Chapter 33

He woke up early, drank some coffee, took the dog out for a quick bathroom break, and went outside with a shovel. The ice was packed in, hard to break apart—but not impossible. The temperature had dropped to the low teens. Eric worked on the driveway first, vigorously chipping away. He ought to help out Mrs. Betz as well, which meant he was in for a full day’s hard labor. It wouldn’t do him any harm, however; he was probably going the slightest bit soft.

Katherine came out. “These are the times I’m most glad you’re here,” she said, with an assumed sweetness. “You ought to do something for Mrs. Betz, too, if you can.”

“Good idea,” he agreed, without trying to set her straight on just whose idea it actually was. He wondered if the blade of the shovel was going to hold up.

He returned to scraping and Katherine stepped back inside the house. After a while, he got into the rhythm of his work and thought about Kitani. The man obviously wanted to seduce Eric, he decided. Nothing sexual, of course. He simply wanted Eric on his ‘team,’ for whatever reason. Doing what? Stealing secrets, maybe, or tracking down the person who had supposedly stolen secrets from Moritomo. Or maybe he simply wanted Eric with him in general, adding to his already impressive power base.

But still, Eric liked the man. The seduction was working, had proven itself to have worked from the moment Eric mischaracterized Kitani to the Metro-Dade police—more or less lying for him.

A car drove up the street. Eric wondered why anyone was driving around before the roads were cleared. If driving was possible, he’d send his sister to the store for more salt. And a new shovel. The car parked nearby. Eric looked up. Three men got out. They spelled trouble. A lot of it had been coming to his door of late and here came some more. He leaned on the shovel and watched them approach. Three. Nasty. Sons-of-bitches. They reminded him of the men who had invaded his sister’s house nearly two weeks ago. Well, that figured. Somebody sooner or later had to come for revenge—or to finish the job that the first three had been sent to do. Sent by whom? The one he’d left alive told the cops it was a home invasion. Maybe.

If Eric had any sense at all, he would run into the house, get his 9mm A-75 and wave it in their faces—shoot them, if necessary. But no one had ever accused him of being overly rational. “Hey,” he yelled at the three men. “Looking for me?” He had taken his jacket off when starting to sweat from dealing with the ice. Now he was dressed conveniently for sparring, whereas these guys were encumbered by their jackets.

He continued to lean on the shovel. He liked this tool. He had learned early in his Army career what a nice weapon a ditch shovel makes. Surely a snow shovel would come in equally as handy now. It was the only weapon he had at the moment. Aside from himself. He whistled tunelessly.

The men stood in front of him—all three average-sized white guys with long-haired shingled kind of cuts. One had a gold cap slipped over a front tooth, apparently a stylish affectation wherever he had come from—like the Green Haven maximum security prison.

The man closest to Eric, the one with the fetching gold tooth, spoke at last. “You’re the guy, aren’t you?” he said. “You’re the one that killed my cousin Frank and our buddy Alex.” He slipped a 9mm Glock out of his pocket.

Eric didn’t wait to verify his own identity or the identification of the gun but swung the shovel back behind him as the pistol emerged, chopping the blade full force down onto the guy’s gun arm. The gun clattered onto the sidewalk. Nice that the safety was still on!

Eric moved forward. He could kill the man simply by using the shovel, but that wasn’t his intention. He could hear Hiro barking inside the house. He smiled. The dog wanted a little romp in the cold. Eric threatened the three with his snow removal tool, but not one of them made a returning gesture in his direction. One stepped back and Frank’s cousin stood clutching his arm, a look of mixed pain and bravado stamped across his face. This was no fun. Eric kicked the gun behind him into a pile of chipped ice and threw the shovel away, toward the yard.

Maybe his sister was right; he was an awful lot like the dog—vicious when aroused. He curled the tops of his fingers in partway, without making fists, in order to fight open-handed using a partial-knuckle strike. He assumed a low stance which turned him into the smallest target possible. Mohammed Ali had once said it all. “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” Eric was ready to sting like a bee.

One of the men came around from the side and Eric jumped and spun, kicking out into the guy’s midsection before landing. The man was thrown back two steps, trying to recover his balance, while Eric approached a second time, now placing the blade of his foot against the top of the guy’s thigh. His opponent was down.

This had happened quickly, but as Eric kicked a second time, he sensed one of the others behind him. He swirled and lashed out with his hand, smashing his forward knuckle into the second attacker’s nose, splintering the cartilage. A hand over his face, the man staggered off and slipped on the ice, falling flat on his rump.

The remaining bad guy, the one with the gold tooth, came forward in a low, martial arts posture, giving Eric a look of absolute confidence.

“Forget it, man,” Eric told him with a little laugh. “You don’t have the right stuff.” He took a similar horse stance and slapped his front leg with his hand, inviting his challenger to come forward toward him. He was beginning at last to enjoy himself.

The dog was going crazy with his barking and Eric hoped Katherine was taking a long bath or something and wouldn’t interfere. He spun with a roundhouse kick, but the gold cap tooth blocked the attack almost facilely with his arm. Eric stepped away and evaluated the man before feinting with his front leg then bringing his back knee up and around for a kick at the man’s upper chest. He achieved his object of throwing his opponent off balance, then jumped up with both legs curled into himself as the man tilted backward. Eric struck the vengeful cousin a second time in the chest with the force of his legs and, indeed, his entire body. Eric landed on the icy lawn and rolled.

He stood in time to see that the first man had recovered the gun and was going to be able to bring it around and shoot. At this point, Eric’s strategic plan went a little vague, and he simply lay back flat on the lawn, hoping that the man would walk closer, since Eric was now such a poor target from afar. At the same time, he heard the door open, and Hiroshi bounded out of the house. In a flash, the dog’s teeth were sunk into the gunman’s shooting arm. The man screamed.

“I’ve called the police,” Katherine shouted at the men. “You’d better get out of here.”

Hiro wouldn’t let his captive go, however, and the man was still screeching, trying to free himself from the dog’s fangs. “Stop,” Eric told the animal. Hell, he didn’t even know if the dog was trained, or what. “Hiro, halt. Friend.” The dog dropped the man’s arm. “Good dog.” Hiro came over to Eric and Eric patted him on the head. The beast had his uses.

All three men were scrambling to get up and away, but Eric directed them to “Sit. Stay.” He recovered the gun. He had never liked the Glock. He didn’t like the way it sighted. From a distance, he could hear the sirens wailing. He hoped Haliburt would come around. He still had high hopes that the policeman might become a brother-in-law. Or at least take Katherine out once or twice to give her the perhaps-unrealistic sense that some romance was still possible in life.

The patrol car appeared. A call for help was still somewhat of a rarity in this middle to upper-middle class town. An officer got out of the vehicle, stooping against it gun in hand, shouting to Eric to drop the gun. Eric dropped it. He was having trouble figuring out if he was being arrested or rescued. Hiro growled, but Eric quieted the dog down.

Katherine came to the curb and explained to the policemen who was who. The one who seemed to be the bad guy was really her brother—in this instance, the hapless victim. “You should call Lieutenant Haliburt, if he’s on duty,” Eric advised them loudly. “He knows this case.”

Could he ask the patrolmen if Haliburt was married? Right now, they had the three men on their stomachs, kissing the icy ground. This might be the moment for a short break from his morning shoveling.