Tengu (13 page)

Jerry drove
David to school, dropping him outside the gates. Then he cruised slowly back
home to Orchid Place, listening to Hilly Rose on KMPC 710 and thinking about
Japan.

Japan...
 
and those hot still days in the Chugoku
Sanchi, under a sky the color of melted lead, hidden deeply in a camouflaged
crevice of the forest, with no sound but the chirruping of insects and the
endless warbling of the radio. He pulled up at an intersection, and for a split
second he didn’t know where he was. A garbage truck pulled up behind him and
gave him a noisy blast on its horn to remind him that he was back in the
present day. On the radio, Hilly Rose was talking to Sergeant Skrol-nik. “Is
there anything apart from the white mask which connects these two murders? Any
other clue whatsoever? I mean, are we dealing with a single murderer here, or a
look alike?”

Sergeant
Skrolnik was on his best media behavior, and his voice sounded strangled. “The
connections are many and varied. You understand what I mean. It’s not just the
mask. The modus operandi is strikingly similar, in that both victims were
wrenched apart by bare hands.

No sign of any
kind of blunt instrument, or weapon of any description. This is a job committed
by somebody of almost superhuman strength.”

“Somebody
crazy, perhaps?” asked Hilly Rose.
“Somebody with lunatic
strength?”

“Lunatic
strength is a myth,” said Skrolnik. “What we’re dealing with here is somebody
who naturally and normally possesses unusual physical power; and that’s who
we’re looking for.

Somebody who trains day and night in karate, something like that.
Maybe a bodybuilder.”

“What about
this white mask?”

“We don’t have
any clues about the mask so far... but a police artist has been reconstructing
the mask based on the evidence supplied to us by witnesses who passed the
homicide location on the Hollywood Freeway, and we hope to be able to show that
mask on television tonight, in the hope that it’s going to jog somebody’s
memory. All I can say about it so far is that it’s dead white, kind of
expressionless...
 
and probably
varnished. One eyewitness said that it had some kind of pattern on it, on the
forehead, but for tonight’s reconstruction we’re omitting that detail because
nobody else saw it, and the witness admits that it might have been a fleck on
his own windshield....”

Jerry thought,
White, expressionless....
 
There was
something about the way in which Sergeant Skrolnik was trying to describe the
murderer that made his stomach turn over, something which disturbed old
memories....
 
We ‘ve
located it, sir. No question about it.
We ‘ve
taken
sixteen radio bearings and we have it right on the button. In that case,
withdraw immediately. I repeat, immediately. You will be picked up at 2125
hours on the 15th on the beach at Kokubu.

“Yes, sir,”
Jerry whispered to himself, aloud, as he turned into the driveway of his home.

He climbed out
of the car. A young man in a sleeveless T-shirt and shorts was sitting on the
wall, smoking and obviously waiting for him. The young man was blond and curly,
and looked as if he spent most of his day down at the beach or sunning himself
on a flat roof somewhere. Jerry said flatly, “Good morning.
You
looking
for me?”

“You’re Mr.
Jerry Sennett?”

“That’s right.
Who wants to know?”

“Mack Holt’s my
name. I used to be Sherry’s boyfriend. Sherry Cantor? That was in the days before
Our Family Jones. But we broke up when she got into that.”

Jerry slung his
jacket over his shoulder and climbed up to his front door. “You broke up, huh?”
he asked, as he took out his key. “What happened? Was she spoiled by success?”

“She wasn’t,
but I was. I was a would-be actor in those days, too. And I can tell you, it
wasn’t easy, parking cars for a living while she was the toast of the town. And
it isn’t easy to accept her death. That’s why I came to see you, I guess.
You’re her neighbor, after all.”

“Do you want a
drink?”

“If it’s not imposing on you.”

Jerry gave him
a wry smile. “Nothing imposes on me these days, young man. I have gradually
crystallized into a kind of emotional rock formation, upon which nothing can
make the slightest impression, let alone impose.”

Mack, following
Jerry into the living room, gave an uncomfortable laugh.

“Quiet kind of
place you’ve got here,” he said. “Quiet, well, that’s the word for it,” nodded
Jerry.

“What’ll you
have? There’s Chivas Regal or Chivas Regal.”

“I’ll have a
Chivas Regal,” said Mack, sitting down on the sofa.

“What happened
to Sherry, that was a great shock to us here,” said Jerry. “She was a nice
girl.

Friendly, pretty.
Always bouncing and full
of life.
I wish now that I could have gotten to know her better.”

“She was
somebody special,” said Mack.
“Maybe too special.”

Jerry gave Mack
a drink and then walked across to the window. “I don’t think we’re talking
about the usual kind of Hollywood nut murder here,” he said. “Not a Charles
Manson,
or anything like that.”

Mack said, “She
was torn apart, you know.
Literally torn apart.”

“Yes,” agreed
Jerry. “But who uses a Sherman tank to crush a peanut?”

“You’re a
military man?” asked Mack guardedly.

Jerry came away
from the window. “Used to be, in the days when it meant anything.
Naval intelligence group.”

“Now you’re
...
 
?
” asked Mack,
indicating the living room with his glass in his hand.

‘‘Now I’m
semiretired,’’ Jerry told him.
“Living off my investments and
a little part-time architectural work.
Oh, yes, I used to be an
architect, too. But it was the intelligence group that made the big impression
on me, made me what I was. You don’t get hardened designing duplexes in
Westwood. Not hardened the way I am.”

In that case,
withdraw immediately. I repeat, immediately.

Mack said, “You
think they’ll ever catch him? Not that it matters.”

Jerry stared at
him, unfocused. “Catch him? Well, they might. I don’t know. I always get the
feeling that the police are satisfied with anybody who’s prepared to confess,
whether he happens to be the real criminal or not.”

Mack sipped his
whiskey, shuddered, and then said, “You’ve got some kind of feeling about this,
right? I mean, about what happened to Sherry?” Jerry nodded. “I don’t know why.
But I noticed it this morning. There’s something in the air.

Something tense.
I don’t know what it is. I don’t have a
clue. But I think it’s tied up with what happened to Sherry. And there’s
something else, too.”

Mack sat and
waited for Jerry to say what this “something else” was. A minute, two minutes
passed, and in the end, Mack said, “What? What else?”

“Well... let me
try an experiment,” said Jerry. “I don’t know whether you were listening to the
radio this morning or not, but the detective who’s handling Sherry’s murder
said that a police artist is busy reconstructing the same kind of mask that the
killer wore, based on descriptions from witnesses, and that tonight it would be
shown on television.”

“I didn’t know
that,” said Mack. He didn’t. This morning, he’d been too busy with Olive. Not
making love, but arguing about Sherry, arguing about his unwillingness to give
himself to Olive while he mourned.

“I’ll tell you
what,” Jerry said quietly, raising one finger. “I’ll show you a mask I brought
back from Tokyo after the war; and then you watch television tonight, and if
you think the mask they show is similar–maybe not the same, but similar–then
you call me. I’ll be watching too.”

Mack said
uneasily, “You’re not pulling my leg about this? I mean, you’re not....”

“I have a mask
that happens to sound like the police description on the radio,” said Jerry.

“White, expressionless.
But that doesn’t mean that I had
anything to do with Sherry being murdered. I can promise you, I wasn’t even
here at the time.
And besides...
”He looked down at
his hands. “I’m too weak these days to lift a box of groceries. I’m getting
old. And I think I did enough killing in the war to satisfy the most
bloodthirsty killer’s most bloodthirsty dreams.”

Mack was quiet
for a long time, watching Jerry suspiciously at first, then more
sympathetically.

The man was
old, and deeply upset by what had happened to Sherry, he could see that. He
could also see that there were shadows crossing his mind, shadows he would
probably prefer to forget.

We ‘ve
locate Jit, sir. No question about it. No question
about it. No question about it.

Mack said,
“Sherry once said to me, before she got famous, ‘I think that I’ll love you
forever.’

And I said,
‘What makes you think that?’ and she said, ‘Because everything you feel, you
feel forever.’

Jerry said,
“What are you trying to tell me, Mack? Can I call you Mack?”

Mack said, “I’m
trying to tell you that she still loved me when she was dying. You know that?

When she was
dying, she still loved me. And that makes me part of what happened. That makes
me responsible.”

Jerry swilled
the whiskey around in his glass, without taking his eyes off this young
curly-haired L.A. bum with the raggedy shorts and the tears in his eyes.
“You’re crying,” he said baldly.

“Yes,” said
Mack miserably.

“Well,” said
Jerry, “that’s a start.”

After a while,
Jerry left Mack to finish his drink and went down into the cellar. It was dusty
and untidy, stacked with tea chests and packing cases and crumpled-up copies of
the Los Angeles Examiner for the day he had moved in eight years ago. But once
he had shifted two stacks of cord-wood and a broken bicycle, he found the
varnished trunk with the rusted iron bands which had followed him from
apartment to bungalow to hillside house for nearly thirty-five years. He tugged
out the six-inch nail which kept the hasp closed, and opened the lid. Inside,
like the multicolored body of a vampire waiting to be revived,
lay
his remnants of Japan. Kites, fans, Wajima-nuri
lacquerware, masks, Arita-yaki ware, paper flowers.

Mack Holt was
sitting on Jerry Sennett’s sagging sofa, thinking about Sherry, and about the
day they had hurtled on his motorcycle all the way down to Baja California,
Tengu laughing, ridiculous, loving, and high on the best Mexican grass, when he
was abruptly confronted by a ghastly eyeless face, as white as death. He
spilled his whiskey and said, “Shit!

You scared me!”

Jerry laid the
mask carefully on the table. “It’s only a mask. I picked it up in Japan after
the war.”

Mack breathed out
unsteadily. “Some mask. But what makes you think it’s the same kind of mask
that Sherry’s killer was wearing?”

“I have a
feeling about it, that’s all.”

“A feeling?”

Jerry stared
down at the mask. Its features were blank, apart from a V-shaped black mark
which defined the forehead. To anybody who was uninitiated in Japanese
demonology, the V looked like a fierce frown. But Jerry knew that it was a
representation of the bird’s beak which would usually have protruded from such
a demon’s head. The demon was called a Tengu; and it was supposed to be the
supernatural reincarnation of a Shinto monk whose ways had become proud and
corrupt. It was the most terrible of all Japanese demons: because it knew
heaven as well as hell.

Jerry said,
“The Japanese have a phrase: The crow kills by day and by night.’ These days,
they usually use it when they’re warning one another to watch out for a
particularly aggressive business colleague. In fact, most Japanese have
forgotten what it meant originally. But in the old days, the very old days,
back in the eighth century, it referred exclusively to the Tengus, the devils
of Buddha. They had beaks like crows, which gradually developed into fierce
jaws; and they weren’t above tearing people to pieces when they felt the urge.”

Mack eyed the
mask suspiciously. “You’re not suggesting that...”

“No,” said
Jerry. “I’m not suggesting anything. It’s just that I have a feeling. The
Japanese call it ‘a cold wind.’

Mack said
nothing for a long time. He looked at Jerry, and then back at the mask. “This
is some kind of a puton, right?” he asked at last, but his voice betrayed his
lack of conviction.

“It might sound
like it,” said Jerry. “I can’t find any way to persuade you that it isn’t. I’m
not even sure about it myself. But the police said that a man in a white mask
tore Sherry to pieces, and then assaulted and killed a cop on the Hollywood
Freeway.”

He swallowed a
mouthful of whiskey, and then said, “I’m probably wrong. When they show the
mask on television tonight, we’ll probably find it’s a Casper the Ghost mask
from some joke store on Hollywood Boulevard.”

“But you can
feel ‘a cold wind,’
“ said
Mack.

Jerry nodded.

Mack finished
his drink, hesitated for a moment, and then stood up. “I’ll watch the news, and
then I’ll call you.”

“Even if it
turns out to be Casper the Ghost?” asked Jerry dryly.

Mack shook his
head. “If it’s Casper the Ghost, then I’ll simply put you down as a stray
fruitcake. And that, believe me, will be the most charitable thing I can do.”

Jerry stood in
his doorway watching Mack cross the street in the hazy mid-morning sunshine and
climb into a dented green Volkswagen Beetle. The engine started up with a
clattering roar and a cloud of blue smoke. Jerry closed the door and went back
into the living room. The Tengu mask lay on the table where he had left it,
staring eyelessly up at the ceiling.