Tengu (39 page)

“Well, your
boys certainly put paid to him,” said Skrolnik. “What do you arm them with,
howitzers?”

‘‘We killed him
before he could kill Admiral Thorson,’’ said Calsbeek acidly. “That’s all you
need to know.”

“Has the
coroner been over this body yet?”

“He’s taking it
tomorrow. There was a mass poisoning two nights ago at Strawberry Drive, up by
the reservoir. His slabs are kind of crowded right now.”

“Well, life’s
busy in Encino right now,” remarked Skrolnik. “What are you trying to do, beat
out the Los Angeles homicide statistics?”

“Believe me,
this is the last thing I want,” grated Calsbeek. “Encino’s supposed to be quiet
and neighborly.
Neat yards and law-abiding suburbanites.
Up until now, the worst crime we’ve had all year has been inconsiderate
roller-skating on the sidewalk.”

Skrolnik rolled
back the drawer, and the Tengu’s mutilated body disappeared from sight. “Do you
want some coffee?” he asked Calsbeek. “Stiffs always make me thirsty.”

Calsbeek gulped
a few mouthfuls of scalding machine-made coffee with them, and then left.

Skrolnik and
Pullet sat for the next two hours in the reception area, listening to the
splash of the illuminated fountain and the syrupy warbling of Muzak, and
leafing through copies oi Reader’s Digest and Encino.

“I never
realized that Encino was such a goddamned dull place,” said Skrolnik, tossing
one of the magazines back onto the table.

Just after
midnight, a short, bespectacled doctor with a shock of black wavy hair came
scuttling into the reception area to tell them, blinking, that Admiral Thorson
would now be available for a short period of police questioning. “As long as
you understand that he’s a very sick man, you got me?”

“Yes, sir,”
grunted Skrolnik. “Aren’t we all?”

Considering the
trauma that he had been through, Admiral Thorson looked remarkably fit. He was
no longer the old “Inch-Thick” of Navy days. His eyes were sunken and shadowed.
But when Skrolnik and Pullet were shown into his room, he nodded to them
alertly and said, “What’s this? More damn fool questions?”

Skrolnik smiled
uncomfortably and perched his rump on the edge of an uncomfortable stacking
chair. Pullet went across to the other side of the bed and peered with almost
morbid interest at the admiral’s cardiopulmonary monitors and
electroencephalograph. Skrolnik said, “We won’t keep you very long, sir. We
know that you’ve been through a lot. But what happened here at Rancho Encino
bears a close resemblance to a homicide we’re investigating in Hollywood.”

“I’m sorry to
hear it,” said Admiral Thorson. “Would you mind passing me that glass of
lemonade? A man gets damn thirsty all wired up like this, tucked up in bed like
a damned invalid.”

Skrolnik passed
him the lemonade, and the old man took four or five sips and then handed it
back. “Used to be bourbon and branch, in the old days,” he grunted.

Skrolnik said,
“What particularly interests us, sir, is that your assailant was Japanese.
Detective Pullet here has been theorizing that maybe the attack has something
to do with your war record.

We’ve had one
or two cases of white people attacking Japanese because they lost somebody they
loved during the war; usually when they’re drunk or depressed or suffering from
some kind of nervous collapse. But on the face of it, your assailant was
psychotic, to say the least, and Detective Pullet thinks that maybe...”

Admiral Thorson
looked from Skrolnik to Pullet, and then back again. “Anything that I did
during the Second War is faithfully and fully recorded in my memoirs, sergeant.
From Saipan to Kyushu with Admiral Knut Tengu Thorson, published by the
Institute for Naval Studies. Rather than interview me, and wear out what little
there is left of me, I suggest you go buy yourself a copy.”

Skrolnik wedged
his fingers together and raised his eyebrows toward Detective Pullet in an
expression of testy patience. “What I was trying to get at, Admiral, if you’ll
forgive me for pressing you, is whether you were involved in anything personal
or private that may have excited some Japanese fruitcake to try to get even
with you. I understand that the Japanese have very severe codes of honor and
duty; maybe you inadvertently trod on someone’s face during the war, upset them
more than you’d meant to.
Something to do with a woman,
maybe?
I’m not trying to pry.”

Admiral Thorson
was silent for a moment. Then he gestured toward his bedside cabinet and said
to Skrolnik, “Open the top drawer. Take out the letter you’ll find in there.”

Skrolnik did as
he was told. He lifted out the faded V-mail envelope and opened it.

“Read it,” said
Admiral Thorson.

How can a love
so gentle be so fierce? How can a soft caress grip with such strength? How can
your tenderest glance so quickly pierce
My
heart its
very depth, my life its length?

Sergeant
Skrolnik said cautiously, “
It’s
poetry.”

‘‘Yes,’’ said
Admiral Thorson. “I wrote it to my wife in October 1944, just before the battle
of Leyte Gulf. It was one of many. Let me ask you if a man who writes poetry
like that to his wife is likely to get involved with a Japanese woman?”

“I’m sorry,”
said Skrolnik. “But you understand that I have to chase after every possible
idea.’’

“Admiral,” put
in Detective Pullet, running his hand through his tangled hair, “was there any
other operation you were in charge of, during the war, anything that maybe
didn’t get into your memoirs?”

“Anything that
didn’t get into my memoirs was excluded for reasons of national security,”

Admiral Thorson
answered. “There were one or two operations I was able to write about in the
revised edition of my book, in 1968, but since then nothing else, as far as I
know, has come off the top-secret list.”

“Was there
anything that might have motivated an attack of revenge–the kind of attack that
happened here last night?”

Admiral Thorson
said, “I can’t discuss anything that isn’t in my memoirs without a specific
security clearance from the Secretary of the Navy. I’m sorry.”

Pullet sensed
something,
he wasn’t at all sure what it was. But the way in
which Admiral Thorson had abruptly invoked the rulebook aroused his nose for
the obscure and the unusual. Admiral Thorson had an inkling of what had happened
to his wife, and why. Pullet was sure of it. And if Pullet knew anything at all
about the psychology of retired military commanders, Admiral Thorson wasn’t
refusing to discuss it because it was secret. He was refusing to discuss it
because he was afraid of being ridiculed. The attack on Rancho Encino Hospital
had been pretty wacky, as homicides went, and Pullet was convinced that Admiral
Thorson had an equally wacky theory about it.

He said,
‘ This
guy who assaulted your wife and the rest of the
hospital staff. Did you ever see anyone who looked like him before?
All those wounds on his body?
Would you have any idea what
they were?”

“I’m afraid I
can’t answer that,” said Admiral Thorson.

“Then you do
know something about it?” demanded Pullet.

“I didn’t say
that. I simply said that I can’t answer your question.”

“You can’t
answer the question because it’s a matter of national security?”

“That’s
correct. Now, please...”

Pullet dragged
over a chair and sat astride it, frowning at Admiral Thorson with scruffy
concern.

“Admiral,” he
said, “
there
was a multiple homicide here last night.
Tengu Your own wife was among the victims. Now, if you refuse to discuss what
happened here because you believe that it’s going to be an infringement of
national security, then you must have some kind of notion what it was all
about. I mean, otherwise, how do you know that it’s likely to be an
infringement of national security?”

“I’m tired,”
said Admiral Thorson. “I’m tired and you’re playing with words. I don’t have
anything to say to you.”

“Admiral...”

“The man is
dead, isn’t he?” Admiral Thorson demanded. “He’s been caught, and executed on
the spot. What’s the purpose of investigating any further?”

“Admiral,” said
Skrolnik as gently as he could, “It’s conceivable that there might have been a
conspiracy to attack you, involving a considerable number of people. So far, we
don’t have a single clue why. But we believe there are men still at liberty who
were concerned in the killing of your wife. We want to catch those men.”

Admiral Thorson
shook his head. His voice was hoarse now, and desperate. “You’ll have to leave
me alone for now. I’m too tired. Please–will you call the doctor?”

Skrolnik took a
deep breath and stood up. “Okay, Admiral. If you don’t want to help, then I
guess I can’t force you. Pullet, will you push that bell, please? We’re going
to leave the admiral to think things over, see if he can’t come up with some
kind of surprise recollection.
Something meaningful to add to
his memoirs.”

The doctor came
in and asked, “All finished now?”

“I hope not,”
said Skrolnik.

“You haven’t
upset him?” asked the doctor.

“He’s okay, I’m
the one who’s upset,” Skrolnik complained.

Skrolnik and
Pullet left the hospital and walked out into the warm night air. Skrolnik’s car
was being repaired in the police workshop, and he had borrowed a dented black
Lincoln Continental from his next-door neighbor. He had parked it on the far
side of the hospital parking lot, and so he and Pullet had to cross almost to
the perimeter of the hospital to reach it. They were almost there, walking side
by side in irritated silence, when Pullet said, “What’s that? Do you see
something?”

“Where?” asked
Skrolnik.

“Out on the road there, beside those bushes.
No–you see that
low stone wall. That’s it. There.”

Skrolnik
strained his eyes in the darkness, and made out the shape of what appeared to
be a man, kneeling in the road. As Skrolnik took two or three steps nearer, he
saw that in front of the man there were two smoking bowls, and he also glimpsed
what looked like two shiny crossed swords.

Skrolnik
immediately hiked out his .38 revolver and released the safety. Pullet did the
same.

Without a word,
Skrolnik ducked down behind the nearest parked car, ran the length of it with
his head bent low, and then crossed the hospital lawn at a quick canter, making
obliquely for the bushes beside the road, but keeping a screen of shrubs and
trees in between himself and the man with the smoking bowls and the swords.

As he neared
the road, Skrolnik waved his arm behind him to indicate to Pullet that he
should circle around on the other side. Then, without any hesitation, he hurled
himself straight through the bushes, with a crash of leaves and broken
branches, and struck a knees-bent stance on the road, his gun held in front of
him in both hands, and yelled, “Police!
Freeze!”

There was a
shot from the other side of the road, and Skrolnik felt the wind of a bullet
flash past his cheek. He dropped to the ground and rolled
himself
back into the bushes again, firing off a quick diversionary shot that hit
something on the other side of the road with a sharp spangl of metal.

The man who had
been kneeling on the roadway had already scurried crabwise to the protection of
the low stone wall. Skrolnik gingerly raised his head and shouted, “Pullet?
Where the fuck are you?” but before Pullet could answer there was a roar of an
engine starting up, and a large limousine backed out of the trees on the other
side of the road, reversed wildly up to the stone wall, its tires smoking and
its suspension bucking, and Skrolnik knew that their mysterious suspect was
about to make a fast getaway.

He knelt among
the dust and the leaves, steadied his hand, and fired off four shots, in what
he hoped was a tight cluster, toward the limousine’s front window. There was a
crackling of broken glass, but the limousine gunned its engine, and took off
down the road with its tail snaking from side to side and its tires screaming
like slaughtered pigs-

“Get on the radio!”
Skrolnik bellowed at Pullet. “Get an alert out on those jokers! Go on, movel”

Pullet pushed
his way out of the bushes and went running back across the lawn to the parking
lot, trying to stuff his gun back into his trousers as he went. Skrolnik meanwhile
walked along to the place where the man had been kneeling and hunkered down to
examine the evidence that he had left there.

One of the
bowls had been tipped over, and its contents were strewn across the blacktop.
It was still smoldering, though, a grayish powdery substance that looked like
incense or charcoal. There was a light, sweetish smell around, which reminded
Skrolnik of something he couldn’t immediately put a name to.
Something
unusual and exotic and, for some reason, very disturbing.

He licked his
finger, touched the powder, and tasted it. It could have been dried flowers or
the burned gum from some species of tree.

He recognized
at once what the two crossed swords were. Samurai
swords,
curved and sharp and decorated with lacquer and silk bindings. He didn’t touch
them; he wanted them photographed and fingerprinted first. But they confirmed
what he and Pullet had just been saying to Admiral Thorson. The attack on
Rancho Encino had been connected with Thorson’s war record, and his assailants
almost certainly wanted revenge. What for, Skrolnik couldn’t even begin to
guess. He reloaded and bolstered his gun, and planted his fists on his hips in
a gesture of thoughtful determination.

It was a pose
that everybody in Skrolnik’s department recognized as a sure
sign
that – Skrolnik was now going to get tough.