The Devouring God (11 page)

 

CHAPTER 21

Sunday Evening

T
here was a knock on the lid of his sarcophagus. Through the translucent plastic, Takuda could just make out the black sleeve attached to the rapping hand. Counselor Endo of Zenkoku General was moving him along to the next clue.

“I think I have to go, Tracy Jenkins,” he said into the handset. “I hope you enjoy your stay in Japan.”

The line was dead. He dropped the handset and stepped out of his sarcophagus.

The club had been cleared, and the music had stopped. Endo wasn't there in person. In his stead, a slim phalanx of black-­uniformed security guards squared off against Takuda on the dance floor. Tracy's sarcophagus was already empty.

“What did you do with the girl?” Takuda asked the security guards.

The guard nearest the door bowed and indicated the exit with an extended palm, a gesture of almost courtly elegance. Bright spots of light from the mirror ball swam over his Zenkoku Security badge. “The club has been cleared for safety reasons, by order of the regional fire department,” he said. “Everyone else has left. Please move toward the exit.”

Takuda felt something tight loosen in his chest. Ten of them to one of him. Hardly a challenge, but finally, an enemy he could lay his hands on.

He tossed them like laundry. They maced him and Tasered him before he even reached their ranks, but they couldn't break his momentum, and four of the ten were down for the evening before the others could regroup and circle him. Three of the six still had functional Tasers. It was an effort of will, forcing individual limbs to resist the paralyzing current, but even a tenth of his true strength was enough for these rented toughs. He laughed out loud as he yanked the leads from his own flesh and shocked them with their own weapons. Three tried to pin him with their staffs. He took their staffs away and tossed them up to the mezzanine. One guard, enraged by failure, threw himself on Takuda and tried to wrestle him to the dance floor. He howled as Takuda took him up on it, and he shrieked for his friends to rescue him as Takuda idly applied joint locks. He was testing the suppleness of the fellow's elbow when he heard a familiar metallic clicking.

He looked up into the barrel of an old revolver. Even in the dim lights of the disco Takuda could tell it was a museum piece. He released the swelling elbow and stood to face the lead guard, the one who had stayed out of the fray until he could get a clear shot.

“Please,” the guard said. “It's time to move toward the exit.”

The pistol was a Russian M1895 with a rounded front sight, at least six decades old. “Be careful with granddaddy's gun,” Takuda said. “You'll blow your hand off.”

The guard stepped back as he fired past Takuda's ear. The noise was deafening, and Takuda blinked involuntarily. His ears rang, and the pistol was now aimed between his eyes. The guard's hands were rock-­steady, and he aimed to drop Takuda where he stood. “Please move toward the exit,” he repeated.

Takuda looked back at the jagged, gaping hole in King Tutankhamen's face; the round had destroyed the sarcophagus behind him, so the old Russian pistol wasn't loaded with starter rounds. The other guards had withdrawn, tending their wounded near the karaoke stage. The guard with the gun was keeping out of reach.

It was time to go.

Takuda felt the gun pointed at the back of his head all the way to the door, but every time he turned, the guard stopped two body lengths behind, pistol trained on Takuda's skull. Maybe Takuda was faster than the guard, but he wasn't faster than the bullets.

At the door, he told the guard, “Tell Counselor Endo I want to speak to him.”

The guard let the door swing shut. Without taking the aim off Takuda's face through the glass, he jammed the door with his own boot as he reached down to flip the lock. He spun on his heel and returned to his men.

Takuda faced toward the street to see the old manager waiting for him. The manager snapped a Polaroid of Takuda and told him he was banned from the bar forever. Then the old man slouched off toward the Street of Disobedient Children.

Takuda looked around. The alleyway was deserted, with only a garlic-­themed restaurant to keep the disco company. Club Sexychat itself was a mess. The old pink faux-­marble stairs were faded and milky: they hadn't been made for outdoor use. The sphinxes pieced together from auto chrome were slowly rusting to bits on either side of the golden door, and the rust stains extended down the marble and halfway across the concrete sidewalk. The old
Excite Disco Pharakos
sign was still visible under the sagging and faded banner that proclaimed it
Club Sexychat
. Takuda felt a pang of sadness for Tracy Jenkins, the brown-­eyed girl who felt she had to work in such a place.

Takuda followed the old manager to Oyafuko-­dori, the Street of Disobedient Children. Oyafuko was lined with restaurants, pubs, karaoke parlors, and game centers. Dusk had filled the street with shifting swarms of orange-­haired youths with raucous laughter and too many teeth, small knots of young business ­people, and the occasional long-­legged beauty who slid like silk under the neon. On this evening before the fireworks show in Ohori Park, the street swam with girls in bright summer kimonos. There were sidelong glances for Takuda, bloodied and disheveled and massive. On the Street of Disobedient Children, the kids weren't afraid to let him know he didn't belong.

The phone booths were plastered inside and out with sex ser­vice ads. Takuda read them idly as he rang Mori's cell phone. Mori and Suzuki were waiting for the call.

“I just slapped the snot out of ten Zenkoku Security guards. Nine, I mean. The one got the drop on me. But the others, I stuck my hands in their ears and rattled their molars. Most fun I've had since Sado Island.”

Suzuki laughed in the background as Mori quizzed him on what he had found.

“There was a girl Thomas Fletcher knew. I couldn't tell her he's dead. Couldn't do it. But I found out that he taught students from Able English Institute in private lessons. Get this: He taught them in a space provided by Zenkoku.”

Mori didn't even comment on that.
Silently cataloging everything
, Takuda thought.
That's another thing I hate about him.

Mori said, “We're on our way. There's a lot of police activity in the area. A lot, but they don't say what they're looking for, and they've gone to cell phones, blackout on radio communication. Stay around there. We'll be there in five minutes.”

“Meet me at the pub here on Oyafuko, a place called Fair or Cloudy. It's not cheap, but the ­people are wonderful. Even for this wonderful town, they're wonderful ­people. My treat.”

“You're drunk,” Mori said.

“You're perceptive,” Takuda said. He hung up and called Yumi. He left a message that she should meet them at Fair or Cloudy, and that she should wear her summer kimono.

After the answering machine clicked off he hung up and wandered, enjoying stares and the whispers. Adrenaline from the fight had sobered him up, but he was still too drunk and too mussed to be out on the streets. He could have been in the pub bending his elbow in minutes, but he enjoyed shocking the children a little. After half a block, he noticed that they were really disturbed, really frightened. They all averted their eyes when they realized he was staring back. One girl cut away from the crowd. “Please, uncle,” she said, a note of terror in her voice. “The police box is empty, and there's a hungry ghost in the park.”

It was like being struck sober. He ran to the little park where the kids made out, dodging and weaving through the knots of frightened ­people fleeing some unknown horror.

The police box on the corner was empty, lights on but no one home. He walked past the darkened kiosk into the park, right to the hungry ghost floating above the grass.

It was a girl in a stained white dress, and she wasn't really floating. Her feet were so dirty and covered with caked blood that they blended with the shadows. She shuffled in the grass, her arms held out from her body as if to keep the dress clean, but it was too late. The dress was covered with drying blood turned blackish brown in the vapor lights in the park.

“Little sister,” Takuda coaxed, unsure what would happen if he got too close. “Little sister, come with me. Let's get you cleaned up.”

She looked up at the sound of his voice, but her gaze was blank and uncomprehending.
Just like the police box
, Takuda thought.
The lights are on, but no one is home.
He cursed Ogawa for pumping him full of drugs, and he cursed himself for drinking on the job, even a single beer. He wasn't in control, not in control at all, and he couldn't help this girl, couldn't help this poor little wounded thing who had come to the make-­out park, a place that may have been a place of ease and comfort before whatever had happened to her had happened.

Takuda was face-­to-­face with one of the jellyfish killers.

“Kurodama,”
she whispered. Her eyes widened and she looked down at her hands. Clotted blood had gathered at her cuticles and the webbing between her fingers. Clots like strips of bark fell to the grass as she picked feebly at her bloody dress.
“Kurodama.”
The bloodstained fingers shook as she started to scrub at the dress. She whimpered deep in her throat as her scrubbing became more frantic, and then she opened her mouth and began to shriek.

He was glad he was drunk when the screaming started. If Ogawa had been there with his evil syringe, Takuda would have rolled up his own sleeve. He gathered the girl in his arms and wrapped her tightly. He couldn't stop her screams, but he could stop her from hurting herself. She could barely breathe for the screaming, and Takuda had to turn his face away from her gaping, gasping, howling maw. It wasn't just the volume. It was what she was doing to herself. He knew it was only his drunken imagination, but he thought he could hear her vocal cords shredding as she screamed.

As her shrieking subsided into gasping moans, black shapes milled in the park shadows. Takuda looked to the lampposts for the first time—­most of the lamps were dark. This was all carefully staged, with just enough light for him to find the girl.

Takuda turned and turned with the girl in his arms. The shadows were all around. He could take care of himself, but he didn't know if he could protect her.

Two figures appeared from the Oyafuko side of the park, just by the police box he had passed moments before, and he knew them at a glance. “Mori! Suzuki! Help me here!”

As they began to run toward him, shadows detached themselves from the darkness, shadows in Zenkoku Security uniforms, masked and armed. Also limping and maimed. Takuda had met them before.

They surrounded him, and their leader pulled up his mask. “You can't take care of her. You don't know what's wrong with her.”

He looked down at the girl. Her eyes had rolled back in her head. She jerked spasmodically as a thin trickle of bloody drool ran from the corner of her mouth.

“Give her to us quickly,” the security team leader said. He motioned, and two smaller figures appeared from the shadows. They removed their masks: grim, hard-­eyed women who stared at the girl with an urgency beyond mere concern.

“We have to get her stable,” one of the women said.

“Shut up,” the team leader hissed. He turned to Takuda. “Quickly. We give the girl the help she needs, and you get what you asked for. Counselor Endo wants to speak to you.”

 

CHAPTER 22

Sunday Evening

T
he blindfolds came off. Takuda, Mori, and Suzuki were in a posh lobby. Takuda looked behind them to see huge doors of frosted, curved glass sliding silently together.

The floor was formed of concentric, alternating rings of polished marble and rough granite radiating outward from the circular reception desk to walls of matte burnt-­umber tile with dark oak trim. Burgundy leather couches, fat ferns, the works. An oversized version of
The Thinker
dominated the lobby from a pedestal in the center of the reception desk. It was Thomas Fletcher's work. He had used beveled edges and precise curves to replace the smooth, natural lines of the ­original.

Suzuki elbowed Takuda. “The original is from a piece called
The Gates of Hell
. Do you think they get the irony?”

Takuda shook his head as Zenkoku Security forces nudged them toward the elevators.

Counselor Endo waited for them in a dimly lit third-­floor conference room. The walls were covered with pages from flip charts, and one whole wall was taken up by a vinyl whiteboard, the warning not to erase it more prominent than anything else written thereon.

Hiroyasu Ogawa lay on a thin mat on the conference table. He was unconscious, pale, dressed in a hospital gown, attached to an intravenous saline drip bag hanging from the fluorescent light fixture.

Counselor Endo was solid and brown and smiling wide with his large, yellow teeth. As the security guards fanned out around the room, the counselor performed the polite and distinguished bow of a successful businessman to his colleagues.

“Good evening,” he said. “I trust you had a pleasant time on Oyafuko-­dori. Fukuoka is a wonderful town for entertainment, I find.”

Suzuki looked around. “That was a very short drive,” he said. “We must be in Daimyo.”

Mori said, “They turned right and then left. Based on the direction the van was headed, that would put us west, not east. From the traffic sounds as they unloaded us, we're probably in the little strip between Showa Avenue and Meiji Avenue. I think we're in Otemon.”

Endo's smile broadened. Takuda hadn't thought that possible. “Ears like a fox,” the counselor said. “Almost as keen as your wits.”

“Where are you taking the girl?” Takuda asked.

“I'm not taking her anywhere. After her condition is more or less stable, she will be remanded to a sanitarium, a plush, privatized counterpart to the one in which you foolishly and illegally visited the foreigner.”

“The one in which your Ogawa tried to murder me.”

The smile didn't dim at all. “Yet he is the one still supine on the altar of modern medicine,” Endo said, indicating Ogawa's pathetic condition with a sweep of his manicured hand. “I think you'll agree that it is with him that our sympathies must lie.”

“He murdered Thomas Fletcher and he tried to murder me.”

Endo raised one eyebrow. “If that is true, then it seems that pharmacology is not his strong suit. In an unexpected lucid window, he reported administering to you a dosage that would have felled an ox, literally. Yet you were up breaking furniture in no time.” Endo inclined his head as if examining a curious work of art. “He also said your heart stopped altogether. Did you know that? If our Ogawa did succeed in murdering you, as you so colorfully put it, something brought you back to life right before his eyes.”

There was nothing to say. Takuda thought back to the massive presence that had woken him in the mental hospital.

Endo idly poked Ogawa in the side with a meter stick. “You're getting stronger and stronger, unlike your friends. Doesn't that bother you? Young Mori is just getting impatient, and the priest is getting hungrier. He's eating you out of house and home, no matter what ends up in his begging bowl.”

He continued into the silence: “So, the girl is safe, the parents—­whatever sorry excuse for parents allowed their misbegotten waif to get into this situation—­have been notified and compensated for whatever anxiety they were obliged to feel. The foreigner is gone, cleared by his own death and by the testimony of expert consultants of any connection to the recent killings, disappearances, and whatnot. Apparently, a doctor at the mental hospital, a most disagreeable little fellow named Haraguchi, will commit suicide any minute now over the foreigner's accidental overdose. All the blood is washed away.” He made a dusting-­off motion with his hands. “All fresh and shiny like newborn babes, ready to start again.”

“Ready to start what again?” Mori asked.

“The hunt for the artifact, of course, the artifact whose activity wakened your latent talents and disturbed your tranquil working life. Get this taken care of quickly so you can get back to making ends meet.”

“It's important to you,” Takuda said.

Endo almost frowned. “In itself, no. You see, once ensconced in its usual home, it has a muted and salutary effect on the workplace. Without it, things don't run smoothly. It shares a home with some sharp, aggressive men and women who are expected to go out and make a real difference on an international level. It also shares a home with a group of editors, copywriters, and such who should be beaten to death at their desks. Seriously. They are lackadaisical, pedantic fools who should have been whipped into shape from birth, and even then, they may still have turned out to be the sort of useless buffoons they are today. Some ­people blame postwar liberalism, but I think they just might be congenital idiots.”

Endo poked Ogawa a little harder. “The sharp ones, the international players, are off their game. Numbers are down, and they seem to have lost their hunger, their lust, for acquisition. But even at their worst, each of them is worth a dozen of the copy editors. I don't think you can imagine how those pitiful wretches behave without the influence of the artifact. Just today, two of them came to blows about a reference in a valve manual, and the one nicknamed Ishii the Mutant somehow managed to staple his own tongue.”

Ogawa groaned and tried to turn over before falling back into uneasy slumber. “If I had my way,” Endo said, “I would turn the girls and the artifact loose on the editors, solving the whole problem at once, but there are rules to be followed and deadlines to be met. My conduct in relation to such antiquities as the artifact are extremely circumscribed. Once again, I need your help.”

Takuda said, “It drives children to murder, but you broke one loose from the pack and directed her into our path so she could tell us about the Kurodama, but not where it is.”

Endo assumed a pained expression. “
Kurodama
is a word for grapes or candies. Or coal. No jokes, please. It's nameless. It's older than Japan itself, and I mean the islands, not our beloved national identity.”

Mori snorted. “No one cares what you call it. It drives mere children to murder. I'd like to shove it down your throat. Just as you used us to kill your pet kappa in Naga Valley, you want to use us to find your Kurodama.”

Endo spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “Rules are rules, and I must obey the rules. Even worse, I can't tell you where to look. Ironic, isn't it? It's the bedrock of our organization, the foundation of everything we do.” A yellow grin split his face. “But I can't tell you anything about it.”

Endo's broad, nut-­brown face was impassive. Takuda leaned over the table toward him, far enough to catch a whiff of antiseptic and stale urine wafting upward from the unconscious Ogawa. “You're dropping hints about girls and bedrock, laying a trail of rubbish that will lead us wherever you want us to go. Tell us where your wayward stone knife lies, and we'll destroy it. For the victims, not for you.”

The counselor rubbed his forehead. “Your strength has completely scrambled what brains you ever had. As you obviously can't follow in the moment, at least try to reconstruct later, between the three of you, the various threads of our conversation tonight.”

Takuda leaned in closer, despite the unpleasant odor from Ogawa. “Where is it?”

Endo put his hands in his pockets. “You look at our poor Ogawa with something like disgust, but you are so inferior to him in so many ways. So pathetically ineffective. You want me to draw you a map. You want me to do your job for you.”

They heard a sound like thunder. The fireworks had begun.

Endo said, “I could draw you a map, but there would be little use. Things keep on shifting here in Japan.” He sighed as if in pain. “This is tedious beyond belief. Please listen so that I don't have to repeat it.” He held his hands out as if trying to physically grasp their attention. “I was sightseeing in Fukuoka City's East Ward, just beyond the end of the subway line. You know the old mystery novel
Points and Lines
? It's set there.”

Suzuki smiled. “Why am I not surprised you're a mystery fan?”

Endo ignored him. “On the way, I noticed a marker commemorating a poem in the
Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves
. Something about frolicking in the surf and gathering seaweed. That marker is roughly where the beach lay in the ninth century, but it's quite far inland from where the beach lay in the 1950s, when
Points and Lines
was written. And that shoreline in the 1950s is a brisk walk from the shoreline today. You see? Land reclamation continues apace, and the shoreline continues to move. Zenkoku Heavy Materials, I am proud to say, is deeply involved in plans to build an island in the marshlands beyond the present shoreline, once some concerns about migratory birds are cleared away. And they will be. Time marches on, and so does the shoreline.”

Mori frowned deeply. “So you can't draw us a map.”

Counselor Endo pointed at Mori with genuine enthusiasm. “You have everything you need. All you need is transparency and a proper sense of proportion.”

Takuda turned on Mori. “You've got it? You understand what he's going on about?”

Endo laughed out loud. “Young Mori could find the artifact's home on his own, I suppose. He could stop more killings, as you three did with the poor little water-­imp.” He turned his attention fully on Mori. “It's really too bad that you didn't stop the water-­imp before it gutted your sister, but you were just a child then, weren't you? Not all grown up, as you were when you failed to protect the Nabeshima girl from the mad foreigner. She really shouldn't have been there to start with, but there's no stopping a girl once she acquires a taste for the exotic.”

Mori's jaw clenched. He took off his glasses.

“Oho, you'll need those,” Counselor Endo said, apparently oblivious to the security guards unsnapping mace and Tasers. “Keep your eyes peeled. Engage that intellect and find the artifact.”

“You don't have to wind him up,” Takuda said to Endo. “He's already so disgusted with the rest of us that he can barely stand it.”

“Just tell us who's drawing up the clues,” Mori said. “Is it the elder Reverend Suzuki? Is he alive? Is he working for you, or is he some sort of captive?”

Endo's smile was beatific. “Yes, you all have your daddy issues, don't you? Your father, Detective Takuda, showed you how a man may be destroyed by monsters. He really let the water-­imp drag him down, so to speak.” He looked at the ceiling as if considering whether to stretch the pun even further. “Reverend Suzuki, on the other hand, was abandoned for fear of monsters. The youngest son, destined to be the lost one . . . but he stayed home to prove his loyalty, so the whole family had to leave him instead! That was a surprise, wasn't it? And his father didn't stay around long enough to teach him about monsters.”

“So is the elder Reverend Suzuki alive,” Takuda asked, partly to fill the void left by Suzuki's silence, “or was he drowned by your little pet in the valley?”

“The water-­imp was not my pet,” Endo said. “It was a nonfunctional aberration, a relic of a failed union of vastly dissimilar entities, a freakish miscegenation that could only cause confusion in this otherwise orderly modern world. I'm grateful to you all for cleaning that up. Anyway, back to your daddies. Detective Takuda's father taught the dangers of monsters by example. Reverend Suzuki's apparently didn't teach quite enough about monsters before his abrupt departure. Young Mori's father, however, taught best, in a much more direct method.” Endo absently examined his own shoes. “What better way to teach the danger of monsters than to become one yourself?”

Mori went for Endo over the table, but Takuda pulled him back before the security guards could Taser him.

“Very well, then,” Endo said, clasping his hands together as if something had actually been accomplished. “Thanks for playing, and we have lovely parting gifts for you all. First, for young Mori.” Two security guards limped forward with a large box. They tilted it forward so everyone could see. It was a ceramic figurine, a samurai in a fighting stance holding a large sake bowl. “A Hakata doll, one of Fukuoka's most renowned local products, a fearsome Kuroda clan warrior. His spear and the glass case are in the box as well.” The security guards busied themselves repacking the box as another came forward with a flat, twine-­tied packet. “For Reverend Suzuki, another local treat, spicy pickled cod roe. Delicious on rice for any meal.” Mori hissed as Suzuki reached for the package, and Takuda held Mori a little more tightly so the hiss became a rushing of air.

“For you, the strongman of the group, something special.” Endo himself reached under the table and pulled out a suit bag. “My tailor made this for you.” He unzipped it to reveal a suit, shining black, iridescent. “The shirts and shoes are not tailored, I'm afraid, but the measurements should be correct.” He zipped up the suit bag and laid it on the table beside Ogawa. “There is also a bottle of solvent for the mace. The smell of it is rather strong, still. I believe that might have been why that poor child you accosted in the park was crying so. And you don't want to make your Yumi cry. She's waiting for you.”