Tengu (12 page)

As he had
adjusted his hat in front of the mirror in preparation for leaving, Esmeralda
had added, “The super bodyguards will be called Tengus, after the Japanese word
for powerful devils. You like that word, Tengus? They will be volunteers, each
one of them...
 
young Japanese men who
are already physically fit and extremely strong. They know the risks of the
drugs they will be taking, the steroids and so forth, and you will have to get
used to the idea that some of them may become temporarily...
 
well, unstable. My client’s experiments are still
in their early days.”

He had opened
the door, so that Francesca could hear what he was saying. “I want you to know,
Mr. Crowley that this program is worth millions of dollars–millions. You
understand me? You will get your share when the time comes, but only if you do
exactly what you are told to do, and behave .yourself. And there is one more
thing.”

“What’s that?”
Gerard had asked him flatly, annoyed that he had opened the door.

“You must know
that the program has some enemies...
 
people who look down on this kind of thing.
Health
officials, bleeding hearts.
You know who I mean. After all, some of the
drugs that my client will be using won’t exactly be... approved, if you
understand me. So, there may be people who have to be warned off, decisively.”

Gerard had
opened his cigar box and taken out a fresh cigar. He knew exactly what “warned
off, decisively,” meant. He was quite fluent in the euphemisms of smuggling and
arms running. He took out a match, struck it, and looked at Esmeralda through
the smoke and the flame. “All right,” he had said. “We’ll talk about that when
the time comes.”

Now, the time
had come, and their attempt to “warn off” one of the program’s enemies had
ended in chaos and complications. Francesca could sense the unease and tension
in Gerard’s body, and she touched his forehead, stroked the backs of his hands,
kissed
him.

“Money isn’t
everything, Gerard,” she said.

“I don’t think
I’m involved with Esmeralda for the money,” Gerard told her. “In fact, I don’t
know why I’m involved with Esmeralda at all.”

Francesca said,
with unexpected softness, “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I’ve been hurt
plenty of times,” he said, kissing her quickly. “Once more wouldn’t make any
difference. Not that I intend to get hurt. I don’t intend to get anything but
very much richer.”

The telephone
warbled. Gerard picked it up. He listened, but didn’t speak. Then he put the
receiver down again.

“Put something
on,” he told Francesca. “Nancy Shir-anuka’s coming up.”

Francesca took
a pair of tight white corduroy jeans from the back of the bedroom chair and
stepped into them. Then she buttoned a blood-red silk blouse over her bare
breasts and ran her hands through her hair. She looked like a woman who had
been making love for most of the afternoon.
She smellcd of
sex and Chanel.

Gerard went
into the living room and switched on the lamps. He called, “When you get
through to room service, have them send up a couple of bottles of California
chablis
and some potato chips.
Maybe some
beer.”

“When you
entertain, you really go to town, don’t you?” she said sarcastically, tucking
her blouse into her jeans.

Gerard didn’t
answer. He had opened the drawer in the writing desk, and he was looking inside
as intently as if he had found the dead body of a poisonous spider in there.
Lying among the Hotel Bonaventure writing paper and postcards was a .357 Python
revolver.

He didn’t touch
the gun. He knew it was loaded. He just wanted to make sure it was still there.

Quietly, he
closed the drawer.

“Is the
commander coming up, too?” asked Francesca.

The door chimes
rang. Gerard said: “He’s staying out at the ranch for tonight. He’s arranging
to get Yoshikazu over the border.’’

He put his eye
to the peephole in the door. Then he loosened the chain and opened it. Nancy
Shiranuka stalked in, dressed in an olive-green safari shirt and slacks, and
wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat. She took off her hat, tossed her long black
hair, and looked around the suite disdainfully.

“For two
hundred a night, you think they’d give you some decent prints on the walls,”
she said.

“I don’t
usually come here to look at the pictures,” Gerard told her. He said it without
humor.

“I know what
you come here for,” said Nancy blandly. “But sex is art, and art is sex. If
they put up one or two Sugimura prints of ten-year-old courtesans, don’t you
think the room would look much better? And don’t you think it would be a more
stimulating place to take your lady-love?”

“Unfortunately,
I don’t think Westin Hotels have any leeway in their decorating budget for rare
Japanese pornography,” said Gcrard.

Nancy sat down
on the mock-antique sofa and elegantly crossed her legs.
“Of
course not.
It’s the great Caucasian failing.
Budgets
before art, budgets before sex, budgets before anything.”

Gerard said,
“And what about the great Oriental failing?”

His voice was
quiet, but acidly sharp. Nancy sensed the change in tone.

“Have you heard
from Ernest?” she asked him. “I talked to Ernest an hour ago.”

“Then he
probably told you they’ve already disposed of the van.”

“Yes.”

“Well,” said
Nancy edgily, “I don’t have much more to tell you.”

“What did
Doctor Gempaku say?” asked Gerard. “He was too busy when I called.”

“He’s not very
hopeful. The Tengu was shot by the police several times, and he’s still in a
coma.”

“What will
Gempaku do if he can’t be revived?”

Nancy opened
her pocketbook and took out a green lacquered cigarette case. “The same as our
noble employers do to anyone who doesn’t fit in happily with their business
schemes, I suppose” she said.

Gerard pursed
his lips. He was angry, but controlled. He knew that most of what had happened
had been ridiculous bad luck, and that Nancy wasn’t really to blame. But now
there had been two foulups in two days, two serious and disabling setbacks, and
even if the caper hadn’t been completely written off, it had certainly been
delayed.

Worse, it had
shaken Gerard’s credibility, and with EsmeraJda breathing so closely down his
neck, Gerard needed all the credibility he could muster. Working for Esmeralda
was all bluff and double bluff, and living on your nerves.

Gerard said, “I
suppose Yoshikazu knows how much this has cost us.”

“Of course he
does. But it wasn’t his fault.”

“He ran a red
light right in front of a police car, and it wasn’t his fault?”

“What else was
he supposed to do?” Nancy demanded. “The Tengu was going mad. He couldn’t sit
in traffic while the whole van was torn to pieces around him.” She lit her
cigarette. Then she added, “Yoshikazu did very well. This has cost us, but it
hasn’t cost us everything.”

“Not unless the
police trace the van. Not unless the customs people pick him up at the border.
Not unless some smartass with a long memory puts six and seven together and
comes up with unlucky thirteen.

“I think you’re
fretting too much about what your precious Mr. Esmeralda thinks of you,” said
Nancy. “Don’t worry about him. You know the police won’t trace the van. You
also know that Ernest will get Yoshikazu safely into Mexico.”

“That’s two problems
out of three,” put in Gerard.
“But what about our friend
Sennett?
The one for whom that sad young starlet died in vain?”

“That’s up to
Esmeralda, not to me.”

“He made it our
responsibility,” Gerard insisted.

“It’s not a
responsibililty I want to accept.”

“You’ll have
to. If you don’t, this entire scheme is going to collapse like a half-cooked
souffle.”

“I didn’t
accept this job to murder people,” snapped Nancy.

“It’s too late
for that, my dear. You’re an accessory already. And what did you think you were
letting yourself in for, really, when Esmeralda told you he was building up a
crack stable of killer bodyguards?”

Nancy said,
“I’m beginning to wonder if any of us is safe. If Esmeralda can order one man
killed, why not another? Why not us? Why did he
chose
any of us in the first place?
Because we are all
magnificently unprincipled, and because we all have connections in the
grubbiest places?
Or because, if any of this business goes wrong, we can
all be dropped quietly into the ocean without anybody making too much noise
about it?”

Gerard nodded.
The cold smile was back on his lips. “My thoughts exactly,” he said.

Francesca came
into the room, her hair brushed and shining. “That wine’s taking its time,” she
remarked.

Gerard said, “They’re
probably waiting for it to become a respectable vintage.”

“Are you going
out to the ranch yourself?” Francesca asked him.
“In a couple
of days.
Once, I get all this administrative mess sorted out. And
replace Yoshikazu.”

“You could try
Kemo,” suggested Nancy.

“Kemo?
Your houseboy?”

“That’s right.
He’s quick, he’s eager, and he’s got a good head on his shoulders.”

‘‘As long as he doesn’t object to having it knocked off.’’

“He knows the
risks.”

Gerard pinched
the bridge of his nose tiredly. He was beginning to feel that maybe he wasn’t
as energetic as he had been two or three years ago. A whole afternoon of
drinking and lovemaking was more than he could comfortably manage, especially
if he wanted to stay alert during the evening. “Okay,” he said, “I’ll have a
talk with him. Now, what other problems do you have for me?”

“Only details.
They spotted a couple of prowlers around the
ranch yesterday afternoon, but they turned out to be hippies looking for a
place to crash. Doctor Gempaku says he needs more power, perhaps another
generator, and maybe you can arrange for a temporary stopgap.
A mobile generator maybe.”

“What’s he
running out there?” Gerard demanded.
“A sound-and-light
show?”

“He’s hoping to
open the new center in six weeks. He has to do it, Gerard, or he’ll never meet
the deadline.”

“All right,”
said Gerard. “I’ll get on it. Francesca?” Francesca made a scribbled note on
the hotel pad, and pulled a tight, unhelpful expression which Gerard recognized
as trouble.

J
erry and David ate breakfast together in silence; a cup of black
coffee for Jerry and a bowl of Lucky Charms for David. On the radio, they were
still talking about the white-masked copkiller, but by now the story had been
chewed over by so many expert opinions and so much tough talk from the
Hollywood police that it bore little resemblance to the violent event it had
actually been.

David was as
rangy as his father; a long-legged, untidy boy of fourteen; but he had
inherited, unmistakably, his mother’s forehead and eyes. Jerry could stare at
him sometimes, when he was watching television or doing his math homework, and
see Rhoda, exactly as she had been before the cancer had dulled and wasted her
and at last taken her away.

“That’s some
weird murder,’ huh?” asked David. “Do you hear what they said? Some guy in a
white mask swinging this cop around by the ankles.”

“Sure,” said
Jerry unenthusiastically.
“Real weird.”

David said,
“You’re okay, aren’t you, Dad?”

“What makes you
ask that?”

“I don’t know.
You seem like you’re down.”

Jerry shrugged.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what it is. I just get the feeling there’s
something strange going on. You know that feeling you get just before an
electric storm?
Kind of a tension.

Like two
magnets when you try to push them together and they resist each other.’’

David finished
his cereal, drained his glass of orange juice, and then went to the sink to
wash his dishes. “Are you seeing Doctor Grunwald today?” he asked
matter-of-factly. Dad’s continuing analysis was a part of daily life which he
had grown to accept as quite normal; besides, half the kids in his class had
parents undergoing psychiatric treatment. Kim Pepper’s mother had taken an
overdose last month and nearly died. It was nearly as fashionable to attempt
suicide as it was to Sierra-Stone your poolside. Jerry said, “Maybe. I mean,
yes, I probably will.” David stood by the sink, in his T-shirt and faded
Levi’s, and looked at his father with a mixture of sorrow and exasperation.
“You don’t really need him, you know. You could manage on your own, if you
tried.”

Jerry gave his
son a quick and vinegary smile. “Day-today living I can manage on my own. You I
can manage on my own. The only thing I can’t manage on my own is Japan.”

David was quiet
for a long time, but then he said, “That all happened thirty-eight years ago,
Dad.

You know?
Thirty-eight years.”

“I know, David.
But memories aren’t necessarily erased by passing years. Sometimes, they grow
more relevant, sharper, more disturbing. And now there’s something in the
air... this tension....

It kind of
reminds me of Japan. I don’t know why. But it has the same feeling of complete
doom.”

“Doom?”
repeated David, with exaggerated wide-eyed emphasis. “Jesus, Dad, only comic
strip characters say

‘
doom
’!”

Jerry glanced
up at David wryly. “Maybe that’s my real problem. Maybe, in reality, I’m a
comic strip character.
Jerry and the Pirates.”

David said,
“Never,” and gave his father a friendly cuff on the arm.