The motion was so smooth and so fast that Mori really didn’t have time to react. The biker’s arm came up and he shot Mori in the head. I saw an eye blossom red and Mori collapsed. The rider tracked him down with the pistol and put two quick, accurate shots into Mori’s chest. From where we were, the shots made popping noises, but it must have been louder by the doors. People screamed and tripped over their luggage in clumsy attempts to get away.
The chauffeur cringed near Mori, certain he was next. But the biker simply dropped the gun to the pavement, revved his bike, and bolted away into traffic. In seconds, the angry whine of the motorcycle was fading.
Ueda reached Mori and knelt down. He looked up at me and shook his head. Micky and Art were right behind me.
“You get a make on the bike?” my brother asked Art.
“Nah,” his partner grunted. “Never really got a clear look at the tags.”
“He’s dead,” I told them. Blood oozed from Mori’s wounds and had begun to snake across the pavement. The white of his shirt was quickly soaking into a dark crimson. The suddenness of the shooting was disorienting and numbing. I didn’t care much for Mori, but nobody deserves to go that way. I felt the same way I always felt at the spectacle of violent death—shaky and humbled and guiltily glad to be alive.
“He was dead before he hit the ground,” Micky said. Sirens were approaching from the distance. He looked at Ueda. “Now what?”
Ueda spoke quickly to the driver, giving him instructions. Then he got on his cell phone and gave someone else more instructions. As he spoke, he ushered us back toward the car. He was quick, but not flustered.
“I prefer not to have you gentlemen involved with the police at this time,” Ueda explained. “We need to leave.”
Micky shrugged. “We can sort things out later. But, leaving a crime scene . . . ”
“We’ve been in this country, what? Two hours?” Art asked rhetorically.
“And already we’re in trouble with the authorities,” Micky added.
“Gotta be a record. Even for us,” Art finished.
I said nothing. Ueda got behind the wheel and slid the limo out into traffic while behind us flashing lights converged on Mori, faceup on the pavement, his once clever eyes robbed forever of all knowledge.
The three of us sat in the cool dim corner of the hotel bar, waiting for Ueda. The man behind the bar kept his eye on us. He moved quietly along the terraced rows of bottles, their labels providing subdued flashes of color in the artificial twilight. It was late afternoon and the pre-dinner crowd hadn’t come down. We, on the other hand, were getting an early jump on things. The bartender polished the counter and worked on his set-up for the evening, cutting lemon peels and arranging cocktail napkins. He didn’t say much to us, but when the beer got low, he was right there with some replacements. We were all conscious that we needed to keep our wits about us, but no one had the heart to discourage him. It’s always a pleasure to see a professional at work. Even if it wasn’t the first time that day.
“A hit like that,” Micky said, shaking his head. “Pretty smooth.”
“Someone knew what they were doing,” Art agreed.
“So we’re dealing with pros again?” I asked. “That’s good in some ways, right?”
“Sure,” my brother said. “Whoever capped Mori does this for a living . . . ”
“Which means Reyes will have a good idea of who it might be, but will probably have a hard time pinning it on them,” Art finished. He didn’t seem particularly upset. He saw the look on my face, though. “Don’t worry, Connor. There’s a beauty to being—whattaya wanna call it, Mick—unofficial operators?”
My brother sipped at his beer bottle, swallowed and nodded with a smile of wicked satisfaction. “Sure. Irregulars. With any luck, we get to operate under the legal radar.”
“Which means?” I asked.
“It means that we tear through this town until we find Yamashita and hopefully the girl and then boogie outta here before Reyes catches up with us.”
Art brightened up. “I like this plan. Simple. Direct. With the possibility of creating untold trouble.”
“It’s the Burke way,” I reminded him.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Art said. “We just gotta hope that Ueda can get us someone with some good inside info.”
Marangan was maybe in his mid-fifties with close-cropped hair and deep grooves running from the sides of his nose to the corners of his mouth. He didn’t look like a happy camper. The second floor office Ueda led us to was poorly lit and the walls were decorated with old posters for sporting events. The words in Tagalog were made even harder to read by the fact that the humidity was curling the posters right off the wall. An oscillating fan pushed at the air sporadically in useless fits. Marangan sat and looked at us balefully. We looked back. No one was impressed on either side.
“I believe that the
batikan
Marangan can help us.
Batikan
is much like our term
sensei
,” Ueda explained in an aside as he led us up the stairs. “It is the title used here for a master of
eskrima
.”
“It’s a Philippine martial art,” I told Micky before he could open his mouth.
“Here we go again,” Art mumbled.
Now we sat in the stuffy office and waited to learn why Ueda was so optimistic.
“The
batikan
served for a number of years on the Manila police force,” Ueda began. “He was later seconded to an intelligence unit dealing with the southern provinces. He has family on Mindanao, and the variety of his contacts can be extremely useful to us.”
Marangan sat there like a reptile, never blinking, barely even breathing. He didn’t seem particularly interested in talking.
“How come you’re off the force now?” Micky asked. Between Marangan and my brother, I suspected we had located two of the world’s worst conversationalists.
Marangan sat forward. “They wanted a clerk. I am a
mandirigma
.”
“A warrior,” Ueda translated, then continued. “There was some conflict, gentlemen between the
batikan
and his superiors . . . issues of means and ends, really.” He said it like we were all men of the world and could forgive a little excess zeal here and there.
Micky’s eyes narrowed as he weighed the Filipino. Marangan looked back. If they were dogs, the hair on their necks would have been bristling.
“Okay,” my brother finally said. He didn’t sound happy, just resigned.
Marangan pulled open a drawer and fished out something to write on. “The usual pay arrangements?” he asked Ueda. It was one of the few times I saw any spark of interest in his face. The Japanese nodded. Marangan sat forward. “Then we begin.”
Ueda briefed him on the events to date—the kidnapping in Mindanao, the disastrous ransom attempt, Yamashita’s kidnapping, and now Mori’s murder. After a while, Marangan stopped Ueda’s narration and pulled an old rotary dial phone across the desk. He made perhaps five phone calls, talking in a low clipped voice.
When he finished, Marangan looked at Ueda. “I wish you had come to me earlier. In matters of this type, it is important that the trail not grow cold.” Ueda said nothing, just sat there, and finally the Filipino shrugged. “We will see what we will see.” Then he looked at me.
“You are friends of the kidnapped?” Marangan’s voice was dry and didn’t contain much inflection.
I nodded in response. To describe Yamashita as my friend doesn’t begin to characterize our relationship, but I wasn’t interested in long explanations. “And you two . . . ” he continued, looking at Micky and Art.
“We’re cops,” Micky said. “Partners. From New York.” Marangan opened his mouth to ask another question, but Micky forestalled it. “He’s my brother,” he told Marangan. It was part explanation and part excuse.
The Filipino nodded. “Ah.”
“When Yamashita
Sensei
was kidnapped, they agreed to help me out,” I added.
The word
sensei
triggered a response in Marangan. He looked quickly at Ueda. “
Sensei
? Of what, Ueda?”
“Yamashita
Sensei
is a master of the sword and other arts,” he began. But Marangan jumped in. If he were a cobra, his hood would have swelled out in excitement.
“And you are his student,” he told me with a slight air of satisfaction. “Come to rescue your master.” He smiled then, and you saw that his teeth were crooked and stained and long like his face. “I honor you for the effort.” Marangan stood up. It was a smooth motion, like a spring uncoiling. “Perhaps you would be interested in my art as well.”
“We gotta waste time with this?” Micky hissed in my ear as we followed Marangan.
“Yeah,” I told him. “Shuddup.” I
knew
Marangan. I’ve spent most of my adult life with people like him. When he had described himself as a
mandirigma
—a warrior—it sounded a bit over the top. But people like him lose themselves in a world of their own making. It doesn’t matter whether the art deals with fists or feet or sticks or blades. The pursuit of the art takes hold of you if you do it long enough. It becomes in many ways a reality bigger than reality itself. Everything is judged in terms of it. Including people. Marangan would need to know how I fit in his world. It would tell him how far he could push me and how far I would push him back.
We were in a strange place where the rules were unknown to us, clues were few and far between, and the need for haste was almost paralyzing in its insistence. For me, it was going to be a comfort and a release to have to deal with something as elemental and familiar as fighting. Besides, I rationalized to myself, I needed to show Marangan that I was
not
going to be pushed.
I flexed my hands gently, stretching muscles in anticipation. Art looked at me with a worried expression.
Marangan led us out of the office and down the hall. Double doors were propped open to reveal a large, high-ceilinged place. There was a faded sign over the entrance that announced the Kapatiran Marangan Kali. I didn’t understand Tagalog, but I knew a training hall when I saw one.
These places are all different and all the same. Spaces empty of embellishment or ornamentation stripped down and filled with the smell of sweat and the lingering psychic charge of effort and adrenalin. A Japanese training hall may be matted or have a hardwood floor. There may be some weapon racks hugging a wall and a small Shinto shrine tucked into a corner. But those are the sorts of details only a novice focuses on. The real essence of these places is something more subtle.
Marangan’s training hall had a dingy floor and smudged gray walls. Wiry young men in black T-shirts and sneakers worked alone or together, some with rattan sticks, others using their hands and feet. The wooden floor thudded with their movements and the sticks filled the hall with clatter. If you listened, you could pick up the grunt of effort, the hiss of breath, the emotional give and take of attack and defense. It didn’t have the understated geometric precision of a Japanese
dojo
. But I knew this place.
We filed in along a wall, out of the fray. When Marangan entered, the students stopped and came to attention. Their master waved them back into activity.
“We train for both armed and unarmed fighting here,” Marangan explained. “Your karate is good, Ueda,” he told the attaché, “but an armed attacker is far more lethal.”
“The art is called
kali
?” I asked.
“It is a broad term,” the Filipino explained. “We combine the various forms of
arnis
and
eskrima
here.” He saw me looking at the different types of weapons arrayed along a wall. “Sticks and blades, Mr. Burke. Perhaps it is the same with your
sensei
?”
I had seen
eskrima
before.
Eskrimadors
usually used two rattan sticks about two feet in length to fight. Sometimes one of the sticks was replaced with a knife. I saw swords on the wall and gestured at them. “Do you train with long blades as well?”
Marangan gave his jagged-tooth smile. “Advanced students sometimes use them. Our islands have a variety of sword traditions.” He led us over to the wall and as he identified them, he touched the swords affectionately.
“The
barong
,” he ran a finger along a heavy, leaf-shaped sword about two feet long. “Quite common in Mindanao. The various Moro tribes use them.” He moved to a thin, wavy blade whose guard crossed the top of the handle at an angle. “The
kris
. Found all over Southeast Asia.” He stopped at the longest of the weapons. It must have been almost four feet long. “The
kampilan
,” he announced with satisfaction. It was nasty looking. The blade started out narrow and flared gradually to a jagged, angled point. The pommel was forked and the entire thing looked like something engineered to do frightful damage. “Sea Dayaks used them. Headhunters. These blades are widespread in the southern islands here.” He touched the handle. “The pommel is said to represent the jaws of a crocodile.” Marangan turned to us. “The Japanese are not the only people with martial arts.” There was a defiant gleam in his eye as if he looked forward to debating the point with Ueda. But no one said a word.
“Perhaps you would enjoy seeing our
eskrimadors
at work,” Marangan suggested. “or experiencing our arts firsthand?” I felt the familiar inward shift, half anticipation and half dread, and nodded in agreement. This was the whole point of him bringing us here. His little natural history exhibit of the swords of the Philippines was beside the point. This was when Marangan got to push me and see if I could push back.
He led me to a rack and showed me a range of
baston
, the sticks they used. There was a long one there—almost four feet in length. It was pretty close to the
jo
staff I use in training with Yamashita— a white oak shaft maybe an inch in diameter and about fifty-four inches long. Marangan told me that the one I picked out was called a
bangkaw
. It wasn’t an exact match to the
jo
, but it was close. I like to stay with what I know.
Marangan called out to his students. They flocked around him and he singled one out. Marangan draped a hand over the younger man’s shoulders and gave him some instructions. The student wore track pants and a black T-shirt with a red insignia on the chest. They told me later it was a fighting cock, a pretty popular martial image in the Philippines.