Hard Rain

I collapsed and pocketed the baton and made my way to the end of the street, where I found a pay phone. I didn’t know if Naomi had caller ID and didn’t want to take a chance on trying her from one of the cell phones I had just acquired.

I called her. She picked up on the third ring, her voice a little uncertain. “Hello?”

“Hey, it’s me.”

A pause. “Where are you?”

“I’m not going to be able to make it tonight. I’m sorry.”

Another pause. “That’s okay. It’s fine.” She sounded relieved.

“I just wanted to let you know. I’ll be in touch soon, okay?”

“Okay.”

I hung up and returned to the back of her building. I eased into the shadows next to the body I had left there.

One of the cell phones I was carrying started to vibrate. I pulled it out and opened it.

“Hai,” I said.

I heard Murakami’s signature growl and felt adrenaline dump into my system. “He’s not coming tonight,” he said. “I’ll be down in a minute. Call Yagi-san and be ready to move.”

I guessed Yagi was one of the guys I’d taken out. “Hai,” I said.

He clicked off.

I dropped the cell phone back in the coat pocket. I took out the baton and kept it retracted in my right hand. I held the pepper spray in my left. My heart was thudding steadily in my chest. I took in a deep breath through my nose, held it, and let it out.

The back entrance was the less obvious, less trafficked choice. Also, it lacked a security camera. I knew he’d come out there, just like I had.

I stayed at the edge of the diffused light from a nearby streetlamp, where Murakami would see me but where my appearance would be obscured by shadows. I needed him to come as close as possible, to maximize the element of surprise. Surprise might be the only advantage I would have over him.

Two minutes later he emerged from the rear door. I hung back just inside the shadows, the shades on, the hat pulled low.

There was a dog with him, straining on a leash. It took me a second to recognize it without the muzzle. The white pit bull, the one that had been in the car after my fight with Adonis.

Oh fuck.

I almost turned and ran for it. But a dog’s most atavistic instincts are triggered by flight, and there was too great a chance that the thing would have caught me and brought me down from behind. I’d have to play this out.

At least Murakami’s attention was partly engaged by the animal. He saw me and lifted his head in curt acknowledgment, then looked down at the dog, which had begun to growl.

Nice doggy, I thought. Nice fucking doggy.

They came closer. Murakami looked up at me again, then back to the dog. The damn thing was really growling now, staccato killing sounds that rumbled up from deep in its chest.

Murakami didn’t seem unduly concerned. I guessed that a dog that took gunpowder and steroids with its Alpo and jalapeño pepper suppositories for dessert might growl at the fucking wind, and that Murakami would be used to the behavior, might even welcome it.

They came closer. The dog was starting to get out of control, snarling and straining at the leash. Murakami looked down at it. I heard him say, “Doushitanda?” What the hell is with you?

Then his head started to come up. He wasn’t as close as I wanted, but I knew his next glance was going to put things together. I wasn’t going to get a better opportunity.

I leaped out at them and closed the distance in two long strides. Murakami reacted instantly, releasing the leash and getting his hands up to protect his upper body and head.

It was a well-trained reaction and I’d been expecting it. Ignoring the dog, which I ranked as the lesser threat, I dropped to a crouch, cocked my right arm back, and whipped it forward like a te

But I didn’t miss. I felt bone shatter under the steel and heard Murakami howl. An instant later all I could see was white dog, coming at me like a cruise missile.

I managed to get my left arm up in front of my throat. The dog shot forward and clamped onto it just above the wrist. There was an explosion of pain. The impact knocked me backward.

I knew if I fell to my back with that creature on top of me there wouldn’t even be body parts for the clean-up crew afterward. Partly by instinct, partly by judo training, I let our paired momentum somersault us backward and rolled into a squat on the other end of it. The dog still had me just above the wrist, snarling and shaking its head, holding on in a dead game grip the way it had been trained. I couldn’t feel anything in my arm anymore.

I tried to bring the baton up and crack the thing over the head, but I couldn’t. The dog’s claws scraped against the pavement, seeking purchase, leverage from which it could force me over onto my back.

I dropped the baton and reached around with my good hand, scrabbling for its testicles. The beast dodged left, then right, knowing what I was going for. I found it anyway. I grabbed that canine package and yanked downward as hard as I’ve ever yanked anything in my life. The jaws loosened and I jerked my arm free.

I lurched to my feet. The dog writhed for a moment, then got its legs under it. It snarled and looked up at me with bloodshot eyes.

I glanced at my left hand. It was clamped around the pepper spray canister with rigor mortis determination. The tendons must have locked up from the pressure of the animal’s jaws.

The dog’s muscles coiled together. I pried the canister loose with my good hand. The dog leaped. I turned the canister forward and depressed the trigger.

There was a satisfying sound of gas escaping under pressure, and a red cloud hit the beast directly in the face. Its momentum carried it into me and knocked me backward, but it was jerking and slobbering now, no longer attacking. I kicked out from under its twitching body and rolled to a crouch.

The dog started writhing on the ground, rubbing its snout frantically into the tarmac as though trying to wipe off the substance that was causing its agony. I held the canister closer. When the animal turned its wheezing face toward me, I aimed directly into its nose and depressed the trigger. A thick cloud jetted out, and then, just as suddenly, died, the canister’s contents exhausted.

But it was enough. The dog’s body launched into spasms that made its previous writhing look like playful stretching by comparison. Oleoresin capiscum irritant is ordinarily nonfatal, but I thought a concentrated dose like the one the dog had just received might prove the exception.

I looked over at Murakami. He was on his feet, but was keeping his weight entirely off his wounded ankle. He had the Kershaw in his right hand, held close to his body.

I looked down and saw the baton. I swept it up in my good hand and approached him, my left arm hanging uselessly.

He was growling from deep in his chest, sounding not unlike his dog.

I moved around him in a wary circle, forcing him to adjust, trying to gauge the extent of his mobility. I knew the ankle shot had been potent. I also knew that he might try to exaggerate the extent of the damage, to get me to overcommit and attempt to finish him too quickly. If he could grab the baton or otherwise get inside my guard, his knife and two good arms would prove decisive.

So I took my time. I feinted with the baton. Left, then right. I circled toward the knife hand, making it more difficult for him to snatch something with his free fingers, keeping him moving, stressing the ankle.

I let him get used to the left/right feints. Then I ran one straight up the middle, jabbing the steel directly at his face and neck. He parried with his free hand, trying to grab the baton, but I’d been expecting it and snapped the unit out of the way in time. The, just as suddenly, I backhanded it in, cracking him along the side of his skull.