Second Skin (46 page)

Mick spent some time lighting up a cigar while he allowed Akinaga to come to terms with the situation in which he found himself.

‘I could have you snuffed out in the wink of an eye.’

‘I have no doubt. But circumstance does not favor you, Akinaga-san. Tanaka Gin is after your ass and he won’t stop until he puts you behind bars.’

‘Fuck Gin,’ Akinaga spat. ‘I’m taking care of him.’

‘Then there’s Nicholas Linnear,’ Mick continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted. ‘He’s as cozy with Mikio Okami as his father ever was. And that means he’d become your enemy as well.’ Mick drew on his cigar. ‘I believe you need new allies, Akinaga-san. Allies who hate Linnear and Okami as much as you do. Allies whose philosophical outlook meshes with yours.’

Akinaga’s head swung around. ‘Allies like yourself.’

Mick gave a little bow.

The
oyabun
glanced at Londa. ‘It seems you have played your hand well,
iteki.’
He gave a grim smile. ‘Well, I have thrown my lot in with one foreigner. Why not another?’

Mick held up his cup as he poured sake for the
oyabun.
‘To this new alliance.’ The men drank while Londa looked on, silent as stone.

‘All right,’ Mick said briskly. ‘About your penetration of Sato International.’

Akinaga looked at him a long time. Secrets were not something he divulged so easily. At last, he said, ‘There is a man named Kanda Tōrin. In Nicholas Linnear’s absence, he has gained Tanzan Nangi’s trust. Tōrin works for me.’

‘Fuck you get my gun?’ Caesare shouted.

‘From your collection, where else?’ Vesper said. ‘What, I’m not allowed to protect myself?’

‘You don’t need no fuckin’ gun now,’ he thundered. ‘You got me.’

He was in a towering rage, and Vesper wanted to know why.

‘As it turned out, it’s a damned good thing I was armed. What’s your problem?’

‘Problem? I’ll tell you my fuckin’ problem,’ he thundered. ‘It’s you! Women should not be carrying,
that’s
the fuckin’ problem.’ He hit his forehead with his palm. ‘Jesus, a blind man could see it. There are certain
rules
inna world that shouldn’t be violated. Men do men things, women do women things. Women do not go around shooting people. Christ, it’s clear as black ’n’ white.’

They were back at the white mansion in West Palm and he had been on the phone for almost an hour straight, pulling strings, invoking privilege, and using his subtle forms of persuasion to ensure that whatever investigation into Croaker’s death was made, it would be brief and perfunctory.

‘This fuckin’ pain in my ass Croaker was ex-NYPD,’ Caesare had said into the phone during the last call. ‘He hadda lotta enemies, right? They all do. One of them whacked ’im. Period. You tell
that
to the feds or whoever’s handlin’ the investigation. You make sure there’re no witnesses, get me? End of investigation, end of conversation.’ He’d rung off. ‘Fuckin’ cops,’ he’d muttered to no one in particular. ‘Once they make commissioner, they think they know it all.’

He turned back to her, shook his head. ‘You’re fuckin’ nuts, you know that? What the hell am I gonna do with you, killing a fuckin’ ex-cop like that?’

‘What d’you care? From what I could see, there was no love lost between the two of you.’

‘Loony as shit.’ He put his hands on his hips and glared at her.

‘I got royally pissed off, okay?’ Her voice softened suddenly and he saw tears glistening at the corners of her eyes. ‘You’ll make it all right, won’t you, Caesare?’

He took her into his arms, stroked her gleaming golden hair. He was filled with pride that she needed him now for protection, she was vulnerable, and giving her his confidence was something he wanted very badly. She was like a dream, every day revealed to him another side of her that delighted him, and now he would do anything to keep her at his side.

‘Don’t worry bout a fuckin’ thing. I think we got it all worked out.’

And the weird and awful thing was that, cradled in his powerful arms, feeling the aura of his power coming off him in waves, she
did
feel protected, safe as she’d never felt in her parents’ house, or on the street or even with Mother Madonna in the House of Marbella – safe as she’d ever felt with Okami. Nothing in her life could have prepared her for this, and so, for a moment, she was disarmed, the chink in her self-made armor pried back, exposing the starving woman beneath.

Caesare kissed her and said, ‘Paulie’s here an’ I gotta say hello to him. It’s business.’

She nodded.

He tipped her head back with his thumb beneath her chin. ‘You okay? I mean you whacked a man, an’ all, an’ it wasn’t just some anonymous jamoke. You wanna throw up or anything?’

She smiled. ‘I already did that while you were on the phone.’

He nodded. ‘Okay then. Move on from it. It’s over. Go into the kitchen an’ have Gino fix you something.’

‘I can do it myself.’

‘Jesus Christ, I know you can. There anything you
can’t
do? But what I should do? It’s Gino’s job. You want I should fire him?’

She laughed. ‘No.’ And bowed her head obediently because that was what he needed to complete the picture of having her completely in his power, a woman like her. It was the most compelling aphrodisiac imaginable. ‘Okay, I’ll get him to fix me something.’ She disengaged herself from his embrace. ‘You?’

‘Nah. I’ll pick something up on the way inta see Paulie. He an’ his broad – what’s-her-name, I never remember. Anyway, they’re in the guesthouse.’ He took her hand, kissed the palm. ‘I may be a while, okay?’

She smiled at him. ‘Okay.’ Then she shooed him out the door. ‘Go on. Take care of your business.’

In fact, Caesare spent very little time with Paul Chiaramonte. He said, ‘How’ya doin’? Ya did a good job gettin’ the broad an’ her kid outta New Yawk.’ Then he cuffed Paulie hard behind his right ear. ‘You fuckin’ moron, killin’ an NYPD detective. Shit for brains.’

‘But no one saw me,’ Paul Chiaramonte protested, ‘except the broad and her kid. I used a stolen gun that’s untraceable, so fuck the NYPD six times over.’

‘It isn’t the cops I’m thinkin’ of, Paulie. It’s your fuckin’ cover. You blew it. You were my little church mouse inside the Goldoni machine.’

‘But now you’re takin’ over, who gives a shit?’

Caesare cuffed him another one hard enough to make Paul’s head ring. ‘Putz, don’t you read your history? How d’you think the Romans extended their empire so successfully? Infiltration among the conquered. You think the Goldoni family capos are gonna just roll over an’ let me scratch their stomachs? That’s a sucker bet. They’ll pretend to go along with me, then try to stab me in the back first chance they get. An’ now I don’t have you to keep me one step ahead of them.’

Paul’s head went down. ‘Sorry.’

‘Ah, what th’ fuck, you did good with Tony D.’s wife.’

Paul’s head came up. ‘So we can forget the whole thing?’

Caesare stepped up into his face. ‘Fuck, no. Listen, Paulie, I want you to remember every step of this – not as a penance, unnerstand? But to
learn,
so you never make the same mistake again. Got it?’

‘Sure.’

Caesare reached out, drew the younger man toward him with his hand on the back of his neck. He kissed Paul’s forehead. ‘You’re a good kid. An’ loyal. I put a high premium on loyalty. An’, meanwhile, read some Pliny, for Christ’s sake.’ He looked around the guesthouse, which had been furnished by some local interior designer in soothing neutral shades. He hated it, but what the fuck, he didn’t have to stay here. ‘Where’s Margarite?’

‘Inna bedroom.’

‘Okay. You keep an eye on the kid. I don’t wanna be disturbed, got me?’

Paulie nodded and headed for the bedroom, where he uncuffed Francie from the doorknob of the closet.

‘C’mon, kid. Let’s get some lunch.’

Francie looked at Margarite bound by wrists and ankles to the corner posts of the king-size bed. ‘But what about my mom?’

‘I’ll take care of her,’ Caesare said, entering the room. ‘How ya doin’, Francie?’

Francie shook her head and said nothing as Paul hustled her out of the room.

Caesare, a can of diet Coke in one hand, stood at the foot of the bed, regarding Margarite. ‘Now this is a sorry sight.’

Margarite stared straight at him. ‘It was one thing to go after Tony. But by marking me and my daughter you have violated every rule of our world. You’re a pariah, a marked man without respect.’

Caesare scratched the side of his head with a pinkie. ‘You finished? Nobody’s gonna buy that crap an’ I’m gonna tell you why. You brought this grief on yourself, Margarite. You couldn’t leave the business to Tony D. You had to stick your nose inta things that didn’t concern you, taking trips to DC to see Dom’s old pals, to maybe strike up new alliances for Tony. An’ then, to top it off, you started to play stuff the bacon with Lew Croaker, an ex-NYPD detective, for the love of God.’ He shook his head. ‘Why Tony D. allowed you to run amok is one fuckin’ mystery. But the fact is, you became my enemy as much as Tony D. As for your daughter – an’ what a lovely creature she has become – you left me no choice. When you whacked two of my out-of-town crew, I had to reel you in as quickly as possible. An’ I hadda bring Paul inta it. I didn’t like that. But, again, you left me no choice; you’d become far too dangerous. In my opinion, Francine was the most reliable way to get to you.’ He took a sip of the drink. ‘I think, how things turned out, I was right.’

‘You’re despicable.’

Caesare moved around the side of the bed. ‘Considering the source, I’ll take that as a compliment.’ He offered the can. ‘Care for a sip?’

‘I’d rather die of thirst.’

Caesare smiled. ‘Just like a woman. Overreacting and overemotional.’ He shook his head. ‘It was a mistake to make this your business, Margarite. I trust you see that now.’

‘I have nothing more to say to you.’ She turned her head to the wall.

‘Oh, in that matter, like everything else, you’re wrong, Margarite.’ He sat beside her. ‘I didn’t bring you here for a vacation or even to dispose of you. I brought you here so that you could vomit it all up, every secret that Tony made you privy to. You see, I want what Dom had: his leverage in DC and overseas. I want the Nishiki files – the dirt he used t’keep so many of the really big boys under his thumb. Now, you’ll do that for me, won’t you, Margarite?’

‘Get lost.’

He stood up abruptly and smashed her across the face with the aluminum can. She cried out, but he ignored her and the blood blooming on her cheek. ‘You
will
tell me everything, Margarite, or by God I’ll march Francine in here, and while you watch, I will take a lit cigarette to her beautiful, unblemished body and face inch by inch.’

Sunlight flooded through the high windows, making of the dust motes suspended in the air tiny dancers that spun and sparked as they were struck. Far below them, in the dimness of his Vulcan-like chamber, Kaichi Toyoda bent to the task at hand. His broad, round back made him look like a tortoise, an impression that his huge shoulders, deep chest, and narrow hips and waist did nothing to dispel.

Toyoda slid a bar of layered steel into his forge, and a blast of heat seared the already uncomfortably hot workroom. The stained and flame-singed ferroconcrete walls were festooned with the tools of his trade. Toyoda was an armorer, a man who fashioned beautiful and deadly blades out of solid bars of steel. He did this by beating out the white-hot steel ingot until it was long and narrow, then folding it over, hammering it again, heating it again until the two layers formed an inseparable bond, then repeating the process again and again, some said ten thousand times, until the composite sword blade was ready to be shaped. The Japanese were unique in all peoples of the world – in that only they had perfected the art of composite swordmaking. They used ultrahard steel to shape the edge and spine of the blade, the one to hold a cutting edge so perfectly sharp it virtually disappeared, the other to create a strong backbone. They surrounded this hard spine with layers of mild steel, soft enough to absorb the shock of the hardest blows. Surrounding this were layers of semimild steel of medium hardness to give the blade flexibility. Only then did it have the requisite strength and flexibility to cleave armor and bone and to resist being broken in two.

‘Push dagger,’ Toyoda said now in response to Nicholas’s question. ‘I don’t get too much call for that kind of weapon these days.’ The swordsmith was old – in his seventies, at least, Nicholas estimated, with a round face and skin as lined and leathery as an armadillo’s hide. A wispy white beard floated from the point of his chin.

‘But you have been asked for at least one, haven’t you?’

Toyoda pulled out the steel and was about to pound it with his hammer when he apparently noticed something, a flaw forming, and he flung the now useless piece of metal into a barrel filled with cold water. Steam hissed like an angry serpent.

The swordsmith wiped his heavy, blunt-fingered hands on his thick apron, went to the front door of his shop, and locked it.

‘Let’s go inside,’ he said.

He led Nicholas into a short hallway behind the forge that was as hot as a sauna going full blast. At the end of it was an open tatami room that looked out onto a tiny garden surrounded on three sides by high walls. Still, a single hinoki cypress, dark green, flourished amid its sterile surroundings. Toyoda pulled down mottled bamboo blinds until the upper half of the wide slider out to the garden was covered. Heat rose like dizzying waves from the desert.

The room was small and decorated as a monk’s cell. Toyoda was a Zen Buddhist; as such, less was always more. It was like the single hinoki – it was all the garden he required.

The two men sat where Toyoda indicated. There was a long white scar down the inside of his left leg where a decade ago surgeons had taken out a vein to circumvent two clogged arteries in his heart. Toyoda offered him tea and he accepted. They drank in companionable silence for some time, staring out at the hinoki.

‘We know each other a long time, Linnear-san.’ Toyoda put aside his cup, signaling the silence was over. ‘I have made you many weapons. Dangerous weapons. Unique weapons.’