Giri (34 page)

The plane came to a halt and she was out of her seat instantly, in the aisle reaching for the overhead luggage rack and her shoulder bag. A stewardess politely but firmly requested that Michi sit down until the engines were off and the plane had come to a complete stop. Michi smiled “I am very sorry. Yes, you are right.” She had been too anxious. She must not be that careless again.

There was no delay at customs; she had nothing to declare and was waved through without an examination of her shoulder bag, her only luggage. There had been only a cursory examination of her false passport, the one listing her as an American. After making one telephone call she found a cab.

And on the way into Paris she reminded herself that she had only two more men to kill and then she would be free to be happy with Manny for the rest of her life.

She woke up when the taxi entered Place de la Concorde. The sight of the magnificent square excited her. Just before reaching the rue du Faubourg St.-Honoré the driver slowed down. Michi took a ski mask from her lap and pulled it over her face

“
Froid
,” she said. Cold.

She wasn’t the first woman the driver had seen wearing a ski mask in this weather.

The driver turned onto rue du Faubourg St-Honoré, the street of the most elegant shops in Paris. Michi’s destination was the Yves St. Laurent boutique.

But before her driver could get there, a second cab coming from the opposite direction reached the boutique first. Michi’s driver hugged the curb of the narrow street and waited, his motor idling.

From the second cab a woman in a white fur coat boots and a floppy black hat her face covered by dark glasses and a black scarf, stepped out and entered the St. Laurent boutique. Michi paid her driver, and as she walked toward the boutique she saw the Renault. It slowed down behind the second cab and a man in a dark green anorak and square-shaped tinted eyeglasses stepped out stopped long enough to touch the hearing aid in his left ear, then crossed the street. He entered an empty cafe where chairs were piled on tables and an Algerian mopped the floor.

Pulling a copy of
Paris-Match
from his pocket the man in the anorak took a chair from one table, sat down and ordered cappuccino. He began to read.

Fifteen minutes later a woman wearing Michi’s cloth coat cap and ski mask left the boutique and entered a taxi that had just dropped off another customer. Michi, hidden from view, watched the cab pull away. Her heart was in her throat. But no one followed, not the man in the anorak, not the Renault. She bowed her head in gratitude to the gods. She had been successful.

Michi turned from the door and walked back into the shop, where she purchased skirts and a new pair of sunglasses. When she stepped onto the street she was once more wearing her white fur, floppy hat, dark glasses. The scarf was around her neck, not her face. No need to hide now.

She walked along the rue du Faubourg St-Honoré, stopping to buy perfume and a sweater. An hour later she hailed a cab and asked to be taken to the Hotel Richelieu just off the Étoile at the head of the Champs Élysées. Here, in a suite with a balcony overlooking a courtyard, Michi soaked herself in a bath, then checked the room for signs of entry. She found none. After making several business calls, she left a wake-up call for three in the afternoon, then lay down to sleep.

At 4:15 that afternoon she was in front of the hotel being ushered into a taxi by the hotel doorman. When her cab pulled away from the hotel, the Renault, with a man in the anorak at the wheel, fell into line, taking care to keep two cars between himself and the cab.

T
HE FBI AGENT WALKED
to the door of the bedroom, pushed it open with his foot and looked inside. He shook his head in mild disgust at the mess, then turned away and walked back to the front window to stand beside Decker. Together the two looked down at Dorian Raymond’s corpse, now lying on top of the apartment house marquee ten stories below. Several men standing around the corpse stepped aside to allow stretcher bearers to move away the body. Decker watched flashbulbs go off as last photographs were taken of the dead man.

Decker turned to the FBI agent, who was also a member of LeClair’s task force. “What do you have?”

The agent pursed his lips and shook his head. “Zilch. No sign of forced entry. No indication of a struggle. Window wasn’t broken. The fingerprints we’re getting say he was the only one near that window. Neighbors didn’t hear a thing, but then again nobody ever does. Tenants in two apartments were out at the Christmas pageant across the street. Other tenants on the floor went to bed at 8:30 and slept like a baby all night.”

Decker said, “LeClair doesn’t like it.”

“LeClair doesn’t like anything.”

“Says it’s one hell of a coincidence, Dorian going out the window like that.”

The FBI agent turned around to watch someone dust the television set for prints. “We found empty liquor bottles and an opened fifth of vodka. Found a joint on the floor, some grass in the john, Quaaludes in the bedroom and a vial of cocaine in a suitcase on the bed. Maybe he got stoned and thought he was Superman.”

“Doesn’t the suitcase tell you something else? His wife says he was packing to move back in with her. Why kill himself now?”

“So he changed his mind. I hear tell he has got himself a foxy old lady.” Decker looked at him to decide whether the agent was getting personal, then decided he wasn’t and let the remark pass.

Upon hearing of Dorian’s death, LeClair had ordered Decker and two more task force members to hustle over to the apartment and nose around. But a local West Side precinct was handling the investigation, so Decker and the task force guys were mere observers.

No one was ready with a quick opinion on Dorian’s apparent suicide. It could be death by his own hand or it could be death with a little help from his friends. The final verdict would have to wait until the investigation was completed. Decker wondered if Molise’s people hadn’t been the ones. Or had Dorian really just gotten high and accidentally fallen out?

Decker walked aimlessly around the apartment. It was crowded. Cops, forensics, representatives from the coroner’s office, the mayor’s office, the police commissioner’s office. The reporters were restricted to the hallway and downstairs in the lobby.

Suddenly the apartment door was opened and Decker saw them. Hand-held cameras, harsh lights carried by jeaned assistants, all decked out with clipboards, microphones and tape recorders. Decker felt the usual surge of disgust. Onlookers at the orgy. Ready to shape the truth to whatever half-assed theory would sell papers.

What the hell was he doing here? He was here because LeClair was furious that there was no way to work out a deal with Dorian Raymond. And where did this leave Romaine? Decker had to try and see her today. He owed her that much. He wondered if it were true that Dorian had been planning to move back in with her.

He strolled into the empty bedroom. The fingerprint boys, official police photographers and investigating detectives were through for the moment. Decker had the room to himself. As he glanced around the room, he couldn’t help but feel that there was something sad about the way Dorian had lived. “The Almost Man,” he had called himself. It had been that way at the end, too. He had almost gotten back with his wife, almost made a deal with LeClair to stay out of prison, almost lived to see his birthday a week away.

Decker, hands in his overcoat pocket, sat down on the bed. Either suicide or death by the Molise family. No matter what the reason it was never smart for the mob to kill a cop. It always brought down heat. Cops and professional criminals usually got along well with each other, both understanding the importance of sticking to the rules.

Decker was about to stand up when an object on the floor under an end table caught his eye. Someone had probably unknowingly knocked it down. Decker reached for it. And his heart almost stopped. He looked over his shoulder to make sure he was still alone, then looked at the object in his hand. It was a tiny reindeer, a beautiful example of origami wildlife.

He put it in his pocket, then stood up. He felt sick, warm, sweaty. He needed air. He hurried from the bedroom, crossed the living room, then opened the door and plunged into the crowd of reporters, shoving them aside until he reached the stairs. Yanking open the fire-exit door, he dashed through and stopped at the head of the stairs, both hands squeezing the iron railing.

Decker breathed deeply, sucking air in through his mouth, then slowly began walking down the stairs. In his overcoat pocket the tiny reindeer seemed to burn through to the skin like a red-hot coal. He continued walking down into darkness, neither knowing nor caring where he was going. At the next staircase he stopped to throw up.

Traditional Japanese drama involving sword play with its choice between
giri,
duty, and
ninjo,
feeling or inclination

S
PARROWHAWK LISTENED TO THE
call coming through his speakerphone with the intensity of a man whose life hung on every word.

He needed sleep. Fatigue had knotted his back muscles and brought back his migraine headaches. In the two days since Dorian’s death he had slept a total of six hours. What kept him awake at night was the lie that Dorian Raymond had killed himself.

Sparrowhawk was confused, too. Michelle Asama had dug a pit, and he knew that if he didn’t push her in he would be pushed in himself. Somewhere along the line she had overdone her deception. He had to find out where.

Now he sat at his desk at MSC, palms pressed together in front of his long nose, his unblinking gaze squarely on the speakerphone directly in front of him. Behind him, cooing pigeons on a window sill flapped their wings. Robbie sat to his left, legs outstretched and squeezing a rubber ball, first in one fist, then in the other. His eyes were on his pulsating fists, but his attention, like Sparrowhawk’s, was riveted to the voice of the caller in Paris, who spoke with a German-Swiss accent.

“We followed her from the hotel in Amsterdam to Schipol Airport, where she boarded a private plane to Paris. The plane belongs to a Mr. Tetsuo Ishino. I believe that is how you pronounce it. He is a leading diamond dealer in the Netherlands, Mr. Ishino. Quite wealthy and a member of the Amsterdam Chamber of Commerce. Has a daughter married to an Anton Koestraat, a Dutchman who owns real estate—”

“Will you bloody well get on with it, man,” snapped Sparrowhawk. “I don’t give a tinker’s damn about Mr. Ishino’s daughter or the bugger she’s married to. Stick to Michelle Asama.”

“Yah, I understand. Well, we could not board her plane—”

Sparrowhawk rolled his eyes toward the ceiling.

“—so we have our people in Paris waiting for her when the plane lands at Charles de Gaulle Airport. She clears private customs, then she takes a private limousine to Paris.”

Sparrowhawk massaged his tired eyes. “Thorough, Dieter, quite thorough.”

“Yah. Anyway, she goes to the Hotel Richelieu, just off the Champs, checks into a top-floor suite.”

“I take it since you’ve not mentioned it that you’ve not been able to get into the suite.”

“You are right. We have not. She did not leave until yesterday and we thought maybe she come back quick. She was sick, so we think maybe she not stay out too long.”

Sparrowhawk’s fingers slid away from his eyes. “Sick?”

“Yah. She stay inside her room the whole time. Two nights, one day inside. She does not come out and we cannot go in. A hotel doctor comes up to see her and we learn from somebody that she is being treated for a cold. Yesterday is the first day she comes out. She goes shopping on rue du Faubourg St.-Honoré, first to Yves St. Laurent, then to other shops.”

“And during her entire Paris stay she’s been under surveillance?”

“Yah. We have men in the lobby around the clock. We know what she is doing in the hotel.”

“Really? And what is Miss Asama doing?”

“Business. No telephone calls, but she writes letters.”

Sparrowhawk leaned toward the speaker. “And to whom were these letters addressed?”

“I cannot say. They were dictated in the room, typed there and kept by Miss Asama. She mailed them yesterday when she went shopping. She kept the secretary’s note pad as well.”

Sparrowhawk slammed the palm of his hand down on his desk. “Bloody cheek. She’s either a very careful businesswoman or she knows we’re on to her. And you’re quite certain she hasn’t left Paris since her arrival?”

“Rest assured, sir, she has not. She is still here, conducting business outside the hotel now. Meeting diamond dealers, diamond cutters and people from whom she will probably make private purchases. She is reportedly interested in a necklace called ‘Lagrimas Negras,’ black tears. It is made of black diamonds from Brazil and belongs to an Italian countess, who claims it was Hitler’s last gift to Eva Braun.”

Robbie shifted the ball to his other hand. “Lady seems to have made one hell of a quick recovery from her cold.”

Sparrowhawk gazed at him with red-rimmed eyes. He whispered, “So it would seem. Along with that we’re asked to believe that Dorian Raymond, hardly the suicidal type, suddenly took it into his head to dive out of a window. The mind boggles at this mystifying series of events.”

He said to the speaker, “And you actually saw her leave the hotel for the first time since arriving, and go directly to the St. Laurent shop.”

“Yah. There were two of us in the car following. We both saw her. Same white fur coat, a rather grotesque hat that hung down over most of her face, dark glasses and a scarf across her mouth, I suppose, to prevent her from succumbing to more germs.”

Robbie tossed the ball into the air and began to play catch with himself. “Who was that masked man?” he joked.

Sparrowhawk, annoyed and in no mood for levity, threw him a withering look. His headache was getting worse. Sparrowhawk was about to speak into the phone when he suddenly snapped his head toward Robbie. “What did you say?”

“Me?” said the German-Swiss voice three thousand five hundred miles away. “I said nothing.”