Tengu (21 page)

“Somebody open
this goddamned door!” but after a whole minute of waiting, nobody did.

Skrolnik
propped his back against one of the wooden pillars of the porch, lifted his
left leg, and kicked against the lock. There was a loud bang, Kinney town shoe
against solid oak, but the door didn’t give one fraction of an inch. Skrolnik
took a deep breath and kicked again.
Nothing.

The door was so
damned thick that it wouldn’t budge.

At that moment,
however, there was a clicking noise, like a catch being released, and the door
suddenly swung open. An elderly lady in a blue nylon scarf and a blue bathrobe
stood there, blinking at Sergeant Skrolnik through bifocals.

“You don’t have
to knock, you know,” she told him. She reached across and pointed to the bell.

“You can
always...
 
you know...
 
ding-a-ling-a-ling!”

Skrolnik
flipped open his badge wallet. “Madam,” he said. “I have reason to believe that
there may be a dangerous criminal in this building.”

“I’m
eighty-three years old,” the woman said, with a note of triumph.

“That’s
terrific,” Sergeant Skrolnik told her.
“Eighty-three!
You don’t look a day over sixty!”

“Well, you’re
very flattering,” the old lady smiled. Skrolnik checked his watch; it was 9:14.

“Lady,” he
said, “in one minute flat my partner’s going to come busting into the house
from the rear, and I’ve got to be up there to give him some backup. So, will
you please
...
 
?”

The old lady
clutched Skrolnik’s sleeve. “Do you know something?” she said. “You remind me
so much of my grandson–a fine, well-built fellow, just like you.”

“Lady...” said
Skrolnik, gently but firmly clutching her wrist and prising her away from him.
But it was too late. There was the flat sound of a handgun shot from upstairs,
then a scream, a girl’s scream, and a door banging open so hard that plaster
showered down the stairwell. Skrolnik threw himself against the wall, his .38
raised toward the stairs, his eyes wide.

“Pullet!” he
shouted. “Pullet, what the fuck’s going on?”

The next
instant, a huge man came thundering down the stairs with a noise like an
approaching avalanche. Skrolnik shrieked, “Freeze! Police!” but the huge man
collided with him as he fired his first shot, and the bullet zonked harmlessly
into the plaster.

Skrolnik,
however, was a streetfighter, and not so easily put off by one simple dead-end
football block. He made a grab for the big man’s arm as he galloped for the
front door, missed, but ran two steps, jumped, and clung onto the big man’s
shoulders.

There was a
grunting struggle. The big man’s hand pushed straight into Skrolnik’s face,
squashing his nose. Skrolnik punched him in the kidneys, once, twice, three
times, and then in the side of the ear. They both toppled and fell over, while
the old lady in the blue bathrobe had gone off to fetch a spiky-haired toilet
brush, and now was hitting them both violently on the back and the legs.

Skrolnik jerked
up the huge man’s head and succeeded to getting a wristlock onto his throat, as
well as a good firm handful of hair. He banged the head on the green linoleum
floor to stun him, and followed that up with another punch in the ear. Then he
painfully climbed off, and scrabbled around for his hat, and his glasses, and
his .38. He found his gun on the other side of the hallway, wedged behind a
cheap Chinese vase with a chipped rim. He picked the gun up, cocked it again,
and walked over to the huge man lying half-conscious.

‘‘You have the
right to remain silent,’’ he panted. ‘‘But you are advised that anything you
say can and will be used against you in a court of law.

The huge man
lifted his head and saw the muzzle of Skrolnik’s revolver pointing at his nose.
“All right,” he said.
“All right.”

Skrolnik tugged
his handcuffs out and locked the huge man’s ankle to the bottom of the newel
post. Then he quickly climbed the stairs, calling, “Pullet? Pullet, are you
okay?”

The old lady
shrilled out, “You can’t leave this monster here! Not in my hallway!” and she
slapped at the huge man with her toilet brush.

“For Christ’s
sake,” the man complained. “I’ve surrendered!”

At that moment,
one of the doors across the landing opened. Detective Pullet appeared,
blushing. Behind him, inside the bedroom, Skrolnik glimpsed somebody bending
over, and he pushed past Pullet’s foolish grin and threw the door wide. “All
right,” he demanded. “What goes on here?”

The room was
decorated with rose-covered wallpaper, and over the wide bed was a 3-D picture
of Jesus the Savior, sad but forgiving, his hand raised, surrounded by a
glittering gold chorus of 3-D cherubs. A young girl with very short-cropped
blonde hair was sitting on the end of the bed, rolling on a pair of sheer black
stockings. Apart from her stockings and a black garter belt, she was naked,
small-breasted, suntanned, and Teutonkally pretty.
A Rhine
maiden in shiny nylon.

“Is that your
boyfriend, that man-mountain we’ve got downstairs?” asked Skrolnik. He watched
impassively as the girl fastened her stockings and then reached for a sheer
black bra. It is a good thing I’m a reliable family man, Skrolnik thought.
Because, by God, if I weren’t a reliable family man....

“He hasn’t done
anything, has he?” the girl asked, in a snappy East coast accent. “He hasn’t
broken the law or anything?”

“What do you
think?” asked Skrolnik. “You probably know him better than we do.”

“He’s a red
gentle guy,” the girl said. “Most of my girlfriends call him the Gentle Giant.
“Ever known him aggressive? Mad, for any reason? Drunk, maybe?”

The girl
reached for a short black dress with a white Peter Pan collar. “Sometimes he
gets sore about the whales.”

“The whales?”

“You know, the
whale-killing, Save the Whale. He hates the Japanese for what they’re doing to
the whales. And the Russians, he hates the Russians. I swear
,
if he ever saw a Russian, he’d tear him to pieces.”

Skrolnik
nodded. “I see. Is that what he does to people when he’s mad at them, tears
them to pieces?”

“Oh, sure.
I mean, he’d tear anybody to pieces.”

Detective
Pullet was standing by the door with his notebook. Skrolnik turned around and
gave him a jaundiced look. “What are you doing, detective? Taking down
evidence, or sketching? You heard what the girl said. When he gets mad, he
tears people to pieces.”

Detective
Pullet said, “On, sure,” and jotted a few notes.

Sergeant
Skrolnik looked around the bedroom. “
This your
room,
miss?”

“It’s my
friend’s room. But she lets me use it when I meet Maurice.”

“Can you tell
me your name please?”

“Oh, sure.
Beverly Krauss, Bitzi for short. I live at 1803
Taft Avenue, with my parents. Walter C.

Krauss,
Consultant Pediatrician.”

“Sure. I see.
Have you known Maurice long?”

Beverly Krauss
shrugged. “I guess a year, almost. Ten months.
Maybe longer.
I met him at the circus last spring. His circus name is El Krusho the Great.”

“Sure. El
Krusho.”

“You’ve been
lovers all that time?”

Beverly nodded.
“Could you do me up, please? This catch is kind of fiddly.’’

Detective
Pullet stepped smartly forward, but Sergeant Skrolnik gave him a sharp stare
which sent him smartly back again. Skrolnik fumbled at the back of Bevcrly
Krauss’s dress with his fat, insensitive fingers, and at last managed to nudge
the hook through the eye.

“Did you ever
hear Maurice talk about any of his previous girlfriends?” asked Skrolnik.

Beverly frowned
at him. “Sure. I talked about my old flames, he talked about his. What’s he
supposed to have done wrong?”

“Just bear with
me for one moment,” said Skrolnik, as reassuringly as he could. “Did Maurice
ever mention a girl named Sherry Cantor?”

“Well, sure. I
knew Sherry Cantor. I mean, I met her once or twice. Maurice said that he’d
always had a kind of a crush on her. That was, until he met me.”

Skrolnik
sniffed dryly. “Did Maurice ever mention to you that Sherry Cantor and he and
another man had all gone to bed together, a threesome?”

Bcverly shook
her head. “He never told me anything like that.”

“Did Maurice
ever say that he was sorry because he wasn’t seeing Sherry Cantor any longer?”

“Un-unh.”

“Did Maurice
ever say that he disliked Sherry Cantor for any reason? Did he ever say
anything about her?
Anything at all?”

“Once,” she
said.

Skrolnik
glanced at Pullet. “Can you remember what he said? This could be very
important.”

“Well,” Beverly
hesitated, “I don’t really know if it’s relevant or anything. We were sitting
watching Our Family Jones because nothing else was on... and she came on the
screen, Sherry I mean, and he said it. He was pretty drunk at the time.”

“What did he
say?” insisted Skrolnik.

“He said, ‘I
don’t know why she’s acting so pure and innocent, I gave it to her up her ass
once.’

Sergeant
Skrolnik lowered his head and took a deep breath. “Miss Krauss,” he said, “how
old are you?”

“
Seventeen,
and a week.”

“Seventeen and
a week,” Skrolnik repeated sadly. He wiped his forehead with the back of his
hand. It was a warm night, warm and close, and there was no air conditioning in
the room.

“Well,” he
said, “I’ll call a patrol car and have you taken back to... Taft Avenue.
Meanwhile, I’m afraid we’re going to have to take your boyfriend in.”

“Take him in?
You mean, arrest him?”

Skrolnik
nodded.

“But for what–I
mean, why”>“

“Homicide, Miss
Krauss.
The first-degree murder of Sherry Cantor.”

“Are you
joking? Maurice could never even...”

“Swat a fly?”
said Skrolnik. “Is that what you were going to say? The man who tears people to
pieces when he’s angry? He could never even swat a fly?”

“But that was
only a figure of speech” protested Beverly. “I didn’t mean he actually does
it!”

“No, sure,”
said Skrolnik. “Pullet, will you call up the local cavalry and ask them,
nicely, if they could take Miss Seventeen-and-a-Week here home to her folks?”

“But you can’t
arrest Maurice!” cried Beverly. “He hasn’t done anything! He never killed
anybody!”

Pullet said,
“Just watch us.”

Skrolnik made a
quick check of the bedroom, opening drawers, opening the wardrobe, checking the
lipstick and the makeup on the cheap varnished dressing table. He opened one
drawer and produced, between two fingers, a white satin G-string.

“Well, what do
you do to prevent embarrassing panty lines?” Beverly demanded.

Skrolnik
grunted. “Seventeen and a week, huh?” he said. He took one last look at the
room, and then he went downstairs to the hallway, where Maurice Needs was still
lying on the floor, his ankle handcuffed to the newel post. The elderly lady in
the blue scarf was standing nearby, sucking nervously at her dentures. “All
right, El Krusho,” said Skrolnik. “I’m going to release you now, and I want you
to come peacefully with me to the police precinct, where you will have the
opportunity to call your lawyer. You understand me?”

Maurice Needs
nodded. He was very big–bigger than Skrolnik had imagined he would be, from his
photograph. Six foot six, at least, and built like Arnold Schwar-zenegger’s
older brother, all trapezoids and deltoids and overdeveloped triceps. He had
dark curly hair, and he was dressed in jeans and a slim-fitting black shirt
that probably would have flapped around Skrolnik like a bedouin tent.

Maurice Needs
painfully stood up. There was a large red bruise on his forehead, and he had
the beginnings of a black eye; but he was a good-looking boy, a mixture of
Clark Kent and a young Elvis Presley, with a hint of Clint Walker around the
eyes. He hopped a little, and then bent over to massage his ankle.

“Sorry I hurt
you,” said Skrolnik. “Had to keep you tied down
somehow.
”

El Krusho
shrugged. “You needn’t have bothered, you know? If I’d wanted to, I’d have torn
that newel post out by the roots.”

Pullet, coming
down the stairs, gave Skrolnik a sick little smile.
“Seems
we’ve got our man, sergeant.”

Skrolnik said,
“Let’s go. We can talk about this down at the precinct.”

Pullet frowned,
and began to say, “You don’t think that–?”

“I’ve charged
him now, fuckhead,” snarled Skrolnik. “But, no, I don’t.”

O
ver Inca’s aji de galliha and anticuchos, Mr. Esmeralda carefully
explained to Gerard Crowley about Admiral Thorson.

“He was in
Japan during the war, and became very friendly with some of the doctors who later
worked on the Tengu program for the Tokyo Olympics. He found out about the
research simply by accident. He may suspect nothing, but we cannot risk him
blowing the whistle on us.

“What I really
want to know is this,” Gerard said. “When do we stop killing people, and when
do we start getting on with building up this team of bodyguards?”

‘‘We have to
take everything by orderly steps,” said Mr. Esmeralda. He forked up some of his
barbecued beef and chewed it assiduously.

“Nancy
Shirariuka is getting distinctly restless,” Gerard remarked. “She doesn’t like
this killing any more than I do. If you were intending to create a hit squad of
homicidal maniacs, you should have told us. At least we would have known what
we were letting ourselves in for. I’m no angel, Esmeralda, and neither is Nancy
Shiranuka; and we all
know
about the good Commander
Ouvarov. But the only reason any of us agreed to submit to your rotten
blackmail was because we thought we were in on a shady but highly profitable
bit of merchandising.
Hired thugs for the protection of the
wealthy.
Now what’s happened? We’ve taken an innocent young actress to
pieces, as well as a cop, for no reason at all; and two days later you’re
asking me to take a Tengu out to Rancho Encino Hospital and rip some poor old
retired admiral to shreds.”