Dog food? I wanted to laugh out loud. Dog food? Re was deluding himself. So far, I hadn't seen anyone here who struck me as a spice mill, never mind an actual meat grinder.

Nevertheless something about the idea must've appealed to me. I was in a better mood as I headed back to the tournament.

Seven.

By midafternoon the tournament was heating up in more ways than one.

More spectators had arrived. More rings were in use. And they all put out more energy. The adults and teenagers who competed in team sparring showed a real passion for attempting to thump on each other.

Sometimes the passion looked like eagerness. The rest of the time, it was plain fear, the kind that makes you overreact because you're trying so hard to pretend you aren't scared.

On top of that, the AC had to work harder, and it was losing ground.

Sweat gathered at the base of my spine, and my shirt began to smell like a salad going bad.

And on top of that, my nerves still hadn't made the adjustment. I couldn't tune myself to the hall. Watching cost me too much effort.

Details distracted me. And all that yelling and pounding tightened the muscles on my scalp until my head ached.

Mostly I kept to the dais. Its elevation enabled me to pick up a general idea of how the IAMA ran team sparring.

Apparently there were eight divisions brown belt, black belt, advanced, and something called "soft style," all for men, with the same again for women. The silk pajamas had soft style to themselves. The other three divisions wore canvas, most of it white. The exceptions stood out like stains on damask.

As far as I could tell, the silk pajamas fought with no more or less effectiveness than anyone else. But their approach was definitely more flamboyant, with more elaborate stances, bigger arm movements, more spins. Maybe it was supposed to intimidate people.

Teams of four competed head-to-head, one member at a time. They flailed and kicked and yelled like it all meant something. The action didn't stop as often as it did in individual kumite. The losers were eliminated, and the winners advanced. Apparently fighters "won" by accumulating points for punches or kicks that satisfied the refs.

Breaking the rules produced penalties. Groins and knees were off-limits. Hitting too hard whatever that meant and ignoring a ref were definite no-nos. Cumulative points for each team determined the victors.

None of it made sense to me. With all the gear they wore, the contestants might've survived a charging rhino, so how could anyone hit them too hard? But of course I didn't need it to make sense. I just needed to know how the game was played.

The refs issued a lot of warnings. What I saw on the fighters' faces resembled frenzy, the same wildness you see in a horse's eyes right before they take it out and shoot it. Several of them kept attacking after the ref called them apart.

Presumably that was normal for a karate tournament, anyway. And it wasn't my problem. Ned Gage was the director of referees. If things got out of hand, he could deal with it. Nevertheless the intensity pouring from the rings felt like trouble to me. Without thinking about it, I left the dais to get closer to the action.

After scanning three or four contests from the sidelines, I found the one that bothered me the most.

This match was men's brown belt, and it pitted white against screaming scarlet. At the moment, a gangling teenager in white fought a young man who outsized him by two inches and fifty pounds. The white canvas carried a couple of patches, one the ubiquitous IAMA insignia, the other too small to read. But I couldn't miss his opponent's label. Big yellow letters arcing across the scarlet said, "Nelson Brick's Killer Karate."

Noise inundated all the rings as spectators and teams hollered in every direction, but here it sounded raw and bloodthirsty, like there was something personal at stake. Maybe when the ref declared a winner the losers would be put to death.

Right away I saw why this contest bothered me. The clown in scarlet strutted and thumbed his nose, taunting the hell out of his opponent.

Whenever they engaged he said something. I couldn't make out the words, but he was obviously sneering.

The kid grew more and more frantic with every attack. Anger and frustration cramped his punches, and most of his kicks went wild. Every time his opponent scored on him, his face turned a more desperate shade.

The audience loved it.

If I had been the ref, I would've disqualified them both. Sent them home to grow up. But no one here agreed with me. The Brick team encouraged their fighter by jeering at his opponent. The kid's supporters shouted, "Hit him! Hurt him!" Meanwhile the ref called points but not breaks, and ignored everything else.

It ate at my nerves. I resisted an impulse to charge into the ring, sort out the problem myself. But I stayed ready, just in case.

A minute later, the match ended. Killer Karate won by a landslide, thanks mostly to this round. The scarlet pajamas congratulated each other like they'd just won the Battle of Britain. In contrast, none of the white pajamas consoled or commiserated with their thrashed teammate. Instead they seemed to turn their backs on him, like he'd shamed them somehow.

I figured I knew exactly what was going to happen next.

Radiating ego and humiliation, the teams moved away from the ring. Now I could see the second patch on the white pajamas. Tae Kivon Do Academy. Master Song Duk Soon's school.

Swaggering with triumph, the clown in scarlet headed for his gear bag, apparently unaware that the kid he'd just crushed was right behind him.

Shame twisted the kid's features like nausea. When his opponent bent to his bag, the kid aimed an elbow at his kidneys, jumping into the blow to get all his weight behind it.

That made it easy for me to catch him by the back of his pajamas and jerk him away before his elbow landed.

"Stop it!" I barked into his face, doing my best drill-instructor imitation. I wanted to break into his dismay fast.

"You're out of line!"

Before I could go on, the young Killer sprang up and spun toward me.

Yelling even louder than I did, he wheeled a kick at the kid's head.

With me holding him, the kid couldn't protect himself. I heaved him back, turned to cover him with my right shoulder.

When the kick hit me, I staggered, and my arm went into shock. For half a second or so, astonishment paralyzed me. I would've sworn that was just a kick, pure stunt work, all show, but somehow he'd managed to catch me with a baseball bat instead.

Then my brain turned red, and the next thing they knew both punks hit the floor, Killer scarlet on the bottom, flushed kid next, with me on top, using one knee to hold both of them down.

"I'm going to say it again." Under the circumstances, I thought I sounded remarkably calm.

"You're out of line. Both of you. If you want to brawl, take it outside. And I mean all the way. Off the hotel grounds.

"Are you children listening to me?"

Let them tear each other apart somewhere public. The cops could sort them out.

A crowd had already gathered. No one under me answered, so I leaned down harder.

"I said, are you lis?" Suddenly I caught a peripheral flash of scarlet, and a blow hit my sternum hard enough to drive me off the pile. Pain tugged across my abdomen, tracing the line of Estobal's bullet. I barely caught my balance as my attacker advanced, ready to club me again.

"No, you listen, bub! This is none of your damn business! That twerp tried to hit my guy in the back. He was just defending himself!"

The man had a face like permanent apoplexy, complete with bulging eyes and an assertive mustache you could've used to sweep out the hall. He may've been six inches shorter than me, but he outweighed me easily.

Every bit of him seemed to swell inside his pajamas. I thought the canvas might tear.

Across all that scarlet he wore a crisp black belt. Yellow letters over his heart identified him as Nelson Brick.

My chest felt numb, and I feared he'd torn open my guts. I wanted the .45 so badly that my good hand ached for it.

Maybe he'd back down if I spit blood at him.

Behind him, the fighters scrambled to their feet.

"That's right!" Brick's student yelled.