He unzipped his jacket and took a respectful step backward before shrugging it off. If he’d stayed just a little closer I would have moved on him as soon as it was down around his elbows, and he knew it.
He looked at the doorstop, my hand bloody around it. “We’re going to do this armed?” he asked, his tone dead-man flat. “Okay.”
He reached into a back pocket and pulled out a folded knife. He flicked a thumb stud on the handle and the blade snapped out and into position. From the instant, semiauto opening, I knew it was a Kershaw model, essentially a quality, street-legal switchblade. The cutting edge was black, coated with titanium nitride, about nine centimeters. Shit.
In my unpleasant experience, unarmed against a knife, you’ve basically got four options. Your best bet is to run like hell, if you can. Next best is to do something immediately that prevents the attack from getting started. Third is to create distance so you can deploy a longer-range weapon. Fourth is to go beserk and hope not to get fatally cut going through and over your attacker.
I don’t care how much training you’ve had, these are your only realistic options, and none of them is particularly good except maybe the first. Unarmed techniques against the knife are a fantasy. The only people who teach them have never faced a determined attacker with a live blade.
My macho years are at least two decades behind me, and I would have been thrilled to turn and run if I could have. But in the enclosed space of the dojo, with a younger, and probably faster, enemy standing between me and the exit, running wasn’t really an option, and I realized that the ordinarily depressing odds of emerging unhurt against a knife looked downright desolate.
I glanced over at the bag. It was about ten meters away, and my chances of getting to it and accessing the gun before Murakami put that blade in me were not good.
He smiled, the bridge a predatory rictus. “Throw away yours, and I’ll throw away mine,” he said.
He really was deranged. I had no interest in fighting him, only in killing him now or running away to wait for a more opportune moment. But maybe I could play this out.
“You going to tell me what this is about?” I asked.
“Throw away yours, and I’ll throw away mine,” he said again.
So much for that. I knew there was a set of weights in back. I might be able to reach them before he got to me. If there were loose plates, I could use them like missiles, wear him down, create an opening that would give me time to deploy the gun. Not a happy prospect against a guy with the reflexes to fight dogs, but I was running out of ideas.
“You first,” I said.
“All right, armed,” he said, and started coming toward me. But slowly, taking his time.
I tensed to go for the weights.
A commanding series of knocks ran out from the front door, and I heard the words “Keisatsu da!” Police! bellowed through a bullhorn.
Murakami’s head swiveled in that direction, but his eyes didn’t leave me. I saw from the reflex that the knocking had startled him, that he wasn’t expecting anyone.
It came again, a fist banging on metal. Then “Keisatsu da! Akero!” Police! Open up!
Tatsu, I thought.
We looked at each other for a long second, but I already knew what he was going to do. He might have been crazy, but he was a survivor. A survivor reassesses odds continually and doesn’t disrespect them.
He gestured at me with the knife. “Another time,” he said. Then he bolted for the back.
I dashed to the gym bag. But by the time I reached it, he’d already made it inside the locker room and had slammed the door behind him. Following him in alone would be dangerous. Better to have Tatsu as backup.
I sprinted to the entranceway. The door was secured with horizontal, spring-loaded bars, and it took me a few seconds to figure out how to work the mechanism. There was a gear in the center that wouldn’t give. There, that latch-press that first. I pressed and turned, and the bars pulled in.
I shouldered the door open. Tatsu and another man were on the other side of it, both with their guns drawn. “Inside,” I said, gesturing with my head. “There’s a back door he might use. He’s got a knife.”
“I’ve already sent a man around back,” Tatsu said. He nodded to his partner and the two of them moved inside. I followed them in.
They noted the two men on the floor but could see that they weren’t going anywhere. We made our way to the back of the dojo. I saw Tatsu’s man move toward the bathroom. “Not there,” I said. “There. The locker room. There’s a back door inside, but he might still be in there.”
They took up positions on either side of the door, crouching to reduce their profile. Each held his gun close in and at waist level in the so-called third eye position, which demonstrated some tactical acumen. Tatsu nodded, and his man, who was on the knob side of the door, reached out and pushed the door inward while Tatsu sighted down the funnel. As the door swung in, Tatsu tracked it with his eyes and his weapon.
Another nod and they went in, Tatsu in the lead. The room was empty. The exterior door was closed, but its bolt was pulled back and the lock I had seen previously was gone.
“There,” I said. “He went through there.” I thought of Tatsu’s other man, the one who had gone around back. He and Murakami would have been on a collision course.
They took up their positions again and went through. I followed them. Behind the building was a tiny courtyard, choked with refuse containers, empty boxes, and abandoned construction materials. A rusting HVAC unit lay disconnected and inert to one side. Opposite, the carcass of a refrigerator leaned sideways against a corrugated wall, its door gone, two of its interior shelves hanging out like innards from a gutted animal.
The courtyard fed into an alley. In the alley we found Tatsu’s man.
He was on his back, his eyes open, one hand still clutching the gun that had been useless to him. Murakami had opened him up and left him. The ground around him was soaked in blood.
“Chikusho,” I heard Tatsu breathe. Fuck. He knelt to confirm that the man was dead, then pulled out his cell phone and spoke into it while his remaining man scanned the alley.
I noted the absence of defensive wounds on the corpse-no slash marks on the hands or wrists. He hadn’t even gotten his arms up to protect himself, let alone managed to fire his weapon. The poor bastard. The gun might have made him feel overconfident. A common error. In some conditions, and a narrow alley can be one of them, a blade will beat a bullet.
Tatsu stood up and looked at me. His tone was calm but I could see quiet rage in his eyes.
“Murakami?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Those men inside, they’re his?”
I nodded again.
“There is a large Mercedes parked in front of the building. I am guessing he arrived in it, and was planning to leave in it. Now he will be forced to rely on taxis or public transportation. He could not have done that”-he gestured to the downed man-“without getting a substantial amount of blood on him. We will have men here shortly to search the area. We may be able to track him.”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
His nostrils flared. “One of the two men I saw inside looked well enough to interrogate,” he said. “That will also be useful.”
“Was there anyone out front when you arrived?” I asked. “Murakami cleared the place out just before you got here.”
“There were several men outside,” he said. “They scattered when they saw us. They won’t be of immediate use.”
“I’m sorry about your man,” I told him, not knowing what else to say.
He nodded slowly, and for a moment his features seemed to sag. “His name was Fujimori. He was a good man, capable and idealistic. Later today I will have to tell these things to his widow.”