Second Skin (23 page)

‘But control is why Dominic first came here, Margarite,’ the old mother superior said. ‘And it is why you have come.’ Her pale blue eyes grew round and depthless in that charismatic way of hers as she gathered herself for power. ‘Never forget that your inner strength is why Dominic chose you to succeed him.’

‘I don’t know. What if he was wrong?’

‘But
I
am not wrong,’ Bernice said in that tone she used that brooked no rebuttal. She took Margarite’s tear-stained face in her smooth hands. ‘Now listen to me, child. I advised your brother on his successor and he agreed. We were not wrong about you. But your path is difficult, you knew that when you began your journey.’

‘But I didn’t know
how
difficult it was going to be.’

‘None of us do. But that is God’s will, believe me. He is always testing us, that is His way.’ She patted Margarite on the arm. ‘Now come. Dry your eyes. It is time for a council of war.’

There was something immensely comforting about Bernice’s office. Perhaps it was the size or shape, like a room in one of the fairy stories Margarite used to read to Francie when she had been young.

Francie!

‘That evil monster has my baby!’ she blurted out as soon as she stepped across the threshold. ‘What have we wrought with the Leonfortes, Bernice? They murdered Dom. Now Tony has been killed, I am almost gunned down on Park Avenue, and Bad Clams has my Francie! And to top it all off, I may have lost control of my business!’ The tears were coming again even though she had promised herself that she must be calm. Hadn’t it been Bernice herself who had taught her that serenity in crisis was the only path that would take her safely to victory? But there was no path to safety here, at least none that she could see. She clenched her fists and her voice was clotted with emotion. ‘That animal, that troll! I’ll kill him!’

Bernice sat beneath the wood and gilt crucifix, wrapped in her serenity. Age had given her face lines and an almost absolute absence of fat, so that the skin was stretched slackly over the bones of her skull seemingly without the intervention of flesh or sinew. But even time could not diminish the fierce intensity of those pale blue eyes, whose fire had unerringly guided so many over the years. ‘My dear, if you truly think like that, then Caesare has already won his most important victory.

‘You are terribly frightened. And you have every right to be. Believe me when I tell you I understand what you’re feeling, Margarite.’ She placed her hands on Margarite’s fists, and slowly, inexorably, their warmth opened the clenched fingers like petals turn to the sun. ‘But that feeling must end,
now.
Fear breeds hate, and hate is ignorance. People such as Caesare Leonforte count on the ignorance of their adversaries.’

‘But look what he has done to me!’ Margarite cried. ‘In one concerted strike, he has taken my whole life from me. I have lost the battle, the war, everything. In less than two hours I have to be in Sheepshead Bay or he will kill Francie!’

‘He won’t kill your daughter,’ Bernice said with such finality that, at last, Margarite was forced to believe her.

‘How can you say that?’

‘Think about it rationally and logically, my dear. What can he gain from Francine’s death? She is the one form of leverage against you he can be certain of. Once he lets go of that, you will slip away from him, and he knows it.’

Margarite could feel her teeth grinding together. Bernice said she knew what Margarite was feeling, but how could she? She’d never had a child. And now that that child was in jeopardy, Margarite knew she would do
anything
to get her back. ‘With all due respect,’ she said, ‘this is Caesare Leonforte we are talking about. I don’t believe that he is either rational or logical. He lives purely on emotion and we both know it.’ Beneath Bernice’s warmth, Margarite could feel her hands curling back into fists.

‘Margarite!’

Bernice leaned forward, pouring her psychic energy into the younger woman until she was enfolded in Bernice’s charismatic power. ‘Listen to me now because it is crucial you understand what I am about to say. Right now your mind is locked within the cage of revenge.’ Margarite’s head shook from side to side. ‘Don’t bother to deny it. I can see the venom in your eyes, feel it in the clenching of your fists. You
must
let go of such poisoned thoughts, my dear. It is what started the vendetta between the Leonfortes and the Goldonis. Otherwise, as surely as night follows day, suffering and death will ensue.’

For a moment, Margarite said nothing. She felt Bernice’s aura bathing her, that strange and unique quality she found both comforting and exhilarating. This was not a power that Bernice used indiscriminately. In fact, it was safe to say that most visitors to the convent had no idea she possessed anything other than a kind and generous spirit.

‘I can’t just bow my head and acquiesce, Bernice,’ she whispered. ‘You can’t ask me to do that because I won’t. I won’t, I tell you!’

Bernice gave off the semblance of a smile. ‘Spoken like Dominic. “Always take the offensive,” he said. “The minute you curl up in a ball, you’re dead.” That was why he hated the Federal Witness Protection Program so passionately. Why he kept in contact with you, against their rules. Dominic played life by his own rules, and damn what anyone thought of him.’

Margarite found herself mesmerized by those electric blue eyes. ‘At this moment Caesare has taken the one thing you hold most dear,’ Bernice went on. ‘I am not asking you to fold, Margarite. On the contrary, I believe we have embarked on the last phase of the long and bloody vendetta between the Leonfortes and the Goldonis. Now is the darkest time, my child, but it is also the time for you to be strongest. The time for you to make your stand.’

‘I don’t know. My world has been torn apart; I no longer recognize it.’

‘That is Caesare’s goal. It is up to you to see he does not achieve it.’ Bernice’s grip tightened on Margarite, the heat of her power infusing the younger woman. ‘Judicious use of all forms of power is what we are about. Isn’t that what you were taught during your time here?’

For a moment, Margarite’s face clouded with remembrance, then she nodded.

‘It isn’t power itself that corrupts us,’ Bernice said. ‘It is the
abuse
of it. This is what makes the Leonfortes so strong; but it is also what will bring them ruin.’

‘Then let the two brothers kill each other,’ Margarite said bitterly.

‘Revenge is God’s province, not your own. I want you to remember that in the days to come.’ Bernice rose. ‘Now I will leave you to prepare yourself mentally. As usual, all the considerable facilities of the convent are at your disposal, should you need them.’

Once more her charismatic power enfolded Margarite in its loving embrace. ‘Remember everything you have learned here.’ She leaned down, kissed Margarite’s forehead. ‘God bless you and watch over you always, my child.’

Morning mist rose from the Sumida, wrapping Tokyo in a damp haze that made it seem like a picture postcard. The exhaust from Nicholas’s black Kawasaki rumbled off the facades of the prewar warehouses that closely lined the streets of this business district. A mournful foghorn from a boat heading downriver outlasted the liquid cough of the motorcycle’s enormous engine as he rolled to a stop, then cut the ignition.

He dismounted, stood gazing at the front of a small town house wedged between two warehouse behemoths. It was an unremarkable facade, so much so that it would surely remain unnoticed by any but the most penetrating glance.

So this was the home of Kisoko, Mikio Okami’s sister, Nicholas thought. The place where Nangi had chosen to recuperate. Just what did he think he was doing? Nicholas wondered as he placed his helmet beneath his arm and, quickly crossing the cracked pavement, went up the stairs to the front door.

There was no bell, and the first thing he noticed when he used the brass knocker shaped like an animal’s paw was the sound it made against the door. He put his hand out experimentally and discovered that the door was metal, most likely steel. Very odd in a private dwelling such as this. Was it for security?

But there was no time for further speculation as the door opened inward and he found himself face-to-face with Mikio Okami’s sister.

Nicholas had heard stories of Kisoko, but she was highly reclusive, and despite the fact of his closeness with Okami he had never before met her. Despite this, he recognized her immediately.

‘Won’t you come inside?’ she said in a musical voice, as naturally as if he were an old friend. ‘There’s more rain coming, I fear, and you will get soaked if you stand on the stoop much longer.’

When he hesitated, she added, ‘I know who you are, Linnear-san. I would recognize you anywhere.’

He stepped into the foyer and she swung the steel door shut behind him. It closed with the heavy clang of a prison door.

‘You have your father’s face,’ she said. ‘And some of your mother’s, as well.’

‘You knew them?’

‘In a manner of speaking, yes.’

He found himself in an oval foyer, painted a rich cream color with wainscoting of pale gold. In the center was a small, elegant marble console on which was a large crystal bowl filled with sprays of bright flowers. Beyond was the kind of grand staircase that hadn’t been built with such expertise since the turn of the century.

Though the house was, as far as Nicholas could discern, entirely Western in aspect, Kisoko was clad in traditional silk kimono and underkimono. Her hair was intricately coifed, held up with a set of long, carved silver pins. Her kimono was the color of a blood-orange sunset; the underkimono, which could only be seen at cuff and collar, was the indigo blue the Japanese had justly made famous.

Nicholas knew Kisoko was in her seventies, but she looked twenty years younger. She had the pale, unblemished skin, glossy as porcelain, of the pure-blood samurai woman. Hers was an odd face, asymmetrical with sensual, bow-shaped lips. Nevertheless, it was almost wholly dominated by her utterly black eyes, which, so he had heard, had the ability to extrapolate conclusions about people from their seemingly insignificant physical movements. It was said that she was never surprised by anything. It was also whispered that she was
kanashimi de nuitori shite aru.
Literally, this meant that she was embroidered in sadness. What is implied was that she had experienced a terrible tragedy sometime in her past. What that tragedy was, Nicholas had no idea; given the secrecy surrounding her, he doubted that anyone other than Kisoko and perhaps her brother knew.

She led him soundlessly down a corridor paneled in gleaming cherrywood. At intervals,
surimono
– Japanese prints from the 1700s that had originally been greeting cards – were hung in gilt frames. Their authors, scorned in their day, had now achieved the status of world-class artists, sought after by collectors, auction houses, and museums the world over.

In a sitting room painted persimmon with gold trim, Nicholas found Tanzan Nangi. He was half-reclining on a pale yellow brocaded settee of French manufacture. He looked tired and drawn, and when Nicholas tried to make eye contact, he looked away.

‘I am honored that you are finally here, Linnear-san,’ Kisoko said quickly and lightly, as if trying to defuse a potentially thorny situation. ‘I realize I have been remiss in not inviting you.’

A palace-sized Persian carpet covered the wood floor. The furniture was all period pieces, with wide seats and low backs, but made comfortable by a plethora of voluptuous, tasseled pillows in damask, chintz, and more brocaded silk. The walls were without paintings. In their place, suits of samurai armor for full battle regalia stood at eternal attention within glass cases. The pristine collection was as stunning as it was extensive. Many museums, Nicholas knew, did not have this range.

‘The armor does not belong to me,’ Kisoko said, watching the direction of Nicholas’s gaze. ‘It belongs to my son, Ken.’

‘It’s astonishing. Magnificent.’

She bowed slightly. ‘Such effusive praise cannot fail to please him.’ She smiled suddenly and, as if they were alone in the room, said, ‘Would you care for tea?’

‘Thank you, no.’

‘It is poor fare, I know, but…’

‘Thank you, no.’

She asked one more time and he declined, after which, in this heavily Confucian society, he was allowed to accept the offer. Kisoko bowed and, with a secret smile, said, ‘If you will excuse me for a moment, it is the servants’ day off.’

Left alone in the sitting room with Nangi, Nicholas crossed to the settee.

‘Nangi-san.’

‘How did you find me?’ he said curtly.

‘Through your Kami transmission.’

An odd, cool silence ensued, during which Nicholas sat next to his friend and mentor. ‘Nangi-san, there are many matters that urgently need our attention.’

‘Discuss them with Tōrin-san. That’s why he’s there.’

‘Tōrin is no substitute for your expertise. I cannot say that I trust him overmuch.’

‘He has my complete trust,’ Nangi said emphatically. ‘You must find a way to work with him.’ He lay back as if exhausted. ‘I grow old, Nicholas-san.’ He smiled. ‘Or perhaps I am merely melancholy.’

Nangi’s head turned and his good eye peered at Nicholas. ‘You’re far too clever a detective for me to think I could hide from you for long.’ He nodded. ‘You see what I mean? A simple miscalculation, but five years ago I would not have made it.’ He sighed.

‘I have to talk with you, Nangi-san,’ Nicholas pressed. ‘Sato-Tomkin without a working president will soon be in disarray. I’m afraid I need to go to New York to sort things out, and I don’t know how long I will have to stay. Sato needs you here at the helm.’

Nangi hitched himself higher on the settee. ‘Listen to me, Nicholas-san. I won’t always be here. Don’t you think I know your nature? I never expected you to tie yourself down in Tokyo, to overseeing the day-to-day running of Sato International. You have more than enough on your plate as it is with the American affiliate. And then there’s been your involvement with Okami-san and the Yakuza.’

His head swung away and that odd, cool silence crept into the room again. ‘That’s why I have been bringing Tōrin-san along. He’s young but he’s smart and quick. You
must
overcome your prejudices and learn to trust him.’