The Nicholas Linnear Novels (47 page)

“I watched him come toward me. There was something clouding his eyes which I couldn’t place then. I had never seen him this way before; I was seventeen. He seemed a totally different person than the one I had known as my father; he had come out of himself.

“He took me there where I lay, staring up at him, thinking myself helpless under him. He plunged into me with such force that I cried out and, immediately, I felt his wrist between my lips. I bit down on it with my teeth; I sucked up the blood I had caused to come out of him. I felt as if I was being stuffed all the way up to my throat.

“It was over so quickly that for a moment I thought it had never happened. But there was the salty taste in my mouth and the wet soreness between my legs; I couldn’t walk without some pain for two days after.”

She stopped and her head turned. She became aware of him again. “There, I’ve said it; I’ve spewed it all out and now that’s supposed to make me feel better. But you know, it doesn’t. I still feel the same lousy rotten feeling inside. I loathe myself. Not because he did that to me. But because I didn’t fight him; because deep down I didn’t want him to stop. I reveled in feeling his come jetting deep inside me. Oh, God! Oh, my God!” She was weeping now, her frame shuddering as if it might shake itself apart.

She fell forward and he caught her. His hands slid under her arms and he stood up with her. Her legs had no strength and he had to support her half propped against him. Her shudders transferred themselves to him as if they were seismic quakes, the vibrations entering him. He felt her long silky hair gently brushing back and forth against the side of his face; the strength of her perfume; the heat of her flesh beneath her elegant clothing.

She cried for a long time and even after her sobs had subsided she continued to cling to him, her hands locked behind his neck.

Then he heard her whispering, “I must be mad. I must be mad.”

“C’mon.” He said it softly but with a great deal of force. “Let’s get you the hell out of here.”

Nicholas thought about the three names as he went up in the elevator to the top of the tower and Raphael Tomkin’s plush office. Hideoshi. Yodogimi. Mitsunari. What the hell had Terry meant? Nicholas knew him almost as well as Eileen had but he couldn’t fathom this cryptogram. All right. Start at the beginning. Hideoshi is the ninja. Assume? No, it’s a given. Then who are Yodogimi and Mitsunari? Were there three people involved? It seemed to go against all the laws of ninjutsu but, of course, it couldn’t be ruled out. Deduction was so easy in literature. Elementary, my dear—he wished Holmes were here with him now.

Yet he felt a kind of familiarity with the names. Of course he knew all about the historical personages, their personal histories: the sweep of the past come alive. But this was the present, divorced from the past.

He looked up, watching the neon indicator moving relentlessly from left to right as if ticking off the seconds, the minutes, the years. Time, he thought.

My God! What am I thinking? I’ve been too long in the West; I’ve become one of them. He felt then a kind of secret shame, something that was difficult to admit to, even within himself.

Wasn’t I taught that the present is never divorced from the past? Why have I pushed that away continuously? Why have I suddenly, at age thirty-three, dropped out of life? Given up my job, left the city, begun to hibernate—yes, that’s the right word—out on the beach like it was Malibu, some far-off lotus land devoid of worries or responsibilities?

Abruptly he felt something rising within him; something dark and ugly and unstoppable. A
tsunami
—the tidal wave. It reared up at his back, rushing recklessly toward him. Had there been no warning?

There had been plenty of warning. He had just been too preoccupied or merely too dense to see it. Or far too close.

He felt as if he were suffocating and he put his hand out, palm against the textured wall. It was slippery with sweat. He imagined that he was Amelia Earhart blithely flying through the cotton-candy skies on her way to—where? He couldn’t remember. No matter. Traveling, working the controls. When suddenly.

Nothing.

Not a thing. No sky, no clouds, no land below, no stars above.

Had the past overtaken her, too?

The elevator doors sighed open and he stepped out into the corridor, stiff-legged. He went to the outer edge, looked out at the streaming city through a pane of glass so newly installed that it still carried the wide white
X
through its center. He seemed oblivious.

It seemed so obvious to him now. Yukio should have given him the clue. His memory of Yukio stood between him and Justine like a guardian ghost baring her teeth. It was this specter within him that had hurt Justine so. He clenched his fist unconsciously. Still a part of him after all this time. But he knew how hollow a statement that was. The psyche bore no notion of time, that was a rational response to a basically irrational question.

Abruptly, the force of his feelings for Justine broke the surface like a geyser rupturing the glass surface of a still pond. How stupid could he have been!

Having made up his mind, feeling calmer than he had for a while, he quickly went down the corridor and pulled open the metal doors to Raphael Tomkin’s office.

Frank stood just inside. His eyes blazed when he saw Nicholas and his right hand twitched. Nicholas went by him without a second look.

“Hey, you can’t—”

But Tomkin had looked up from behind his desk and had already waved him to silence. “It’s all right, Frank,” he said amiably. “Nicholas is now on the payroll, isn’t that right?” He redirected his gaze toward Nicholas.

The office was immense, perhaps slightly smaller than a grand ballroom. This seemed, outwardly, impossibly excessive until one saw that the space was divided up not by walls but by furniture groupings, forming out of the whole a kind of mini-apartment.

Here to the left was what amounted to a living room with a one-step-down sunken parquet floor surrounded by a C-shaped sofa in crushed velvet from Roche Bobois. A low smoked-glass and chrome coffee table sat in the center, above which swooped a crescent-necked floor lamp.

To the right, nearer the long bank of windows, was what could be classified as a professional engineer’s workroom, complete with drafting table, flexible light source and a black plastic tabouret. Nearby was a vertical metal file for storing architectural plans. There was, on its top, even a scale model of the tower as it would look when completed, including the ventral atrium garden, plaza and trees along its eastern and western peripheries.

Far to the left, in the dimness of the office’s interior, Nicholas could make out a tiny kitchen with half-refrigerator, a stainless-steel sink and, above, an electric oven. Next to it a door stood open revealing a full bath. The rear corner on the left had been transformed into a library. Bookshelves climbed two walls. There were two strong, shaded reading lights hovering at the side of a pair of clubby high-backed leather chairs which, rather than new, looked well lived in. All that was missing was a massive glass ashtray holding a meerschaum.

Lastly, there was the office proper, directly ahead of him, where Tomkin sat now. The magnificent hardwood desk had quite obviously been custom-made. It was a beautifully blank piece of furniture from this side but, on walking around to its reverse side, one found it revealed itself as housing a complex data center. Nicholas thought it more resembled a console of a 747 than it did anything else. There was a bank of four phones, each color-coded; a telex; a NYSE ticker; the set of TV monitors for the now obligatory interior surveillance system and a number of other gadgets whose functions totally eluded him.

Tomkin was on the phone. He waved Nicholas to a plush chair in front of the desk. Nicholas looked down. The left armrest contained its own phone. He lifted the receiver, pressed an unlit button for a clear line, dialed Justine’s number in West Bay Bridge. He let it ring six times before he hung up. She might just be out on the beach. On impulse, he tried her city number. No answer.

He got another line, asked Frank for Abe Russo’s extension, dialed it. When he got the construction foreman on the line, he asked him for a list of all oriental men currently working on the tower project.

“That’ll take some time,” Russo said shortly. “I got a lotta work. I don’t know—”

“Let me put it this way,” Nicholas said slowly. “If we don’t get these names, this project may be halted—permanently.”

“Okay. I’ll get it right up to you.”

“I appreciate your assistance,” Nicholas said. “And, Abe. I want you to do this all yourself. Don’t involve anyone, is that clear? And, listen, when you’ve got the list, I’m going to want to see all the men on that list. Think about how you’re going to do that without giving them any advance notice. No leaks, all right? Good.” He hung up, suppressed a desire to try Justine once more.

Tomkin was on the phone for another ten minutes. During that time there was no movement in the office. In the brief silences, Nicholas could hear the gentle hiss of the central air conditioning. Frank was immobile near the closed doors.

Nicholas got up and, skirting the conversation pit, went back to the library. There was an old-fashioned rolltop desk to one side that he hadn’t noticed before. On it he saw several pictures in silver frames that looked Mexican. There were a number of color shots of the same women at ages varying from perhaps sixteen to late twenties. One was Justine; the other, he surmised, must be Gelda. They were both quite beautiful in very different ways, yet they seemed linked by a hidden quality that defined both. He saw only one photo in which the sisters appeared together. It was a black and white shot, torn at one corner. The two girls stood on a lawn. In the background he could just make out the corner of a building, brick-faced, ivy-covered. It appeared to be part of an estate house. They were ten and seven years old. Justine held up a painted egg. At her feet was a tiny wicker basket. She was smiling at the camera. Gelda, a step behind her, taller and a good deal heavier, had been caught looking off to her left. There seemed, even at that young age, a peculiar gulf between the two, as if one had no cognizance of the presence of the other. They might have been pasted together from different pictures for all the relationship they bore to one another.

“Nicholas?”

Nicholas turned and walked back to the side of the desk. Tomkin stood up, came around. He wore a fox-colored silk suit, deep yellow-and-white-striped shirt with solid yellow collar and cuffs and a brown silk tie. He extended a hand. It was thick, the back dark with curling hair. He wore a ring of white gold or platinum on his right ring finger; his left hand bore no jewelry at all.

“Glad to see you,” he said. His blue eyes seemed to have a touch of gray to them today. “I was wondering when you’d show up. What did you find out?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Information, Nicholas.” He formed the words slowly as if trying to capture the attention of a retarded child. “You went out to West Bay Bridge because you thought the ninja might be there. At least, that’s what you told me over the phone.”

“He wasn’t there.”

“Is Justine all right?”

“Perfectly.”

“I don’t like your tone of voice.”

“You’re not paying me to like my tone of voice, merely to protect you.”

“I have been wondering how you were doing that from Long Island. Remote control, I suppose.”

Nicholas laughed shortly. His eyes were steely. “Let’s cut the crap, Tomkin. You don’t have to like me, just be cooperative. Otherwise, I can’t do my job.”

“But I do like you, Nicholas. Whatever gave you the idea that I didn’t?” Affable now, he guided Nicholas down into the living area. They sat on the couch. It was chocolate brown and luxuriously comfortable.

“Surely you’re not surprised to find that I’m—curious, shall we say—about your methodology. After all, Frank here never leaves my side. He gives me a great deal of comfort.”

“Frank is useless,” Nicholas said, “when it comes to the ninja. He’ll get through Frank as if he’s not there.”

Tomkin smiled thinly. “He may get through Frank but if he does, he’ll do so with a couple of .45 bullets in him.”

Nicholas shrugged. “If you choose to take this matter lightly—”

“I assure you, I am not taking this lightly. At all. Else I would not have hired you, understand? Now—” he slapped his thick thigh—“tell me what you’re up to.”

“I’m expecting Abe Russo any minute.”

“What the hell we need him up here for? He’s got his hands full keeping to our deadline.”

“The ninja’s hallmark is infiltration,” Nicholas said quietly. “He won’t try to kill you by… remote control, as you say.” He grinned. “He’s got to come right up to you—do it himself from arm’s length. When Abe gets here, we’ll find out if he’s in the tower building.”

“Here? But how?”

“The most likely probability is as a worker. He’d be anonymous, have the run of the place. It’s only logical.”

At that moment there was a knock on the door and Frank let Abe Russo in. He carried a sheaf of computer printout paper in one hand. His clothing was rumpled and he wiped a stray lock of sandy hair from his forehead.

“Here it is,” he said, dropping the paper on the coffee table in front of them. “I’ve circled all the oriental males. There’s thirty-one of ’em,” he continued as they both began to look over the list.

“What are you looking for?” Tomkin said. “You know his name?”

Nicholas shook his head. “Even if I did, he’d never use it here.” It was a long shot to expect to find the name Hideoshi on this list but it would have been foolish to have ignored the obvious. “This it?” he said to Russo.

The other nodded. “Yeah. Every one. Twenty-five are on the day shift, the rest are on at night.”

“All twenty-five here today?” Nicholas asked. “None called in sick?”

“None sick. They’re all here as far as I can tell.”

“And no one knows about this?”

“Not a one,” Russo said. “I worked on it alone.”

“Okay,” Nicholas said. “Let’s go.” He stood up.

“What’s happening?” Tomkin said.