The Nicholas Linnear Novels (210 page)

“Oh, yes, true,” Nangi said. “But even before that happens, the carbon dioxide buildup in the
dorokusai
will bring him close enough to death for him to achieve orgasm.”

“It’s disgusting.”

“It’s part of his training. He practices it regularly—not only during the sex act—until it becomes as basic as
aiki taiso
in aikido,” Nangi said. “It is another area in which the tanjian are taught to attack the Void.”

Tomi hardly heard Nangi now. Something had caught in her mind. She fought to bring it to the surface, but it slipped away from her and was gone.

Nangi, watching the intensity of her expression, wanted to ask her what was on her mind, decided to observe instead.

In a moment there was a knock on the door. Tomi opened it. The owner-manager of The Silk Road stood in the dim light of the busy hallway.

“Back after so long, Detective? This is a surprise. I thought the case had been closed,” the man said, bowing with exaggerated humility. “Can I be of service in some way?”

Tomi stepped back, beckoned him inside.

He looked around the room, taking inventory, as if needing to assure himself that they had not appropriated anything. He was a thin, weasely individual with bad breath and an obsequious manner.

Tomi had taken an immediate dislike to him, and nothing about her subsequent relationship with him had changed her mind. In fact, as she studied his anxious face now, a door clicked open in her mind. She began to suspect that there might be something here that she had overlooked, or that had been deliberately hidden from her. Now she thought that Nangi’s presence might give her a chance to find out.

“I’d like to ask you a few questions,” Tomi said.

“Again?” The weasel made washing motions with his hands. “But of course.” He frowned. “But after all this time I can’t imagine what it is you expect to find.”

“This is Tanzan Nangi,” Tomi said, ignoring him. “He’s a professor of psychological criminology at Todai.” She meant Tokyo University. “He’s begun studying the case. Professor Nangi has developed a theory concerning the case that he would like to try out.”

She waited until the weasel’s oily eyes flicked from Nangi back to her. “How long have you been managing The Silk Road?”

“Six years,” the weasel said. “But you already know this, Detective.”

“This is for the professor’s benefit,” she assured him. “And is that the same amount of time that you’ve owned the club?”

“No, I bought it seventeen months later. But you already know—”

“How did you originally obtain financing for this establishment?”

“But this is all old ground, Detective.” The weasel’s hands were working overtime, washing themselves. “I obtained a loan from a local bank. As collateral, I put up the assets of my small sales business.”

“How long was the dancer, Mariko, working here?”

“Three years, almost,” the weasel said. He addressed Nangi now. “She was quiet, a hard worker. And the patrons liked her. She never missed a show, never complained. I have a daughter who gave me more trouble than Mariko ever did.”

The three of them waited in the silence of the tiny ferroconcrete room, as small as a closet, as large as a tomb of the wealthy. The muffled rhythmic thump of the electronic bass, the pulsing of an evil heart, was a constant reminder of where they were.

When Tomi could no longer tolerate the oppressive sense of despair inhabiting the room like a
kami,
she said to the weasel, “That will be all.”

The weasel looked stricken. “I thought—I mean, I was hoping to witness the development of the professor’s theory. After all, Mariko worked for me. She was like family.”

Tomi controlled a desire to spit in the weasel’s face. She said, “We’ll call you if we need you.”

When they were alone, Nangi said, “What was that with the professor from Todai all about?”

“I’m not sure,” Tomi said. “A hunch, maybe. You stay here, see what you can uncover. I want to see what that weasel’s up to. Something in his face when he saw you made me suspicious.”

“Haven’t you already run a check on him?” Nangi asked.

“Yes, and I found nothing in the police computer. Still, when I saw how he reacted just now, I decided to put him to a test. It’s simple, almost crude, but maybe it worked.”

She slipped out of the room, feeling an uncomfortable weight lift from her chest. She moved quickly down the warren of corridors. By now she knew her way almost as well as did the girls who worked here.

At the weasel’s office she put her ear to the door, but with the muffled thump-thump-thump of the amplified bass she could hear nothing.

She tried the knob but the door was locked. It required nothing more than a paper clip bent just the right way to pop it.

Tomi took a deep breath, swung the door open wide. She saw the weasel on the phone, made a dash across the room. His eyes opened wide and his instant of hesitation was enough to allow her to lunge across his littered desk, grab the receiver before he had a chance to hang up.

“Who were you calling?” Tomi snapped.

The weasel said nothing. His face was pale. She pinned him where he sat behind his desk.

“Moshi,”
she said into the mouthpiece, but she could hear nothing. She put the line on hold, punched open a second line, dialed the telephone company maintenance shop, gave them her name, rank, and authorization number, told them what she wanted to know.

Within five minutes a technician was back on the line. “The call that was just made from the number you gave me was to the Metropolitan Police.”

The ensuing silence was so long that the technician said, “Hello? Sergeant, are you still there?”

“Yes,” Tomi said hoarsely. “Yes.” Gathering her wits. “Can you tell me which precinct?”

“That’s a snap,” the technician said. “Uchibori-dori headquarters, the main one.” Tomi’s offices.

Still in a daze, Tomi thanked the technician, put down the phone. She fought to center herself, but thoughts kept intruding. The weasel had clearly been nervous at her reappearance. And when she had introduced Nangi as a new player in the investigation, the weasel had become positively agitated. Then something he said hit her like a shot:
I thought the case had been closed.
How would he know that? Unless he had some contact with the Metro Police?

Tomi, staring hard at the weasel, said, “Who did you call?”

“My mother.”

“Your mother works for the police?”

“Yeah. She’s a cleaning lady. She mops out your latrines.”

For a long moment Tomi did nothing. Then, in a lightning move, she snatched the weasel up by his lapels, slammed him against the back wall. Glass shattered in the window.

Tomi put her face so close to his, he had trouble focusing on her. “You’re going to tell me,” she said, “or you won’t leave this room.”

“Big words,” the weasel said.

Tomi jammed him backward so hard he cried out. Blood began to seep out of his suit as the shards of jagged window glass punctured his skin.

“Tell me who you called!”

All at once the weasel began to weep. Sweat slid down the side of his face. “Oh, my God,” he whimpered, “I can’t. Don’t you see, he’ll kill me.”

“He won’t have a chance,” Tomi said savagely. The glass sunk deeper into the weasel, and he gasped.

“All right,” he said, twisting and moaning in pain. “But you’ll have to protect me.”

“Who? Tell me?”

“I demand protection!”

“You’re in no position to demand anything,” Tomi pointed out. “But I’ll see what I can do. Who did you call? Who were you going to tell about Professor Nangi?”

The weasel’s eyes almost bugged out of his head. “It’s not so easy, damnit!” he gasped. “The bastard’s a division commander. He used to come here years ago when he had been assigned this district. He worked out a deal with me so I’d allow him access to my girls, so he could do—ow, God, that hurts!—so he could do what he wanted with them. I—I never—God—I never asked what he did. I didn’t want to know. Then this
thing
with—oh, God!—Mariko happened and I was terrified. I didn’t want to be implicated in her—”

“Are you telling me that a Metropolitan Police division commander tortured, raped, and murdered Mariko?” Tomi was aware that she was shouting. She didn’t care.

The weasel nodded. “Y-yes.”

Mariko, she thought, all your life you had no one. Now you have me. Your avenger.

“Who was it? Who killed her?” She was shaking him like a leaf. Bursts of adrenaline surged through her, powering her. And a glimpse into the flash of memory that had been eluding her: dim light, the tiny precinct closet, her body entangled with Senjin’s. Her mouth opening onto his flesh. The taste of him and…

“Who killed Mariko? Tell me, you bastard, or I swear you won’t walk out of this room alive!” A red haze behind her eyes, the memory, slippery as an eel, winking in and out of her consciousness. Nangi saying,
The
dorokusai
will use a specific methodology, self-asphyxiation, during the sex act. It’s part of his training. He practices it regularly…

“Who killed Mariko!” Working the weasel on the rack of the shattered glass fragments. The red haze deepening, Mariko, I have him for you, the memory surfacing, Senjin making love to her in the closet, she pulling aside his tie, unbuttoning his shirt so she could kiss his chest, the flesh of his neck abraded as if by a wound. A wound around his neck.

The
dorokusai
will use a specific methodology, self-asphyxiation. He practices it regularly…

A Metropolitan Police division commander was a tanjian, a
dorokusai,
and dear God, he seduced me in every way it is possible for a man to seduce a woman: he assigned me to a homicide case in which he committed the murder
and
coordinated the police work in its aftermath; he used me as a stalking horse to keep track of Nicholas Linnear when it would arouse suspicion for him to do it himself; he took me like an animal in the office, where even a kiss between colleagues is unthinkable. He made me break all society’s rules, all my own rules as well. He made me feel elated and debased at the same time. He used his dark erotic magic on me to penetrate my mind and my flesh, to suck himself into me, to use me over and over again. And I was powerless, as powerless as Mariko must have been.

Humiliation, rage, fear all combined inside her.

“Who killed Mariko!”

What he did to me. The abraded flesh of his neck. What he did to her.

“Who killed Mariko!”

Used like dolls made of putty he could mold into any shape, Mariko and I and how many others? My God, how many more?

“Who killed Mariko!”

“Omukae!” The weasel shrieking at her in a potent mixture of terror and relief. “Commander Senjin Omukae!”

When Killan left the Nippon Keio Building some hours after she had entered it, there was no question as to what the Pack Rat’s next move was going to be. He followed her. She was the key, he was sure of it, the enigma whose solution would bring into perspective everything he had heard up until now.

It was a moon-drenched night, the air unnaturally clear and calm after the days of rain, gloom, and suspended petrochemical ash. The Pack Rat encountered no difficulty in tailing Killan as she went across town into Asakusa, to the Scoundrel’s
usagigoya.

This time the Pack Rat would not be shut out. He had run a check on the Scoundrel, had found to his intense curiosity that he was a member of Nakano Industry’s research and development department. He was also Killan Oroshi’s friend. What were the two of them up to? It seemed clear now that Killan had wanted to be at Nakano, not Chiyoda, all along. Why? The Pack Rat meant to find out.

He scouted the hallway. On one side of the Scoundrel’s apartment was a stairwell, on the other, another tiny apartment. The Pack Rat chose the stairwell first, finding the common wall with the Scoundrel apartment. He knelt down, got out his miniature listening equipment. He got nothing. He put his hand against the ferroconcrete of the stairwell wall. There must be a ton of structural iron in there, he thought, blocking transmission.

He gave it up, went back into the hallway. He listened with his ear, at the door to the adjacent apartment, then with the electronic equipment. Silence.

It took him fifteen seconds to get through the lock.

Cautiously, he pushed the door open just wide enough to allow him to slither through sideways. Darkness and the smell of plaster, fresh paint, kerosene. There was debris on the floor, which he could see in the moonlight filtering through the blindless window had been taken down to the rough concrete underflooring. There were no lights, no electricity. Obviously the place was deserted, awaiting construction.

The Pack Rat went to work. Crouching beside the common wall with the adjacent apartment, he put his electronic “ears” on.

Immediately he heard Killan’s voice, very loud, filled with the harsh sibilants of the “ears.” “…telling you, life wouldn’t be the same without you, Scoundrel. You’re the only person who really sees me. All the women I know despise me, and all the men want to fuck me. Except you. You want to listen to what I have to say.”

“And
then
I want to fuck you.” It was a male voice, no doubt belonging to the platinum-haired Scoundrel.

Killan laughed. “You’re the only one who can make me laugh, you know that? It’s a gift, like your genius with computers.”

As he had done in the Nami offices, the Pack Rat was taping all this, avidly preserving Killan’s aural history as if that would allow him to capture her like a butterfly in a bell jar.

“Look at all this equipment,” Killan said. “I sure hope it’s going to do us some good. Are you sure this virus-thing is as powerful as you’ve said?”

“You bet. More. MANTIS, the Manmade Nondiscriminatory Tactical Integrated-circuit Smasher. Not a virus-thing, a borer,” the Scoundrel said. “But MANTIS is a unique kind of borer virus. It only attacks computer software programs with virus-prevention encryptions. It actually cannibalizes the software’s own security systems, mutating them so that they turn on themselves. The deeper the encryption, the harder my borer works. I’ve told you, MANTIS is very sophisticated, very experimental stuff.”