The Kaisho (2 page)

It was heading toward evening, and traffic was barely moving. A Mack truck loaded with gravel heading west had jumped the divider and plowed head-on into, first, a VW Bug, then a Toyota MR2, and finally a Chevy Citation. Do Duc didn’t mind the slow going; he had time to kill, and besides, the vectors of the disaster interested him. By the degree of the carnage he began calculating the speeds of the respective vehicles. Then he commenced to imagine what it must have been like inside them.

Death, whether quick or drawn out, was his meat, and he was never sated.

He could hear a howling filling his ears, flooding his mind until his fingers resonated to its frequency. Feral lights danced before his eyes like forest sprites, and every manifestation of civilization dropped away. Time, thus naked, turned primeval, and Do Duc, a beast in the forest, was fearless, omnipotent. He thought briefly of Hope, not of her life, but of her death, and he feasted on it all over again.

Do Duc took the Wantagh State Parkway exit and headed north for two exits. He was now on Old Country Road. By this time, the world had reverted to normal, except for the slight aura visible to him around each person he passed.

Old Country Road took him into Hicksville, where he came upon the sprawling Lilco building on his right. At first glance, it could have passed for a school: a two-story red-brick structure. He pulled over, unfolded a hand-drawn map of the building’s interior. Everything he needed to know was clearly marked. He memorized the map, put a lit match to one corner, watched it burn into his fingertips. He mashed what ashes remained into the car’s ashtray, then got out and went quickly across Old Country Road.

He was in and out within seven minutes, having retrieved boots, overalls, shirt, webbed utility belt, and most important, an official laminated clip-on ID. The photo of the man, Roger Burke, looked nothing like Do Duc, but it made no difference.

Three miles from the building, Do Duc stopped the car and changed into the Lilco uniform. Working with an artist’s knife, provided for him in the capacious doctor’s satchel, he pried up the outer layer of lamination. He cut one of his photos from the strip he had taken outside Lauderdale, glued it over Burke’s black countenance, replaced the lamination. The result would fool no one for long, but Do Duc didn’t need long.

He looked at his watch: just after seven. Dinnertime. He found a Chinese take-out restaurant, ordered, brought the loaded plastic bag back to the car. He broke open several cardboard containers, extended the first and second fingers of his right hand. With this utensil, he shoveled into his mouth cold rice lacquered with a glutinous fish sauce. He washed this down with drafts of strong black tea. Refreshed, he was ready to go.

He made his way back to the packed northbound Wantagh Parkway, which soon turned into the Northern State Parkway heading west. The first exit was Post Avenue, and he took this north. Just after he crossed Jericho Turnpike he found himself in the tony suburb of Old Westbury. He went under the Long Island Expressway, made a left onto the north service road. Just past the Old Westbury Police Station, he made a right onto Wheatley Road. Here, in stark contrast with the industrial clutter of Hicksville, he cruised slowly past large old-money estates, complete with white-brick walls, stately oaks, winding driveways, and massive brick or fieldstone houses with whitewashed porticos or columned porte cocheres.

The house he was looking for stood well back from the road, behind a ten-foot-high, serpentine red-brick wall. It had a black wrought-iron gate and an electronic-security squawk box. Do Duc pulled up to it.

“Roger Burke, Lilco,” he said into the grill set into the metal box, in response to a thin, electronicized voice. He had to put his head and shoulders out the window of his car to do it, and this afforded him an excellent view between the posts of the gate, along the wide crushed-clamshell drive that swept up to the white-and-dark-green house. He noted a large black-and-tan rottweiler bounding through the thick privet hedges. Dangerous beasts, they had originally been Roman cattle dogs centuries ago. Nowadays, they were most popular as police and guard dogs because of their ferociousness and their strength.

He gave Burke’s Lilco ID number and a line about having to check the feeder cables because of a dangerous outage in the area. The simplest lies were the most believable, he had been taught, and the risk of raw electricity made even the most stouthearted people nervous. A moment later, he heard electronic servos start up, and the gates began to swing slowly inward.

Do Duc pulled on padded gloves with a black rubberized exterior, put the car in gear, went slowly up the driveway. He drove with his left hand only. His right hand was buried in the open jaws of the black physician’s bag.

He saw the armed guard coming toward him across the wide sloping lawn and he stopped obediently. Not far away, the rottweiler, unleashed, was urinating nervously in some sheared boxwood as he eyed Do Duc with a half-open mouth.

The guard came up, made eye contact, and asked for Do Duc’s ID. He was clad in sneakers, jeans, a chambray workshirt, and a corduroy jacket beneath which his piece bulged from its shoulder holster. Mafia button man or ex-cop, Do Duc mused, these days it was difficult to say.

In either case, he was not a stupid man, and Do Duc had made his move before the guard could get suspicious about the hand in the bag. With his left hand, Do Duc grabbed a fistful of chambray, jerked the man toward him. The guard’s hand was on its way to the butt of his gun when Do Duc’s right hand, wrapped around a slender steel blade, flashed upward.

Do Duc was ready for a certain amount of galvanic reaction when the blade buried itself in the soft flesh of the guard’s throat. But even so, the guard, who was very strong, almost jerked out of Do Duc’s grip. Do Duc rose up off his seat, slamming the blade through the roof of the guard’s mouth into the base of his brain.

The body in his hands trembled. There was the quick offensive stench as the guard’s bowels gave way. The rottweiler was downwind, and it began to whine, then growl as its nostrils filled with the scent of death.

“Couldn’t be helped,” Do Duc said as if to an invisible companion as he heard the dog coming fast at him. He let go of the corpse and opened the car door in almost the same motion.

The rottweiler, ears flat back, teeth bared, was already upon him. The frightening, stubby muzzle was white with saliva. Do Duc led with his left hand, catching it between the dog’s snapping jaws as it leapt, flinging him back against the car roof.

The long teeth penetrated into the rubberized glove, and while the animal was thus occupied, Do Duc took the bloody blade and inserted it into the rottweiler’s left ear, punching it right through to the other side.

The teeth almost came through the padding then, as the dog bit down in reflex. Do Duc stepped away from the fountain of blood, holding the twitching beast at arm’s length, grunting at its weight, but happy at the resistance in his biceps and deltoid muscles.

In the end, he was obliged to slip off the glove because, even in death, the rottweiler would not relinquish its hold. Do Duc bent, extracting the blade from the dog. He wiped it on the leg of the guard’s jeans, then climbed back into the car, resuming his journey up the driveway to the massive porte cochere.

The mock Doric columns rose above him as he pulled in, turned off the ignition. He took the physician’s bag from the seat beside him, went up the brick steps to the front door.

“Mr. Goldoni?”

The well-dressed man standing in the doorway shook his head. “Dominic Goldoni is, ah, away.”

Do Duc frowned, consulting papers on a steel clipboard; papers that were meaningless to the situation. “This the Goldoni residence?”

“Yes, it is,” the well-dressed man said. He was handsome in a large-featured Mediterranean manner. His brown eyes were hooded, liquid. He was pushing fifty and seemed foreign, almost courtly in his rich Brioni suit, Roman silk shirt, and thousand-dollar loafers. “Are you the Lilco man?”

“Right,” Do Duc said, flashing his ID briefly as he stepped across the threshold.

The man’s eyes tracked the plastic badge. “I’m Tony DeCamillo, Mr. Goldoni’s brother-in-law.”

“Yeah, I know,” Do Duc said, burying his fist in DeCamillo’s solar plexus. He held the man up almost gently as DeCamillo retched and gasped for air. Then he brought a knee up into DeCamillo’s chin, snapping his head back.

Do Duc let DeCamillo’s unconscious form slide to the floor. While so bent over, he took the time to inventory the man’s gold jewelry—rings, watch, cuff links, tie pin. Then he took DeCamillo under the arms and dragged him into the coat closet in the huge marble-floored foyer. Do Duc used flex he produced from his bag to tie DeCamillo’s wrists and ankles. He took a scarf from a shelf, balled it up, and stuffed it in DeCamillo’s mouth, then secured it with more flex.

There was no cook; Margarite DeCamillo prided herself in being a first-class chef. But there was a live-in cleaning woman. Do Duc found her in the kitchen pantry, preparing her own dinner. He came up silently behind her, looped a piece of flex around her neck, and exerted pressure. She gasped, tried to cry out. Her nails flailed the air, scratched him down one burly forearm before her breath gave out and she pitched forward into the cans of Redpack tomatoes. He left her there, hunched over, cooling quickly. He crossed to the phone on the wall next to the enormous built-in refrigerator, cautiously picked up the receiver. It was not in use, and he dialed a local number, listened while the electronic clicks and relays sent it on its way out of state. He counted off the requisite five rings before the call was answered, then said into the silence, “I’m in.”

Back in the foyer Do Duc mounted the wide mahogany staircase. The wood was polished to such a high gloss he could see himself reflected in it. His shoes made no sound on the Persian runner.

Margarite DeCamillo was luxuriating in a steamy bath in the master bedroom wing. Her head was back against a rubber pad, her eyes half-closed as she felt the heat seep through her muscles into her bones. This was her favorite time of day, when she could shut the world away, relax, and let her thoughts drift free. The added responsibilities her husband had recently taken on had changed him irrevocably. She knew he was worried, definitely in over his head, and probably in trouble.

She knew she was the only person in the world who could help him, but he was Sicilian, and she knew she would have to tread a careful path. It would do no good reminding him of the roster of show business personalities who had become his clients because of her contacts.

Serenissima, her highly successful boutique cosmetics company, catered to many of the biggest stars of Hollywood and New York, and because she was the creator of all the products, they wanted to meet her. Because she was such a shrewd judge of character, it wasn’t difficult to pass some of them on to Tony.

As her mind drifted, her fingertips almost unconsciously explored her body, pressing those spots that hurt, the bruises that recurred. The heat of the bath drew the pain out, like the tendrils of some sea creature, and she relaxed.

Eventually, as they inevitably did, her thoughts turned to Francine. At fifteen, her daughter was at a difficult age, too old to be considered a child, too young for the responsibilities of adulthood. The fact that she already had the body of a woman only compounded the problem. Several times, before her brother, Dominic, had entered the WITSEC program, Margarite had been forced to go to him and ask for his help in extricating Francie from difficulties at school or with a boyfriend too old for her.

Margarite sighed. She loved Francie more than anything else in life—and perhaps the resonances of that love were overwhelming to her. She had been torn between following a career and raising Francie virtually alone. She was all too aware that she had never spent enough time with her daughter. But what was she to do? She would shrivel and die if she were chained to the house. Tony had no time or patience for a female child—she believed he continued to resent her for not giving him the male heir he so desperately wanted. But now Margarite could no longer bring a baby to term, and there would only be Francie. No wonder Tony was angry all the time.

The outsize tub was carved from a monstrous piece of black-and-brown onyx, an oval bowl filled now with hot water, aromatic salts, and Margarite DeCamillo’s voluptuous form. The water spigot was gold, carved in the shape of a swan’s head and artfully curved neck, the taps, also gold, its wings. The niche into which the steeping tub had been set was clad with floor-to-ceiling mirrors, which now reflected the image of Do Duc as he entered the humid room.

Margarite DeCamillo started, simultaneously sitting up straight and clasping her hands over her naked breasts. Her amber eyes opened wide, her ample lips forming an
O.

“Who are you? What do you mean by coming—”

“I’m here to make you an offer.” Do Duc’s deep voice was soft. Nevertheless, Margarite was compelled to silence.

She stared at this interloper and, somewhat to Do Duc’s surprise, had the presence of mind to say, “What have you done to my husband?”

“He’s not dead,” Do Duc said, “if that’s what you’re thinking.” He approached her slowly across the steam-sheened tiles. Her eyes watched him as a mongoose will scrutinize a cobra, with equal degrees of fascination and dread. “He’s not even badly injured. Just—sleeping.”

Do Duc now stood at the edge of the tub, looking down at Margarite. She was an exceedingly handsome woman in her midthirties, with high cheekbones, wide-set, direct eyes, prominent nose, and a thick head of curling dark hair, wet now at the ends so strands stuck to the pearlized flesh of her shoulders and neck. It was an altogether aggressive face, yet he could see that she had learned to guard her private thoughts well. She had that canny, intelligent look that he had seen in many a successful gambler. The initial fright was over, and color returned to her cheeks as she recovered her composure. Do Duc gauged that she was not as frightened of him as she ought to be.