Giri (21 page)

Then she sat up in bed and began to mock him, laughing and threatening as she had done long ago. This time it would be rape and she would swear to it. No boarding school for Robbie. He was going to
prison.
The women—his mother, aunts, his sister—had worked out this plan to rid themselves of Robbie permanently, to once more take control of the house, and there was nothing he could do to stop them. Robbie, in a haze of drugs and wine and feeling the fear again, sprang up in bed, cupped his sister’s chin in his right hand, placed his left hand behind her ear, and savagely turned her head as though it were a steering wheel, snapping her neck.

There was no hesitation about what to do next. Taking her in his arms he carried her limp, nude body down the hall to the bathroom, sat it in the tub and turned on the water. Then be hurried to her room, got a robe and slippers and returned to the bathroom, placing them near the tub. After soaping and washing her body, he let the water run out but did not clean the tub. Lifting her up, he sat her on the floor, back against the tub. Then, cupping her wet head in his hands, he pulled it toward him and smashed it into the edge of the tub with all his strength.

Her death was ruled accidental, the result of a fall while stepping from the tub. Traces of drugs and alcohol found in her body supported the verdict. Still, Robbie thought it best to leave California, to get as far away from the women as he could. Vietnam was the obvious answer and so was the navy, with its Black Berets, the Sea, Air, Land guerrilla force known as SEAL. Out of 250 men, Robbie was one of 6 to qualify for SEAL training.

In Vietnam he killed on orders. He and his SEAL team worked with the CIA, assassinating Cong leaders, capturing weapons and records and destroying supply caches. There were even times when killing was fun. Once, to prove that a certain Cong leader had actually been assassinated, Robbie’s team brought back both of his feet, encasing the grisly trophies in wet clay.

Like others, he took drugs before going out on a mission. The drugs did what you wanted them to. They made you alert or happy and killed any feeling that might weaken you. Robbie smoked grass laced with opium, swallowed amphetamines and Dexedrine. He did cocaine. Sometimes he shot up with the morphine worn around his neck, ordinarily to be used if he were wounded. Being wired on drugs gave Robbie a thousand eyes. Wired meant hearing the footfall of an ant.

He had taken drugs on the day he raped a Vietnamese woman and, still in her body, sliced her throat with the nine-inch blade of his k-bar. He never forgot that day, for seven members of his SEAL team were killed in a Cong ambush. Only Robbie survived. That night his drug-induced dreams were not of his dead comrades but of himself and
Hachiman Dai-Bosatsu,
god of war. The dream changed Robbie’s life forever.

“Give me a woman in sacrifice,” said the god of war, “and you shall never be bested in any combat. You will live forever and be
bushi.
You will be invincible.”

Other SEALs said Robbie wept in his sleep that night. Only Robbie knew that the weeping had been in gratitude to
Hachiman Dai-Bosatsu
—not for the seven who had died.

The truth of the dream could not be denied. By killing his sister and terrorizing the women in his family he had survived. And he had avoided prison. And he had come to Vietnam, where he had met Major Sparrowhawk, the Englishman who was the strong father Robbie would like to have had. Everything good in Robbie’s life had come from dominating and destroying women.

Even after leaving Vietnam and going to New York with the major, Robbie continued to hear the voice of the god of war. Drugs helped. They led him back to
Hachiman,
back to strength and victory. To know and act are one and the same. Knowledge, true knowledge, came only from
Hachiman.

Robbie believed. And to believe meant living according to that belief. He did not hate the women he killed. He needed them. Together they were united in
Chi-matsuri,
the rite of blood demanded by
Hachiman.
Because of them Robbie could defeat anyone.

Robbie knelt beside Christina Cholles’s dead body and kissed her still-warm lips, then stood, fixed his clothes and put on his wet coat and hat before going back out into the rain. He grew stronger with each step; his
ki,
his energy began to expand.

And then he heard it. He stopped. His senses were so sharp he could hear raindrops falling into the lake almost a mile away.

But he heard other sounds, too, sounds that could only reach the ears of a true
bushi.
Eagles shrieked inside his skull and bared their talons as they attacked from out of a blood-red sky, to swoop down upon a brown, smoking earth. He heard the hiss of metal upon metal as
Hachiman
unsheathed his sword and moonlight reflected on that great weapon, a light so piercing that only a true warrior could look upon it with the naked eye.

In the heavy rain, Robbie stood and gazed upon that wondrous light.

M
ANNY DECKER TURNED RIGHT
onto the huge parking lot and braked the dark blue Mercedes to a halt just inside the entrance. After slipping the keys into his overcoat pocket, he took a pair of wool-lined leather gloves from the seat and left the car without locking the door. Several feet away from the Mercedes he stopped in ankle-deep snow to stare at the new Long Island arena built by Paul Molise. Very impressive.

“Three gigantic ovals of off-white marble and green-tinted glass stacked one on top of the other rested on thirty feet of marble and steel columns. Winding staircases and stainless steel escalators led inside. Between the columns were fountains, miniature pools and flower gardens. Modern and distinctive.

Icy winds from the freezing waters of nearby Long Island Sound sliced into Decker’s back and neck. To prevent his hat from being blown away he pulled it down until it almost hid his eyes. His one wish was to see Charles LeClair naked in these freezing waters, his black ass going down for the third time. LeClair, who had ordered Decker to drive out here in twenty-two-degree cold.

“Listen good,” the prosecutor had said. His forefinger was an inch from Decker’s mustache. “I want me a copy of that jiveass seating plan, the one your girl friend says was put together by a certain Greek lawyer. When I have that particular document, I have Mr. Constantine Pangalos.”

LeClair turned his back. “I’ll answer your unspoken questions. No, I can’t have it mailed to me. No, I don’t trust local town officials out there or the police either, no offense. Why? Because, Mr. Manfred, the construction industry in New York is rotten from top to bottom. Everybody pays off. Everybody has his hand out. Everybody breaks the rules. So you can bet your pension that Molise and his front men have done their share of paying off. That new arena is good business for the town. The people out there are going to protect it. The minute they get wind of the fact that a federal prosecutor is interested in that phony seating plan, it’s going to disappear in a puff of smoke.”

Decker said, “Or somebody makes changes in it.”

LeClair smiled, looking like a wolf pulling his lips back from his teeth. The gesture belonged to the hunt. It had nothing to do with social graces.

“You’re playing the game the way I like to see it played, Mr. Manfred. What other thoughts are flitting across your crafty mind at the moment?”

“That somebody out there knows the plan is phony. Somebody in the department of building records, somebody on the zoning commission, maybe even in the mayor’s office. You don’t spend thirty million dollars without drawing a crowd. I’d say—I’m guessing now—but I’d say the local city hall was on top of this project from the beginning and got its share under the table and knows about the phony plan. In other words, I stand to get my chops busted by going out there to pick it up.”

“Decker, Decker. Trust me.”

In God we trust, thought the detective. All others pay cash.

“Soon as you arrive out there,” LeClair said, “get on the horn. A minute later, a federal judge will telephone building records. I guarantee it. What’s so funny?”

A smiling Decker said, “I was just thinking of the three greatest lies. No offense, but your saying ‘I guarantee it’ sort of set things off in my mind.”

“Oh? What are the three greatest lies?”

“You really want to know?” LeClair waited.

Decker said, “ ‘Your check’s in the mail.’ ‘I won’t come in your mouth.’ ‘Black is beautiful.’ ”

LeClair howled. “Jesus, that’s funny. Got to remember those.” He repeated them quickly, half to himself, half out loud, then said, “Okay, back to business. You’ll be covered out there. I do guarantee it. Hey, man, don’t laugh, I mean it. The phone call from the judge will happen. All you have to do is pick up the plan and toddle on back into Manhattan. Don’t need a platoon for that. One plan, one man.”

LeClair, in his high-back leather chair, began a gentle swing left to right. “Fact: that seating plan, as it now stands, constitutes fraud, a crime punishable by imprisonment Talking about tax fraud, stock fraud. Fact: the IRS and the state tax people aren’t the only ones in the dark about those five hundred missing seats. Bet you the banks who went for part of the building costs don’t know. Bet you the entertainers booked in there on a piece of the gross don’t know. More fraud. Mr. Manfred, you get me that seating plan and I’ve got Constantine Pangalos in a tight grip about the scrotum. And I have lapsed Hebrew Mr. Livingston Quarrels as well.”

LeClair leaned forward, hands folded on a desk totally cleared of papers, topped by a spotless blotter. It was, Decker knew, a sign of an organized and exact mind. The old Prussian heritage.

“As Molise’s attorneys of record,” said LeClair, “our boys will have to take the weight. Oh, they’ll have a choice: they can spend time in a federal penitentiary, which as you know is hard time indeed. Or they can give me Paul Molise and Management Systems Consultants. What we have here, Mr. Manfred, are dominos stacked neatly in a row. Knock down one, they all fall. And Senator Terry Dent? Icing on the cake.”

In the three days since LeClair had learned about the suspect seating plan he had also learned that Dent had paved the way for the building of the arena. Permits, the elimination of red tape, bank loans at favorable interest rates. The senator’s influence had smoothed the way, and LeClair guessed that when the task force dug deep enough they would find that Dent was probably a silent partner in one of the companies fronting for Molise and had points in the auditorium. Dent was known to be greedy.

Decker had told LeClair about the false seating plan before the prosecutor had gone to Washington for a special weekend with the attorney general. By the time LeClair passed the information on, it had become the biggest breakthrough to date in the government’s case against Management Systems Consultants. LeClair’s chances for the deputy-attorney spot had never been better.

On his own, Decker had learned what LeClair did to those he considered less than helpful to his career, such as DeMain and Benitez, the two cops who had been dropped from the task force.

DeMain, in his forties, had been forced into an early retirement. Budget cutbacks, he had been told. Early retirement meant only a partial pension for a cop who had been wounded six times and had more citations for bravery than he could count. Benitez, who had hoped to become one of the few Puerto Rican lieutenants in the NYPD, learned that his name had slipped from the top of the list of those eligible for the lieutenant’s examination to the bottom. He had been an outstanding officer until assigned to LeClair’s task force. Now, it would be at least three years before he could hope to move back up the list.

It did not pay to run afoul of Chocolate Chuck.

LeClair said to Decker, “Tomorrow when you go out to Long Island, you’ll be prepared. Warrants, papers, whatever I think you need. If the judge does his stuff you probably won’t need to use them. Seems to me we can draw blood with this one. We’re doing it right, the three of us. You, me, Mrs. Raymond. Mr. Manfred, you make sure you give that woman what she needs.”

LeClair leered.

“And she still doesn’t know you’re a cop?” he continued.

Decker closed his eyes. “No.”

“Mr. Manfred, you are one silver-tongued devil.” LeClair leaned back in his chair, his steely gaze taking in all of the detective. “You’re good at hiding yourself from people. Yes, sir, that is one thing you are good at.”

Before driving out to Long Island, Decker had spent the night with Michi at her apartment. Yes, he had hidden a part of himself from her, the part that was Romaine. Blame that on LeClair. Tonight Decker was going to be happy no matter what the cost, no matter how hard the effort. Nothing was going to spoil this evening with Michi.

She cooked
soba,
buckwheat noodles, and they ate them the Japanese way, noisily drawing them in through the mouth and laughing. There was
unagi,
eel filleted and cut into strips, then dipped in sauce, charcoal broiled and served on vinegared rice balls. Since a Japanese cook was judged by her ability to make soup—Japanese soup was considered an art—Decker made a point of praising Michi’s clear soup of trefoil, chicken balls and lemon peel shaped as oak leaves. Rice was served in
meoto-jawan,
matching bowls which were part of the concept of paired items—chopsticks, bedding, teacups—to be used by husband and wife. It was a custom Decker and Michi had shared in Saigon, where she had brought matching teacups for the two of them. Decker still had the cups at home.

The meal took an exciting turn with the serving of
fugu,
a puffed-up black fish, hideously ugly and potentially fatal. Eaten raw, its glands contain a powerful poison, so the utmost care has to be exercised in removing it from the meat. But
fugu
is delicious; its meat has a pearly white color and tonight Michi had sliced it extra thin and arranged it in a beautiful arabesque on blue and white porcelain plates, all set on a red and black lacquered tray. The entire presentation was so beautiful that Decker was reluctant to touch it.