Tengu (37 page)

They were going
to fight until the very last man. I mean, the war could have gone on for
years.’’

Doctor Gempaku
helped himself to some more of David’s breakfast. “How readily the young absorb
the lies of their parents,” he said. “By May of 1945, Japan was already
defeated, and even the most fanatical of her leaders knew it. The Japanese
merchant navy, on which the whole country depended for food and supplies, had
been reduced from ten million tons to one million.

Over forty
percent of all of Japan’s sixty major cities had been destroyed by bombing. Her
navy and her air force were shattered; what remained of her fleet was
immobilized for lack of fuel. In May, we attempted to discuss peace with the
Americans, using the Russians as mediators. But the Americans relentlessly
insisted on unconditional surrender, unconditional, and failed to make it clear
to the Japanese people that our Emperor, who is divine, would not be treated as
a war criminal, and would be allowed to remain as Emperor under any Allied
occupation force. This failure by the Americans to understand even the simplest
fact of Japanese life and religion was what prolonged the war beyond the early
summer of 1945. And through the hand of your father and his military henchmen,
it was this failure that eventually led to the dropping of the first atomic
bomb.”

David was
silent. Doctor Gempaku stood up straight,
then
walked
across to the window. “I am sorry if I have been lecturing you. But you should
know why you are here.”

“Do you want to
kill my father?” whispered David.

Doctor Gempaku
made a face. “I do not want to kill him,” he said.

“But you’re
going to?”

“Almost certainly.
And you, too.”

David stared at
Doctor Gempaku, shocked. He felt as if all the blood had drained out of his
body; he was ice-cold and empty.

“They’ll catch
you,” he said unsteadily.

“Who will?”

“The police.
The Los Angeles police.”

Doctor Gempaku
turned around. “By tomorrow night, there will be no Los Angeles police.

More than that,
there will be no Los Angeles.”

David couldn’t
think of anything else to say. He chewed nervously at his lip, and looked at
Doctor Gempaku against the diffuse light of the window.

Doctor Gempaku
said, “It will be interesting to see how brave this man who killed so many
thousands of Japanese during the war can actually be.”

G
erard Crowley looked unshaven and tired as he pushed his way
between the crowded tables of Zucky’s deli-restaurant a little before noon. His
tie was loosened, and his shirt was crumpled and dirty. He was halfway through
his second cigar of the day.

Jerry, in spite
of his anxiety and his nervousness, had felt hungry when he had arrived at
Zucky’s, and had ordered himself a turkey sandwich and a cold beer.

Gerard Crowley,
when he arrived, stood a foot or two away from Jerry’s table with his hands in
his pockets, his cigar between his lips, an expression on his face that was
half cautious and half apologetic, like a man who has cornered a wounded
Doberman and doesn’t quite know whether he ought to try to bind the dog’s foot
or run for his life.

“Listen,” he
said, “I’m sorry about what happened. I’m sorry about all of it.”

Jerry couldn’t
think what to say to that. The last thing he had expected from Gerard Crowley
was an apology. The waitress came back with Jerry’s sandwich and asked Gerard,
“You’re eating, sir?”

“Just give me a
Scotch for now,” said Gerard. He took the cigar out of his mouth and sat down
next to Jerry, tugging the sleeves of his jacket down to cover his grubby
cuffs. All around them, the deli was noisy with talking and laughter and music.
Gerard said, “I don’t suppose you want to shake hands.”

“I just want to
know how to get my son back,” Jerry told him.

Gerard said,
“The last I heard, an hour ago, your son’s safe. You know why they’re holding
him, don’t you? It’s you they want. It’s you they wanted right from the very
beginning. Sherry Cantor died because they wanted you.”

“The Tengus?”
asked Jerry.

Gerard nodded.
“They were afraid you’d guess. It looks like you did.” Jerry said tightly,
“What’s this all about? What the hell’s going on? Nancy Shiranuka said
something about bodyguards.”

“That’s a
blind,” said Gerard. He crushed his cigar out in the ashtray and wiped his
mouth with the back of his hand. “I don’t know what they’re really into, but I
can’t believe it’s anything to do with bodyguards. When they first approached
me, they said it was nothing more than a moneymaking scheme for protecting rich
Arabs and nervous
mafiosi
.
Killer
bodyguards, each one worth a million dollars of anybody’s money.
That’s
what they told me. They offered me the kind of money that nobody in his right
mind would possibly turn down; and they backed up the carrot with a big stick.
They knew about some contraband business I’d been involved in, and they said
that if I didn’t help them, they’d fix me up.”

“Because of
that, you agreed to murder?” asked Jerry. He tried to keep his voice as level
as possible, but he was seething with frustration and anger at David’s
kidnapping, and at Gerard Crowley’s impossible weakness. He was weak himself,
he knew it. He still hadn’t been able to find a way to face up to his own past.
But Gerard’s weakness was of an even more insidious variety: Gerard’s weakness
was a steady and unstoppable corrosion of the spirit. In Gerard’s life, there
was no hope of redemption, only meaningless apology.

Jerry thought
it was ironic that their names were so similar: Jerry and Gerard. They were
like the two faces of Dorian Gray, the unspeakably corrupt and the falsely
innocent. They were different victims of the same human problem: an inability
to cope with the utter immorality which was the prerequisite of success or even
survival.

Gerard said,
“The hits didn’t seem like anything very special at first. They were a way of
trying out the Tengus, proving that, as a market commodity, they worked the way
they were supposed to. I know you find that difficult to swallow, but you
haven’t been working for twenty years in the import-export business like I
have. You can believe me–anything that turns a buck gets sold.
Drugs, fertilizers, chemicals, guns, surface-to-air missiles,
tanks, mines, spirits, tobacco, pornography, girls, animals, boys.
If
you have enough money, you can buy anything, from anywhere. Let me tell you
something, my wife thinks I’m a cold fish, unreachable. But if you’re going to
keep yourself alive and moderately wealthy, you have to keep your soul under
lock and key, and that’s what I’ve been doing. They told me to hit you, and
that’s what I arranged to do. They told me to kidnap you, take you out to the
mountains, and dispose of you; so, I found that you weren’t at home, I took
your son instead.”

“It was you?”

Gerard nodded.
“I arranged it. I was told to flush you out, and that seemed like the best
way.”

Jerry was
dumbfounded. “So now what?” he said. “I’m supposed to forgive you, or
something?

Now what? I
want my son back, and that’s all there is to it.”

‘‘Would you
give up your life for your son? If I said you can have him back, but only if
you allow me to kill you, what would you say then?”

Jerry stared at
him. “Are you serious? Are you asking that as a serious question?”

Gerard didn’t
even blink.

Jerry put down
his turkey sandwich. His throat was drier than ever. “If that’s the way it has
to be

...
then
yes.
If that’s the only possible
condition for David’s release.”

Gerard smirked,
and then let out a grunt of a laugh. “You’re even more innocent than I
imagined,” he said. “Do you really think that anybody who wanted to kill you
would actually honor this agreement, and release your boy? Your boy’s being
kept alive for one reason only: you’re still alive. Once you’re dead, why
should anyone bother? Your boy will be knocked off, too. You’re not likely to
come back from the grave and argue about it, are you? And your boy will be far
too damning a witness for us to let him go.”

Jerry was
silent for a long time, staring at Gerard in hopeless anxiety. Then he said,
“You’ve come to meet me for a reason, right? Either to have me
killed,
or to put up some kind of a suggestion.”

“That’s right,”
said Gerard. The waitress brought his whiskey, and he paid for it with a $20
bill.

“You see,
everything was fine until yesterday night. Then, they sent out a Tengu to kill
Admiral Thorson, who is the only other man apart from your good self who might
have jeopardized the Tengu project by recognizing what the Tengu actually are
and by helping the police to trace them back to where they came from.”

“Admiral
Thorson was in a coma. He had been for months. Why should they bother to send
out a Tengu to kill him?”

“They’re crazy,
that’s why,” said Gerard. “And, besides, they’re Japanese. Although they won’t
admit it, a whole lot of what they’re doing has got something to do with the
ancient Japanese principles of revenge and honor. You and Thorson knew about
the Tengus: y6u had to die.

Don’t ask me
why. The whole thing’s like some kind of nightmare.”

Jerry said, “I
get the feeling you’re trying to tell me that you’re changing sides. You’re not
trying to threaten me, are you? Or are you? You’re trying to find out if I’ll
forgive you enough for what you’ve done to help you.”

Gerard took out
another cigar and clipped off the end. “This Tengu project isn’t what it seems,
believe me. There’s something really heavy going down; and when I say heavy, I
mean heavy.”

Jerry picked up
his sandwich, looked at it, and then put it down again. He said, “You took my
son, right? All I want to hear from you is that you’re prepared to help me get
him back again.”

Gerard briefly
closed his eyes, to indicate his assent.

“I don’t trust
you,” said Jerry. “For Christ’s sake, how can I trust you? It was you who took
him in the first place.”

“I’m not asking
for anything,” Gerard said.
“Not sympathy, not forgiveness, nothing.
I’m just asking you to believe that in the past twenty-four hours, I’ve changed
my mind about the people I work for, and I’ve begun to change my mind about
myself. The motivation has been completely selfish. I’m scared, if you want to
know the truth. I’ve never been scared of anyone or anything in my life, but
I’m scared now. And the reason I’m scared is because I’m in love. I’ve been
dating my secretary, Francesca. I was supposed to go back to Nancy Shiranuka’s
place last night and talk about the Tengus, report on what we’d been doing out
at Rancho Encino. But I didn’t go. Instead, I took Francesca to L’Ermitage,
where nobody was going to find us, and I spent the whole night talking myself
out.

My past, my present, and my future.
The whole Rancho Encino
thing went wrong, it all turned into a massacre. I can’t live with that. When
you’re really in love for the first time, you realize you can’t accept half the
things you accepted before. You’ve got a responsibility to yourself, and to the
person you love.”

He smoked, and
rubbed at his forehead, and then he said, “I can’t erase what’s happened, you
know? I can’t bring Sherry Cantor back to life. But I would if I could. And
I’ll do whatever I can to help you get your son back. I thought I was a frigid,
emotionless tough guy before any of this started, and the fact is that I’m not.
I don’t think anybody is, when you really take it down to the bottom line. You
can’t be a lover and a killer at the same time. And that’s why I said I was
sorry when I first came in.”

Jerry said,
“Nancy Shiranuka told me they were holding David at some ranch near Pacoima.’’

“That’s right.”

“What goes on
there? When you say ‘they,’ who do you mean? How many people do they have
there?”

“The ranch at
Pacoima is where they’re creating the Tengus,” said Gerard. “The head guy there
is Doctor Gempaku, he’s the guy who actually develops the Tengus, brings them
into being. Then
there’s
ten or eleven guards; they
all wear black masks on their faces, so you can never tell which is which. But they’re
all armed, and they’re all skilled in Oni, which is some kind of ancient
martial art.”

“I know about
Oni,” said Jerry.

“In that case,
you’ll be quite aware that these guys are totally deadly,” said Gerard.

“Yes,” said
Jerry. He felt awkward with Gerard, suspicious of him. And yet at the same time
he could recognize that Gerard was going through an inner turmoil that, if he
only allowed it to, could bring him out of a life that had been shallow and
cynical and exploitative, and into an existence that would be honest even if
not particularly profitable.

Jerry hadn’t
been at L’Ermitage, during those hours in which Gerard had drunk whiskey after
whiskey, and talked, and argued, and made love to Francesca in ways that had
been both tender and fierce. Jerry^hadn’t seen that the news from Rancho Encino
had shocked Gerard more than Gerard was prepared to admit, even to himself.
Wheeling and dealing was one thing. Hearing secondhand stories about hits on
treacherous Chinese dope dealers was chilling, but not personally alarming. But
the slaughter at Rancho Encino and the kidnapping of David Sennett had made
Gerard Crowley realize at last that he was out of his league. In spite of his
apparent remoteness, in spite of his cynicism, he was a man who needed to feel
that he was loved; and with loving and being loved came morality, and with
morality came hesitation.