The Nicholas Linnear Novels (232 page)

“Cook, I love you.”

He shook his head. “I’m not sure what that means right now.”

Shisei stood very still, but even at this distance Branding could sense a change come over her. There was a tension, a kind of fluttering of the air between them that made his bowels turn to water. What had she said before?
I thought you might be afraid of me.
If she had murdered David Brisling, he would have good reason to be. What would stop her from doing the same to him? But he had no real proof, and never would have. Just a dark, accusatory spot on her closet door and his overactive imagination, which in time he might come to terms with.

After a long time Shisei said, “What would you do if I told you the truth?”

Branding shook his head. “You must tell me because you want to tell me the truth, because you want to start life anew, not because of any reaction I might have.”

Shisei’s eyes were glowing like amber subjected to the light. She took a deep breath, fighting for
prana,
for equilibrium. The atmosphere in the room seemed to quake, ripples extending outward until they purled against Branding’s chest.

“Yes,” she whispered. “I know.”

Branding gave a tiny sigh, as if he had been holding his breath. He turned away, began slowly preparing the bed for sleep.

Shisei approached him. “Is that all you’re going to ask? Don’t you want to know more?”

Branding stood up, looked into her face. “I already know more.” That tension again, the sweat collecting in his armpits, crawling down the line of his spine.

“I want you to know something, Shisei. I love you. But I’m not yet sure who it is I love. Is it the perfect illusion—one of the many you’ve conjured up for me? Or is it you—the real you, hidden deep down somewhere with all your weaknesses and flaws?” His eyes never left hers. “I need your help to find out. I’m already well-acquainted with the illusion. Now I need some time with the real Shisei. Tell me. Are you willing to help me?”

Shisei was crying. “I can’t believe you’re still here. I can’t believe I haven’t driven you away. Why have you stayed? I can’t understand it. The more monstrous things you learn about me, the closer you seem to me. Is that possible? Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”

Branding wanted to go to her, to take her in his arms, but he hesitated, sensing that to move at all now would be a mistake. He recalled a vacation out west, talking to a cowboy who had just finished breaking a horse. The cowboy told him that the bronco was at his most dangerous in the moments just before he capitulated, accepting the bit, the direction of the reins, the unfamiliar weight of a human being on his back.
That’s when you can get hurt bad,
the cowboy drawled.
’Cause you relax, thinkin’ yore work is done, an’ you’re safe. Let me tell you, bud, that’s shore as shit when you git yore neck broke.

Some similar instinct told Branding now that he was at that critical moment with Shisei. He did not relax, watched, instead, the tears streaming down her face, his heart breaking.

“The truth is—” Shisei stopped, gathered herself, began again. “The truth is, I love a show. I always have. But even more, I love to perform, because I can feel loved then, the collective love of my audience.”

She stopped again, and she was so long in continuing that Branding was certain that was all she could squeeze out now. “My brother,” Shisei said in a strangled voice, “said that acting would be the death of me.”

“I didn’t know you had a brother.”

“A twin brother.” She gave him a wan smile. “There are many things you don’t know about me, Cook. Many things I wish now I didn’t have to tell you.”

“What is it? Do you think I’ll leave you when I know?”

Shisei hissed air out of her mouth. “Cook, no one has ever loved you as I love you. No one else will, because no one else can in the way I do. And whatever happens, that at least will never change. I swear to you I’m telling the truth.”

“Yes. I know.”

“I wish I could believe you.”

“Why? I’ve never lied to you.” He held out a hand. “Do you see now how completely you’re entangled in the snare of your own deception?”

She leaned heavily against the bed, as if she suddenly had lost the will even to stand up. “Oh, God, what do you want from me? Don’t you understand that the truth will destroy me?”

“No,” Branding said. “It won’t, Shisei. That’s just an illusion you’re using to frighten yourself. What I want is for you to climb out of the pit you’ve been living in for Christ knows how many years. I’m offering life, and life only.”

Shisei, trembling, said, “I have played the siren with you, and the Judas. Now you ask me to abandon my acting, to give up the roles I have lovingly fashioned, to exist only as myself. I don’t know whether I can do that.”

“Of course you don’t,” Branding said. “Because you’re a stranger to yourself. Given a choice, don’t all humans choose the known over the unknown?”

“But I am not human!” Shisei fairly shouted it, terrified, heartsick that he had at last driven her to this confession, one she had vowed long ago never to make. “I and my brother stand apart from all humankind. We are tanjian. We possess a gift of the mind. We see things, know things—we can do things others cannot.”

Branding, stunned, moved on a somnambulist’s leaden feet toward where she huddled on the corner of the bed. “You mean you’re psychic.”

She gave a bitter laugh. “Only in the broadest sense. Not as parlor tricksters, able to tell a stranger’s birthdate from holding a possession of his. No, not that. Our gift is far more potent.”

Branding sat next to her. He felt her pain as if it were his own. He gave her an encouraging smile. “Is that your secret, the terrible revelation that you thought would make me hate you?”

“No,” Shisei breathed. The she turned away from him. “Oh, God, help me.” She shivered once, then said, “No. My secret is my twin brother. My bond with him. It was my brother—not the mad artist Zasso, whose name I invented—who imprisoned me, who felt compelled to create upon my back the centerpiece of the dreams that haunted his young life.

“It is my twin brother with whom I have been intimate in ways you could never imagine. It is my twin brother who loves me unto death, who will not let me go, who has destroyed those who would seek to love me as he loves me.

“My twin brother, who is my guardian, my ghost lover, my other half, dark, foreboding, reeking of death.”

Branding looked at Shisei spread across the bed, saw the great spider moving, breathing as she breathed, living as she lived, and for the first time he understood the extent of her agony, the nature of the prison without walls in which she was incarcerated.

He moved to touch her. “Shisei—”

“Wait,” she said. “There’s more. My brother called me yesterday. He’s here, in America. In New York City. Something’s happened. He’s called for me.”

“You don’t have to go.”

“But I do, Cook!” She rolled over. “If you know anything about me, you know that I must.
Rata,
the rules.
Giri,
my duty. These are still the only definitions of my life. Without them, I am nothing.”

She sat up. Her eyes were pleading, not for sympathy—that was not in her—but for something akin to understanding. She seemed to be saying, Cook, don’t be Western now. Try to think like an Easterner. Be accepting. Be patient.

She held out her arms. “Hold me, Cook. I’m frightened.”

“Of your brother?” he asked as he enfolded her in his arms.

“Yes,” she whispered. “But now I am just as frightened of myself.”

“I think that’s a good sign.” Branding smelled her damp hair, the faint musk of her skin. It was as heady, as dizzying as throwing yourself into a field of wildflowers. He hugged her to him, feeling at last close to the core of her, that torn and battered part of her that she seemed to despise, and which he knew now that he loved above everything else.

“Cook,” she said, and a tremor went through her. “I will have to go. In the morning. First thing.”

“Will you tell him about me?”

“I won’t have to,” Shisei said bleakly. “He will already know.”

Branding felt that peculiar sensation run down his spine, as if Shisei’s spider were now upon his back. “What will happen?”

“I don’t know. My gift does not extend to second sight. I can only feel how powerful your love is. It is like a splendid ache in my heart.”

They rocked together, like children locked in the aftermath of a disaster.

“I can’t come with you, Shisei,” Branding said. “I can’t run out on the press. And I have the ASCRA bill coming onto the Senate floor later today. I’m its sponsor; I have to be there.
Kata. Giri
.”

“I understand.”

“But I’ll be with you, nonetheless.” Branding kissed her neck with such tenderness that Shisei began to weep anew.

Her nails dug into the flesh of his back. “Oh, Cook, how I love you!”

When Tomi returned to her office to pick up some notes, she was told by one of the uniforms that someone was waiting for her. She remembered the moment just over a month ago when she had been told that and had then met Tanzan Nangi for the first time.

But as she approached her desk this afternoon, she recognized the man sitting beside it. She detoured, made two cups of tea, brought them to her desk.

“Hello, Scoundrel,” she said, handing him a tea. “How the hell are you?” But she could see in his hollowed, frightened eyes how he was.

“Domo,
Tomi-san,” the Scoundrel said. Thank you. He took the tea gratefully, drank it down in three straight thirst-quenching gulps.

“If you want more, you know where the hot plate is,” she said.

“Thank you,” he said again, and bowed, very formal now, so unlike his grinning, lighthearted self, a Japanese-featured Billy Idol thumbing his nose at the world.

Tomi watched him as he went to get himself more tea, turning over in her mind the change that had come over him.

When he returned, she said, “I must say I’m surprised you’ve come on your own.”

“What?”

“Where’s Killan?”

The Scoundrel was so startled he spilled hot tea all over himself.

Tomi gave him a pile of paper napkins so he could brush himself off. “Did you get burned?” she asked.

“It’s not so bad,” the Scoundrel said.

“I wasn’t talking about the tea.” His hand came up and their eyes locked. “Why isn’t Killan here with you?” She said it softly, the steel inside the glove.

“Killan? Why should she be?”

“Because she’s in this thing with you.”

“What thing?”

“Stop it!” Tomi said it so sharply that she froze him, the teacup halfway to his lips. “You came here for help. A blind man could tell you’re in trouble. So let’s save some time. I know about MANTIS, and I know what it can do. While you’ve been a very bad boy, I’ve been working with Tanzan Nangi. Do you know him? You should. You tested your MANTIS virus on his computer system.” Tomi shook her head. “This is some really bad shit you’ve fallen into, Seji. I know you, my friend. I know what you’re capable of—and what would never occur to you.

“That’s how I know that somehow Killan Oroshi is involved. We were all so close once. The Three Musketeers, remember? Haunting movie theaters, hanging out on the Ginza, guzzling beer and pizza.”

The Scoundrel cleared his throat. “Long time passing.”

“You’re telling me, brother.” Tomi put her hands on her desk. “Okay. Bottom line. You’ve come to me for help. I can give it, but only if you’re straight with me. The truth and nothing but the truth, so help you John Wayne.”

That brought the glimmer of a smile to the Scoundrel’s lips, but it soon faded. “You have to understand. Killan’s my friend, too. I have an obligation to—”

“We owe her nothing, Seji. Look at her. She’s a master manipulator.”

“You two just—”

“Forget about us,” Tomi said. “Why didn’t you come to me before this?”

“Killan said not to.”

“Killan.” Tomi held herself in check. “I’m your friend, Seji. I would have helped you. I will help you now if you give me the chance.”

The Scoundrel’s eyes broke from hers. He could not bear to look at her accusatory face. He put his tea aside, rested his face in his hands. “Tomi-san, we were almost killed last night. I—I found a tape, electronic ears, surveillance equipment in an abandoned apartment next to mine. The guy—I don’t know what happened to him—was spying on me, but also on Killan and Kusunda Ikusa. There’s a lot of dirt on it about him. Killan got the idea that we should sell the tape to Ikusa. She told me she could handle him. No sweat.

“Instead, he sent his car after us last night and almost ran us down. For Christ’s sake, the fucking thing went up on the sidewalk to get us! If I hadn’t put a couple of bullets through the windshield, Killan and I would both be dead!”

“Just hold it,” Tomi said. Her heart was hammering so hard she could barely think straight. Could the tape the Scoundrel found have belonged to the Pack Rat? Nangi said that he had been following Ikusa. But if so, how had the Pack Rat come to spy on the Scoundrel? Then she had the connection: Killan Oroshi.

Tomi picked up the phone on her desk, dialed an interoffice extension. “I need a forensics team,” she said. She gave the officer the Scoundrel’s address and apartment number. “There’s an abandoned apartment next door. I want it combed from top to bottom. And this is a red priority. I expect the lab results in twenty-four hours.”

Then she dialed another extension. She spoke to the officer on duty, asked him about suspicious car accidents reported within the past twenty-four hours. He told her about a black Mercedes that had smashed into a row of seedy stores in the outskirts of the city, killing two occupants. The odd thing was, the officer said, they’d found bullet holes in the windshield.

Tomi asked if they’d ID’d the victims yet. The officer gave her the names, but they rang no bells. She asked if the names had been run through the computers. “Yes, and because of what we got, we’re referring the case to Homicide, your department,” he said. “These guys were Yakuza hit men.”

Tomi thanked the officer, put down the phone, lost in thought. She looked at the Scoundrel. “You’re right,” she said. “Kusunda Ikusa tried to have you killed. I’m taking you into protective custody right now. Where’s Killan?”