Ransom (3 page)

She and Miles kissed. Ransom stood up.

“Hello, Ransom-san.” She looked him over and turned to Ryder. “His breeding is wonderful. It wouldn't occur to you to stand up when a woman enters the room, but Ransom does it in a bar for a woman he doesn't even like.”

Ransom was surprised all over again by the quality of her English. Certainly none of his Japanese students could rival Marilyn, even if he worked with them for years. To him her slight accent seemed vaguely French.

“Ransom likes you just fine,” Miles said. “Don't you?”

“Who could resist Marilyn's charm?”

The bartender called Miles to the phone. “Keep an eye on my baby,” he said to Ransom. Marilyn pulled a cigarette from her purse and hunted for a light. “The only defect in your manners, Ransom, is that you never light a girl's cigarette. But you don't approve of smoking, do you?”

“I gave it up myself.”

“And you don't drink?”

“Not much anymore.”

“Bit of a bore, aren't you?” She took his hand and fingered the callused knuckles. “Karate.” She flipped the hand over and spread the palm open on her knee, as if to read his fortune. “
Kara
—empty.
Te
—hand. Empty-handed Ransom. Is that it? You give up everything for your quest.” She leaned close and whispered, “How about girls? Have you given up girls, too?”

“Some girls I have given up in advance,” Ransom said.

Marilyn finally produced a lighter and lit her cigarette.

“You know, I asked Miles if you were running from some terrible secret. He says there is no warrant for your arrest he knows about, no pregnant girlfriend. What is this mysterious problem? You can tell Marilyn.” She smiled coquettishly.

“Original sin. I'm Catholic—born and raised guilty.”

“I was raised Catholic, too.”

“In Vietnam?”

“Yes. Where else?”

“That would make you French Catholic, basically. French Catholicism is different. The French are only in it for the art. Cathedrals, paintings, gold chalices. Pomp plus bread and wine. It's a wonder they haven't added cheese to the service. Nothing like the Irish or the Spaniards, who are in it strictly for the self-abuse.”

“Which are you?”

“My mother was Irish Catholic.”

“Is she religious?”

“She's dead.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Happened quite a while ago,” Ransom said.

“And you? Still a Catholic?”

“Not practicing. But it's not necessarily something you can shake.”

Miles reappeared. “What can't you shake?”

“Those old lonesome blues,” Ransom said. “Who was on the phone—your wife?”

“What are you, my mother?”

“That's what you have against me, isn't it?” Marilyn said.

Frank DeVito strutted up to the bar, pointedly leering at Marilyn, bringing eyebrows and tongue into play. She stared back belligerently and Miles glowered. Something ugly verged on happening until DeVito turned slowly away and moved to an opening several stools down.

Frank DeVito, ex-Marine and current Bruce Lee clone. Enlisting with the fervent desire to see combat, he got out of basic after they stopped sending Marines to Vietnam.
Posted to Okinawa, he acquired a taste for the martial arts and, eventually, a dishonorable discharge, the cause of which was variously attributed to drug trafficking, assault on an officer, assault on an Okinawan schoolgirl. From what he knew of DeVito, Ransom thought assault more likely than drugs, and the schoolgirl more likely than the officer. The rumor was that, despite the discharge, DeVito had wangled a disability pension for an alleged back injury and was thus able to devote his time solely to training. Shortly before Ransom landed, DeVito had come to Kyoto to study at the dojo of a maverick sensei of dubious standing in the karate world who made movies starring himself and who demonstrated his skills by killing oxen barehanded. His disciples, among whom DeVito was prominent, were required to take a blood oath of allegiance and secrecy. DeVito, who modelled his appearance on the old samurai, was embarrassingly eager to please Ransom whenever he didn't choose instead to insult him, his dojo, his sensei and his mother. Ransom was consistent in his dislike of DeVito, who reminded him of grade school misfits who gave you all their toys one day and beat you up the next. His only achievement, in Ransom's view, was his exceptionally fluent Japanese.

“I'm going to boot him out of here,” Ryder said, after he had walked away.

“Don't,” Ransom said. “It will be a mess if you do. He just wants the attention.”

“I hate that fucking Okie.”

“He's not worth getting upset about,” Marilyn said.

Ransom turned toward the stage. Kano was still tuning his guitar with the intense concentration of a man wiring a
bomb. Sato, on rhythm, watched and tuned with him. Bubba, the bass man, née Satoichi Yasuhiro, was rocking back and forth on his heels, ready and waiting. Finally Kano stepped up to the mike and said, “Let's get down and dirty.” The gaijin up front hooted and clapped, while the Japanese looked on politely. Kano counted out the beat—“Ichi, ni, san, shi”—and they started into “Got My Mojo Workin'.”

Kano had once asked Ransom how he would define
Mojo
, leaving Ransom very much at a loss. When Kano had tried to enlist the guidance of the only black patron of Buffalo Rome, an aikido student from Oakland, he had been told that the blues were strictly Uncle Tom and very uncool. He was shaken, but he kept the faith.

Ransom observed the crowd and half listened to the set. Miles and Marilyn fondled each other's limbs. Ransom couldn't help but feel sorry for Miles's wife, Akiko. On the only occasion when Miles had felt obliged to explain his womanizing, he invoked the when-in-Rome theory, claiming that Japanese women expected no more fidelity than Japanese men delivered. Ransom thought this extremely swinish. He was also suspicious of this Marilyn. He had no reason to doubt she was a Vietnamese refugee, nor that she was a singer in a downtown bar. But he wondered if she didn't do a little after-hours work as well.

When the set was over, Ryder seemed wistful. “If only I could find a Japanese band that played Hank Williams.”

“You've got everything he ever recorded on the jukebox,” Ransom said.

“I know. But I'd love to hear that high, lonesome twang in Japanese.”

Miles was taking another call in the office, and Marilyn was in the Ladies', when Frank DeVito returned with an empty glass.

“Ransom, you scumbag. I thought it was you. Old handsome Ransom.”

Ransom glanced briefly at his fellow American, tonsured in the fashion of a sixteenth-century samurai, the front and sides of his scalp shaved, a long lock of hair doubled over and tied along the ridge of his skull. “Hello, Frank.”

DeVito pulled a long face. “
Hello, Frank
. What kind of greeting is that?”

“Sufficient, I'd call it.”

“I'd call it unfriendly. What's with the chill here? Fellow karate-ka ought to get along. Are you still hanging out at that wimpy dojo?”

Ransom looked into DeVito's dark eyes but he didn't say anything.

“What do you call that brand of dancing they teach you there? Go-go?”

“Goju.”

“Tofu?”

“It's called Goju,” Ransom said. “Hard-soft.”

“Hard-soft? What's that? Soft guys with hard-ons, or what?”

“The principle works many ways. Like, you apply a hard weapon—say, fist—to a soft area—say, belly.”

“Think you're pretty good, don't you?”

“I'm just a student,” Ransom said.

“Don't hand me that humility shit. Show me your stuff.”

“I've got nothing to show,” Ransom said.

DeVito called for a beer. Miles came up behind the bar, watching DeVito intently, and set a bottle on the counter. DeVito lifted his beer and drank off half of it.

Marilyn returned, nodded at the seat beside Ransom and looked at DeVito. “Do you mind?”

“Yeah,” DeVito said, still facing Ransom. “You can just wait a minute. There aren't five men in Japan fast enough to knock the neck off of a standing beer bottle.”

“There aren't two,” Ransom said, “who could care less.”

“You think you can do it?” DeVito asked.

Ransom raised his hands and flopped them down on the bar. DeVito was the sort who made a personal contest out of a coin toss, invested a game of checkers with the aspect of an epic struggle for survival. A few weeks back he had taken bets and broken one of the spool tables in half. Miles threatened to call the cops, but DeVito had contemptuously turned over his winnings to pay for the table. Because he would stake everything on nothing, DeVito would have been dangerous even if he was weak.

“Let's just see,” DeVito said, stepping away from the bar and drawing a deep breath. He closed his eyes and drew his hands up to his chin. Opening his eyes, he swung his right hand, palm open and rigid, in a slow arc that ended at the neck of the beer bottle. Behind him, the onlookers were divided—one could judge from the expressions—between those who admired DeVito's strength and audacity and those who hoped he would slice his arteries and die. People cleared away from the bar. DeVito practiced the move several times, closed his eyes again, and gathered himself up from the shoulders, inhaling violently.

The bottle skidded along the bar, spouting foam, and disappeared over the edge. Miles retrieved it and held it up, intact.

“Great trick,” Marilyn said.

DeVito examined his right hand, sorting out his failure, and looked up at Ransom. “Your turn, handsome.” He called for another beer. “I want it tonight, not tomorrow afternoon”—drumming his hands on the bar as the bartender reached into the cooler.

DeVito lifted his head back and held the bottle high as he swallowed, then slammed it down in front of Ransom. By this time he was surrounded by spectators, some explaining to others the nature of the challenge.

“Go ahead,” he demanded.

“I need a reason,” Ransom said. “Even if I could do it, why should I?”

“The thrill of victory. Because it's there. But mostly, because I say you can't do it.”

“You're probably right.”

DeVito seemed at a loss. “You think you could land a hit on me?”

“I don't think about it at all. I don't spar outside the dojo.”

“Try it.”

“Not interested.”

“How about if I start things off? Is that what it takes?”

Ransom turned away and took a sip of his tea. At the edge of his vision he saw Miles winding through the crowd behind DeVito, then he registered DeVito's move. He dodged quickly enough so that the blow glanced off his shoulder instead of his temple, and saw Miles bring something
down on DeVito's head. The impact sounded like a bat connecting with a ball. DeVito slumped to the floor as the bar gradually went quiet. Miles was radiant.

“I didn't want you to break your priestly vow of non-violence,” he said to Ransom, ax handle in hand, “so I had to drygulch the fucker. It's my prerogative as owner and proprietor.”

Ransom nodded—the brief surge of adrenaline beginning to subside. He knelt down and checked DeVito's scalp and topknot with immense distaste. No blood.

“Last of the Mohicans,” Miles said, and laughed.

Together they carried DeVito, now starting to moan, out into the street, depositing him on the sidewalk, followed closely by the two women he'd been sitting with. One of the women cradled DeVito's head in her lap while the other massaged his shoulders.

Inside, the music resumed. The Japanese were still stunned by this American display of violence.

The band started into “Stormy Monday,” one of Ransom's favorite songs, and did a creditable cover, but there was always a little trouble with the vocals. Kano's face was red and slick with sweat.

They call it stormy Monday, but Tuesday's just as bad
.

They call it stormy Monday, but Tuesday's just as bad
.

Wednesday's worse, and Thursday's oh so sad
.

Kano plucked his Gibson and winced as if he were tearing the notes out of his chest. He made it through
Friday and Saturday admirably the first time, then fumbled the repetition:

The eagle fries on Flyday, Sa'day I go out to pray
. Sunday morning, he was playing where he should have been praying.

If you were a tourist coming in from the train station en route from Tokyo, you would be prepared for the winged rooflines of ancient temples and the crabbed enigma of ideographic signs. You would have found Tokyo disappointingly modern, but this is Kyoto, the ancient capital, founded in the eighth century, spared the American bombing. From the taxi window, rolling along broad boulevards laid out a thousand years ago, you would see castles and palaces, temples and shrines. But if your hotel were in the southeastern section of the city, you might be brought up short by the prospect of a billboard almost two stories high: a desert landscape in garish oranges and yellows, cacti and cowskulls, presided over by a mounted, golden-maned cowboy with psychedelic eyes, under the legend:

HORMONE DERANGE
Western Goods and Sundries
Hats, Boots and Everything Between
Miles Ryder, Owner and Proprietor

Hormone Derange, sole distributors for Tony Lama boots on the Japanese archipelago, had first opened for business
under a more conventional, phonetically similar name. Miles Ryder explained to his friends that he had changed the name to conform with standard Japanese pronunciation. Ryder was the model for the cowboy on the huge billboard atop the storefront, and himself appeared to be based on photographs of Wild Bill Hickok. There was drama in the sweep of his blond hair around his shoulders and in the droop of his mustache on either side of his chin. The black Stetson was habitual. He was something of a legend in Kyoto; besides running two businesses he occasionally appeared on television talk shows and currently was the star of a commercial in which he bellied up to the bar of a saloon and called out for his sake of choice:
Even cowboys like it
. Either out of loyalty to American engineering or concern that a six-foot-two blond gaijin in cowboy togs was not conspicuous enough in Kyoto, Ryder drove a full-dress 1962 Harley-Davidson Electra Glide complete with buckskin saddle bags which he had imported at great expense.