Tengu (4 page)

“You don’t have
to give me a lesson in personnel management,’’ snapped Ernest. ‘ This whole
thing was set up so tight that nobody had any room to move. Not even the
brightest member of the team had room to think. There was no improvisation, no
contingency plan, nothing but a sequence of precisely controlled and
coordinated events. It can’t have gone wrong.”

“Yoshikazu seems
to think it has.”

“Well, in that
case, he’s probably talking his usual gibberish.”

“What are you
going to do?” smiled Nancy, slyly. “Clap him in irons? Send him off on the next
clipper to Shanghai?”

Ernest
scratched the iron-gray stubble on his angular chin. Ht still felt unsettled,
working with civilians. His father had been a naval commander before him, and
his grandfather had been a friend of Teddy Roosevelt, back in his Rough Rider
days. Ernest could only think of life as a battle plan, and he mentally graded
the people he had to deal with as admirals, fellow officers, or idiots. Each
day presented its difficulties like a fleet of hostile ships, and each
difficulty could only be overcome by classic naval tactics. He even walked his
three retrievers, John, Paul, and Jones, in line formation.

Only Nancy
Shiranuka knew all about those moments when he disembarked (inside his mind)
from his self-imposed regime of naval discipline.
Those
moments when he sought, perversely and desperately, the consolation of
girl-children, and extraordinary sexual techniques.
He called those
moments his “shore leave.”

“We need some
up-to-date intelligence,” he said. “Can’t Yoshikazu find out what’s happening?”

“He’s going to
try, Commander. But right now the whole area is crawling with police.”

Ernest crushed
out his cigarette. “Dammit, I should have entrusted this one to somebody with
experience.’’ He added, with expressive contempt: “Yoshikazu. The nearest
Yoshikazu’s been to Tokyo is the Japanese take-out on Sunset and Fairfax.’’

“I trust him,”
said Nancy, pointedly. “I believe it’s better if we simply wait.’’

Ernest looked
at her with a testy expression, and then nodded.
“All right.
We’ll give him an hour. If he doesn’t report in by then, we’ll go take a look
for ourselves. Meanwhile, let’s keep the television going. They might have a
news bulletin.”

Nancy gave a
sarcastic salute.
“Aye, aye, Commander.
Anything you
say.”

The old
commander ignored her. “Why don’t you have Kimo fix some breakfast? I’m getting
damned hungry. Have him fix some of that dashimaki tamago.”

Nancy paused
for a moment, a slight smile on her face. Then she picked up a small square
silver bell from the telephone table and tinkled it. After a while,
a young
Japanese in a white shirt, white jeans, and a white
headband came into the room and stood, waiting.

‘The commander
has a taste for your eggs this morning, Kemo,” said Nancy.

Kemo looked
across at the commander, and gave a brief, correct nod of his head. If anyone
had nodded to him like that in the Navy, the commander would have had him up on
a charge of dumb insolence. But Ernest turned irritably away, parted the
slatted bamboo blinds with two fingers, and glared out at the trees of Alta
Loma Road until Kemo had gone back to his kitchen.

Nancy asked,
“What are you thinking about?”

He cleared his
throat. “I was just wondering, for the six hundredth time, whether this whole
damned carnival is ever going to work.”

“You’re not
paid to wonder. You’re paid to make it work.”

“Correction,”
said Ernest. “I’m paid to make my pan of it work. I can’t be responsible for
the rest of this ragbag collection of Oriental hoodlums.’’

Nancy gave a
high, tittering laugh. “Sometimes you’re so fierce. You’re just like Gary Grant
in Destination Tokyo.”

“You like that
movie?” asked Ernest, surprised.

“It’s one of my
favorites. I like especially the scene where the Japanese pilot parachutes into
the water and stabs to death the American seaman who is trying to pull him
out.”

“You would,”
growled Ernest. “But I never saw anyone, Jap or American, anything but
eternally grateful to be hauled out of the drink. Maybe it just appealed to
your cruel sense of humor.”

“I thought you
enjoyed my cruel sense of humor.”

“Hmh?
Well, there’s a time and a place for everything.’’

Nancy came toward
him, raising her arms. The silk sash of her robe slipped apart, revealing her
naked body. She was slim and pale, the color of Japanese provincial pottery,
and her breasts were tiny and round with dark nipples that always reminded
Ernest of those cups that conjurors use to hide dice. Between the thighs of her
slim, short legs, her black pubic hair had been trimmed into the shape of a
heart.

Ernest raised
his skinny, sinewy arm. “Now, you get away, Nancy. It’s too early. We’ve got
this whole operation going snafu, we don’t know what in hell’s going on, and
you know as well as I do that we’re going to have Gerard Crowley coming down on
top of us by the end of the day like fifteen tons of hot shit.
The Huck Finn of Bevcrly Hills.”

Still smiling,
Nancy pressed her bare body up against him, and reached up to ruffle his silver
hair. “You shouldn’t call him that,” she cooed. “You know he doesn’t like it.”

“What else
should I call him? He’s a good old country boy, isn’t he, if you want it put
politely?

Now, let go of
me, will you?”

“I wonder what
you call me behind my back,” Nancy whispered.
“The Dragon
Lady?”

Ernest gripped
her waist, and twisted her away from him. But then his towel slipped, and he
had to release her to save his decency. She tittered again, that high birdlike
laugh, and Ernest’s neck went red with irritation.

“I should have
slammed the door in your face that very first day I saw you,” he growled.

“Oh, no, Mr.
Milward,” Nancy mocked. “That would never have done. Think of what you would
have missed.”

Kemo appeared
in the doorway with a tray of tea. Nancy drew her robe around herself as he
sulkily crossed the room and set the delicate cups and teapot down on the low
table.

“Dashimaki
tamago five minutes,” he said, and slip-slopped out again.

Ernest sighed
and sat creakily down on the floor. Nancy poured out two cups of tea, and then
sat down beside him, cross-legged. Her robe was wide open again, and he
couldn’t help noticing how the heel of her right foot, drawn up under her,
parted the bright pink lips of her silk-haired sex. He closed his eyes and
inhaled the strange, smoky smell of the Japanese tea.

“You have no
need to fear anything,” said Nancy, in a quiet, monotonous voice. “Even if
things have gone wrong this morning, nobody can possibly trace the Tengu back
to us. You know that as well as I. And it had to be done. It is all part of the
preparations.”

“There could
have been some other way. I told Crowley that.” Ernest spoke without opening
his eyes.

“Crowley wanted
to make sure it really worked. And you can scarcely blame him for that, can
you, when you think how much money he’s spent?”

“I don’t know.
In my book, the best tactics arc those which are mounted in secrecy. Then–when
you can’t keep the secrecy up any longer–you keep your enemy guessing by laying
smoke, and taking up unexpected and confusing positions.”

“Ernest,” said
Nancy, in the same quiet voice, “we are not fighting frigates. This is not
Midway anymore. And what in the world could be more confusing to everybody than
what the Tengu was sent out to do this morning?” Ernest opened his eyes. He
peered into his steaming teacup, and watched the dark leaves floating around
and around.

“My God,” he
said, under his breath. “What a strange assortment of lost individuals we are.

What a cause
we’re fighting for.’’

“Is money such
a terrible cause?” asked Nancy.

Ernest thought,
and then grimaced, and shook his head.

Nancy leaned
over toward him and kissed the roughness of his cheek. He kept his eyes open,
watching her, so that when she came close he was almost squinting. She sat up
straight again, and said, “I have a woodblock print somewhere by Eisen, in the
style of Ukiyo-e sbunga prints. It shows a Yoshiwara courtesan anointing her
lover’s organ with sake before they make love.”

Ernest stared
at her suspiciously. But he made no attempt to ward her off when she reached
across and loosened his towel. With one tug, she bared his already-stiffened
penis and his salt-and-pepper hair.

She uncrossed
her legs and knelt beside him. She kissed him again, on the forehead. She
smelled slightly of sweat, but mostly of some musky, deep-noted perfume.

“We have no
sake,” she said. “But we have something that will please you even more.”

With one small
hand, she stroked his penis up and down, so slowly and leisurely that he felt
like gripping his hand over hers and forcing her to rub him faster. But this
was one of those times when she was completely in control. He had to wait. He
had to obey. If he didn’t, the spell, and the experience she had in store for
him, would be forfeit at once.

He said
hoarsely, “Nancy...”

She raised one
immaculately lacquered fingertip to her lips. Then, still slowly stroking him,
she reached across to the tea tray and picked up one of the small white towels
that were laid beside a dish of salted plums.

Ernest felt his
heart slow up, then quicken, like a man struggling to keep himself afloat in a
heavy sea.

Nancy took the
lid off the teapot and lowered the towel into the boiling-hot tea. She swirled
it around for a moment, and then lifted it out. Hot tea ran onto the tray and
across the table.

Ernest said,
“You’re not...”

She smiled. She
said nothing. With a deft flick of her wrist, she wound the scalding towel
around the hard shaft and swollen head of Ernest’s penis, and gave him a brief,
vicious squeeze.

He burst out
with a short, sharp shout of pain. He felt as if his whole erection was
exploding.

But then the
pain seemed to detonate into something else altogether.
More
than pain.
More than pleasure.
A brief dark instant of that terrible feeling which he craved and
feared like a drug.
It seemed as if his insides were boiling, as If his
brain were going to burst into thousands of pieces.

But then he
ejaculated, and his semen fell across the back of Nancy’s wrist.

The world and
the room gradually refocused, as if he were adjusting a pair of binoculars.

Everything
returned, almost absurdly, to normal. Nancy wiped her hands and arms with the
towel, and pulled her robe around herself with stylized modesty. Ernest,
feeling stunned and sore, reached down and slowly gathered up his towel.

“Now you know
the meaning of Ukiyo’’ said Nancy. “
The floating world of
pleasure.”

“I also know
the meaning of burned balls,” Ernest told her in a coarse whisper. “You’re a
devil, you know that? Much more of a devil than any of those damned Tengus.’’

‘‘Perhaps,’’
said Nancy. “But even devils are sometimes obliged to live a symbiotic life. I
need you, and you need me, and perhaps we should offer a prayer that we found
each other in the prime of life.”

Ernest,
wincing, bent forward and took a salted plum from the tray. He chewed it
thoughtfully.

“My prime,” he
said, “was when I was standing on the fantail of the USS FernJale, watching the
whole Japanese fleet blazing like the Fourth of July.’’

Nancy touched
his hand consolingly. “I’m sorry I can’t give you an action replay here in my
living room. But it won’t be long, will it, before I can offer you something
very much like it?”

Ernest didn’t
answer. Kemo came in with the Japanese omelets.

S
ergeant Skrolnik of the Hollywood police department watched with
deep moroseness as two medics from the coroner’s office lifted the
white-sheeted stretcher from the living room floor and took it unsteadily
outside through the broken French doors.

The yellow
drapes were stirred by the morning breeze as the medics made their way down the
path between the fan palms and the poinsettia, and out to the waiting car. The
sloping sidewalk was crowded with blank-faced, shuffling spectators.

The day was
glaring and hot, and getting hotter. Skrolnik took off his crumpled linen coat
and laid it over the back of a chair. Detective Pullet came through from the
bathroom with a pair of small blue satin panties in a self-sealing plastic bag.
He stood beside Skrolnik without saying a word, chewing his lip and looking at
the wide brown splatter of blood on the rug. There were even splashes of blood
up the walls, in the shape of commas and question marks and exclamation points,
as if Sherry Cantor’s dying struggle had been punctuated like a comic book.
Skrolnik offered Pullet a stick of Wrigley’s, but Pullet shook his head.

“More hygienic
than chewing your damned mouth,” said Skrolnik, without any particular rancor.

Pullet nodded.

Skrolnik said,
“There are more damned bacteria in the human mouth than down the damned sewer.
If you kiss somebody’s ass, instead of their mouth, it seems like you’re doing
yourself a favor.”

Pullet nodded
again.

The two
detectives were noticeably ill matched. Skrolnik was short and heavily built,
with fraying hair like fuse wire, and a bulbous Slavic face. When they were
younger, his two sons had taken delight in squeezing his nose as if it were the
horn on a Model T, and there were still one or two fellow officers who were
sorely tempted to give it a quick parp when they passed him in the corridor.