Linnear 03 - White Ninja (66 page)

Isn't it clear to you yet?' Howe replied. Til do whatever I have to in order to destroy him utterly. This isn't a game I'm playing with Branding. I think you understand.

'I've distanced myself from the operation. It's strictly Brisling's baby. I've got plausible deniability. But that didn't work out. You were right about that, I never should have tried it. Branding got wind of it. This is better - much better! Branding and Brisling dealt with in one pre-emptive strike!'

Albemarle stopped the tape. 'How'd you get this?'

Tve worked for Howe on and off,' she said. 'Nothing official. I liked the money, I admit that. But this thing between him and Senator Branding was getting out of hand fast, I could see that. I tried to warn him, to stop him, but he simply wouldn't listen. Howe was obsessed with his feud. All he could think of was destroying Branding. I wanted out before Howe did something really stupid.'

'Like murder his assistant and try to pin it on Branding.' Albemarle tapped his forefinger against his lips. 'What exactly did you do for Howe?'

'When my environmental interests and his overlapped, as they sometimes did, we pooled resources, got bills passed up on the Hill. That sort of thing.'

Albemarle nodded. 'Go on.'

She leaned over the desk, started the tape running again.

'Forget the environmentalists you work for, Shisei,' Howe's voice went on. "That mind of yours is wasted there. When the vote for the Ascra bill is over, and I know it's as dead as Branding's political career, I want you to sign on with me. I could use your talent on a permanent basis. You'll insulate me from any danger; you'll guard my domain tike a well-trained mastiff. You'll scare the shit out of anyone who tries to cross me.'

The tape ran out, and Albemarle turned off the machine. There was a thoughtful look on his face. 'What'd he mean by that?'

'Howe saw me in the same light he saw Brisling. We were dogs to be trained to do his bidding. He's loathsome.'

'No. I meant about scaring the shit out of people.'

Shisei shrugged. 'I know some martial arts. Howe liked that; k made him feel more secure to have me around.'

Albemarle grunted again. Til say one thing for you, you sure ain't worried about implicating yourself.'

'In what?' Her voice was absolutely neutral. Shisei knew to be more careful than ever now. She could see the sheet of ice Albemarle was leading her towards, waiting for her to hit it with her backside.

'You're so good with your hands, so scary, how about you iced Brisling for Howe?'

She made sure her eyes didn't waver from his, but there was nothing aggressive in her look. 'Tell me again how Brisling died.'

'Something thick and square crushed the back of his head,' Albemarle said as if he were describing the features of a new car. 'You know, like you do with an eggshell on the edge of an iron skillet.'

'That sounds to me like a crime of high passion, done in a fit of rage or at least with a sense of premeditated hate,' Shisei said. 'Besides, I had no motive.'

'You told me you work for Howe. You like the extra bread..

Shisei was good at putting venom in her voice. 'When I was young, I was used by a man. Abused, you might call it. 1 vowed then I'd never let it happen again. No one has the right to do that to me. When I realized that Howe was using me, I called it quits.' She allowed her face to relax a little. 'In any case, I would have been more circumspect in what I did.'

'Meaning?'

'Do you know anything at all about the martial arts, Detective?'

'I've taken some karate - the usual departmental thing.'

'If you don't mind my saying so, that isn't martial arts. That's putting your hand through a board or subduing a perpetrator.'

'Perps're my business.'

'But they're not mine, Detective. The true martial arts, the way they should be taught, are eighty per cent mental. In any case, they're reactive. I was never trained to be the aggressor. If David Brisling, or one of your street perps, came at me I'd know what to do to protect myself, but I certainly wouldn't smash the back of his head in. I wouldn't have to work that hard.'

Albemarle was silent a long time. He produced a toothpick, began to twirl it around in his mouth. Then his finger tapped the tape recorder. Til need to impound the cassette. Evidence.'

'It's yours,' Shisei said.

'When I bring Howe in, I'll want you with me.'

'Well.' She let something new into her voice. 'I wouldn't mind that at all.'

When Nicholas cleared Immigration and Customs at New York's JFK airport, he heard his name being called over the loudspeaker. He went to a courtesy phone, and

was given a telephone number. He went over to a bank

of chrome and graffitied pay phones. He needed to go

to the far end of the baggage carousels to do so. He had

got yen changed to American dollars at Narita Airport.

He dialled the local number he had been given. -

'It's me,' a voice said. 'I'm at a phone on the other side of the place. I can see you. No one's tagging you.'

'I didn't think it was that kind of situation,' Nicholas said. 'We can meet.'

Nicholas dialled the number Tomi had given him. Homicide detective Mel Branca was working nights, and he took Nicholas's call. 'Bad news, bud,' -he said in a smoky voice. 'I met this Japanese yo-yo's plane like Tomi asked me to, but couldn't find the guy. He was on the passenger manifest all right. I checked that. I even polled the flight crew, but none of them could remember him. The seat assigned to him was filled, though, that's all they could tell me. Best I could do, bud, at such short notice. My in tray's higher than a cokie with a head on.'

Nicholas thanked Branca, hung up. He was about to call Justine at their house in West Bay Bridge, then thought better of it. If Senjin were loose here, there was no point in giving him any advance notice of his, Nicholas's, arrival. But the thought of the dorokusai with Justine out in the beach house was almost too much to bear.

Patience, he thought. Your time is coming.

He turned, saw Conny Tanaka striding towards him. It had been Conny who, through Umi, Nicholas had arranged to meet here at the airport.

Conny was Terry Tanaka's older brother. He had been living in Vancouver when Saigo had come to New York in 1980, challenged Terry in Terry's own dojo and subsequently killed him. Afterwards, Conny had left Vancouver to get his brother's martial arts school back on its feet. But he had never gone back to British Columbia,

preferring the highlighted kineticism of New York. Conny loved to party, but that didn't mean he wasn't serious about business.

Tik-Tik,' he said, taking Nicholas's hold-all from him, 'I got your message.' Only Conny called Nicholas Tik-Tik, because, as Conny had once told him, 'You're like a bomb, man, ticking away beneath that ultra-cool exterior. Nobody has a chance against you.'

Conny had no trouble recognizing him; Nicholas had shaved off his beard 30,000 feet over the Hawaiian Islands. 'What's up?' Conny said now.

Trouble,' Nicholas said as they weaved their way out of the terminal. 'A whole bellyful of it.' It was already night, the sodium-arc lights bathing everything in their unnatural bluish glow. Windshields were haloed and people's faces looked ghoulish, drained of blood.

Only Conny looked the same, short, squat as a fireplug, muscular shoulders and arms, slim hips. He moved like a dancer with his centre of gravity low to the ground. His square, even-featured face, so like Terry's, yet so much more massive, seemed intimidating to those who did not know him. Yet, as Nicholas knew, Conny was capable of great tenderness and concern. It had been his idea to give a third of the dojo's profits to Eileen Okura's family. Eileen had been Terry's girlfriend before Saigo had murdered her.

It had begun to rain. The access road looked filthy, clotted with soggy rubbish. They crossed it, dodging limos, cabs and lumbering buses, picked up Conny's battered Buick in the short-term parking lot. 'I've got a lot to do and very little time to do it in.'

Conny threw Nicholas's hold-all in the back seat, started the engine. 'We'd better get rolling,' he said.

In the privacy of the car's interior, Nicholas turned to Conny. 'It's good to see you, Tanaka-san,' he said formally.

Conny bowed. 'You honour me, Linnear-san.' There was a debt for which Conny could never repay Nicholas, for avenging his brother's death. It was unspoken, and would forever be, but it was always there, cementing the boundaries of their friendship.

'First things first,' Nicholas said. 'West Bay Bridge. You know where.'

Conny nodded as he paid the parking lot attendant, and they joined the line of vehicles on the airport ring road. 'Everything's as you left it. It's cleaned every week, and someone comes to check up every other day.'

'And my car?'

'I go out and run it myself each weekend,' Conny said. 'It's in beautiful shape.' He swung around a rental car mini-van which had stopped to pick up passengers. 'I miss that old house. You were smart to buy the place you'd been renting. Bought at the right time, too, when the market was soft. Beach houses are hard to come by now, unless you want to build one from scratch. Then you've got to want to part with two, three million easy.'

'Ouch.'

Conny gave him a look. 'What d'you mean ouch, man? Did you ever count how many millions you're worth?'

'No.' Nicholas grunted. 'To tell you the truth I've never got used to the wealth. I'm not entirely comfortable with it.'

Conny nodded. 'Yeah. Money's got a karma of its own. Well, you've got to ride it like an unbroken stallion.'

'Doing my best,' Nicholas said as they accelerated, heading east on the Van Wyck Expressway.

The windshield wipers made a kind of music, a rhythmic undercurrent. It wasn't until they were past Patchogue that Nicholas spoke again. 'There's some very bad news headed my way. In fact, it's already here. It's the kind I don't want you to touch under any circumstances. The

way you can help me best is to stay at the periphery.'

'Just how bad is it?' There was no inflection in Conny's voice.

'I'm in a tunnel,' Nicholas said, 'and truthfully I don't know if I'm coming out the other side.'

'That bad,' Conny said. He flashed Nicholas a grin. 'It's a good thing you've got friends, man.'

'I know.'

'But you don't say "don't touch" to friends, Nick. You don't keep them on the periphery when they can help you stay alive.'

'Conny -'

'I'm not about to let you tie my hands behind my back just so I can watch you die.'

Not a word was said about Terry Tanaka, and the debt Conny owed Nicholas. It didn't have to be. It had its own life in the minds of both these men. Giri was never spoken of among Japanese. Everyone knew that it existed along with the air that one breathed, and was just as essential to life.

'OK,' Nicholas said.

Nicholas kept to himself the rest of the way out. When Conny swung the Buick off Montauk Highway into the parking lot of the A&P in West Bay Bridge, he said, 'The place looks the same.'

Conny trod hard on the brakes. The Buick's headlights illuminated empty spaces. 'It's not here, man,' he said. 'Your car's gone.'

'That's a good sign,' Nicholas said, knowing that Justine must have taken it. 'Just drop me off at the house.'

'I can hang around if you want.'

Nicholas knew what Conny meant, wanting to be there if there was going to be trouble. 'You'll be more use to me in the city. I've got a couple of things I want you to do.' He handed Conny a sheet of paper folded around

an audio cassette Nicholas had taped on the flight over. 'Take a look when you get home.'

Conny took the cassette and the note as he wheeled out of the parking lot, heading for Dune Road and the Atlantic Ocean. It was late, quiet. Just some kids hanging out against their cars, smoking, drinking, perhaps. But the little town had a peaceful look, like something out of a children's story, waiting for teddy bears to begin dancing along the streets. Nicholas thought of Justine.

He remembered the Christmas they had spent out

here just before leaving for Japan. They had needed

to be alone, away from the city and, in the aftermath of

the holocaust caused by Saigo, everything it had come to

represent.

How beautiful the town was, with Christmas trees, strung with coloured lights, all along the streets, a dusting of snow on Christmas morning and then brilliant sunshine, the beach so cold and windy that they couldn't take their usual early walk, so they retreated to the house to drink steaming glass mugs of mulled wine Justine had made while they opened presents. She had given him a watch, the one he still wore now; he had given her a ruby necklace from Tiffany's. He remembered how much time and care he had spent in selecting it for her, the look on her face when she had opened the blue box.

What's happened to us since then? Nicholas asked himself. Where did we get lost inside ourselves? When did we stop being a couple?

'We're here,' Conny announced.