I eased him down to the ground and looked around. All quiet. I pulled off his cap and coat and slipped them on. I hunted around on the ground for the shades-there they were. I pulled them on, too.
I dragged the body as deeply as I could into the shadows, then picked up his still-lit cigarette and stuck it in my mouth. I slammed the baton onto the pavement to close it, slipped it in one of the coat pockets, and palmed the pepper spray.
Unlike the back of the building, the front offered no perpendicular streets and thus fewer vantage points. There was really only one good spot there, I knew: the alley alongside the building directly across the street.
I walked around to the front of the building, the shades and hat on, the cigarette burning. I kept my head down and my eyes forward, the same posture these guys would have been using to avoid witnesses and cameras.
I saw him across the street as soon as I rounded the corner. He was dressed like his recently deceased partner. I made my way directly to his position, moving fast, confidently. The shades we were wearing were great for light disguise, but were hell on night vision. He thought I was his partner. He stepped out of the shadows as though to greet me, perhaps unsure of why I had abandoned my post.
When I was three meters away I saw him purse his lips in confusion. At two meters his jaw started to drop open as he realized something was definitely wrong. At one meter all his questions were answered with a mouthful of pepper spray.
His hands flew to his face and he staggered backward. I spat out the cigarette, dropped the canister into a jacket pocket, and withdrew the baton. I snapped it open, stepped behind him, and whipped it across his windpipe the way I had done to his buddy, this time with a stronger cross grip that crushed the carotids along with the larynx. His fingers clawed at the metal and his feet scrabbled for purchase for a few seconds as I dragged him back into the alley, but by the time we had reached the shadows he was dead. I patted him down and found another knife and another cell phone. I left the knife. The cell phone I took.
I collapsed and pocketed the baton and made my way to the end of the street, where I found a pay phone. I didn’t know if Naomi had caller ID and didn’t want to take a chance on trying her from one of the cell phones I had just acquired.
I called her. She picked up on the third ring, her voice a little uncertain. “Hello?”
“Hey, it’s me.”
A pause. “Where are you?”
“I’m not going to be able to make it tonight. I’m sorry.”
Another pause. “That’s okay. It’s fine.” She sounded relieved.
“I just wanted to let you know. I’ll be in touch soon, okay?”
“Okay.”
I hung up and returned to the back of her building. I eased into the shadows next to the body I had left there.
One of the cell phones I was carrying started to vibrate. I pulled it out and opened it.
“Hai,” I said.
I heard Murakami’s signature growl and felt adrenaline dump into my system. “He’s not coming tonight,” he said. “I’ll be down in a minute. Call Yagi-san and be ready to move.”
I guessed Yagi was one of the guys I’d taken out. “Hai,” I said.
He clicked off.
I dropped the cell phone back in the coat pocket. I took out the baton and kept it retracted in my right hand. I held the pepper spray in my left. My heart was thudding steadily in my chest. I took in a deep breath through my nose, held it, and let it out.
The back entrance was the less obvious, less trafficked choice. Also, it lacked a security camera. I knew he’d come out there, just like I had.
I stayed at the edge of the diffused light from a nearby streetlamp, where Murakami would see me but where my appearance would be obscured by shadows. I needed him to come as close as possible, to maximize the element of surprise. Surprise might be the only advantage I would have over him.
Two minutes later he emerged from the rear door. I hung back just inside the shadows, the shades on, the hat pulled low.
There was a dog with him, straining on a leash. It took me a second to recognize it without the muzzle. The white pit bull, the one that had been in the car after my fight with Adonis.
Oh fuck.
I almost turned and ran for it. But a dog’s most atavistic instincts are triggered by flight, and there was too great a chance that the thing would have caught me and brought me down from behind. I’d have to play this out.
At least Murakami’s attention was partly engaged by the animal. He saw me and lifted his head in curt acknowledgment, then looked down at the dog, which had begun to growl.
Nice doggy, I thought. Nice fucking doggy.
They came closer. Murakami looked up at me again, then back to the dog. The damn thing was really growling now, staccato killing sounds that rumbled up from deep in its chest.
Murakami didn’t seem unduly concerned. I guessed that a dog that took gunpowder and steroids with its Alpo and jalapeño pepper suppositories for dessert might growl at the fucking wind, and that Murakami would be used to the behavior, might even welcome it.
They came closer. The dog was starting to get out of control, snarling and straining at the leash. Murakami looked down at it. I heard him say, “Doushitanda?” What the hell is with you?
Then his head started to come up. He wasn’t as close as I wanted, but I knew his next glance was going to put things together. I wasn’t going to get a better opportunity.
I leaped out at them and closed the distance in two long strides. Murakami reacted instantly, releasing the leash and getting his hands up to protect his upper body and head.
It was a well-trained reaction and I’d been expecting it. Ignoring the dog, which I ranked as the lesser threat, I dropped to a crouch, cocked my right arm back, and whipped it forward like a tennis backhand. The baton started telescoping out. By the time it reached Murakami’s lead ankle, it had achieved its proper twenty-six inches. The impact of that steel to his ankle was one of the best feelings I’d ever known. If I’d missed, I would have been dead a few seconds later.
But I didn’t miss. I felt bone shatter under the steel and heard Murakami howl. An instant later all I could see was white dog, coming at me like a cruise missile.
I managed to get my left arm up in front of my throat. The dog shot forward and clamped onto it just above the wrist. There was an explosion of pain. The impact knocked me backward.
I knew if I fell to my back with that creature on top of me there wouldn’t even be body parts for the clean-up crew afterward. Partly by instinct, partly by judo training, I let our paired momentum somersault us backward and rolled into a squat on the other end of it. The dog still had me just above the wrist, snarling and shaking its head, holding on in a dead game grip the way it had been trained. I couldn’t feel anything in my arm anymore.
I tried to bring the baton up and crack the thing over the head, but I couldn’t. The dog’s claws scraped against the pavement, seeking purchase, leverage from which it could force me over onto my back.
I dropped the baton and reached around with my good hand, scrabbling for its testicles. The beast dodged left, then right, knowing what I was going for. I found it anyway. I grabbed that canine package and yanked downward as hard as I’ve ever yanked anything in my life. The jaws loosened and I jerked my arm free.
I lurched to my feet. The dog writhed for a moment, then got its legs under it. It snarled and looked up at me with bloodshot eyes.
I glanced at my left hand. It was clamped around the pepper spray canister with rigor mortis determination. The tendons must have locked up from the pressure of the animal’s jaws.