Linnear 01 - The Ninja (31 page)

He had one more thing to do. He went to the phones again, called Lieutenant Croaker.

‘Yeah.’ The voice was harsh and rushed.

‘Nicholas Linnear, Lieutenant.’

‘What’s up?’

Tm on my way back out to the Island. Justine’s had some kind of accident.’

There was some silence. Nicholas was still checking the vicinity.

‘Croaker, there’s someone following me.’

‘Seeing shadows or just too much TV?’

‘I haven’t seen anyone - yet.’

The singing along the line seemed like a live thing, the only thing to make a sound.

‘How do you know there’s anyone there?’ Croaker asked finally.

‘You might not believe me if I told you.’

‘Try me.’

‘It’s haragei. Bujutsu training. It’s a kind of ESP. A way of looking at the world, sensing things - you might even call it an enlarged sixth sense.’

Nicholas half expected a joke but none seemed forthcoming from the other end of the line.

‘Who do you think it is?’

‘The ninja.’

There was an indrawn breath. ‘Stay there, Linnear, I’ll be right over.’

‘No good. He’d never stay put that long. Besides, he’d smell you a block away.’

‘We can’t just sit tight.’

‘Believe me, it’s the only way. Leave him to me.’

‘To you? Where the hell do you come into it?’

‘I think he’s after Tomkin; Justine, too. That’s why I’m going back out.’

‘Since when did you get interested in Tomkin’s life?’ The voice held a hard edge to it now.

‘Since I’m working for him. Today.’

He heard the indrawn breath in his ear. ‘Shit! Listen, you motherfucker -‘

‘No, you listen, Croaker. You have no idea of what you are up against. No idea at all. I tried to give you a taste of it today at the dojo but I guess it’s true what they say about Westerners: they’re too thick-headed ever to be educated.’

He slammed the phone down and went to join the crowd moving down the stairs to Track 17. His scalp tingled all the while. Just as he left the lower level, he thought he caught a glimpse of a face. It was only a glimpse. A ghostly flash, the pale crescent of a face in semi-profile. Something about it stuck with him. He thought fleetingly of reversing his course but the crush of people was enormous.

Then he was on the train, in a window seat. The feeling was gone. Had it ever been there? He knew better than to ask that question of himself. But why would the ninja be following him?

There had to be an answer but he was unable to come up with a satisfactory one.

There was some jostling in the aisles as last-minute passengers squeezed on board. The air-conditioning cut out for a moment and someone moaned. The lights blinked and then full power came on. Everything appeared as it should be.

The bell rang and the doors slid shut with a sigh, sealing them in. A moment later, the train had started up and the platform began to slide away. He looked out of the window. A black man was sweeping up at the end of the platform. Nothing but patterns of light and shadow dictated by the controlled speed of the train.

Then the city was behind him and he was thinking about Justine. He began to doze, his head against the windowpane.

‘Tickets, please.’

He started awake, his mind filled with that pale crescent of face, the features oddly indistinct as if he were staring up at the moon through a summer night’s mist.

Gelda was laughing. When she laughed her breasts shook, and when her breasts shook, Dare said, she was at her most sensual.

Dare could always make Gelda laugh, which was one of the reasons Gelda enjoyed her. Her body was the other reason.

Dare’s skin was a golden brown all over, deeply tanned with no bikini lines. Perhaps it was the natural colour; Gelda never inquired. She was tall, taller at least than Gelda, who was not a small woman. She was long and lean without being thin or over muscular. She had kinky blonde hair which she wore long. It was quite natural.

Dare’s legs were even longer than Gelda’s. More slender, to be sure, but exquisite just the same. She had small, perfectly round breasts high on her chest, a narrow waist, slender hips. She was boyish and feminine at the same time; there was no touch of the bull in her or in how she dressed. She loved the Old West: the sun-browned masculinity, the fluid musculature of the galloping horse, but most of all she loved the lawlessness.

As Pear had said, this was more pleasure than business.

‘I almost found one this time, G,’ she was saying now. She lay back languidly in the tub; the strong scent of violets was

in the air. Gelda knelt by the side of the tub, working the crystal faucets. Water crashed onto the white porcelain, between Dare’s spread legs, against the thick tangled bush of hair now darkened to the colour of caramel by the moisture. Behind them, on the wall, the stained chaps hung like an effigy waiting for the fire to consume it.

‘But, you know,’ she continued, ‘even when it was about to happen, I didn’t really believe it.’

‘What happened?’ Gelda increased the hot water just a bit. ‘What happened?’ Dare wailed. ‘My wonderful Texan, my great Longhorn, my -idea of the range turned out to be a fag.’ She put her elbows outside the tub, wiggled her ass against the water as it crept up her body. ‘He cried in bed with me; told me women intimidate him.’ She put her head back, closed her eyes, luxuriating in the wet warmth. ‘Oh, I’ll never find one.’ Her eyes flew open, as grey as Gelda’s were topaz. ‘But, you know something, I don’t think I care any more.’ Her voice had lowered to a husky whisper. ‘I’ve got you and there are things in this world that shouldn’t be any realer than that.’ Her arms lifted and she held them out. ‘Come in here, darling. It’s cold outside.’

Gelda stood up, slipped off the peach satin robe which hung from her shoulders. It slid to the tile floor with a sensual whisper and Dare shuddered to see her thus naked before her.

Their hands touched as Gelda stepped into the steaming tub and Dare moved to accommodate her.

‘There’s no one like you,’ Dare whispered. ‘Not anywhere.’ She stroked Gelda’s shoulder, the upper slope of her breast. ‘It wouldn’t make any difference how much you charged.’

Gelda’s fingers stroked the other’s thigh through the water, using just the tips of her long nails. ‘And what,’ she said softly, ‘if I didn’t charge anything at all?’

Dare’s brow wrinkled in a frown and Gelda’s forefinger smoothed the skin. ‘Don’t do that,’ she said.

‘It might have mattered,’ Dare said, ‘in the beginning. Now I don’t suppose it does.’ She shrugged. “The studio gets the bill anyway but even if they didn’t…’ Her wide lips curled up in a smile. ‘I come to see you, darling. It just happens that you cost money. Who cares? It comes in, it goes out. You’re better than

a gram of coke or Russian sable by a long shot.’ Gelda smiled. ‘I suppose that’s a compliment.’ Dare laughed. ‘You know it is.’ She looked around. ‘Where is it?’

Gelda’s fingers continued their stroking, softly but insistently. A muscle high up in Dare’s thigh jumped and she gasped. Gelda knew her pulse rate was rising. “There’s plenty of time, darling. Relax. It’s in a safe place.’ Her fingers stroked the supple flesh. ‘It’ll come out when you’re ready.’

Dare’s head turned, her hands cupped Gelda’s bountiful breasts, her thumbs moving back, and forth against the large nipples, feeling them erect. ‘Uhm,’ she whispered. ‘That’s what I love about you: the duality. The fire and ice, the soft and the strong, the bitch and the little girl.’ ‘I’m only a mirror,’ Gelda murmured.

‘No, that’s not true, not with me you’re not. I know you love it as much as I do. You can fool all the men but with women it’s different. I can tell. You want me as much as I want you.’

Gelda’s nails delicately parted Dare’s nether lips, probing slowly inward, carefully keeping away from the clit. ‘You’re the only woman I’ve wanted this way,’ she said.

Dare’s hips were pumping, setting off the waves which lapped at the sides of the tub. They were their own universe. The moon’s transit, setting off a series of tidal waves.

Gelda worked her other hand around underneath Dare’s buttocks, stroking the cleft.

‘Oh; oh, oh !’ Dare twisted her upper torso, began to suck on Gelda’s nipples. ‘Ahhh!’ The breasts popped out, coated with saliva. ‘When I’m filming, I lie in bed at night and think of you. I masturbate while I think of your big breasts, your long legs, your wide cunt. Oh, my God!’ She clutched at Gelda’s shoulder as she felt the first friction against her clit,. ‘Oh, now, now, now!’

Gelda reached her hand over the side of the tub, brought the Remington into full view. Dare’s eyes were round and luminous, clouded with lust. ‘Let me,’ she whispered throatily and Gelda let her lick the opening of the barrel. ‘Oh, more!’ But Gelda had pulled it away and, holding Dare down as she began to

struggle slowly, so slowly, she inserted the end between the lips of her vagina. ‘Ahhh!’ Dare arched her hips upwards” and the barrel slid into her, all the way, until the hard protrusion of the hammer mashed against her clit. Gelda needed only to waggle the Remington back and forth twice before she felt the oncoming spasms of delight in Dare. She waited, holding on, licking at her hard nipples as she soared up the orgasmic curve. Dare’s body was superbly responsive and she could accurately gauge when she would hit the peak.

Dare convulsed upwards, breaking at last Gelda’s hold on her, and as she did so Gelda pulled the trigger. Once. Twice. Six times. And with each shot, Dare cried out as the air-propelled jets of hot water inundated her.

The bathroom was awash in water. Dare shuddered as if with the ague. She wrapped her arms around Gelda, her lips between her breasts, whispered, ‘Leave it in, leave it in.” Her eyelids fluttered. ‘Oh, my God.’ Her breasts heaved as if she had just run a marathon.

‘Do it again,’ she said. ‘Do it again.’

Vincent met Lieutenant Croaker promptly at six-fifteen under Michita’s wooden awning. Because of its location, the restaurant was already crowded with people eating a hasty pre-theatre dinner.

The place was L-shaped, dark with wooden walls separating the tables. There was a sushi bar to their left as they walked in which curved around to the shorter leg of the L. It was perhaps three-quarters full. Vincent saw a lone American.

They were led into the rear of the restaurant. Here there were no Western tables but rather a series of private tatami rooms. These traditional areas were covered by the reed mats and contained no chairs, only one low table around which diners sat cross-legged. The tatami rooms were screened by a series of shoji.

Vincent ordered sake for both of them as they slid off their shoes and climbed into the room. A waiter left buff-coloured menus on the gleaming wooden tables, went to get their drinks.

Croaker put a manila folder on the table, took out two eight-by-ten sheets and placed them side-by-side in front of Vincent.

‘Ever see this man before?’

They were police artist sketches of a man in his thirties, oriental, wide nose, flat cheeks, anonymous eyes. His hair was long-Vincent studied the drawings carefully before he shook his head. ‘No, but to tell you the truth, I’d be surprised if I had.’

‘Why?’

‘This is the man who came to Terry’s dojo the day he and Eileen were murdered, right?’

‘How’d you know that?’

The sake came and they were silent while the waiter filled the tiny cups. When he had gone, Croaker looked inquiringly at Vincent.

‘I had dinner with Terry that night,’ Vincent said slowly. ‘I did most of the talking.’ His voice had turned rueful. ‘Now I’m sorry I did because Terry obviously had something on his mind. He spoke briefly about a Japanese who had come in to practise that day. Karate, aikido and - kendo.’ He sipped at his sake and one hand waved. ‘I’m only putting this together now as I talk to you. You see, Bennoku, the dodo’s regular kenjutsu sensei, had been on vacation for about ten days. If that man came to Terry for kenjutsu there was only one way he could possibly be accommodated. By Terry himself.’

Croaker shrugged. ‘What’s so odd about that? Linnear told me that Tanaka was an expert at kenjutsu, a - sensei, did you call it?’

Vincent nodded. ‘Yeah, but what Nick obviously didn’t tell you is that Terry had put his katana away. He had what I can only describe as a spiritual change of heart. He no longer found pleasure in kenjutsu; he no longer practised it.’

‘When did this happen?”

‘I’m not really certain. Perhaps as long as six months ago.’

‘Then why didn’t Linnear tell me?’

Vincent poured more sake for them both. ‘To tell you the truth, I’m not sure Nick knows. He’s - well, he’s also had a kind of spiritual change of heart, only he’s still going through his and I don’t know what it entails. We’re still very close, he and I, and he was close with Terry, too, but he’d withdrawn somewhat. I’m sure Terry had the opportunity to tell him but I rather think he chose not to.’ He shrugged. ‘Anyway, if this is the man’ - he tapped the drawings - ‘he’d be disguised. I might know him or Nicholas might but we’d never be able to tell you from one of those.’

Croaker nodded. ‘Okay.’ He began to put the drawings away.

Vincent put a hand out. ‘Why don’t you wait until Nick comes? It couldn’t hurt for him to see them.’

‘Linnear called me late this afternoon. He went back to West Bay Bridge. His girl had an accident.’ He finished putting the drawings away. ‘Nobody saw this bastard going in or out. Not at the dojo or Terry’s apartment.’

‘I’m not surprised. This man’s a professional. A highly dangerous professional. I’m afraid you don’t know what you’re up against here.’

‘That’s just what Linnear told me,’ Croaker growled. ‘I don’t like hearing it.’

‘It’s the truth, Lieutenant. You’d better face facts. This guy can put away just about anyone he chooses.’

‘Even Raphael Tomkin?’

Vincent nodded. ‘Even him.’

‘It’s been tried a dozen times,’ Croaker pointed out. ‘By professionals.’

Vincent sighed. ‘This professional is different. We are not talking about a hit man from Detroit or wherever they manufacture them.’

‘Jersey City,’ Croaker said with a thin smile.