Giri (31 page)

Get out. That’s all there was to it. He had money. Seventy-five, plus another twenty or so in the bank. Almost one hundred thousand. And his copy of the pigeon list. He could turn that into millions, enough for him and Romaine to live comfortably for the rest of their lives.

Money would bring Romaine around. He knew it. She was the only woman he felt at ease with. He’d learned his lesson when she had walked out. All he needed was one more chance with her, just one. Let her see how well he could take care of her. Then she’d give it another shot.

Right now he was going to an Eighth Avenue bar, have a few drinks and think about how he was going to handle this Robbie situation. After Quarrels, he never again wanted to look into the face of a friend who was about to die.

In a bar on Eighth Avenue and Forty-ninth Street, he sat among faceless men in overcoats and dark hats, drinking scotch and swearing to himself that his past would never be his future. Take the money and run. Take Romaine with him and disappear into the sun.

He stayed in the bar for a long time, because the last thing he wanted was to go home and dream of the men he had just killed.

I
N AMSTERDAM’S RIJKSMUSEUM, MICHI
showed no sign that she knew she was being followed. She tagged behind a small group of tourists moving from one Rembrandt painting to another and when they stopped in front of
Night Watch
she stopped, too.

She looked at her guide book, then back at the painting. Minutes later she detached herself from the group and left the room, deliberately walking toward the man who had followed her from the Okura Hotel. He appeared to be deeply engrossed in Rembrandt’s
Jewish Bride.
But his feigned concentration was too forced, an obvious performance. Michi neither slowed down nor acknowledged him in any way.

She left the museum. Outside, a cold wind made her cover the lower half of her face with a black scarf and draw her white fur tighter. It was Sunday and Amsterdam was quiet. She stood and looked around. No major traffic today.

Michi began walking. She welcomed the exercise and a chance to get away from the hard bargaining involved in diamond dealing. She passed tree-lined canals, the homes of Rembrandt and Anne Frank and walked along quiet side streets of narrow buildings and elegant mansions. She never once looked behind her.

When she came to the Albert Cuyp market she stopped and made her way through the rows of stalls selling antiques, old jewelry, wooden shoes and diamonds, finally stopping at a fish merchant’s stall, where she ordered a plate of raw herring. As she ate the tender and tasty fish she casually glanced to her left. He was there among the crowds, a round-faced man in a dark green anorak, tinted square-shaped glasses and a hearing aid. He stood in front of an Indonesian food stall, hands outstretched and waiting for a dish of coconut and fried bananas. He gave the stall owner two guilders, pocketed the change, then, holding the dish to his face, began shoveling the fruit into his wide mouth.

Michi turned her back to him, threw the unfinished herring in a nearby cardboard box overflowing with trash and shouldered her way through the market crowds. She had also been followed during her two days in London. Before leaving her London hotel room one morning, she had deliberately placed a diamond on the floor near the door. While attractive, the stone was flawed. But to the untrained eye it appeared to be a valuable stone. She left the Do Not Disturb sign on the door.

On her return the room seemed untouched. Bed unmade, newspapers deliberately strewn over chairs and couch, towels on the bathroom floor, a tray of half-eaten food near the television set. Everything as she had left it. The diamond, however, was gone. Had the intruders not been greedy she might never have noticed they were there.

Since her run-in with the two American youths at the Long Island arena, Michi realized she had to be more careful. She must do nothing further to call attention to herself, nothing more to alert the men she had come to America to kill. Luckily, there had been nothing in the London hotel room that might have betrayed her. Fifteen thousand dollars in cash was in the hotel safe, along with a sealed envelope containing three passports, each issued under a different name.

After killing Paul Molise and his chauffeur she had hidden the
kai-ken
and certain papers, so anyone breaking into her New York apartment would find nothing that would reveal her real identity or true purpose in coming to America.

But she obviously had made a mistake at some point. How else to explain the search of her room, the man following her in Amsterdam? Why had those stupid American boys entered the ladies’ room? But maybe it wasn’t that; maybe something else had given her away. A word, perhaps. Or had she been recognized by someone?

When she returned to America she would tell Manny the truth. They loved each other, but she knew that love would find no peace until she had done her duty to her family. Michi had sworn to kill men involved in Manny’s investigation. Was his love for her strong enough to make him understand why?

Leaving the market she headed back to her hotel on foot. But instead of going back to the hotel she stopped two blocks away at a small cafe, where she ordered a glass of Genever Dutch gin flavored with orange. From her table she could see the front door. No sign of the man in the dark green anorak. Which did not mean he had stopped following her.

Michi asked for the telephone and was directed downstairs. Here she took an address book and a handful of coins from her shoulder bag. After positioning herself to see the stairs, she dialed. For a long time the telephone rang at the other end and she was almost ready to hang up, when—

“Hello?”

“Manny, is that you?”

The voice, at first guarded, now relaxed. “Michi. Where are you calling from?”

“Amsterdam. How are you?”

“Fine. Just fine. I miss you. When are you coming back?”

“I still have business here, then I have to go on to Paris. Are you sure everything’s all right? You sound tense.”

He laughed. “I’m always that way whenever someone calls me this early in the morning, especially at the dojo. I like my workouts to stay private. But you can call me here anytime.”

She smiled. “Thank you. I just wanted to say that when I get back you and I will talk. I will tell you everything. Everything. Do you understand?”

His voice was gentle. “Whatever you want me to know, that will be enough.”

“I think I can trust you now.”

“You mean because I haven’t ripped off your apartment?”

“I just know, that’s all. Tell me something: why are you in the dojo so early on a Sunday? I had a feeling you might be there, but it does seem strange that you would work out so early.”

“Not so strange if you knew what was happening. We had two murders here yesterday. Couple lawyers. The guy I work for on the task force is pretty angry about it. He’s dragging us downtown on Sunday for a nine o’clock meeting. We think we know who did it. Somebody you and I both know. Dorian Raymond.”

The smile faded from Michi’s face. “Will you arrest him?”

“No hard evidence. Just a theory. It’s his kind of handiwork. Twenty-two caliber. Head shots. And he knew the victims. I think we’ll probably bring him in for questioning and see if we can scare him into admitting something. The problem is, if he did it, he did it to keep them from testifying against Management Systems Consultants, Sparrowhawk and the Molise family. There went our only two sources of information. Smart thing now is to talk Dorian into testifying against these people. Make some kind of deal with him if we can. That’s what today’s meeting is all about.”

Michi said, “So he will be in jail soon?”

“Who knows? Depends on whether or not we can shake him up. Throwing him in prison won’t give us the people the task force wants. But we’ll sure as hell try. Look, why are we talking about my damn job? Finish buying all those diamonds and get on back here.”

She became flirtatious. “You mean the warrior is committed to something besides karate?”

“Come on back and I’ll show you.”

“There is so much I have to say to you.”

“Do I get the feeling that this time you’re going to tell me the whole story?”

She closed her eyes. “
Hai.
I will tell you what happened during the years we were apart. I will tell you what really happened to my family and why I came to America. Please do not let anything change between us. Promise me you won’t.”

“I promise. I think it will bring us closer, at least I hope so. Look, let’s give it a try. Let’s not let another six years go by without trying. I wish you were coming back on the next plane.”

No sooner were the words out of his mouth when the idea flashed into her mind.
Hai.
Take the next plane to New York. And kill Dorian Raymond.

It would be dangerous. She would have to evade the man following her, then fly to New York and without being discovered by Manny or anyone else kill Dorian Raymond, then return to Europe. To do this would take all of her training, all of her cunning, all of her concentration. And all of the blessings from the gods and her ancestors.

“The next plane,” she whispered.

“Don’t I wish,” Manny said.

She broke out of her reverie. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For loving me. I cling to that. It is all I have. Love me, Manny.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Please love me.”

She hung up abruptly.

Thirty-five hundred miles away, Manny yelled, “I love you! I love you! I love you!”

He paused. “Michi? Michi? Hello? Hello?”

The sound of her name echoed throughout the empty dojo and there was only the long figure of Decker, the phone pressed to his ear and the red sun of a new dawn crossing the polished wooden floor to reach out for his sweat-stained body.

Twelve hours after speaking to Michi, Decker pressed the downstairs buzzer in Romaine’s apartment building and waited to be buzzed inside. Romaine lived in a West Eighty-fourth Street brownstone, near Riverside Drive and within walking distance of the boat basin on the Henry Hudson River.

Romaine buzzed him in. He wasn’t looking forward to seeing her, but he had no choice. LeClair was in a shitty mood, thanks to Pangalos and Livingston Quarrels being blown away. Even his staff wanted nothing to do with him. The double slaying had seriously damaged any case he had against MSC. Two dead mob lawyers had slowed down Charles LeClair’s march to glory, and he did not take it lightly. Since the discovery of the bodies LeClair hadn’t got off the phone with the Justice Department. And the press was having a field day with “The West Side Murders.” Oddly enough, MSC’s name had not been mentioned.

Dorian Raymond, however, had no such luck. At least not in LeClair’s office.

“Bet your ass it was Dorian who did the hit,” LeClair said. “Who the hell else could it be?”

Decker shrugged. “Wish I knew.”

“Yeah, well I wish you knew, too. Tell you this for sure: you had better drop everything, and I mean everything, until we straighten this one out, until we can get some kind of handle on it that I can pass on to the Justice Department. From now on you stick to Dorian’s wife. Don’t even let me hear ’bout your eyes wandering elsewhere, you dig? I want to know where Dorian was last night. For that matter, where were you?”

“Hey, look, you blaming me for those two guys getting burned? Come on.”

LeClair, in disgust, threw a pencil over his shoulder. “Words between you and me don’t cut it no more. Hand me something, Mr. Manfred. Hand me something this time tomorrow.”

He didn’t bother to say
or else.
He didn’t have to.

LeClair said, “So forget that Japanese lady. Because if I decide you ain’t on the team, then, Jack, it’s down to the short strokes and I start playing hardball and I don’t stop until one of us is lying facedown in the dirt. And, as you might have guessed, I don’t plan on being the one. MSC ain’t gonna beat me. And I ain’t about to lose that assistant attorney general’s job.”

He leaned back in his chair, removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose with a thumb and forefinger. “See, Decker, I look at how you treat your women and I’m goddamn sure I don’t want you treating me like that. So just get the fuck out of here.”

Below the belt, sure. And on target as well.

It hurt and it made Decker afraid that there was some truth there, that he might end up treating Michi the way he had treated the others. Good sex at the beginning. But then nothing more than hints about who the real Manny Decker was. At least he never made promises.

Today’s phone call marked the first time Decker and Romaine had spoken in days. He wondered if she had heard from Dorian, who, since the murders, had dropped out of sight. He had called in sick at his precinct, but wasn’t at his apartment. He hadn’t been in the after-hours clubs he usually frequented, nor had he been in touch with his bookies. Word on the street was that he no longer owed money, unheard of for Dorian.

Decker wasn’t looking forward to seeing Romaine, but LeClair hadn’t given him a choice. Playing LeClair’s game was the only way to keep him from Michi. Decker wondered how much the prosecutor already knew about her.

At Romaine’s door Decker hesitated, shrugged, rang the bell. Get it over with. He heard someone near the door, heard a scraping near the peephole, then locks were being opened. Slowly, hesitantly.

Romaine had been crying. Her eyes were red, puffy. A tear clung to her chin like a drop of rain. She stepped aside without a word. No kiss, no gesture of welcome. Decker felt the chill. Inside she closed the door, dabbed at her eyes, then turned away from him. The frost was getting thicker. She said, “If you had trusted me you would have known that it didn’t make any difference. All you had to do was tell me.”

“Tell you what?” He knew. But he had played the role of deceiver too long to relinquish it that easily.

She turned. “You’re a cop. You were never interested in me. You wanted to learn about Dorian, didn’t you?”

From the moment he’d entered her apartment Decker knew what would happen. But he still wasn’t prepared. He stepped toward her, arms out, but she stopped him with a shake of her head. “Dorian,” she said. “That was it all along, wasn’t it?”