Ransom (27 page)

“I think I'll stop in at Buffalo Rome,” he added. “Any messages?

“Tell my minions to salt the food and water the drinks.”

“Business as usual?”

“Right.”

Ransom kissed Akiko, shook Ryder's hand, and said goodnight. As he was putting on his shoes in the entryway, Miles said, “Let me know when you're ready for boots.”

Ransom stopped by Marilyn's club, where he learned that she was off for the next two nights. He wasn't really sure what he would have said to her, anyway. Presumably she was safe enough unless he chose not to fight.

At the bar Ransom ordered a beer and told the bartender he was expecting a call. A new narc had taken up the post near the door, the old one having blown his cover on DeVito. Mojo Domo was playing and he was glad for the music—blues falling down like hail, songs of exile from love, home, self—and relieved that for a moment he didn't have to talk to anyone.

Ten minutes after he arrived, the phone rang at the bar. The bartender told him he could take it in the back office. Ransom went back, closing the door behind him, and picked up the receiver. “Yeah?”

“Are you ready to deal?”

“I'm ready.” Ransom held the receiver and stared at the map of Texas on the wall.

“The stakes are higher now,” DeVito said. “You insisted on escalating hostilities.”

“How did I do that?”

“By turning up your nose. By pretending I wasn't worthy of your attention. You could have gotten it over with a long—”

“Spare me your attempts to reason, will you?” Ransom said, but DeVito wanted to finish his speech.

“—a long time ago. But I had to convince you, which took a certain amount of time and effort on my part, Ransom. And you owe me for that. Which brings up the question of weapons.”

“Weapons?”

“Swords.”

Ransom had vaguely expected something like this, although he hadn't thought DeVito would spell it out in advance. “I don't have a sword,” Ransom said.

“I can provide one.”

He could refuse; it was up to him, not DeVito. Marilyn should turn up by tomorrow, somehow, and he wouldn't have to fight. They could both leave Kyoto. As the alternatives to fighting DeVito with swords flashed plausibly across his mind he found himself unconvinced, or perhaps just uninterested. He tried to imagine himself on a plane to the States. “All right,” he said.

“Sunrise tomorrow. The top of Mt. Hiei, in front of the main temple.”

Showdown at sunrise. Ransom wondered which movie DeVito was living out. All of them, maybe. But this, Ransom thought, was his own movie now.

“I don't think so,” he said. “I'll meet you on the west bank of the river. The wide stretch halfway between the Kitaoji and Imadegawa bridges.”

Ransom waited for a response.

“Are you backing out on me?” DeVito said finally.

“I'm just telling you where I'll be.”

“You'll be at the temple, Ransom.”

“I'll be at the river at sunrise,” Ransom said and hung up.

Ransom returned to the bar, the buzz of conversation and laughter rising and fading rhythmically, even as he was in the midst of it. He saw Kano sitting alone at the bar and walked over. Kano put out his palm, and Ransom gave him five.

“What's happening?” Kano said.

“Nothing much.”

“You feeling okay? You look weird, man.”

“I'm fine, really,” Ransom answered. “I hear you're going to Chicago.”

Kano took a seat and nodded gravely. “Maybe.”

“Not definite?”

Kano shrugged. “I don't know if I want to go.”

“You're kidding, right?”

“It's difficult to explain. You want a drink?”

“Sure,” Ransom said. “Whatever you're having.”

Kano ordered two bourbons. As Ransom waited for him to speak, he wondered how he should feel, wondered why he felt fine. He felt free to devote his attention to Kano or to anything that he liked.

He and Kano lifted glasses in unison, tapping them lightly. Kano drank and lowered his glass, his face registering the attempt to gather his thoughts. “For ten years I play blues. I listen to records, I make an image in my head. The place where the music comes from, for me maybe it's like the place that black folks sing about, the place they can't go back to. It's a place in my head. I don't know if I want to go there.” Kano shook a cigarette from his pack and lit it up. “You think I'm crazy?”

“You may be very smart.”

“Everyone thinks I'm crazy, man.”

“Don't worry about that,” Ransom said.

“You know what I mean?” Kano asked hopefully.

“I think so.”

When Kano returned to the stage, Ransom thought about the morning. In a few hours he would meet DeVito, something he had decided to do not for DeVito's reasons but for reasons of his own. He was very much awake, but he would go home to lie down for a few hours, getting up in time to wash and dress and walk down to the river. He left his unfinished drink on the bar and waved to Kano on his way out.

The sun had just dropped behind the mountains into Afghanistan. Ransom had no idea how long the Pathan had been gone. The bazaar was closing down. Ransom was sitting at a table in front of a tea shop. The old man who had served him came out of the shop to look at him, then went slowly back inside.

Someone was addressing him. At first Ransom didn't hear what was being said. The man who was speaking had bushy hair tied back in a ponytail and wore a gold ring through his left nostril. He was waving his hand in front of Ransom's face.

“Hey, man. Do you read me? Anybody home in there?” He unstrapped his backpack and took a seat across from Ransom. He put his finger to his ear and said “Bang!” then patted his shirtpockets. “Got a smoke?”

Ransom shook his head.

“Got a voice? Speak to me, man. I'm going crazy. Five fucking hours at the border. They tear my pack down. They strip me. Check my asshole. Under my toenails. Behind my ears. But I'm clean. Jesus, I'd kill for a toke right now. Swallowed my last half gram on the bus. Once
that hit I thought the Khyber Pass was going to swallow me. What a place. Journey into Hades. So tell me. What's the scene here? These dudes toting guns, they got a war going on or what?”

Ransom saw the Pathan approaching. He stopped a few yards short of the tea shop, took a pistol from his holster and pointed it at Ransom, whose companion stopped talking. He followed Ransom's gaze and when he saw the Pathan he dropped to the ground and rolled under the table.

The Pathan said, “We had an agreement.” His voice was strange.

Ransom nodded.

“Perhaps you think to make a joke.”

Ransom opened his mouth to speak, but he could not catch his breath. The pistol followed the back-and-forth motion of his head.

“My offer was more than generous,” the Pathan said.

“Where is Annette?” Ransom said, although he was not sure if his voice could be heard.

“Where? Do not worry about where. She is just where you left her.” The Pathan stepped forward and examined Ransom's face. “You do not know, then?” He shook his head in apparent disgust. Then he spit on the ground between them. Stepping forward, he went through Ransom's pockets with one hand. He found the envelope and put it in the sleeve of his shirt. Then he left.

The man with the ponytail crawled out from under the table. Ransom looked at the ring through his nose. He wondered if it had hurt when the ring was put in.

“Jesus Christ,” the man said. “That was close, man. Somebody could've got killed.”

It was almost dark. Ransom looked up at the huge gray sky. He could see the first faint stars. He could feel the planet turning and moving through space. He could feel the tug of gravity in his arms and legs, and he could hear the roar of darkness sweeping toward him like a fist.

The alarm was unnecessary; DeVito was awake when it went off at a quarter to four. Sunrise was 5:09. Last night, after talking to Ransom, he had laid out the weapons and a kimono and then lay down, allowing himself to float just beneath the surface of consciousness, half dreaming of battle.

DeVito filled a basin with cold water and washed his entire body. Then he prepared a bowl, shaved his face and his forehead up to the point where the hair of the topknot started, and the top of his head on both sides of the inch-wide stripe beneath the topknot. When he was finished he brushed out his hair and tied the topknot in place. He put on a pair of sweats and jogged once around the temple compound to get his blood moving. The air was dense and saturated. The rainy season would set in any day. Back in the house he filled a blender with a pint of orange juice, a pint of milk, three bananas and three eggs.

He took up his katana in its polished lacquer scabbard, the weapon made by the great swordsmith Yasukuni of the Soshu Branch of the Sagami School. From sitting position, holding the scabbard in his right hand, he drew the sword in a single continuous motion. Last night he had polished
it. Along the graceful curve of the temper line, the cutting edge showed the wavy pattern of its layers; the ancient swordsmith pounded the steel into sword shape, folded it in half and hammered it out again, doubling each time the layers of steel: four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four . . . the method of the Sagami swordsmiths calling for fifteen folds, which gave the finished blade more than thirty-two thousand layers, each a molecule or two thick. DeVito had worked it out, many times, on a calculator, amazed in the face of this simple mathematical progression.

He could have handed Ransom the sword he had picked up in Okinawa, the prewar, mass-produced item turned out for flunky officers of the Imperial Army to carry into the jungles of the South Pacific. But he wanted a fight, not a fix. He had stolen another sword from the temple's cache, a seventeenth-century weapon nearly as good as his own. For their purposes, the technology was about equal. Although DeVito was confident of the outcome, he'd been briefly rattled when Ransom switched the location and hung up the phone. He had felt his authority diminished. But it didn't make a damn bit of difference, he told himself, where Ransom wanted to buy the farm. In two weeks DeVito could finally join the kendo dojo, but this way he could give himself the most important lesson first.

At four-fifteen he changed from his sweats into the kimono, put both swords in a big fishing-rod case and set out.

When he reached the Kitaoji Bridge, light was beginning to show over the ridge of the eastern mountains. He left his motorcycle in a bicycle-park area and walked down along
the deserted riverbank, the rod case slung over his shoulder by the strap. When he was halfway between the two bridges he sat down on the ground to wait. As the sky grew brighter he began to be certain that Ransom wouldn't show.

DeVito did not hear Ransom until he was standing directly behind him.

“Either you're a very trusting soul,” Ransom said, “or very unobservant.”

DeVito leapt to his feet. Ransom was in his white karate gi. “Are you ready to fight?”

Ransom didn't answer. He turned and looked over his shoulder at the eastern mountains. DeVito looked too, thinking that it was stupid of Ransom to expose himself; as they watched, a yellow glow seemed to spread among the thick clouds spilling over the ridge.

“Do you have a weapon for me?” Ransom said, turning back to face DeVito.

DeVito unslung the rod case and unscrewed the cap, removing the two katana. Cautiously, watching for sudden moves, he extended one sword. Ransom took it, examined the hilt and scabbard, and then unlaced the ties that fastened the guard to the scabbard. DeVito stepped back as he partially unsheathed the blade.

“It's a good sword,” DeVito said.

Ransom looked again to the east. “I don't think we're going to see the sun today, but I believe it's dawn.”

“I'm ready when you are.” DeVito took another step back, and slid the scabbard of the Sagami sword into the obi fastening his kimono.

Ransom unfastened his obi and retied it, then drew his
sword and threw the scabbard into the river. DeVito set the balls of his feet in the sand and drew his sword in a smooth arc which Ransom leaped back to avoid. DeVito held his sword aloft, two-handed, above his right shoulder; Ransom raised his to a similar position. He parried DeVito's first cut and slashed low. The two blades rang like chimes, each with its distinct tone, as DeVito blocked and threw aside Ransom's blade. Ransom was open for a moment but he managed to raise his blade in time to stop DeVito's just short of his neck. They stood face to face, so close that DeVito could see the pores on Ransom's nose, and for a moment the assurance of Ransom's gaze robbed DeVito of his own.

Ransom pushed off from DeVito's blade. He thrust low. DeVito slashed, deflecting Ransom's blade into the sand at his feet. Ransom raised his sword just in time to parry the following slash. He threw DeVito's blade back and came in from the side, cutting the sleeve of DeVito's kimono and slicing the flesh over his ribcage. DeVito gasped—the wound seeming to burn deeper into him even after he had slipped away from the blade, burning with all the heat that had gone into the forging of the steel. Ransom paused, his sword in the air showing blood.

DeVito inhaled deeply and tried to suck all the pain into his lungs. He let out a yell and attacked. As Ransom's blade met his own, DeVito kicked him in the gut, and when he doubled over DeVito drew his arms back and struck with what the sixteenth-century master Miyamoto Musashi called the Flowing Water Cut. The blade entered diagonally between neck and shoulder, severing Ransom's spine.

Standing over the body, DeVito watched the blood spilling from the open neck onto the white sand of the flood plain. So this is what it's like, he thought, as the rain began to fall and the rainy season commenced.