Tengu (20 page)

“Do you think
that really rings true?” asked Nancy.

“Security is
big business these days. There are con- dominium owners on Wilshire who would
pay anything you asked for a bodyguard like one of Esmeralda’s Tengus.’’

“I don’t
know....
 
I find it difficult to be
satisfied by what Esmeralda keeps telling us,” said Nancy.

“Does it
matter?”

“It didn’t
matter until they sent the Tengu to kill that Sennett man. Now we have two
murders on our conscience. That poor
actress,
and that
policeman.”

“On your
conscience, maybe, but not on mine,” said Gerard. He finished his whiskey in
one throat-burning swallow, and then held up the glass for Kemo to bring him
another one. ‘

‘Esmeralda said
that Sennett used to work in Japan during the war, and that he will guess what
the Tengus are all about the minute he hears about them. Gempaku’s using some
kind of process that isn’t strictly in accordance with PDA regulations, you
know? Some brand of anabolic steroids to build them up physically, give them
muscle. It was either Sennett or us, and that’s the hard old story of everyday
life and survival. Besides, it gave us a chance to try out the Tengu, didn’t
it, to see how controllable he was?”

“Not very,”
said Nancy coolly.

“There was a pharmaceutical
problem, that’s all. Gempaku used too much stimulant, or so he said. The Tengu
woke up in the van and blew his mind. It shouldn’t happen again.”

“I don’t know,”
said Nancy. “Esmeralda is always full of explanations, but the motivations
don’t seem right. If you want to develop a team of extra-special bodyguards,
why use such clandestine methods? And why use the name of an ancient Japanese
demon?”

“You’re
spooking yourself, that’s all,” said Gerard. He watched her as she took out her
green-lacquered case and lit a cigarette. “As long as we appear to do what
we’re told, and make sure that Esmeralda never catches us napping, we’ll come
out of this several hundred thousand dollars richer, and still in one piece.’’
Nancy blew two streams of smoke out of her nostrils, and then said quietly,
“Let me tell you something, Gerard. I don’t know whether Mr. Esmeralda is aware
of this or not. It may be the whole reason he approached me and asked me to
work for him. But when I was much younger, I belonged for several years to a
Shinto shrine in Japan known as the Shrine of the Seven Black Kami.

Kemo brought
Gerard his Scotch, and Gerard took a large mouthful before he said anything. ‘

‘The Seven
Black Kami?” he asked. “What are they?”

“In Shinto,
every material object–every mountain, tree, lake, every person, every animal–is
seen as a symbol of spiritual power. Everything and everyone has its kami, its
spiritual essense, which is not so much its ‘being’ as its ‘beingness.’ There
are evil kami as well as good kami, and the particular oddity of the Shrine of
the Seven Black Kami was that its priests revered the seven most terrible of
all Japan’s ancient spirits, the most evil, in the hope that they would suffer
in mind and body, and thereby achieve greater spiritual cleansing.”

“I see,”
lied
Gerard.

“Of course you
don’t see,” said Nancy. “There is no way that I can explain the Shinto shrines
to a Westerner. Shinto priests believe that the body and the mind are
manifestations of spiritual power, and that if they starve themselves for weeks
on end, or walk hundreds of miles barefoot, or immerse themselves for hours in
freezing water, they will bring themselves closer to a state of purity.’’

“Not much
chance of achieving a state of purity at Inca’s,” said Gerard, checking his
watch.

Nancy sucked at
her cigarette and then said, “Shrine Shinto came into being at the end of World
War Two, after the abolition of State Shinto. There is also Imperial Shinto,
which is forbidden to the public, and centered
around
the ancient rites performed by the Emperor of Japan; Sect Shinto, based on the
thirteen sects which worship a high trinity of great and good kami–Amaterasu,
Izanagi, and Izanami; and Folk Shinto, the superstitious customs of the people
who live in Japan’s remotest rural regions. Shrine Shinto, however, is the most
ritualistic and the most mystical.”

Nancy went on,
“It was my uncle who introduced me to the Shrine of the Seven Black Kami.

Before that, I
had always gone to the shrine of Fushimi Inari. But he told me that in conjuring
up the demons and devils of old Japan, I would experience my inner self in a
way that I had never been able to do before. He said, ‘You cannot know total
spirituality until you have known utter darkness and despair.’ “

“Go on,” said
Gerard, watching her narrowly.

“I became
obsessively involved with the Seven Black Kami,” said Nancy. Her voice seemed
softer and more Japanese-accented than ever. “I went through mental and
physical pain such as I had never suffered before and I hope I never suffer again.
Whether everything I saw and heard was happening in my mind alone, I shall
never know. But I saw demons walking through the streets of Kyoto; real demons
such as I can scarcely describe to you. And for night after night I felt myself
on the very brink of something I would have to describe to you as hell itself.

“I walked for
five miles on shoes that were filled with broken glass. I sat naked in a
karesansui garden for a day and a night, impaled on a bronze phallus. I learned
to talk the language of devils. I have photographs of myself taken when I was
seventeen and eighteen years old, and to look at me you would not have thought
that I was the same person. You remember the Manson girls? I looked like that.”

Gerard said
huskily, “What made you give it up?”

Nancy
half-smiled at him. “I underwent the greatest of all the mortifications of the
spirit and the flesh that a member of the shrine could attempt. I took into
myself–that is, I allowed myself to become possessed–one of the Seven Black
Kami.
Actually possessed.
The idea was to experience
complete evil from the inside; and thereby to conquer it forever.”

She was quiet
for a moment. Her long, immaculately painted fingernails traced a pattern on
the polished wooden floor. Then she said, “It took me six years finally to
shrug off that demon, and in the end I only managed it because I was taken in
by a wise and knowledgeable old Shinto priest called Shizuota-Tani. He had seen
me many times in Kyoto during the six years of my possession, and he had
gradually come to understand that what I appeared to be was not my true self. I
appeared to be a drug addict, a prostitute, and, indirectly, a murderess.”

“A murderess?”
asked Gerard. He felt the skin prickling at the back of his back.

“I procured
girls for films which, in Japan, we call sacrifice dramas. In Los Angeles they
are commonly known as ‘snuff movies.’
Films in which girls
are involved in sexual orgies, and then, at the height of intercourse, are
stabbed or strangled right in front of the camera.”

Gerard said
nothing. The room was as silent as a Japanese rock garden.

Nancy said, “I
went through another year in the company of this priest, fighting to find out
where, inside myself, my own kami had been imprisoned. Then, one night in
February, the old priest took me to Nara, the ancient capital, on the evening
of the lantern festival at the Kasuga Grand Shrine. I stood in the grounds of
the shrine on that evening and saw thousands and thousands of lighted lanterns
hanging from the walls and the eaves of the building, bobbing in the wind like
the captive souls of happy people. At that moment, without my knowing it, the
old priest passed over my head the purification wand, which drives out demons
and devils. I fell to the ground as if I had been hit by a truck. They took me
to the Kyoto University Hospital, and for three weeks they did not know if I
could live. But I survived, and with the help of friends I managed to leave
Japan and come here.”

“Why are you
telling me this?” asked Gerard in a harsh, soft voice. “What does it have to do
with Es-meralda?”

“It has
everything to do with Esmeralda. The demon which I accepted into myself was
Kama Itachi, a kind of weaselike demon which thrives on pain inflicted by
knives and blades. There
were
six other Black Kami to
which I could have opened myself up: Raiden, the storm demon, for instance, who
enters human bodies through the navel, and for fear of whom many Japanese
people still sleep on their stomachs during thunderstorms.
Kappa,
the water demon.
Pheng, the bird creature who can
eclipse the sun Kami Amaterasu with his wings.
Rinjin,
the dragon beast, who rejoices in death by fire.”

Gerard raised
both his hands, a gesture of friendly impatience. “I’m sorry, Nancy, but I’m
really not a superstitious guy. I mean, I’m not saying that you didn’t
experience any of this. I’m not saying that it wasn’t as real to you when it
happened as anything else you might have experienced.

I know how
people get when they’re on drugs, that kind of thing. But I have to be getting
along to see Esmeralda, and I really don’t see how this is helping.”

Nancy said,
very quietly, “The most evil of all the seven Black Kami was called the Tengu.
Even the most experienced adepts at the shrine were warned opening themselves
up to the Tengu. It was said that the leader of the shrine had once done so,
and had almost been driven mad. The Tengu had even caused him to bite off his
own tongue to prevent him from exorcising the demon, and to curtail his prayers
to Amaterasu.”

“Nancy,
please...” Gerard interrupted.

“No,” said
Nancy. “You must listen to me. The characteristics which the Tengu gave to all
the men and women he possessed included invincible physical strength, the mad
strength of the berserk; and the ability to stand up to ferocious attack from
any kind of weapon. He had another characteristic: if the person he was
possessing was chopped into the tiniest pieces, the pieces would regenerate
themselves, and grow again into misshapen demons even more hideous than the
original. What was more...
”

“Nancyl” Gerard
shouted.
“For Christ’s sake!”

“No!” Nancy
hissed back at him. “You have to listen because it’s true! They’ve done itDon’t
you understand what I’m saying to you? They’re not building up men into
bodyguards. They’re not using steroids or chemicals or vitamins! They’ve
brought it here, the Tengu, the real Tengu demon!”

She was
shaking, and she paced from one side of the room to the other as if she were a
madwoman who had been locked up for her own safety. “I didn’t believe it at
first. I didn’t want to believe it. I couldn’t! I thought
,
they are using the name of the Tengu simply because it also means a terrible
and powerful being. When Esmeralda said we had to send it out to kill, I had
fears enough then. But what happened to that
girl,
and
the way that policeman was smashed to death.... That Tengu was no superathlete,
no killer bodyguard. Perhaps Esmeralda doesn’t even know it himself, but we’re
helping him to create a race of men who are possessed by the crudest devil ever
known. The Tengu is the devil of remorseless destruction; a god without a
conscience and without pity. Those men have him in their souls, and they can
never get rid of him.”

A
t nine o’clock that evening, Skrolnik and Pullet drew up outside a
pink house on Rialto Avenue in Venice, and doused the lights of their car.
Across the street, two or three young boys were smoking and playing a guitar
and drinking beer. “I could do with a beer myself,” growled Skrolnik. “That
chili-dog is just about burning me up, from the inside out.”

“I could get
you a Pepsi,” suggested Pullet. Skrolnik gave Pullet such a withering look in
reply that Pullet found himself coughing, looking through his notebook, folding
his arms, and finally saying, “Well, I offered.’’

Skrolnik said,
“Okay, you offered. Next time, don’t offer. Now, how are we going to tackle
this El Krusho character? I have a feeling that if we invite him to accompany
us back to headquarters, he’s going to decline. You know what I mean? Guys with
a fifty-pound advantage usually do. So, we’re going to have to catch him by
surprise. You go round the back of the house. I’ll take the front. At
nine-fifteen on the button we’ll kick open our respective doors and shout
‘Freeze, police’! You got me?”

“Freeze,
police?” asked Pullet.

“For Christ’s
sake,” said Skrolnik.

They climbed
out of their car and walked side by side across the sidewalk until they reached
the low stone wall which surrounded Casita Rosa. Skrolnik hiked his police .38
out of his belt and cocked it. “Just remember,” he said. “This guy is totally
dangerous. If it looks like he’s going for you, armed or not, open fire. Shoot
to kill.”

“What should I
do if it looks like he’s going for you?”

“Stand by idly
and watch him grind me into a Wendy’s hamburger,” said Skrolnik sarcastically.

“What the hell
do you think?”

Pullet went
around to the back, climbing uncertainly over a wrought-iron fence, while
Skrolnik went to the front
door,
his revolver raised
in his right hand, and tentatively rang the bell. There was a long silence,
punctuated only by the lonely nighttime sound of a patrol car as it howled its
way along Mildred Avenue, answering a call to a supermarket robbery. Skrolnik
glanced up at the building and thought for a moment that he could see someone
looking down into the street from the third floor, a girl’s face. He leaned
forward and pressed the bell again.

It was 9:11. If
Skrolnik didn’t get into the building now, right away, Detective Pullet would
inevitably go leaping into the suspect’s room, legs bent,
revolver
held in both hands in the approved Los Angeles Police Academy style, and get
the holy shit beaten out of him. Skrolnik yelled,