Authors: Francis Porretto
He directed her to one of the chairs and sat in the other one.
"How long ago did he take off?"
The unconcern in the question made her bristle inside. She did her best not to let it show.
"Louis left Onteora a week ago yesterday."
"Are you sure he's dead?" The tone remained the same: off-handed, casual.
"Yes, I'm sure." She fought to unclench her teeth. "I identified his body last Sunday night and buried him Tuesday."
If there's a Hell, it can't feel any worse than it felt to see his body laid out on that police station morgue table. It can only last longer.
"Well, I suppose that's that, then."
It was too much. "Louis said you were his combat instructor."
Loughlin nodded. "Among other things. For eight years."
"Well, I'm glad he learned his manners somewhere else."
His eyebrows rose. "Oh? Do you prefer his to mine?"
"By quite a margin, so far."
Loughlin's smile was concentrated mockery. "I suppose there's something to be said for someone who can lie that charmingly."
"What? Get off it. Louis never told a lie in his life. He probably wouldn't have been able to."
"No? He's lied to me, and rather effectively, too. But it was for your sake, so I suppose you'll have no problem with it."
She bit back an angry reply and replayed his statement in her head.
"What did Louis tell you that you
think
was a lie, that's somehow worked out to my benefit?"
She saw him clench his jaw. His stone mask failed, revealing anger mixing with humiliation at having been hoodwinked by someone he trusted.
Whatever it is, he believes it. This is not a test.
The Nag piped up from the back of her skull.
Everything is a test, Christine. Look sharp.
"Your late protector promised me something in exchange for my looking after you, girl. He said he'd found someone special, someone who could carry on the tradition in which I'd schooled him, if I would complete his discovery's education. He said this fellow would be coming here with you. Did you see him wandering around in the woods, perchance?"
The cables of her self-control had drawn tight.
"I don't know about any of that. All he told me was that you would continue my combat training, but that I had to come here to do it. He never mentioned anyone else. If you have a problem with that, or with me, I'll take my marbles and find another game." She picked up her purse and rose from her chair.
Before she could move toward the door, Loughlin's hand shot out and clamped onto her wrist. His grip was tight enough to leave marks.
"
Your
combat training?"
Anger flared within her. "Take your hand off me or I'll take it for a souvenir."
To her surprise, he did, and sat back in his chair, staring at nothing.
Sit down, Christine. He's going to take a while adjusting to this.
She sat. The Nag went back to silence.
Loughlin stared at the wall over her head for some time. She tried to be patient. Louis had said he was odd.
"That word-mincing son of a bitch."
She burst out laughing.
***
"So what had he taught you?" Loughlin said.
She shrugged. "Basic hand-to-hand, several styles. Aerial moves. A lot of weapons training, the last few weeks."
"What weapons?"
"Blades, quarterstaff, small arms, explosives, a bunch of jury rigs."
"Over what period of time?"
She tried to remember. "We started in early June."
He stared at her, plainly disbelieving.
"Four months. He gave you a master's course in single-soldier combat techniques, that took
him
three years to absorb, and you claim to have gone all the way through it in
four months?
"
She nodded. "I'm a quick learner."
He shook his head. "You're a bullshit artist."
"Why not test me and find out for yourself?"
He scowled. "I don't have time for a little girl with a head full of fantasies. You probably don't know much more than the average Girl Scout. He just puffed it up for you to make you feel good, and told you what to say to me to get under my wing. I'm not buying it."
"You don't have to take it on faith. I'll demonstrate anything you want."
"Spare me. I don't think I could endure that much buffoonery."
Her adrenaline rose again. "Just what makes it so hard for you to take me seriously?"
"Take you seriously? I can hardly take you at all. Just look at you!"
She looked down at her white silk blouse, navy blue linen suit, and matching high-heeled pumps. Her only ornament was a delicate gold necklace. It was her most somber outfit. Louis had once said it made her look like a high-class undertaker, but it had seemed right for the encounters she had planned for the day.
If only I'd known.
"All right, I've looked. What's wrong with me?"
"If you were a fashion model, I'd say nothing at all. But I don't train fashion models, girl. Did you really tramp all the way from Mill Neck Road to here in those shoes? It's a wonder you can walk."
She bit back another blast. "Louis liked the way I dress. In fact, he's mostly responsible for it."
He snorted. "The cancer reached his brain a long while ago, I see."
A rising tide of fury pressed against her waning self-restraint. She ground out the words. "Louis Redmond was God's finest creation. Everything I am, everything I have, I owe to him. I'll hear no more of your contempt poured on his memory."
His answering glare betrayed a measure of grim satisfaction.
"You'll hear whatever I choose to tell you, girl, and keep a civil tongue in your head while hearing it, or you can totter on home in those torture devices you call shoes. You're sitting in
my
home, on
my
land, and the rules here are what I say they are."
She nodded. Her right hand moved across the table and curled around the saltcellar.
"I see." She glared at him and squeezed. There was a muffled crunch. She opened her hand slowly, allowing shards of ceramic and grains of fine white salt to trickle onto the table top.
"Are you willing to fight for it?"
His eyes widened. There was still anger there in plenty, but it had been leavened with a germ of respect.
"Contest rules, or blood?"
She bared her teeth. "It's your ballpark, Bubba. You decide."
***
Loughlin used a heavy stick to mark off a square about twenty-five feet on a side in the soft earth behind the trailer. She watched in silence.
When he had finished, he tossed the stick aside. "Do you know contest rules?"
She nodded and shed her suit jacket. "No deliberate attempts to injure. Unconsciousness or leaving the ring ends it. Either party can concede at any time by slapping the ground three times."
"Good. Better than I expected. Take your shoes off."
She smirked. "Not necessary."
He scowled. "It
is
necessary, girl. I've no reason to trust your skills, and I don't want an
unintentional
spike heel through my solar plexus."
She stepped out of her pumps, kicked them aside, and stepped into the makeshift ring. She was still about an inch taller than he.
He stepped into the ring at the opposed side, bowed in Louis's fashion, and said, "Check."
She bowed, murmured "Check," and they approached one another, crouching.
She decided to let him have the early initiative. He probed her defenses first high, with whirling side kicks she deflected easily, then low, with leg hooks and low-line thrusts at her knees that required more subtlety to elude without conceding space or balance. She contented herself with efficient evasions, restraining the urge to counterpunch until she had seen more of his style.
He sought to lock stares with her. She refused to look into his face, concentrated on his shoulders and hips as Louis had taught her. He was a practiced and natural fighter, and could much more easily do without his eyes than she.
When he came at her overhand, expecting to overwhelm her with a drop kick from above, she surprised him by darting forward and snapping a kick into his lower back. He staggered, stumbled, and caught himself before she could follow up on her momentary advantage. The first blow had been dealt and received; the lust of battle was fully upon them both.
They began to gyrate more rapidly, each seeking to disorient the other, to gain a purchase on the other's movements, and to evade the other's thrusts and hooking maneuvers. The contest had shifted into high gear.
She exulted. All her energy poured into the deadly dance. Even though it was her first serious encounter, and was against an opponent Louis had venerated, she could feel nothing but mastery and pride.
He taught me well.
Loughlin's style was much like Louis's, but devoid of the impish humor she had loved in her mentor. She thought she could sense flaws in it. He matched her spin for spin, thrust for thrust, sweep for sweep, but his transitions were infinitesimally jagged. He seemed to need an instant more to decide on each attack and parry than she did, and the momentary slackenings showed as lapses from kinetic smoothness.
Could it be a gambit? Some kind of counter-counterpunching strategy?
She pressed him hard, and the initiative passed to her. She oscillated between vertical and horizontal techniques, mixing sallies on the high, middle and low planes as randomly as possible. He kept her at bay with increasing difficulty, essaying fewer and fewer offensive moves of his own.
She seemed to hear Louis's voice in her head:
"Friction is the ultimate enemy. If conditions change out from under you while you're deciding what to do next, you'll lose a step. If it happens again, you'll lose your orientation. If you can't stop it in time and resynchronize with events, you'll lose your life."
In the midst of a cartwheel scythe that he eluded by twisting away to her right, she plunged to her belly and feinted swinging her legs at his ankles. He tried to abort; she did abort. In the instant that he stood frozen, she shot both hands at his shins. She pulled at one, pushed at the other, and he was down on his back.
He had to try to roll away, in one direction or the other. She guessed lucky and was on his back before he could somersault to his feet. She threw a chokehold around his neck and bore down, riding out his frenzied bucking.
Ninety seconds later, he was unconscious. She wasn't far from it herself; she had held nothing back.
She lifted him by the waist and flipped him over. His breathing seemed normal. She left him where he lay, retrieved her pumps and put them back on. Drained by the contest, she staggered across the loam, unable to correct for the way her heels sank into the earth. When he regained consciousness, he rose to a sitting position and blinked. She watched with arms folded.
"Well?" she said.
"Well what?"
Her anger returned at full force.
"Want to see me do it again with my pumps on? I promise I won't hurt you."
He said nothing.
"Louis thought a lot of you. He must have, to think you could teach me anything he couldn't. But just what subject was he thinking of, Mr. Loughlin? Because if I just saw your best, he could have taken you on his worst day without breaking a sweat."
He shook his head, eyes rolling and momentarily unfocused.
"I know that. Don't you think the man who trained him would know that? And he told me plainly that you were better than he was."
Shock lanced through her. "So you knew all the time."
He nodded. "Yes, I knew all the time. Let's go back inside."
He rose and turned toward the trailer. She snapped, "Just a moment," and he stopped and faced her again.
"How did Louis address you?"
"He called me Malcolm." He tried to smile. It didn't work.
"Then that'll do for me as well. My name is Christine.
Not
'girl.' And Malcolm, I meant what I said in there. Think what you like about Louis, but say none of it while I'm around, or I swear to God I'll have your throat out. Got it?"
The false-looking grin vanished. "It was only a test, you know."
"I don't give a shit. I'll see you next Saturday at eight AM sharp. Be ready."
She brushed past him and headed back toward her car.
==
Chapter
36
Tiny had to remind himself about fifty times that one of the men appraising him as if he were a side of beef was the highest ranking policeman in the county. Both of them were bigger than he was, not to mention armed.