The Nicholas Linnear Novels (225 page)

The tape ran out, and Albemarle turned off the machine. There was a thoughtful look on his face. “What’d he mean by that?”

“Howe saw me in the same light he saw Brisling. We were dogs to be trained to do his bidding. He’s loathsome.”

“No. I meant about scaring the shit out of people.”

Shisei shrugged. “I know some martial arts. Howe liked that; it made him feel more secure to have me around.”

Albemarle grunted again. “I’ll say one thing for you, you sure ain’t worried about implicating yourself.”

“In what?” Her voice was absolutely neutral. Shisei knew to be more careful than ever now. She could see the sheet of ice Albemarle was leading her toward, waiting for her to hit it with her backside.

“You’re so good with your hands, so scary, how about you iced Brisling for Howe?”

She made sure her eyes didn’t waver from his, but there was nothing aggressive in her look. “Tell me again how Brisling died.”

“Something thick and square crushed the back of his head,” Albemarle said, as if he were describing the features of a new car. “You know, like you do with an eggshell on the edge of an iron skillet.”

“That sounds to me like a crime of high passion, done in a fit of rage, or at least with a sense of premeditated hate,” Shisei said. “Besides, I had no motive.”

“You told me you work for Howe. You like the extra bread.”

Shisei was good at putting venom in her voice. “When I was young, I was used by a man. Abused, you might call it. I vowed then I’d never let it happen again. No one has the right to do that to me. When I realized that Howe was using me, I called it quits.” She allowed her face to relax a little. “In any case, I would have been more circumspect in what I did.”

“Meaning?”

“Do you know anything at all about the martial arts, Detective?”

“I’ve taken some karate—the usual departmental thing.”

“If you don’t mind my saying so, that isn’t martial arts. That’s putting your hand through a board or subduing a perpetrator.”

“Perps’re my business.”

“But they’re not mine, Detective. The true martial arts—the way they should be taught—are eighty percent mental. In any case, they’re reactive. I was never trained to be the aggressor. If David Brisling—or one of your street perps—came at me, I’d know what to do to protect myself, but I certainly wouldn’t smash the back of his head in. I wouldn’t have to work that hard.”

Albemarle was silent a long time. He produced a toothpick, began to twirl it around his mouth. Then his finger tapped the tape recorder. “I’ll need to impound the cassette. Evidence.”

“It’s yours,” Shisei said.

“When I bring Howe in, I’ll want you with me.”

“Well.” She let something new into her voice. “I wouldn’t mind that at all.”

When Nicholas cleared Immigration and Customs at New York’s JFK Airport, he heard his name being called over the loudspeaker. He went to a courtesy phone and was given a telephone number. He went over to a bank of chrome and graffitied pay phones. He needed to go to the far end of the baggage carousels to do so. He had gotten yen changed to American dollars at Narita Airport. He dialed the local number he had been given.

“It’s me,” a voice said. “I’m at a phone on the other side of the place. I can see you. No one’s tagging you.”

“I didn’t think it was that kind of situation,” Nicholas said. “We can meet.”

Nicholas dialed the number Tomi had given him. Homicide detective Mel Branca was working nights, and he took Nicholas’s call. “Bad news, bud,” he said in a smoky voice. “I met this Japanese yo-yo’s plane like Tomi asked me to, but couldn’t find the guy. He was on the passenger manifest, all right. I checked that. I even polled the flight crew, but none of them could remember him. The seat assigned to him was filled, though, that’s all they could tell me. Best I could do, bud, at such short notice. My in tray’s higher than a cokie with a head on.”

Nicholas thanked Branca, hung up. He was about to call Justine, at their house in West Bay Bridge, then thought better of it. If Senjin were loose here, there was no point in giving him any advance notice of his, Nicholas’s, arrival. But the thought of the
dorokusai
with Justine out in the beach house was almost too much to bear.

Patience, he thought. Your time is coming.

He turned, saw Conny Tanaka striding toward him. It had been Conny who, through Umi, Nicholas had asked to meet him here at the airport.

Conny was Terry Tanaka’s older brother. He had been living in Vancouver when Saigo had come to New York in 1980, challenged Terry in Terry’s own
dojo,
and subsequently killed him. Afterward, Conny had left Vancouver to get his brother’s martial arts school back on its feet. But he had never gone back to British Columbia, preferring the highlighted kineticism of New York. Conny loved to party, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t serious about business.

“Tik-Tik,” he said, taking Nicholas’s carryon from him, “I got your message.” Only Conny called Nicholas Tik-Tik, because, as Conny had once told him,
You’re like a bomb, man, ticking away beneath that ultracool exterior. Nobody has a chance against you.

Conny had no trouble recognizing him; Nicholas had shaved off his beard thirty thousand feet over the Hawaiian Islands. “What’s up?” Conny said now.

“Trouble,” Nicholas said as they weaved their way out of the terminal. “A whole bellyful of it.” It was already night, the sodium-arc lights bathing everything in their unnatural bluish glow. Windshields were haloed and people’s faces looked ghoulish, drained of blood.

Only Conny looked the same, short, squat as a fireplug, muscular shoulders and arms, slim hips. He moved like a dancer with his center of gravity low to the ground. His square, even-featured face, so like Terry’s, yet so much more massive, seemed intimidating to those who did not know him. Yet, as Nicholas knew, Conny was capable of great tenderness and concern. It had been his idea to give a third of the
dojo
’s profits to Eileen Okura’s family. Eileen had been Terry’s girlfriend before Saigo had murdered her.

It had begun to rain. The access road looked filthy, clotted with soggy trash. They crossed it, dodging limos, cabs, and lumbering buses, picked up Conny’s battered Buick in the short-term parking lot. “I’ve got a lot to do and very little time to do it in.”

Conny threw Nicholas’s carryon in the backseat, fired the engine. “We’d better get rolling,” he said.

In the privacy of the car’s interior Nicholas turned to Conny. “It’s good to see you, Tanaka-san,” he said formally.

Conny bowed. “You honor me, Linnear-san.” There was a debt that Conny could never repay Nicholas for avenging his brother’s death. It was unspoken, and would forever be, but it was always there, cementing the boundaries of their friendship.

“First things first,” Nicholas said. “West Bay Bridge. You know where.”

Conny nodded as he paid the parking lot attendant, and they joined the line of vehicles on the airport ring road. “Everything’s as you left it. It’s cleaned every week, and someone comes to check up every other day.”

“And my car?”

“I go out and run it myself each weekend,” Conny said. “It’s in beautiful shape.” He swung around a rental car minivan that had stopped to pick up passengers. “I miss that old house. You were smart to buy the place you’d been renting. Bought at the right time, too, when the market was soft. Beach houses are hard to come by now, unless you want to build one from scratch. Then you’ve got to want to part with two, three million, easy.”

“Ouch.”

Conny gave him a look. “What d’you mean ouch, man? Did you ever count how many millions you’re worth?”

“No.” Nicholas grunted. “To tell you the truth, I’ve never gotten used to the wealth. I’m not entirely comfortable with it.”

Conny nodded. “Yeah. Money’s got a karma of its own. Well, you’ve got to ride it like an unbroken stallion.”

“Doing my best,” Nicholas said as they accelerated, heading east on the Van Wyck Expressway.

The windshield wipers made a kind of music, a rhythmic undercurrent. It wasn’t until they were past Patchogue that Nicholas spoke again. “There’s some very bad news headed my way. In fact, it’s already here. It’s the kind I don’t want you to touch under any circumstances. The way you can help me best is to stay at the periphery.”

“Just how bad is it?” There was no inflection in Conny’s voice.

“I’m in a tunnel,” Nicholas said, “and truthfully, I don’t know if I’m coming out the other side.”

“That bad,” Conny said. He flashed Nicholas a grin. “It’s a good thing you’ve got friends, man.”

“I know.”

“But you don’t say ‘don’t touch’ to friends, Nick. You don’t keep them on the periphery when they can help you stay alive.”

“Conny—”

“I’m not about to let you tie my hands behind my back just so I can watch you die.”

Not a word was said about Terry Tanaka and the debt Conny owed Nicholas. It didn’t have to be. It had its own life in the minds of both these men.
Giri
was never spoken of among Japanese. Everyone knew that it existed along with the air that one breathed, and was just as essential to life.

“Okay,” Nicholas said.

Nicholas kept to himself the rest of the way out. When Conny swung the Buick off Montauk Highway into the parking lot of the A&P in West Bay Bridge, he said, “The place looks the same.”

Conny trod hard on the brakes. The Buick’s headlights illumined empty spaces. “It’s not here, man,” he said. “Your car’s gone.”

“That’s a good sign,” Nicholas said, knowing that Justine must have taken it. “Just drop me off at the house.”

“I can hang around if you want.”

Nicholas knew what Conny meant, wanting to be there if there was going to be trouble. “You’ll be more use to me in the city. I’ve got a couple of things I want you to do.” He handed Conny a sheet of paper folded around an audio cassette Nicholas had taped on the flight over. “Take a look when you get home.”

Conny took the cassette and the note as he wheeled out of the parking lot, heading for Dune Road and the Atlantic Ocean. It was late, quiet. Just some kids hanging out against their cars, smoking, drinking, perhaps. But the little town had a peaceful look, like something out of a children’s story, waiting for teddy bears to begin dancing along the streets. Nicholas thought of Justine.

He remembered the Christmas they had spent out here just before leaving for Japan. They had needed to be alone, away from the city and, in the aftermath of the holocaust caused by Saigo, everything it had come to represent.

How beautiful the town was, with Christmas trees strung with colored lights all along the streets, a dusting of snow on Christmas morning and then brilliant sunshine, the beach so cold and windy that they couldn’t take their usual early walk, so they retreated to the house to drink steaming glass mugs of mulled wine Justine had made while they opened presents. She had given him a watch, the one he still wore now; he had given her a ruby necklace from Tiffany’s. He remembered how much time and care he had spent in selecting it for her, the look on her face when she had opened the blue box.

What’s happened to us since then? Nicholas asked himself. Where did we get lost inside ourselves? When did we stop being a couple?

“We’re here,” Conny announced.

The Buick’s headlights illuminated Nicholas’s car, a 1962 white Corvette with red side scoops. Nicholas had had it completely reconditioned a year after he had bought it, and it ran superbly.

“Hey, someone’s in there,” Conny said. His voice was wary, and Nicholas could feel the tension come into his frame.

The lights were on in the house, but Nicholas could not see anyone moving around.

“It’s okay,” Nicholas said, getting out of the Buick. He reached in, pulled out his overnight bag. “Go back home, Conny. You’ve got a lot to do.”

Conny nodded, waited until Nicholas stepped back, then reversed out of the gravel driveway.

Nicholas went up the steps to the house. Behind him the black Atlantic pummeled the shoreline unmercifully. Out here in winter, he knew, the beach could lose two to three yards to the sea and to storms, until spring came and the winds and tides turned more favorable. It was ten to fifteen degrees cooler than it had been at the airport, and he was grateful for the relief from the sticky heat. He was hungry and he needed a shower.

On the porch he used his key without ringing the bell. Despite what he had told Conny, he was cautious. He did not know where Senjin Omukae, the
dorokusai,
was, or even what he really wanted beyond the rest of So-Peng’s emeralds.

If you die now, if you die too easily, you will never understand.
What had the
dorokusai
meant? Nicholas thought he was closer to finding out.

He crossed the threshold, heard music coming from the stereo, Tracy Chapman singing “Fast Car.” One of Justine’s favorites. He knew he should relax a bit, but he could not.

He looked around the wide, open living room, dining room, and kitchen. The space looked huge, yawning after so much time in Japan, where everything, it seemed, was in miniature, exquisite miniworlds standing shoulder to shoulder, elbow to elbow, in a land where for centuries chronic overcrowding had been a way of life.

Amazingly, the large fish tank, the demarkation between the living and the dining areas, had been maintained. A trio of lacy angelfish swam regally by, and his ancient whiskered catfish was wiggling up one side, vacuuming algae as he went.

“Gus, old buddy,” Nicholas whispered to the catfish. “It’s good to see you.”

He put his bag down, went silently all through the house. When at last he came to the master bedroom, he found Justine’s suitcases opened on the bed. She had not unpacked, but clothes had been laid out. He heard the shower running. In a moment it was shut off.

He stood there in the semidarkness, in his own house, listening to his wife moving about the bathroom. Yet he did not move. It occurred to him that he felt like a stranger here, and the realization saddened him. He had no home, no family. The only thing he seemed connected to was Japan.

He abruptly realized what this connection had cost him, and he wondered whether it was worth it. Japan was his milieu, but it was not Justine’s. Until this moment he had not realized what a fundamental difference that could be. Now standing here, alone, in the midst of everything that should have been familiar and comfortable and was not, he could put himself in Justine’s mind, see as she saw the alien in the familiar.