Giri (4 page)

Decker considered himself warned. Everybody in law enforcement, Decker included, had an eye out for the main chance. Advancing your career was the name of the game. At the same time one had to avoid stepping on the wrong departmental toes or getting crushed in the numerous power games surrounding police work. LeClair was simply being up front with Decker by telling him that on the task force, LeClair’s career came first and everybody else’s came second. In law enforcement, the power and all of the money were with Washington. LeClair was Washington. And he had warned Decker.

Management Systems Consultants was under investigation because it had sabotaged an inquiry into the crime connections of Senator Terry Dent, New York’s most powerful congressman. If LeClair could bring Dent down, his own career was made; he would end up in Washington, the center of attention at embassy parties and the object of constant media exposure. LeClair also wanted to bring down Constantine Pangalos, the lawyer for Dent, MSC and the Molise family. When Pangalos had been a federal prosecutor and LeClair had been a member of his staff, the two had been friends. But it was now time to show who was the better man.

LeClair leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head. “Relax, Decker. Cross your legs or loosen your tie or dig the wax out of your ears or something. Your file says you’re into karate. Always wanted to try that myself. Never got around to it. How long have you been practicing?”

“I’ve been training fifteen years.”

“I’d better treat you with respect. Fifteen years. Still keeping it up?”

“I train two hours a day. Every day.”

“No shit. Where do you find the time?”

“I make time. I run at four in the morning or midnight or when I can. I jump rope and do stretching exercises at home. A lot of times I work out on my own, usually when the dojo’s empty.”

“A man who flies his own flag. I like that. Ever use it on the street?”

“Yes.”

LeClair was impressed. He studied Decker; that kind of persistence made the detective special, a man with certain strengths and weaknesses. LeClair would have to learn what they were and how he could use them.

LeClair then turned conciliatory. “Sorry about bringing Mrs. Raymond into this, but I don’t have to tell you that guys in our line of work don’t have a private life. Our marriages, bankbooks, sex lives, personal mail can all be poked into by inspectors and there isn’t a damn thing we can do about it Anyway, Decker, I’m here to make it as easy on you as I can. I need you and I need you working happy. Singing and dancing on the old plantation.”

In spite of himself Decker smiled at that one. But when it came down to the short strokes, LeClair could hurt him more than he could hurt LeClair and they both knew it.

“You’re on board now, Decker, so I think it’s fair to say we are entitled to a certain loyalty from you. This might bring you into conflict with what you think is best for Mrs. Raymond. They say when you serve two masters, you have to lie to one.”

LeClair’s grin was pleasant. His eyes were not “Please don’t let it be me.”

Across the table from Ushiro Kanai, Decker began telling the truth. “Yesterday, my partner and I came to see you at your office. When we got there, two men were just leaving: Constantine Pangalos and someone else. Could you please tell me the name of that other man?”

The Japanese looked down at the attaché case a long time before answering. Finally, “He is Mr. Buscaglia. He is the president of a union that represents security guards. Mr. Pangalos is his attorney. My company owns the building that houses our New York office and we must have security for our workers and tenants. We are thinking of dismissing our current firm and hiring Management Systems Consultants, which Mr. Pangalos also represents.”

Kanai removed the attaché case from the table and placed it on the floor beside him. “Recently we had some difficulty when our building was picketed by an affirmative action group. They claimed we had not hired enough black and Puerto Rican guards. At one point, the demonstration threatened to become violent. Some of our people were afraid to enter or leave the building. It was then that we heard from Mr. Buscaglia, who told me that he would speak to the group and fix things. He kept his word. The blacks and Puerto Ricans left. I was most impressed.”

Decker decided not to tell Kanai that he had been tricked. Buscaglia had probably sent the “affirmative action” group to the building himself and called them off when it suited him. A grateful Kanai was bound to be more receptive to a sales pitch from someone who had done him a favor. If Buscaglia was connected with Pangalos and Management Systems Consultants, that also linked him to the Molise family. Like other legitimate businessmen, Kanai’s fear of crime and desire for labor peace had led him into bed with some very bad people.

“Mr. Buscaglia has offered us an attractive package,” said Kanai. “The guards in his union work cheaper, the pension plan will cost my company less and he guarantees no strikes for the length of the contract.”

Promises written on water, thought Decker. But who could blame Kanai for believing? Crime and vandalism were everywhere, making the security field the third-fastest-growing business in America. Fear had put Management Systems Consultants at the top of this growth industry, in a class by itself with a multimillion-dollar income from private intelligence as well as security services. Decker now had a new name: Buscaglia, plus his union. That should please LeClair for at least ten minutes.

“Mr. Pangalos and I discussed one other business matter,” said Kanai. “My company has begun a program of diversification in America. Already we have real estate interests in three states, and next year we will break ground on a new hotel in Hawaii, on the island of Maui. We had planned to purchase an interest in a new Atlantic City casino hotel that Mr. Pangalos represents.”

Rather than appear too anxious, Decker poured more sake for Kanai, then waited until the executive had poured for him. Both men practiced stern self-control. The pauses in their conversations were in the tradition of Japanese deliberation and sensitivity to the feelings of others.

Decker took three sips of sake before speaking again. “Could you tell me, Kanai-san, the name of the new hotel casino represented by Mr. Pangalos?”

“It is called the Golden Horizon. The new owners are the Marybelle Corporation. I believe they deal in video games, vending machines, slot machines and home computers.”

“May I ask why your company no longer wishes to buy into the Golden Horizon?”

“There had been an agreement in principle to purchase a ten percent interest for a certain figure. However, that agreement was based on the Golden Horizon being in possession of a certain file, a list of major gamblers. Every casino in the world has one. I believe you Americans call them high rollers. Men who gamble for very high stakes, who can afford to lose as much as five million dollars in a single night.”

“It’s called a pigeon list,” said Decker. When a casino changed hands, the pigeon list was sold separately. One list Decker knew about contained the names of three hundred gamblers and had sold for three million dollars.

“Before buying into the Golden Horizon,” said Kanai, “I insisted on seeing its pigeon list, as you call it. I wanted to see the names of men the casino considered favored patrons. I regarded that list as part of my company’s investment. Unfortunately, Mr. Pangalos and Marybelle Corporation could not show me such a list. I can only assume that they do not have it and whoever does wants a high price for it.”

The Marybelle Corporation and the Molise family won’t stop until they get that list, thought Decker. No outside investor will put a dime into Golden Horizon until they see it, and the hotel casino needs outside investors to keep up the appearance of being legitimate.

The Molise family would not be happy with what Decker had done to Sergeant Aldo LoCicero either. LoCicero spoke Sicilian and had been assigned to translate wiretaps placed on Molise’s people by LeClair’s task force. LoCicero was not on the task force; he worked out of Decker’s precinct and it was there in the locker room that Decker noticed LoCicero’s new teeth and what appeared to be a persistent chest rash.

For a long time the Sicilian-American had suffered from bad teeth. Suddenly he’d had them filled, cleaned, capped; overnight LoCicero’s mouth had turned from coal to pearls. And with his proud new smile had come the habit of constantly scratching his chest. Once Decker had come upon LoCicero alone in the precinct locker room, huddled close to his locker in an almost childish attempt to hide while he frantically rubbed lotion on his itching chest.

At the sight of the detective, the patrolman grew twitchy with nerves. He paled at Decker’s suggestion that he remove his blouse and undershirt, the better to get at the itch.

Decker often walked the twenty blocks from his apartment, on West Sixty-fourth Street, to the station house for exercise, and it was on one of these morning walks that, unobserved, he watched LoCicero’s wife let her husband out of a car several blocks away from the station house. The car was a Chrysler Imperial, long and black, new and expensive.

While increasingly disillusioned by what he encountered every working day, Decker still found a cold satisfaction in kicking a hole in other people’s vision of themselves. In his heart he knew what all cops knew, that power was pleasure.

Decker moved in closer on LoCicero. He telephoned “Ron,” his anonymous contact at police headquarters, and told him about the man’s new car, new teeth, chest rash. A day later Decker learned that the car had been purchased in Nassau County and registered in the name of Mrs. LoCicero, who paid eight thousand five hundred dollars in cash, a third of her husband’s yearly salary after taxes.

The LoCiceros had also paid cash, five thousand seven hundred dollars, for an upcoming Caribbean cruise aboard an Italian liner, and had contacted real estate agents about a new house, far out on Long Island and away from their “changing neighborhood.” LeClair had to be notified, but Decker didn’t want the information to come from him. Should he turn out to be wrong, the prosecutor would have one strike on him. Ron agreed. The information was passed to the task force through Internal Affairs. And Decker had guessed right about LoCicero.

LoCicero, while translating Molise wiretaps, had made copies to pass on to the crime family. He had shaved the hair from his chest and worn a recorder taped to his skin each time he stepped into task force headquarters at Federal Plaza. One telephone number found on him was that of a public booth in Manhattan. Word of LoCicero’s arrest, however, reached the street in a hurry, so that no one in the Molise family would go near that phone booth. Decker, backed by two FBI agents, had only been going through the motions when he answered the ringing telephone on the corner of Seventy-second Street and Columbus Avenue. Whoever was at the other end wouldn’t talk to a stranger. Later it occurred to Decker that LeClair might have been toying with him. Assigning him to stake out that booth was practically an admission that the prosecutor knew who had tagged LoCicero. Or was it?

In the private room of the Fûrin, Kanai said to Decker, “At the hospital we talked briefly of
Karate-dō,
when I mentioned that my son-in-law once trained, but had been forced to stop by the pressures of work. Had he been more experienced, he might have done better against his attackers. Did you learn Japanese through the martial arts?”

“I speak only bits and pieces, Kanai-san. Enough to embarrass myself.”

“We Japanese appreciate hearing even a little of our language. We are warmed by the efforts of strangers, no matter how small.”

Kanai seemed more relaxed. His obligation to Decker had not involved betraying his company or his self-respect. It was something he would remember.

“I expect to come to an arrangement with Mr. Buscaglia regarding new security guards for this building. It is sad, but one cannot live in New York without such services. Just a few days ago, there was a horrible killing on Fifth Avenue.”

“I know,” said Decker. “A woman working late was raped and murdered in her office.”

“Oddly enough, a similar murder occurred in San Francisco two months ago. I was there to meet the architects for our proposed Hawaiian hotel. A woman working late in a nearby building was also attacked and murdered in the same fashion.”

“The police here think it was the work of a maniac. They’re not sure if he used a weapon.”

“This killing does not come under your jurisdiction?”

“No. Different precinct. I read about it in the papers and saw it on the green sheet, the list each station house gets every morning of all the crimes that occurred in the city during the previous twenty-four hours.”

“I see. Just from newspaper accounts, one could almost say that the same man did both murders.”

“With respect, Kanai-san, I would say that this is a coincidence. A sad coincidence.”

Kanai did not disagree with Decker. “I prefer to call it destiny, Decker-san, and destiny is the sum total of our actions, the adding-up of all our days. Destiny is a ruthless justice. I would say that the dead women were judged and sentences passed, perhaps by the same man. Perhaps. In any case, please to honor me by joining me for dinner. I will have food cooked in this room. Forgive me for not having planned a more suitable meal. I ask you to accept what little I can offer you on such short notice.”

Remembering the department rule about freebies, Decker shook his head. Ignoring his refusal, Kanai rose to his feet, walked across the mat and slid back the door. He spoke rapidly in Japanese, then returned to the detective and looked down at him. “It is my obligation, Decker-san.”

Giri.
Decker had set that wheel in motion. The dinner invitation was the result of something he had done, an inevitable consequence of his scheming. The sum total of our actions, Kanai had said, the adding up of all of our days. To leave would be an insult, making it difficult to return with further questions about the Marybelle Corporation, Buscaglia’s security guard union, Management Systems Consultants.