Free Giri by Marc Olden Page B

One, my uncle, was a hunchback. Now, he heard my grandfather preaching all the time about God does everything perfect, we live in a perfect world, shit like that. One day my uncle says, ‘If God is perfect, how come I’m a hunchback? My grandfather says, ‘He made you a perfect hunchback.’
    “So, Decker, it’s obvious that some people are born to suffer and they might as well live with it. Before you start revealing any confidences to your boy Kanai, check with me first. Is that clear?”
    “Clear.”
    “Hey, hey,” said LeClair. “Lighten up, my man, lighten up. We’ve got a long way to go, you and I. We do it together, we get there in half the time. Incidentally, something you might find interesting about Major Trevor Sparrowhawk. CIA is stonewalling us on him. Won’t tell us dick about what he did for them in Saigon. We knew he hired out to them as an independent, but nobody wants to say what he did. Typical of those fuckers.”
    “I can only tell you what I heard,” said Decker. “I heard Sparrowhawk killed for them. So did Dorian Raymond.”
    “Doesn’t come as a surprise. We know that in Saigon, Sparrowhawk and Raymond also had contact with a Japanese named George Chihara. He had a daughter, who I think you knew.”
    “Michi. We were going to be married. She’s dead.”
    “Sad.” LeClair waited a respectful three seconds, then began again. “Cong rocket attack on her home. Bodies found and accounted for. Sparrowhawk and Raymond saw the attack, I hear.”
    Decker began taking the bandages from his knee. “A third man was with them. Robbie Ambrose.”
    “Mr. Ambrose. Yes, yes. Says here he’s also a karate man. Whole fucking world’s gone chop socky. Okay. Now we get another player in the game. Paul Molise, Jr., known Mafioso who sees a chance to profit by the war and shows his face in Saigon. So we got mob, we got CIA, we got American military personnel and we got one Mr. Chihara, Japanese. Not to mention one Englishman, one Major Sparrowhawk. All huddled around the same campfire. Ponder that, if you will.”
    “What about me? I was there, too, remember? Same time. And I knew them all.”
    LeClair chuckled. “They hated your guts, Decker, and you know it. That’s your saving grace. You were on one side and they were on the other. You were a marine guard, and if it wasn’t for your relationship with Michi Chihara, you wouldn’t have had any contact with these people. Except maybe Robbie Ambrose. He beat you twice, didn’t he?”
    “Yes.”
    “Decker, you say you only heard things in Saigon about our happy little bunch. What brought them together? What did you hear about that?”
    “Money. Narcotics, graft on Vietnam construction projects, diamond smuggling, gold smuggling, gunrunning. Everything was an open secret in Saigon, especially during those last crazy days. Especially then. Here, it’s classified. Over there, even the monkeys knew what was going on.”
    “Well, suppose I try the CIA again. End run this time. Use a little influence. Use what you got, to get what you want, they say. Your knee okay?”
    “Can’t kick.”
    “Jesus, too bad. Well now, tomorrow morning it is. My office, nine-thirty A.M. sharp. And be nice to Mrs. Raymond, Decker. Try a little tenderness. Women go for that shit little bit of kindness goes a long way.” Decker hung up first.
    That night in the dojo, Decker worked his advanced students hard because he wanted to cleanse himself, to block out what he was doing to Romaine. Dorian’s phone call to her had pulled Romaine closer to LeClair’s ambition than Decker wanted her to be, and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. Except throw himself deeper into karate.
    The dojo, the Manhattan Karate Club, had five instructors, four Americans and one Japanese. Two of the Americans, Nick and Grace Harper, a husband and wife approaching sixty, owned the club. Both had struggled in the martial arts for years, teaching, demonstrating, losing money. In good