Giri

by Marc Olden

  On one side of the large black oak desk the Caymanian banker and two assistants stopped counting to enter printout totals from individual calculators into a ledger kept by the banker. Opposite them, and with a calculator of his own, sat Constantine Pangalos, a high-powered New York attorney whom Sparrowhawk and two of his agency guards had escorted with the money from New York to St. Petersburg by car and from there by jet to the Cayman Islands. Pangalos was fortyish, a dark and hairy little man, with thick eyebrows over a hooked nose and a decided preference for other men’s wives. Sparrowhawk was convinced that the man’s lechery and abominable table manners would have found him quite at home with Rasputin. Pangalos had once been a noted federal prosecutor, in charge of a task force investigating organized crime. But how he worked for organized crime, for the Paul Molise family of New York. As did Trevor Sparrowhawk.

  Another cruise liner arrived in the harbor. Sparrowhawk heard the three blasts of its deep horn and the answering whistles from the fishing boats.

  “Finished.”

  A tired Pangalos flopped back in his chair and massaged strained eyes with his fingertips. He spoke to Sparrowhawk, whom he disliked—the feeling was mutual—without turning around. “You can call New York now. Tell our friends three days.”

  The Englishman rose from his chair, the Burns poems under one arm. Paul Molise, junior and senior, would be delighted to hear they were getting the eight million back so soon. Washed, of course. This particular laundering scheme was the brainchild of Paul junior, a financial wizard who had graduated from Harvard Business School and was responsible for his family’s move into legitimate investments: nursing homes, shopping centers, savings and loan associations and real estate.

  Management Systems Consultants also laundered its share of dirty money, but that was not its primary function. Under Sparrowhawk’s shrewd direction it gathered information vital to Molise interests. The information came from the police files, congressional committees, corporate board meetings, union bargaining sessions, the IRS, FBI, secret court testimony and the federal witness protection program. It came from former lawmen now on the company payroll, who used their contacts to secure computer tapes, data bank information and copies of memos, dossiers and reports.

  Sparrowhawk had turned Management Systems Consultants into a profitable company. It had legitimate security contracts with leading corporations ranging from hotel chains to fast-food restaurants. It performed investigations for top law firms, politicians and foreign businessmen. It furnished bodyguards, in-house security for banks and federal plants, performed debugging and wiretapping and made employee background checks. Most of its clients thought the company was legitimate and efficient; they didn’t know that private information about each of them was accessible to a crime family.

  Though backed by Paul Molise and his father, Management Systems Consultants was Sparrowhawk’s domain. He insisted that wet work, killing, be left to the wogs, so as not to bring MSC under scrutiny. The company was to restrict itself to washing money and collecting intelligence.

  “Men see wrong even in the righteous,” he had said to Paul Molise. “The suspicious mind has only to know a little to suspect much more. American law enforcement is that suspicious mind. It surely has both of us under surveillance, you more than me. In any case, a corpse draped around the company water cooler is apt to discourage business and cause our board of directors to leap up and down like a fiddler’s elbow.”

  In the Georgetown banker’s office Sparrowhawk said to Pangalos, “I’ll telephone from outside. Gives me a chance to stretch my legs. By the way, should anyone inquire, when may I say you’ll return to New York?”

  “When I get there. I have things to do in Miami.”

  “I’m sure.”

  Pangalos slowly turned his small dark head to lock eyes with Sparrowhawk. The staring contest ended with the Greek snapping at the banker, “Let’s keep it rolling. We finished the counting, but there’s paperwork to take care of. I’d like it done while we’re young, okay?”

  Sparrowhawk watched Pangalos indulge in a protracted fingering of his crotch. Insatiable bastard. One of Pangalos’s clients, a producer of television news in New York, had been too busy to accompany his wife to Florida, where she had fled to escape a November snowstorm. She was now waiting for Pangalos to join her at a Spanish villa in Key Biscayne.

  “I shall take Robbie with me,” said Sparrowhawk, referring to one of the two agency guards waiting outside the door. “Martin can stay behind. Should you need a runner to bring a message to me I daresay he’ll have no trouble locating me in a town this size.”

  Pangalos smirked. “Maybe you can find some bimbo down here to sit on Robbie’s face.”

  “Perhaps I shan’t be around the next time you annoy Robbie.”

  Frowning, Pangalos chewed a thumbnail, remembering how close he had come. Sparrowhawk had stepped in between the two of them and calmed Robbie down, but it hadn’t been easy. A remark about Robbie never going out with women had set him off and almost cost Pangalos his life. Robbie was lethal.

  He was expert in Tae Kwan Do and Okinawa-Te, in Kung Fu and Shotokan. In knife fighting and Bo-jitsu, stick fighting. He and Sparrowhawk had first met in Saigon, where Robbie was a SEAL and Sparrowhawk had worked for the CIA, Both also worked for the Mafia, which had managed to make a big profit out of the Vietnam War. At Management Systems Consultants, the thirty-year-old Robbie worked as bodyguard, as courier for cash and vital papers and as martial arts instructor to company personnel. Sparrowhawk was proud that Robbie successfully competed in major karate tournaments, where he had become a nationally ranked competitor. With only one child—a daughter—Sparrowhawk saw Robbie as the son he would have liked to have, and the lad showed his respect by calling Sparrowhawk major.

  In Saigon, where Paul junior and Sparrowhawk had first discussed forming Management Systems Consultants, the major had made it clear that Robbie was to be part of the deal. This was not merely a gracious gesture to a comrade-in-arms; the lucrative contract and wide latitude of freedom offered Sparrowhawk did not rule out the possibility of treachery from the Italians. Robbie would be a handy chap to have around.

  Sparrowhawk was suddenly alert. Something was wrong at the other end of the phone in New York.

  Paul Molise was supposed to have answered. Instead Sparrowhawk heard another voice, mockingly polite and barely suppressing laughter. An alarm went off in the Englishman’s mind. As arranged, he was using a public telephone in Georgetown to reach a public telephone in Manhattan, one that should have been free from wiretaps. The voice that greeted Sparrowhawk seemed to know he was out of the country.

  “Paulie says he’s sure you did a good job down there. He wants you to pass the information on to me.”

  The information. Molise’s eight million, now untraceable in a Cayman bank, would return to America in three days as loans to businesses controlled by Molise. Also, Molise would be allowed tax deductions for interest payments on the loans.

  And in the telephone call fifteen minutes earlier Sparrowhawk had arranged for someone—not an employee of Management Systems Consultants—to carry out a contract killing for the Molise family within the next forty-eight hours.

  The silver-haired Englishman, receiver to his ear, drew deeply on an oval-shaped Turkish cigarette and stared at a Pride of Burma, whose scarlet and gold blossoms made it one of the world’s most beautiful trees. Two American college girls, made giggly by ganja, cycled past on their way to Seven Mile Beach, fins and snorkel masks dangling from handlebars. One, the blonde, reminded Sparrowhawk of Valerie, his daughter, and suddenly he remembered his promise to bring her some coral jewelry.

  “Hey, I know you’re there,” said the voice. “I can hear you breathing.”

  Bloody bastards are on to us, thought Sparrowhawk. One bloody bastard in particular.

  He put a hand over the mouth of the receiver and with his head signaled Robbie to come closer.

  “Manny Decker,” whispered Spar
rowhawk. Robbie’s eyebrows rose.

  “That’s him on the phone?”

  “Keep your voice down, dammit. Whoever it is, is trying to disguise his voice with a handkerchief over the mouthpiece. But I’ll give you cards and spades it’s Decker.”

  “Son of a bitch. How did he find out which phone we’d be calling in New York? How the hell did he even know we were down here?”

  Sparrowhawk, struggling to control his anger, stared at the setting sun, a bright red ball that had turned the sea into crimson glass. Jesus in heaven, how he hated to be hunted.

  “Doesn’t matter how he came to know. He’s a police officer.”

  “Come, come,” urged the voice, “time’s a-wasting. Give me numbers, dates, something to tell Paulie.”

  The look on Robbie’s face would have chilled the blood of a lesser man than Sparrowhawk, who had seen it before: in Saigon just before Robbie tortured and killed, and at karate tournaments before he annihilated his opponent.

  The Englishman, his hand still covering the receiver mouthpiece, violently shook his head. “Unpurse your lips and listen to me. You’ve twice had a go at Decker. Leave it at that. This isn’t Vietnam, do you understand?” Chastened, Robbie hung his head.

  Like Robbie, Manny Decker was an accomplished karateka. Twice they had met in tournament competition, with Robbie winning both times. In their last fight, which had gone into overtime, Robbie had savagely broken the knee of the New York City detective. Only skilled surgery and months of special exercise had saved Decker from being permanently crippled.

  After that, Decker had never fought in another tournament, leading many, Sparrowhawk included, to assume he was afraid of Robbie. Decker continued to train and instruct and was in top shape, but he avoided all tournament competition. Unfortunately, he was still a good cop, too good. Sparrowhawk and Robbie had run up against the man in Saigon and knew how efficient he could be. Decker was assigned to a federal task force investigating Management Systems Consultants; to date, the investigation hadn’t gotten very far. But any murder that could be blamed on MSC would naturally be welcomed by the task force. And by Decker. Especially by Decker.

  Damn Paul junior for even considering the idea of Robbie or anyone else at MSC for a contract killing. But what could one expect from wogs, spaghetti eaters. They suffered from a revolting desire to control and manipulate everyone in their employ. The instant Robbie or Sparrowhawk or anyone at MSC killed on Molise’s orders, the Italian would forever have them by the balls. Sparrowhawk wanted outsiders for this sort of work and if Paul junior didn’t like it, tough.

  At the moment it was back to the bank for a quick conference with Pangalos on how to go about contacting Paul junior, if it was wise to do so at all. It might be better to return to New York and deliver the news in person. In either case, Sparrowhawk planned to meet again with the bank manager and other Caymanian cabinet members to discuss installing a new security system at the Georgetown airport, a deal worth one million dollars to Management Systems Consultants. That was another reason why Sparrowhawk had personally accompanied the money to the islands.

  “Paulie,” began the voice in New York, but Sparrowhawk had tuned him out. He distrusted the voice at the other end and, without uttering a word, he hung up.

  2

  DETECTIVE SERGEANT MANNY DECKER stepped out of a snowy New York night and into Japan.

  He was in the Fûrin, a private Japanese club on East Fifty-sixth Street in Manhattan, named for the delicate hanging bell that tinkled in the wind. Gaijin, outsiders, were not welcome here. The Fûrin was a place where lonely Japanese men could hear their language spoken, flirt with professional Japanese and American hostesses, drink Awamori, the sweet potato brandy from Okinawa, and close deals by imprinting documents or correspondence with hankos, their personal seal.

  To get inside, Decker had flashed a meishi, the business card of a Japanese he was. to meet upstairs in a private room. Not presenting a meishi was considered by the Japanese to be the height of bad manners.

  Decker handed his hat and topcoat to a hostess in a kimono and wooden clogs. He kept the attaché case and followed a dark-suited maître d’ through a restaurant designed around a rock garden, with a miniature waterfall and dwarf trees. Food smells—sliced raw fish over vinegared rice balls, delicate sparrows charcoaled over steel plates, cold buckwheat noodles—triggered memories. Of Saigon. Of Michi. If the pleasure of their love had lasted only a moment, its pain had lasted much longer. Michi Chihara was dead.

  The detective was stared at, first by men in one corner, who played go in shirt sleeves and cooled themselves with hand-painted fans. And by men at the bar, who sat reading newspapers flown in daily from Tokyo or watched video cassettes of sumo matches from Tokyo’s Kokugikan Arena. Decker, not upset at being eyeballed, considered staying to watch one sumo match. They never lasted over sixty seconds; a 350-pound sumo wrestler wasn’t built for endurance, but, oddly enough, the huge men had agility, balance, speed. They were Japan’s most popular athletes.

  Decker, however, decided to keep walking. Good manners said be on time, especially since he’d been the one to ask for the meeting with Ushiro Kanai.

  Manny Decker was five foot ten, broken-nose handsome, with dark brown curly hair and matching mustache. He was thirty, slim and hard muscled and his eyes were sea green. He had been a cop since his marine discharge six years ago, winning his detective’s gold shield in less than two years. The broken nose was a reminder of an early karate tournament when an opponent, wearing a class ring, had failed to pull a punch to the face.

  Decker was also a field associate, a shoo-fly, part of the Internal Affairs Division of the Police Department. Field associates were recruited out of the Police Academy and their identities kept secret. Their job was to spot police misconduct and report it. For this they won the hatred of just about every cop on the force. It was life on the edge. Decker enjoyed it.

  Which is not to say he wasn’t careful. Associates had a single contact at headquarters, a lieutenant or captain. Associates and contacts used code names and met in out-of-the-way places. Decker improved on that. He and his contact never met face to face; they stayed in touch by phone, and Decker initiated all calls.

  On the second floor of the Fûrin, the man leading Decker stopped in front of an o-zashiki, a private dining room with tatami, rush-covered mats changed frequently to retain the sweet smell of straw. The entrance to the room was covered by a shoji screen, a sliding door of translucent cream-colored paper. From inside a voice answered hai, yes, and then the detective was alone.

  “Please come in, Sergeant Decker.”

  Decker removed his shoes, placed them on the floor beside Kanai’s, then slid the door open.

  Ushiro Kanai, dressed in the dark suit favored by all Japanese businessmen, sat on his heels in front of a small, lacquered square table holding a cup of warm rice wine. As head of the New York office of Murakami Electronics, a Tokyo-based multinational corporation with branches m thirty-one countries, the boyish-looking Kanai, still in his forties, was being groomed as company president. He was intelligent and enigmatic, the product of a highly competitive society.

  He motioned for Decker to sit on the other side of the table. The bad knee prevented him from sitting on his heels, so Decker sat as he did in the dojo, on his buttocks, feet in front but close to his body. Kanai gave Decker a smile that was hard and cold. The smile didn’t mean shit. Kanai thought damn little of New York to begin with, and less since the stabbing of his son-in-law three days ago.

  Decker handed the attaché case to the Japanese and watched the smile disappear. For once Kanai, whose life had been one of stern self-control, was caught off guard. His mouth dropped open. But he recovered quickly. He recognized the case; he’d given it to his son-in-law as a gift. Kanai thumbed it open, lifted the lid and carefully examined every sheaf of paper inside. This time, when he looked at Decker, there was no smile.

  Gratitude.

  Kanai closed the case,
placed both hands palms down on the top and shut his eyes. From me to you, thought Decker. I’ve just handed you back your future and I expect to be paid.

  “Dōmo arigato gozai mashite, Decker-san,” Kanai said, with a bow. Thank you very much.

  “Dō itashi-mashite, Kanai-san.” You’re welcome.

  “Dōmo osewasama desu.” I am much obliged to you.

  Decker sensed Kanai’s meaning. But since his Japanese was at best rudimentary, fragments picked up from fifteen years of karate and the bittersweet affair with Michi, he decided to make sure. He waited until Kanai opened his eyes and then stared at him.

  “Giri.” Kanai breathed the word. Though Decker had just returned a stolen report that could have damaged Murakami Electronics and pulled Kanai down from his high position, the Japanese executive disliked being obligated to a gaijin, a foreigner. But he was, and pride demanded that he meet that obligation. Pleased with himself, Decker did the polite thing. He followed Japanese custom and poured rice wine into Kanai’s cup. With Kanai’s admission of giri, all that remained for him was to tell the Japanese how he wished to be paid. He wished to be paid here and now. Tonight.

  Three days ago, in a cheap hotel on the West Side, a Japanese male had been found badly knifed. He had been robbed of cash, personal jewelry and an attaché case containing valuable company papers. The man was Ushiro Kanai’s son-in-law, an accountant for Murakami Electronics, and he had been carrying papers detailing a proposed takeover of a California electronics firm, one with American defense contracts. The proposal was one that Kanai wanted kept secret until he had dealt with the sticky problem of Pentagon objections to foreign nationals buying defense-connected businesses.

  Single Japanese men in New York had problems finding women. Not only were there few single Japanese women, but the language barrier prevented the men from socializing with American women. Some of them turned to prostitutes, a dangerous alternative. The Japanese were sometimes robbed, beaten, murdered.