Linnear 02 - The Miko (85 page)

He was telling this to Croaker, who was saying how nervous and naked he felt without his gun. “You know us cops, Nick,” he said, “we even take a shower with our piece strapped under our armpits.”

They had come through the dojo proper and were now in the sensei’s quarters, a series of small, tatami’ed rooms separated by rice-paper shoji.

“I’ve been thinking I’m getting too old for this. I’m tired of caring more for my piece than I do for the woman beside me. They pound that into you at the Academy, at least they did in my day. Your piece’s the only thing between you and a hole in your chest. Can’t say the same about your woman.” He tried to smile but could not make it work.

“Does that include Gelda?” Nicholas asked.

“Gelda. I don’t know. But it seems to me that if she can’t make it on her own we won’t make it together. I’m just no good as a crutch. It won’t be long before I come to hate her.” At that moment he had a piercing image of Alix in the safe house, Matty the Mouth’s apartment. She was sitting with her hands clasped between her knees, staring into the darkness. Traffic hissed by outside, uncaring. Was it a true image? he wondered. Was she really waiting there for him to come back? Or was she gone from his life, a puff of smoke he had once felt beside him and nothing more? On the covers of Vogue and Bazaar she bore an unattainable demeanor. But he had felt her head on his chest, had seen the despair opaquing her caged eyes. He had taken her hand and in its trembling had been privy to her vulnerability. He was astounded by the depth of his hope that she had not fled Matty’s into the endless night. Away from him.

“Then you’re through being a cop.”

“If only I knew what that meant,” Croaker said. “But I don’t.”

“You knew it well enough with Tanya,” Nicholas observed.

“Yah,” Croaker said, “I did at that.”

There was a shadow beyond the last shoji. It could have been a human figure.

“Sensei?” Nicholas called. There was no answer. He reached out and slid aside the shoji.

“Oh, Jesus Christ!” Croaker said, staring.

Kenzo, the sensei of this dojo, was strung up from the ceiling, a length of nylon cord lashed around his ankles. His legs were white as bone, his face the color of a ruddy sunset. His blackened tongue protruded from between his engorged lips.

Nicholas saw the slash through Kenzo’s heart, neat as an incision, and knew instantly what weapon had been used to kill him.

“Goddamn!” Croaker cried. “I told you I felt naked without my piece!” He turned, running back through the path of the open shoji toward the staircase and the locker room where his gun was locked up, thinking, A cop’s what I am; it’s what I’ll always be. The beat of my heart.

“No!” Nicholas cried, spinning. “Lew, stop!” Running after his friend.

But Croaker did not hear him. He was in a foreign land and he felt terribly vulnerable without his gun. He was in the second room. Nicholas increased his speed, lunging forward just as Croaker sprinted through into the first room.

Grabbed at his cotton blouse, pulling backward and down.

But there was already a whirring in the air, a dazzling blur, the brief wind of an insect passing close by.

“Ah, God!” It was Croaker’s voice, full of surprise and pain.

There was blood and a flurry of bodies rolling. Nicholas was up in a crouch. Only an expertly wielded katana could have made that lethal cut in Kenzo, and that was what he had feared. The strike he was trying to protect Croaker from had been meant for him.

He saw his friend kneeling on the tatami, his right hand gripping his left. Blood poured out of the wound at the open wrist that had abruptly become a stump. Fearful shades of steel had sliced through flesh and bone alike.

That peculiar silvery tone was in the air, a lethal shimmer, an oncoming rush of wind that would slice him open if he let it. Used tobi ashi, the flying step, launching himself upward and over the oncoming strike.

Koten laughed harshly. “All your ninja acrobatics will avail you nothing. I have the dai-katana.”

And indeed it was as Nicholas had feared the moment he saw the expert incision through Kenzo’s heart. Koten was wielding Nicholas’ own sword, Iss-Hogai. Fleetingly, Nicholas found himself wondering how a yokozunaa sumo grand championsuch as Koten had had time to learn kenjutsu.

He was wearing montsuki and hakama just as if he were about to step into the dohyo to begin a match. His gleaming black hair was immaculately coiffed in ichomage. Even the dai-katana with its thirty-inch blade appeared thin and puny so near his great girth. He was an enormously powerful man, and Nicholas had to be constantly aware of the discipline in which he was sensei.

Sumo was a bit more limited in range than many other martial arts. Perhaps just over two hundred combinations were possible, stemming from thirty-two key techniques based on pushing with the handstsuki; with the entire bodyoshi; and clinching yon.

But Koten was also a sumai sensei. All contact with such a sumo could be instantaneously dangerous since their size combined with their huge hara gave them leverage normally unheard of for a human being unaided by mechanical means. Unarmed, Koten was decidedly lethal.

Koten extended the blade and moved forward in quick crablike steps. He was close to the groundalmost squattingwhere he was most comfortable and the strongest.

Nicholas burst backward through the last of the shoji, found himself in the dojo proper. He looked for the katana, but their ceremonial spot was empty.

Koten slashed downward in an oblique strike, the dai-katana piercing wood and rice paper, ripping up the shoji only centimeters from Nicholas’ retreating leg.

“I’ll cut into your ankles first,” Koten said, “and make you scream.” He came crashing through the rent shoji like a wild boar. “I made sumo scream, too. In the dohyo.” Iss-Hogai swept through the air left to right, then abruptly reversing course, swiping at Nicholas’ feet. “You thought ozeki made no noise during a match. The audience figures they grunt like territorial animals.” Blur of blade again. “That is the secret of sumo’s popularity. Beneath the formal rituals, the veneer of dignity and civilization, the audience is excited by what they believe they are seeing. Antlered stag going at it with instantaneous savagery.”

Koten’s bead eyes were bright as his massive legs powered him forward, as his bare soles beat the floor in a thunderous tattoo. “But within that space of timethirty seconds, no moreI learned to make my opponents scream. The thunder of the crowd was such that only I heard, locked against his sweating body.”

Nicholas feinted right, then came in beneath Koten’s guard. But the sumo let go of the blade with his left hand, slamming the forearm into Nicholas’ chest. Nicholas hit the floor hard.

Koten laughed again. “I didn’t hear you scream that time, barbarian, but you will soon.” The dai-katana swooped down, its finely honed tip splintering the polished wooden boards at Nicholas’ feet.

Nicholas knew what all this bantering was in aid of. It was Koten’s aim to make Nicholas come against him, to make Nicholas use whatever he might know of oshi, drawing Nicholas into his own strength.

I might as well give him what he wants, Nicholas thought. It is time To Pass On to Koten that which he wants most.

Koten laughed as Nicholas came at him, a human mountain attacked by an insect who possibly could sting, but nothing more.

He countered Nicholas’ oshi, using the hilt of the sword instead of,as Nicholas had expected, returning oshi for oshi. Nicholas felt the crushing blow on the point of his shoulder, felt the resulting grinding of bone and the audible pop of dislocation. Pain ran like fire down his arm, rendering his right side totally useless.

“This is what Musashi called Injuring the Corners, barbarian,” Koten gloated. “I’ll beat you down in small strokes. I’ll make you scream yet.”

He ran at Nicholas, feinting with the long sword, employing oshi now to throw Nicholas hard onto the floor. He knelt over him on one knee. The blade sizzled downward, cutting a vicious arc through the air.

Desperately Nicholas twisted, raising his left arm upward so that it broke inside Koten’s upraised arm, deflected the blow out and away from him. But because of the injuries to shoulder and fingers he was unable to complete the suwari waza move as he would have wanted to.

Instead he was obliged to release Koten’s arm prematurely to deliver an atemi, a percussive strike, with his left elbow. Heard the answering crack as ribs caved in beneath the blow.

Koten cried out, twisting his body up and away, at the same time slashing back toward Nicholas’ body with the dai-katana.

Two attacks at once and Nicholas was able to handle only one at a time. The steel blade was his first priority. He made contact with Koten’s forearm, gliding his left hand along the flesh. At the point of the bone protrusion along the bottom side of the wrist, he broke inward, twisting with the fingers of his left hand. Because it was aikido, he was combining his own strength with that of Koten’s own momentum. It was power enough to snap the bone.

Now they were even in a way; Koten was obliged to drop the two-handed grip on the sword, his right arm hanging loose at his side as the broken joint began to swell.

But his second attack could not be stopped, and he used a shoulder throw to Nicholas’ right side. This time Nicholas cried out with the pain directed at his dislocated shoulder.

He rolled away, scrambling. He knew that he would be done for if he allowed Koten’s bulk to dominate him while he was off his feet. This was the danger with sumai, and it was enormous. Their territory was bringing their weight and strength to bear in an area close to the ground.

Nicholas was moving away when he felt the presence of the blade swooping after him. He leaped aside, directly into a powerful tsuki that forced all the air from his lungs. His head went down and he began to wheeze reflexively as his lungs tried desperately to regain the oxygen denied them.

A second vicious tsuki to his sternum rocked him backward awkwardly so that he sprawled on the floor. In an instant Koten was over him, his weight pressing oppressively on Nicholas’ chest, further denying him air. Nicholas began to cough, bile rising into his throat.

Koten brought long, gleaming Iss-Hogai crosswise along Nicholas’ chest, drawing a horizontal line, peeling back his black cotton blouse.

“The next stroke will pierce skin, drawing blood,” Koten said, his voice silky. “Stupid iteki Protorov wouldn’t let me at you in Hokkaido. Lucky for you; unlucky for him. But now I have you. Unlucky for you; lucky for me.” Koten leaned forward, bringing more pressure down on Nicholas’ chest. “Next this katana of yours will slice through flesh. Finally, bone and organs.” He grinned fiercely. “Tell me, barbarian, how does it feel to know that you are going to die by your own dai-katana?”

Beginning the first cut, skin rupturing, peeling back like the rind of a fruit. Blood welling, dark and hot.

Nicholas’ mind was screaming for surcease. Reaching back for the “no mind” of the Void, he allowed the organism to work on its own. His left arm shot straight up, the fingers together and as rigid as any swordblade ever forged. Into the soft spot of flesh joining Koten’s chin with throat.

Nicholas struck as he had been taught kenjutsu, as he would have done a sword strike: with all his muscle, mind, and spirit. He thought not of Koten’s flesh but rather of what lay beyond it.

The kite struck through flesh and cartilage, ripping through Koten’s larynx, his mouth and sinuses.

The sumo’s eyes opened wide, more with shock than with fear. There was no time for anything else. He was dead before sensation could reach the brain and register.

Sirens screaming. Inside the ambulance, Lew Croaker lay on a stretcher unconscious, in mild shock. The paramedics had kept the makeshift tourniquet he had fashioned, afraid to remove it lest the bleeding begin again.

Nicholas sat next to him, one shoulder lower than the other. He had refused a shot and now sat staring at his stricken friend and his ruined left hand that was no more than a stump.

Across his lap lay Iss-Hogai in its black lacquer scabbard. He gripped it so hard his left hand was white. For life. Its name seemed ironic to him now. There’s magic in a Japanese forged blade, he had once told Justine. But what use was magic that could do this?

At the hospital he climbed painfully down after Croaker had been wheeled inside the emergency room. Leaning the dai-katana against a pale green cinderblock wall, he dug a coin out of his pocket and dialed the hotel.

“Justine,” he said wearily when the connection was made, “come and get us. We’re at Toranomon Hospital.” He put his forehead against the cool wall. An intern was calling urgently to him, coming across the crowded corridor to take him away.

“Everything’s all right,” he said into the phone. “But I miss you.” He put down the phone and began to cry.

TOKYO SUBURBS SPRING, PRESENT

On a clear day in late spring, three weeks after the incident at the dojo, Nicholas and Justine returned from jampacked Narita, where they had seen Lew Croaker off to America.

His arm was healing well. The operation, an attempt to sew back the hand that had been so cleanly sliced off, had been a failure. Too much time had elapsed. But otherwise the news had been good. No complications, no infections. The tourniquet he had fashioned from strips of cloth blouse had quite possibly saved his life, the surgeon had said. He was very encouraged about the prognosis.

Instead of heading back into the choking riot of Tokyo, Nicholas drove them northwest, skirting the city itself. In the backseat of the Nissan sedan Iss-Hogai lay scabbarded and quiescent, its presence an ever-constant weight.

They went past the lake above which Sato had gotten married, where Akiko had first revealed herself, where Yukio had returned from the grave. Bright sunshine turned the water to gold and glass. Herons rose near the inlet to the stream that fed the lake, their white bodies bright and sharp against the deep translucent blue.

“What a beautiful place!” Justine exclaimed. Nicholas said nothing.

Just outside the gate to Itami’s property he stopped the car and they got out. He wanted to walk the rest of the way. It was as if the modern conveyance did not belong there; he felt strongly that he would defile the grounds by driving in.