Second Skin (43 page)

In this manner was their peculiar and deepening friendship sealed for all time.

‘Will you be able to talk to this individual? I need you to concentrate,’ Tanaka Gin asked, now all business. And when Nicholas nodded, he led him around the left side of the bar, through a door at the end of it that looked like a part of the wall. As the door shut behind them, the massive noise and heavy vibration all but disappeared. Some kind of sophisticated acoustic damping, Nicholas thought.

Almost immediately, another kind of vibration, rhythmic but much slower, became audible, rising in volume as they walked down a dim wood-floored corridor that seemed part of the original warehouse into which the dance club had been built. An old metal-grilled industrial elevator took them down into a sub-basement. Music with a slow, sensual beat rose around them like tendrils from the deep.

The elevator disgorged them into a tiny anteroom beyond which Nicholas could see on a round lighted dais a woman with buttock-length hair squatting over a prostrate male who was naked, except for a spiked dog collar around his neck. The woman wore skintight leather capri pants pockmarked with zippers, a scary-looking black latex bra, a leather hood, and six-inch spike heels. In one hand she held a cat-o’-nine-tails, in the other a leash attached to the dog collar.

A dapper-looking Japanese with slicked-back hair and a hatchet face said, ‘What can I do for you, gentlemen?’

The woman on the dais pulled open a zipper and began to urinate on the prostrate man’s face.

‘Got an appointment with Tento-san.’

Hatchet-face gave them both the once-over. ‘Tento-san?’

It was a joke, a nickname.
Tento
was slang for a hard-on. It was taken, not inappropriately, from the English word
tent.

‘He’s expecting us,’ Tanaka Gin said.

Incredibly, on the dais the prostrate man was drinking the woman’s urine.

Hatchet-face leaned forward expectantly. ‘And you are?’

‘You don’t want to know. Just tell him Gin.’

Hatchet-face disappeared while in the small theater there was a smattering of applause and the lights went out while attendants mopped the dais in preparation for the next act. Nicholas hoped they’d be out of here before then. Judging by what he’d just seen, one S&M act a night was more than enough. Men in rumpled gray suits and sweating faces trooped by on their way to the elevator.

A fat man in a sharkskin suit and with rings on every finger waddled up to them, gave them both perfunctory bows. This was Tento.

‘Gin-san,’ he said in a high, almost feminine voice, ‘we will be more comfortable in back.’

His office was a windowless cubicle whose only wall decoration was a filthy air vent behind which was the almost constant rustling of rodents. There was one dented and severely scarred green metal desk that looked vaguely American Army issue, a cheap swivel chair, and against the opposite wall, two sets of flimsy file cabinets. This was Tento’s idea of comfort? Maybe he meant privacy.

Nicholas wisely declined the fat man’s offer of a drink. While Tento blew into a dusty glass covered with greasy fingerprints, Tanaka Gin said, ‘Tento-san, when we last spoke, you told me you had seen the woman Giai Kurtz in your club several times before her death.’

Tento fetched a bottle of Suntory Scotch from a desk drawer, poured two fingers in the glass. ‘That’s right.’

Tanaka Gin produced a photo of Giai Kurtz and placed it on the desk. ‘You’re absolutely certain it was this woman?’

Tento glanced down at the photo, then into the prosecutor’s face. ‘There are two things I am superb at. One is handling money. The other is faces. I can tell you with confidence I know every face that’s entered my club more than once.’ His finger stabbed out. ‘She came here maybe half a dozen times.’

‘The dance club or here?’ Nicholas asked.

‘A Bas.’ Tento downed the Scotch. ‘That’s the name of this place. It’s French for Down There.’

‘So she liked this sort of thing?’

Tento inclined his head. ‘Who is he?’

‘A friend of the family,’ Tanaka Gin said. ‘Just answer his questions, please.’

The fat man pursed his lips. ‘I never talked to her, you understand, but if I had to make a guess, I’d say no, she didn’t like S&M. She used to turn her head away, I remember. But her companion, now he was a different story altogether.’

‘Describe him, please,’ Tanaka Gin said.

‘But I already –’

‘Again.’

Very precisely, Tento began to describe a man who very clearly was Mick Leonforte. Tanaka Gin’s eyes briefly met Nicholas’s in recognition.

“He liked the S&M show,’ Nicholas said when Tento was done.

‘Oh, yeah.’ The fat man poured himself another drink. ‘But I mean he lapped the stuff up. You know, I got a lotta types in here so I know one when I see one.’

‘One what?’ Tanaka Gin asked.

‘A sex junkie.’ Tento very carefully pushed the empty glass aside. ‘He’d come back sometimes without the woman and he’d pay extra to take the dominatrices upstairs after the show, sometimes two, three at a time.’

‘What was that like?’ Nicholas asked.

Tento made a face. ‘Shit, what d’you think I am, a pervert? I didn’t ask because I didn’t want to know. That kind of thing – well, every man to his own kind of meat.’

‘Anything else?’ Tanaka Gin asked.

Tento thought a moment. ‘Only one: the dominatrix he liked best, Londa, left about three months ago, and I got the feeling this guy had something to do with it.’

‘You have an address for her?’ Nicholas said.

‘Yeah, well, who knows with these creatures.’ Tento sat down behind his desk, rummaged through his drawers. He took out a long logbook, went through it until he came to the entry he was looking for. He grabbed a pad and pen and scribbled something down, tore it off, and handed it over.

‘That’s it, then.’ Tanaka Gin took the photo of Giai Kurtz off the desk and was already halfway out the door when Nicholas turned back to Tento.

‘You said this man came back sometimes without the woman.’

‘That’s right.’

‘You mean he’d also come back
with
her?’

Tento nodded. ‘Yeah. He’d always want Londa then, and she’d go upstairs with the two of them – the woman, I mean.’

‘Did you ever wonder?’

Tento was looking longingly at the bottle of Scotch. ‘About the three of them? Naw. Why should I?’

As they walked back to the elevator, Tanaka Gin said, ‘What’re you thinking?’

‘I’m not sure.’ Nicholas opened the gate and they got in. Thankfully, the next act hadn’t yet taken the dais. ‘But somehow for Mick sex and death are inextricably linked. That was a sense I got most strongly that night at the Kurtzes’. I think it’d be worth my while to see if I can run Londa down.’

Tanaka Gin shook his head. ‘Not without me.’

‘Listen, Gin-san, this dominatrix works in another world altogether.’ They had reached street level and they went back to the dense clamor of Mūdra. ‘Her work may not be illegal per se, but if she’s mixed up with Mick Leonforte, she’s on the other side of the law. I don’t think she’s going to want anything to do with you.’ They went past the bar. ‘Besides, I’ve got some leads for you to run down concerning the personnel in your office.’

Tanaka Gin was about to reply when his pager went off. He scrolled through the LED readout and his face lit up.

‘Let’s go,’ he said with some excitement. ‘We’ve got something that may be of interest to both of us.’

It had begun to rain again, the slick streets picking up the city’s neon shimmer and smearing it in long pastel streaks against the blackness. Nicholas followed Tanaka Gin’s Honda across town, west by northwest, from the rather dull southern boundary of establishment Tokyo into the glitter of Roppongi, high-tech ghetto of the foreigner and the roving bands of Nihonin, the motorcycle gangs who collectively had been dubbed with the Japanese street slang for nihilist.

The Honda led him into a side street that had been cordoned off by police cars, their multicolored lights swinging again and again off the buildings, the flashes running like blood reflected in the rain-slick street.

Nicholas got off his Kawasaki. Dead ahead of him was a white Mercedes across whose long hood was spread-eagled a male body. As Tanaka Gin guided him past the phalanx of uniformed cops, Nicholas got a look at the corpse’s face in the lurid light. Even with the dark, glistening mass protruding from the livid lips, even with the bloody vertical crescent carved in the center of the forehead, he recognized the man.

‘Ikuzo-san!’

That brought Tanaka Gin up short. ‘You know this man?’

‘Yes. He was the head of Ikuzo Nippon Steel and Metallurgy.’ Nicholas moved closer to the body. ‘Gin-san, this man was a member of Denwa Partners.’

‘Heart, liver, and what else carved out of him,’ Tanaka Gin said. ‘What’s that he’s got in his mouth?’

‘It’s his spleen,’ a thin man who was the medical examiner said.

Tanaka Gin nodded. ‘Too much like Rodney Kurtz to be the work of another killer.’

Nicholas let out a deep breath. ‘Has anyone touched the body yet?’

‘It has been photographed,’ the ME said, ‘that’s all. I was given instructions to wait for Gin-san’s arrival.’

‘I want to examine the wounds.’

Tanaka Gin nodded and signaled to the ME. He, in turn, spoke to several assistants, who, donning latex gloves, carefully removed the corpse from the hood of the white Mercedes and laid it on a gurney.

Nicholas asked for a flashlight and, when it was given to him, played the beam at close range over the wounds. ‘See here... and here.’ He pointed to several major wounds. ‘As with Rodney Kurtz, something with a wide blade punctured him with great force.’ He gestured. ‘Like this, straight in. There was no tearing or ripping of skin as with a knife blade.’

‘What was the murder weapon?’

‘My guess is a push dagger.’

Tanaka Gin glanced at him. ‘What is that?’

‘The blade emanates here.’ Nicholas put the forefinger of his left hand between the third and fourth fingers of his right hand and jabbed outward. ‘And when it strikes, it does so with the full force of the body behind it. It would puncture flesh, sinew, muscle, even bone, with a force like that.’ He pointed. ‘Here you can see the puncture wound went straight in and out. That’s unique to push daggers.’ He pointed to the place where the organs had been removed. ‘But here these are almost like surgical cuts. If you look closely, you can see the blade marks.’

The two men stood up. Tanaka Gin glanced at Nicholas, who nodded, and the prosecutor signaled for the ME’s men to take the body. ‘I want a full report as quickly as you can. Doctor,’ Gin said.

‘By nine
A.M.,’
the medical examiner said.

Tanaka Gin watched Ikuzo being loaded into the ambulance. ‘Showy kind of murder, don’t you think?’

‘Yes,’ Nicholas said. ‘And the spleen stuffed in his mouth. Almost like a warning.’

‘To us or to someone else?’

‘Perhaps both.’

They were cold and tired but entirely too wired to think about bed and sleep. Besides, it was almost dawn. They drove over to Tsukiji. The fish market was already open, its flood of light and movement a tonic from the claustrophobic darkness the two men had endured. At a nearby noodle stand, they stood out of the rain, slurping up steaming bowls of broth enriched by fresh greens and slices of roast pork as well as soba noodles.

‘We must both use extreme caution,’ Nicholas said.

Tanaka Gin’s impassive face was attentive as ever.

‘The vertical crescent is a ritual symbol of a certain tribe in the Vietnamese highlands.’

‘The Nungs.’ Tanaka Gin nodded. ‘Yes, I know.’

Nicholas’s head swung around. ‘You knew all along.’

‘I wanted to trust you, Linnear-san. And I wanted you to trust me.’ Tanaka Gin slurped up some soba noodles, chewed thoughtfully. ‘It’s all worked out for us, in the end, hasn’t it?’

Nicholas laughed. ‘I suppose so.’ He sipped some of the delicious, rich broth. ‘Then you know something of the Nung ritual of absorbing an enemy’s strength by eating his vital organs.’

‘Yes. The
ngoh-meih-yuht,
the crescent moon.’

‘It also has another meaning here. The ancient Messulethe used the symbol of the crescent – the Gim – for their two-edged sword. They used to paint their faces with woad to mark themselves – and the bodies of their enemies.’

Tanaka Gin swallowed hard and put down his chopsticks. ‘Are you saying that Michael Leonforte is a Messulethe?’

‘I don’t know. He’s lived in Vietnam and Laos on and off since 1968. And most of the time it was in the deep bush where the Nungs live. He obviously knows the ritual. Whether he was initiated by them is impossible to guess.’

Tanaka Gin took up his chopsticks again, began to eat more slowly and thoughtfully.

Nicholas, who had been running this conversation back in his mind, said, ‘Gin-san, you didn’t ask me what a Messulethe is. That means you already know.’

Tanaka Gin smiled. ‘I spent a year in the Vietnamese highlands. It was part of my reckless youth. I had an anthropology professor at college who was mad about hands-on experience. I followed him to Vietnam one summer and didn’t come back for twelve months.’

‘So you met the Nungs.’

‘We lived among them for almost all that time. Fascinating people, in touch with the spirits, the old gods of earth, or so they believe.’ Tanaka Gin pushed the sleeve of his coat up, unbuttoned his long-sleeve shirt, rolled it up to his elbow. There, on the inside of his left wrist, was a crude tattoo of a vertical crescent.

Nicholas took a deep breath, let it out slowly. No wonder it seemed to him as if Gin knew more than he was letting on. He himself was a Nung novitiate.

‘We’ve got to stop Michael Leonforte from killing again,’ Tanaka Gin said flatly.

‘Everything leads back to Denwa. Mick wants to control the partnership. He also wants the vid-byte technology.’ Nicholas considered a moment. ‘I think it’s now more imperative than ever that I have a talk with Londa, the dominatrix Mick is so attached to.’

‘Maybe that isn’t such a good idea.’ Tanaka Gin rolled his sleeve down over the Gim tattoo. ‘Has it occurred to you that Leonforte had Giai Kurtz run down in front of a club he frequented? Normally, I’d say that was a stupid thing to do, a slip-up. Most criminals are stupid, if cunning, which is why we eventually catch them. But we already know this man is different. This was no slip-up, was it?’