Bad Blood

by Anthony Bruno

  “Well, maybe you’re right. Maybe it is my fault.” Nagai stood up, went over to the VCR, and ejected the video tape. “If it’s my fault, then I’ll fix it. My way. It’s the only honorable thing to do.” He brandished the tape in Francione’s face like a knife.

  “Hey, come on, sit down, Nagai,” D’Urso said. “We’ll handle this. Don’t—”

  “No, no, no. I will take care of this.” He headed for the door with the tape in his hand. The idiot brother-in-law started to get up to stop him, but he shoved the punk back down as he passed by. The nausea had settled down. It was his head that was throbbing now. When the time was right, Mashiro would take care of the brother-in-law, too. D’Urso would never have to know.

  Francione yelled after him. “Leave that tape here. You fucking hear me, Nagai? I’m telling you.”

  “Nagai,” D’Urso called to him. “Come back and sit down. Can’t we just discuss this like rational people?”

  Nagai paused out in the hallway. “Let him go, John,” he heard Francione say. “How’s he think he’s gonna find this guy Gibbons? Call up the FBI and ask for his address? Stupid fuck.”

  Nagai heard Francione’s snide laugh as he headed for the stairway. Asshole. He thinks he knows everything. He’ll see.

  The smell was overpowering when he got to the first floor. The noise was deafening, the shuffle of the slaves’ feet combined with the machinery as they hustled all those dead chickens through the plant. He felt like he was going to puke again. Walking fast toward the back door, he glanced to his right and saw a procession of whole plucked chickens hanging from stainless-steel hooks dipping down one after the other into a murky bath. Standing over the vat was a slave, staring dead-eyed at him. Half the slave’s face was purple with bruises, one eye puffy and closed. It was that kid who burst into the back room the other day, Takayuki, the one Mashiro beat up. Ballsy son of a bitch.

  “What’re you looking at?” Nagai snapped.

  Takayuki kept working, washing those stinking chickens, staring at him with his good eye.

  Nagai couldn’t take the smell. He turned away and rushed out before he started gagging.

  Mashiro sat on his knees on the concrete floor, candlelight flickering over his back, his sword in his belt. Nagai rubbed his cold hands and peered over the samurai’s shoulder. A wooden board was laid out in front of him, a jar of Welch’s Grape Jelly off to the side. A dark line of jelly had been painted down the length of the board. Mashiro, Mashiro. Nagai shook his head. The samurai was testing his own patience as well as his accuracy with the katana. He was waiting for cockroaches, perfectly calm and perfectly still in the cold, darkened warehouse. Nagai stepped closer and could make out the broken bodies of two cockroaches stuck to the jelly. He knew Mashiro could keep this vigil for hours, waiting endlessly for the cautious insects to feel secure enough to come scuttling out again and take the sweet bait.

  Nagai quietly found a seat off to the side on a box of Dole Canned Crushed Pineapple and held the camcorder he’d brought in his lap. Two hungry bugs were testing the edges of the board. Mashiro was stone. The roaches climbed the board and stopped, their antennae twitching and twirling. Mashiro was the darkness. The first roach found the jelly, took a reading, and stepped right into it. The second one paused a moment, then dashed for the sugar. They dipped into the jelly like deer at a stream. Suddenly the sword flashed and flashed again. Two more hacked bodies littered the board.

  “Very good,” Nagai said in Japanese.

  Mashiro didn’t turn around. “Never good enough,” he said in a soft grunt.

  “Good enough for me. More than good enough.” Mashiro had to be. He was the only one he could turn to now.

  Nagai looked into the viewfinder of the camcorder. The FBI man was in there. Like a cockroach in a box. If only the nosy bastard really were in there, dammit. He pressed the rewind/search button and Gibbons started moving jerkily, rushing backward to the Honda, skittering around it like a bug. He went to the trunk, pulled the air hose out of his pocket, and put it back in. Nagai ran the tape back to the point where Gibbons used his keys to open the trunk.

  “Mashiro.”

  “Hai.” Mashiro stood up and walked over to his lord. No sign of pain or stiffness in his legs. And he was three years older than him. Remarkable.

  “Here, look at this.” He hit the play button and handed the camcorder to Mashiro who took it and peered into the viewfinder. “That man is a cop, a federal government agent, FBI.”

  Mashiro nodded with the camcorder stuck to his face, his other eye squeezed shut. “He’s taking an air hose out. He knows about the slaves?”

  “He must suspect something.”

  Nagai watched Mashiro watching the tape for a few moments. Then Mashiro started nodding again. “Interesting . . .”

  “What?”

  “This FBI man is not so young. Surprising.”

  Nagai shrugged. He thought of Reiko. What’s old? What’s young?

  “Why are you showing me this?” Mashiro asked.

  “Study his face. I want you to do something.”

  “Kill him?”

  “No. According to D’Urso and the punk, it’s a bad idea to kill cops in America, especially federal cops.”

  Mashiro put down the camcorder and scowled. “A poor excuse for cowardice, I think.”

  Nagai shrugged. “Perhaps.”

  “D’Urso’s people are supposed to take care of the police. That’s their part of the bargain.”

  “I know, I know, but he doesn’t want to do this one. He says killing him would make things worse for us.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Then why shouldn’t I kill this man? Just to make sure.”

  Nagai thought about it. “They might be right, I don’t know. It’s their country, they should know.”

  “So if you don’t want me to kill this man, why are you showing me this?” Mashiro was so up-front, so matter-of-fact. He was beautiful.

  “I want you to find this FBI man and hurt him in such a way that he will never be able to testify in court as to what he found at the docks.”

  Mashiro shrugged. “I could cut out his tongue.”

  “No. No blades. Hands. Can you do something to him that will incapacitate him without killing him? You know, like a permanent coma.”

  Mashiro nodded once.

  Nagai was ashamed to be skeptical, but he had to know what Mashiro had in mind. He had to know that it would work. “What can you do?”

  Mashiro held out his hand in the karate blade-hand position and looked at his lord. Then without a word, he walked to the back wall of the warehouse where his ancestor’s armor hung. Nagai hadn’t noticed it when he came in. It loomed in the flickering candlelight like a ghost. Mashiro gathered up an armful of boards from the floor, clear pine about two feet long and a half-inch thick, just like the one he’d smeared the jelly on. He set them up on two cinder blocks, laying them down one by one. “Ten,” he finally said, pointing to the neat stack.

  Nagai went closer and Mashiro took his stance behind the boards, feet apart, slowly taking aim with his blade-hand, touching the top one and raising his hand, touching and raising, touching and raising until he was ready.

  “Haaaiii!”

  His hand smashed down on the stack . . . and nothing happened.

  Panic shot through Nagai’s gut. It was the first time he’d ever seen his samurai fail. Fear grabbed him around the neck. “What—?”

  Mashiro calmly held up one finger, then proceeded to dismantle the stack of boards, one by one, examining each one. They were all solid, untouched. Nagai felt sick.

  Then Mashiro picked up the bottom board. One end dangled at a right angle from the other it was cracked so badly. Splinters jutted from the break. He’d broken the bottom one but left all the others intact. How the hell—? Nagai’s smile hurt he was so relieved.

  “When I worked for Toyota, there was a young tiger in my division making ag
gressive maneuvers for rapid career advancement. He rose quickly, and in no time I found him over my shoulder, eyeing the job I was in line for. Our boss liked this young man very much. I had a bad feeling that I would be passed over. One night after work I followed him to a bar and watched him drinking with his young associates. When he went to the bathroom, I followed. He was standing there taking a piss when I delivered this same blow to his neck. For some reason, I was afraid to kill back then. I could do it easily, but I was afraid to. I don’t know why. So I practiced, calibrated my attack so that my hand would fall just short of death. The young tiger became a vegetable. As far as I know, he still lies in a back room in his parents’ home, permanently asleep. Four years now. He will never recover. His parents punish themselves needlessly by keeping him. I will silence the FBI man the same way,” Mashiro said. “No killing. No problem.”

  Nagai grinned. His throat ached so much he couldn’t speak. He knew all along that Mashiro could do it for him. Mashiro could do anything, anything. Who needs the fucking Mafia? Who needs Hamabuchi’s fucking hitters? Who needs any of them? A tear squeezed out of the corner of Nagai’s eye as he laughed.

  “Do you know where I can find this FBI man?” Mashiro asked.

  Nagai reached into the pocket of his jacket. “Our man down at the docks that day was smart enough to follow him home. Here’s his address.” He handed him a slip of paper.

  “Gib-bons,” Mashiro pronounced, staring at the paper.

  “That’s his name. Gibbons.”

  Mashiro nodded, looking at the address, sizing up his task. He bowed to Nagai, then turned on his heel and bowed to the shadowy armor hovering over them. “Gib-bons . . . hai.”

  Nagai swallowed over the hard lump in his throat, closed his eyes, and let out his breath. Sayonara, Gib-bons.

  ELEVEN

  LORRAINE WAS AT the stove putting the kettle on. Gibbons watched her from the living room. As he zeroed in on her backside, he suddenly remembered that knockout blonde he saw at the Auld Sod the other day with Tozzi. That girl was something, yeah, but she didn’t have anything on Lorraine. Not really. Lorraine still had a nice figure, and when she wore her hair down—long, dark, and loose—she was a Renaissance dream. The blonde would be very lucky if she looked this good at fifty-one. Lorraine’s hair was tied back tight now, though. She was still pissed at him.

  “What’s this?” Lorraine said as she pulled down a box from the kitchen cabinet shelf where the Lipton tea bags usually were. Gibbons came in from the living room and looked at the box in her hand. There was a picture of a Mandarin prince on the front. The prince had long, curling fingernails and a thin, curlicue mustache. Lorraine narrowed her eyes skeptically. “Oolong?”

  “Yeah, oolong.” The fluorescent bulb under the counter buzzed softly.

  “But this is commie tea. You told me you don’t buy commie products.”

  “You like commie tea. It’s not for me. It’s for you.” He put the last of the dirty dishes in the sink and went back into the living room. Damn. He was just trying to be nice, thinking of what she likes for a change. Suspicious of everything, these damn Italians.

  The water in the kettle started to simmer. She took down two mugs and made tea for them—oolong for her, Lipton for him—then cut a few slices of the zucchini bread she’d brought from home and laid them on a plate. She was still mad at him for going back to work. She said she wanted to at least be a part of the “decision-making process.” What she meant was that she wanted to have the veto. You’re no kid for God’s sake, she kept reminding him, you really shouldn’t be working out in the field anymore. It’s too dangerous. You can’t keep up with Michael. It was the friendly reminders like these that made him ignore her and opt for the unilateral decision. She dunked the tea bags a few more times and tossed them into the sink. That’s why he was getting the cold shoulder now.

  She came into the living room, balancing the plate of zucchini bread on top of her mug of oolong. Gibbons was sitting on the couch, looking through the book she’d brought him, a scholarly study of the function of the centurion in the Roman army between 450 BC and 350 AD. He liked books about the Roman empire, but she’d made it clear that this wasn’t a peace offering. She’d explained that it was a complimentary copy sent from the publisher courtesy of the author, a tweedy Boston Brahmin now teaching at UCLA who always brings some exotic liqueur to the Classical and Medieval History Society convention each year in the hope of luring her back to his hotel room. Last year it was a green potion from the Abruzzi region of Italy called Cent’Erbe, she said. The year before it was a rare Spanish armagnac. He was good-looking in a waspy sort of way, but she’d never taken him up on his standing invitation. This little slice of academic life was her way of getting back at him. He watched her set down his tea on the coffee table. If the convention were tomorrow, bet she’d go to bed with the jerk for a can of Bud just to fix him.

  “So how’s the case going?” Her voice was very frosty. Very out of character for her.

  Gibbons flipped to the table of contents in the book. “Slow.” He didn’t look up from the page.

  “No leads?” More frost.

  “Not really. You want to go out to a movie tonight?” Better than sitting here in the meat locker.

  “You hate going to movies.”

  He looked up at her. “You don’t.”

  “I don’t think so. There’s nothing I’m dying to see.”

  Can’t butter you up, huh? “Oh. Okay.” He went back to the book.

  “Ivers must be getting antsy. He hates bad press, doesn’t he? You once told me that ritual murders that aren’t solved quickly create very bad publicity for the Bureau.”

  He looked up at her. Since when do you care about bad publicity for the Bureau? “Who said anything about ritual murders?”

  “Well, the way the killer cut them . . . It certainly seems ritualistic. That’s what Michael says.”

  He shut the book, tossed it on the coffee table, and reached for his tea. “That was yesterday’s theory. Now he’s hot on karate killers.”

  “I take it from your tone of voice that you don’t agree.”

  Gibbons shook his head. “The problem with Tozzi is that whatever comes into his head goes out his mouth. Tomorrow it’ll be something else.”

  She broke off a piece of zucchini bread. “If you don’t try out different theories, how else do you solve the case? Don’t you have to consider every possibility, no matter how strange it may seem?”

  “That’s Tozzi’s usual style. He’s gotta jerk around for a while with the tangential stuff before he gets down to business.”

  “You don’t jerk around?”

  He looked at her. “No.”

  “Never?”

  “Come on, let’s go to a movie.” He started to get up.

  “I said I didn’t want to go.” She crossed her arms over her chest.

  Gibbons sighed. He could see it coming. “Why not?”

  “Do you really think street punks are capable of this kind of carnage? Or was it the Mafia? You always like to blame the Mafia. That’s your thing.” She was getting testy. “But how many people would have the intestinal fortitude to make incisions like that, then pick up the bodies and put them in a car? It had to have been some extraordinary fiend. Even professional hit men do it quickly and get away fast. You told me that yourself.”

  “What do you do, take notes when I say things?”

  “Well? Do you think the Mafia is responsible?”

  Gibbons shrugged. “Could be.”

  “Do you really think the murderer was some guy acting on orders from his boss? It seems to me that it would take a hell of a lot of loyalty to kill like this. No, you’re wrong. I don’t think it was the Mafia.” She was gloating.

  Gibbons shook his head slowly. “Who’s more dedicated to their bosses than Mafia guys? They’ll put you through a meat grinder and make hamburger if their boss tells them to. They’re as vicious as they come. Believe me. I’ve seen.”r />
  She looked him in the eye. “So why the hell did you go back to all that?”

  The play of moonlight and shadow on the cobblestones turned the alley into the knotted armor on a giant samurai’s chest. Mashiro stood in the shadows and felt his ancestor’s presence under his feet. He counted the floors of the building across the way. There were lights on in the apartment. He crumpled the note with the address written on it and threw it away, then reached into his pocket for a handful of salt. He mumbled a prayer to the venerable Yamashita and tossed the salt onto the cobblestones.

  “Let me tell you something.” Gibbons was on the edge of the couch, pointing his finger at her. “You’ve got a bug up your ass because I went back to work. You think there’s something wrong with me because you think I get off on this kind of violent shit.”

  “Well, don’t you.”

  “No, I don’t. Maybe Tozzi does. But I don’t.”

  “We’re not talking about Michael.”

  “You know, you and your cousin are two of a kind. You have to blow everything way out of proportion. Well, put this in your notes. The motives for murder are almost always very simple ones. Hate, greed, revenge. One guy sees another guy scratching his new car in a parking lot and he goes nuts, bashes the other guy’s head in with a tire iron. That’s a typical murder.”

  “Are you telling me these two kids were slaughtered and mutilated because they scratched the wrong man’s car?”

  “Don’t act so stupid, will ya? The point I’m trying to make is that in a murder investigation you’ve got to concentrate on the motivation for the murders, not how it was done. That’s how you investigate a homicide. Once you get bogged down in all kinds of irrelevant crap, you end up chasing your own tail.”

  “Maybe you’re the one missing the point. Thirty years as a special agent doesn’t necessarily make you an expert on every crime, past, present, and future. I think you’re being too close-minded about this. It’s a strange world and it gets stranger every day. You have to admit this was no ordinary killer. This was done by a killing machine.”