Cold Fire

wait.”
    “No, no. Ask your questions. I won't stop at the top. I'm gonna see how much of the Empire State Building I can climb next.”
    “Ironheart was a student of yours.”
    “Yeah. Taught him myself.”
    “He came to you long before he won the lottery.”
    “Yeah. More than a year ago.”
    “May of last year, I think.”
    “Mighta been.”
    “Did he tell you why he wanted to learn Tae Kwon Do?”
    “Nope. But he had a passion.” He almost shouted his next words, as if he'd triumphantly completed a real climb: “Top of the monument!” He increased his pace instead of slacking off.
    “Did you think it was odd?”
    “Why?”
    “Him being a schoolteacher, I mean.”
    “We get schoolteachers. We get all kinds. Everyone wants to kick ass.” He sucked in a very deep breath, blew it out, and said, “In the Empire State now, going up.”
    “Was Ironheart good?”
    “Excellent! Coulda been a competitor.”
    “Could've been? You mean he dropped out?”
    Breathing a little harder than before, the words coming in a quicker though similar rhythm, he said: “Hung in there seven or eight months. Every day. He was a real glutton for punishment. Pumping iron and doing aerobics plus martial arts. Ate his way through the pain. Man was getting tough enough to fuck a rock. Sorry. But he was. Then he quit. Two weeks after he won the bucks.”
    “Ah, I see.”
    “Don't get me wrong. Wasn't the money that made him quit.”
    “Then what?”
    “He said I'd given him what he needed, he didn't want any more.”
    “What he needed?” she asked.
    “Enough Tae Kwon Do for what he wanted to do.”
    “Did he say what he wanted to do?”
    “Nope. Kick someone's ass, I guess.”
    Eddie was really pushing himself now, ramming his feet down on the StairMaster, pumping and pumping, so much sweat on his body that he appeared to be coated in oil, droplets spraying off his hair when he shook his head, the muscles in his arms and across his broad back bulging almost as fiercely as those in his thighs and calves.
    Sitting in the chair about eight feet from the man, Holly felt as if she were ringside at some sleazy strip club where the gender roles had been reversed. She got up.
    Eddie was staring straight ahead at the wall. His face was creased by lines of strain, but he had a dreamy, faraway look in his eyes. Maybe, instead of the wall, he saw the endless stairwell in the Empire State Building.
    “Anything else he ever told you that seemed … interesting, unusual?” she asked.
    Eddie didn't answer. He was concentrating on the climb. The arteries in his neck had swelled and were throbbing as if evenly spaced, small, fat fish were schooling through his bloodstream.
    As Holly reached the door, Eddie said, “Three things.”
    She turned to him again. “Yeah?”
    Without looking at her, his eyes still out of focus, not for an instant slackening his pace, speaking to her from the stairwell of that skyscraper in distant Manhattan, he said, “Ironheart's the only guy I ever met who can obsess better than I can.”
    Frowning, Holly thought about that. “What else?”
    “The only lessons he missed were two weeks in September. Went up north, Marin County somewhere, to take a course in aggressive driving.”
    “What's that?”
    “Mostly they teach chauffeurs for politicians, diplomats, rich businessmen how to handle a car like James Bond, escape terrorist traps, kidnappers, shit like that.”
    “He talk about why he needed that kind of training?”
    “Just said it sounded like fun.”
    “That's two things.”
    He shook his head. Sweat flew, spattered the surrounding carpet and furniture. Holly was just out of range. He still didn't look at her. “Number three—after he figured he had enough Tae Kwon Do, the next thing he wanted was to learn guns.”
    “Learn guns?”
    “Asked me if I knew anyone could teach him marksmanship, all about weapons. Revolver, pistols, rifles, shotguns …”
    “Who'd you send him to?”
    He was panting now but still able to speak clearly between each gasping breath: “Nobody. Guns aren't my thing. But you know what I think? I think he was one of these guys reads Soldier of Fortune. Gets caught up in the fantasy. Wants to be a mercenary. He sure was preparing for a war.”
    “Didn't it worry you to be helping someone like that?”
    “Not as long as he paid for his lessons.”
    She opened the door, hesitated, watching him. “You have a counter on that contraption?”
    “Yeah.”
    “What