by Marc Olden
“Yes. The knife goes in deep on the left side and then is drawn across the stomach and up on the right side a little bit.”
“Much pain,” she said softly. “You can understand that someone might lose his nerve and cannot do what must be done to save his honor. Or they try to escape. To save them from pain and disgrace, it is the kaishaku who uses his sword to behead them. To us it is a merciful act to assist in seppuku. Women commit seppuku in a different manner.”
“How?”
She stopped and turned to face the shrine on the hill behind him. The words came with great difficulty. “An artery here.” She touched the side of her neck.
She turned to face Decker with tears in her eyes. “It is an honorable death for honorable people. When you do not want to be disgraced by your enemies—”
She couldn’t go on. Decker took her in his arms. Children like Michi and her sister grew up knowing about seppuku; it held little horror for them.
What role had it played in Michi’s life during the last six years? Decker wanted to know more. But he simply held her and said nothing.
Even though Kanai’s daughter was now in Japan, Kanai still wanted to see the kaishaku captured. “I am one of the backers of the suibin tournament in Paris next January,” he said.
“I didn’t know that,” said Decker. “Should be quite a show.”
“Hai. But it would be most shameful if this kaishaku is among the contestants. I greatly fear he could be. He is a skilled fighter, one who might respond to the challenge provided by such a tournament.”
“Don’t see how you can keep him out. I mean, how can you check the background of every single entrant? You’re going to have hundreds of fighters from all over the world.”
“It would be a service to the martial arts if he were to be apprehended or”—he drew a deep breath—“disposed of prior to the tournament. It would not be easy to stop him, but it could be done.”
Not by me, thought Decker. I’ve got my problems with LeClair.
Inside the Instruction Department of the Botanic Garden, Decker and Michi walked past rooms where classes were being given in Oriental brush painting, photography, orchid growing, flower arrangement and origami wildlife.
After some urging on his part, Michi agreed to make paper animals. As the instructor and the small class watched, she calmly folded sheets of yellow, blue, pink and orange paper into tiny deer, birds, a bear, an eagle. She worked fast, as though she were alone and time had stood still. Magic.
Only when Michi finished did she look up, embarrassed by the attention. The instructor, a gray-haired woman wearing thick glasses and leaning on a cane, picked up a tiny deer. There were tears in her eyes when she said, “I have never seen anything so lovely.”
Leaning forward, she kissed Michi and the class applauded.
The instructor held the deer in the palm of her hand as though the paper animal were alive. “May I please keep this, miss?”
Michi looked at Decker. “Asama. Michelle Asama.”
“Miss Asama.”
“Yes, of course.”
The class moved closer, holding their hands out for the remainder of the paper animals. Decker was so proud of her, so very proud. He took several sheets of colored paper and placed them in the pocket of Michi’s fur coat. He was going to have her teach him to make paper animals.
They drove back to Manhattan in the Mercedes that was on loan to Decker from the task force, taking the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel to the southern tip of Manhattan and stopping off for dinner in Greenwich Village, in an Italian restaurant where the waiters sang opera and the owner’s pregnant dog wandered from table to table silently begging. A waiter dropped to one knee in front of Michi and sang an aria from La Bohème and kissed her hand and she seemed so happy; Decker decided that this was not the time to ask her who in her family had committed seppuku. Nothing must spoil this night together.
At her apartment she made love with an energy that almost intimidated Decker. It seemed more like combat than love, almost like what had gone through her mind at the mention of seppuku. But then he was caught up in it and he couldn’t think anymore. He felt. He experienced.
They made love in the bath. She soaked his body in almost scalding water, purification, she said. Shinto. And then, after they had soaped each other from head to toe in yellow lather, she guided him to the floor, to a mat beside the sunken tub and she gave him a massage. She lay on top of him, rubbing her lathered body back and forth on his, slowly, and though Decker became totally aroused, she refused to let him make love to her. “Wait,” she whispered. “Wait.”
She stood on his shoulders and walked down his body, down his spine and onto his buttocks and calves, then walked backward until she reached his shoulders. On her knees she made the same journey, down and back. The pleasure was sharp, on the edge of pain. Decker groaned. The sweetest pain he had ever known.
Using one lathered knee she rubbed his buttocks, then slid down to rub her lathered breasts against his buttocks. To hell with it Decker couldn’t hold back any longer. He stiffened, rubbed himself against the soaped mat and came. Michi continued. Sitting on his soaped calves, her bare buttocks sliding around on his flesh, she picked up one of his feet and rubbed it against her breast and moaned. Decker felt himself getting hard again.
Michi signaled for him to turn over. When he did she began to slide and writhe against him, her eyes closed with pleasure. Sitting up she began to pound his body with the edge of her hand, then with the bottom of her fist, working her way from shoulder to thigh, hurting and yet at the same time exciting him. Did he come again or imagine it? At this point, how could he know?
She led him to the water and they slipped into the tub together. When the soap was washed off, they changed the water and sat down in it once more and made love, with Michi mounting Decker, clutching him, rocking gently back and forth on his thighs, the music of the thirteen-stringed koto coming from a speaker high on the wall; and Decker was so in love, so fucking happy, so completely her captive.
He was drowsy. Ready for sleep. Through his semiconsciousness he felt her lick blood from his mouth that was drawn by her teeth, and then his tongue met hers and there was the taste of blood mingled with the sweet softness of her mouth. He knew that so long as Michi loved him he would submit to anything she asked. His surrender was complete.
“You,” he whispered, and in that single word was all that he was, and all of it he offered to her.
18
ELLEN SPICELAND ENTERED HER apartment on tiptoe and closed the door softly behind her. After hanging a leather overcoat, hand-knitted sweater and cloche hat in a hall closet she removed her boots, bent down to rub feeling into icy toes, then padded into the kitchen, boots in hand. Her holstered .38 Smith & Wesson remained clipped to an alligator belt with a Haitian mahogany buckle, a recent anniversary present from Henri. The gun would stay on her hip until she entered the bedroom to look in on her sleeping husband. There she would hide it in a slipper on her side of the bed, within easy reach if she needed it during the night.
Their home was a two-bedroom apartment in upper Manhattan’s hilly Washington Heights, with streets that twisted and dipped sharply and a view across the Henry Hudson River of the New Jersey Palisades, purple cliffs rising above abandoned factories.
Before Henri, Ellen had never gone to a museum in her life. Art, culture, literature were all white people’s pastimes.
Life, she learned early on, was a struggle. To win that straggle she left home and Harlem at eighteen to go downtown, and worked three jobs to support herself and graduate from City College. Then she got hit with the racism and sex discrimination of the Police Department. And somewhere in all of this survived two bad marriages and a miscarriage that hospitalized her for over a month, bringing with it the news that she could never have children. So she was a survivor.
In gentle Henri, a slight, handsome Haitian twenty years her senior, she found the right man to be strong for, one who needed her to prote
ct him from the world.
Yet, Henri, in his own way, did the same for her. His intelligence, sensitivity and talent were a comfort to her after a working day of danger and abuse, and often hostile public, all exacerbated by the helplessness she felt in the face of the misery around her. How did a cop survive? Detachment, humor, alcohol, drugs helped.
In the kitchen she moved around on stockinged feet. She lit the oven and placed her wet boots on its open door to dry. After rubbing her hands in the oven heat she turned around and let the heat warm her ass. She thought of how confused this kaishaku business had left her. How could she get that killer off the street? Manny was too busy with the task force to help her and the rest of the guys were uninterested.
Kanai, who had bought three of Henri’s paintings, bless him, had said the murders were the work of one man, though Ellen wondered how he could be so sure. But he was Japanese and karate was Japanese fighting. The problem, as Ellen saw it, was that the kaishaku moved from city to city. Pinning down someone like that was like trying to nail custard to the wall. She had to talk to Manny, a karate man himself.
The telephone on the kitchen wall rang and Ellen grabbed it immediately. Didn’t want to wake up Henri. The man needed his sleep.
“Hello?”
“Ellen? Manny.”
“Just the man I want to speak to. How’s it going down there?”
“Busting my chops with these phony assault charges by Buscaglia’s guards. LeClair doesn’t want me wasting my time in court with these things, so what it’s going to come down to is both sides are going to drop the charges. What counts is that seating plan. We can use it against Pangalos and Quarrels. Their names are on it.”
Ellen squeezed the receiver between her jaw and shoulder and moved around the kitchen assembling what she needed for a fresh cup of coffee. “Anything new on who got Molise?”
“Zilch. Street has nothing about a war, nothing about anybody coming in from out of town to perform a hit, nothing about trouble inside the Molise family. Beginning to look like some crazy just decided to kill the first people he found parked in a limo on a Manhattan street. Maybe Molise and his bodyguard just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Ellen spooned coffee beans from a tin and into a grinder. “Who’s taking Paulie’s place?”
“Don’t know. For now Gran Sasso, Johnny Sass, is calling the shots. Paul senior’s too broken up. Whoever takes over, his first job will be to learn who did Paulie. What’s with Raoul and his lady?”
Raoul was the Dominican pimp who had stabbed Yoshi Tada to death. That day Ellen was in court for preliminary hearings concerning bail and charges.
“They’re talking manslaughter two,” Ellen said.
“A joke. That’s all it is. Why do we even bother arresting these clowns. Asshole judges.”
“How’s this for a joke? Bambi, Raoul’s lady of the evening, had at least two venereal diseases. If Tada had lived he’d have come down with syphilis or herpes at least.”
“You’re kidding.” Manny chuckled.
“Thought your warped mind would find that amusing.”
“We chuckle and guffaw and somehow make it through a most trying day.”
“I know. And love makes the world go down and all that. Look, Manny, be serious for a minute. This kaishaku thing—”
He groaned. “I knew it, I knew it.”
“I can’t let it go.”
“I know. Okay, let’s hear it.”
She shrugged. “Tell me how to go about getting him.”
“Holy shit. Is that all you want to know? How to grab some sicko who goes around the country raping and beating women to death with his bare hands? Look, suppose Kanai’s all wrong about this. Suppose it’s not one guy, but a series of coincidences?”
She finished grinding the beans, switched the receiver to another ear and poured the ground beans into a filter resting over a bone china cup. As she added boiling water she said, “Manny, stop jerking me around, okay? We both know Kanai did not get to where he is by being stupid. So let’s just start by saying he knows.”
“If you say so. Actually you’re right. Kanai’s no dummy. Hey, all I called about was to see how it went in court today, that’s all. Stop sticking your finger in my eye.”
She stirred her coffee,
“Please, Manny.”
He sighed. “Go.”
“How do I pin this guy down? Where do I start? I mean he’s all over the place. I spoke to the captain about it and he says the only reason he’s letting me make a few calls on this thing is A, because a woman was killed in New York and B, because I’m a woman and he doesn’t want me yelling discrimination or sexism or shit like that.”
“Blackmail.”
She sipped coffee. “Screw him. Anyway, I can’t get away with blackmailing him forever. If I don’t come up with something in a hurry, it’s bye-bye kaishaku and back to the real world.”
“Kanai says he’s a karateka, our boy, and he moves around. Could be a traveling salesman, maybe, but Kanai says the man’s good, and very skilled, so that’s out.”
“Why?”
Decker said, “Wouldn’t leave him time to train. If he’s that good he trains all the time. Only way to stay in shape. He could be some kind of worker, whose job takes him from city to city. Okay, so here’s what you do. Work with those cities Kanai told you about—”
She set the cup of coffee down, went to the wall where a metal writing pad hung beside the phone and reached for a magnetized pen.
She said, “New York, Atlantic City, Dallas, San Francisco. Wait it wasn’t Atlantic City, it was some town outside of Atlantic City. Real small town. I forget what it is but I have it written down at the office.”
“No problem. Hey, yesterday a friend reminded me about double veterans, GIs who raped and killed women in Vietnam.”
“Hooray for our side.”
“I know. The worst. Anyway, get lists of all dojos in those cities. Karate clubs. Get the membership lists of those clubs, if you can; but it won’t be easy and it means a ton of names. We have one hundred twenty people in our club.”
“Oh, God.”
She stopped writing. “Manny, you said karate clubs. What about judo?”
“Judo is throwing techniques, not striking. This guy’s a fighter. Uses his hands. Hey, hey, hey—”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I just remembered what Kanai said. He said he didn’t want this guy in his tournament, that this kaishaku was a skilled fighter and might enter the tournament. Tournament. Jesus, why didn’t I see that before?”
“See what?”
“Fighter who moves around. Tournament. Competition. Matches. That’s where you start.”
There was a light in Ellen’s eyes. “Manny, you are one beautiful man. Sounds good. Real good. I don’t know anything about this stuff except that you wear your pajamas when you do it.”
“That’s gi, wiseass.”
“Whatever you say. So our boy goes from city to city fighting, you think?”
He cautioned her. “Stay cool. Don’t get your hopes up. Just a theory, that’s all.”
“Hey, man, what the hell do we do every day of our lives except make educated guesses, right?”
“What can I tell you. Now what I want you to do is find out if there was a tournament in any of these cities around the time a woman was killed. Call the martial arts publications.”
He gave her eight names of publications, three of which were in Los Angeles.
“List of fighters at each tournament,” said Ellen, writing as she talked.
“Who said minorities are dumb.”
“You’re a kind person—the kind I’d like to kick. I do like the tournament idea, though.”
“Now you’ve got me interested. When you get the names let me have a look at them. Who knows? Maybe I’ll get an idea just by running them through the old mental computer.”
“Manny, I don’t care what they say about you, I li
ke you anyway. By the way, everything all right with you?”
He had told her about Michi. Not everything, not even most of it. Only that there was now someone special in his life, someone he had met a long time ago and had run into again. And they were taking it slow. And hoping.
“It’s cool,” he said. “She’s away on a business trip. She promised to come back.”
“She better. If she hurts you I’ll kick the white off her behind.”
“She’s Japanese.”
“Whatever. Manny, thanks. I mean that.”
“Don’t bother thanking me. You’re right. This shit, whoever he is, deserves to die. Maybe we can get lucky and at least get him off the streets.”
Ellen said, “Could happen to any of us, Manny. Me. Even your lady, whoever she is.”
Decker said nothing.
Then, “Yeah, even her. But you know something? If that ever happened, I’d kill him. I swear to God I’d kill him. Doesn’t matter who he is or where they hid him or how long it took me, I’d find him and I’d kill him.”
19
TREVOR SPARROWHAWK WATCHED WITH pleasure through the window of his Connecticut home as a lean, spotted doe, trailed by a spindly-legged fawn, stepped from a clump of maple trees and cautiously picked its way across snow to sniff timidly at a cardboard box of spinach, hay and cabbage.
Between nibbles of food the doe lifted her head to glance around for enemies, real and imagined. Sipping tea and milk from a Wedgwood china cup, Sparrowhawk reminded himself that to fear anything was to give it power over you. How much power had he given Giovanni Gran Sasso and Alphonse Giulia, Don Molise’s nephew?
Several days ago, after young Paul Molise had been laid to eternal rest in a Long Island cemetery, a meeting had taken place with Gran Sasso and Giulia in the spacious back seat of a stretch limousine returning to Manhattan. Sparrowhawk had been the only other person present. Until now the Englishman had dealt solely with young Paul, who, despite a certain stubbornness, could at least be reasoned with—unlike the more hardened members of the Molise crime family. It now appeared that the old order was to yield to the new; and the new, Sparrowhawk feared, would be more difficult to manage.
