Katsuro stomped through the hole in the wall, his broad shoulders opening it wider; more plaster fell to the carpet. Milton braced as Katsuro came at him once again.

104

The room next door was identical to the one that they had just been inside, apart from the fifty-something businessman in bed with a much younger woman. It was dark, the blinds drawn and the room lit by a flickering candle on the bureau. Clothes had been strewn across the floor and there was a bottle of rum and two glasses.

Milton scrambled to his hands and knees, but was too slow to evade Katsuro as he grabbed the back of Milton’s shirt with one hand and his belt with the other, lifting him off the floor and driving him, like a battering ram, into the opposite wall. Milton fired his elbow backwards, the bone deflecting off Katsuro’s rock-hard abdominals, and then, as the Japanese locked both hands around Milton’s head and squeezed, his fingers reaching for his eyes, Milton butted him and then pushed with his feet. Both men crashed through a half-open door and into the small bathroom. The back of Katsuro’s head cracked against the wall, but the impact didn’t even daze him. There was a smaller vanity mirror on a reticulated arm that was fixed to the wall; Milton yanked it from its mount and smashed it into Katsuro’s face. The bigger man jerked away just enough that it struck only a glancing blow. He hit Milton with a left to the ribs and then a right to the side of the head, then fixed him in a headlock and leaned back and suplexed him, the momentum turning Milton upside down and sending him through the thin partition wall and back into the bedroom.

The man and woman were still in bed, frozen by the spectacle. Milton scrambled up, reached for one of the rum glasses, and flung it at Katsuro. He swiped it away with one meaty paw, the alcohol splashing over him, and closed in. Katsuro swung lefts and rights, big punches that would have fractured bone had they landed, but Milton was just fast enough to duck and swerve out of the way. He retaliated with his own strikes, hooking right and left into the bigger man’s ribs, but the blows had no effect, and Katsuro, as if angered by Milton’s resilience, picked up his foot and kicked out with it, his boot landing square in Milton’s sternum and impelling him back onto the bed. He fell back onto the legs of the pair and rolled off again, landing on his shoulders and corkscrewing to get his legs back underneath him.