Kage (17 page)

you on the first plane out of here.”

I nodded in acknowledgment and headed toward the door.

It was slightly ajar.

“That’s funny,’ I said, “I would have sworn I locked it.”

Charlie pushed me gently aside. “These doors are self-clos-

ing,” he commented quietly. He reached down and took a small

handgun from an ankle holster and pushed the door back into

the room. A small piece of wood had been wedged in the bot-

tom of the jam.

I looked at him questioningly, but he shook his head and

did a quick sweep of the room. I looked around, but everything

seemed fine. Charlie moved quietly into the other rooms, check-

ing closets and corners. He called to me from the bedroom.

He was standing there, looking at the wall above the bed.

Some characters had been spray painted there. And driven

into the wood of the headboard was a small throwing star, the

archaic weapon of the
ninja.
The points that weren’t embedded

in the wood gleamed as if they had been recently sharpened.

My laptop lay on the bed, the screen up as if it had just recently

been used. When I had left for the meeting, the computer had

been on the desk.

“Don’t touch anything,” he said, but it was unnecessary—

I’d been at crime scenes before. I just stood there looking at

things, picking up details, and trying to make sense out of it.

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Kage

He nodded at the wall. “Can you make that out?”

“Sure,” I nodded. “It’s crude, but it’s legible.”

“And…” he prompted.

Two characters, one below the other. “
Okuden
,” I read.

“And?” he said again, with a trace of impatience.

“It refers to hidden teachings,” I told him. “In the martial

arts world there are layers to what students get taught. The

okuden
are the special secrets of your teacher and not to be

revealed to outsiders…”

Even as I said it, I began making the connections.

“I’ve seen these things before,” Charlie commented, point-

ing to the throwing star. “Kung fu, right?”

I smiled. “It’s a
shuriken.
A throwing star. Pretty common

in various arts.”

“They all have the little design in the center?”

“No,” I sighed. Etched in the center of the star was a small

diamond. A diamond, the
kongo
symbol that Eliot Westmann

claimed was the mark of the followers of Inari-sama’s secret sect

in Hokkaido.

“You still think Lori’s jerking your chain?” Charlie asked

me quietly.

In fact, I didn’t know what to think. After the cops arrived

and checked things out, I was left to puzzle over recent events.

Roy moved me to another room, this one small and on the

third floor of the main building, and also informed me that I

was scheduled for a mid-day flight out of Arizona the next day.

He appeared deeply concerned by the strange chain of events. I

imagined that he wasn’t so much worried about what happened

to me, since I was on his boss’s black list, as he was upset about

the fact that someone had defaced hotel property in one of

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John Donohue

their more elegant suites.

I sat down in my little room for a while, staring at the walls.

After a time, I moved out to the postage-stamp sized balcony.

There was a white plastic chair and wobbly table, tangible evi-

dence of how far I had fallen in Lori Westmann’s estimation. I

gazed out over the resort property, the winding paths and roof-

tops, the lush deep green of grass and the bright blossoms of

flowering plants. I lifted my eyes higher and into the rougher,

less forgiving ground of the distant desert. We try so hard to

make our worlds pleasant and tidy.

I sighed, turned around, and brought my laptop out to

begin the chore of writing a report. But it wouldn’t boot up. I

tried a few different things, but got the same result.
Great. Now

I’ll have to do it from memory.

I made a call to the business center and the folks there were

more than happy to take a look at the computer. The word of

my fall from grace had obviously not percolated down to the

troops. I wandered down to the main reception center, taking

care to make sure my door was securely locked. I was alert to

the possible presence of danger. The most alarming thing I saw

was an obese woman in a bright, expansively flowered bath-

ing suit. She was alone in the deep blue of the pool, paddling

slowly with the odd, languid grace that heavy people display in

the water.

They ran a check on my computer. All the components

were working.

“So what’s the deal?” I asked the tech.

“It’s been wiped,” he told me matter of factly. He was prob-

ably still in college, reed thin, with a spiky hairdo.

“Wiped?” I said.

“Sure,” he shrugged. “The hard drive’s been wiped out.”

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Kage

“And the data?” I pressed him.

“Gone.” He saw my expression. “I can reformat the drive

for you. It’ll take a while, but you’ll be able to use it again.”

“How’s something like this happen?”

“Pretty easy,” he explained. “All you need is a fairly good mag-

net. You wave it across the drive and it scrambles everything.”

I had wondered why the laptop was left on my bed. If the

point of the break in was to warn me about discovering old

secrets from Westmann’s work, then someone had to worry

that there might be information on the computer I was using.

I thought about the odd juxtaposition of things: a crude,

scrawled warning in Japanese characters on the wall, the more

sinister message of the
shuriken
’s point driven deep into a wood

frame above the place where I lay, and now the destruction of

my notes. As if to say that the revelation of secrets begun by

Westmann so many years ago should finally be put to an end.

It was creepy. But something about it bothered me: The lore

of Japanese assassins is replete with various types of exotic equip-

ment: blowguns, blades, smoke bombs. Westmann’s books had

described a sect of warrior monks armed with the typical set of

Japanese weapons. As far as I could remember, I don’t think his

ninja-
like
assassins were equipped with computer-destroying

magnets.

I spent a few hours in the business center, hogging the use of

one of their computers. I wrote down what I could, padding my

text with information and sources I could pul from the Internet.

The advanced education I had received while earning a Ph.D.

has almost no useful application in the real world. But after years

of graduate school, one thing I can do is write a book report.

I printed the report out and delivered it to the Dragon Lady.

Then I took a ride out to Hasegawa’s
dojo
to say goodbye. Steve

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John Donohue

Hasegawa was puttering around the empty space, sweeping the

mats in preparation for the evening’s class, and he seemed gen-

uinely sad to learn that I wasn’t going to be around any more.

“It was good training with you, Burke,” he said and shook

my hand. “The students will miss you.”

I shrugged the compliment off. “All good things come to

an end,” I said.

Steve nodded sadly. “Sure.” He looked down at his feet,

but I don’t think that was what he was seeing. I wondered for a

moment whether he was thinking of his father, once a martial

artist of accomplishment and now a prisoner in his own body.

Then he looked up, back in the moment, and summoned up a

smile. He tapped the side of his head with the heel of his palm

in mock surprise. “But hey, I’m forgetting my
reigi.”

Etiquette. It’s part and parcel of training. He rummaged

around in his desk drawer and drew out a small folded piece

of cloth wrapped in cellophane. It was a
tenegui,
a small cotton

towel used in the martial arts for a variety of things. It’s custom-

ary when visiting other
dojo
for people to exchange them, since

each school has
tenegui
made in different colors embodying dif-

ferent slogans representative of their unique character.

I accepted it with two hands in a gesture of respect. “I have

nothing for you in return,” I admitted, “except my thanks.”

The
tenegui
was yellow, with crimson calligraphy. The color

scheme echoed the state flag of Arizona, but the sentiment

written upon it was the same slogan that guided the students in

the
dojo
of the Hasegawas.

Steve shrugged and smiled. “I know you like the motto,” he

commented.

“Relentless as fire,” I recited.

He nodded. “Real old-time hard core, Burke.” But his tone

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Kage

led me to believe he had more to say.

“And?”

“You know what’s really relentless as fire, Burke?” I shook

my head no. “Life,” he said simply, and turned back to cleaning

the mats.

When I returned to the hotel, Charlie Fiorella was waiting

for me. I barely got the car parked before he emerged from the

shade of the front portico of the hotel reception area.

“Hi Charlie,” I said brightly enough, but then I registered

his serious mood.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said grimly. He looked

slightly disheveled, and I noticed a smudge or two on his sport

coat.What’s up?”

He didn’t answer me directly. “Where have you been for the

last few hours?” he asked.

“Here, for the most part,” I said, puzzled.

“Witnesses?”

“Sure, I was in the business center.” I didn’t like the direc-

tion of his line of questions, but I liked Charlie and was willing

to give him the benefit of the doubt.

He nodded at the car. “And now?”

“I took a drive out to the martial arts school I was training

at to say good bye.”

“Can it be confirmed?”

I nodded in the affirmative. The brisk, focused series of

questions was familiar: it was something I had seen my brother

Micky do any number of times as he interrogated people who

might or might not be suspects in a criminal investigation.

My responses seemed to reassure Charlie; his face relaxed

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John Donohue

somewhat, and he took me by the arm and guided me along

the shaded walk so we’d be out of earshot of the staff.

“Look,” he said quietly. “After the meeting I went out to the

old man’s place to get that journal you found. I had a couple of

issues pending in the office, so I didn’t get out there until after

lunch.”

“And?”

“When I got out there, the place had been torched. The

main building was pretty much gutted. And the room you

described had been ransacked.”

“No journal?” I guessed.

“No journal,” he replied. “No nothing. Every single scrap of

paper in Westmann’s library is gone.”

I wasn’t sure that this was a major literary disaster. And I

was pretty sure that Charlie didn’t care much about the loss

of Westmann’s notes either. He wasn’t focusing so much on

what was done; he was more concerned at the fact that it had

taken place at all. It was a turf issue, a pride issue. But mostly,

it was a cop thing. These guys work hard at keeping a messy

world in some semblance of order. Their self-image is inter-

twined with the abilities they display on the job. Someone like

Charlie could deal with any number of disasters and take them

in stride. But this event was personal in an odd sort of way: an

insult to his competence as head of security in the tiny efficient

empire of Lori Westmann.

“Do you have any suspects?” I said.

He squinted at me. “We usually look to disgruntled employ-

ees.” I nodded. “People with an axe to grind.” He saw that

I wasn’t getting it. “Someone,” he said with emphasis, “who

might have recently been called to a meeting and argued with

his employer and whose work was judged to be unsatisfactory.”

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Kage

“Oh,” I replied, finally getting it. “Ah.”

Charlie started to laugh. “Burke, get a grip. I don’t seriously

think you’re a suspect. And, fortunately,” he told me, “you’ve

got an alibi.”

“True, but imagine that my tab at the poolside bar is not

going to be honored anymore.”

“If you’re not packed yet,” he told me in confidence, “I’d

make that a priority.”

The staff didn’t line up to bid me farewell. Charlie had hosed

down Lori Westmann enough to ensure that I wasn’t arrested

on suspicion of arson. I signed the bill with a sense of relief and

prepared to escape. As I settled up, I asked them to retrieve the

package I had deposited in the hotel safe a few days ago. It was

fairly bulky, and when the clerk passed it over the high counter

to me, some of the papers spilled out. The sheets swirled to the

floor. I scrambled to pick them up and get them out of sight.

Anyone who knew his handwriting would recognize the copy I

had made of Eliot Westmann’s journal. I was focused on getting