“I am the police,” I said. Which was technically true. They hadn’t fired me yet.
“Oh, God,” she said. She shook her head more and more, desperation in the gesture. “I don’t want to be . . . I can’t be seen talking to you. Go
I lifted my eyebrows. “Ma’am, please. If you’re in trouble . . .”
I wasn’t sure she’d even heard me. I’d seen women like her often enough to know the look. She was terrified of something, probably a husband or boyfriend or a string of husbands and boyfriends, and maybe a father before that. She was living scared, and she’d been doing it for a long time. Fear had ground away at her, and the only way she’d been able to survive was by capitulating.
Maria was damaged goods. She shook her head, sobbing, and just started pushing at the door. I was about to pull my foot out and go away. You can’t force someone to accept your help.
“Is there some kind of problem here?” asked a booze-roughened voice.
I turned to face a wooly mammoth of a man. He was well over six feet tall and probably weighed three of me, though more of it was mass than muscle. He wore a white undershirt that showed off his belly, and a button- down shirt with the name RAY embroidered on one breast.
He looked at me and at the apartment door and scowled. “Mary, you got some kind of problem?”
Maria had gone still, like a rabbit that suspects a predator is nearby. “No, Ray,” she whispered. “It’s nothing.”
“Sure as hell don’t sound like nothing,” Ray said. He folded his arms. “I’m trying to get the city out here to fix the lights on the street and the fuse box, and you’re making enough noise to fuck up my conversation all the way down the hall.”
“I’m sorry, Ray,” Maria whispered.
Something flickered behind Ray’s eyes, an ugly little light. “Jesus, I give you all that extra time to pay off on the rent, and you treat me like this?”
Maria sounded as though someone were strangling her. “It was an accident. It won’t happen again.”
“We’ll talk,” he said.
Maria flinched as if the words had smeared her with grime.
My hand clenched into a fist.
Well, dammit.
I’d seen Ray’s type before, too—bullies who never managed to outgrow the playground; people who liked having power over others and who controlled them through fear. He was big, and he thought that made him more powerful than everyone else. The worm probably had a record, probably had done some time, probably for something fairly gutless. For guys like Ray, sometimes prison only convinces them what dangerous badasses they are, serving as a confirmation and validation of their status as predators.
Ray looked from Maria to me, with that same ugly light in his eyes.
“You’re the super?” I asked.
He grunted in Martian.
It’s an expressive language, Martian.
“What’s it to you?” he asked.
“I’m the curious sort,” I said.
“Fuck off and die,” Ray said, in English, this time. “Get out.” He looked past me to Maria. “Close that goddamn door.”
“I—I’ve been trying,” Maria said. My foot and my heavy black work boot were both still between the door and its frame.
Flat rage hit Ray’s eyes, and it was aimed at Maria. That made up my mind for me. Ray was obviously an abuser and one who took out his frustrations wherever he damn well pleased instead of upon their source. He was going to be unhappy with me, and when he realized he couldn’t take it out on me, Maria would be the recipient of his rage. It more or less obliged me to protect her.
And I wasn’t going to enjoy doing it even one little bit, either. Honest.
“Get your foot out of the door before I tear it off,” Ray growled.
“Suppose I don’t,” I said.
“Last chance,” Ray said, his eyes narrowing to slits. He was breathing faster, now, and I could see sweat beading on his brow. “Get out of here. Now.”
“Or what?” I asked, mildly. “You gonna hit me, Ray?”
Self-control was not one of Ray’s strong suits. He spat out the word “Bitch,” spraying spittle with it as he did. He moved toward me, all three-hundred-and-change pounds of him, his hands balled into fists the size of cantaloupes.
There was something Ray didn’t know about me: I know martial arts.
I’m not a truly advanced student, but I’ve practiced every day since I was seventeen. I started with Aikido, then Wing Chun, then Jujitsu. I’ve studied Kali, Savate, Krav Maga, Tae Kwan Do, Judo, boxing, and Shaolin Kung Fu. It sounds impressive laid out like that, but it really isn’t. Once you get two or three arts down, the next dozen or so come pretty quick. Since they are all addressing the same problem, and because human bodies are human bodies, regardless of which continent you’re on, they share characteristic motions and timing.
Ray swept a fist at me in a looping punch a kiddie-league fighter could have avoided, so I took my foot out of Maria’s door and ducked it. He kept coming forward in a fleshy avalanche, while I went under his arm and took a pair of steps to one side on a diagonal angle. He tried to grab me as I slipped loose, but he wound up losing his balance badly in doing it. I gave him a helpful push with the first two knuckles of my left fist, right in the kidney.
Ray smashed into the drywall and left dents. I thought about how long it had taken him to build up speed, and I took several steps back. He turned, screaming a vicious oath, and came at me, gathering sluggish momentum like an overloaded tractor trailer. I had to back up another pair of steps to give him enough space to move into a wobbling run.
He didn’t bother with a punch this time. He simply grabbed at me with his huge arms. I timed it carefully, and dropped to the floor at the last instant, sweeping my leg out in an almost-gentle kick that did nothing except prevent his right foot from proceeding forward and to the floor in proper rhythm with his left.
The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Ray fell pretty hard.
He staggered up to his hands and knees and swiped a paw at me in another grab.
Jesus Christ. Basic self-defense instructors would kill to have a video of this. He was coming at me with every stupid-aggressive move he possibly could, as if working his way through a list.
There were a lot of things I could have done with the gift he’d made me of his hand, but in real conflict, I don’t get fancy. I go with simple, fast, and reliable. I let him grab my wrist, then broke his grip, wrapped him into a wrist lock, and applied pressure.
That kind of hold has very little to do with muscle or mass. That one is all about exploiting the machinery of the human body. It wouldn’t have mattered if Ray was in shape. He could have looked like Schwarzenegger as Conan, and he would have been just as helpless. Human joints are all built to more or less the same specifications, out of similar materials, no matter how much muscle or lard is on top of them. They’re vulnerable, if you know how to use them against your opponent.
I did.
Three hundred plus pounds of body odor, stupid and mean, slammed down onto the worn, dirty carpeting in the hallway, as if dropped from a crane.
While he lay there, stunned, I twisted his wrist straight up and behind him, keeping his arm locked straight with my other hand. From there, I could literally take his arm out of his shoulder socket with about as much effort as it would take to push a grocery cart. And I could make him hurt—a lot, if need be—in order to discourage him from trying any more stupid moves.
Being Ray, he tried stupid again, screaming and thrashing against the lock. I sighed and kept control, and he and his face relived his crushing impact with the carpet. We repeated that several times, until the lesson began to drill its way through to Ray—he wasn’t going anywhere. It would hurt if he tried.
“So I’ve been talking to people in several buildings,” I said in a calm, conversational tone. Ray was puffing like an engine. “I was wondering if you could tell me if you saw anything odd or unusual last night? Probably between two and three in the morning?”
