Shadowboxer Read online

  They just stared at each other. Then Shea held up his hand to her, gesturing for her to wait.

  He turned to his friend and said something. After a minute the car pulled into a parking space. The two men got out. Mya hesitated as they walked towards the restaurant, but Shea turned and made the same wait gesture to her. They went in, and five seconds later Shea emerged. He jogged toward her.

  ‘I know you,’ he said. ‘I saw you back in Thailand.’

  ‘That wasn’t... exactly... Thailand,’ she said carefully.

  ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘I thought you were gone forever,’ she breathed. ‘I’m glad to see you are well.’

  ‘But I’m not well. I’m hallucinating and I keep losing my memory. I didn’t think you were real.’

  She thought of his phone, the caller with a voice so much like her mother’s.

  The words burst out of her. ‘Do you know my mother? We are from Myanmar. My family are in prison there, and I was brought to the orphanage. My mother’s name is Kyi and my father is called Thura. I have a big sister Htay and a little sister Thiri. Have you spoken to them?’

  He smacked his forehead and stared at her so intensely she recoiled.

  ‘Richard Fuller—you’re one of his victims... I mean... I’m sorry, I don’t know what to say. We have to talk. Tell me how you got here. Last I saw you we were... in a forest? In northwest Thailand.’

  ‘We were in between the worlds,’ Mya said, disturbed that he couldn’t remember. ‘The forest of the immortals. Outside time. You were near death. You needed to return to the mortal world, but you are part of Kala Sriha.’

  His face softened. ‘I remember. We must have both been drugged. I woke up in a strange apartment near here. I had to call a friend in New York and make up a crazy story, and I keep thinking I’m a... you’ll laugh, but... well, I keep hallucinating I’m some kind of animal.’

  Mya didn’t know what to do. It was hard to speak up, to contradict him. But his foolishness was too great.

  ‘Mr. Shea. I lived with Mr. Richard. Please understand that he is a mor phii.’

  ‘No disrespect to witch doctors, truly,’ he said. ‘But no. Fuller’s not a mor phii. He’s a criminal.’

  ‘He has powers other people don’t have. Don’t forget about the things you saw. Kala Sriha has let you live. Please don’t be arrogant.’

  ‘Arrogant? Me?’ Shea ran his hands through his hair, which was now clean and shining. ‘Listen, I’m in the middle of a job. I work as a translator for a newspaper, but I have contacts in the police, too. I’m gathering evidence against Richard Fuller. He shouldn’t be running an orphanage or going to Hollywood premieres with his posh wife. He should be in jail. How did he get into Myanmar?’

  She didn’t answer. Police? What had she done wrong?

  He kept on talking, half to himself.

  ‘You can’t just wander around New Jersey by yourself. How did you get here? Who brought you? I knew this gym was involved. I knew it!’

  Mya moved away a bit more in case he tried to grab her.

  ‘I just needed some food. I won’t bother anyone—’

  He shook his head. ‘I’m supposed to save you. That’s the whole point of what I’m doing. If you come with me, we can talk. I can help you...’

  Mya edged away further. He was in no condition to be ‘saving’ anybody.

  ‘I should have brought the police in sooner,’ he went on. ‘I promised my boss a story if he could get money to the right people, but everything went wrong and my informant was murdered. It was terrible. I tried to get more evidence against Richard Fuller, but that American psycho caught me. I wish I knew what drugs they’d given me. I’m a mess. Look at this!’

  And he pulled out his passport, opening it and showing it to her.

  ‘There’s no stamp in it. How did I get into the country?’

  ‘You’re part of Kala Sriha now. Maybe Kala Sriha has a plan for you. I don’t know what the plan is, but you are here and you must be changing form.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘I woke up in this girl’s apartment. She’s one of the fighters at the gym over there.’ He nodded in the direction of Combat Sports Emporium. ‘She just came back from Thailand, and she took my phone. There’s a connection between Richard Fuller and this gym, and I’m going to find out what it is.’

  Mya thought about the delivery she had made to the man in the office. She thought about Kala Sriha, and how his roar could stun or even kill. If Shea could tell everyone about Richard Fuller, wouldn’t that be just like Kala Sriha putting matters right with his roar? This investigation must be what the lion wanted.

  ‘Maybe I can help you,’ she said. ‘Will you help me, too?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I wish I weren’t so unstable. I’m exhausted all the time, and hungry.’

  ‘That’s because you have suffered,’ she told him. ‘You must please strengthen yourself, Shea. You need to have human experiences to stay here. Food. Life. Talking with other people. Things to connect you to life. Otherwise you will keep...’ she bit back the word ‘changing’ and substituted, ‘forgetting.’

  ‘So... you know what I’m talking about? You’ve seen this effect of the drug before?’

  ‘Something like that.’ She hadn’t wanted to go on arguing about whether or not Kala Sriha was real. There had been more important things to do. ‘Shea, I need food for others who are... having problems like you. I need food for them. To make them better. Can you help me?’

  He’d laughed. ‘What, all you need is food? That’s easy. I have to go talk to Jamie, the man I was with. He’s helping me with the investigation. Come with me. We won’t tell him who you are.’

  She shook her head. No way.

  ‘OK, then. Wait here.’

  He went inside and came out with a hot, fragrant paper bag. Mya realized it would have been better to specify food that was not disgusting, but never mind. She took the bag and backed away, still leery of being grabbed. She would keep an eye on Shea and help him accept his relationship with Kala Sriha if she could... but for now, she stepped back into the tangled bushes and prayed herself back to the forest.

  The last she saw of his face before she vanished, he looked surprised. Very surprised.

  Duct Tape and iCarly

  WAS I HALLUCINATING because I was hungry or because of jet lag? I don’t know, but I kept thinking I saw Waldo out of the corner of my eye on my way home from work. It was probably wishful thinking. I was so hungry. And tired. One thing that sucked about being home was being broke. Malu’s parents had been sending Malu and me money for rent, but we were covering the groceries ourselves. You gotta wash a lot of dishes to feed a fighter in training. They gave me free food at work, but most of it wasn’t nutritious enough to support my training. I walked because I couldn’t afford the bus.

  At one point I stopped, turned, and squatted down. I rubbed my fingers together and made psss psss noises and called ‘Waldo?’ really quietly. Waldo didn’t come. I felt stupid.

  By the time I turned onto my street the gecko tattoo on my butt started itching like crazy. And it’s not like you can walk down the street scratching yourself there. I trudged up the stairs to the apartment, dumped my gym bag outside the door, and leaned my head against the door as I unlocked it. As the door swung open my tattoo actually felt like it was burning. Freaking stupid gecko.

  There was a light on in the living room, and the TV was flickering, mute.

  ‘Honey, I’m home,’ I called, kicking the bag ahead of me and shutting the door. ‘What a day.’

  I put the chain on the door and went to the bathroom, then came out to see what Malu was up to that was keeping her so quiet. I hobbled down the short hallway past the little kitchen, and then I stopped.

  Malu was on the floor just inside her open bedroom door. She had been tied up and gagged with duct tape. Her hands were taped together behind her, and her ankles were taped to them. Her face shone with sweat, and her e
yes were fixed on mine. My hackles rose.

  ‘Hello, Jade,’ said a deep voice.

  Sometimes you get a voice that deep in a small body. But not this time. The guy who stepped out of my bedroom was a mountain of a human being, his hair scraped back in a ponytail to show off the piercing in his ears and eyebrows. He had a jaw like a professional wrestler. From the darkness in Malu’s bedroom another guy emerged, as tall as the pierced mountain, but whipcord-thin. The way the second one moved set my teeth on edge. Both of them wore dark jackets with t-shirts, and Pierce had boots on.

  My scumbag alarms were ringing the house down. I mean, Tommy Zhang’s bodyguards were all show and blow with Hollywood written all over their sculpted muscles—in reality they were cowards just like him. But these guys felt menacing. They were probably psychos who used to be in the service. The kind who join because they like the idea of killing and then when their service is over, they hire out in civilian life with career titles like ‘Threat Management’ and ‘Close Cover Operative.’ Khari used to have a cold-blooded ‘friend’ like this and the stories he told made me sick.

  They didn’t even look comfortable around each other. Two of them, honestly, was overkill.

  What had they done to Malu?

  My bones started to glow hot from inside. I wanted to launch myself at them. It was all I could do not to look either of them in the eye. I was mad. I should have been scared, but I was too mad for that. I guess that’s part of my whole problem right there. I never know how to be scared at the appropriate time.

  Then I clocked the guy on the sofa as he stood up. He’d been only partly visible behind the Norfolk pine, or I’d have seen him sooner. He was Asian, older than the other two, and his eyes were moving all the time. He looked back and forth between me and the two other men.

  I said something like, ‘What the fuck is this?’

  Pierce nodded to the skinny guy, who twitched aside his jacket so that I could see his holster. In a rumbly voice Pierce said, ‘We’re here for the phone. No games. Put it on the floor and back away.’

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ I was still staring at Malu. She didn’t look right. I wondered how they’d managed to subdue her without the neighbours hearing. She didn’t look bruised or bloody, and there was no sign that the room had been disturbed. Her pupils were dilated and her eyes looked bloodshot. Maybe they drugged her.

  ‘You don’t want to ask that question,’ said Pierce. He oozed self-importance, so that without him actually saying so you felt that he was in command and everything was going to fall his way. The other guy said nothing, but I was watching him in my peripheral vision.

  Pierce added, ‘You have a phone that belongs to my client. I could accuse you of stealing it and punish you the way my client punishes all thieves, but my client is a reasonable man. Unless you give him a reason not to be.’

  I was tempted to argue; I’m always tempted to argue. But the sight of Malu like that freaked me out.

  ‘Wait,’ I said, suddenly remembering. ‘I found a phone. I never had a chance to turn it in...’

  I pointed to my bag. I’d shoved it in there and forgotten about it, but how would anyone even know I had it?

  The twitchy guy leaned across me and picked up the bag. I could smell him. My eyes narrowed.

  ‘So,’ I said. ‘I’m a mule now? Who am I working for, because I didn’t get paid for this.’

  I felt like an idiot for letting myself be used this way. I was mad at myself for not remembering to show the phone to Khari. I’d been too distracted by Geek Boy.

  The dangerous-vibe guy flipped the phone open and handed it to Pierce, keeping his eyes on me the whole time. I could feel him looking, not at me but through me. People used to say my dad had penitentiary eyes but this guy had something colder than that. I was looking up the barrel of his gun before I even saw him move.

  I refused to go to pieces; I’ve been around guns before, and they scare me, but they don’t scare me shitless.

  Pierce said, ‘Contact the authorities and we’ll come for you. Not a word, to anybody. We will be watching you.’

  I nodded, wishing he would just go so I could check Malu. He stared back at me until I stepped back; then he disengaged. I heard him thumping down the stairs.

  I put on the deadbolt and the chain; then I went to untie Malu.

  I had peeled the duct tape off Malu’s mouth and was working on her arms behind her back when I heard a noise outside that freaked me. It was an animal noise, a roaring—not like a lion’s roar, more like something out of Jurassic Park. It started me shaking all over.

  For what seemed like several seconds, I couldn’t move. Malu was hyperventilating and cursing, and now she began to thrash. I heard voices outside.

  ‘Quiet,’ I hissed at Malu. ‘Don’t make a sound. I’m going to look outside.’

  I crawled across the floor to my bedroom window. The roaring sound had been close, and it hadn’t come from the street below, but from somewhere high up. Like the roof.

  I peered over the sill. On the sidewalk below the three of them stood facing me, looking up. I dropped my head again, thinking they were looking at me. Then there was a noise over my head, on the roof itself. Footsteps, the shifting of weight. Something was up there. Sounded like two men.

  I didn’t dare stick my head up again. I might end up in the crossfire.

  Overhead a bass drone started up, a rhythmic rattling that vibrated in the roof of the building itself.

  ‘Jade? Jade, come back here and untie me.’ Malu was scrambling around on the floor.

  ‘Shhh!’ I backed away from the window and got a pair of scissors and a paper bag. I cut her loose.

  ‘Breathe into the bag,’ I said. ‘When you stop tingling, get yourself a drink. I’ll be back in a minute.’

  She grabbed my arm, her big hand circling my whole forearm.

  ‘Don’t you dare go out there and get involved,’ she said. ‘Just stay here and stay out of it. I’m calling 911.’

  I shook myself free and returned to the window on hands and knees. There was a part of me that wanted to do as she said, trust in the law and the overall righteousness of the universe to take care of shit. There was a part. A very small, tiny-tiny part. OK, I’m lying. There was no part of me that thought that. Get real! The universe doesn’t take care of shit. And anyway, the person who takes care of my shit is me. End of story. Like an idiot I’d brought the phone into the house, endangered Malu and myself, and now I needed to find out what was up on the roof making the GI Joes look like they needed extra-large Huggies.

  Gunshots popped off. One, two, three, four. Movement on the roof. There was a scrabbling sound on the tar paper, and from my position crouched on the floor under the open window I glimpsed something larger-than-man-sized go sailing overhead and collide with the tree in the yard next door in a flailing of branches. Leaves seemed to explode from the tree as a black shape went scrambling down—panther? Leopard? Very furry ninja?—whatever it was, it ran down the tree head-first in the darkness and the four men fled, led by Pierce with his ponytail flying.

  The Thai dude was the last to flee. He turned and fired at the shadow as he ran, but his shots were wild.

  The men cut across the street and ran between some houses, disappearing from sight. The shadow followed them without a sound.

  Malu’s voice. ‘I need the police. Yeah, I’m in Cliffside Park—’

  I dived across the room, grabbed the phone from her and killed the connection.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Her eyes and teeth flashed and she tried to get the phone back but I was too quick for her.

  ‘They told us not to report it or they’d come back. Don’t you get it? The police can’t protect you from people like that. We have to just keep quiet, and lie low, and... I’ll be right back.’

  ‘You’re crazy,’ she shouted at me. ‘Don’t go out there! Hey!’

  ‘Emergency services have to call you back. Don’t answer it,’ I commanded, standing in the hal
f-open door. I grabbed the only weapon I could find, a collapsible umbrella. ‘Don’t talk to the police. You’ll get us killed.’

  Then I went. As I closed the door, she shouted, ‘Yeah? You’re not the one with duct tape burns on your ankles!’

  I ran down the stairs. By now people were out on the landing, including the super, Irene, yakking into her cell and running her free hand through a giant mop of blonde hair like it was the end of the world. Who was I kidding? The whole neighborhood would be calling the police. You didn’t get gunshots at nine o’clock on a Thursday night in Cliffside Park.

  Irene put out a hand to me as I passed, but I dodged around it. Nobody touches me if I don’t want them to.

  ‘Hey!’ she said. ‘You know anything about this, Jade?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘If it’s gunshots, the black girls upstairs must know something about it, right?’

  That shut her up. I went out.

  I didn’t follow them at first; I turned right coming out of the apartment and went up to Anderson Ave. like I was going to get a bus or whatever. I walked a couple blocks north and then cut back down the hill on a side street that I knew would connect. You can’t go very far east in Cliffside without hitting the cliff itself.

  I heard dogs barking toward the bottom of the hill. I could track the men by the disruption they caused. I followed them north, towards Fort Lee. Maybe they’d left their car up there to be closer to the Turnpike.

  I didn’t have to go far. If I had, then I’d have had time to think about what I was doing and I’d have realized it was pointless, and dangerous, and the kind of thing that never ends well for me. But I’d jogged only a few blocks when I saw the automatic security lights come on behind a big house on the cliff, and I heard the muffled sound of a dog barking inside. I started up the driveway, waiting for somebody inside to turn on more lights or open a window or shout or something, but nothing happened. There was a Lexus in the driveway. From the back yard came a terrible snarling noise.