Tengu

by Graham Masterton

  “Then let’s take two cocktails into the bedroom. Do you have any peach brandy? I mix a formidable Fish House Punch.”

  “A dry martini will do.”

  Mr. Esmeralda looked down at this woman clinging to his neck, and for one moment he had an almost uncontrollable urge to tug her arms away and slap her into sensibility. But he needed her, and he had learned years and years ago that you never upset anybody you need, no matter how much contempt you might feel for them.

  “It will be as quick as my trembling hands will allow,” he whispered.

  The bedroom, too, was Italian. Mirrors, chrome, and smoked glass. The only touches of human life were a slender vase of lilies, a framed photograph of Gerard after he had won the visitor’s golf tournament at San Pedro, and a single white stocking draped over the side of the stainless-steel dressing-table stool.

  Mr. Esmeralda took off his jacket and hung it over the back of a chair. “Gerard is a man who lives inside of himself,” he remarked, looking around him.

  “How can you reach the soul of such a man? I am surprised he loves anybody; although if it has to be anybody, Francesca is the least surprising of all. A chilly, stupid girl. If you knew her better you would like her worse.”

  Mr. Esmeralda stripped off his tie. Then he approached Eva, and held her in his arms, his eyes liquid and brown and delightfully quizzical. He kissed her, and then began to unzip her dress.

  She said, “Carlos...” but he hushed her and said, “You must call me ‘my dear,’ and that is all.

  Names have unhappy memories.”

  He gently tugged the dress from her shoulders, kissing her face and neck. She felt as if she were afloat, like a balloon. Eva, the Inflatable Woman–so light and heady that the slightest warm breeze could carry her upward into the early-morning smog of West Los Angeles and away across the San Gabriel Mountains.

  Mr. Esmeralda unhooked her beige lace bra. Her breasts were firm and full for a woman of her age, and he held them in his hands with obvious pleasurfe. Her nipples stiffened between his fingers, and he played with them until her wide pink areolas crinkled and she began to feel that tingling which she hadn’t felt for so long.

  She murmured, “My dear... ”as if she were quoting from a play. Mr. Esmeralda said, “Sshh.”

  He pushed her gently back onto the bed, onto the white-on-white bedspread, and removed her stockings and sheer panties.

  She watched him as he deftly undid his shirt buttons, unbuckled his alligator belt, peeled off his socks. Soon he was kneeling over her naked, his chest shaggy with black hair, his penis rearing from the curly forest between his thighs as purple as an overripe plum.”

  He gripped her legs and opened them up wide, so that the crimson lips of her vulva parted as stickily as a mouth that has been feeding on cranberry syrup. He lowered his mustachioed face and licked at her clitoris with the tip of his tongue, then probed her urethra so deeply that she shivered. She moaned and twisted her hips, but Mr. Esmeralda clasped her tight, and plunged his tongue into her again and again.

  She closed her eyes. She shuddered, deep within herself. She thought, this is mad, and bad. This isn’t the way to solve anything. This isn’t the way to save my marriage or to salvage my self-esteem. But, God, it feels beautiful.

  He rose up at last, and mounted her, his chin shiny and his eyes bright with lust. She reached both her hands down between her legs and opened herself up for him, as wide as she could, so that the very first time he thrust into her, he thrust extravagantly deep, the head of his penis touching the neck of her womb and making her jump in erotic shock.

  He thrust again and again, grunting with each thrust; and Eva tugged herself wider and wider, as if she wanted to take all of him inside her, as if she wanted to take so much that he killed her. He was right: she wanted to be martyred. But only to the cause of her own excitement.

  She felt herself gradually ascending the foothills of an orgasm. She knew it would come this time, that if she concentrated all her mental and muscular energy, she would climax. She very rarely climaxed with Gerard, only when she was so drunk that she didn’t care about his remoteness, or when she knew that he had been with Francesca only hours before. Mr. Esmeralda panted and lowered himself onto her, his hairy chest thick and wiry against her bare breasts, and for a split second she felt an extra-ordinary sense of unreality and alienation, as if she were dreaming that she was making love to some dark-pelted beast.

  At eight, Mr. Esmeralda swung himself out of bed and quickly began to dress. Kuan-yin would still be waiting for him outside, and while he had abused her unmercifully as a lover, he didn’t like to treat her inconsiderately as an employer. You could only expect so much, even from people who were uncritical and devoted.

  As he tied up his necktie, he leaned over the bed and kissed Eva on the ear. “You don’t have to open your Tengu eyes,” he whispered. “If you are awake, I will call you. If you are asleep, I will call you, too. You have been ecstasy beyond belief.”

  He tiptoed to the hallway, and released the chain on the door. He was just about to close it behind him when he heard a soft voice say, “Mr. Esmeralda?”

  He peered back into the apartment through an inch-wide opening in the door. “Who’s that?”

  “It’s me, Kelly.’’ She came up to the door with tangled hair, dressed in a striped nightshirt. “I wanted to say goodbye, and thank you.”

  “Thank you?”

  “I’ve never seen Mother looking as pleased as when you invited her out last night.”

  Mr. Esmeralda opened the door a little wider. “Well,” he said, “thank you for saying thank you.”

  “She’s our mother,” saidJCelly. “I know she drinks a lot, and I know she’s silly sometimes, but we love her. You will take care of her, won’t you?”

  “Of course,” replied Mr. Esmeralda. He took her hand and kissed it. “She will be marvelously taken care of, I promise.”

  He left, clicking the apartment door behind him. As he went down in the elevator, he hummed to himself that sentimental old Latin tune, “The Rose of Rio.”

  Across the street, in a morning that was still chilly, Kuan-yin was sitting behind the wheel of Mr.

  Esmeralda’s limousine, listening to KMPC 710 and eating a cold break- | fast of take-out odamaki mushi, steamed egg and noodles. | Mr. Esmeralda simply said, “Good morning,” as he i climbed into the back of the car. There were hot-towels ! waiting for him in an electric steamer, and his shirt and suit were neatly laid out on the seat. i

  “You looked tired,”- said Kuan-yin.

  “I need some breakfast, that’s all,” said Mr. Esmeralda, ! stripping off his jacket, and then gratefully burying his j face into the cologne-scented towels. “It’s been one of those nights.”

  “You want to go straight home?”

  “No. Take me to Laurel Canyon.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Now I’m sure, yes.”

  Kuan-yin didn’t ask what Mr. Esmeralda meant. It wasn’t her place to ask, and in any case she wasn’t interested. She wasn’t a jealous person, but she did expect something more from Mr.

  Esmeralda than the functional employer-chauffeur relationship they were going through now.

  Perhaps he would grow softer toward her when he found someone else who could excite him as much as she used to. Perhaps he would always hate her for having summoned up his greatest strengths and for having simultaneously exposed his greatest weaknesses. She knew there was very little left in her life, apart from Mr. Esmeralda and the few Chinese friends she knew in downtown Los Angeles. And the Chinese proverb did say, “When you have only two pennies left, spend one on a loaf of bread, and the other on a lily.” She would have to start taking care of herself, both financially and spiritually. She had a feeling that her time with Mr. Esmeralda was coming to an end.

  Mr. Esmeralda, buttoning up his clean blue shirt in the back of the limousine, was already sure that the weather was changing, and that a storm was going to brea
k before too long. At least he was prepared for it, as much as anyone who had to deal with a creature like Kappa could ever be prepared. Doctor Gempaku, very early on, when they were first converting the ranch at Pacoima into a center for developing Tengus, had told him, “Once you have instructed a Tengu to kill somebody, then the Tengu must kill, whether it is the person you want to see killed or not. I suppose the only way to protect yourself against a Tengu is to elect a substitute to be killed in your place. It is written in the old scrolls that if you offer the Tengu the blood of somebody you have lain with–a woman or a man with whom you have had sexual congress–or somebody who owes you a lasting favor, then the Tengu is obliged to accept your offer. Such an offer, after all, heightens the evil of what is about to happen; and no devil as iniquitous as the Tengu could refuse that.

  Doctor Gempaku’s words had crossed Mr. Esmeralda’s mind the very first time he had walked into the Crowleys’ apartment and found Eva deserted, half naked, and drunk. Here is a woman who is crying out for consolation, he had thought to himself. Here is a woman who will take me as her lover just to spite her husband. And, quite apart from the fact that taking Eva Crowley to bed will enable me to score a particularly ironic point against that cold and arrogant Gerard Crowley, it will also provide me with a living, loving sacrifice to throw to the Tengus if Kappa ever sends them after me.

  This morning, however, Mr. Esmeralda was more than satisfied. This morning, he felt unusually safe. Not only could he offer Eva Crowley to any Tengu which Kappa might direct to kill him; he could also offer Kelly and Kathryn, bound to him by their gratitude. His life-insurance policy had trebled in value in the space of a single night.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  At the same moment that Mr. Esmeralda closed the door of Eva Crowlcy’s apartment, Sergeant Skrolnik opened the door of El Krusho’s cell, folded his arms, took a deep breath, and said,

  “It’s all right. We’ve dropped the charges. You can go.”

  Maurice had been working out by lifting and lowering his stool with one hand. He blinked at Sergeant Skrolnik and said, “What?” Sergeant Skrolnik said, “You deaf or something?”

  “I don’t know. What? You said I could go?”

  “You think I’d leave the fucking cell door wide open if you couldn’t? Go. Collect your belongings at the desk.”

  Maurice looked almost disappointed. “You found out who really did it?” he asked, as he tugged on his T-shirt and tried to straighten his hair in the two-way mirror. Skrolnik watched this impromptu primping with disgust. “We didn’t find out who did it,” he said. “We just happen to know that it wasn’t you. Although, believe it or not, I said from the beginning that it wasn’t you. I only had to take one look at that sheep’s behind of a face of yours, and I knew it wasn’t you.”

  “You really thought I was innocent?”

  “You’re about as homicidal as a pet llama. Physically, could have taken us both to pieces when we arrested you, but you weren’t even angry. You didn’t know what you were being arrested for, and you weren’t even angry.”

  Maurice said, “Can I claim compensation?”

  “Compensation for what?”

  “Well, for spending a couple of nights in the cells. It was pretty uncomfortable. And my mother’s totally convinced that I’m a mass murderer.”

  Sergeant Skrolnik took El Krusho’s beefy arm and led him down to the desk to collect his belongings. He said confidentially, “If I were you, I would get the hell out of this place, and not worry about compensation or defamation or any of that shit, because the best place that anyone can ever be is miles and miles away from the law. You got me?”

  Maurice counted his $27.76, thrust it into the back pocket of his jeans, and nodded. “I still think there ought to be some kind of compensation. You know, a month’s exemption from parking tickets, something like that?”

  Just then, the swinging doors of the police headquarters opened and Mack Holt strode in, with Olive close behind him. “Hey, Maurice!” said Mack. “They told me you were sprung.” Tengu “You know why he was sprung,” said Sergeant Skrol-nik, poker-faced.

  “Well, yes, I’m sorry about that,” said Mack.’“I guess I’m just pleased that Maurice is out, that’s all. Are you coming back to my place, Maurice? How about it? A couple of beers, a steak or two? Fifteen eggs? Maurice has to keep up his strength,” he explained to Sergeant Skrol-nik.

  “Why was I sprung?” asked Maurice, his eyes on Skrolnik. “You didn’t tell me that. You just said I was free to go.”

  Mack glanced at Sergeant Skrolnik, then at El Krusho, and then back again to Sergeant Skrolnik.

  “Ah,” he said uncomfortably.

  But Sergeant Skrolnik said, “You were sprung because I didn’t believe you were guilty, that’s all; and because twelve hours’ intensive police work has so far failed to tease out the slightest evidence that you were the man responsible for Sherry Cantor’s murder, or that you were anywhere near the Hollywood Freeway when Patrolman Ed Russo was killed.”

  Skrolnik hesitated. Olive started to say something, but ; Mack nudged her to keep quiet. This was, after all, I Skrolnik’s show; and Mack considered that Skrolnik was reasonably human.

  Whatever Mayor Tom Bradley had said about “the dimensions of violent crime,” whatever Sheriff Peter J. Pitchcss had said about everybody in Los Angeles suffering from a “siege mentality,” whatever Governor Jerry Brown had said about prisoners taking karate lessons in California’s prisons “so that when they get out, they’re more dangerous than ever,” it was Sergeant Skrolnik who had to go out on the streets and track down the killers and the weirdos and the homicidal freaks, and Mack respected him for that. If Maurice had actually committed those murders, Mack wouldn’t have gone near Maurice with a loaded .45 and half a division of the California National Guard. Yet Skrolnik had arrested Maurice, albeit mistakenly, with nobody to help him but Detective Pullet.

  Sergeant Skrolnik laid his hand on El Krusho’s shoulder and said, “The main reason you were sprung is because last night someone broke into the Rancho Encino Hospital, and tore several people wide apart in the same way that Sherry Cantor was torn apart. The similarities of the killings are overwhelming; and besides that, we have the body of the man who did it. So, what happened at Orchid Place quite obviously wasn’t down to you.”

  “You caught the guy?” asked Maurice.

  “If you want to,know the confidential truth, we caught the guy and blew his fucking head off,” said Skrolnik.

  “Instant justice,” said Olive.

  Skrolnik looked at her balefully. This morning she was wearing a thin cheesecloth blouse that dimly revealed the darkness of her nipples and an extremely tight pair of canary-yellow pants.

  The effect of the pants, as Detective Pullet was to remark afterward in a moment of intense lateral thinking, was to remind him of two bananas side by side.

  Mack said, “It’s over, then? You’ve caught him and killed him?”

  “You think it’s over. The governor thinks it’s over. The mayor thinks it’s over. Even the police commissioner thinks it’s over. But, of course, we now have several weeks of intensive and incredibly tedious investigation to carry out to discover who this fruitcake was, and why he committed those killings.”

  “Isn’t that what we pay you for?” asked Olive sharply.

  Skrolnik grinned tightly. “You also pay me to keep the next murderer away from your door, Mrs. Nesmith. And the next. Hillside Stranglers, Manson gangs, Lawrence Btttakers. Hell’s Angels, muggers, intruders, rapists, perverts, sadists, lone headcases. You’re not safe now. I’ll never pretend that you are. But you’re a whole lot safer than if I wasn’t here, taking care of you.”

  El Krusho said, “I could use a beer.”

  Skrolnik said, “Sign here for your belongings and you can go sink as many beers as you like.” Olive asked, “Where’s the body now?”

  “What body?” said Sergeant Skrolnik, watching El Krusho sign “M. Needs” in a large, roun
ded scrawl.

  “You said you killed him. The murderer. Where’s his body now?”

  “They’re keeping it on ice for me, in the morgue at Rancho Encino. I’m going up there to collect it later today. The medical examiners can’t wait to slice it up and sec what made it tick.”

  Olive said, “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry for what?” asked Skrolnik.

  ‘‘I’m sorry I bugged you. I don’t know. Don’t press me. Just accept that I’m sorry.”

  Sergeant Skrolnik put his meaty, red-freckled hands on Olive’s bare black shoulders and smiled at her. “Listen,” he said, “if only one-tenth of the population said what you just did, sorry, then Los Angeles would be a happier city. We make mistakes in the police department. Everybody does. If it costs you, as a taxpayer, then I personally apologize. But it’s nice to hear someone say sorry in return. After all, we’re all in this thing together.”

  “This is all getting unnecessarily emotional,” said Mack. “Do you think we might leave now?”

  “Go ahead,” said Skrolnik, and gave Olive a comfortable squeeze on the behind.

  “As the criminals get weirder, the cops get weirder,” Maurice remarked as they climbed into Mack’s battered Volkswagen.

  “At least you’re out of there,” said Mack. He gave Maurice a friendly punch on his muscular arm.

  “You know, it’s fantastic to see you. You’re looking great.”

  “What happened up at Encino?” asked Maurice as Mack started up the Volkswagen’s blaring engine, stuck his hand out of the window, and pulled out right in front of a lumbering Hostess Cupcakes truck.

  “You shithead!” roared the truck driver.

  “I see your driving hasn’t improved,” Maurice remarked. “Do you remember the time you drove off the

  I edge of that cliff at Santa Barbara?”

  “I didn’t drive off any cliff,” Mack protested. “It was just a gully, that’s all. Don’t give me cliff.”

  Olive said, “We heard about it on the radio this morning. Some mad guy broke into the hospital at Rancho Encino and ripped a nurse to pieces. Some other people were shot. The police went in there and killed him.”