Well. You did the best you could, and that was that; nothing else mattered.
They were still an hour or more away from SeaTac. He’d get some rest. It might be a while before he had another chance. He took a series of slow, deep breaths.
In three minutes. he was asleep.
35
Toni went to the small gym to work off the tension and anger she felt. There was a guy in steel-rimmed glasses, a T-shirt, and bike shorts doing hatha yoga in the corner, otherwise the place was empty. She hurried through her own stretching routine, bowed in, and began practicing djurus, working the triangle, the tiga. Half an hour later, when she was done, she started footwork exercises on the square, langkas on the sliwa.
The moves were there, automatic after so many years, but her mind was elsewhere.
Alex was upset with her, that was obvious. Well, what had she expected? That he would smile and pat her on the head and offer his congratulations? She tried to see it from his viewpoint, but she knew she couldn’t have it both ways, not this time. This was the best thing. Working for him had become a sore point even before they had gone to London; he wasn’t treating her like he did the other members of the Net Force team, he was shielding her, and she didn’t want that, not in the work. So, okay, there was going to be an uncomfortable period while he adjusted to her new job. She didn’t like it, but that was how it seemed to be working out.
In the long run, she kept telling herself, it would be better for them. They’d be able to relate to each other more like equals, the personal relationship wouldn’t be bogged down in the professional one.
Yeah, but in the long run, we’re all dead, aren’t we? So what happens after a couple months of nobody having a good time if you or Alex get hit by a bus crossing the street? How is that going to fit in with your “long run” plan, hmm?
Toni stopped moving and stared into the mirror at the end of the room. Crap. I really don’t need this.
But — what help was there for it? What else could she do? She had to make a living!
She sighed, went back to her footwork.
A few minutes later, she was aware that the yoga guy had finished his routine and left, but that he’d been replaced by a trio of other men. Two of them were in karate uniforms, the third wore dark blue FBI sweats. One of the karate guys wore a brown cloth belt tied around his waist to keep his gi shut, the other a black belt. They were watching her. Watching and smiling. Then the guy in sweats leaned over and said something to the other two.
Pentjak silat wasn’t a flashy art; a lot of what went on in it didn’t look particularly impressive to the uninitiated. The last time a martial arts player from another style stood here and watched her practice, he had made the mistake of making some ignorant remarks out loud. She had been having a bad day when that happened — not nearly as bad as this one — and she had demonstrated to the loudmouth that what she was doing was in many ways superior to what he knew about fighting. It had been a painful lesson for the man.
The lesson she had learned was pretty painful, too.
She didn’t want to think about what had happened with — and to — that man later, but she couldn’t avoid it. Rusty had become her student, then her lover, however briefly, and as a direct result, he was dead.
Given the day so far, the opportunity to offer a correction to any — or all — of these three if they spouted off would feel pretty good. It wasn’t part of a self-defense mind-set to entertain such thoughts, but silat wasn’t primarily a self-defense art, it was a fighting art, and there was a big difference in your level of aggressiveness.
Toni stopped what she was doing and walked toward the trio.
“Afternoon,” she said. “Can I help you with something?”
The guy in sweats was the oldest of the three men; he had short and curly gray hair. He smiled and gave her a small bow. “No, ma’am,” he said. “We were just admiring your art, guru. Silat Tjimande?”
That surprised her. He got the subset wrong, but he knew it was silat and he had enough appreciation and understanding to call her “guru,” as well. Damn.
“It’s Serak,” she said, the “k” silent. “But it’s Western Javanese, like Tjimande. I’m surprised you recognized it.”
“I used to work out with an old Dutch kuntao teacher in San Diego,” he said. “He had done a little training in silat as a boy. My JKD teacher also had some training in Harimau, tiger-style.”
Toni nodded. JKD — jeet kun do, the way of the intercepting fist — was the style created by the late Bruce Lee. It was a hybrid system, and while they weren’t big on forms, many of the moves were based on wing chun, which to some people looked at least superficially like silat. At least the WC players knew in theory what the centerline was, even if they didn’t cover it adequately according to Serak standards…
If Curly here knew enough to recognize and respect what she was doing, he probably wouldn’t be interested in trying to deck her to impress his friends. Silat fighters didn’t go in much for point-sparring, and for that matter, neither did JKD players.
Well. Too bad. Kicking somebody’s butt would feel pretty good about now.
And she was going to have to do something or she would explode.
But — what could she do?
It was dark by the time Michaels got to the theater, and there really wasn’t much left to look at by then. Truth was, there really wasn’t any good reason for him to be here, except to see things — such as they were — for himself. Anybody involved with this who was still alive was undoubtedly long gone.
The bodies had been removed, the screenwriters released after giving their statements, and the local police still puzzled as to what had happened. The mainline FBI op who showed up to meet Michaels was a junior man, not the special-agent-in-charge, but he was willing to say what he thought. His name was Dixon.
Michaels and Agent Dixon ducked under the yellow crime-scene tape covering the doors and went into the building.
“Here’s what we know,” Dixon said. “The dead men, all thirteen of them, were shot in the theater proper. We have identification on six so far”—he looked at his palm computer—“Wu, Morrison, a screenwriter named C. B. Shane, and three men with criminal records: two Vietnamese-Americans, Jimmy Nguyen and Phuc Khiev, and a man named Maxim Schell. Nguyen, Khiev, Schell, and Morrison were armed with handguns. Nguyen’s was in his hand, Khiev’s on the floor under his body, Schell’s still tucked into his belt. None of them got a shot off, though some of the other dead men did fire their weapons.
“Morrison’s gun, a little.22, was locked in his right hand in a death grip, and shot empty. Nobody got hit with a.22 that we can tell. We haven’t come up with IDs on the other dead men yet, but all of them had guns, too.”
Michaels said, “So what do you think happened here?”
“No way to tell for sure. The dead guys were mostly shot in the back or back of the head, so what it looks like is some kind of ambush. You have to figure that if you have a dozen armed men, most of whom didn’t do any shooting before they got taken down, there were a lot of other guys in here blasting away, too. Forensics hasn’t gotten the blood all sorted out, but a quick prelim says there were a few who got hit hard enough to bleed, but who didn’t stick around.”