Giri (24 page)

“Hey, I just remembered. My husband’s an artist and he’s having his first New York exhibition tonight. Manny’s supposed to try and make it to the show. We’re expecting critics from a couple of newspapers to be there. This is the only thing’s been on my mind all day, that show of his.”

Kanai thought of Yoshi. “You sound very proud of your husband.”

“Proud? I’m ’bout to burst let me tell you. That man’s suffered so much to get to this night. He’s had his heart broken so many times by the art world, I don’t know how he kept going on. Friend of ours, Mr. Kotlowitz, he got Henri next to the gallery people and they liked his work and next thing you know, wham, we got the show. Look, if Manny doesn’t call in, I still might see him at the show. Damn, it’s almost five-thirty and I should be at the gallery by six-thirty.”

She was happy and reached out to include him in that happiness. “Mr. Kanai, I hope you won’t think me pushy or anything, but would you like to attend Henri’s exhibition? Frankly, we need all the bodies we can get, ’cause he’s not known, not yet anyway. It’s at the Cleveland Gallery on East Fifty-seventh Street. You might run into Manny over there. Besides, if I say so myself, my husband’s a damn good artist”

Kanai thought of Yoshi, of what he might have become.

The Japanese said softly, “Your husband is a most fortunate man to have someone who believes in him as you do. I would be most honored to attend.”

“Hey, all right.” She laughed. “Be an invitation for you at the door. Looking forward to seeing you there.”

After hanging up, Kanai again looked at the wedding photograph of Yoko and Yoshi. An impulse, of course, his attending the woman’s show. He should have shown this sort of kindness to Yoshi. Let this expiate some of his guilt. Let it be seen by Yoshi’s spirit as a humble offering begging forgiveness from a prisoner of his
karma,
fate.

There was another reason for attending the show: to find the effect of Decker-san, Baksted’s murder and Marybelle Corporation on Murakami. Kanai had his duty and Decker had a role to play in it.

Decker-san the
karateka. Hai.
He would be able to put himself into the mind of the madman committing these ritual murders, the madman who himself was a
karateka.
Kanai knew that the murders were the work of one man. A severe beating, followed by rape, followed by what appeared to be a single killing blow.

Hai.
The death of one woman in a city would not indicate a pattern and obviously the killer knew this, for why would he move from one city to another. Two women killed this way in the same city would also be difficult to connect. Perhaps impossible.

Kanai had given the killer a name.
Kaishaku.
A very special executioner. Decker-san would understand. But would he act? Could he get others to act before more women were brutalized? Kanai, like all Japanese, was appalled at the high incidence of crime in America. Yoko’s death at the hands of someone like the
kaishaku
would have destroyed him.

The Japanese picked out three Baksted murder clippings with the Ocean City murder tagged onto the end and placed them inside his suit jacket. Kanai wondered if Decker or any one man could deal with this killer.

A
S USHIRO KAUAI PREPARED
to leave his office for the Cleveland Gallery, Paul Molise used an attaché case to push against the revolving door of his Park Avenue office building and outside into the frozen December darkness. Pausing, he placed a copy of the Wall Street
Journal
under one arm, then used the free hand to turn up his coat collar. Shoulders hunched, he joined the crowds moving toward the corner. An extended working day and the lack of any food since a quick lunchtime sandwich only aggravated his anger at what had happened today at the arena. Connie Pangalos. Sal Buscaglia. Assholes, both of them.

Aldo, Molise’s chauffeur-bodyguard, left the warmth of the limousine to hurry around the car and open a back door. He didn’t have to be told that Molise was in a shitty mood; you could see that from the way he walked. Wisely, Aldo decided to say nothing, drive carefully and pray that he didn’t get a ticket on the way to New Jersey.

As he walked toward the car, Molise slapped his thigh with his folded newspaper. That business out on Long Island today with the task force cop and Buscaglia’s security guards wasn’t just wrong; it was dumb. Hadn’t been Buscaglia’s idea, that’s for sure. He did what he was told, no more, no less. Give him money to blow at the track or on some blonde with tits like dirigibles and he was happy.

As for Livingston Quarrels, the closet Jew’s biggest fight was trying to get his wife into the Junior League and his daughter to be satisfied with owning two jumping horses instead of three. Today’s trouble on Long Island had been caused by Constantine Pangalos, who had come unglued at the thought of making license plates in some federal prison. Schmuck. Of all people, Pangalos should have known better.

So Decker gets the seating plan. So what. There were ways of dealing with that. That’s why Sparrowhawk and Management Systems Consultants were around, to find out who in law enforcement wanted a fat-paying job in private security after retirement.

People like Manny Decker had to be finessed. You let him think he’s winning, then you show him that all along he had only been spinning his wheels in place. You do this by using money, brains, connections. Instead, Pangalos fucked up and the seating plan, along with Buscaglia, was down at Federal Plaza in the hands of the ambitious Charles LeClair.

The trouble out at the arena had resulted in a quick meeting in the back of a Mulberry Street social club in Little Italy among Molise, his father the don, and Giovanni Gran Sasso, Johnny Sass, the
consigliere,
the adviser. A very nervous Constantine Pangalos was there too, forced to sit in the bare room and remain silent while the three Sicilians spoke in Italian and made decisions about the rest of his life.

After the Italians had deliberated among themselves they told Pangalos that he had acted stupidly, and from now on was to do nothing until they told him to. Buscaglia knew better than to open his mouth. The four security guards, each of whom had been hurt, would file countercharges against Decker, causing any charge against Buscaglia to eventually be dropped.

“When you sleep, you sleep for you,” Johnny Sass told Pangalos. “But when you work, you work for us. Teeth placed before the tongue gives good advice. That’s an Italian saying. It means you shut your mouth, you never make a mistake.”

As for who would take the blame for the phony seating plans, that would be Pangalos and Quarrels, the Greek and the Jew. If arrested, they would have the best lawyers and the don guaranteed that the case would appear before the correct judge. Files would be stolen, destroyed or doctored to help their case. Leave that to Sparrowhawk and MSC.

With the old don watching, Johnny Sass had placed his face nose to nose with Pangalos and told him not to make any more trouble. The Greek, looking as if he’d just eaten a dead rat, had looked away. He had been sentenced and he knew death was not far away. Johnny Sass had never liked Pangalos. As a prosecutor he had sentenced some of the
consigliere
’s friends and hounded others.

At the corner near Molise’s limousine a Santa Claus rang a bell to encourage people to drop money inside a black kettle suspended from a wooden tripod. In his other hand he held a tape recorder playing tinny Christmas carols. Molise felt like pissing in the kettle. First week in December and Santa’s already on the street with his hand in your pocket. Before you knew it there would be carols in July.

He stepped inside the car, and Aldo slammed the door behind him and then walked out into the street to enter the car on the driver’s side. Molise wondered if it might not be better to skip dinner and meet his wife at his daughter’s school, where she was to perform in a dance recital; at least he could catch part of it. He wondered if Tricia might grow up to become a professional ballerina. Now that would be something.

These thoughts relaxed him. Eyes closed, he leaned back in his seat. And never saw Aldo die.

A slim figure in dark clothing, face hidden by floppy hat, dark glasses and a scarf, hands in the sleeves of a fur coat, detached itself from the crowd crossing the street in front of the parked limousine and walked up to the open window on the driver’s side. After looking to make sure no one was watching, the figure removed one hand from a sleeve, reached through the open window and slit Aldo’s throat with a knife. A
kai-ken.

A quick shove and the dying chauffeur-bodyguard was down on the front seat and out of sight.

Hark the herald angels sing. Glory to the newborn king.

The figure withdrew both hands from inside the limousine, pocketed the wet knife and looked around. No one was watching.

Molise, eyes closed, felt a rush of cold air as the door opened and someone slipped into the back beside him.
What the fuck.
He frowned. Aldo should have been more alert.

Michi removed her scarf, letting him see her face. Then she removed the floppy hat she wore and Molise saw the
hachimaki,
the headband with the characters for
Jinrai Butai
and a red circle that symbolized the rising sun, the headband that had belonged to her father.

Molise said, “Look, I’m in a hurry to get home. What do you want? Did Dorian send you here? Is that it?”

Michi said, “
Kataki-uchi
.”

“Lady, I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about
Kataki
what?”

“Measure for measure. Retaliation.”

Molise leaned toward the front. “Hey, Aldo, get rid of this crazy bitch, will you? I really don’t have the time—”

Michi, seated to Molise’s left, drove the edge of a booted foot into his ankle, causing him to cry out and lean down toward the pain. As he did, Michi bent over him, arm extended overhead, fist clenched, then brought her elbow straight down, striking Molise behind the ear and driving him to the car floor.

The pain split his skull and he wondered what the fuck she had hit him with. He fought to stay conscious, tried to rise, to grab the seat and pull himself into a sitting position, but he couldn’t. The Jap woman was sitting on his chest, her knees pressing down on his biceps. Crazy bitch. What had he ever done to her?

God and sinners reconciled.

No one passing by the parked limousine stopped to look through the tinted windows. In any case, Michi and Molise were out of sight, on the floor and in the darkness of the back seat.

Kataki-uchi.
Justice. Revenge. And by her hand. Manny’s American justice would not satisfy Michi’s ancestors.

Reaching down to her boot top, Michi pulled out a steel needle, four and a half inches long, its point sharp enough to draw blood by the merest touch, and, squeezing it with both fists, placed the point under Molise’s jaw, hesitated only for a second, then drove the needle through his jaw, tongue and into the roof of his mouth. He shivered, groaned, tried to throw her off and failed.

God, the pain. He struggled, but she was more than a match for him now. The blow behind the ear had weakened him and the pain in his mouth and head terrified him.
The needle.
One sound and he would rip his tongue in half.

There was another needle in her hand and she held it close to his face so that he could see it. Then she shoved it through his right eye and into his brain and he made a sound, sending blood pouring from his mouth. He had to throw her off, but it was getting dark and he had no strength. His mouth was filled with his own blood and he wanted to swallow but that meant more pain because of the needle piercing his tongue.

He never saw the third needle, but he felt it.

In his left eye, into his brain. He groaned, stiffened and relaxed.

And died.

Michi removed the blood-wet needles, placed them in the pocket of her fur coat and sat back on the seat, eyes on Paul Molise. She whispered their names—her father, mother, sister, closed her eyes, bowed her head and remembered that you could never live under the same sky with someone who had done you a wrong.
Ren-chi-shin,
the sense of shame, could only be removed when those who had committed the wrong had been removed from under that sky. Blood must be washed with blood.

She put on her hat, covered her face once more, stepped from the limousine on the traffic side and in seconds was swallowed up by the crowd.

D
ECKER BLEW GENTLY ON
a
shakuhachi,
a wooden flute given to him by Michi, who clung to his arm as they stood in the Japanese Garden, part of the fifty-acre Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. The two were in front of the Cascades, five waterfalls over echo caverns designed to intensify the sound of falling water. Surrounding the waterfalls and miniaturized landscape were forest-sized pine trees, hills and a lake narrowed and shaped to reflect shadows and the beauty of the
niwa,
the Japanese landscape garden.

Designed in 1914 by famed Japanese landscape architect Takeo Shiota, the Japanese Garden offered an escape into a “mirror of nature.” Decker came here often, and he wanted to share the beauty and tranquillity with Michi, who was leaving tomorrow on a business trip to London, Amsterdam and Paris. She would purchase diamonds, meet prospective buyers and return to New York in approximately ten days. Decker had already begun to miss her.

From the echoing waterfalls they walked in silence to Drum Bridge, gracefully curved and casting a reflection in water so that, combined with the bridge itself, it formed a circular, drumlike image. Steppingstones had been placed in the water to trace the flight of wild geese. When the couple stopped again it was at the
torii,
two logs placed horizontally on top of two pillars to form an archway marking the presence of a nearby Shinto shrine. The shrine was located in a pine wood on a hill behind the
torii
and was made of redwood and held together by wooden pins instead of nails. Decker had never gone inside. He had visited similar shrines in Tokyo with Michi and knew that the inside would be plain and empty, in keeping with Shinto’s simplicity.