Tengu (31 page)

“They will kill
you,” said Kuan-yin.

“No,” said Mr.
Esmeralda. “Not yet. They have gone this far, but they have not yet completed
whatever it is they want to do. I think I am comparatively safe until they have
accomplished their purpose.”

“You have never
told me their purpose.”

Mr. Esmeralda
lifted the points of his collar and began tying his necktie again. “I have not
wished to burden you. What they want to do is utterly catastrophic. If I told
you, you would not understand. But, I have committed myself to helping them.’’

“Why?” asked
Kuan-yin. In the evening lamplight, her face looked very pretty and serene. “I
always thought you were a man of great independence.
The son
of the great pirate Jesus Esmeralda.”

Mr. Esmeralda
tugged the knot of his necktie straight and examined
himself
carefully in the gilt-framed mirror that hung on the parlor wall. The shiny
hair was perfectly combed back, and the mustache was immaculately scissored. He
thought he looked handsome, but also out of date, like a character out of a
1950’s movie. If he hadn’t been able to play the part of “Mr. Esmeralda” as if
he were acting, he probably wouldn’t have the nerve to survive. The world in
which he lived was dangerous and bizarre, where sudden death was considered to
be the least of a man’s worries.

Kuan-yin stood
up and walked across to him, laying her hand on his arm. She said, “It is years
since we were lovers.”

“You cannot
measure what I feel for you in years,” he told her, his dark eyes looking down
at her with compelling steadiness. There was a moment of silence, and then
Kuan-yin let him go. It was no use. He was the kind of man whose soul lived
somewhere else, away from his body. What you saw was suntan and greased-back
hair and clipped mustache; a papier-mache mask with nothing behind it but
cocktails, sentimental chatter, and emptiness. The real Mr. Esmeralda was
unreachable.

“Do you think
you are in very great danger?” she asked him.

He looked at
her unblinkingly, and said, “It is no time for losing my head. There is too
much money at stake.
And too many lives.
The Japanese
are not deterred by such concepts as fairness or justice; and they are
certainly not deterred by American law. If they wish to murder me, they will.
But they will have to outwit me first.” When he had finished, he asked Kuan-yin
to drive him across to West Los Angeles, to Eva Crowley’s apartment. Kuan-yin
said nothing, but went to fetch her cap. In the car, while Mr.

Esmeralda
listened to the radio news in the hope of finding out more about what had
happened at Rancho Encino, Kuan-yin remained silent and aloof, although Mr.
Esmeralda could see her eyes watching him in the rearview mirror.

‘‘What if
Commander Ouvarov comes back and finds that you’ve gone out?” she asked him at
last.

“Commander
Ouvarov will never come back. Didn’t you hear what they said on the television?

One of the
Japanese was probably killed by his associate. That means that Commander
Ouvarov panicked and ran, but not before he had disposed of anyone who could
identify him. In my opinion, he probably killed Yoshikazu in the same way.
So much less trouble than taking him all the way down to Mexico and
smuggling him over the border.
Commander Ouvarov is a profiteer, an
opportunist, a murderer, a pimp, and a sexual deviant. He had a reputation for
efficient organization, and that is why I asked Nancy Shiranuka to hire him.
Maybe I was wrong.

Maybe he was
too old for the job. It is too late to be concerned about that now, and too
late to be concerned about him. He is probably halfway to Mexico already.”

“Supposing he goes to the police?”

“Commander
Ouvarov has been involved in too many rackets and too many unsavory deals to
risk going to the police. He is still wanted in five states, including Washington
and Nevada. He is wanted in New York for jumping bail. Commander Ouvarov will
never go to the police.”

“Not even for a
little plea-bargaining?”

Mr. Esmeralda
didn’t answer. He knew from experience how little honor there was among
thieves. And among the motley hirelings he had been obliged to collect for the
Tengu project, there was no honor whatsoever. All they had in common was fear
and greed, and if someone else could frighten them more, or offer them more
money, then their allegiance to Mr. Esmeralda would evaporate like Pacific fog.
He had no illusions about them.

Kuan-yin pulled
the limousine into the curb outside Eva Crowley’s apartment. Mr. Esmeralda
said, “Come back for me at six A.M. Bring some hot towels with you, and a
change of clothes.’’

Kuan-yin said,
“You’re not taking the lady any flowers?”

Mr. Esmeralda
smiled at her wryly. “I can do better than that,” he said, and took out of his
pocket a gold-and-diamond bracelet.

Eva Crowley
came to the door in a smart, schoolmarmish blouse with a pleated bib and a
severe black pencil skin. She said breathlessly, “I didn’t expect to see you
again.”

“But, I’m
here,” said Mr. Esmeralda, with a self-satisfied grin. “Aren’t you going to
invite me in?”

“The twins are
home. We were just about to have a snack. Then we were going to watch a little
television and go to bed.”

“You don’t want
me to meet your daughters?”

“Well, it’s not
that I don’t want you to... ”

“Then invite me
in.” Mr. Esmeralda beamed. He reached through the half-open door and held her
wrist. “You can tell them that I am an old friend of your husband’s.
A cigar exporter from Dominica.”

“Well...” Eva
hesitated.

Mr. Esmeralda
reached into his pocket and took out the bracelet, dangling it in front of
Eva’s eyes. “You won’t even let me in if I bribe you?” he asked her.

Eva relaxed and
smiled.
“All right.
But only for an
hour or so.
The girls have to go on a field trip tomorrow for school,
and I want them to have a moderately early night.”

“Your wish is
law,” said Mr. Esmeralda, and bowed.

Inside the
Crowley’s apartment, the mathematical sterility of Gerard’s modern Italian
decor had already been overwhelmed by dozens of rock records and magazines and
scruffy-looking schoolbooks, as well as two girls’ college sweaters, three
fluorescent-yellow sneakers, a pink Fiorucci bag crammed with hairbrushes and
makeup, and a disassembled hair-dryer which looked as if it could never
assembled again. On the Giulini sofa, in tight matador pants and T-shirts, sat
Kathryn and Kelly Crowley, both 17, identical twins, painting their toenails,
Kathryn plum and Kelly green. They were very pretty girls, an inch taller than
their mother, with dark wavy hair and wide slate-and-lavender-colored eyes.

“We-e-ell,”
said Kelly saucily, looking up from her toe-nail painting. “Who’s this,
Moth-m?”

“Don’t you be
so fresh,” Eva Crowley snapped back. “This is a business colleague of your
father’s, Mr. Esmeralda. Mr. Esmeralda, this is Kelly, and this is Kathryn.
Girls, clean up all this mess, will you? Mr. Esmeralda came by to see your
father, but the least we can do is offer him a drink. Isn’t that right, Mr.
Esmeralda?”

“It is a great
pleasure,” replied Mr. Esmeralda, exaggerating his South American accent. “It
isn’t often that one sees one young girl as beautiful as you, let alone two.’’

“Do you have a
Christian name, Mr. Esmeralda?” asked Kathryn boldly.

Mr. Esmeralda
nodded. “I was baptized Jesus, after my father. But, for understandable
reasons, most of my close friends call me by second name, Carlos.”

“I think I
prefer Jesus,” said Kathryn.

“Would you like
a drink?” Eva interrupted. “I’ve restocked the cabinet since you were last
here.”

‘‘Mother’s
always restocking the cabinet.’’ Kelly winked at Mr. Esmeralda. “She does like
her little celebration now and again.”

“Thank you,
Kelly,” said Eva sharply.

Mr. Esmeralda
said, “I’ll have a negroni, if you don’t mind. Shall I mix my own?”

“Oh, please.”

“Can we call
you Carlos?” asked Kathryn. “Carlos Esmeralda, it sounds very romantic. Do you
come
from

I South America, Carlos?”

Mr. Esmeralda
took out gin and Campari. “I didn’t think for one moment that your daughters
would be so grown up,” he told Eva. “
when
you said
‘twin daughters,’ I imagined two little moppets in ribbons and frills.”

“Moppets?”
Kathryn exclaimed. “I haven’t heard anyone say
‘moppets’ since I was a moppet.

Oh, you’re
wonderful, Carlos. You’re just like Desi Arnaz.
Or Ricardo
Montalban.”

“Kathryn, will
you stop being so personal” demanded her mother.

“I don’t mind,”
said Mr. Esmeralda, shaking his cocktail in Gerard’s most elegant Italian
silver shaker. “When you are swarthy, like me, and when you have a South
American accent, as I do, you deliberately cultivate a social personality that
is halfway between Edmundo Ros and Rudolph Valentino. Perhaps it’s outdated,
but people like it.”

“You’re so
outdated you make me dizzy
“ said
Kelly.

Eva laughed. “I
hope you can take all this ribbing,” she told Mr. Esmeralda. Mr. Esmeralda
poured out his cocktail with all the deftness of a bartender, turned around,
raised his glass, and grinned. “From three such beautiful ladies, a man can
accept anything.’’

“Anything!”
asked Kelly in a deep, melodramatic voice.

Mr. Esmeralda
put down his glass. “In actual fact, I came here to invite your mother out.

“We had planned
an early evening,” said Eva.

“I’m sure your
lovely daughters will not miss you,” smiled Mr. Esmeralda. “Now please, you
cannot refuse me.”

Eva smiled and
blushed. “I don’t know. I shouldn’t really.”

“Oh, go on.
Mother,” insisted Kelly. “God knows you deserve to have a night out.
Especially a really old-fashionednight out.
What could be
better?”

“All right,”
said Eva, after a moment. “But you’ll have to give me a minute to change.”

“Bravo!” said
Kathryn, and clapped her hands over her head.

While Eva dressed,
Mr. Esmeralda mixed
himself
another negroni, and told
the twins fanciful anecdotes about his life in the Caribbean and the Far East,
and a farfetched story about the time he had agreed to stand up against a
wooden fence in Nightmute, Alaska, as the human target for a Canadian
bowie-knife thrower. “The sweat froze on my forehead like seed pearls,” he
said, and the girls giggled in disbelief and delight.

“I can’t think
why Mother hasn’t talked about you before,” said Kelly.

Mr. Esmeralda
gave her a noncommittal shrug. “Sometimes a lady likes to keep certain things
to herself. Don’t you have secret thoughts, secret ideas, of your own?” He
raised one dark, well-combed eyebrow. “Don’t you have your own secret desires?”

Kathryn
giggled. Mr. Esmeralda was so much of a Latin smoothie that she couldn’t decide
whether to be amused, amazed, flattered, impressed, or simply skeptical. Yet
because he was so stereotypical, because he seemed to have stepped down from
the conductor’s podium of some cheap rumba band in Rio de Janeiro, she found
herself responding to him in a stereotypical way, flirting with him, flashing
her eyes at him,
metaphorically
clutching a rose
between bared teeth.

“You won’t keep
Moth-wout too late, will you?” she asked him. “Or maybe you will.”

Mr. Esmeralda
laughed. It was a laugh as flat and humorless as castanets.

“We’ll see,” he
said. “Life is more exciting when it is uncertain, don’t you think? Certainties
dull the palate.”

Kelly was about
to answer when the door opened and her mother reappeared, in the cream-colored
Bill Blass cocktail dress she had bought when she first found out about Gerard
and Francesca. Her hair was brushed, diamonds sparkled in her ears,
she
looked prettier and more confident than she had for
months. She came across and took Mr. Esmeralda’s arm. He, in turn, laid his
hand over hers and smiled as possessively as a bridegroom.

“You have
beautiful daughters,” he told her. “And it is very easy to see how they
inherited their looks.”

“You’re teasing
me,” said Eva.

“No,” said Mr.
Esmeralda. “It is one of the firmest rules of my life, never to tease.”

They were
driven by taxi to the Occidental Center on South Olive. It would have been
easier for Kuan-yin to drive them, but Mr. Esmeralda did not want to risk being
seen too obviously in public with Eva. It was a question of discretion, rather
than absolute secrecy. In the back of the taxi, Eva said, “I haven’t been taken
out by a strange man for years.”

“I am so
strange?” asked Mr. Esmeralda.

She looked at
him. “No,” she said. “Not so strange. Not really.”

They knew Mr.
Esmcralda well at The Tower; he was ushered at once to a table by the window,
overlooking the twinkling lights of Greater L.A. He ordered drinks for both of
them and talked fluently and endlessly, about money, about trading, about the
Far East, about the beauty and perversity of life in Bangkok, Rangoon, Shanghai
and Ho Chi Minh City, once called Saigon.

“You must have
known a great many women,” Eva told him gently.

Mr. Esmeralda
shook his head. “I am a selective man; not promiscuous. Of course one could
have women, thousands of them. But that kind of life means nothing to me. What
I have always sought is the woman who can give me a deep, romantic affair; an
affair with roses and wine and dancing, and expressions of true love.
Perhaps not an affair that lasts forever, but one which ends with
no regret, no bitter feelings, and no promises.”