Tengu (18 page)

“I think that
came over on the TV screen,” said Jerry.

Mack swallowed
Chivas Regal and shrugged in acknowledgment. “Sure. The trouble was, when
everybody else started loving her, I started to feel crowded out.”

“You argued?”

“/argued.
She didn’t say anything, just took it, hoping I’d
learn to understand. I don’t think she really wanted to leave me, but you know
what insecure people are like. Forever saying, ‘Get out of here, I don’t need
you,’ in the hope that she’ll say, ‘
You
may not need
me, but I need you.’

Classic.
She packed and
left,
and I
didn’t do anything to stop her. Five minutes later I was banging my head
against the wall and wondering why the hell I was so damned stupid.”

Jerry looked
across at him carefully. “Did the police question you?”

“Oh, sure.
I’m not supposed to leave the city, and I have to
rack my brains to think of anyone who might have killed her.”

“Any ideas?”

Mack tugged his
fingers through his blond curls and shook his head. “Why did Manson’s
creepie-crawlies kill Sharon Tate? Why does anybody kill anybody? I don’t know.
This whole town is nutty. I thought you were nutty, until I saw that mask on
television.”

Jerry stood up
again. He needed to stand up to say what he had to say next. “I am nutty,” he
said. “Well, slightly. I had some bad experiences in Japan during the war,
things to do with conscience, and guilt. Things you don’t easily forget. You
remember Colonel Paul Tibbets, who piloted the Enola Gay, the plane that
dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima? You remember what happened to him,
how he turned into a kelptomaniac, that kind of thing?”

“The same thing
happened to you?” asked Mack.

“I used to
steal clocks and turn the hands back to 8 A.M. the minute before they dropped
the atom bomb, in the hope that it might never have happened. I don’t steal
clocks anymore, but I still have dreams about it. That morning, we killed
78,150 people at one stroke, in one instant and burned or injured 37,425.
Hundreds of people are still suffering for what we did, even today.”

Mack didn’t say
anything for a while, but then he suggested gently, “We were fighting a war,
right? A whole lot more people would have died if we hadn’t dropped it.”

“You think so?
Well, who can say? Yes, you’re probably right. My doctor says the same thing.

‘You helped to
save the lives of countless American troops,’ he tells me. ‘It was either us,
or them.’ But that doesn’t take away the enormity of what I had to do. That
doesn’t take away the fact that at one moment in history I was solely
responsible for America’s decision whether to drop that atomic bomb or not.
I’ve never even told David about it, my own son, I’m so damned ashamed.

There was a
garlicky smell of baking pizza coming from the kitchen. Mack swallowed a
mouthful of whiskey and said, “You picked that mask up in Japan?” It was an
obvious attempt to change the subject.

Jerry lifted
the mask up from the table. The late-afternoon sun shone brilliantly through
its empty eyeholes, giving it a disturbingly triumphant appearance. “You don’t
believe me?” he asked.

Mack shrugged.
“It was Truman who decided to drop the bomb, right?”

Jerry hesitated
for a moment,
then
looked down at his half-empty
glass. “Yes, it was Truman who decided to drop the bomb.”

Mack looked
distinctly uneasy. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come.”

“Sure, it was
Truman who decided to drop the bomb. It was Truman who said go. But Truman
wasn’t sitting beside me in those mountains by Yuki and Namata, with a
high-power receiving set, listening to Japanese intelligence reports from
Hiroshima. Truman didn’t know whether I was fabricating everything I heard on
that radio or not. When I said
That’s
it,’ Truman said
go; but if I hadn’t said ‘That’s it,’ then Truman would have said forget it.
You really believe he was eager to drop that thing? Maybe he was. Who knows?”

Mack finished
his drink and put down the glass. “I don’t know,” he said. “I wasn’t even born
then.”

“Sure,” nodded
Jerry. “You weren’t even born. Well, that lets you out. You can think about
Hiroshima with an easy mind.”

“Listen,” said
Mack, “I don’t even pretend to understand it. I came here because of the mask;
and because of Sherry. I didn’t come here for a lecture in moral philosophy, or
some kind of psycho confession about World War Two.”

Jerry looked at
Mack for a moment, and then nodded. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m acting my
age. I’m out of date. And I’m even
more sorry
that I’m
having to say sorry.”

Mack said,
“Okay. Listen, I wasn’t very understanding. I never had to serve in the Army,
you know? I don’t even know what I’m talking about. I’m just as sorry as you
are.”

Jerry thought
for a while, then emptied his glass and set it down on the table beside him.
“You want to talk about the mask?” he asked Mack.

“Sure. I
couldn’t believe it when I turned on the television and there it was.
The same goddamned mask.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt so
creepy in my whole goddamned life.”

“You’re happy
it was the same mask?”

“If happy’s the
word for it.”

Jerry said,
“Come on into the kitchen. That pizza’s going to be ready before you know it.”

Mack perched on
a stool while Jerry took the pizza out of the oven and fumbled it onto a wire
rack to cool. Jerry said, “That white mask is similar to those they use in No
theater, in Japan.

There are two
main kinds of traditional theater in Japan–Kabuki, which was the dance theater
introduced for commoners at the end of the sixteenth century–and No, which was
reserved for the aristocracy. There was also, of course, the Bugaku
theater
, which was performed exclusively for the Japanese
royal family, and which wasn’t seen by the public from the time it began in the
seventh century until the end of World War Two. Can you imagine that?
A whole art form which was kept secret for 1,300 years.
When
you start to think about that, you can start to think about what you’re really
up against when you’re competing with the Japanese. I know, I know, you’re
thinking about Toyotas and Panasonic televisions and Suntory whiskey. But
you’re missing the point. Everybody’s missing the point. “Japan is a mystical,
rigid, highly formalized society;
a society in which magic
and occult forces have
considerably more strength because they’re so
widely accepted and believed. Japan is the last great magical society of the
modern world; and that magic was only slightly diminished by losing the war to
the United States. Oh–they were prepared to accept certain superficial changes,
after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There are times when even the dragon is prepared
to surrender to the atomic bomb. But Japan remains, and always will. That
extraordinary group of islands has a social and religious history more ancient
than Americans can imagine. You know something? The city of Nara, that’s about
26 miles south of
Kyoto, that
used to be the capital
of Japan, from the year 710 to 784. Can you imagine that? One thousand years
before the Declaration of Independence. And that’s where the culture that
created this mask, the culture that was responsible for Sherry Cantor’s
murder–that’s where this culture began.”

Mack said, “I’m
not sure that I understand what you’re saying.”

Jerry began to
slice up the pizza. “I’m not sure what I’m saying, either. No masks may make
some kind of sense to me, but why should they have anything to do with Sherry?
Did Sherry ever visit Japan?”

Mack shook his
head. “She never traveled farther than Bloomington, Indiana. That’s where her
mother lived.”

“Did she know
any Japanese people? Work in ajapan-ese restaurant?”

“Not that she
told me.”

Jerry slid a
plate out of the cupboard and handed Mack a steaming slice of pizza. “You want
a beer?” he asked.

Mack said,
“Sure. A light, if you’ve got it.”

They sat side
by side at the kitchen counter, devouring the pizza. Every now and then, Mack
would stop to fan his mouth with his hand. “This is terrific pizza. I’m going
to have a thousand blisters on the roof of my mouth tomorrow. Jerry said, “We
could be making a really bad mistake. I mean, /could. When the witnesses said
that the murderer was wearing a white mask, they could have been confused. They
were all in passing cars, remember. What they saw was probably nothing more
than a glimpse. And the guy could have been wearing anything.
A white stocking over his face.
White
makeup.
Maybe he was just naturally pale, like an albino.”

“But the police
drawings,” Mack put in. “They look just like that mask.’’

“Well, sure
they do,” agreed Jerry. “But what do we have here?
Two eyes,
a nose, a mouth; and a white, blank face.
Not much to go on.”

Mack looked up
at Jerry narrowly. “That cold wind you talked about. You don’t feel it anymore?

That intuition?”

Jerry toyed
with his last triangle of pizza. “I’m not sure. Once you start analyzing it,
once you start thinking about it, you lose it. It was in Kyoto once, after the
war, walking along Shijo Street on my way to the Fujii Daimaru department
store. I stepped off the curb just opposite the Shiro Karasuma station, and I
felt that cold wind like ice. I stepped right back onto the curb again, and an
Army truck grazed my hip.
Just missed me.”

Mack said,
“You’re sure, aren’t you?”

“Sure of what?”

“You’re sure that
the guy who killed Sherry was wearing a No mask.”

Jerry thought
for a moment. “Yes,” he nodded, “I’m sure.”

Mack picked up
his beer, and then put it down again. “Maybe this isn’t relevant,” he said.

“Maybe what
isn’t relevant?”

“Well...
 
come with me for a second. I just want to
show you something.”

Jerry hesitated
at first, but then he followed Mack out of the house, leaving the door open
behind
them,
and down the sloping concrete driveway to
the street. The day was humid and smoggy, and Jerry wiped his face with his
hand Tengu to clear away the sweat.

Mack stood on
the sidewalk and said, “Take a look at this.”

Jerry said, “My
house number. What of it?”

“No, but you’re
used 10 it,” said Mack. “When/first came up
here,
I
didn’t know whether number 11 was your house or Sherry’s bungalow next door.
The party wall, the angle of the driveway.
To someone who
isn’t familiar with the street, and the way the houses are arranged, it looks
like Sherry’s bungalow is number 11.”

Jerry narrowed
his eyes, and took a pace or two backward. After a while he said, “You know
something? You’re right.”

Mack stared at
Jerry through the sweltering heat of the afternoon. “You know what that could
mean, don’t you? What with the Japanese mask and everything? It would make more
sense.”

Jerry felt that
cold wind again, blowing around the skirts of his soul. “You’re trying to tell
me that it would make more sense if the killer had made a mistake, mixed up the
houses?”

“Sherry didn’t
know anything about Japanese people.
Nothing.
I don’t
think she’d even been to Benihana’s. All she was interested in was Our Family
Jones, and being a terrific television
star,
and that
was it. I’m not sure–and I’m not trying to sound like a jealous ex-boyfriend or
anything–but I don’t think she was even dating anybody. Not seriously.”

Jerry looked
back at the low stone wall with 11 on it, and then nodded. “You’re saying that
the killer was after me, and not Sherry? You’re saying that I’m the one who
should’ve been torn to pieces?”

“It’s only a
theory.”

“Oh, sure.
Some theory.”

“Listen,” said
Mack, “I know there are all kinds of holes in it. Like, how did the killer
manage to mistake a young woman for a middle-aged man, and why did he kill her
even when he knew that he was attacking the wrong person? But...
 
you heard what the police said. The guy was
crazy. Only a crazy person could rip the legs right off a girl’s body, just for
the hell of it. And if he was crazy, then maybe he didn’t care too much who he
killed.”

Jerry said,
“Let’s go back in the house. It’s too damned hot out here. And besides, half
the blinds in the whole damned street are twitching. They’re a nosy bunch up
here in Orchid Place. I’ve been thinking of rechristening it Rubberneck
Mountain.”

Back in the
kitchen, they finished their pizza and drank their beer in silence. Then Mack
took out a packet of papers and rolled himself a cigarette.

‘‘The most
important clue to this thing is that No mask, isn’t it?” he asked Jerry,
blowing out smoke.

Jerry wiped
beerfoam away from his upper lip. “It could be. I’m not sure. But as far as I
know, I’m the only person in this whole street
who
has
ever had anything to do with Japan; and boy, did I have something to do with
Japan. It was practically up to me that the whole country got wiped out.”

“You think you
ought to tell the police?”

“I don’t know.
I suppose so. It’s just that I haven’t worked it out in my own head yet, and I
think I need to. If I tell the police about it now, that’ll kind of take the
onus off my own brain, and maybe I’ll miss something important, simply because
I don’t feel I’m responsible for it anymore. I have to admit
it,
I’ve got a lazy mind. Old age, I guess.”