Giri (22 page)

In Japan the appeal of
fugu
lay in its danger. One who had eaten it became a member of a mysterious and exotic cult. Lists were kept of the famous who had died while dining on
fugu.

It occurred to Decker that Michi might be testing him, to see if he would step deeper into her world.

Michi, kneeling on the floor to Decker’s left, took a piece of the fish and, with her eyes on the detective, slowly ate it Decker reached for a paper-thin slice, hesitated a second, then put it in his mouth. Salty. But delicious. His heart was pounding, but he chewed and swallowed. Michi ate a second piece. Decker, trusting her, loving her, did the same. Without knowing what the test was, he knew he had passed it because Michi took his hand and smiled so sweetly at him that he wanted to take her in his arms and hold her forever.

He sipped Suntory, the smoky Japanese whiskey. “After this,” he said, “tomorrow won’t seem so dangerous.”

“Tomorrow?”

He told her about Paul Molise’s new arena and its phony seating plan.

“You will arrest Molise?” she said.

“First we grab his lawyers—they put the plan together—and we hold their feet to the fire. That’s LeClair’s job and he’s good at it. Lawyers live soft lives. They don’t want to go to prison. Hey, one day in jail’s enough. Sometimes when we want to make a suspect talk, we pop him on a Friday—”

“Pop?”

“Arrest.”

“I see.”

“We arrest him on a Friday, late on a Friday, then he’ll have to stay in jail for the weekend. Courts are closed on the weekend, so bail can’t be set. Now that’s just two days and three nights, and you know by Monday our suspect’s ready to tell us anything we want to know. That’s how bad jail can be.”

Michi held her cup while Decker poured sake for her. She said, “Paul Molise has managed to avoid your American jails. And even if he is judged to be a criminal, he has powerful friends. You told me of Senator Dent and I know of the American military and intelligence people who were his friends in Saigon. Do you honestly believe anything bad will happen to him?”

Decker sighed. “We can only try. Can’t do any more than that.” He put down his whiskey, took her hand in his and kissed the palm. “I tried the
fugu
tonight because of you.”

“I know.” She seemed pleased.

And he noticed that she almost,
almost
said more. Was she going to tell him about the six years she had spent apart from him? She turned away and her eyes glazed over, as if looking back, remembering.

Decker said, “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but it was no mistake to have loved you. Please tell me: am I fooling myself?”

She looked at him. There was a sadness in her face, but the smile came and she said, “No. From my heart I tell you this.”

Her eyes shimmered behind tears and she took his hand and placed it on her breast, over her heart. “
Shinju
,” she whispered.

Shinju:
if the heart were to be cut open, only her love and devotion for him would be found there. The word also referred to a double suicide by lovers, who sometimes used a red cord to tie themselves together at the waist before leaping into the sea.

Michi, however, was not speaking of death. She was telling Decker that he was truly loved.

“
Shinju
,” she repeated. He leaned over and kissed her tears and then her mouth before she could say more.

On Long Island, Decker had followed LeClair’s plan exactly. He arrived in the town around lunchtime, giving him fewer clerks to deal with. Then he called LeClair and waited ten minutes before appearing at the building that housed seating plans and similar records. Inside, almost everyone was out to lunch. The clerk in charge was sufficiently intimidated by a telephone call from a federal judge to hand the plan over to Decker without a fuss. The detective put it in a brown manila envelope, folded it twice and placed it inside his overcoat.

A chunky woman in sequin-studded eyeglasses and a floor-length sheared beaver coat entered the office as Decker was leaving. The clerk rushed to her, clutching one of her ample arms, and with one eye on the departing Decker, began whispering in the woman’s ear.

The chunky woman chewed her thin bottom lip and fingered her gaudy eyeglasses while impatiently waiting for the phone to ring at the other end. She gripped the receiver with a meaty hand. Ring, goddamn it. Dimitrios was a schmuck to have handed over that seating plan, detective or no detective. There would be hell to pay over at the arena. She knew that for sure.

“Hello, who is this?”

“Livingston Quarrels.”

“Thank God. Just the man I want to talk to. This is Mrs. Kuhn over at building records. Something you should know about.”

Minutes later Quarrels dialed Constantine Pangalos in Manhattan.

“I don’t believe it,” the ex-prosecutor said. “What a bunch of dipshits you got out there. That plan can put us all in the toilet, you know that, don’t you?”

Quarrels left his desk in the arena office, walked to the window and looked out at the parking lot. “Connie, I didn’t
—”

“Yeah, yeah. You didn’t, I didn’t, nobody did it. The fucking elves in the fucking forest fucking did it. Jesus.”

“Connie
—”

“Moskowitz, do me a favor and stop whining. I’m trying to think.”

Moskowitz. Pangalos only called Quarrels by his old name when he was pissed.

At the window Quarrels said, “Hey, wait a minute. There’s a guy out there in the parking lot. He’s looking up at the building.” The lawyer stepped to the side and out of sight. Gripping the receiver with both hands he whispered, “You think it’s him, the guy who took the seating plan?”

“Jesus you’re there and I’m here. What am I, a goddamn psychic? What’s the guy look like?”

Quarrels peered out again. “Hard to tell. Hat pulled down low. Hey, the wind just blew his hat off and he’s chasing it. Got a mustache, slim
—”

“Seven to five it’s Decker. Phone call from a federal judge, and a New York detective shows up flashing warrants. That’s task force clout and a task force detective sergeant with a mustache means Decker. Shit, we can’t let him walk away with that seating plan. Look, is Buscaglia still around?”

“Yes. He’s been here since early this morning with the new security guards from MSC. He’s showing them around the arena. Also he and I have to work out the guards’ pension deal.”

“Let Buscaglia figure out how much he’s going to steal from the pension fund and the union dues some other time. Right now that ginzo’s going to earn his money. Get him to the phone. I want that goddamn plan back.”

There was sweat on Quarrel’s upper lip. “Connie, the guy out in the parking lot is a cop. We can’t
—”

“Moskowitz, shut the fuck up before I piss on the phone and it runs into your mouth. You want to do time in a federal pen for fraud?”

In the parking lot Decker finally caught up to his hat, brushed snow from it, then jammed it back on his head and held it there with one hand. Time to leave before the wind blew the Mercedes away. The car, less than two years old and containing a mobile phone, had been confiscated from a Colombian cocaine dealer by federal narcotics agents. Any vehicle used to transport illicit drugs—car, private plane, yacht, motorbike, even skateboards and roller skates—became the property of the federal government.

In the Mercedes, Decker turned on the heater and blew into his gloved hands. When the car felt warmer he switched on the ignition and heard the powerful motor rumble, but before he could back out of his parking spot two cars sped out of nowhere to block his way.

Doors opened, men sped toward Decker. Two had guns.

One, in a red cap and sheepskin jacket, tapped on Decker’s window with the butt of a .357 Magnum. “Fingers on the head,” he said. “You do anything else and I’ll fire one warning shot through your stupid forehead.”

Decker looked to his right. The second gun carrier, bearded, stocky, knelt down and held a .22 in a two-handed grip. He was aiming at Decker’s right ear.

“Hey, asshole,” said Red Cap. “I said outta there.”

“I’m a cop. My badge is in my inside jacket pocket. I have federal warrants—”

“You got trouble is what you got.” He leveled the Magnum at Decker’s left temple.

The detective used one hand. Opened the door slowly, gently easing the door the rest of the way with one foot. Decker got out, hands on his head.

Red Cap stepped back, gun still aimed at Decker’s head. “Get his piece.”

A third man, in a blue down vest and a checkered hunting cap, walked up to Decker, yanked his overcoat and his suit jacket open, popping all the buttons, and removed the detective’s .38 Smith & Wesson. He pocketed it and stepped back.

Red Cap stuffed the Magnum into his jeans. “Let’s have it, numb nuts, and you can make it as hard on yourself as you want.”

Decker, hands crushing the hat on his head, saw no reason to play dumb. He had been spotted back at the records building; the four goons breathing steam in his face knew what they were looking for.

“Right hand overcoat pocket,” he said.

Red Cap curled his lips. He had planned on dealing with a liar, not someone who gave in so easily and spoiled the fun. But they’d get around to the fun in a minute or two. He stepped forward, found the envelope, stepped back. A peek told him the seating plan was inside. Satisfied, he folded the envelope in haphazard fashion and jammed it into a jacket pocket. From another pocket Red Cap moved a hand radio, extended the antenna and flicked the
on
switch. He turned toward the arena.

Static. Then, “Frank here. Got him. Over.”

“Good.” A male voice through the static. “The package?”

Frank tapped his jacket pocket. “Safe and sound. Over.”

Through the crackling the voice came back hard, detached, strictly business. “You know what to do. Make it look good.”

“Gotcha. Over and out.”

Frank pushed the antenna down and tucked the radio back in his pocket. When he stepped closer to Decker, the other three followed, tightening the semicircle in front of the detective, whose back was to the Mercedes. Frank’s hand went up in a stop signal, and the four halted. “Put away the gun, Richie. Man said make it look good, not crazy. Let’s not draw any more attention to this thing than we have to.”

The gun, of course, had made all the difference. Still, the expression on Decker’s face never changed when it disappeared. He took a deep breath, held it for a count of three, then exhaled slowly through his nose.

Ready.

Frank the Red Cap pulled a pair of black leather gloves from a back pocket of his jeans and put them on, taking time to admire one clenched fist. “Shame on you, detective sergeant who-gives-a-shit. Getting yourself mugged in a quiet little town like we got here. Sad. Somebody steals your gun, badge, wallet, car. Leaves you lying here in the parking lot. We were in the arena the whole time it happened. Got witnesses. We seen the guys who did it, though. Crazy teenagers. By the time we run over here to help, shit, it was too late. The kids had split. Worst thing is we can’t make no positive ID of the perpetrators. You know how it is. People will get hot and bothered over this for two minutes, then they won’t think about it no more. I mean it’s sad, but what the fuck can you do?”

A smirking Frank turned to look at his team and then back at Decker, who, hands still on his head, kicked him in the balls with casual contempt, his foot, knee and thigh muscle driving deep into the soft place, leaving Frank popeyed and doubled over in pain.

In one motion Decker whipped off his hat and backhanded it into the face of one bearded man, temporarily stopping him, then stepped behind the open door of the Mercedes and slammed it into the man in the hunting cap, who had charged him. Hunting Cap crashed into the Mercedes and slumped to the ground with a broken wrist and four broken fingers. Of the two remaining attackers, both bearded, the larger one rushed Decker, slipped in the snow, but reached out to catch the detective in a bear hug and pin his arms to his sides. There was the smell of beer and peppermint about the attacker. “Cocksucker. Your ass, now.”

Decker kneed him low, and when the man released his grip Decker grabbed his head with both hands and pulled it down on his raised knee, shattering nose, teeth, jaw. His beard bright with his own blood, the man fell to the ground, writhing and groaning.

One more. A second bearded man. He tapped his gloved palm with a tire iron and circled to his right, eyes on Decker. The detective slowly eased out of his overcoat, his gaze fixed on the last man.

The bearded man stopped. His eyes flicked to the three on the ground; the one with damaged hands sat up, his back against the Mercedes, hands resting on his thighs. Red Cap attempted to crawl. A third lay still. Tire Iron hadn’t made up his mind yet. Go for it. Or run. Decker inched forward, mindful of the snow.
Zanshin.
Concentration. Decker’s eyes bore into the man with the tire iron.

Decker tossed his overcoat at him. It landed, covering the man’s head and shoulders and he cried out under it, his arms flailing.

Decker was on him.
Kiai.
Decker’s yell echoed across the empty parking lot, across water white with floating chunks of ice, across a blue and cloudless sky. As he yelled he attacked the lump under the coat that was Tire Iron’s head. Two punches, left-right, arms extended, straight bone driving into the skull, as Decker struck from a crouch, gloved fists clenched to a white-knuckle tightness, ankles and thighs squeezed in a granitelike stance.

Absolute concentration.

All mental, emotional and physical resources collected and delivered to the point of impact.

The result was maximum force.

Tire Iron dropped backward, arms flung wide, head and shoulders still wrapped in Decker’s overcoat. He lay inert, a foot drawn up close to his groin and one hand near Red Cap Frank’s rear.

Decker, alert, calm, looked around. Four men down, no one else coming out of the arena. Fighting outside of a dojo or tournament rarely gave him satisfaction. Certainly Decker would have preferred to talk his way out of fighting. Given the chance, he would have even backed down. There was no glory in fighting untrained men.