminders of the fact in the most unexpected places.
The two men cleared their weapons, taking refuge in the familiar actions. They picked up the spent shell casings and dropped them in a plastic bucket. Farther down the range, a marksman with a scoped revolver the size of an elephant gun blasted away. He wore a swank shooter’s vest and had yellow tinted aviator sunglasses. He was very serious. Probably had seen too many Clint Eastwood movies. I swear you could feel the concussive blast of his weapon from where we stood.
I walked up to the counter where Art and Micky worked in an awkward silence. “Can I try?”
The two men looked at each other in surprise. I had never asked to shoot before. There was an unspoken agreement that each of us had different areas of expertise. We tried not to step on each other’s toes. But, I owed them a great deal. I thought maybe I could help.
Art shrugged. “Couldn’t hurt. Hard to be much worse than me.”
Micky looked like he was going to say something to his partner, then thought better of it and prepared his pistol for me. “OK, Deadeye,” he said to me. “You’ve seen it done often enough. But one important safety tip.” He held the squat, black pistol in front of me, turned to one side. Then he pointed at the muzzle and smirked. “The bullets come out this end.”
He slotted a clip into the handle and placed it down on the shelf that marked the firing line. Then Micky stepped away. “The safety is on.” I picked the pistol up and slid the receiver back to run a shell into the chamber. I took off the safety off. The target was fifteen yards away: a long shot for a pistol.
“You want it closer, Connor?” Micky asked. He wasn’t being a wise guy. Cops train for relatively close shooting scenarios. I shook my head no.
I held the weapon and pointed it out toward the target, getting a sense of balance. I slowed my breathing down. Then I fired a shot off. I wasn’t too interested in where the bullet hit the target; I wanted to get a feel for the recoil, the weight, the tension in the hands as you squeezed the weapon into life. I slowly went through the clip. Then I placed the pistol down and Micky hit the switch that brought the target to us. There were holes all over the place. And there weren’t even seventeen of them.
“Well,” my brother said. “Not bad for a rookie, but I wouldn’t give up my day job.”
I picked up the pistol again, getting a sense of its heft. Wooden weapons feel different. There’s a special type of connection forged with primitive arms. The whole process feels more integrated. With the Glock, you got the sense that you were trying to control something that had a life of its own. But still…
“All weapons are the same in some ways,” I said. “They’re extensions of us. Of our power. Or our will. Know what I mean?” The two men looked blankly at me for minute. I plowed on anyway. “When you use something like this, you know what you want to happen. The trick is to somehow get the tool to obey your will.”
I reached over and clipped a new silhouette target to the wire. I ran it back out. Then I hit the button and ran the target toward us a few times. Watching.
“Seems to me, though, that if you worry too much about how to use the tool, you end up losing sight of the target. Know what I mean?”
The two men saw I was serious and nodded.
“I mean,
you
shoot the target. Not your hands. Or even the gun.”
My brother’s face brightened. “Like the bumper sticker. Guns don’t kill people…”
Art smiled at us, his left hand on his hip, the right curled slightly at his side.
“So,” I said, and I held out my hand to Micky for another clip, “you need to know what you’re doing with your hands, but you’ve got to look beyond it. To the target. It’s not a question of the hands being strong or skilled.” I tried not to look at Art as I said it. I put the clip in and let the target run back out. “They are simply there to help you meet the target.”
I nodded and Micky hit the button. The target ran in toward us. I fired the Glock until it locked back empty.
My shots were pretty nicely grouped above the neck. Micky took the shredded paper off the clip and both men looked at the target. And then at me.
“Yamashita says you get the head and the rest follows,” I commented.
Micky looked at the target again. “You,” he said, spacing the words out for emphasis, “are… one… weird… dude.”
“I gotta agree,” Art said. “But if you’ve got a secret hand-shake, I’d like to learn that, too.”
We talked a little about breathing and muscle control. Focus. For the most part, these two guys thought that the training I did was an exercise in delusion. Years ago, my brother had come to a dojo and taken one look at the exotic costumes and odd movements. He called it a pajama party.
That was before Yamashita.
Now we were on common ground, talking about weapons and the skill that lets you use them. Cops are a clannish bunch—they have experiences and perspectives most of us are fortunate to escape. It means that it’s hard for them to let you in. Even when you’re a brother. Or a friend. But, for a while at the pistol range, I got the feeling that the barriers had broken down a little bit.
As we wadded up the paper targets, Micky looked at mine. “Sort of reminds me of that Sakura guy,” he said. “How’s that mystery clue thing going?”
I shrugged. “Eh. I met with Sakura’s calligraphy teacher. Tried to get a sense of whether the phrase shumpu had any significance.” I could still see the diminutive shodo sensei in my mind. She sat sadly, an old woman who had seen too many lives pass away. She answered what questions she could in a listless voice. The bold strokes of her brushwork were in odd contrast to her physical presence. She was a fragile and faint presence in the quiet of her studio, like a ghost slowly fading from sight. Nothing she said seemed to offer any insight into Sakura’s final testament. I summarized it for Micky and Art. “I’ll keep at it,” I told them.
“We’re working what we can from our end, too,” Art said. “The guy from Brooklyn, Strakoswki, would like to keep us on a nice short leash.” He grinned at me. “But it doesn’t quite fit our unique genius.”
“That’s an understatement,” I answered.
“It’s killin’ him that he has to use us,” Micky observed. He knew he was right about Strakowski: it would have killed Micky if their positions were reversed.
“The calligraphy doesn’t tell us anything?” Art looked at me.
I shrugged.
“We’ve taken a look at the guy’s life,” Art continued. “His business dealings…”
“It’s why Strakowski needs us. Sakura’s office was in Manhattan. So we’re poking around.”
I could tell from the tone of Micky’s voice that they had something. “And?” I prompted.
“There’s something hinky there,” Micky added, and looked at Art for confirmation.
“Oh, yeah.”
“How so?” I asked. I was used to this. These men thought in very linear patterns. They were methodical and went from point A to point B to point C. They built a conversation in the same way they developed a case file: a piece at a time.
“Most murders,” Art explained as we walked off the range and away from Dirty Harry’s blast zone, “get fueled by love or money.”
“Feelings or finances,” my brother chimed in. He had an unconscious appreciation of alliteration.
“Sakura’s personal life seemed pretty stable. We checked the usual angles: lovers, office affairs, marital strain. Nothing there.” Art sounded wistful.
Micky popped the trunk of the car. They placed the pistols in small locked cases for the ride home. I knew Micky had a .32 automatic strapped to his ankle. On a spring day in suburbia, going armed seemed a bit paranoid. Then again, Edward Sakura got his brains blown out amid the well-manicured splendor of a Brooklyn backyard. Cops see things differently from most of us. For good reason.
We settled in for the ride and Micky continued. “So, we’re still double-checking on things, but the feelings angle seems out of the picture.”
I sat in the back seat and Art twisted around to talk. “At one time in his life, Sakura was up to his eyeballs with all sorts of money deals. He was a show-biz specialist.”
“An agent?” I asked.
Art thought for a minute. “Not really. He was more like a fixer, a guy who put different people together.”
“For a price,” my brother added.
“So how’s that relevant? How’s it fit in?”
“We’re not sure just yet,” Art admitted. “These days, he was semi-retired, spent most of his time doing calligraphy. Consulting with art dealers. But we wonder about things…”
“Like…” I prompted.
“Sakura had Asian connections,” Micky began.
“Mick,” I said, “he was a second generation Japanese American. His Asian connection was his grandparents.”
Micky shot a wicked look at me over his shoulder, then swerved forward to steer the car. “Connor, I’m not a complete asshole, ya know? I mean that, over time, Sakura had put deals together at a lot of different levels. Some were big. Some were not so big. And a lot of times, you got people from overseas wanting to break into the business who are maybe not so legit.”
“Movie industry is a money launderer’s dream,” Art added. “From what we can tell, Sakura had all sorts of people wanting in. Some he played with. Some he didn’t. What we’ve gotta ask is whether there was something in the past, a deal that went sour. Maybe money was lost. Or feelings hurt.”
“Feelings hurt?” I asked incredulously.
“Feelings,” my brother repeated. “And you know what these types of people feel most deeply about? Money.”
“You think there was something in his past? That Sakura was involved in something and he ticked somebody off?”
“Based on the condition of his head, I’d say someone was pretty pissed at him,” Micky concluded.
“Not the action of a happy camper,” Art said in support.
“Yeah. OK. But what do you think Sakura was involved in?” I persisted.
Art held up a finger in admonishment. “Our powers, while mighty, are not without limit.”
“I’m shocked,” I said.
Micky drove in silence, taking the turns to his house with easy familiarity. His wife Dee had taken the kids off for a day at one of our sisters’ houses. The Burkes are a numerous clan, rapidly growing more so. I had a bewildering number of nieces and nephews. Some were dark. Some light. There were fat little Burkes and leaner, more agile models. But they all had the subtle underlying familial resemblance that marked them as Americans of Irish extraction. And they would all play together, which gave their parents an opportunity to relax. Which is what I hoped Dee was doing. Life with my brother was not an adventure in calm.
As we pulled up in front of the house, Art murmured to Micky, “Blue sedan. This side of the street. Motor running. Recognize the car? Looks like he’s got himself parked so he can watch things.”