Giri (12 page)

What they had clashed over was tonight’s skim, money taken from admissions and concessions to avoid paying taxes.

Constantine Pangalos had devised the idea of listing the auditorium’s official capacity as twelve thousand three hundred and thirty-two, some five hundred short of the actual total. Income from these
invisible
seats went directly to the Molise family, and since they controlled concessions for food, drink, T-shirts and programs, they skimmed from these receipts as well. Tonight’s total skim came to almost seventy thousand dollars. Molise wanted that money carried to Manhattan and placed in a safe at Management Systems Consultants’ office, where it would be picked up within hours and taken to the Golden Horizon in Atlantic City. Now. No excuses.

Intelligent men always make the same mistake, thought Sparrowhawk: we refuse to believe that the world is as stupid as it really is.

Tonight, Molise had brought only his bodyguard-chauffeur with him. Others associated with the family, particularly known hoodlums, had been told to keep away from the auditorium on opening night Too much press, too many police on hand. Molise himself had entered the auditorium office unobserved and would remain there until it was possible to leave the same way.

Without men of his own to do his bidding, the next best thing was to order Sparrowhawk’s men around, something the Englishman opposed.

“Cut the shit, Trevor,” said Molise. “I said get four of your men in here now and I mean it. I want this money out of here before anybody starts poking around. I’m talking about tax people. Federal, state, local, whatever.”

“And I tell you, I don’t have four men to spare. I need every man I can get. We’re fighting gate crashers, not to mention groups of drugged cretins trying to get in without paying. Barely holding our own against them. We’re dealing with scalpers, counterfeit tickets, screwed-up seating arrangements and, God help us, backstage security. And that little twerp entertaining the throngs out front keeps mentioning John Lennon, so we have no choice but to assign a dozen guards to him.”

“Fuck him.”

“You’re both consenting male adults and from what I understand, he might even enjoy it. Be that as it may, it’s in his contract that we supply sufficient security.”

Mouse slammed a hand down on the desk. “Trevor, you’re not in the army now. Somebody else gives the orders. You take them.”

The Englishman’s permanent squint hardened and he stared at Molise. Angry. His voice was a soft monotone. “We’ve had incidents tonight in the parking lot. Tire slashings, dope dealings, fights. As I said, we’ve managed to contain the situation so far, just barely. When the concert’s over, we’ll still need every man and the local police. Dignitaries must be escorted to the party two and a half miles away. We do want them to get there, don’t we? Don’t want them stabbed in the parking lot or urinated upon as they bend over to unlock their car doors, do we? Don’t want them to rush the stage and kill our star performer, do we? Don’t want to have the fans being trampled to death, do we? We’ve had emergencies tonight and on balance, my men are acquitting themselves quite well. However, there isn’t an extra man to spare right now. You could put this entire auditorium venture at risk by insisting I try and supervise this opening short-handed.”

Pangalos used a pinky finger to dig wax from his ear.
“Now
is a very small word, not hard to understand. Paulie says now. I mean, what’s to understand?”

Sparrowhawk eyed him coldly. “Tell me, please: does
Paulie
wipe his arse north to south or east to west. If anyone here knows, besides
Paulie,
I imagine it would be you.”

Someone in the room snickered, someone else coughed. The Greek lawyer froze, finger still in his ear. His nostrils flared. He forced a smile, shook his head. One of these days, Birdman, one of these days. All Pangalos had to do was wait. And remember.

Asinine, thought Sparrowhawk. All of it. All of them. He stood up. “Paul, a single negative incident tonight and you’ve undone months of work. The press will see to that and the press is something we haven’t bought and paid for just yet. If we let it be known that we cannot provide adequate security, all future bookings will disappear faster than a Jew’s foreskin.”

Livingston Quarrels laughed the loudest.

Paul Molise leaned back in his chair, listening.

“One night, Paul. One night makes or breaks this auditorium. I need every man I have. Can’t spare one. Well, perhaps one. Robbie. If the money has to go now, let him take it. He’s licensed to carry a gun and you know how good he is.”

Molise inhaled. He was coming around. “Cash-flow problem at the Golden Horizon. Right now I need every dime I can get my hands on. Can’t reach that fucking Jap Kanai. Still, dragging his ass over his dead son.”

“Son-in-law.”

“Whatever. And even if I do get him to pop for ten percent I’ll need more money for renovations, twice as much as I’d planned on. Look, Robbie’s fine, but one man. Shit, that worries me. Two, okay, but one. Don’t like it.”

Sparrowhawk had won. At last “Two men sounds bloody good. And I have just the second man. Dorian. He’s here tonight with a rather smashing Japanese girl. Michelle Asama. She’s one of our clients.”

The men in the room knew who she was. And approved. Was Sparrowhawk the only one who found the idea of her and Dorian Raymond an extremely odd coupling? She was intelligent, cultured, capable of running a business; not the sort of woman one normally expected to find in the company of Dorian Raymond.

Sparrowhawk had met Michelle Asama a few times, first at her Madison Avenue office, where he had personally checked the installed burglar alarms, new safe, new door and introduced her to the security guards who would be protecting Pantheon Diamonds. And he’d met her on a few occasions with Dorian Raymond. She had clung to formality with him, always calling him
mister,
saying as few words as possible. While it may have been the Japanese way, Miss Asama still seemed more formal than called for.

Was it his imagination or did he detect in her a hostility toward him? Not to worry. She was a client, paid her bills on time and one should never mix business with pleasure in any case. Let her be as glacial as the Antarctic. Sparrowhawk was devoted to his wife Unity and after more than twenty years of marriage still preferred her company to that of other women.

Molise was talking to Sparrowhawk, agreeing to the idea of using Dorian and Robbie. But the Englishman only half listened. Something about Michelle Asama that Sparrowhawk had encountered tonight danced on the edge of his subconscious.

Backstage earlier, she and Dorian had been among the crowd sipping champagne, mixing with politicians and celebrities all happily posing for cameras. Not Miss Asama. She had been adamant about not being photographed. Shades of Jacqueline Onassis, thought Sparrowhawk. Or was she part American Indian and terrified that the camera would steal her soul?

He had managed to engage her in a brief conversation, first complimenting her on the lovely black and white Halston she wore, with a white gold and black diamond pin on her heart. As usual, Miss Asama had seemed less than enthralled by his presence. Somehow the matter of education had come up, which led to a few words on French literature. Sparrowhawk had made a reference to the published works of Baudelaire.

Holding a champagne glass in front of her beautiful mouth and looking elsewhere, Michelle Asama said, “Baudelaire did not publish works, major. He published one single volume of poetry,
Les Fleurs du Mal.
If you are interested in
works
by French poets of that period,
symbolistes
they were called, I suggest you read Verlaine, Rimbaud and Mallarmé.”

She turned away, leaving him more irked than angry. He knew his literature as well as any man, but she was right. Baudelaire had debauched himself into an early grave and hadn’t lived long enough to turn out
works.
Still, Sparrowhawk didn’t like the way she had made him feel like a schoolboy who had just been paddled across his backside.

Sitting in the office with Molise, Pangalos and the rest, Sparrowhawk suddenly remembered.

Major. Michelle Asama had called him major for the first time.
She had never done that before. What’s more, he doubted if she’d ever heard Dorian use the term. In the nauseating informality of all Americans, Dorian too often insisted on calling him
Birdman
or
Tweety Pie,
a vile habit acquired in Vietnam. He did use the name Trevor on occasion, but never major. Even if he had mentioned it to Miss Asama, he would have said it once in passing and not repeated it Why would she associate that rank with him? Even Molise never called him major. Sparrowhawk himself no longer used the term. Only Robbie still accorded him that honor.

Molise said, “Let’s go with Dorian and Robbie before I change my mind. Dorian’s got a car, if I remember. How much should we give him?”

Sparrowhawk said, “Sorry. Would you repeat the question?”

“Dorian. How much?”

“Thousand should be sufficient. Bugger’s only driving from here to Manhattan. Doesn’t have to know how much he’s carrying, either. He does have that Japanese girl with him.”

Molise shrugged. “She can tag along with him. Looks normal, having a woman along. Dorian’s a cop. He can give her a song and dance about having to return to the city on cop business. Tell me something: how does a schmuck like Dorian end up with a class act like her?”

Pangalos said, “Her side lost the war, so she’s got to pay.”

“Glaucoma,” said Quarrels. “Check her eyesight. You’ll find she has glaucoma. She thinks Dorian’s Clint Eastwood.”

Molise said, “A dipshit like Dorian getting into her pants. Go figure.”

Had Michi made a mistake? Part of her said what happened had been unavoidable. The rest of her issued a warning: leave the auditorium as soon as possible, before questions were asked.

She waited in a narrow hallway before a closed door and a uniformed guard. Dorian was on the other side of that door, summoned by Sparrowhawk and Paul Molise. Were they discussing her? Had she somehow slipped up and betrayed herself?
Did they know about the incident in the ladies’ room just minutes ago?

She forced herself to stay calm, to tune out the uproar from the auditorium behind her. There must be no fear in her; fear weakened and robbed the mind of its powers.

The office door opened and she saw the four of them together—Molise, Ambrose, Dorian and Sparrowhawk. She turned away before the hatred on her face could betray her. Then Dorian had his arm around her shoulders. “Okay, babe. Time to roll.” He carried an attaché case.

“Cop business,” said a grinning Dorian. “Got to get back to Manhattan right away;”

He was lying, but she didn’t care. They were not onto her after all. She offered a prayer of thanks to the gods and to her ancestors. Before she finished, all four of them would be dead. She let him take her elbow and guide her out of the building and toward the parking lot.

Interrogation was an art at which Sparrowhawk excelled. In the course of his military career, he had interrogated men and women in Africa, Asia, Ireland, Europe, the Middle East. He had broken some, killed others and left his mark on the rest. But tonight at the auditorium he faced an interrogation session that was a first: he was about to question three American teenage girls about an incident that occurred minutes ago in a ladies’ room. It could be that the incident was part of the opening hysteria. Or it could be something more. Sparrowhawk and two uniformed guards were in a barely furnished office with the-three girls, who appeared to regret having come forward with their story. Recognizing this, the Englishman began working to put them at their ease. Softly, softly catchee monkey.

“Ladies, first let me say how grateful I am that you have voluntarily chosen to help us with our inquiries. Our security can only be better for it, thanks to such good people as yourselves. And I stress again that this is not a police matter. Your story will be held in strictest confidence. This need not concern your families, unless you wish it to.”

The girls shook their heads
no.

Sparrowhawk clapped his hands together. “Good. To begin. Oh, incidentally, anyone who entered the ladies’ room to indulge in forbidden activity”—he paused, winked—“such as milk and cookies, well, all is forgiven.”

Nervous giggles.

“There will be no search of your purse or person. Simply repeat to me what you told the guards. I want your account of what occurred as you saw it”

Reaching into a desk drawer he turned on a hidden tape recorder. Smiling, he leaned back in his chair. “Now let’s see. I suppose we can start with the pretty one first.”

Blushes. Smiles. Giggles. And two of the little dears began talking at once.

Michi was in the ladies’ room to get away from Dorian, away from the pandemonium in the auditorium, away from the cloud of marijuana floating over the audience. Instead, she had walked into more sickly sweet air. More marijuana.

The smell reminded her of Dorian and their lovemaking. She hated it all the more.

This time it was three teenage American girls, leaning against washbasins and smoking dope and drinking from a pint bottle of vodka. The oldest could not have been older than eighteen, but all three were indulging in public behavior that Michi found distasteful and shocking. Why did American women cheapen and degrade themselves in front of others? Japanese women would never do such a thing, nor would Japanese society allow them to.

She washed and dried her hands and prepared to leave. The door flew open and two muscular young men, high school football players, entered. They were drunk and stoned on drugs. One carried a bagged bottle. A horrified Michi noticed that his fly was open and his penis, flaccid and pink, now dangled from his trousers. She looked away in disgust and shame.

“Hey, you guys,” yelled one of the girls, “this is a ladies’ room. Get the fuck outta here before I call a security guard.”

The youth who wore a professional hockey team jacket spat at her. “Stupid cunt. Open your mouth and I’ll shove my dick in it. Christ, man, nothing but pigs in here.”