Smoke

start trying to tell him he hadn’t done a thorough job with the leads they had? “We’ve been following up.”

“Yeah,” said Lydia. “I know you have. We’ve got some trainees going over them too. So far we don’t have anything there, either. We’re moving forward with The New Day.”

“Sounds like vapor to me, Ms. Strong,” he said. It had taken her less than twenty-four hours to go off in a direction he’d never even considered and come up with a more substantial lead than he’d approached in two weeks. It pissed him off a little.

“Call me Lydia,” she said. “And I think you’re wrong. If you have something better to go on, please share it.”

He smiled at her though she couldn’t see him. What had Kepler said? Pit bulls. They were like pit bulls.

“Okay,” he said with a sigh. “I’ll see what I can find out about The New Day. Maybe they have some complaints against them, something in the system.” It’s not about me, he reminded himself. It’s about Lily. That’s why I hooked Lydia Strong in the first place.

“I was hoping you’d say that, Detective. Call me back?”

“As soon as I get back to the station.”

He hung up and contorted himself into the Caprice.

“Who was that?” Jesamyn wanted to know.

“None of your business,” he said. His bad mood had turned foul.

“Girlfriend?” she teased, punching him on the arm.

“Let’s talk about your love life,” he said, starting the car.

“Let’s not,” she said. He nodded and raised his eyebrows at her.

She frowned at him. “Man,” she said when he stared blankly ahead and pulled out into traffic too quickly. “Who dropped your ice-cream cone on the sidewalk?”

She walked through the elevator doors and stepped onto the hardwood floor. Before entering the giant loft space she bowed. The hours Jesamyn had to herself were precious and few. And she used them well at her kung fu temple. This was the place she cleansed herself with sweat and hard work. She’d come to the martial arts while attending John Jay College of Criminal Justice, to learn how to defend herself and to develop skills that would help her compensate for her size when she joined the New York City police department, really the only thing she had ever wanted to do with her life. What she’d learned there had taught her valuable lessons about herself, what she was capable of, what she could endure. When she first arrived, young, a little out of shape, lacking confidence, she found a group of people, her Shifu and his black-belt students, who taught her, then gently pushed and cajoled her with respect and faith, into doing things she never would have thought herself able. Her Shifu had a way of believing she could do the things she didn’t believe she could do, and then demanding them out of her with a hard, knowing stare. All her life she’d been told she wasn’t athletic, she wasn’t physical, by a mother who wasn’t those things herself. Her controlling and critical father had considered her a failure for choosing to go into law enforcement, but his disdain for her and for women in general had communicated itself to her in a thousand different ways all her life. She had been in the endgame of a relationship characterized by terrible infidelity and emotional abuse. She came to the temple on Twenty-Seventh Street feeling bad about herself in ways she didn’t even realize. But forced to look at herself in the long wall of floor-to-ceiling windows for two hours, three days a week, she met a whole new woman, one who was defined by her accomplishments and through her actions, not through the negative messages of others who were acting out of their own misery. At the temple she found her strength and speed, she found her center, she found her power.

“Detective Breslow, you look tense,” her Shifu said from his office behind glass walls. He wasn’t even looking at her.

“It’s been a long day, Shifu,” she said with a bow. “Difficult.”

“Leave it at the door.”

“Yes, Shifu.” Passing him and going into the women’s locker room to change. Her Shifu was a badass, the indisputable king of the world he had created. All the black-belt students respected and revered him, the boys wanted to be him. Jesamyn was just profoundly grateful for the things he’d taught her about kung fu and about herself, for his endless patience and the way he’d helped her to hone her techniques. It was the way a father should be: patient, knowing, and understanding. Pushing without insulting, correcting without humiliating, demanding more and better while praising the effort and small successes. She’d never had that kind of instruction growing up, and the little girl inside her worshipped him just a tiny bit for it.

In the locker room she changed into black baggy pants, wrestling shoes, and the school tee-shirt. She was one of three women at the school, which could be annoying. Sometimes it felt like she was fighting her way through a jungle of adrenaline and testosterone, with everyone several inches taller and many pounds heavier than she was. But she figured if she could hold her own with these guys, highly trained fighters with the boundless energy of people in extraordinary shape, she could handle herself with most of the out-of-shape street fighters she ran into on the job… and the criminals, too.

On the floor, they did forty minutes of killer calisthenics, endless push-ups, sit-ups, jumping jacks. It could be longer or shorter depending on what kind of mood whoever was teaching the class was in that day. Then there was a half an hour of drilling and stances. Once you learned a technique, the philosophy was you had to throw it a thousand times before you would begin to get it right. Drilling forced your head and your muscles to remember the techniques, and eventually they became more instinct than thought. By the end of the first hour, most of what she was wearing was soaked through with sweat. Then it was time to spar.

They fought without guards, avoiding shots to the head, the groin, and the breasts. The principle was that a fighter had to learn how to take a hit. You had to condition your body to endure blows and understand what it feels like to be hit. Someone who had never been hit would be shocked if on the street a blow was delivered. It’s painful, it’s shocking, and it’s very upsetting. So for the rest of the class, they basically just beat the crap out of each other… but with discipline, technique, and control. So pumped with adrenaline, they never felt a thing while sparring. It was hard play, fun in a way she could never explain to someone who hadn’t experienced it. It was only after that all the aches and pains would set in, the bruises would bloom.

When she left, she was clean. All the stress and negativity of her day had drained from her. She felt light and relaxed, happy and confident. Even though she would be two hours later getting to Benjamin, she was a better person when she got to him; not wound up from the job, not tense and snappish.

“Hey, ass-kicker.” A sexy male voice she didn’t expect surprised her when she stepped onto the sidewalk.

“Mom. You’re a badass.”

She turned to see Dylan put a hand on Benjamin’s head. “Hey, little dude, I told you no swearing around your mom.”

“No swearing, period,” she said, kneeling down and taking Benjamin into her arms. His little body always felt so good.

“But you swear all the time,” he said into her hair. He wrapped his arms around her neck and squeezed.

“Never mind that,” she said, standing and taking his hand. She smiled at Dylan, hating herself for how happy she was to see him. “What are you guys doing here? I thought you were going to the movies.”

“We saw Spy Kids. Benj was so impressed that I thought he might like to see his mom in action. I can’t believe you never brought him here.”

“You were like, pow! And like, wham!” said Benjamin, imitating her techniques. He was pretty good.

“I figured I’d start him up next year. I thought he might get scared seeing me fight.”

“No way, Mom! You’re like Jackie Chan.”

Dylan shook his head but gave her a smile. You baby him too much. That’s what he was thinking but he didn’t say it. “How ’bout some pizza?” he asked.

“Sounds good. I’m starved. There’s a place around the corner on Broadway.”

They walked up the street together, Benjamin just a few feet ahead of them throwing kicks and punches with sound effects. Dylan took her hand and she didn’t pull away. Normally she didn’t like Benjamin to see them holding hands or being affectionate with each other. She’d quashed the hopes he harbored that they’d be together again, live under the same roof. She didn’t want him to be confused. But there was something about the three of them together, walking on the street. It just felt right. It didn’t mean anything, she told herself. Just that their relationship was easier; they could be together with Benjamin, be kind to each other and not fight, not get ugly with each other. It was progress. That’s all it was.