Tengu

by Graham Masterton

  Mack said, “You’re sure, aren’t you?”

  “Sure of what?”

  “You’re sure that the guy who killed Sherry was wearing a No mask.”

  Jerry thought for a moment. “Yes,” he nodded, “I’m sure.”

  Mack picked up his beer, and then put it down again. “Maybe this isn’t relevant,” he said.

  “Maybe what isn’t relevant?”

  “Well... come with me for a second. I just want to show you something.”

  Jerry hesitated at first, but then he followed Mack out of the house, leaving the door open behind them, and down the sloping concrete driveway to the street. The day was humid and smoggy, and Jerry wiped his face with his hand Tengu to clear away the sweat.

  Mack stood on the sidewalk and said, “Take a look at this.”

  Jerry said, “My house number. What of it?”

  “No, but you’re used 10 it,” said Mack. “When/first came up here, I didn’t know whether number 11 was your house or Sherry’s bungalow next door. The party wall, the angle of the driveway. To someone who isn’t familiar with the street, and the way the houses are arranged, it looks like Sherry’s bungalow is number 11.”

  Jerry narrowed his eyes, and took a pace or two backward. After a while he said, “You know something? You’re right.”

  Mack stared at Jerry through the sweltering heat of the afternoon. “You know what that could mean, don’t you? What with the Japanese mask and everything? It would make more sense.”

  Jerry felt that cold wind again, blowing around the skirts of his soul. “You’re trying to tell me that it would make more sense if the killer had made a mistake, mixed up the houses?”

  “Sherry didn’t know anything about Japanese people. Nothing. I don’t think she’d even been to Benihana’s. All she was interested in was Our Family Jones, and being a terrific television star, and that was it. I’m not sure–and I’m not trying to sound like a jealous ex-boyfriend or anything–but I don’t think she was even dating anybody. Not seriously.”

  Jerry looked back at the low stone wall with 11 on it, and then nodded. “You’re saying that the killer was after me, and not Sherry? You’re saying that I’m the one who should’ve been torn to pieces?”

  “It’s only a theory.”

  “Oh, sure. Some theory.”

  “Listen,” said Mack, “I know there are all kinds of holes in it. Like, how did the killer manage to mistake a young woman for a middle-aged man, and why did he kill her even when he knew that he was attacking the wrong person? But... you heard what the police said. The guy was crazy. Only a crazy person could rip the legs right off a girl’s body, just for the hell of it. And if he was crazy, then maybe he didn’t care too much who he killed.”

  Jerry said, “Let’s go back in the house. It’s too damned hot out here. And besides, half the blinds in the whole damned street are twitching. They’re a nosy bunch up here in Orchid Place. I’ve been thinking of rechristening it Rubberneck Mountain.”

  Back in the kitchen, they finished their pizza and drank their beer in silence. Then Mack took out a packet of papers and rolled himself a cigarette.

  ‘‘The most important clue to this thing is that No mask, isn’t it?” he asked Jerry, blowing out smoke.

  Jerry wiped beerfoam away from his upper lip. “It could be. I’m not sure. But as far as I know, I’m the only person in this whole street who has ever had anything to do with Japan; and boy, did I have something to do with Japan. It was practically up to me that the whole country got wiped out.”

  “You think you ought to tell the police?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose so. It’s just that I haven’t worked it out in my own head yet, and I think I need to. If I tell the police about it now, that’ll kind of take the onus off my own brain, and maybe I’ll miss something important, simply because I don’t feel I’m responsible for it anymore. I have to admit it, I’ve got a lazy mind. Old age, I guess.”

  ‘‘Do you think somebody found out what you did in the war? One of these Japanese terrorist groups? Maybe that’s it. You remember that trouble they had last year at the Japanese Film Festival, all those fanatical rightwing Japanese students threatening to disembowel themselves all over the place?”

  Jerry didn’t reply, but swilled the last of his beer around in his glass as if he couldn’t decide whether he ought to drink it or not.

  Mack said, “It wasn’t your fault, you know, what happened to Sherry. Even if it was all a mistake, and the killer was really looking for you. You can’t blame yourself.’’

  Jerry gave Mack a forced smile. “You’re just saying that to make me feel better.’’

  “You think so?” said Mack. “I was Sherry’s lover. I still am.”

  Jerry finished his beer, and then said slowly, “That No mask, that particular No mask, represents the absolute epitome of cruelty. It appears in only one or two traditional plays, and even then it seems to be treated with great ambiguity... do you understand? As if the actors themselves can’t decide how they ought to react toward it. It’s very powerful, very strange... as if it’s the worst thing the actors could possibly imagine, something they ought to hate and reject, and yet they can’t, because it’s part of the human condition itself. . . Like, you may detest yourself for being unreasonably angry with somebody at work, or for swearing at somebody who pushes in front of you when you’re standing in line, but anger and viciousness are part of what you are, and you can’t completely reject them because that means you’d be rejecting part of yourself.

  Mack said, “What do they call it? This No character?”

  Jerry put down his glass. “It has several names. The most common name comes from the Shinto monks who originally staged the No drama-dances; and that name is simply used to describe any monk who has sold his soul to total evil. The Tengu, they call him. The carrion monster. The tearer of hearts and souls.”

  Mack stood up and went across to the table where the mask lay, empty and emotionless, smiling but unsmiling, death without rhyme or reason. “Whatever the police do,” he said hoarsely, “you and me, we’ve got to find this character, the guy who wore this mask; and we’ve got to take our own revenge.”

  Jerry said, “Revenge?”

  “What would you call it?” asked Mack. Jerry shrugged. “Justice? I don’t know. No, you’re right. Not justice. Revenge.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Gerard Crowley was sitting in the sauna on the twenty-third floor of Century Park East reading

  “It Pays to Increase Your Word Power” in the Reader’s Digest when the telephone rang. He picked it up, sweating, and said “Yes?”

  “Mr. Crowley? This is Mr. Esmeralda.”

  “Well, good evening to you, Mr. Esmeralda.”

  ‘‘Not so good yet, Mr. Crowley. But, if everything goes well... ”

  Gerard took a breath of lung-scorching air. “You want something done, right? I detect that note of lip-licking anticipation.”

  “You’re a good judge of latent emotion, Mr. Crowley. Yes, I want something done. Can we meet?”

  Gerard lifted himself up slightly so that he could see the clock on the gymnasium wall through the sauna window. It was 6:47 P.M., and he was due to take Francesca to The Tower at 7:30 for dinner. He said, “Can’t we make it tomorrow? I’m really tied up this evening.”

  “It’s urgent, Mr. Crowley. More urgent than dining out with Francesca Allis.”

  Gerard wiped sweat away from his mouth with the back of his hand. “All right. I’ll manage to cancel. Where do you want to meet?”

  Mr. Esmeralda cleared this throat. “Meet me at Inca’s, 301 North Berendo Street, at eight.”

  “Inca’s?”

  “It’s a restaurant. South American.”

  “Listen, Mr. Esmeralda...”

  “What is it?” Mr. Esmeralda’s voice was calm and cold.

  Gerard let out a short, testy sigh. “I’ll see you at Inca’s, at eight. That’s all.”

  “Goodbye.�
�

  Gerard hung up, reached for his towel, and angrily punched open the door of the sauna. Joseph, the coach, was buffing up the chrome on the barbell when Gerard came stalking through to the changing room and banged open the door of his locker.

  “You’re getting dressed already, Mr. Crowley? Didn’t you take a shower? Your pores are going to be way open, Mr. Crowley, like a Swiss cheese.”

  “Fuck my pores,” snapped Gerard, tugging his shirt on to his damp back. Joseph glanced up at Mr. Corrit, from Corrit Film Productions, “who was panting into his eighteenth mile on the Puch exercise cycle, and pulled an utterly perplexed face. How could anybody who cared anything for modern body-toning say anything like “fuck my pores”? It was a total denial of the fitness ethic.

  Back at his desk on the twenty-seventh floor, Gerard tucked his shirt untidily into his belt, and called Francis Canu at The Tower. “Francis, I’m sorry. Your restaurant is beautiful. The best.

  I’m going to remember the Sunset Room when I’m in heaven. Well, wherever. But some other time, you know? Yes. Yes, I know. Well, me too.” Then he called Francesca at her studio apartment at Culver and Elenda. “Francesca? Hi. It’s Gerard. Yes. Listen, baby–yes, I know–but I have to tell you that tonight’s off. No. No, listen, its not Evie. It’s nothing to do with Evie. It’s business, you got me? Genuine, legitimate business. Well, look. (Will you please listen to what I’m telling you? Yes. I’ll come by at eleven o’clock if I’m through by then. I should be, sure. And, listen...” He closed his eyes and listened for almost three minutes to a staccato rattle of complaint. Now and then he nodded and began to say something, but it was only when her anger was completely spent that he was able to say, “I’m sorry. You got that? You want me to spell it for you? And I love you, too, regardless.

  Yes. Well, you can think what you like. But I’m sorry. And I love you. And if I don’t see you later tonight I’ll see you tomorrow. Yes. Yes. Goodbye. Yes. Goodbye.”

  He was sweating afresh by the time he put down the phone. He wished–almost, but not really–that he had told Francesca just what to do with her fancy culinary tastes and her wretched language. But the truth was, he did, in his peculiarly self-destructive way, love her. They were right together, she and he, Gerard and Francesca. Suicidal, maybe, like the lovers in “Life in the Fast Lane,” by the Eagles, which Gerard played at top volume on his Delco 8-track as he drove to work every morning. He was brutally handsome... and she fwas terminally pretty....

  But wasn’t that where he had always needed to be; wasn’t that where he had been born to be; speeding along in the fast lane, reckless, crazy, high as a kite? He looked at the color photograph of Evie and the twins next to his telephone, and suddenly he knew that he could never go back; security and marriage and Evic’s endless attentiveness were like suffocation and slow death. If he was going to die, then he wanted to die fast. So fast that he would never know what hit him.

  On his way out of the office, he caught sight of himself in the screen of tinted glass which surrounded his receptionist’s desk. He looked not chiseled, but tired; not brutally handsome, but middle-aged. It had never occurred to him before, not with such uncompromising clarity, that he might simply be growing too old for the kind of life he was trying to lead. He started to light up a cigar in the elevator, but a dignified black cleaning woman pointed wordlessly to the notice: NO SMOKING UNDER PENALTY OF LAW.

  He had to wait in line for nearly ten minutes before they brought his car up from the underground parking lot, and he drove out of Century City with a shriek of tires and a bad-tempered blast on his horn. He had a stop to make before meeting Mr. Esmeralda.

  Outside Nancy Shiranuka’s apartment on Alta Loma, he parked his Buick aggressively between two other cars, colliding bumper-to-bumper with both of them, and then he got out and slammed the door. Kemo was waiting for him when he stepped out of the elevator on the fourth floor, impassively holding the door open. “Welcome, Mr. Crowley, he said. “Miss Shiranuka was not expecting you.”

  “Hi, Kemo,” said Gerard, and gripped the boy’s arm as he entered the hallway, so that he could balance himself while he slipped off his Bijan loafers. Nancy was sitting cross-legged on one of the black-and-white silk cushions on the living room floor, her eyes closed, listening to a tape of koto music. There was sandlewood smoke in the room, and the fragrance of tea. Kemo said to Gerard, “You wish for a drink, Mr. Crowley?”

  “Scotch,” Gerard told him. “And none of that Japanese stuff you gave me the last time.

  McKamikaze, or whatever it was called.”

  “Yes, Mr. Crowley.”

  Nancy opened her eyes and looked toward Gerard without turning her head. “This is an unexpected delight,” she said blandly.

  “I’ve had another call from Esmeralda,” Gerard said, dragging over two or three cushions and sitting down closer to Nancy than Nancy obviously thought was comfortable. “I’m supposed to be meeting him at eight at a restaurant downtown called Inca’s.”

  “Do you know what he wants?” asked Nancy. Her eyes were as dark and as reflective as pools of oil. You could have drowned in her eyes–you could have been swallowed up in their Oriental tranquility, but your feathers would have been slicked forever.

  Gerard said, “It sounds like something important. Maybe we’re going to have to go out to the ranch again. Personally, I don’t know what the hell’s going on, and I don’t particularly care. As long as Esmeralda keeps the bank deposits coming, that’s all that matters.”

  “A man of principle,” said Nancy, quietly but acidly.

  “That’s right,” Gerard agreed. “And the principle is that I make as much money as I can and stay alive for as long as possible.”

  Kemo came in with Gerard’s whiskey on a square black-lacquered tray. Gerard took the drink, knocked back half of it, and then said, “one thing, though. It’s time we found out who’s pulling the strings around here. I mean really pulling the strings. If Esmeralda has something particularly important to tell me tonight, and it sounds as if he does, then he’s probably going to go straight back to his employers to report that everything’s okay, or whatever.”

  Nancy nodded almost imperceptibly. “You mean to follow him?” she asked.

  “Not me, of course. But Kemo could. If he really wants to take Yoshikazu’s place, it’s time he statrted getting actively involved.”

  “You don’t think that it might be excessively dangerous, trying to check up on our employers?” asked Nancy. “Esmeralda did insist from the very beginning, did he not, that we should do nothing except what he told us to do; and that we should refrain from being too inquisitive?

  And–let us make no bones about it, Gerard, anyone who can create a Tengu, as these people can... well, they are not to be played with.”

  Gerard said, “Of course it’s dangerous. But which is going to be more dangerous? That’s what we have to ask ourselves. Should we make an attempt to find out who’s behind all this–who’s giving the orders, who’s paying the money? Or should we blindly go on doing all of Esmeralda’s dirty work for him, never quite knowing when the police or the FBI or the very people we’re working for are going to wipe us out? Just as you said yesterday, my dear, we were all chosen not so much for our individual talents, however sparkling those might be, but because we’re all of us dispensable. Easy to get rid of. Each one of us has been involved in enough shady little sidelines for the police not to ask too many embarrassing questions if we happened to meet with a nasty and unexpected accident.

  I used to run guns in Cuba; the commander used to traffic in children; and God only knows what you used to be mixed up with, but I can guarantee that it was something less respectable than Sunday-school outings.”

  Nancy thought carefully for a while, and then stood up, gracefully slipslopping in silk slippers to the other side of the room, where she switched off her koto music and slid a bamboo panel across the stereo equipment.

  “I have had a feeling for some time now that we
do not know the whole story of what we are doing and why we have been employed,” she said.

  “I’ve had that feeling from the very beginning,” said Gerard. “But when ten thousand dollars is credited to your account every single month, on the first, without fail, then who’s arguing?”

  “They pay you ten?” asked Nancy. Her voice was emotionless. The way she said it, Gerard didn’t know whether she was getting more than him, or less. Nancy added, “I wonder where the money is all coming from. I know they are paying the commander seven thousand a month, and Esmeralda has promised him a bonus if he arranges everything to Esmeralda’s satisfaction.”

  Gerard said, “Whoever they are, they’re obviously loaded.”

  “Don’t you think, more loaded than this Tengu project warrants? Such an investment, such salaries, all for the sake of bodyguards?”

  “Very special bodyguards, so Mr. Esmeralda said. Completely invincible. The kind that a Mafia leader or an Arab oil millionaire would pay up to a couple of million to have beside him.”

  “Do you think that really rings true?” asked Nancy.

  “Security is big business these days. There are con- dominium owners on Wilshire who would pay anything you asked for a bodyguard like one of Esmeralda’s Tengus.’’

  “I don’t know.... I find it difficult to be satisfied by what Esmeralda keeps telling us,” said Nancy.

  “Does it matter?”

  “It didn’t matter until they sent the Tengu to kill that Sennett man. Now we have two murders on our conscience. That poor actress, and that policeman.”

  “On your conscience, maybe, but not on mine,” said Gerard. He finished his whiskey in one throat-burning swallow, and then held up the glass for Kemo to bring him another one. ‘

  ‘Esmeralda said that Sennett used to work in Japan during the war, and that he will guess what the Tengus are all about the minute he hears about them. Gempaku’s using some kind of process that isn’t strictly in accordance with PDA regulations, you know? Some brand of anabolic steroids to build them up physically, give them muscle. It was either Sennett or us, and that’s the hard old story of everyday life and survival. Besides, it gave us a chance to try out the Tengu, didn’t it, to see how controllable he was?”