The Kaisho (68 page)

He had thought it immensely brave of her that she would again seek love after the first disaster, despite all the years that had passed. That he had shot an arrow into her most vulnerable spot was unforgivable, but he was too much in love with her not to tell her the truth as soon as it became apparent to him. But in seeking to minimize her hurt he had committed the sin of being cold, cutting her dead. At the time, he believed a clean break to be the best course of action. Only later would he live to regret his decision, when she would not speak to him in private and in public turned her face in the direction of others.

“Ah, Kisoko, how I love you,” he said with her cheek against his. “But how quickly that love would have turned to bitterness and resentment had we wed. In my life, I cannot be beholden to anyone else for decisions.”

Her arm came up, her fingernails caressing the nape of his neck. “How lonely it must be for you.” And drawing closer still: “For both of us.”

“If I had given in to you, even what we once had would have been destroyed. At least, this way, we were left with the memory.”

She closed her eyes. “I wish you had told me this years ago.”

“Yes,” was all he could think to say.

Then she dropped her arm, pushed herself away, as if it were important to show him that she could stand on her own. She dabbed at her face. “Isn’t it curious how blind one becomes when one cries.”

She led him back down the cherrywood hallway in silence, but the weight of the atmosphere when she was near him disturbed him still. Caught in an emotional eddy, he wondered whether he was safe in a protected harbor or about to be swept into white water.

He was again struck by the marvelous silence of the house, the security of its walls against the world outside. He wondered if Okami might be here, then hoped not. It might be too obvious a place for his enemies to look, and Nangi could not bear the thought of Kisoko in danger. He calmed himself. She had always remained wholly apart from her brother’s world, and there seemed no good reason why the relationship should change now.

Gradually, he became aware of an ache inside him, as if a muscle had ruptured or a tendon had snapped. The pain, almost but not quite physical, made him long for scalding tea, a bit of sticky rice on the end of chopsticks, a magazine to read, anything mundane to take his mind from the extraordinary reverberations this leave-taking was inciting in him.

“My curiosity brought us together again,” he said when they had returned to the foyer. “I must believe there was a purpose in that.”

Kisoko turned her dreaming face up toward him. “Do you still live in the same house?”

“Yes.”

“I remember the garden in back. Do you still take great pleasure in pruning your
shishigashira
maple?”

“It’s a permanent passion, I’m afraid.”

Her eyes caught his, glittering. “There is one here I planted five years ago that is in desperate need of your attention.”

“I’m sorry, he’s not here.”

“Where is he, then?”

“Pardon, who did you say is calling, please?”

“Croaker. Lew Croaker. Calling from the United States for Nicholas Linnear.”

Silence. Then that terribly formal voice made tinny by electronics and distance: “May I take your message for Linnear-san?”

“I want—I need to speak to him now. Damnit, it’s important!”

“I can take a message, please.”

Croaker put a splay of fingertips to his forehead. He had promised himself he would not lose his temper. But these damned Japanese and their symbolic formality could drive you around the bend when you wanted to get something done ASAP.

“I need,” he said slowly and distinctly, “to speak to someone who can help me.”

“One moment, please.”

He stared down at the copy of yesterday’s
Washington Post
he had found lying in front of their door with the photo of Harley Gaunt staring out at him. The late Harley Gaunt. Poor bastard. Croaker had never met the man, but he could recall the fondness with which Nicholas had spoken of him.

He glanced at his watch. What would it be? Just after three in the afternoon there?

“Yes? Mr. Croaker, may I help you?”

“I sincerely hope so. I’m a friend of Nicholas Linnear’s. Can you tell me where he is? I need to speak with him. It’s urgent.”

“I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

“Who is this?”

“My name is Seiko Ito. I am Linnear-san’s assistant.”

“And you can’t get me through to him? Do you know who I am?”

“Yes, Mr. Croaker, I do.” There was a pause. “The truth is, no one knows where he is at the moment. We’re all very concerned.”

Croaker let go with a small sigh.
Christ.

“How about Nangi. Can I speak with Tanzan Nangi?”

“I’m afraid Nangi-san is in a meeting. He left strict orders not to be disturbed. May I take your number so that—”

“Never mind that,” Croaker snapped. He looked up, saw Margarite standing by the hotel window, her torso striped by the blinds and the sodium streetlights. The room was drenched with elongated triangles of light like moonlight on water. “Please give Nangi a message. Tell him that Lew Croaker is on his way to Tokyo. I’ll be there tomorrow at four P.M. and I expect to meet with him as soon as I can get in from Narita. Got me?”

“Pardon?”

Croaker massaged his forehead. “Just tell him, all right?”

“Yes. I will give Nangi-san the message as soon as his meeting is—”

But Croaker had already cradled the receiver. He rose, went to where Margarite stood. He touched her and she shivered.

“I can feel him,” she said in a reedy whisper, “just as if he’s in the room with us.” She turned her head toward him so that the sodium light fired her eyes. “No, no. Put your arms around me. Hold me close. I don’t know whether I’m
hot or cold.” She put her head on his shoulder. “He’s inside me, Lew, and there’s only one way I’m going to get him out.”

A taxi went by, hissing. A couple came around a corner, shoulders hunched, went quickly out of the wind into the hotel entrance below them. A cop car cruised past, its red light flashing but its siren off. Particles of dust, hanging in the air, turned bloodred, then vanished.

“I have to see him again.”

Plane trees, their branches bare as nails, rose from grilled openings in the sidewalk, a ghostly reminder of a summer long since past. He was staring at them because, apparently, he couldn’t bear what she was about to say.

“I’m going to agree to Lillehammer’s plan. I’m going to offer myself up. We’re going to become target and sentinel, you and I.”

He felt a tiny tremor in his arms. “I wish you’d rethink this.”

“Oh, Lew, what good would it do? Whatever has happened can’t be changed. Whatever the link is between Robert and me can’t be broken by any other means.”

“He’ll know you’re coming. Faith said as much. I can’t imagine what will happen when he sees you again.”

“You’ll kill him.”

“My job is to take him in.”

He could feel her head moving back and forth. “No. You’ll kill him. Or he’ll kill you.” She turned around in his arms so that she faced him. “Those are the only possibilities.”

He stared down at her, trying to see into her. “Life is so much more complex than that.”

“Not this. Not him.”

He accepted her judgment, just as, he realized, he accepted her ambivalence toward Do Duc.

“In any case, we’ll be in Japan tomorrow, and we’ll see.”

Silence and the hum of the hotel’s heater. Something, perhaps only a gust of wind, rattled the windowpane, and he could feel her tense, look quickly over her shoulder, then sigh. In relief or in disappointment? he wondered.

“Tell me something,” she said. “Why did you accept my stepmother’s help?”

“Isn’t that what you wanted me to do?”

“Yes, but it’s important for me to know why you agreed.”

Just below the window, flags cracked and furled, ensigns of influence and command, seeking something unexplainable in the night.

“If you’re looking for a rational answer, I’m afraid I don’t have one. All I can tell you is that right now I don’t trust anyone. My sense all along was that Lillehammer was lying to me or—at the very least—not telling me everything about this case. As I told you, I didn’t believe for a minute he needed someone outside his official agencies to do the fieldwork. A man like that without people he could trust or call on in an emergency? Not likely.”

“And you believed my stepmother?”

“I believe what she told me, yes.”

“I hear a but.”

He smiled into the darkness. “It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that she has her own agenda.”

“Why go after Do Duc at all? Why not just walk away and forget him, Lillehammer, and my stepmother.”

He saw her eyes searching his, and he knew they were not the eyes of a married woman. Whoever ruled her heart would be blessed.

“There are so many reasons I couldn’t begin to list them,” he said. “I accepted Lillehammer’s offer knowing it wasn’t what he made it out to be. But, as he anticipated, I was bored running a charter boat out of Marco Island. I was getting boozy and soft. I needed to change that.” He could hear her breathing, just like an animal in the jungle. “I was intrigued with Lillehammer, and Dominic’s murder. It wasn’t merely that he had been killed but how it had been done. I wanted to solve all the puzzles: who killed your brother and why, and who Lillehammer was and why he was so desperate to get Do Duc. Then, as you’ve told me, this thing just got bigger and bigger, like ripples in a lake.” A crown of thorny vines was in her hair for just a moment. The triangles of light were moving, as if alive, but it was only headlights that, now and again, came and went with unknown intent like spies in utter darkness. “And then there’s you. Even after what I’ve told you, I could walk away from it all, but you can’t and I won’t have that.”

“Then I was right.”

His smile widened. “Yup. Once in a blue moon emotion finds its way through even detectives’ thick exteriors.”

He felt her shift in his arms, get more comfortable. She put her arms around his neck, sighed. She rested her forehead against his chest.

“I’m tired,” she said. “I never realized before how power could exhaust you.”

“It’s hidden in the definition. As close as you two were, I doubt that would be something Dominic would have shared with you.”

“He was in power for a long time. I don’t know how he did it.”

Croaker knew what she really meant was she didn’t know how she was going to do it. Maybe she wouldn’t. But maybe that was just wishful thinking.

“I’d better call Lillehammer and tell him you’ve agreed. We don’t want him getting suspicious at this late date.” Croaker picked up the phone. “He’ll be delighted, I’m sure.”

He dialed a number, heard the hollowness just before the operator answered. He gave his code name and she put him on hold. The connection cut in abruptly and he heard the faint click of the solenoids as the antisurveillance system kicked in, and through the wave fronts of all the electronic junk he heard Lillehammer’s voice.

“We’re on,” he said into the mouthpiece. “She’s agreed to go ahead with it.”

“Excellent,” Lillehammer said. “What do you need?”

“Documents. We’re going to Tokyo.”

“Tokyo?”

“That’s right. That’s where he is.” Croaker gave Lillehammer the particulars of their flight. “Just get us on it.”

“I’ll have everything you need messengered over to the hotel within three hours. I assume that’s where you are now.”

“Uh-huh, fine. And, Ahab, we need to meet at the airport just before flight time.”

“Roger.”

Croaker hung up the phone, felt the sweat breaking out on him.
Now it’s well and truly done,
he thought.
No turning back.
He turned to see Margarite watching him in the semidarkness.

“How many ways is he going to try to fuck us, in the end?” she asked.

“I hope I’m not going to give him the chance to try.”

He walked across the room to her. He was already feeling contaminated by the phone call. He stood in front of her and she lifted her arm, such a simple gesture, pulled a lock of hair off his forehead.

“Tell me something,” he said after a time. “What is it between you and Faith?”

“You don’t know anything about her,” she said flatly, “so you have no right to ask that question.”

“Don’t you think the way we feel about each other gives me the right?”

Margarite, looking up at him, opened her mouth to say something, closed it almost immediately. Behind her, the street was entirely deserted, wide, windswept, solemn, with its looming, square-shouldered buildings in commemoration of something, the home of mythical beings.

All at once, her shoulders began to shake and he thought she was weeping. A stifled gasp told him he was wrong; she was laughing.

“God must be playing this joke on me for my sins,” she said, still laughing. “Married to a despicable Sicilian who is regardless indispensable to me, duty-bound to carry on my brother’s business behind my husband’s male mask, I’m nevertheless hopelessly in love with an ex-cop working for the feds.” Her laughter had a bitter edge sharp as a knife blade. “What is to become of me?”

What answer would he give? What answer did he want?

Life was so full of unclear choices and wrong turns that he wanted this moment to be different—the choice unclouded, the chance they were both taking correct. But how could he be sure? The answer was simple: there was no way.

Her arms went taut, her hands behind his neck pulling his face down until his lips covered hers. They were salty, and now he knew that she had been weeping silently in the shadows as she had at Faith’s stables.

“You want to know what is between me and my stepmother,” Margarite whispered when she pulled her mouth from his. “All right, I’ll tell you. I suspect her. Of what? Of making what I am certain was in her eyes a simple business decision. When my father was no longer able to conduct his business, when he became a liability, she killed him.”

Croaker, feeling her heart thudding in her breast almost as if it were his, held her gaze for some time.