FIFTY-THREE

LEONID STOOD ON THE KERB AND THE CAR TOOK OFF AGAIN and then stopped again twenty feet behind me. The driver got out. Good moves. I was boxed on the sidewalk, one guy in front of me, another guy behind. Leonid looked the same but different. Still tall, still thin, still bald apart from the ginger stubble, but now he was in sensible clothes and he had shed his sleepy demeanour. He was in black shoes, black knit pants, and black hooded sweatshirt. He looked alive and alert and very dangerous. He looked like more than a gangster. More than a brawler or a hoodlum. He looked like a professional. Trained, and experienced.

He looked like an ex-soldier.

I backed up against the wall of the building next to me so that I could watch both guys at once. Leonid on my left, and the other guy on my right. The other guy was a squat man somewhere in his thirties. He looked more Middle Eastern than East European. Dark hair, no neck. Not huge. Like Leonid, but compressed vertically and therefore expanded laterally. He was dressed the same, in cheap black sweats. I looked at the knit pants and a word lodged in my mind.

The word was: disposable.

The guy took a step towards me.

Leonid did the same.

Two choices, as always: fight or flight. We were on 56th Street’s southern sidewalk. I could have run straight across the road and tried to get away. But Leonid and his pal were probably faster than me. The law of averages. Most humans are faster than me. The old lady in the summer dress was probably faster than me. Her old grey mutt was probably faster than me.

And running away was bad enough. Running away and then getting caught immediately was totally undignified.

So I stayed where I was.

On my left, Leonid took another step closer.

On my right, the short guy did the same thing.

Whatever the army had failed to teach me about staying out of sight, they had made up for by teaching me a lot about fighting. They had taken one look at me and sent me straight to the gym. I was like a lot of military children. We had weird backgrounds. We had lived all over the world. Part of our culture was to learn from the locals. Not history or language or political concerns. We learned fighting from them. Their favoured techniques. Martial arts from the Far East, full-on brawling from the seamier parts of Europe, blades and rocks and bottles from the seamier parts of the States. By the age of twelve we had it all boiled down to a kind of composite uninhibited ferocity. Especially uninhibited. We had learned that inhibitions will hurt you faster than anything else. Just do it was our motto, well before Nike started making shoes. Those of us who signed up for military careers of our own were recognized and mentored and offered further tuition, where we were taken apart and put back together again. We thought we were tough when we were twelve. At eighteen, we thought we were unbeatable. We weren’t. But we were very close to it, by the age of twenty-five.

Leonid took another step.

The other guy did the same.

I looked back at Leonid and saw brass knuckles on his hand.

Same for the short guy.

They had slipped them on, fast and easy. Leonid side-stepped. So did the other guy. They were perfecting their angles. I was backed up against a building, which gave me a hundred and eighty degrees of empty space in front of me. Each one of them wanted forty-five degrees of that space on his right and forty-five on his left. That way, if I bolted, they had every exit direction equally covered. Like doubles players, in tennis. Long practice, mutual support, and instinctive understanding.

They were both right-handed.

First rule when you’re fighting against brass knuckles: don’t get hit. Especially not in the head. But even blows against arms and ribs can break bones and paralyse muscles.

The best way not to get hit is to pull out a gun and shoot your opponents from a distance of about ten feet. Close enough not to miss, far enough to remain untouched. Game over. But I didn’t have that option. I was unarmed. The next best way is either to keep your opponents far away or crush them real close. Far away, they can swing all night and never connect. Real close, they can’t swing at all. The way to keep them far away is to exploit superior reach, if you have it, or use your feet. My reach is spectacular. I have very long arms. The silverback on the television show looked stumpy in comparison to me. My instructors in the army were always making puns about my reach, based on my name. But I was facing two guys, and I wasn’t sure if kicking was an option I could add in. For one thing, I had lousy shoes. Rubber gardening clogs. They were loose on my feet. They would come off. And kicking with bare feet leads to broken bones. Feet are much punier than hands. Except in karate school, where there are rules. There are no rules on the street. Second thing, as soon as one foot is off the ground, you’re unbalanced and potentially vulnerable. Next thing you know, you’re on the floor, and then you’re dead. I had seen it happen. I had made it happen.

I braced my right heel against the wall behind me.

I waited.

I figured they would pile on together. Simultaneous launches, ninety degrees apart. Arrowing inward, more or less in step. The good news was they wouldn’t be trying to kill me. Lila Hoth would have forbidden that. She wanted things from me, and corpses have nothing to offer.

The bad news was that plenty of serious injuries fall short of fatal.

I waited.

Leonid said, ‘You don’t have to get hurt, you know. You can just come with us, if you like, and talk to Lila.’ His English was less upmarket than hers. His accent was rough. But he knew all the words.

I said, ‘Go with you where?’

‘You know I can’t tell you that. You would have to wear a blindfold.’

I said, ‘I’ll take a pass on the blindfold. But you don’t have to get hurt either. You can just move on, and tell Lila you never saw me.’

‘But that wouldn’t be true.’

‘Don’t be a slave to the truth, Leonid. Sometimes the truth hurts. Sometimes it bites you right in the ass.’

The upside of a concerted attack by two opponents is that they have to communicate a start signal. Maybe it’s just a glance or a nod, but it’s always there. It’s a split second of warning. I figured Leonid for the main man. The one who speaks first usually is. He would announce the attack. I watched his eyes, very carefully.

I said, ‘Are you mad about what happened at the railroad station?’

Leonid shook his head. ‘I let you hit me. It was necessary. Lila said so.’

I watched his eyes.

I said, ‘Tell me about Lila.’

‘What do you want to know?’

‘I want to know who she is.’

‘Come with us, and ask her:

‘I’m asking you:

‘She’s a woman with a job to do.’

‘What kind of a job?’

‘Come with us, and ask her.’

‘I’m asking you.’

‘An important job. A necessary job.’

‘Which involves what?’

‘Come with us, and ask her.’

‘I’m asking you.’

No answer. No further conversation. I sensed them tensing up. I watched Leonid’s face. Saw his eyes widen and his head duck toward in a tiny nod. They came straight for me, together. I pushed off the wall behind me and put my fists against my chest and stuck my elbows out like airplane wings and charged them as hard as they were charging me. We met at a singular point like a collapsing triangle and my elbows caught both of them full in the face. On my right I felt the short guy’s upper teeth punch out and on my left I felt Leonid’s lower jaw give way. Impact equals mass times velocity squared. I had plenty of mass, but my shoes were spongy and my feet were slick inside them from the heat and so my velocity was slower than it might have been.