Tengu (19 page)

‘‘Do you think
somebody found out what you did in the war?
One of these
Japanese terrorist groups?
Maybe that’s it. You remember that trouble
they had last year at the Japanese Film Festival, all those fanatical rightwing
Japanese students threatening to disembowel themselves all over the place?”

Jerry didn’t
reply, but swilled the last of his beer around in his glass as if he couldn’t
decide whether he ought to drink it or not.

Mack said, “It
wasn’t your fault, you know, what happened to Sherry.
Even if
it was all a mistake, and the killer was really looking for you.
You
can’t blame yourself.’’

Jerry gave Mack
a forced smile. “You’re just saying that to make me feel better.’’

“You think so?”
said Mack. “I was Sherry’s lover. I still am.”

Jerry finished
his beer, and then said slowly, “That No mask, that particular No mask,
represents the absolute epitome of cruelty. It appears in only one or two
traditional plays, and even then it
seems
to be
treated with great ambiguity... do you understand? As if the actors themselves
can’t decide how they ought to react toward it. It’s very powerful, very strange...
as if it’s the worst thing the actors could possibly imagine, something they
ought to hate and reject, and yet they can’t, because it’s part of the human
condition itself. . . Like, you may detest yourself for being unreasonably
angry with somebody at work, or for swearing at somebody who pushes in front of
you when you’re standing in line, but anger and viciousness are part of what
you are, and you can’t completely reject them because that means you’d be
rejecting part of yourself.

Mack said,
“What do they call it?
This No character?”

Jerry put down
his glass. “It has several names. The most common name comes from the Shinto
monks who originally staged the No drama-dances; and that name is simply used
to describe any monk who has sold his soul to total evil. The Tengu, they call
him.
The carrion monster.
The tearer
of hearts and souls.”

Mack stood up
and went across to the table where the mask lay, empty and emotionless, smiling
but unsmiling, death without rhyme or reason. “Whatever the police do,” he said
hoarsely, “you and me, we’ve got to find this character, the guy who wore this
mask; and we’ve got to take our own revenge.”

Jerry said,
“Revenge?”

“What would you
call it?” asked Mack. Jerry shrugged.
“Justice?
I
don’t know. No, you’re right. Not justice.
Revenge.”

G
erard Crowley was sitting in the sauna on the twenty-third floor
of Century Park East reading

“It Pays to
Increase Your Word Power” in the Reader’s Digest when the telephone rang. He
picked it up, sweating, and said “Yes?”

“Mr. Crowley?
This is Mr. Esmeralda.”

“Well, good
evening to you, Mr. Esmeralda.”

‘‘Not so good yet, Mr. Crowley.
But, if
everything goes well...
”

Gerard took a
breath of lung-scorching air. “You want something done, right? I detect that
note of lip-licking anticipation.”

“You’re a good
judge of latent emotion, Mr. Crowley. Yes, I want something done. Can we meet?”

Gerard lifted
himself up slightly so that he could see the clock on the gymnasium wall
through the sauna window. It was 6:47 P.M., and he was due to take Francesca to
The Tower at 7:30 for dinner. He said, “Can’t we make it tomorrow? I’m really
tied up this evening.”

“It’s urgent,
Mr. Crowley.
More urgent than dining out with Francesca
Allis.”

Gerard wiped
sweat away from his mouth with the back of his hand.
“All
right.
I’ll manage to cancel. Where do you want to meet?”

Mr. Esmeralda
cleared this throat. “Meet me at Inca’s, 301 North Berendo Street, at eight.”

“Inca’s?”

“It’s a
restaurant.
South American.”

“Listen, Mr.
Esmeralda...”

“What is it?”
Mr. Esmeralda’s voice was calm and cold.

Gerard let out
a short, testy sigh. “I’ll see you at Inca’s, at eight. That’s all.”

“Goodbye.”

Gerard hung up,
reached for his towel, and angrily punched open the door of the sauna. Joseph,
the coach, was buffing up the chrome on the barbell when Gerard came stalking
through to the changing room and banged open the door of his locker.

“You’re getting
dressed already, Mr. Crowley? Didn’t you take a shower? Your pores are going to
be way open, Mr. Crowley, like a Swiss cheese.”

“Fuck my
pores,” snapped Gerard, tugging his shirt on to his damp back. Joseph glanced
up at Mr. Corrit, from Corrit Film Productions, “who was panting into his
eighteenth mile on the Puch exercise cycle, and pulled an utterly perplexed
face. How could anybody who cared anything for modern body-toning say anything
like “fuck my pores”? It was a total denial of the fitness ethic.

Back at his
desk on the twenty-seventh floor, Gerard tucked his shirt untidily into his
belt, and called Francis Canu at The Tower. “Francis, I’m sorry. Your
restaurant is beautiful.
The best.

I’m going to
remember the Sunset Room when I’m in heaven. Well, wherever. But some other
time, you know? Yes. Yes, I know.
Well, me too.”
Then
he called Francesca at her studio apartment at Culver and Elenda. “Francesca?
Hi. It’s Gerard. Yes. Listen, baby–yes, I know–but I have to tell you that
tonight’s off. No. No, listen,
its
not Evie. It’s
nothing to do with Evie.
It’s
business, you got me?
Genuine, legitimate business.
Well, look. (Will you please
listen to what I’m telling you? Yes. I’ll come by at eleven o’clock if I’m
through by then. I should be, sure. And, listen...” He closed his eyes and
listened for almost three minutes to a staccato rattle of complaint. Now and
then he nodded and began to say something, but it was only when her anger was
completely spent that he was able to say, “I’m sorry. You got that? You want me
to spell it for you? And I love you, too, regardless.

Yes. Well, you
can think what you like. But I’m sorry. And I love you. And if I don’t see you
later tonight I’ll see you tomorrow. Yes. Yes. Goodbye. Yes. Goodbye.”

He was sweating
afresh by the time he put down the phone. He wished–almost, but not really–that
he had told Francesca just what to do with her fancy culinary tastes and her
wretched language. But the truth was
,
he did, in his
peculiarly self-destructive way, love her. They were right together, she and
he, Gerard and Francesca.
Suicidal, maybe, like the lovers in
“Life in the Fast Lane,” by the Eagles, which Gerard played at top volume on
his Delco 8-track as he drove to work every morning.
He was brutally
handsome...
 
and she fwas terminally
pretty....

But wasn’t that
where he had always needed to be; wasn’t that where he had been born to be;
speeding along in the fast lane, reckless, crazy, high as a kite? He looked at
the color photograph of Evie and the twins next to his telephone, and suddenly
he knew that he could never go back; security and marriage and Evic’s endless
attentiveness were like suffocation and slow death. If he was going to die,
then he wanted to die fast. So fast that he would never know what hit
him.

On his way out
of the office, he caught sight of himself in the screen of tinted glass which
surrounded his receptionist’s desk. He looked not chiseled, but tired; not
brutally handsome, but middle-aged. It had never occurred to him before, not
with such uncompromising clarity, that he might simply be growing too old for
the kind of life he was trying to lead. He started to light up a cigar in the
elevator, but a dignified black cleaning woman pointed wordlessly to the
notice: NO SMOKING UNDER PENALTY OF LAW.

He had to wait
in line for nearly ten minutes before they brought his car up from the
underground parking lot, and he drove out of Century City with a shriek of
tires and a bad-tempered blast on his horn. He had a stop to make before
meeting Mr. Esmeralda.

Outside Nancy
Shiranuka’s apartment on Alta Loma, he parked his Buick aggressively between
two other cars, colliding bumper-to-bumper with both of them, and then he got
out and slammed the door. Kemo was waiting for him when he stepped out of the
elevator on the fourth floor, impassively holding the door open. “Welcome, Mr.
Crowley, he said. “Miss Shiranuka was not expecting you.”

“Hi, Kemo,”
said Gerard, and gripped the boy’s arm as he entered the hallway, so that he
could balance himself while he slipped off his Bijan loafers. Nancy was sitting
cross-legged on one of the black-and-white silk cushions on the living room
floor, her eyes closed, listening to a tape of koto music. There was sandlewood
smoke in the room, and the fragrance of tea. Kemo said to Gerard, “You wish for
a drink, Mr. Crowley?”

“Scotch,”
Gerard told him. “And none of that Japanese stuff you gave me the last time.

McKamikaze,
or whatever it was called.”

“Yes, Mr.
Crowley.”

Nancy opened
her eyes and looked toward Gerard without turning her head. “This is an
unexpected delight,” she said blandly.

“I’ve had
another call from Esmeralda,” Gerard said, dragging over two or three cushions
and sitting down closer to Nancy than Nancy obviously thought was comfortable.
“I’m supposed to be meeting him at eight at a restaurant downtown called Inca’s.”

“Do you know
what he wants?” asked Nancy. Her eyes were as dark and as reflective as pools
of oil. You could have drowned in her eyes–you could have been swallowed up in
their Oriental tranquility, but your feathers would have been slicked forever.

Gerard said,
“It sounds like something important. Maybe we’re going to have to go out to the
ranch again. Personally, I don’t know what the hell’s going on, and I don’t
particularly care. As long as Esmeralda keeps the bank deposits coming, that’s
all that matters.”

“A man of
principle,” said Nancy, quietly but acidly.

“That’s right,”
Gerard agreed. “And the principle is that I make as much money as I can and
stay alive for as long as possible.”

Kemo came in
with Gerard’s whiskey on a square black-lacquered tray. Gerard took the drink,
knocked back half of it, and then said, “one thing, though. It’s time we found
out who’s pulling the strings around here. I mean really pulling the strings.
If Esmeralda has something particularly important to tell me tonight, and it
sounds as if he does, then he’s probably going to go straight back to his
employers to report that everything’s okay, or whatever.”

Nancy nodded
almost imperceptibly. “You mean to follow him?” she asked.

“Not me, of
course. But Kemo could. If he really wants to take Yoshikazu’s place, it’s time
he statrted getting actively involved.”

“You don’t
think that it might be excessively dangerous, trying to check up on our
employers?” asked Nancy. “Esmeralda did insist from the very beginning, did he
not, that we should do nothing except what he told us to do; and that we should
refrain from being too inquisitive?

And–let
us
make no bones about it, Gerard, anyone who can create a
Tengu, as these people can...
 
well, they
are not to be played with.”

Gerard said,
“Of course it’s dangerous. But which is going to be more dangerous? That’s what
we have to ask ourselves. Should we make an attempt to find out who’s behind
all this–who’s giving the orders, who’s paying the money? Or should we blindly
go on doing all of Esmeralda’s dirty work for him, never quite knowing when the
police or the FBI or the very people we’re working for are going to wipe us
out? Just as you said yesterday, my dear, we were all chosen not so much for
our individual talents, however sparkling those might be, but because we’re all
of us dispensable.
Easy to get rid of.
Each one of us
has been involved in enough shady little sidelines for the police not to ask
too many embarrassing questions if we happened to meet with a nasty and
unexpected accident.

I used to run
guns in Cuba; the commander used to traffic in children; and God only knows
what you used to be mixed up with, but I can guarantee that it was something
less respectable than Sunday-school outings.”

Nancy thought
carefully for a while, and then stood up, gracefully slipslopping in silk
slippers to the other side of the room, where she switched off her koto music
and slid a bamboo panel across the stereo equipment.

“I have had a
feeling for some time now that we do not know the whole story of what we are
doing and why we have been employed,” she said.

“I’ve had that
feeling from the very beginning,” said Gerard. “But when ten thousand dollars
is credited to your account every single month, on the first, without fail,
then who’s arguing?”

“They pay you
ten?” asked Nancy. Her voice was emotionless. The way she said it, Gerard
didn’t know whether she was getting more than him, or less. Nancy added, “I
wonder where the money is all coming from. I know they are paying the commander
seven thousand a month, and Esmeralda has promised him a bonus if he arranges
everything to Esmeralda’s satisfaction.”

Gerard said,
“Whoever they are, they’re obviously loaded.”

“Don’t you think,
more loaded than this Tengu project warrants?
Such an
investment, such salaries, all for the sake of bodyguards?”

“Very special
bodyguards, so Mr. Esmeralda said.
Completely invincible.
The kind that a Mafia leader or an Arab oil millionaire would
pay up to a couple of million to have beside him.”