Crab Rangoon (1)

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I was leading exercises at Fat Sam's Tiki Dojo when Moogy ran in. He was breathless and looked worried. Our eyes met across the room full of students, practicing punches and kicks in their floral-patterned gis with the masks of our tribal ancestors looking down upon us. I tapped a senior student on the shoulder to direct him to continue instruction, then crossed to the front where Moogy was. From his overstuffed papa-san in his raised alcove, Fat Sam puffed on his pipe and watched me inscrutably.

Despite his windedness, Moogy managed a proper salute and bow. "Jumping Spider," he gasped, "it's Hibiscus Sue! She's at the South Pacific Empress – and she's in trouble!"

I grabbed Moogy by the arms and shook him. "What do you mean?" I demanded. Hibiscus Sue and I had, well, a special relationship. She wasn't my girl, exactly, but I think she wanted to be. I just hadn't gotten the courage up to ask her yet. I may be the baddest street koa in all of Tikitown, but when it comes to girls, I'm downright shy.

"It's Cargo Phil!" said the exhausted Moogy. "He wanted Hibiscus Sue to dance for him, and he wasn't taking no for an answer! Some goons dragged her back into the private area at the South Pacific Empress – I saw it with my own eyes!"

I let go of Moogy, who chafed his arms. Cargo Phil was a bad man who made his living running dirty contraband into and out of Tikitown. You couldn't get a trained monkey or pufferfish venom unless Cargo Phil had put his hands on it. I'd had trouble with Cargo Phil and his hired gorillas before, but this time he had gone too far.

"Just a moment," croaked Fat Sam, waddling out of his alcove. All the students stopped their exercises and dropped to the mat, prostrate; even I saluted and bowed. Fat Sam put a hand on my shoulder.

"Favorite student," he said tenderly, "I sense you are needed elsewhere. The ancestors must give you strength. Drink this." He handed me a ruby-red Mai Tai.

"It will give you… special powers," Fat Sam observed shrewdly.


I emptied the highball glass and felt the supernatural power of the Mai Tai course through my veins. Fat Sam waggled a finger sternly.

"Eat the pineapple spear too," he insisted. "To honor the ancestors!"

"Yes, Ali-I," I said, and complied. The drink was delicious. 'Mai Tai' means 'very good', but also 'out of this world', and I could feel my body gain the inhuman strength upon which the Tiki school of martial arts was founded. Moogy saluted.

"I beg you," he said, "tell me how I can help."

"Not this time, Moogy," I said. "This time I've got to go it alone." The South Pacific Empress was a Tiki nightclub – a fancy one, but with a bad reputation for things that went on in its back rooms and cellars. It was even rumored that Cargo Phil was training his own cadre of Tiki-schooled fighters, trained in forbidden arts of warfare and drink-crafting. Who knew what sinister threats might await me in that palm-fronded den of iniquity?

I ran from the dojo and out into the street that fronted the canal. Out in the middle of the waterway was a taxi, a long proa steered by an oarsman in checkered yellow, and it was unengaged. I waved frantically, and the taxi-man saw me, but he shrugged helplessly to indicate he was too far away, caught in the current and couldn't get over.

I scaled the side of Fat Sam's Tiki Dojo and got up on the roof, stepping gingerly around the banana-leaf shingling. With six long strides I reached the edge of the building and launched myself out over the canal. I flew out over the water, describing a long arc impossible for men not fueled by ancestral power and rum, and landed splay-footed in the bow of the proa. The front of the boat dipped dangerously low into the water (heaving the back upwards, and almost toppling the oarsman overboard), but it rose up again unswamped.

"Hey!" shouted the taxi-man. "What's the big idea?"

"Sorry, aikane," I said. "But I need to get uptown as quick as possible. South Pacific Empress, and pull hard!"

"I'm not your aikane," grumbled the taxi-man, but he redoubled his paddling efforts.

The tall buildings of Tikitown crowded around us. I craned my neck to try to see the tops of the bamboo structures, topped with torches and decorated with vines. Businessmen milled on both sides of the canal, coming and going on their daily errands, most of them wearing the same uniform – a gaily colored floral pattern shirt, slacks and coat, fedora, and narrow black tie. People came down from their lanais to buy pot-stickers and drink Sumatra Kulas from roadside carts and vendor-canoes. Police officers wearing pith helmets and khaki shorts directed traffic. Street toughs did fire dance battles to the clamor of boom-boxes. It was a busy, lively day in the big city – but I had eyes for none of it. My Hibiscus Sue was in a bad man's hands.

The taxi pulled up on the waterfront of the high-class district. I threw the taxi-man a string of shell coins and sprinted to the South Pacific Empress. It was an imposing structure, all colonial arches and imposing gables, strewn all around with cargo netting and wooden casks in bas-relief. The enormous paddle wheels mounted on both sides of the building were surely just for show, but the two sturdy koas flanking the doors with their shark-tooth spears clearly were all business.

I approached the doors, but one of the bouncers put a thick hand on my chest. "No way," said his partner. "Private party."

A person just inside the doors of the South Pacific Empress might have heard a little noise at that point, if they could hear it over the sounds of the club. They might, if they concentrated, make out the sounds of a series of short, sharp blows; splintering wood; the snapping of spear hafts. They could possibly hear some shouts, of increasingly high pitch and hoarse timbre. And it is just possible that they might perceive a voice saying "…oh no.. oh NO!" But to do so they would have to have their ears pressed up against the doors, and that would mean that they would be bowled over as the doors exploded inwards, with two net-shrouded heavies landing heavily and lying motionless on the woven-grass mat.

The festive sounds of the South Pacific Empress went deadly silent as I strode in confidently. The big brass band stopped playing on the island floating in the middle of the club pool; the flaming brands on the ends of the trombone slides sagged to the floor. Fifty well-to-do clients in floral-printed finery and expensive wrap-around skirts turned to stare at the intruder. Up on the stage, four hula girls paused in the middle of a suggestive gyration and stared, open-mouthed. Even the traditional beer-fetching monkey behind the bar stopped keening.

I scanned the room. There, up on the second-floor balcony, I saw them – Cargo Phil, with his loosely woven broad-brimmed hat and his dashing khaki jacket, glaring down in pure fury; and Hibiscus Sue, under Cargo Phil's arm but shrinking away from him with every ounce of her being. I met the eyes of the girl who wasn't quite yet my girl, and something passed between us. I don't know what it was, but it felt powerful, and when it was done, Hibiscus Sue flashed a little smile.

Cargo Phil's finger jabbed downwards. "KILL HIM!" he thundered.

The club exploded into activity. Fancy ladies screamed and bolted for the door, trampling each other on their way out. A waiter threw a huge platter of roast pig at me; I blocked it with a kick. The hula girls slinked through a curtain behind the stage, likely already knowing how to effect a quick escape from police raids. At least one musician dived into the pool and swam for the side in his haste to escape.

But, also, Cargo Phil's goons closed in on me. Cargo Phil had a lot of goons – some dressed in the fedoraed finery of sophisticated toughs; some wearing the feathered skirt uniform of restaurant service personnel. Phil himself watched eagerly from on high, his eyes glittering.

I turned in a careful, crouching circle, surrounded entirely by the thugs of the South Pacific Empress. I adopted the Kanaloa's Tentacles stance, ready to lash out with any limb. The goons shuffled in fighting stances, none quite ready to make the first move.

Then a bottle dropped and shattered, and the bar monkey screeched. Everybody moved at once.

Two of the dandies pulled gats. I scooped the scattered pig-platter off the ground and used it to deflect the first thug's bullet into the gut of the second. Then I threw the platter at the face of the first guy. I didn't have time to see what effect that had, but no more bullets were fired, so I assumed that was good news.

I blocked two punches of beefy thugs, kicked one in the groin and vaulted over his back, and kicked the base of a tiki torch. It snapped and fell, setting fire to another goon's grass skirt, and he began to howl and roll on the ground. Another wave of thugs closed over me.

I switched to Hine style, dropping to the ground and fighting from down low where they couldn't reach me effectively. When a goon raised a foot to stomp me, I kicked his other leg out from under him. I aimed kicks and punches at crotches and guts and the sides of knees. Quite a number of Cargo Phil's hired hands dropped to the ground next to me, faces contorted in anguish and pain. Then an enormous hand reached down and scooped me up.

The koa who had me in his huge mitt had to be eight feet tall, fat all over but with powerful muscles underneath. I kicked and punched him a number of times, as best as I could attack a giant holding me by the neck at arm's length, but none of it seemed to register. The huge goon grinned and carried me over to the bar. He slammed me down against the hard surface and began to choke my life out.

I struggled, but he was too strong for me to get myself loose. I began to see black spots around the edges of my vision. Then I looked over and saw the bar-monkey cowering near the cash register.

I put one hand flat on the bar, and then groped on the bar top with the other hand until I found the little bell. My hand trembling, I picked up the bell and rang it. The monkey, well-trained, skipped to the fridge, got out a beer, and put it into my free hand.

I dashed the beer over the giant's head. It smashed, and sudsy brew got into his eyes. He roared, and suddenly the pressure on my neck was released. I gasped for a moment, side-kicked the two ordinary thugs who ran to restrain me, and then faced the enormous goon once again.

He brought his ham-like fists down in an overhead motion. I ducked out of the way, and his blow merely smashed in the bartop. The monkey ran screaming into the high timbers of the room and perched there, scolding everybody. Then the giant was chasing me through the room. We played a little game where I kicked and threw chairs at him, and he blocked them or allowed them to bounce off his body with no apparent effect. Then we found ourselves directly under the main entryway, with an enormous stuffed swordfish hanging high overhead. I pulled a boomerang off the wall and chucked it at my opponent. He ducked it easily and grinned – but it whipped around and up, severed the cords on the swordfish, and it dropped to skewer the big man on its sharp spine. I put the roast pig's apple in his mouth, then looked up to the balcony again. Alarmed, Cargo Phil recoiled.

I made for the balustraded stairs that led to the second level, but another wave of goons was coming down it; these were armed with clubs. I turned to go the other way, but another swarm of Cargo Phil's men came out of the kitchen. Faced with no choice, I leaped up on a table and vaulted over the pool to the floating island recently deserted by its band. The big kettle drums made a downwards arpeggio as I stair-stepped up them and leaped, catching the bottom of the second floor's railing. As I pulled myself upwards, I heard Cargo Phil withdraw, dragging a struggling Hibiscus Sue with him.

I gained my feet and pursued, but I found my way blocked by a sinister, shuffling figure. I kicked him in the head, but he didn't fall down; he lashed out at me with the joints of his arms oddly locked, and though his technique was odd, his speed was so great that he nearly took my head off. More of these new creatures lurched out of the shadows, and I realized what I was dealing with. Cargo Phil was indeed using forbidden Tiki techniques, for these were men who had drunk Zombies – sinister concoctions that allowed a man to fight as if he were one of the dead.

I yanked the rug out from under two of them, then drove a third back with a series of punches. He bounced off the wall and came back for more. I leaped up to grab a ceiling fan and kicked a circle of Zombies in the faces as the fan spun me around, but this only stymied them for a short while. Of course throwing one over the railing was super effective, but then the rest were on me.

I struggled loose from the pack and found myself pressed against a wall. The slavering, unblinking Zombie-drinkers converged on me. In desperation I snatched a torchiere off the wall and brandished it. Cargo Phil's minions recoiled. Of course – the dead fear fire. I fanned it at them, and they tripped over themselves retreating from my firebrand.

I edged along the wall towards the doors through which Cargo Phil and Hibiscus Sue had retreated. I was about to open them when the entire building lurched, and an awful tearing and crashing sound came from through the portals. I threw them open, and a draught of outside air blew out my torch.

An entire section of the South Pacific Empress's roof had been torn away. Hanging in the air, tantalizingly close yet ever so far away, was a wicker basket suspended below a lumpy, bulging hot-air balloon. Cargo Phil was working the burner and was soaring up and away, taking the terrified Hibiscus Sue away from me. Grinning, the villain shook his fist at me.

"You think you've won?" he sneered. "You've won nothing! She's mine, Jumping Spider; all mine! And no amount of Tiki Fighting Technique will change that!" His baying laughter made tragic counterpoint to Hibiscus Sue's ragged weeping.

The wind caught my hair and sleeves as the balloon drifted away. I knew this was not over. I would find my Hibiscus Sue – the girl I should have given my heart to, but never had the courage – and save her from Cargo Phil, even if I had to tear the world apart island by island to do it.

The bar monkey climbed up my leg. It had a beer in its hand, and it gave it to me even though I had no bell. It was still cold. I opened it and drank deeply; my Mai Tai had worn off. And there was still so much work to do.