Where was I when I needed myself most? How had my intuitive instincts, my unconscious impulse to make patterns out of hints, become so conflicted? The back of my head already had all the information I needed. And yet I couldn't see the truth.

You will not be ready indeed until your pain has become separate from your anger.

I didn't trust myself enough to see it.

What the fuck are you doing?

Sternway had referred to Tae Kwon Do as a "toy." And he was Parker Neil Ps sensei. Yet Parker had informed me flatly, Any teacher who doesn't train his students to honor all the martial arts doesn't deserve to have students.

Ginny had found Bernie's flik and Hardshorn's loot in Mai Sternway's house.

Almost desperately I climbed into the shower and turned the volume up to "brain jelly," hoping that enough pressure and heat would blast the confusion out of my skull.

Eventually the heat started to sink in. Hot spray worked at my muscles like fingers. Steam baked the grime from my pores. And the muffled roar and splash of the water deafened me to my own clamor. Then at last I could think again.

Still dripping from the shower, I went back to the phone and dialed the number for Traditional Wing Chun.

A voice I didn't know answered. Having recovered a degree of cerebral function, I asked for T'ang Wen instead of Hong Fei-Tung.

When he finally came to the phone, I told him straight out, "Mr. T'ang, I'm worried about Sifu Hong. I think he might be in danger."

"Danger," Mr. Axbrewder? What manner of danger?" He sounded suspicious.

"Call it a hunch. I can't explain it. I wish I could." God, I wished I could.

"But ever since he went to look at the chops, my instincts have been trying to warn me about something.

"When I invited him the situation looked harmless. It still ought to be. But I can't afford to ignore my instincts. They're right too often. And they picked up some kind of threat."

I couldn't say things like that to Hong. His stature as a martial artist his "face" precluded them.

T'ang was silent for a moment. Then he pronounced, "You distrust Nakahatchi sensei."

"No," I retorted at once.

"That's not it." I was sure.

"But it has something to do with the chops."

On impulse or inspiration, I asked, "Did Sifu Hong tell you if he considers them authentic?"

"If you wish to speak of such matters," T'ang informed me severely, "you must address them to my master. It is not my place to share his thoughts."

That might've been a hint. Or another warning. But I couldn't challenge T'ang Wen about it.

"Face" again.

Cursing the exigencies of Oriental manners, I dropped the subject.

"All right. I respect that. But please tell Sifu Hong that I'm worried. Tell him" I was in no mood for restraint "I'm on my knees here, begging him to be particularly careful."

If something happened to him T'ang's tone softened.

"I will tell him, Mr. Axbrewder." Apparently I'd gotten his attention.

"And I will be careful for him. We will all do so."

Presumably he meant everyone at Traditional Wing Chun.

That was probably more reassurance than I had any right to expect, so I thanked him and got off the phone.

By then I'd stopped dripping. After checking the time to be sure that I wasn't late, I went into my bedroom and paralyzed myself wondering what I ought to wear.

My only suit was too rank to put on. And after today the jacket was worse. But I didn't have time to locate a one-hour cleaner, so I tossed the jacket and a sheet of fabric softener into the dryer and let it run while I tackled the Augean Labor of choosing a shirt and slacks.

Light blue with khaki? Khaki with dark blue? Civilization as we know it hung in the balance.

When I'd achieved a state of perfect silliness, I applied the Fuck-It Principle. Whatever happened between Deborah and me tonight didn't depend on my clothes. Or my assumptions. It rested squarely and solely on how clearly we saw each other. So fuck it.

On that basis, I got dressed, shaved, trimmed my fingernails, then strapped on my shoulder holster and clicked the .45 through its chambers. While the dryer finished groaning over my jacket, I unfolded my map of Garner on the kitchen table and figured out how to follow Deborah's directions to the restaurant.

When I retrieved my jacket it wasn't clean, but at least it didn't stink anymore. Shrugging my arms into it, I tucked my cell phone into one of the pockets and left the apartment.

As the sun retracted its fierceness toward evening, I saw a surprise in the distance. Dark clouds massive as thunder piled around the setting sun like storms ready to boil. If they kept coming, they'd block the light before long, shed premature night across the city. The air bore hints that I'd learned to identify in Puerta del Sol, suggestions of moisture and violence, a deluge of change. Back home clouds like that brought rain which flattened pedestrians, drowned headlights until you couldn't see to drive, ripped down tree limbs and TV antennae like rubble from the broken heavens. Grandfather storms, tireless and full of malice.

But maybe I was wrong. This was Garner, not Puerta del Sol. As far as I knew, they didn't have weather here. The city fathers didn't permit it.

Nevertheless the sight of those clouds tightened my nerves,

singing shrill harmonies across the neurons. Sensible people stayed home when they saw clouds like that, but I was aimed right into them.

As I wheeled the van away from the curb, I had the disturbed sensation that I was leaving the rest of my life behind that I was about to cross a threshold, an event horizon, which only allowed passage in one direction, and which would definitively alter all my landscapes. Or maybe Nakahatchi had already pushed me past the boundary, and I simply hadn't recognized the change until now.

This was terra incognita. The kind of terrain that scared me spit less

At the moment, it was the only kind that mattered.

Fortunately I'd allowed myself over an hour for what appeared on the map to be a forty-five minute drive. Before I was halfway to the restaurant, I hit preliminary spatters of rain. At first they smeared weeks or months of accumulated oils over the windshield, and I could hardly see. But that didn't last long. As the wipers rubbed the streaks away, the rain gathered force. Lashed from side to side by the wind, the soft drizzle thickened into a downpour. Within a couple of miles it'd become what Puerta del Sol called a "gully-washer," a rain so hard that it caused flash floods in arroyos which hadn't held streams for years. And then the rain turned torrential. It plunged out of the sky like cataracts from a shattered dam, releasing lakes of stored water as hard and fast as its weight and the wind could drive it.

Blackness and scourging rain shut off every vestige of evening. In fact, they nearly effaced Garner's unremitting electric illumination. I lost sight of each street lamp before I crept into reach of the next.

The traffic signals appeared in front of me as suddenly as enchantments. Half the time I only knew that I hadn't lost the road because I was following taillights. Garner's systemic commitment to artificial daylight was all that enabled me to make out the occasional street sign.

The roar of the storm cut out every other sound. I drove in a bubble of reality, a space of isolation created by the pitiless hammering of rain and wind on metal.

The possibility that Deborah might decide not to come at all under these conditions didn't cross my mind until I finally located the restaurant half an hour late.