Second Skin (30 page)

His psyche was directed toward a newly erected coruscating column of light, beautiful filaments floating off it now and again to touch the black bits of Kshira his mind had summoned up. Behind the light, he could sense Okami’s psychic presence. They had been at this for over a week, ever since they were reunited in Venice, and still the Kshira raged within Nicholas, blinding him psychically at odd moments, at others distorting Akshara so badly it frightened him on the most profound level.

And his fear increased as he was reminded of another moment like this one in the forest of Yoshino three weeks ago when he and Tachi Shidare, the young Yakuza
oyabun
who had befriended him, had attempted just such a psychic union. Tachi also possessed
koryoku,
but when he attempted to make contact with Nicholas, he faltered.
I can’t. Something... I don’t know...
There had been an odd look on his face.
The Kshira is so strong...
And Tachi had pulled away. Moments later, he was killed and Nicholas never solved the riddle. Had Nicholas’s Kshira been too strong for Tachi? But how was that possible?
Koryoku
was meant to handle Kshira.

Okami’s face was forming within the column of light, and perhaps Nicholas would get his answer.

He could feel the psychic emanations from within the glittering light source, and he was drawn to it. He felt a heat and a crawling on his skin as of sweat or insects as the ionized particles interacted with his psyche.

Now, as Nicholas moved toward the swirling column of light, it began to iris open to admit him, and his heart leapt with elation. At last, he was beginning his journey to integration; at last, the dark power of Kshira, which had been haunting him, would be put to rest.

But the moment he reached out to embrace the particles of light, he heard Okami’s voice in his mind, as he had heard Tachi’s at this point in the ritual:
No, no... Too much. I cannot hold the line... It is falling inward, imploding... Get clear! Quickly now! It has come undone. Get clear!

Like a band snapping, Nicholas’s hold on Akshara broke, and he was bounced back into specific time and space. He crouched in the grounds of the shrine, panting, the unearthly neon glow of Tokyo spread over him like a mechanized Milky Way.

Nicholas, still dizzy from the abrupt severing of Akshara, looked around for Okami. He found him sprawled on the ground as if he had been shot with a high-powered rifle. Nicholas dragged himself over, listening for breath, checking the eyes beneath the closed lids.

Okami began to convulse. His blood pressure was dangerously high. What had happened at
kokoro?
What had Okami seen? What had sent him into spastic shock, made him lose hold on the column of light, on
koryoku?
Was it the same mysterious occurrence that had made Tachi pull abruptly away from psychic contact with Nicholas? Had Kansatsu somehow physically poisoned him? He had to know.

Using Akshara, he extended his psyche until it entered Okami’s bloodstream. There he adjusted adrenaline levels downward while getting Okami’s body to pump out a more potent mix of nucleopeptides to help fight off the shock, calm the convulsions, and bring him back to consciousness more quickly.

Okami quieted in Nicholas’s arms, the last of the spasms dissipating, and his eyes opened.

‘How do you feel, Okami-san?’

‘Tired.’ He tried to smile but did not quite make it. ‘I am not as young as I used to be.’

‘You’re ninety.’

‘Who told you that? Celeste?’ He licked his dry lips. ‘Even she does not know my real age. Just as well.’ He gestured. ‘Help me up, please.’

As Nicholas began to move him, Okami held his head and groaned, and Nicholas set him carefully back on the ground. ‘What did you do to me? I haven’t had this amount of endorphins running through me since I was in my seventies.’

‘You went into violent convulsions.’

‘I do not remember.’

Nicholas watched Okami carefully as he went into prana, breathing deeply and evenly to continue the bodily cleansing.

When Okami’s eyes fluttered open, they were looking directly at Nicholas. ‘I do not believe I can help you, my friend, though I very much want to.’

I cannot be hearing this,
Nicholas thought. ‘But you have
koryoku.
It is the only way to integration. You are my last hope.’

‘Let us pray to whatever God we believe in that this is not so. Because then you are doomed.’ Okami sighed, grabbing on to Nicholas as they rose. ‘You see, all the time Kshira has been inside you, you have had no access to it. I cannot get close, either. When I tried, I was almost killed. And from what you have told me about your experience with Tachi Shidare, he was stymied in the same manner. From these unfortunate encounters we must conclude that
koryoku,
the Illuminating Power, is of no help to you.’

Nicholas fought a vertiginous sensation of panic. ‘What, then, am I to do, Okami-san? I cannot tolerate Kshira much longer inside me. Lately, I have felt its strength growing. It is like a shadow on my soul.’

‘I know, my friend, and I sympathize. But Kshira must be approached in just the right manner otherwise it will be like disarming a booby trap without knowing how the mechanism works. Disaster.’ Okami shook his head. ‘Pity that Kansatsu, the
sensei
who trained you, is dead. He is the one man who would know how to save you.’ He spat. ‘What a twisted, diabolical brain he had. He must have hated you with all his soul to have done this to you.’

Okami walked on legs made stiff by shock. ‘Come. It is time we left this place. The psychic echoes of the near catastrophe are disturbing.’

As they walked out into the bustle of West Shinbashi, Okami looked at Nicholas’s ashen face. ‘I am too old and tired to help you, but do not give up hope, Linnear-san. I know the answer exists. There
is
someone out there who possesses the means by which you can escape the unique prison into which you have been placed.’

‘Everyone comfy?’

‘Mom’s asleep,’ Francine Goldoni DeCamillo said.

‘Yah, I know,’ Paul Chiaramonte said. ‘I gave her something so she should rest.’

It was dark in the belly of the private plane, and cold. They sat on facing seats while outside the small, scarred Perspex windows clouds rolled by, illuminated eerily by moonlight. They looked like smoke from the dry-ice machines used in rock videos, Francie thought. She was trying to be brave, trying with all her might to still the painful fluttering of her heart. She moved a little until she felt the warmth of her mother’s shoulder and felt a little better.

‘Where are you taking us?’

Paul’s eyes glittered in the semidarkness. ‘South. Where it’s warm. You’ll like it. Plenty of swimming, maybe even surfboarding.’

‘Who are you trying to kid? You’re taking us to Bad Clams.’

Paul regarded her for some time. ‘Kid, you’re a smart cookie.’

‘Don’t talk down to me. I’m not seven years old.’

‘I can see that.’ He eyed her appreciatively. ‘I think you threw out your training bra a while ago, hah?’

‘You like them,’ she said, arching her back slightly, ‘my breasts?’

Paul shrugged. ‘What’s not to like?’

Francie smiled. ‘Want to touch them?’

Paul reacted as if she had burned him with the end of a cigarette. ‘Jesus, kid, what the hell kinda question’s that?’

‘That’s not how you acted back at Sheepshead Bay.’

He waved a hand dismissively. ‘I was fuckin’ pissed off. An’ didn’t I have a right t’be? Your mother was responsible for whacking the men I hired.’

‘They were going to kidnap us.’

‘An’ she made me whack a cop. A
cop,
kid, you unnerstand? My ass is grass back in NYC. You kill a fuckin’ cop, they catch you, you’re a goner. They lock you up an’ throw away the key.’

‘He was only trying to protect us.’

Paul eyed her with what could only be termed a grudging kind of respect. ‘What’re you, seventeen?’

‘Almost.’

Paul snorted. ‘Goin’ on twenny-eight. Take my advice, kid. Give it a rest, okay? You got plenty of time t’grow up, you don’t need t’do it in one gulp.’

Francine thought about this for some time. ‘How come you put my mother to sleep and not me?’

‘Y’know, Jesus Christ, I bettah watch what I say around you.’

‘Why did you want to talk with me alone?’

Paul put a fingernail to his mouth, tore off a thin sliver with his teeth. ‘I like you, kid. You ask a straight question, no bullshit. So I’ll answer you straight. Your mother she, y’know, like hates my guts ’cause of how things worked out. Also, I roughed her up a little I was so pissed, an’ for that I am truly sorry. So I know right off for sure I can’t talk with her because whatevah I say, she’ll go, “Fuck you,” an’ she’d be right, I guess. But I figure maybe you are, like, different. You, bein’ almost seventeen and all, might listen to what I have to say.’

‘I’ll listen, unless I think what you’re saying is bullshit. Then you can fuck yourself.’

‘’Kay, I can respect that.’ Paul tore another thin strip of nail off the end of his finger. ‘You evah met Bad Clams, kid?’

‘No.’

‘Well.’ He looked away, as if that weren’t at all what he had meant to ask her. ‘Hey!’ He jumped up, startling her. ‘You hungry? How about I make us some pasta?’

Francie looked around. ‘There’s a kitchen on the plane?’

‘Sure, sure, whaddaya think? ’Cept it’s called a galley, like onna boat.’ He led the way down the aisle to a small space where he turned on a light to reveal a compact stainless-steel galley.

‘Aren’t there any flight attendants?’

‘Nah. This’s a
private
flight, y’know?’

He took down a box of pasta, set water to boiling on the two-burner electric stove. Then he set about making a sauce with tomato paste, stewed tomatoes, parsley, oregano, olive oil, and sautéed onions. ‘A little salt and pepper,’ he said, ‘and we’re done.’ He set the pot of sauce on the second burner.

‘What happened to your leg?’

Paul automatically glanced down at his shorter leg. ‘Was an accident happened a long time ago when I was a kid. Nineteen sixty-two. In Astoria, near where I lived.’ He stirred the sauce and shook his head. ‘It was kinda crazy, like a dream, y’know? If not for my leg I’d be
sure
it was a dream. I saw a car speeding down the street, an’ for some reason I knew something terrible was about to happen. It was comin’ right at this girl. I’d been watching her, y’know, ’cause, my God, she was a beauty.

‘I shouted a warning an’ she turned. I leapt off the curb just like someone inna movies, thinking I could save her, but the car clipped my hip and thigh.’

‘What happened to the girl?’

‘She died. I was inna hospital a long time. I had three operations an’ they still couldn’t get me back to the way I was. Said I was lucky t’be walkin’ on two legs. In between times, that’s when I tried to find out about the girl an’ was told she didn’t make it. Her funeral’d already happened.’ Then he pointed. ‘Hey, look, the pasta’s done. Trick is not t’let it overcook, y’know?’

‘Yeah. I know.’

He made a fluttering gesture with his hand. ‘That’s what everyone says. But the
real
secret’s to make a sauce that coats the pasta just right.’ He looked down at her and was disappointed that she wasn’t smiling. ‘You scared?’

For a moment, she did not answer. ‘A little, I guess. I’ve heard a lot about Bad Clams.’

Paul snorted. ‘Who hasn’t?’ He shook his head. ‘You know how he got his name?’

Francie shook her head. ‘Uh-uh.’

‘Well, the first guy he whacked, it was like a contract job, y’know? Guy was eatin’ inna restaurant an’ Bad Clams he comes in, levels the gun and – wham! – plugs the guy. Then, like he’s got no nerves at all, he looks down at the guy he just whacked, whose face is inna bowl of pasta with white clam sauce he’s been eatin’ from, an’ he says, “Must’ve been the bad clams that killed ’im.’” Paul was laughing. ‘Jesus Christ, can ya picture it?’

His smile faded a bit as he regarded Francine’s serious face. ‘A little scared, that’s okay. But, hey, kid, nothing bad’s gonna happen t’you.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I know, that’s all.’ He dumped the pasta and boiling water into a colander he had wedged into the small sink. ‘I know a lotta things.’ With a deft twist of his wrist he slid the pasta back into the pot, then added the sauce and tossed it.

‘Beautiful. Good pasta is a masterwork.’ He portioned out the pasta into two bowls. ‘Nothing like it to restore the soul and the spirit, that’s what my mother used t’ say.’ He handed her one bowl, along with a fork and large spoon. ‘Sorry I don’t have any fresh-baked bread, kid.’

‘That’s okay.’ The smell coming out of the bowl was heavenly, and suddenly Francie realized that she was ravenous.

They sat in facing seats, feasting. He had turned on one of those small overhead lights that shone between them with a pure, brittle beam, half-illuminating their faces like in the mirrored room of a fun house.

‘When it comes to cooking, this’s the only thing I do well. Learned it from my mother.’

‘Who
was
your mother?’

‘Bellissima.
A beautiful woman,’ Paul said in a voice tight with tension. ‘That’s all you gotta know.’

Francie gave him a quick glance and went back to eating her pasta. Paul looked at her head pulled down into her shoulders, and he put down his fork onto which he had twirled just the right amount of sauce-coated pasta.

‘I get a little, y’know, uptight about her because, well, because she was Jewish – outside
la Famiglia.
But, well I guess that’s what my old man figured. Woulda been too complicated to have an Italian mistress, hah? With a Jew, it was a no guilt kinda thing, right? I mean she could never be considered family, so even if Faith – y’know, your, what? – stepgrandmother kinda thing – she was married to my father then – so even if she found out, no threat, no sweat, justa roll inna fuckin’ hay.’

Francine risked a glance at him. He looked so sad at that moment she felt an urge to hug him. She knew better than most what it was like to have fucked-up parents.