on to him, but rolls over so that Boone’s on top, his back against Boyd’s chest.
Boone feels Boyd’s thick right forearm slide under his chin and tighten on his throat, then Boyd’s left hand press against the back of his head. Boyd arches his back, stretching Boone out and tightening the grip like a noose.
“Tap out! Tap out!” Dan yells.
Boone twists to loosen the grip but it’s in too tight. Boyd’s forearm is locked onto his throat. Boone can see the thick muscles knotted and, just above the wrist, a small tattoo.
The number “5.”
Boyd hisses, “Tap, Daniels.”
Fuck that, Boone thinks.
Then he’s out.
40
He’s on the mat when he comes to.
Dan looks down at him with concern.
“What happened?” Boone asks.
“Rear-naked choke,” Dan says.
Sounds ugly, Boone thinks, especially the “rear” and “naked” parts.
“Why didn’t you tap out?” asks Dan.
After a little bit of thought, Boone remembers what “tap out” means and what happened to put him in the position to do it. Or not, as the case may be. Dan and another student help him to his feet. His legs feel shaky. He looks across the ring and sees Boyd looking at him. Boone takes some small satisfaction that Boyd has an ice pack pressed against his jaw.
“Why didn’t you tap?” Boyd asks.
It seems to be the question of the day.
“Didn’t feel like it.”
Boyd laughs. “You’re no bitch, Daniels. Only a real freak would rather
out than
out.”
“Real freak” apparently being high praise.
“Thanks.”
Boone walks toward the door on legs that are still objecting to being given so much responsibility. Then he stops, turns around, and says, “There is something you can teach me.”
“Shoot.”
The Superman Punch.
41
You have to have your legs under you to do it, which Boone doesn’t, but Boyd demonstrates on a heavy hanging bag.
It’s basically simple, but it’s harder to do than it looks. You jump off one foot, toward your opponent, then while in midair, execute a downward chopping punch with the opposite hand. The impact is incredible because of the momentum of the whole body being thrown into the punch.
Boyd does it and the heavy bag hops on its chain, comes back down, and shakes.
“It’s not a move you want to try a lot,” Boyd explains after he does it, “because both feet are off the ground and that leaves you vulnerable to any kind of counter. If you miss with it, you’re truly fucked. But if you connect —”
“So you teach this,” Boone says.
“Sure.”
“Did you teach it to Corey Blasingame?”
“Maybe,” Boyd says. “I don’t know.”
Yeah, maybe, Boone thinks. He takes two steps toward the bag, then launches himself. Twisting his hip in midair, he throws everything into the punch and can feel the energy surge all the way up his arm as his fist makes contact.
A wild adrenaline surge.
Superman.
The heavy bag sags in the middle and pops back.
Mike Boyd seems impressed. “You can come train here anytime,” he says, then adds, “We need men like you.”
Boone walks out of the dojo. After a day of dipping his spade in the sad, barren soil of Corey Blasingame’s life, his question isn’t how the kid could have beaten someone to death, but how it didn’t happen sooner.
He gets into the Deuce and heads for the Spy Store.
42
The small shop is a creepy little place in a strip mall in Mira Mesa, its customer base being a few actual PIs, a lot of wannabes, hard-core paranoids, and not a few of the grassy-knoll, wrap-your-head-in-tinfoil-the-government- is-attacking-you-with-gamma-rays set who won’t buy off the Internet because the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security, and Barbara Bush are all tracking their downloads. The store usually is filled with a lot of browsers who just like electronic gadgets and cool spy shit.
And there’s a lot of cool spy shit in there—bugs, listening devices, cameras that look like anything other than cameras, computer cookie devices, computer anticookie devices, computer antianticookie devices . . .
Boone finds his first item: a LiveWire Fast Track Ultrathin Real-Time GPS tracking device. It’s a black box about 21/2 inches square, with a magnet attachment. He picks up a ten-day battery to go with it, then looks for the next item on his mental list.
The Super Ear BEE 100 Parabolic is a nasty and effective piece of intrusive work, a cone-shaped listening device capable of picking up a conversation from a good city block away. Boone picks out a compatible digital recorder with the appropriate cord and plug-in, and decides that he has what he needs for the job. He already has the camera—it came with the basic Private Investigator Starter Kit along with the cynicism, a manual of one-liners, and a saxophone sound track.
He walks up to the counter and says to the clerk, “You talk to me in Vulcan, I’m puking on your floor.”
“Hey, Boone.”
“Hey, Nick,” Boone says. When Nick isn’t working, he’s playing Dungeons and Dragons. It’s just the way it is. Boone hands Nick two credit cards, one his business, the other personal, and asks Nick to run the tracker and the listening device separately. He’ll toss a little time onto his hourly billing to cover the cost of the Super Bee and hopefully Dan will never have to find out about it.
It’s a little sleazy, but it’s really for Dan’s protection. He hasn’t asked Boone for audio evidence of his wife’s alleged infidelity, but Boone’s going to get it anyway, even though it creeps him out.
What usually happens is that the wronged party confronts the cheater (“I had you followed by a private investigator”) and the guilty spouse just gives it up. But every once in a while the philandering partner goes the
