Tengu (38 page)

‘‘The only way
you can rescue your son alive is by hitting Doctor Gempaku when he’s least
expecting it,” said Gerard. “Do you own a gun?”

Jerry shook his
head.

“You’ll need
something heavyweight,” said Gerard. “These Oni guards have Israeli Uzis, and
they won’t hesitate to use them if they think that something’s wrong. I can get
you an M-60E1 and a couple of Ingrams. You have some friends who could help you?”

“I have some
friends, for sure,” said Jerry. “But whether they’d help me or not... Are you
suggesting I storm this place?”

“What else are
you going to do?” asked Gerard. “The minute those people see anything that
looks like a police car, they’re going to kill your boy stone dead. My
suggestion is that I take you in there, like you’ve given yourself up, and then
two or three of your friends bust into the place and go through it with machine
guns until there’s nobody left.”

Jerry said,
“You’re out of your minef. First of all you tell me, quite calmly, that it was
you who kidnapped my son. Now you’re telling me that you’re prepared to help me
rescue him by blowing all your fellow kidnappers away. I’m asking you, Crowley,
are you nuts or am 7?”

Gerard looked
away. Then he said quietly, “This has all come too late–my conversion, if you
want to call it that.
Too late for any kind of sensible
action.
I’m just making a suggestion, that’s all. If you don’t like it,
if you can think of something better, then do it. I won’t stand in your way.

But I’m going
to have to ask you one thing.”

“What’s that?”
asked Jerry.

“I’m going to
have to ask you to plead on my behalf, if this ever comes to the law. I’m in
love with a beautiful girl, Sennett, and I don’t particularly feel like
spending the next ten to twenty years in the penitentiary. That’s why I agreed
to meet you today; that’s why I’m trying to help. It’s got to be a deal or else
it’s no deal. You speak on my behalf; I’ll help you get your son back.”

Jerry finished
his beer, taking as long as he could, watching Gerard Crowley all the time.

“You’ll get me
the guns?” he asked at last.

“An M-60E1,
easy,” said Gerard. “Do you think you’ll know how to use it?”

“I was trained
on a Browning during the war.”

“You’ll manage.
I’m not so sure whether I can get the Ingrams, but I’ll do my best.”

Jerry said,
“Surely the police can manage this better.
Maybe the SWAT
team.
I’m an old man, Crowley. Well, not old exactly, but getting on.
I’m not even sure that my friends will want to help me.”

“If you call
the police in, I’m finished,” said Gerard. Tengu “Not only that, but your son
will be too. You know how ham-fisted the cops can be, when it comes to a
confrontation like this. It’ll be blood and dead bodies, and that’s it.”

“You can show
me where this place is, at Pacoima?”

“Sure,” said
Gerard. “Only I have to have your promise that you’ll back me up in court.”

Jerry pressed
his hands together in a mimickry of prayer. Then he said, “In principle, okay.
In practice, I don’t know. I’ll have to go talk to my friends first. You’re
asking me to risk my life so that you don’t have to risk yours.”

“I’m supposed
to tell you that your son has thirty-six hours to live,” said Gerard. “Either
you come out to Pacoima Ranch by midnight, or David dies.”

Jerry said,
“You’re a bastard, you know that?”

“Sure I’m a
bastard,” Gerard replied. “But every bastard has his moment of glory.”

Jerry pushed
his away his half-eaten sandwich. The world seemed suddenly strange, and cold,
and threatening beyond belief. “Glory,” he said, mostly to himself. “Some
glory.”

F
rancesca was still at L’Ermitage, pinning up her hair, when Gerard
and Jerry said goodbye to each other on the sidewalk outside of Zucky’s and
walked off in opposite directions. She looked at herself in the mirror and
thought: Francesca, you’d better not fall in love. Whatever else you want to do
with your life,
don’t
fall in love. Not with Gerard
Crowley.

Last night, she
had seen a side of Gerard which she hadn’t even realized existed.
Gerard afraid.
Gerard sensitive.
Gerard thinking about nothing but her, and pleasing her; with
champagne, and gardenias, and breast of duckling with Bordeaux sauce.

She brushed out
her long auburn hair in front of the mirror. She was naked except for a white
lace G-string from Janet Reger of London. She had developed expensive tastes in
the three years she had worked for the CIA, first as an undercover agent, and
then as a kind of highly paid, high-class callgirl-cum-entrapment-operative.

Gerard Crowley
was not a particularly big fish. But Crowley Tobacco Imports was the central
clearinghouse for five or six heavy smuggling operations, particularly the
heroin business operated by the Jonas brothers, and the Metaxas
weapons-smuggling ring which supplied machine guns and missiles to the
terrorist groups of the Middle East. It had been Francesca’s job to gather
sufficient evidence against Gerard Crowley to persuade him to testify against
Billy and Nathan Jonas, Salvatore Mazzarino, and Giorgio Scarantino.

She hadn’t
reckoned with the surprise bonus of Mr. Esmeralda; but although she had
reported back to her local CIA chief of operations everything she could find
out about Gerard’s dealing with him, she hadn’t yet been able to decide exactly
what it was that Mr. Esmeralda was up to.

Gerard was
obviously frightened of him; and did whatever he told him to. But whenever she
tried to question Gerard about him, Gerard said nothing at all, or very little
of any interest, and quickly changed the subject.

Last night, she
had known that Gerard was frantically worried. Instead of meeting her at the
Bonaventure or her apartment, he had insisted on taking her to L’Ermitage,
where he had booked a room for two and ordered up the most lavish meal on the
menu. Then, he had talked for hours about his childhood, and about his days in
Cuba, and how life had tricked him and trapped him into being a stooge. “How
can you have any scruples when society expects you to be rich instead of poor,
and yet makes it impossible for you to be rich by honest and honorable means?”

He had made
love to her four or five times, urgently and violently. She liked him because,
over a period of several months, she had made an effort to like him. This was
her third

“secretary-mistress”
operation,
and she had learned that she had to do
everything she could to see the best in her “marks,” no matter how brutal and
coarse they were. There were some nights when she had lain in the dark with a
man’s semen leaking out of her, as tackily as drying blood, and heard him
snoring on the pillow next to her, and known that in two weeks’ time she would
be standing in court testifying against him. And still she liked him.

She didn’t know
whether she was actually capable of love.

She knew that
Gerard had invested all of his affections in their relationship: that his
marriage had fallen to pieces, and he was looking to her to provide him with
his future. But she didn’t feel sorry for him, or guilty. One way or another,
one day or another, with or without her, he would be caught for smuggling or
milk extortion or drug-running or arms dealing or pimping. He was one of those
men who had been born without a future, no matter how hard they tried. Next
month, Franccsca would be smiling seductively at a new employer, and Gerard
Crowley would be forgotten altogether.

She finished
brushing her hair,
then
walked across to the closet
where her dress was hanging up.

“Poor Gerard,”
she thought. “My God, poor, lonely Gerard.”

A
fter the killings, the staff of Rancho Encino Hospital had moved
Admiral Thorson to the next wing, to a lemon-yellow room with a reproduction of
“Some Steps in the Hospital Garden’’ by Van Gogh on the wall above his bed.
Admiral Thorson was still shocked by what had happened, and by the realization
that his wife was dead, but he was conscious and coherent. During the day he
spoke three or four times to hospital staff, and to Harry Calsbeek, the Chief
of Detectives from Encino police headquarters.

There was
little he could say: his wife had screamed
,
he had
woken up to see a dark, flailing shape through the plastic of his oxygen tent.
Then he had heard a salvo of gunfire, and blood had splattered in front of his
eyes like an action painting. “I can tell you this, though,” the admiral had
said hoarsely, “I shall never forget my Mary screaming until I leave this
earth. I shall never forget it, ever.’’

Sergeant
Skrolnik and Detective Pullet arrived at Rancho Encino during the evening,
tired, vexed, and arguing with each other. Detective Pullet had been attempting
some more bursts of lateral thinking, and had come up with the idea that the
killer might be a failed Japanese restaurateur with a grudge against American
naval officers. Maybe they had patronized his original restaurant in Tokyo, but
hadn’t taken the trouble to patronize his new restaurant in Los Angeles?
Skrolnik had had enough of lateral thinking, and had told Pullet to keep his
mouth shut and his mind on the facts.

Calsbeek was
waiting for Skrolnik outside Admiral Thorson’s room.

Calsbeek was
heavily built, red-haired, with a face that looked scraped, like a raw
rutabaga. His tweed suit hung around him in fold after fold, each pocket
crammed with pieces of paper, rolled-up magazines, clips of .38 bullets,
chewing gum, Life Savers, Swiss Army knives, loose Tengu buttons, and string.
But while his appearance may have been gentle, sloppy, and shuffling, his mind
and his tongue were as abrasive as sandpaper.

“You should
have been here three hours ago,” he told Skrolnik. “I’ve talked to the man all
I can, there’s nothing more to be done.”

“You took
notes?” asked Skrolnik.

“Of course I
took fucking notes.”

“By the way,
this is Detective Pullet,” said Skrolnik. “Detective Pullet is our number one
deductive thinker.”

“I see,” said
Calsbeek. “Well, maybe he can deduce why three loony Japs and a white man
decided to burst into Rancho Encino Hospital and slaughter everybody in sight,
because sure as hell / can’t.”

Pullet said,
“You have to go back to the fundamental reasons why anybody kills anybody else.

Believe it or
not, there are only eight reasons why people kill other people: robbery, rape,
jealousy, self-defense, violent disagreement, pity, revenge, and to keep them
quiet. Well...
 
nobody wanted to rob Admiral
Thorson, because he didn’t have any money on him. Nor did they want to rape
him. I doubt if jealousy was the motive, because he didn’t have a particularly
distinguished career, and he certainly wasn’t fooling with anybody’s wife.”

Skrolnik said,
“Will you get to the point, Pullet?”

“Sure,” said
Pullet. “Nobody killed him after a violent disagreement, because he was in a
coma, and unable to argue with anybody. It’s urilikely that anybody attacked
him so violently out of pity. That leaves us with revenge–which, considering
his record in the Pacific theater of war against the
Japanese,
could well be likely. Or, the motive of keeping him quiet.”

‘‘He was in a
coma, what could he say to anybody about anything?” asked Skrolnik. “Why should
anybody want to keep him quiet?”

“You’re right,”
said Pullet. “So what are we left with?
Revenge.
A Japanese
attacks a World War Two admiral, presumably with
the intention of revenging Midway, or Leyte Gulf, or whatever. It’s my guess
that when you manage to identify this turkey, you’ll find that his father or
his older brother went down with the Hirvu, something
like
that.”

“Takes your
breath away, doesn’t it?” said Skrolnik, turning to Calsbeek.

Calsbeek said,
“You can question the admiral at midnight, when they wake him up to give him
his medication. Don’t press him too hard, you know? Give an old, sick man an
even break. He’s just lost his wife and it hasn’t sunk in yet.”

‘‘We
understand,’’ said Skrolnik. “Now, can we see the bodies?”

Pullet said,
“I’ll wait here, you know, stand guard.”

Skrolnik said
wearily, “Come on, Pullet. You’ve got all the
theories,
you’ve got to see the bodies, too.”

Calsbeek led
the way to the hospital morgue. A pale-faced young man unlocked the door for
them, and they trooped reluctantly into the chilled, fluorescent-lit room where
the hospital kept the remains of loved ones who had passed away during their
stay.

“Drawers eight,
nine, and six,” the young man told them.

Skrolnik,
without hesitation, rolled out No. 8. It was Kenji, the Japanese who had been
stabbed by Commander Ouvarov. His face was still locked in a ridiculous grimace
of pain.

“You can’t say
that he died a serene death,” remarked Skrolnik.

They opened the
next drawer, No. 9. It was the Japanese who had been hit pointblank by one of
the hospital security guards. The bridge of his nose was blown away, and his
eyeballs were collapsing toward the middle of his face, giving him a ludicrous
but horrifying squint.

“You didn’t
tell me this hospital had been attacked by Ben Turpin,” said Skrolnik
laconically.

Neither Pullet
nor Calsbeek could find it in them to laugh. “Number six,” instructed Skrolnik,
unperturbed. The body of the Tengu lay on the slab with his arms tucked neatly
beside him, his bloodstained loincloth already black and feud, his chest and
thighs gaping with anemic wounds. There was no head: only the protruding
trachea, and a tangle of muscles and tendons and nerves.