So. What else could I do?

No question about it, the time had come to tackle Song Duk Soon.

I'd been putting that off, even though it was obviously necessary. He'd left the tournament hall in plenty of time to trap Bernie. And, as I remembered his location on the bleachers, he could've seen me watching the picks. If he were Hard-shorn's spot I told myself I'd delayed confronting him so that I could learn more about the residual tensions in Martial America. However, the truth was that he scared me. I hadn't seen any sign that he shared Hong's and Nakahatchi's measured restraint.

And I still wanted to postpone encountering him. I didn't even want food. I was losing confidence by the hour, and I needed a shower. I wanted to blast hot water at my knotted doubts until they dissolved into soapsuds and steam. But I couldn't afford to wait any longer. Not if the chops were genuine.

Nevertheless I had to warm up for the challenge. On general principles, I let myself out of Essential Shotokan, coaxed the Plymouth back to life, and drove away in search of lunch.

An hour later I was back.

It wasn't 1:00 yet, which seemed a bit early for "after lunch." In other words, I'd run of out excuses. Bob Gravel and Malaysian

Fighting Arts didn't worry me Song Duk Soon and his school did. After drumming my fingers fretfully on the van's steering wheel for a couple of minutes, I tightened my grip on myself and went to face Master Soon.

Under his awning, I found another wooden door engraved with Asian symbols and kanji. I couldn't tell the difference between this one and Essential Shotokan's design, except that here everything had been gilt-edged. The intaglio effect made the door stand out like the portal of a trap.

Sternway shouldn't have admitted that he considered Tae Kwon Do a "toy martial art."

Inside, I took off my sunglasses and looked around. As expected, the basic floor plan matched the other schools a main dojo to my right, a smaller one lined with specialized training equipment to my left. In the larger room, a youngish man wearing a crisp white gi and a black belt led twenty or more students, mostly middle-aged women in leotards and sweat shirts, through exercises that looked suspiciously like martial aerobics. The students bounced and flopped strenuously around the floor, yelling at regular intervals punching and kicking their way to fitness. In contrast, their instructor seemed to coast through the movements.

The smaller room held four or five students of various ages, all male, all wearing white canvas pajamas and brown belts, with Master Soon's Tae Kwon Do Academy patches on their chests. They practiced drills in pairs. One partner launched an implausible attack of some kind a two-handed punch, or an aerial kick while the other attempted an equally implausible block. Snorting to myself, I turned away. Most of the street thugs I knew would've dismantled these "artists" in about four seconds.

While I waited for someone to notice me, I scanned the entry hallway.

Maybe a dozen trophies, some of them four feet tall, stood on stands attached to the walls. Between them hung rank certificates in ornate frames, boasting of at least twenty black belts. And up out of reach near the ceiling hung a variety of weapons, all of them apparently old.

Some I recognized katanas, tonfas, bos. Others I'd never seen before.

A couple looked so unwieldy that I couldn't imagine how they were used.

A cluttered bulletin board hung near the doorway to the main dojo.

Mostly it held flyers for Tae Kwon Do tournaments all over the country.

But after a moment I located a class schedule. Apparently Song Duk Soon ran a busy school. The women in leotards were studying "Fitness Tae Kwon Do." A whole series of kids' classes would take over the dojo from 2:00 until 5:30, after which the training divided into beginning, intermediate, advanced, and black belt sessions. Soon's Academy must've had at least two hundred students.

Since I didn't see a brown belt class listed for the afternoon, I assumed that the men in the smaller dojo were working out on their own.

Demonstrating their diligence for anyone who bothered to notice.

A sheet of general information about the school hung near the class schedule. It informed me, among other things, that dues were $100 a month. $20,000 a month altogether. $240,000 a year.

Somehow I felt sure that Traditional Wing Chun and Essential Shotokan weren't doing anything like the same amount of business.

The straining women had stopped yelling. When I turned away from the bulletin board, I found their instructor in the doorway, staring at me with thick arms folded on a broad chest.

He was a white guy, aggressively so, with pale eyes, sandy hair, and enough freckles to make him look vaguely leprous. From a distance he'd seemed youngish, but up close he looked older. For a heartbeat or two, I couldn't figure out why. Then I realized that the skin of his cheeks was too worn for his years. He had the kind of cheeks you usually see on tired boxers, flesh beaten to the consistency of leather by too many fists over way too many years. His left cheekbone had been flattened with blows.

He also looked like you could smack him across the chops with a bundle of re bar and not faze him. He would've fit right in at Sternway's fight club.

"You're Axbrewder," he announced. His voice didn't suit his pugilistic features. It was incongruously high, a voice for whimpering in fright or whining complaints, not for intimidation. But that didn't stop him.

"I remember you from the tournament. You humiliated one of ours.

"We don't like that around here."

Oh, joy.

Right on cue, the brown belts came out into the hallway and ranged themselves across from me, shoulder to shoulder, like a team of amateur enforcers. They all had belligerence in their eyes. At least a couple of them looked like they meant it.

Joy and wapture. Just what I needed, a testosterone check. And here I was supposed to be keeping the peace and all.

"Then I guess it's a good thing," I replied pleasantly, "that you're wrong. I didn't humiliate him. He humiliated himself. All I did was intervene before someone hurt him."

One of the brown belts opened his mouth, but another shut him up with an elbow in his ribs. Apparently students weren't supposed to express themselves in the presence of an instructor.

"Is that right?" the black belt sneered.

"I guess you think you're pretty tough. Is that right, Axbrewder?" He made my name sound like an obscenity.

"Do you?"

Sweat gathered against my ribs. Trying to be unobtrusive about it, I shifted so that I could keep an eye on the brown belts and their instructor at the same time.

"I'm sorry," I said in a neutral tone.

"I didn't catch your name." Then I stuck out my hand optimistically.

My challenger didn't take it. Instead he grimaced like he was going to spit.

"I'm one of Master Soon's senior black belts. That's all you need to know."

Two of the brown belts fumed at the ears. The rest just did their best to look fierce.

I smiled with all my teeth.

"Oh, I don't think so. I'm sure I'll want to mention you by name when I tell Master Soon how I was welcomed.

"I'll have to talk to him, you know," I explained amiably.

"Part of my job. I'm in charge of security for Martial America. Just in case" I unsheathed a threat of my own "anything happens to Nakahatchi sensei's collection of Wing Chun chops."

"That's bullshit," freckles retorted.

"Those chops are junk. We've got swords here worth more than any damn collection of printing blocks, and nobody ever hired security for us."

"I'm not so sure." Exercising my famous people-skills.

"Did you ever ask for security?"

At the same time I slipped my right hand under my jacket, ostensibly to scratch my ribs. Let him think I took him that lightly. But I left my hand inside my jacket.

"Nobody hired security for us," the black belt snapped back,