Leslie Glass - A Killing Gift

She listened to her four messages. Skinny Dragon, Devereaux, Marcus Beame, and Charlie Hagedorn. Skinny Dragon wanted to be taken out for a ride. Saturday was her shopping day, and Astoria where she lived didn't have the best stuff. The dragon wanted worm daughter to pay attention to her, take her to Flushing. April called Skinny back and told her she couldn't play chauffeur; she had to work.

"Half day enough. Your father don't feel good." Skinny stuck in the knife. "Better come at three."

The parry struck home. Did her dad have a big hangover or did they need a lightbulb changed? "We'll see how it goes, Ma." April had learned a long time ago never to give her mother an absolute no. Then she called Devereaux.

"Are you coming over or not? We're getting ready to leave," he said the minute she identified herself.

"Yeah, I'll be there before noon, promise. Where are you going?" she asked.

"Lisa's parents have a house on Martha's Vineyard."

"Nice place, I was there once." She was relieved he was still determined to get out of town. She was just finishing up with Devereaux when Woody appeared with the dog book.

"Where to, boss, the Hamptons?" he said, looking relieved to have found her.

"No, not the Hamptons. What took you so long?" she demanded.

"What am I, a mind reader?" He gave her a look, then opened the precinct door for her.

At least he'd learned some manners. Outside he opened the passenger door of the unmarked vehicle from Midtown North that he'd brought for her. She was gratified that old dogs could learn new tricks. As soon as he'd closed the door for her, she ignored him the way her bosses always ignored her.

She strapped herself in and dialed Hagedorn. "Sergeant Woo," she said when he came on.

"Finally. Okay, I got the skinny on Albert Delano Frayme. Frayme took his mother's name after the divorce, so I went back and found the court records. His father's name is Alberts. His birth name was Albert Delano Alberts, Junior."

"A. A.," April said.

"Is there some significance to that?"

"Only that the two victims were B. B.s."

"Okaaay. So I checked further. Frayme has a double identity with credit cards and a social security number in the name of Albert Alberts. You want me to subpoena the credit card records?"

"Very good, Charlie!"

"Is that a thank-you?"

"That's a dinner at your favorite eatery."

"Check. What about the subpoena?"

"Go for it. Everything you can get on him."

"Anything else?"

"That's peachy for the moment," she said.

"Where to, boss?" Woody was playing with the car keys like a six-year-old.

"Devereaux's home," she told him.

Then she dialed Beame. "Sergeant Woo."

"Hey, April. Mike isn't picking up. You wanted likely dojos, right? I got Praying Mantis. It's 16 East Thirty-second Street. Professional Prepare is on Twenty-second Street at Third Ave. I have three more. You want addresses? You were right on the Silent Warrior call, but it's too far uptown."

"How far up?"

"Two Hundred Thirty-second Street in the Bronx."

"Too far."

"We were checking for more Caucasian gym owners. But that requirement cut the list way down. There are a few more on Bowery. All the suppliers are down there. We could check with them. They'd know who's who. A lot of others are on the West Side and Mid-town too. How wide do you want to go?"

"I have an a.k.a. now. Alberts is his father's name. Al Alberts."

"Okay. This is good. Then your first choice is Professional. They didn't have a Frayme on their members list. But Albert struck a chord when we spoke with them. They have an Al. We were going back there with the photo today. You want me to do that now?"

"Uh-uh, Woody and I are in the neighborhood. We'll go."

"You like to do everything yourself, don't you, Sergeant?" Beame said. "I'll bet you knew the locations already."

"Nope, I didn't," she lied. "Thanks, Marcus. I'm going to remember you on your birthday."

"It's July nineteenth," he said.

"Woody, turn right here; we're going to Third Avenue."

"Yeah, boss." He hit the siren, and the tires screeched as he cut across two lanes of oncoming traffic.

Ten minutes later April and Woody located Professional Prepare's building on Third Avenue and left the car in front of a fire hydrant. The gym was on the fifth floor of a five-story commercial building, and the stairs getting up there were steep. April could hear Woody panting a little as she stepped back to let him go through the door first. Clearly he'd never practiced his chi kung, the breathing so vital to physical power and control in all martial arts. She snorted and stared at the door in front of her when he leaned against the wall to catch his breath.

As Jason had predicted, no Chinese or Japanese or Korean calligraphy was exhibited next to the name. No yin/yang or mystic symbols were displayed either, no front-kicking silhouettes. The gym's door was painted black and had a simple sign with Professional Prepare in block letters. It looked like a no-nonsense kind of place with a greater emphasis on the fight than the philosophy.

Finally Woody stopped wheezing, grasped the door knob, and opened up. Bright light from a skylight shone down on an entry formed by movable screens that blocked any view of the activities beyond. In the small space was a metal desk; on top of it were an open appointment book, a leafy bamboo cutting in a vase full of water, and a telephone. At eleven-thirty on Saturday the place sounded busy.

On the other side of the screens, kumite sparring commands and training grunts came from both directions. No one was seated at the desk, so April paused to examine three walls of photos covering every inch of the rice-paper panels. The photos showed buff white males in various tournament settings, dressed in traditional gi and caught by the camera in appropriately impressive maneuvers with their black belts flying. Vertically along one screen was a row of members who were of the eighth- to tenth-degree black-belt rank that designated them honored masters. Five big guys with blank expressions and black tengui wrapped around their heads indicated this was a serious place. They looked between thirty and fifty years old. Albert Frayme was not among them. In a line next to them were fifth-degree-black-belt-ranked members, then fourth, and the ranking went down to the beginner level. Albert Frayme was not pictured at any degree.

Disappointed, April stepped around a jog in screens into a place that was both intensely familiar and completely unfamiliar. Unfamiliar was the sight of two Caucasian white-haired instructors sitting up front on the traditional Japanese kamiza, divine seat of honor, and a group of slightly younger but like-looking males sitting cross-legged below them on the floor, while on the main mat two practitioners demonstrated Gake, a hooking action used for ankle and sacrifice throws. Nearby was a kumite Scoreboard with the Japanese word card commands that were used in matches. It was a karate center.

Those things were familiar, and the odor of sweat was familiar, too. But the lack of any Asian practicing what April considered the one uniquely Asian sport gave her an uncomfortable feeling. The martial arts had been developed over millennia by Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, Malaysians, Indians, and Filipinos. Each believed their system was the oldest and best. April didn't know why she reacted so strongly to the exclusion of females and Asians here, for certainly Chinese and Korean and Japanese all had their exclusive training gyms, and some still passionately excluded women and girls.

Also unfamiliar at Professional Prepare was the training area that contained a wall hung with protectors and training devices that were far more expensive and modern than any she had ever used. Here, the face shields and fist, body, and leg protectors all were made of expensive white molded plastic and leather. The variety of striking pads, sand bags, iron clogs, kick mitts, focus targets, and coaching mitts was a far cry from the "hand sticking" and "penetration hand" Chinese exercises of her youth. Back then hand sticking meant she had to plunge her soft fingers into bags of powder, then rice, then beans, and finally pebbles to condition her hands for striking. The Chinese exercise tools she'd used consisted mostly of chashi, blocks of cement with handles for one- and two-hand exercises to strengthen the wrists and arms, and black canvas shoes with iron weights in the soles for feet. Tradition. The training area also had five posts designed to toughen up various parts of the body. Each had a striking pad shaped to receive the strike of a specific part of the anatomy; hand, foot, shin, shoulder, head.