The Kaisho (44 page)

Slowly, the front passenger-side door of the Toyota opened and a burly man appeared. He had a pockmarked face, and blunt mouth and eyes that quartered the environment every fifteen seconds.

He bowed, paid his respects in formal Yakuza fashion, giving his name, place of birth, and his clan affiliation.

The Yamauchi, Nangi thought. He had met Tomoo Kozo, the
oyabun,
only once. What could this man want with him?

The burly man rose and said, “Please send the woman away with your driver. You will be in our care today.”

Nangi’s driver moved and the insectoid’s gun was out in a flash.

“There’s no need for this,” Nangi said.

“I have my instructions to bring you,” the burly man said. “The method is entirely up to you.”

Nangi nodded. He bent down, said something to his driver, then slammed his door shut.

Seiko’s pale face was in the window. “Nangi-san—”

“Go home. Nothing will happen to me.”

“How can you trust them?”

But he was already limping toward the white Toyota, relying more than he had to on the dragon’s-head cane. When he came abreast of the Toyota, the insectoid opened the rear door for him. He got inside, and the burly man joined him in the backseat. Then the insectoid slid behind the wheel, slammed into gear, and the white Toyota took off.

Nangi sat back against the cloth of the backseat, his hands curled around the carved head of his cane.

“Where are you taking me?” he asked.

The burly man turned his pockmarked face toward him. “Today is not the same as yesterday,” he said with a smirk. “Your protector may no longer be among the living.” A gold tooth flashed. “Mikio Okami is missing.”

Celeste was screaming.

She came awake with a violent shudder, as if forced from theta to alpha, from sleep to consciousness, by a clawed fist. Sitting straight up in the bed, her forearms crossed protectively over her face, she screamed.

Nicholas, who had been sitting very close to her, came and pried her forearms apart, imposing himself into her field of vision, trying with the force of his mind to exclude the nightmare image, dredged up from the swamp of her subconscious, that swam with sharp teeth and razor tail behind her eyes.

Celeste.

He spoke with his mind, to calm her, and because she would not hear him over her screams. But oddly, this made her all the more frantic. He let go of her wrists and, when he was certain she was focused on him, moved back off the bed. In the end, he stood quite still, breathing slowly, in and out, until she was finished, until her mind, lagging in the aftermath of severe shock, could surface on its own from the depths of the nightmare.

When she had stopped screaming, he picked up the phone, spoke quietly to the day manager to assure him that everything was all right; it was mademoiselle remembering how close the taxi had come to hitting her, she was fine now,
merci,
but perhaps an
infusion menthe
to calm mademoiselle’s nerves.

He replaced the receiver, said to Celeste, “It’s all right. You’re safe now.”

But she was shaking her head, fear a dark stain, widening, in her eyes. “No. It’s not all right. You’re still here.”

And then he understood it all, and he said, “Celeste, it’s time you told me about yourself.”

She turned her head to the wall.

“You can’t hide from me, you see.”

She wrapped her arms around herself for warmth, for shelter.

“Celeste, I’m not the enemy.”

“Everyone is the enemy.”

Of course he could see how she would think that. There was a knock at the door, and opening it, Nicholas took the tray from the waiter, put it on the desk. He signed the check, closed the door to the room.

When Celeste had accepted the mint herbal tea from him, he said, “It’s so simple, isn’t it? You knew what an awful time I had spent here years ago; and you knew it was because of a woman.”

Celeste said nothing, instead put the edge of the cup to her lips. She would not look at him, but it didn’t matter now.

“But more than that, you foresaw the Messulethe adept’s appearance in the Marais. It was only the street you got wrong.”

The cup fell from her lifeless fingers and its steaming contents spilled onto the bedcovers. She seemed unaware of anything but the sound of his voice. He reached out with his psyche to enfold her in his protection, but she flinched and cried out.

“Keep away from me!” Her voice was a dry rasp. “We’re two of a kind, aren’t we?” She shuddered. “Dear God, what dreadful irony that I should call on you for help!”

“You’re wrong,” Nicholas said, and something in his tone made her turn her head. “You and I are quite different—the talents we possess—”

“Talents!” There were tears standing in the corners of her eyes and her body was vibrating with a series of tiny spasms. “You call this a
talent,
this…” She shuddered again and, for the first time looked down, saw the mess on the bedspread in front of her. Her eyes flicked up at him. “So you’ll understand, I did not tell you the whole truth about my mother.” Down again at the wet stain because she could not now maintain contact as she was drawn backward in time.

“She died when I was six. We had—how shall I describe it?—a
difficult
relationship. She and my father were always at odds, or so it seemed to me at the time.
At the time.
That’s all that matters, isn’t it? In the reverse telescope of memory, I understand what an insufferable brat I was, how cruel I was to her. But only now; not then. Then I only knew that she hurt my father and that in return I must hurt her.”

There was a long silence. Nicholas could hear her breathing, would have perhaps sensed what was going inside her, but in prudence kept his psyche well-heeled inside himself.

At length, Celeste drew a deep, shuddering breath and her eyes closed. When her lips moved, her whispered words had a ghostly quality. “I
saw
what was going to happen to her: the fire, her death,
everything.
I saw it in my mind like a film, and I said nothing,
did
nothing to help her.” Her eyes opened, and looking into his, they had a haunted aspect; they were magnified by tears. “I could have saved her. Why didn’t I?”

So this was the truth: not only fear of herself but a crippling guilt as well.

“You were too young,” he said and, in response to her withering look, added, “Look at yourself, Celeste. You’re still too young to understand, let alone control, your talent.”

“That word again.” She squeezed her eyes shut, shuddered. “You can’t control a gift from the devil. It just
is.”

“Whatever it is,” he said softly, “it’s a part of you.” He came and sat on the edge of the bed. “You were six, Celeste. Can you say with all honesty that you knew what you saw was the future? That it was actually going to happen to your mother? Or could you have thought that it was an idle wish?”

“A wish, yes. I—” But the words caught in her throat, and she began to gag, so that Nicholas reached out to hold her close to him, and only this near her could he hear the tissue-thin keening of her words, forced at last from her throat:

“But maybe not just an idle wish, a passing fancy, but an… evil desire that… with this thing, this
power…
I caused to happen.”

She was sobbing now, and Nicholas rocked her, holding her tight, all the fear and tension sluicing from her as her heart broke open and poured forth the blackness she had been holding in check for so many years.

“Celeste, listen to me,” he said in her ear, “no one, not you or me or that Messulethe out there—
no one
—can create the future. What you saw was happening, perhaps even as you saw it. You were six, Celeste, a small child. Think. Even if you had gone to your father and told him what you had seen, would he have believed you? Why would he? You must accept the fact that at six you were powerless to help your mother.”

“But I didn’t want to help her.” Her head on his shoulder, a child again.

“That feeling you must deal with,” he said, stroking her hair. “But that’s another matter, entirely.”

“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life hating her.” Her breath was slowing as she calmed. “I want to love her.”

“Then you’ve got to forgive her... and forgive yourself.”

She slept then, for a while, curled in a ball, her face to the windows, where the gauzy curtains filtered the last of the late-afternoon sun as it fell into the green copper lake of the rooftops. Nicholas put on a light jacket of black cotton, slipped out the door.

Margarite drove very fast, overtaking cars and trucks at will. Croaker was glad he had his seat belt fastened. She had become quite distraught and he wanted to know why.

She turned through the gates of her estate, nodded to the two goons who were lounging around smoking and keeping their hands warm in case, Croaker supposed, they needed to grab their guns quickly. A spray of gravel was left in their wake as she kicked the Lexus around the last curve to the house.

In the silence after she switched off the ignition Croaker could hear the rottweiler barking forcefully. The dog and its handler came into view. It was up on its hind legs, its mouth open, tongue lolling wetly. As soon as Margarite stepped out of the car, it came down on all fours, snorted, then returned to its panting and restless padding.

Croaker looked at Margarite over the low-slung cartop as she drew Francie out beside her.

“I want Francie out of this environment right now. I can see how Tony and I are destroying her. I’ve got a friend in Connecticut who she can stay with.”

“Tony won’t like it,” Croaker warned.

“Fuck Tony,” she said as her daughter slipped her arms around her waist. She kissed the top of Francie’s head, said quietly, “Darling, go inside and ask Mikey to help you pack.” Still, the girl was reluctant to part from them. “Go on, sweetie.”

Francie stood staring at Croaker. At length, she said, “Will I see you again?”

“Promise.”

She gave him one last look, then turned and ran up the front steps, into the house.

“The rottweiler ought to go to Connecticut with her.”

“What for?” Margarite said. “He’s already killed one dog—he’ll just do it again if he wants her.”

“I don’t want anything to happen to her.”

She gave him an ironic smile. “What an extraordinary thing to say, my detective.”

A wiseguy appeared at the front door to the house. “You want Francie to get packed, Mrs. D.?”

“That’s right, Mickey. Do it now before Mr. DeCamillo gets home.”

The wiseguy seemed uncertain, then nodded, went back inside.

For a moment, Margarite was silent with indecision. Unknown emotions flickered in her eyes. At last she said, “What am I going to do, Lew? He was here. He killed two of my staff and Caesar.”

Croaker felt his heart thudding heavily against his chest. “But that isn’t all he did, is it, Margarite?”

“No.” Her voice had dropped to a hoarse whisper. “He went after Francie, threatened to kill her. He would have; I saw that much in his eyes. God, no wonder she’s so freaked out.” The estate had acquired a preternatural stillness, the kind beneath which a trained ear could sense the first onset of electrical energy that presaged a major storm.

“He drugged Francie, hung her upside down in her room as an example for me to see.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “Then we sat and waited for the phone to ring. He told me Dom was going to be calling and that I was to set up a meeting without his WITSEC handlers. That was easy; it’s what Dominic wanted. He’d been told that Tony was beating up on Francie.” The amber eyes seemed haunted, like a roomful of mirrors.

Croaker went on when it was clear she couldn’t. “Then Robert forced you to take him to your brother—all the way to Minnesota.”

Her head went down. “Oh, Christ, what he did to me.” She was shaking with the memory. “He made me an accomplice to my own brother’s murder.”

Gaunt was waiting in a dingy bar on the outskirts of Chinatown. He was nursing a Jack Daniel’s and feeling like hurling himself into the Potomac. Was there such a thing as death by pollution? Sure, it happened every day: death by exposure to radon, plutonium, radar guns, microwaves, even above-ground high-tension wires. Who said living in the country was healthier than the city?

Gaunt, seated in one of the booths in the bar’s rear, stared into the amber corn liquor and contemplated his current situation. Strictly no exit.

He knew enough about the Chi Project to be frightened by what Davis Munch, the Pentagon investigator, had told him. The Chi Project was supposedly still in the development stages, but that could mean anything from we’ve-got-shit-all to we’re-about-to-roll-out-a-production-model-and-beat-the-competition-sίx-ways-from-Sunday. He also suspected that the Chi technology roughly paralleled that of Hyrotech-inc.’s Hive computer. Nicholas, prescient as usual, had embarked on his own project when it became clear that his bid to buy Hyrotech was going to be stymied. From the limited knowledge disseminated within Sato-Tomkin, Gaunt understood that the Chi computer would be several steps advanced from the Hive technology.

At this time of the day, somewhere between dinner and drunk-as-a-skunk, the bar was crowded. A beery, smoky smell permeated everything, killing all color, all sense of time and place, which was just the sort of atmosphere that attracted the denizens of this kind of watering hole. In his current mood, Gaunt felt perfectly at home here.

Had Nicholas somehow managed to steal proprietary elements from Hive, or was someone neatly trying to frame him with Sen. Rance Bane’s Strategic Economic Oversight Committee? Perhaps it was the senator himself, or was it merely that Bane had an agenda, and Nicholas fit neatly into it?

Men in business suits, women in skirts and slacks, lounged up front at the boomerang-shaped bar, half-slurring comments between overloud horsey laughs, leaning in that way, intense and nonchalant, that only seasoned drunkards can achieve. Gaunt watched them with a jaundiced eye, trying very hard not to be reminded of his mother.