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Japanese call shop. The dojo was bright and airy, with a good, hardwood floor and tasteful decorations. Of course, in a real dojo there are no decorations, but this was America. I had seen worse a lot of people fill their schools with all kinds of Asian schlock and they end up looking like bad Chinese restaurants.
    He watched me as I took a look around. "Pretty nice, huh?"
    I had to admit that Bobby (or his interior designer) had done a good job. It was impressive. "Looks like you've got it all figured out," I commented
    He grinned again, "you bet. And, as a perk, I get to work out here."
    "You still train?" I asked. What with all the diversification.
    "I try to keep my hand in," he said with the false-modest smirky kind of reply people use in the martial arts when they want you to understand that they are good. "I'm training with this guy now; he's incredible."
    Bobby glanced at his watch. Was that alligator for the band? "As a matter of fact, it's about time for my workout. Would you care to watch?"
    And on cue, Mitch Reilly walked in to the dojo.
    In street clothes he looked almost normal, although the tight polo shirt stretched across his torso gave the impression that this was a man who spent a great deal of time lifting weights and looking at himself in the mirror. He probably got along pretty well with Bobby's receptionist. Reilly came up short when he saw us and glared at me for a minute.
    "Mitch," I said, just to annoy him.
    He looked at Akkadian. "What's going on here, Bobby?"
    Bobby Kay did not get where he is by being dense. He looked at me, then at Mitch, and realized that what he had here were two unstable elements in very close proximity. He moved in so he was at least partly between us. "Professor Burke is doing some consulting for the gallery. I didn't realize you knew each other."
    "It's a brief acquaintance," I noted.
    Mitch muttered something under his breath. It sounded like "asshole."
    Bobby didn't pick that up. "I had just invited him to watch our workout."
    Reilly bristled. "I don't like outsiders watching me train, Bobby." Akkadian looked a bit put out.
    I jumped in. "It's OK, Mr. Akkadian. Maybe some other time." I held up the file he gave me. "I'll get to work." For a minute, I had the urge to tell him to get someone else for his trainer. But, hey, he was hiring me to do some writing, not to manage his business affairs.
    As I walked out, Bobby Kay looked a bit disappointed. But I figured he wasn't half as disappointed as he would have been if I told him the last time I saw Mitch Reilly, Yamashita had knocked him out and Mitch had wet his pants.

FOUR
Trails
    Owl's Head Park is in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and looks out over the Narrows leading into New "fork Harbor. It's one of the few parts of the borough left where you can still see how hilly it was before all that building effectively erased any of the land's texture. Every morning I run up the hill in Owl's Head, down the other side, and onto the pedestrian walk that borders the choppy gray water that churns between Brooklyn and Staten Island. It was almost summer, and I was praying for an offshore breeze. They built a sewage treatment plant right near the park in a fit of excellent urban planning and now it pretty much smells like you think it would. It helps when the breeze blows in from the ocean.
    Yamashita's a big believer in running. He thinks it aids the cardiovascular fitness of his advanced students, and he's right. Once you get to a certain level in martial arts training, the physical effort sort of peaks out and technique takes over. What makes a novice collapse in a sweaty heap, gasping for breath, does not have the same effect on you. But Yamashita insists that we stay fit, which means some sort of cross-training.
    One of his favorite stones is the one about the American who goes over to Okinawa to live out a life-long dream of training with this karate master. The guy gets there for his first day of training and the master asks him,