The Nicholas Linnear Novels (229 page)

Already he could hear the sirens approaching. A neighbor must have called the fire department. People were rushing along the beach. They brought first-aid kits and blankets, one of which Nicholas threw over Justine’s shoulders. Someone put Polysporin cream on his left arm, but other than that, there was nothing to do but watch the house burn. It was wood frame, as were all the houses on the East End of Long Island, and the fire ripped through it with appalling speed.

“What happened?” someone asked. “How’d it start?”

“I don’t know,” Nicholas said. But of course he knew. He could smell the taint of Tau-tau. Senjin Omukae, the
dorokusai,
had been here; he had set the blaze. Why? To kill them? In such an impersonal manner? Nicholas doubted it. Then what? Nicholas reentered
Getsumei no michi.
Allowed his mind to drift toward the answer. The emeralds! How Nicholas reacted after the fire would tell Senjin if Nicholas had hidden the rest of the stones in the house.

Justine, her head on his shoulder, stood beside him, shivering. He put his arms around her. “Oh, Nick,” she said softly. “I can’t believe it. It’s all gone.”

The fire trucks were arriving, the hoses snaking out, connecting up to the water lines, spraying the house from several directions at once. The firemen swarmed, already breaking a sweat. They fought valiantly. But it was useless, Nicholas saw. The fire ate voraciously at the house, seemingly oblivious to the water being poured on it. It was too well entrenched, raging out of control.

“Look out!” a fireman called, as the center roofbeams collapsed inward, sending great gouts of flame shooting skyward, followed by a cascade of sparks and cinders. The gathering crowd oohed and ahhed as if it were the fourth of July. “Everyone stay clear! This is a dangerous area!”

Nicholas, looking sadly at a part of his past, repository of so many memories, knew that Justine was right. It was all gone.

Detective Albemarle opened the holding cell door, stepped back. “You’re free to go, Senator. I’m truly sorry for the inconvenience.” He shrugged. “We’ve all got our jobs to do. Sometimes mine’s not so wonderful. This is one of those times.”

Cotton Branding looked at him silently. He stood, slung his tuxedo jacket over his shoulders. His sleeves were rolled up and his tie and cummerbund were stuffed in his pocket.

He walked out of the holding cell and said, “Will you kindly tell me what the hell’s going on?”

Shisei, who had been standing in the dense shadows of the precinct corridor, moved into a pool of fluorescent light. Albemarle had taken her into the precinct through a side entrance because the front steps and surrounding street were brilliantly flood-lit with hastily erected television lights, jammed with press clamoring for news of Branding’s status.

Shisei said, “Howe’s dead, Cook. He shot himself tonight.”

“What?”

Albemarle nodded in response to Branding’s look, but he did not say a word.

“Apparently,” Shisei went on, “Howe, obsessed with your growing success, decided to do something drastic about it. After a fight with David Brisling which ended in Howe killing him, Howe decided to try to implicate you in Brisling’s death.”

“Good God.”

“That seems to sum it up nicely,” Albemarle said. He led the way down the corridor. “There are just some papers for you to sign, Senator, and you can have your personal effects back.” He turned. “If you want to call any of your friends in the media from here,” he said, “be my guest. There’s a whole bunch of them outside. I don’t know how you want to handle them, but it’s no sweat to get you out unseen, if you want.”

Branding nodded. “That’s very decent of you, Detective.”

They went through the formalities in the privacy of Albemarle’s chaotic cubicle. “It may not look like much,” he said, “but it’s all mine.”

“After that holding cell,” Branding said, “it looks awfully good to me.”

Albemarle left them for a moment to file the forms Branding had signed and to get his things.

Branding and Shisei looked at each other.

“You’re all I thought about in there,” he said. “I thought I really hated your guts.”

Shisei looked at him levelly. “Does that mean you don’t now?”

“What do you care?” Branding said bitterly. “You played me for the perfect fool.”

“Is that what you think?”

“Oh, please. Don’t deny it. It’s what I know.”

Branding noticed Albemarle standing in the doorway, and he and Shisei lapsed into an uneasy silence.

The detective looked from the one to the other, concerned. “You two having a fight?” He sat on the corner of his desk. “It’s none of my business, right?” He slit open the large manila envelope he was carrying, said to Branding, “Make sure everything’s there, okay?”

“It is,” Branding said shortly, putting away his wallet, keys, address book, and other items returned to him.

“Sign this.” Albemarle nodded, as if the preliminaries were over. “Here’s what I have to say, Senator. You can take it any way you want or not at all, that’s your privilege. This woman’s got a lot of guts. I don’t know your history, don’t want to. Maybe too much water’s gone under the bridge.” He shrugged. “Anyway, you ought to know. She fought like a sonuvabitch to see you freed. She knew you didn’t murder Brisling, and she was willing to put herself in my line of fire in order to help prove it.” He spun the sheet of paper Branding had signed onto his desk. “All things being equal, that ought to count for something. At least, that’s the way it seems to me.” He smiled. “But what do I know, right?”

He got up off the desk. “Good night, Senator, and good luck.” At the doorway he turned, “Feel free to use the office. I’ve got to give a status report to the Indians outside, then I’ll be waiting in case you need me to spirit you out. Use the phone, if you want. Dial nine for an outside line. Like I said, it’s up to you. Handling the press is your métier.”

When they were alone, he and Shisei stared at each other for a long time. When, at length, she saw he had nothing to say, she picked up her handbag.

“Wait a minute,” Branding said. “Don’t go.”

“You said that once before,” Shisei told him, “and look at the trouble it got you into.”

“What trouble?” Branding said.

When she did not answer him, he picked up Albemarle’s phone, got an outside line. He went through his address book, calling all his media contacts either at home or at work. He got them all—a good number were outside the precinct house, linked to their offices, and Branding, by mobile phones. These people never took vacations; they were news junkies, it was all they lived for.

Forty-five minutes later he was finished. “Well, that’s done,” he said. He called his press secretary, briefed her. “I’ll hold a full news conference tomorrow. No, not in the morning. I’ve given a preliminary statement—that’ll have to hold them for the time being. Let’s go for the jugular. Yeah, right. Prime time. Take a page from the President’s book. And let’s do it from S Fourteen.” Branding was referring to his coveted hideaway office in the Capitol Building. “Take the cameras inside. We’ll make it very personal. You know. The photo op will be irresistible. And priceless. We’ll get massive coverage. I’m going to turn this thing right around, make all the points I can and then some. It’ll hit the public like Reagan getting shot and surviving. The news of what Howe tried to do to me will make me a hero. Yeah—and Maureen? I want this Washington police detective, Albemarle—” He looked through the papers on the desk. “Philip Albemarle.” He gave her the precinct number. “I want him at the conference. No. Up there with me. Shoulder to shoulder. Right. You know the kind of thing. The press will eat it up, see us as brothers, kindred spirits. Right. Okay, do it. See you. And Maureen? Thanks.” He put down the phone, sighed deeply. “Long night.”

“Where’s your lawyer?”

“Oh, he was here through the questioning,” Branding said. “When they put me back in the holding cell, he went looking for a judge to sign a writ to get me out. I think he’s still looking.” He laughed suddenly. “I guess the joke’s on him.” He got up, looked at Shisei. “You coming, or what?”

Shisei did not move. “I want to tell you what happened.”

Branding looked at her. “Why is it I wonder that you feel you have to lie to me?”

“I hate that Feraud suit I wore to the dinner,” Shisei said. “I burned it after you left.”

Branding said nothing.

At last Shisei lowered her eyes from his. “I don’t know,” she said in the smallest voice he had ever heard.

“Well,” Branding said, “at least that’s a start.”

This morning Kusunda Ikusa had no time for formalities. He walked up to Masuto Ishii and said, “I have your money.” He fairly thrust the thick envelope at the little man. His contempt for the amount of money, so dear to Ishii, was clearly defined by the gesture.

Ishii opened the envelope; they were alone in the Imperial Palace East Garden, so it was all right. “Thank you, Ikusa-san. Thank you.” He could not stop bowing.

“Forget that,” Ikusa snapped. “What do you have for me?” His nerves weren’t what they were yesterday. But then yesterday that stupid spy was on the bottom of the Sumida River. What in the name of Buddha had caused him to surface? Ikusa wondered. Not that the police would find anything on him to link the body to Ikusa, but Ikusa was a believer in omens, and this was an evil one.

“You were right,” Ishii said, pocketing the envelope, “Nangi-san is planning to move against you.” They began their walk, circumnavigating the garden. It was a brilliant morning, sunshine drenching the last of the night’s dewdrops. “To that end he is marshaling all the support he can from his minister cronies at MITI.”

“I knew it!” Ikusa said triumphantly. On the one hand, he was dismayed that after so many years of being a ronin, Nangi still had such close ties to MITI. On the other hand, he welcomed a showdown with the ministry. If he were to be honest with himself, this battle had been a long time in the making. Ikusa was well aware of the jealousy many MITI ministers felt toward Nami’s burgeoning power. Especially now, since the new Emperor had taken power; he was making it known that Nami’s important policy decisions had his imprimatur. This was especially galling to MITI, which had many decades of smooth sailing in ramming its economic policies down the throat of the industrial sector.

Perhaps the time was right for Nami to put an end to the rivalry. After all, no ship of state could be steered successfully by two captains.

Well, all right, Ikusa vowed, if it’s a fight Nangi wants, that’s just what he’ll get. But I have the edge because I’ve got my pipeline into his strategy.

Ikusa said, “What kind of operation, specifically, is Nangi mounting?”

“I would think financing,” Ishii said, struggling to keep up with the huge man. In his mounting fervor, Ikusa had quickened his step. “Judging by the people he’s brought in”—here he named four of MITI’s top ministers—“that has to be the route he’s taking. All of them have ties to central banks. He’s going to float his company on their backs.”

“And in return?” Ikusa asked.

“It’s brilliant, really. He doesn’t have to mortgage even one division of Sato International.” Ishii took a deep breath. “He’s offered them your head.”

The key. The key to what? Nangi had no idea.

“The first thing to do is to search the Pack Rat’s apartment,” Tomi said, ever the methodical detective.

“It would be a waste of time,” Nangi said, turning the key over and over in his hand. “The Pack Rat never kept anything of importance at home. It was a matter of security to him, and he never broke his own rules.”

“Still,” Tomi said, “it would be poor procedure to assume the key didn’t fit anything there.”

Three hours later they had satisfied themselves that it didn’t.

“Phew! This place is a pigsty,” Tomi said, looking around the cluttered space.

Outside she said, “There was no evidence that the Pack Rat had a safety deposit box.”

“He didn’t,” Nangi assured her. “In his line of business, that never would have occurred to him.”

“Just what
was
the Pack Rat’s line of business?”

Nangi smiled. “He was an information gatherer. He was the best at it I’d ever met.”

“All right. The key opens nothing in his apartment, it’s not for a safety deposit box. That makes sense. Obviously, considering what he did, he’d need twenty-four-hour access to everything important.” Tomi shook her head. “So where does that leave us? Running down lockers in every train and bus depot in the city?”

“No,” Nangi said. “The key has no number, it can’t be to a public locker.”

“Then what
does
it open?”

Nangi considered. Something Tomi had said stuck in his head. What was it? Then he remembered, and it gave him an idea. “Come on,” he said. “We’re going to play some pachinko.”

The Twenty-Four Hour pachinko parlor was in the Ginza, gaudy, loud, smoke-filled, open, as its name said, day and night.

Nangi bought a token from the cashier and moved along the aisles of machines. He counted: seventh row, sixth machine. The machine the Pack Rat always played.

It was being expertly played by a kid of about eighteen with a foot-long Mohawk bristle of hair in flamingo colors down the center of his skull, his head shaved on either side. The kid wore shit-kicker boots with spurs, black jeans covered with metal studs, a short-waisted black leather jacket. Lengths of chains appended from the epaulets clinked rhythmically as he worked the levers that flipped the ball bearing through the maze of the pachinko field. The kid won big and was rewarded with a gush of tokens.

“This could take forever,” Nangi said.

Tomi flipped open her police credentials, hung them in front of the kid’s face.

“Hey!” he said.

“Beat it,” Tomi said, “before I run you in.”

“Yeah?” The kid sneered. “For what?”

“Your hair’s disturbing the peace, sonny,” Tomi said, showing him a glimpse of her gun. The kid beat it out of there.

“Okay,” Tomi said. “What’s up?”

“We’ll see in a minute,” Nangi said, handing her the token. “Here, go crazy.”

Tomi slotted the token, began to play. Meanwhile, Nangi slipped around to the right side of the machine, bent over. There was the little door the Pack Rat had opened to get his tokens. His heart beat a little faster. There was a keyhole in the upper third of the door.