Giri (38 page)

On the passenger side of the customs area Ellen showed her badge and ID again, this time to a uniformed black woman.

There were three lines of passengers waiting to be examined by customs inspectors. Ellen walked toward them. Shit, her feet hurt.

She thought about how much Manny had suffered since his girl friend’s death ten days ago. Ellen stood on tiptoe, bobbed and weaved and saw him in the crowd. She waved. He didn’t notice her. She called his name and after the third time he looked up. The sight of him made Ellen cover her mouth in horror. Manny looked dreadful.

She went to the head of his line and waited. He had lost weight and there were dark circles under his bloodshot eyes. He seemed to be in a stupor. His luggage, a single suitcase, was examined and his customs declaration slip stamped. When he closed the suitcase she rushed to him. He put an arm around her shoulders.

Ellen leaned back to wipe tears from her eyes with a gloved forefinger. “Boy, do you look awful. Oh, Manny.” She hugged him again, then, taking his arm, she guided him out of the almost empty terminal and out onto the sidewalk. She buttoned his overcoat, adjusted his hat, then tenderly touched his unshaven cheek. “Didn’t they feed you in Japan?”

He tried to smile, then abandoned the effort. “They fed me. Took real good care of me.”

“Doesn’t look it.”

A red-capped dispatcher signaled a cab to stop in front of them. Ellen took Decker’s elbow, guided him into the cab and watched the driver put the suitcase into the trunk. As the cab pulled away from the terminal she took his hand and squeezed it.

“Don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. Something I came out here to tell you, because I didn’t want you getting hit in the face with it at the precinct.”

He looked at her. And waited. Ellen fought back the tears. “LeClair’s dropped you from the task force.”

Decker grunted. He didn’t seem surprised.

Ellen said, “It gets worse. All the information we had on this
kaishaku
thing? LeClair ordered us to turn it over to him. List of tournaments, dates of murders, background on Robbie Ambrose. LeClair’s got it now.”

She steeled herself for Decker’s reaction. There was none. She waited a few seconds longer.

“Heard about it in Tokyo,” Decker said. “Guy named Shigeji Shina told me. He’s in Japanese military intelligence.”

“Friend of yours?” Ellen was impressed.

“Friend of Michi’s. Served with her father in World War Two. In Tokyo he kind of took me over. I stayed with him. He took me to the Shinto temple for the burial ceremony, explained the ritual to me, introduced me to people.”

“And he knew about LeClair, about what he had done to you?”

“Mr. Shina knows a lot of things. He’s a very smart man.”

There was something odd about Manny. On one hand he looked like hell with the lid off. On the other hand he seemed completely in control. It was very
strange.

Ellen said, “You should take some time off. Rest. Eat. Get yourself together. You’ve got vacation time coming.”

“I’ll be taking some time off next month. I understand Michi’s death made the papers here.”

“Yes. The press called her Michelle Asama.” She hesitated before saying, “They claimed she might have committed suicide because she was grieving over Dorian Raymond.”

Decker looked out the window to his left. “Doesn’t matter what they say. Maybe it’s better this way. What they don’t know can’t hurt her. Did you check on Robbie Ambrose like I asked?”

“Did more than that. I just happened to mention to a couple of the guys that I needed help, that you needed a favor. I wanted to know about Robbie Ambrose. Whether or not he was out of the country last week, whether or not he had scratches on his face. The guys know LeClair’s a bastard and that he was probably fucking you over when he dropped you from the task force. They came through for us. And it wasn’t easy. They all put themselves on the line with this one because of what LeClair said.”

Decker looked at her.

Ellen said, “LeClair’s left word that you and me and everybody else are to stay away from Robbie Ambrose. From now on Mr. Ambrose belongs to Mr. Charles LeClair, to do with as he pleases.”

“Means LeClair’s working him or plans to. He’s going to hold the murders over Robbie’s head to get him to turn informant on MSC and Dent and that crowd.”

“It’s shitty, if you ask me. Letting a guy who’s killed thirty women walk around loose because he can help your career.”

“It’s been done before. You know that I can’t count the times I’ve looked away as a D.A. or a prosecutor has made deals with killers for information.”

Ellen shook her head. “Still, Robbie Ambrose is one man I’d like to see in his grave.”

Decker scratched the stubble on his chin. “You said the guys helped out.”

“Did they ever. And on their own time, knowing that LeClair would kill them if he ever found out. First we checked with Interpol and U.S. Customs. Robbie Ambrose went to Paris last week, supposedly as an MSC courier. He made a delivery to a private security agency there run by a man named Dieter Rainer, ex-Swiss army officer. Day after the delivery Mr. Ambrose returned to New York. Very next day he flew down to New Orleans for a karate match. Won, as usual. So far there’s been no record of a woman raped and murdered down there then, but we’re still checking.”

As the cab slowed down in front of a toll booth Ellen looked at Decker. For the first time since she had picked him up at the airport she saw a flicker of emotion cross his face. His jaw tightened and he began to take deep breaths. When he spoke his voice was harsh. “He didn’t have to kill anybody in New Orleans. He was covered for this fight before he arrived. Any marks on him?”

She smiled. “That was my department. When he flew back from New Orleans I was waiting for him at Kennedy. From a safe distance, of course. The man’s got marks, all right. Scratches on his left cheek and something wrong with his mouth, stitches in the lip or something. The stitches could have come from the fight, but the scratches didn’t. Those guys wear gloves.”

“Stitches didn’t come from the fight,” said Decker. “French pathologists listed Michi as a suicide. They found traces of alcohol in her system. Not a lot, but some. Food scattered all over the living room as though she had lost her temper and had a fit of some kind. Evidence of recent sexual intercourse indicated she might have killed herself after a lovers’ quarrel. They had no explanation for her internal injuries. Someone said maybe she had hurt herself throwing all that food around.”

Ellen said, “And that was it? They didn’t push it any further than that?”

Decker shoved his hands in his overcoat pockets and leaned back in the seat. “This Shigeji Shina I mentioned. Smart guy. Some kind of brain. He has this friend, guy named Ishino, who’s a diamond dealer in Amsterdam. Both Shina and Ishino served with Michi’s father in the war.”

“You keep calling her Michi. The papers called her Michelle. Is Michi short for Michelle?”

Decker shrugged. “It’s not important. Anyway, this Ishino, he has a private plane. He and Shina talked the French into giving us Michi’s body and we flew her back to Tokyo on Ishino’s plane. In Tokyo Shina came up with his own pathologist. And this guy came up with a lot more information on Michi’s death than the French pathologist did. For one thing, Michi’s injuries weren’t caused by a fall. They were karate injuries. The Japanese were quick to see that. For another thing, I knew that Michi was in no frame of mind to make love to anybody. She was raped.”

Ellen whispered, “Robbie Ambrose. Shit, Manny, I’m so sorry.”

Decker said, “Whoever kicked her in the stomach and ribs hurt her very badly. Probably caught her off guard. He was strong, very strong. My guess is she opened the door thinking it was me and he just wiped her out. And there’s more.” He continued in a monotone. “Shina’s pathologist found bits of human skin between Michi’s teeth and under her fingernails. Also found blood samples under her nails that weren’t Michi’s blood type.” He looked at Ellen. “She fought him, fought him until she died.”

Ellen touched Decker’s thigh. “Manny, we’ve got him. If his blood type matches the blood found under Michi’s nails, if his skin matches the skin found in her mouth, then we have that son of a bitch.”

“LeClair will protect him.”

“No.”

“He will.”

Ellen shifted in her seat to face Decker. “Manny, we are talking about an animal, somebody who kills women because he enjoys it.”

“We’re talking about the real world, about law enforcement as it is. You don’t make cases without informants and LeClair’s only after one case right now and that’s MSC and Dent. Sending Robbie to prison won’t bring LeClair the glory he’s after. That’s why he dumped me from the task force. He doesn’t want me anywhere near Robbie. Robbie’s not going to prison until LeClair’s finished with him, if he goes at all.”

“Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Your friend Shina. We can get that report from his pathologist.”

Decker shook his head. “No. Shina won’t release it.”

Ellen couldn’t believe his ears. “He what?”

“Won’t release it. No one in this country knows about it, except you and me, and I don’t want you to say anything.”

“I can’t believe what I’m hearing. You’ve got a chance to stop Robbie Ambrose and—”

“What do you think LeClair would do with that report?”

Ellen waited.

“He’d sit on it,” Decker said. “He’d claim his investigation of MSC and Dent came first.”

There were tears in Ellen’s eyes. “It’s not right. It’s just not right. I know it’s the real world, but it sucks. It goddamn sucks.”

Decker took her hand. “I want you to do a few things for me. You listening?”

“Yeah, I’m listening.”

“Okay. We’ve got one stop to make before we get to my place. We’ve got to stop at Kanai’s office. I’ve got a form here, which I want you to give him. He’s expecting it. Tell him I’ll get the check to him as soon as possible.”

“Form?”

“It’s for a karate tournament to be held in Paris next month.”

She withdrew from him. “Are you out of your mind? You need time to rest, to get yourself together.”

“I know what I’m doing. Just give the form to Kanai. Shina said Kanai can process it overnight because he’s one of the organizers. It’s all right, Ellen, believe me.”

As the taxi rolled onto the Triborough Bridge, Manhattan’s skyline loomed closer.

And Manny turned to Ellen with tears in his eyes. In a choked voice, he struggled to get the words out.

“We argued. I walked out. Shit, Ellen. If only I’d been there, if …”

He stopped, swallowed, struggled to regain control. Then, “She said you had to be true to something. She was. To her family and as much as she could be, she was true to me.”

He brushed tears from his eyes with gloved fingertips. “Too late for me to take it back. What I said, what I did. I want your word. Nothing about the report. Nothing. Please.”

She nodded. But she still did not really understand.

Decker said, “Michi said you have to be ready to die, then it’s all right. You’re safe then. I understand now what she meant. If I’d been in the room when he came …”

He sighed. “We’ll both be in Paris next month. The two of us.”

“Who? Who’s the two of us?”

“Robbie Ambrose and me.”

He reached inside his jacket and brought out what seemed to Ellen to be a folded handkerchief. He unfolded it and spread it across his knees.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“A
hachimaki.
Japanese headband. Used to belong to Michi’s father. He passed it on to her. Shina gave it to me. You only wear it on special occasions.”

“What special occasions?”

“When you’re going to war.”

Ellen drew back in fear as Decker gave a small, cold smile. In his eyes, she saw death.

His head flopped back on the seat “Got to be true to something in this world.” Seconds later he was asleep.

C
HARLES LECLAIR DROPPED A
pile of newspapers on a card table, then sat down on a metal folding chair. He sighed and looked around the plain and mostly unfurnished apartment in a West Sixty-fourth Street Manhattan hotel, an apartment his office used as a safe house. He linked his fingers across a growing paunch, a gesture of smug satisfaction.

The two FBI agents who had accompanied him to this secret meeting were less joyous. They stood with their backs against the front door and wondered if the rumor about the smell outside in the hall was true. A Haitian couple in a nearby apartment had supposedly kept a dead son laid out in their living room for a month, while they attempted to bring him back to life with nightly voodoo ceremonies. The stench now permeated the entire floor.

But no smell could possibly spoil this day for LeClair, who placed the flat of one hand on the newspaper and said, “Today’s afternoons. Big follow-up in tomorrow morning’s papers. Still breaking big on all three television networks three days after the press conference.”

He pushed the pile of newspapers toward Robbie Ambrose, sitting across from him. “Go on. Take a look.”

Robbie never looked up from what he was doing. He continued to clip his nails and trim his cuticles, as though he were alone in the room.

LeClair said, “Yes. Well, let’s see what we have.” He took a paper from the pile. “Some more stuff about the task force charging Dent with accepting mob payoffs and rumors about Dent being asked to resign. I think I have a few quotes in this one somewhere. I know my picture’s in the carry-over, middle of the paper.”

He dropped that paper and picked up two more. “ ‘Dent Declares His Innocence.’ Chuckle-lacious, as my grandmother used to say. ‘Dent says he will not resign. Vows smear tactics will not work.’ ” LeClair tossed the papers onto the table. “Innocent. Shit. Dent would steal sand from the beach if he thought nobody was looking. Caught him with his hand in the cookie jar this time. Old congressmen never die, they just steal away.”

One FBI agent snickered. The other grinned. Robbie, eye on his thumbnail, filed it a bit more before using the tip of the file to push back the cuticle. “If you’re finished, Mr. Prosecutor, I’d like to get out of here. Place stinks. Like to get in some running before reporting back to work.”