The Nicholas Linnear Novels (62 page)

“The spirit flies, Nicholas—it is the only thing we possess which can. It is a sin to tie it down, to deny your spirit its breath. Life is nothing without it. We merely survive, from day to day, in a kind of unthinking limbo.

“Does this answer your question?”

In the nightsilence of the tower on Park Avenue, he sat with Raphael Tomkin. At the moment, Tomkin was on the telephone. Somewhere in the world, it was always some time between nine and five and that meant business was rolling. Decisions, vital to one subsidiary or another, and thus vital to the corporation as a whole, required the mind of the mover and the shaker. Three continents awaited the outcome of such transatlantic or transpacific conversations.

While Tomkin talked on in mega-figures, a kind of semisecret corporate shorthand, Nicholas looked at the tiny bit of metal and plastic he held between his fingers. He turned it like a miniature world, though in truth it was a disk only and thus flat, so that it caught the lamplight, its face turning to a slow dazzle.

Just possibly, he thought, this little piece of the electronicized present could be the key to it all. The past, the present and the future. It could end right here, if he chose. If he chose.

And he wanted desperately for it to be his decision.

He felt, quite rightly, that Saigō had taken all initiative from him and he felt stripped bare, naked and defenseless because he had not seen what was happening.

Saigō had been leading him around by the nose until he was dizzy, laughing all the way. It was a technique from the
Go Rin No Sho.
What was its name? To Hold Down a Pillow. Restrict the enemy’s useful actions while encouraging his useless ones. Lead him around as if he had a ring through his nose and, when he is in total confusion, strike.

“Where’ve you been?” Tomkin said, cradling the phone. He looked slightly rumpled at this time of the night, his cream-colored linen suit wrinkled at the insides of the elbows, his gray silk knit tie slightly askew. The flesh of his face had lost the pink glow it maintained for most of the day, seeming pummeled into a kind of uneasy truce—submission was a flat-out impossibility—by the long hours. Lines at the corners of his eyes had become noticeable but they merely made him seem that much more human. Nicholas still felt himself wondering which was the façade.

“In Chinatown.”

Tomkin grunted, swiveling around in his high-backed leather chair. His hands played idly across his desk’s electronic console as a Greek peasant might fondle his worry beads. “Chinatown, huh? With that bastard Croaker, I’ll bet.” He stared into Nicholas’ face and his eyes, like chips of blue quartz, were merciless. They were sailor’s eyes, Nicholas thought. The eyes of a man well seasoned to the sardonic tricks of the sea and the open sky. They were the eyes of a survivor; shipwrecked, his crew drowned, this man would make it onto some beachy shore and, like Crusoe, vanquish time though perhaps not solitude. “You better not get too friendly with that cop. Just a friendly warning, ’cause I’m waiting for that motherfucker to step one inch out of line. Then I’m gonna break him in two.”

Nicholas thought about what Croaker had told him of Gelda and he had to smile to himself. What would Tomkin do when he found out that Croaker and his daughter were seeing each other? Apoplexy might be an accurate term.

“That bastard’s got a hard-on for me and I’ve got no idea why. He’s got this crazy notion that just because I was balling Angela Didion, I killed her.”

Nicholas watched him, rubbing the electronic bug back and forth between the calloused pads of his fingers.

Tomkin snorted derisively through his nostrils, giving Nicholas the image of a horse rearing. “Hell, that broad got around, you know? Doing people she didn’t even know. Got a kick out of that, giving rim jobs to guys she pulled off the street. Just like that—Boom! Only it wasn’t always guys, see. The broad was nuts. Definitely nuts. If I’d’ve known about that—you know, a closet lezzie—I wouldn’t have—hell, she disguised it well enough.” He waved a hand and gold glinted. “Anyway, it’s all ancient history now—that’s how I see it. But that cop won’t let it alone, you know? He’s like a fucking dog with an old bone nobody wants but him.”

“He’s doing his job.”

“He
ain’t
doing his job!” Tomkin cried. “That’s the whole goddamned issue.” He pounded the table. “The Angela Didion thing is a dead issue for everyone on the entire fucking New York Police Force except Croaker. What’s he think he’s got? A calling from God? Well, I’m telling you, he’s got nothing. I got his number; loves to see his name in the papers.” He swiveled back and forth in his chair, very fast, as if he had a surplus of nervous energy. “Goddamned glory hound. He’s not gonna ride
me
to any headlines. He needs to be taught a lesson, that’s all.” He glanced up, no longer half-talking to himself. “What about this guy—the ninja?”

“Well, that’s what I came to talk to you about. So far, he’s been setting the pace. What I think we have to do now is reverse the situation. We have a chance if we can control the environment. We have to, in other words, be on the battleground before him.”

“So? Set it up. That’s what I’m paying you for, isn’t it?”

“It’s not that simple, unfortunately.”

“Well, do what you have to do. I don’t care what it is. I want him out of the way. Permanently.”

“It involves you directly.”

“Of course it does. He’s been sent here to kill me.”

“He’s here to kill me, too.”

“What?”

“I know this man. There is an old score to be settled. It’s nothing to do with you.”

“I see.”

“Except that it may lead us to his entrapment.”

“How?”

“Through one of his bugs.” Nicholas lifted the tiny disk so Tomkin could see it clearly. “You see, this is currently inactive. It’s one of the new contact type, which simply means that once it is reapplied to a surface, it becomes active again.”

A gleam came into Tomkin’s icy eyes; deceit was a currency he understood. “You mean—”

“We reactivate it. And use it. Chances are he’ll believe there’s been a minor dysfunction and—”

“What if he’s smarter than that? This guy’s an expert. I’ve heard stories about ninja—”

“I don’t,” said Nicholas, “think it will matter at all. He wants us both and, if he thinks he can get us together, he’ll take the chance, even if there’s the suspicion of a trap. It’s one I’ve set up, you see. It’s a challenge and he cannot back down without losing an awful lot of face. That he will not do.”

“It amounts to inviting him over,” Tomkin said slowly.

“Yes.”

The blue eyes regarded him cannily. Nicholas could almost hear the sound of his mind ticking over, weighing probabilities just as if he were making a computer-assisted business decision. But then, in a curious kind of way, it
was
a business decision.

“Let’s do it.” His voice rang unhesitatingly.

Afterward, as Nicholas detached the bug and dropped it into the thick cotton bed he had fashioned for it in one of the desk drawers, Tomkin said, “Can everything be arranged by the night after next?”

“There won’t be any problem.”

“Good.” He picked up the phone as Nicholas turned to leave. “Hey,” he said, “you didn’t tell me you were having problems with Justine.”

Nicholas froze, silently cursing Tomkin. Had he been spying on his daughter again? How else would he know?

“Hit a nerve, didn’t I?” He laughed. “You got a damn good poker face, but I don’t need to see your expression to know.”

“Just what
do
you know?”

Tomkin shrugged. “Just that she’s in the city; out with another guy. Don’t know who he is but I will soon enough.” He dropped his eyes, began to dial. “It’s too bad, really. I would’ve liked you two to stay together. You’re good for her. Now I’m afraid she’s gone back to her old ways.”

“Where is she?”

“Hello? Yes—”

“Tomkin—” Nicholas’ tone cut through the space between them.

“Hold the line a moment—” Tomkin put his palm over the receiver. “What did you say?” His voice had turned a touch treacly.

“Where is she?”

“At a discothèque. On West Forty-sixth Street.” He rummaged with one hand on his desk top. “I know I have the name of it somewhere. At least, I
had
it earlier…. Ah, here it is.” He read off a slip of paper, giving Nicholas the name. His eyes lifted. “Know it?”

“I don’t go to discos, normally,” Nicholas said. His voice was as tight as a coiled spring. Across from him, Tomkin looked as if he had devoured a particularly tasty sweet.

“No, I suppose not. Otherwise you might have run into her before this. It’s an old hangout of hers. Perhaps you ought to try it sometime.” He turned away into the phone in dismissal.

For a time he spoke as part of a conversation that had no meaning, listening with his free ear to the sound of the elevator’s doors sighing shut, the quiet hum of the machine as it took Nicholas down to the lobby far below.

When that sound had ceased, he reached out one hand and opened a desk drawer. Without turning his head, he replaced the receiver of the phone.

He stared down at the bit of plastic and metal with a kind of rapt fascination. A light line of sweat broke out on his forehead, the way it did every time he made a major business decision. His heart thudded and his pulse rate increased.

He licked his lips and, carefully, deliberately, he brought the bug out of its bed and attached it to the side of the desk.

He swung around, away from it so that he looked out on the winking late-night face of the city. West. The entire country was before him though, of course, he could not see it. At length he began to speak.

“I suppose,” he said, almost meditatively, “it depends on how much you want him. But what if—what if I could
guarantee
Nicholas Linnear. I could hand him to you on a platter. As easy as pie, yes?” He swung around and now he addressed directly the bug hanging like a bloated spider. “I’ll bet that’s worth a lot to you. As much as a life. What do you say?”

He reached out and detached the bug, returning it to its drawer, precisely as Nicholas had placed it. Tomkin was a meticulous man.

Then he sat back with his hands behind his head, waiting for the phone call he was certain would come. The fully loaded pistol clinging in its holster to his damp shirt beneath his suit jacket felt heavy and warm and infinitely comforting.

In matters like this, he thought, one never knew.

“Someone wants to see you.”

The phone had rung just after Croaker had walked in but, despite that and despite the fact that she had already put the machine on, Gelda had picked it up herself.

She had come into the living room to answer the door and both of them were still there in the semi-darkness. She watched him now as she listened to the voice in her ear, as he stood in the oblique bars of light and dark so that they climbed his legs to just above his knees. His face was illumined by the fat wedge of lemon light from the bedroom.

“G, are you there?”

“Yes, Pear.”

“I thought you had drifted away for a moment. Have you popped anything?”

“Not tonight, no.”

He seemed afflicted with a weariness that went far beyond a lack of sleep. It was as if all the endless hours in the office and on the streets and in the courtrooms had built up a sly accretion impossible to discard which now lay heavily upon him like a gray and ageless second skin.

“Just a professional question,” Pear said, mistaking Gelda’s silence as an expression of annoyance, “that’s all Seeing as how there’s—”

“Not tonight.”

“I know I haven’t given you any notice. That’s because it’s the senator.”

Gelda knew what that meant. “Get him someone else.”

“G,” Pear said slowly and patiently, “he wants you. There
is
no one else. You know how he is.”

He stood there in the half-light like some mythic animal come to life; a creature someone had mistakenly dressed in human clothes. He seemed only partially aware of her.

“The answer’s still no.” She could not be more aware of him.

“And what of Dare when she comes to town again?” Pear had obviously caught something in Gelda’s tone of voice.

And, abruptly, Gelda knew that she had answered the phone
because
he was here. “No. Even for Dare. Those days are gone. I am out.”

“I see.” There was no hurt in Pear’s voice, no hint of recrimination.

Gelda felt light-headed, as giddy as if she had just consumed an entire bottle of Dom Perignon. She also felt happier than she ever had before.

“We’ll miss you, G.
I’ll
miss you.” It was like Pear, at a moment like this, not to mention the clients.

“I’ll never forget you,” Gelda whispered.

A soft laugh. “I should hope not. Good-bye, G.”

Gelda put down the receiver, went over to Croaker. “What happened?” She put her arm around him, walking him into the bedroom.

In the warm lamplight, she saw the dried blood on his hands. “Won’t you tell me?” she said in a voice calmer than she felt. “You look so sad.”

“I’ve just come from seeing two families. A pregnant wife and a mother of three small kids.” He looked at her despairingly. “Have you ever had to tell someone that the person she cares most about is dead?” He took a deep breath. “Well, I have. But never before when I knew those deaths were my fault.” He stared at his brown hands, stained as if they had been dipped in dye, crusty as if covered in sea salt.

“Why don’t we start at the beginning,” she said softly, taking his hands in hers, drawing him forward. “The blood has to come off first.”

The place was all mirrored chrome and black smoked glass, multi-leveled like the hanging gardens with floors of translucent glass under which colored lights flashed in time to the music.

The air vibrated with percussion and electric voices, strung like a Christmas tree with garlands of perfume and perspiration and burning pot.

Somewhere was the bar, obscured behind a forest of raised arms, swirling hair, shiny mindlessly concentrating faces. Dance dance dance: the imperative was clear, treading an atavistic path, the primitive’s tribal revivals, an ecstatic communal orgy, trivialized to the point where all possible consequence was nullified.