The Golden Lily Page 0,73

to clarify, in case he also taught about dog breeding or riding the high seas. "I'm Sydney, this is Adrian. I called this morning?"

"Ah, right, right." He scratched his beard. "You got the money? Cash only." I produced one hundred and fifty dollars and handed it over. Out of habit, I nearly asked for a receipt, but then thought better of it. He stuffed the cash into the pocket of his shorts.

"Okay," he said. "You're in. Go ahead and wait in the garage until the others show up. The side door's unlocked." He gestured to a large, industrial looking building - twice the size of the house - over on the far side of the lot. Without waiting around to see if we'd comply, he slipped back inside to the barking dogs.

The garage's interior, I was relieved to see, was the first thing here that looked like it had some semblance of legitimacy. There were clean mats on the floor and mirrors on some of the walls. A TV and VHS player sat on a cart, along with some defense-related tapes covered in dust. Slightly more disconcerting was some of the decor, like a pair of nunchucks hanging on the wall.

"Don't touch those!" I warned, seeing Adrian head toward them. "That's not the kind of guy whose stuff you want to mess with."

Adrian stayed hands-off. "Do you think we'll get to learn to use these?"

"Weapons weren't in the class description. It's about basic self-defense and hand-tohand."

"Why bother then?" Adrian strolled over to a glass case displaying several types of brass knuckles. "That's the kind of stuff Castile does all day. He could have showed us."

"I wanted someone a little more approachable," I explained.

"What, like Captain McTropicalShorts back there? Where on earth did you find him anyway?"

"Just did an Internet search." Feeling a need to defend my research, I added, "He comes highly recommended."

"By who? Long John Silver?" Despite myself, I laughed.

Over the next half hour, the rest of our class trickled in. One was a woman who looked to be about seventy. Another was a mother who'd just had her fourth child and decided she needed to "learn to protect them." The last two women in the class were in their mid-twenties and wore T-shirts with angry girl-power catchphrases. Adrian and I were the youngest in the group. He was the only man, not counting our instructor, who asked that we simply refer to him as Wolfe.

I was beginning to get a bad feeling about all of this, particularly as class started. The six of us sat on the floor while Wolfe leaned against one of the mirrors and looked down upon us.

"If you're here," he began. "You probably want to learn to use those right away." He pointed at the nunchucks.

I caught sight of Adrian's face in the mirror. His expression said, Yes, that is exactly what I want to learn.

"Well, too bad," said Wolfe. "You aren't ever going to use them. Not in this class, anyway.

Oh, they've got their uses, believe me. Saved my ass more than once when I was out bowhunting in Alaska a few years ago. But if you pay attention to what I'm going to tell you, you won't ever need to pick those up, seeing as we don't have a rabid moose problem here in Palm Springs."

The new mom raised her hand. "You used nunchucks on a moose?" Wolfe got a haunted look in his eyes. "I used all sorts of things on that bastard. But that's neither here nor now. Because here's the thing. With a little common sense, you won't need weapons. Or fists. You."

To my shock, Wolfe pointed at me and fixed me with a steely, one-eyed stare.

"What did I tell you to do when you arrived?"

I gulped. "Give you cash, sir."

"And after that?"

"You told us to come wait out here."

He nodded in satisfaction, so apparently my answering of the obvious had gone well.

"We're two miles from any other houses and about a mile from the highway. You don't know me, and let's face it, this place looks like something from a serial killer film." Out of the corner of my eye, Adrian flashed me a triumphant look. "I sent you out into a remote building with hardly any windows. You went inside. Did you look around as you were walking over here?

Did you scan the surroundings in here before coming all the way inside? Did you check the exits?"

"I - "

"No, of course you didn't," he interrupted. "No one