Giri (36 page)

She caught him off guard. He drew his head back and looked at her from eyes that were almost closed.

“Yes, Manny,” she said. “You do hide things.”

“You said you haven’t lied to me. In that case let’s go with this one: did you kill Paul Molise and Dorian Raymond?”

She turned her back to him, hugged herself and after a while she nodded and said, “Yes.”

She turned and saw him almost shrink from despair. “It was my duty to kill them,” she said. “I am samurai.”

He waved her away. “Oh, Christ.”

She drew herself up. “I shall kill Sparrowhawk and Robbie Ambrose as well.”

He stood up, walked away from her, stopped, then turned around, a forefinger aimed at her head. “And what am I supposed to do
while
you’re whacking these guys, sit outside in a car with the motor running? Make a chalk mark on the wall for every poor bastard you heave out of a window? I’m a cop, remember? And you’ve got me involved—”

“You’re not involved. You have your duty, I have mine. No two people see the same world.”

“Great. Fucking great. Can’t wait to tell that to my precinct commander or Internal Affairs or to the guys in the squad room. Meanwhile, if the New York Police Department doesn’t give us both trouble, there’s always the Molise family, Sparrowhawk, Robbie and quite possibly a federal task force.”

“They cannot kill me.”

“Oh, no? Well, let me tell you something. They are damn sure going to try.”

She took a step closer to him and when she spoke the words were delivered softly, but with more power than anything she had said to him. “I am already dead. The way of the samurai is death.”

Decker watched her, eyes on her face, seeing her and trying to see more.

Michi walked to the couch, sat, then stared straight ahead and spoke as though in a trance. “For samurai, it is important that we die well. We must think of death every day. Only this way can we be strong enough to do our duty. I can live only when I face death, when I am truly willing and ready to die.”

She looked at him. “I see how you in the West practice the martial arts. For you it is playing with the idea of death without dying. For me it is much more.”

Decker said, “You can’t come back to America. Even if I don’t turn you in, your life is in danger. I stopped Sparrowhawk’s men from taking anything out of your apartment. But they’ll try again. And one day Paul Molise will learn what you did to his son. He’ll kill you for sure. He’ll take his time doing it, but he’ll do it. God knows what LeClair will do to you, especially if he ever gets anything on you. And don’t forget Sparrowhawk. He and Robbie know or soon will know you’re after them. Go back to Japan, Michi. Leave now, tonight.”

She shook her head.

“Goddamn it,” Decker said, “all I can do for you is look the other way while you run.”

The words were no sooner out than he regretted having said them. Her face said she had expected him to do more.

“I am committed to my family,” she said. “One has to be true to something.”

Her words made him angrier. She also knew that he was jealous of Dorian and wanted to hurt her for that. “Goddamn it,” Decker said, “
giri
or no
giri,
it’s not worth it. Your father’s dead. You can’t help him now.”

“According to what I believe, I can help. I can help him, my mother and my sister. I can bring them justice. I can bring their souls peace. I said I would tell you everything.”

She told him of the night in Saigon, when Sparrowhawk, Robbie and Dorian, on Paul Molise’s orders, had come to the Chihara villa and forced Michi’s mother, sister and best friend to commit
seppuku.
A CIA agent named Ruttencutter had also been involved. Decker remembered him from the Saigon embassy.

Michi said, “Ruttencutter and Paul Molise took my father’s gold and diamonds and narcotics, then turned him over to the Viet Cong. My father was samurai. To be captured, then degraded by enemies is worse than death. Much worse. For three years I tried to free him. I spent money, I begged and pleaded with powerful men. I slept with those men whom I thought could free my father. It was my duty.

“My father was a special prisoner, a corrupt tool of the imperialists, the Viet Cong said. They wanted him alive, to parade him from town to town. He was an example of communism triumphing over capitalism. They kept him in work camps and once when I went to visit him at one, I managed to slip him a knife so that he could commit
seppuku.

“The knife was found before he could use it. To teach him a lesson, the Cong cut off one of my father’s hands. After that I refused to give him any more weapons. I was also searched very carefully after that. By men.”
To remember was to suffer twice.
She looked away in agony.

She said, “Duty is never easy. Still, it must be done. For three years the Viet Cong led me to believe that one day my father might be freed. And then, the last visit. They made me watch.” She blinked tears from her eyes. “A samurai fears only two kinds of death. Beheading and crucifixion. They knew this. The animals who held him prisoner knew this. So they made me watch while they beheaded him. They knew it would mean pain for him in the next world as well. But still they did it. Tell me, Manny, who is to pay for the filthy and obscene way my father died?”

He said, “I don’t know.”

“I know. And my father’s friends in the
Jinrai Butai,
they knew as well. They were not fanatics, as you Americans tried to make them out to be. They were patriots, with a love for Japan that was so strong that they were willing to die for her. When your people sacrifice their lives for America, they are called heroes. When my people do it for our country, we are called insane.”

Decker said, “No two people see the same world.”

Her smile was bitter. “Thank you. Now let me finish telling you about my father’s friends. They are men of strong loyalty, honor, men with a clear idea of duty. They are committed to one another. They are true to the highest ideals of justice and bravery, words which are meaningless in your society, which ignores them in favor of a freedom that has made your people slaves to everything that can destroy you.

“My father’s friends did not force me to do anything. They simply reminded me that I was samurai. I had never forgotten it. They guided my life. They did not take it over, they simply guided it. They saw that my father’s money came to me, money from banks in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Macao, Switzerland. Money and diamonds. I was rich and would never have to work again if I did not want to. But I would always have to live with myself and when I died I would have to face my mother and father and sister with my actions.

“The men of the
Jinrai Butai
had been frightened when they first joined the squadron in 1945. They did not know what to expect. It was my father who gave them courage, lifted their spirits, made them work hard in order to forget their fears. He led them in daily practice of the martial arts. He wrote songs for them and led the singing. He made them write letters home to their parents and he saw to it that the parents of those who had died received personal effects and a final letter from the commander or my father praising the dead boy. Those who survived and those who died well both owed him much.”

Michi rose from the couch. “And they paid that debt by helping me. For three years they supervised my training. I learned to fight. And I learned to face death. I trained in secret dojos. I learned that it was my hand that must reach out for justice to my family, not theirs. It was my duty, not theirs.

“There were nights when I practiced karate in front of tombs. We believe that the spirits of the dead will come out of the tomb, enter our bodies and make us strong.” She touched her thigh. “I strengthened my legs and my arms by training in water. It is good for the legs.”

She began pacing. “Three years training my body and my mind. And then there were other preparations. A business had to be set up, one that I understood and could function in. One that allowed me to travel, to handle large amounts of money. Money is my protection. It allows me to be alone. This year, when I was ready, when enough information had been collected on the men who had turned my father over to the Viet Cong, I went to America to seek justice. Not revenge, Manny. Justice.”

He said, “You tried to draw me closer. The
fugu,
the poisoned fish. You had me watch your apartment. You wanted me to become a part of what you were doing.”

“My father’s friends did not approve of my loving you. But I told them I had to see you, that I must see you. We could not, you and I, live in the same city without sooner or later meeting.”

“
Giri
versus
ninjo.
Duty versus feeling.”

“Yes. I sometimes found it confusing. Can you understand?”

“I don’t know if I want to. Understanding means closing my eyes to the fact that you’ve killed two men and plan to kill two more. Three, if you ever get around to Ruttencutter. A cop’s duty is to prevent that kind of thing. I’ll tell you this: stay the hell away from Robbie Ambrose. We’re checking him out now. He’s a mass murderer, a head case who’s raped and murdered thirty women. Don’t tell me about your training. When it comes to Robbie you’re fighting an animal, a very sick animal.”

“Fear will not prevent me from facing him.”

She saw his nose flare with anger. “That’s another thing,” he said. “That remark about being true to something. I know it was goddamn well aimed at me and I didn’t like it. I’m committed to karate, to being a good cop, to …”

She waited for him to say committed to her, but he didn’t.

“You are very good at karate, Manny. I have told you so many times. But your fear of one man—”

“I don’t want to hear it. Just lay off that, okay?”

“Robbie Ambrose is not better than you. He uses your fear against you. If you—”

He slapped her face, snapping her head to the right and marking her skin with the imprint of his palm. He whispered, “Karate’s all I have in this fucking world. Don’t you ever tell me I’m afraid of Robbie Ambrose. I don’t want to hear it.”

Michi, her hands on the spot where Decker had struck her, said, “Please forgive me. I did not know that you would be so hurt by Dorian. I did not know how much you loved me. Oh, Manny.” She wept and held her arms out to him, but he backed away.

She saw it in his face. The guilt and shame he felt for striking her overwhelmed him. “I’ve got to get some air,” he said. “Walk around. Get my head straight. I’m sorry, really sorry. Didn’t mean to do that.”

He turned and hurried to the door.

He left before Michi could tell him that the blow did not matter, that she had endured infinitely worse over the past six years, that it was she who had hurt him, a hurt she now regretted more than anything she had ever done.

M
ICHI STOOD IN THE
doorway of her suite and willed Manny to return. But the elevator doors closed behind him and she heard the old car make its creaking way down to the lobby. She watched the elevator’s indicator light show that he had reached the lobby. Had his love for her now turned to hate? For the first time she realized that being true to herself inevitably meant being false to Manny.

Suddenly the elevator light blinked and shifted right. The elevator was returning. Michi’s heart began to pound so fast that she found it difficult to breathe. Manny. He was coming back to her.
He did love her.
The indicator light stopped at her floor and the elevator doors slid open.

Two Vietnamese waiters, boyish and slim in white jackets, stepped from the elevator with Michi’s dinner order. One pushed a room-service trolley laden with covered food tins, clean plates, gleaming cutlery and a single yellow rose in a miniature blue Limoges vase. The other cradled an ice bucket containing a bottle of champagne in one arm and carried a carafe of red wine in his free hand. When they reached Michi both waiters nodded. “
Bon soir, madame
.”

Bitterly disappointed, Michi kept her eyes on the elevator. “
Bon soir
.” She stepped aside to allow them to enter her suite.

When the waiters had gone she sat alone at a wall table under a copy of the famed tapestry
The Lady and the Unicorn,
and read the card that had come with the champagne. It was a French diamond dealer, who had enclosed his home telephone number and his best wishes for an enjoyable stay in Paris. When Michi’s eyes, hot with tears, could no longer focus she shoved the ice bucket to the floor, sending crushed ice flying across the rug and the opened bottle of champagne rolling to a stop near a stuffed chair. She tore the card into shreds and threw it aside, then swept the food, dishes and cutlery from the table.

Tired of being alone, of being afraid, of having to live with being a samurai and frightened that she had lost Manny forever, Michi dropped her head to the bare table and wept. Which was worse: the pain of love or having missed that pain? She had no answer.

Decker walked along the dark, deserted rue de Rivoli, the nineteenth-century arcade street of cafes, bookshops and deluxe hotels. Michi’s hotel was more than two miles behind him. He had walked down the broad, lovely Champs Élysées and past Rond-Point park, where Parisians traditionally romped with their children. He stopped to watch the night changing of the guard at the Palais de l’Élysée, official residence of the president of France. But Decker had no idea where he was heading. Didn’t care. He was calmer now, thank God. And feeling like shit for having struck Michi.

On the other side of the street night watchmen in battered kepis and baggy uniforms slammed and locked the tall, gilded gates to the Tuileries.

Now he stopped in front of a corner cafe that was closing for the night. Inside, a rotund, red-faced Frenchwoman, with raisins for eyes, mopped the floor, while outside a coal black Senegalese stacked wicker chairs on top of tables.

Without waiting for Decker to speak, the Frenchwoman stopped mopping to point to a sign hanging on the door.
Fermé.
Closed.

He turned and looked back in the direction he had just come from. He was wrong. Michi was right. No two people see the same world. She had her duty, her truth, and Decker had no business forcing his view on her. She hadn’t forced hers on him. She had told the truth about herself, then given him a choice. Somehow he sensed that he had made the wrong one. Or perhaps hadn’t chosen at all, which was just as bad. He had to make it up to her. Now. Tonight. Being apart six years was long enough.