Second Skin (71 page)

Her eyes met Nicholas’s and they were absolutely unreadable. ‘Such a vision came to Mary Margaret, who was the order’s mother superior in 1947, and she dispatched Bernice to Tokyo on a difficult and dangerous mission. The vision had indicated that an Army officer in the Occupation would return to the States, turn to politics, and become a demagogue, building on hate and fear and paranoia to become president. The vision was apocalyptic: he was a kind of Antichrist, pushing the country into war with the Soviet Union.’

Nicholas thought of the story Honniko had told him. ‘You researched, identified, and targeted Jacklyn McCabe.’

Kisoko nodded. ‘He fit every aspect of the vision, but while we were concentrating on him, the real danger was left undiscovered.’

‘Sen. Joe McCarthy.’

She nodded. ‘When we discovered our error, we were mortified. You must understand, Nicholas-san, in those days the threat of Soviet infiltration and control was all too real. This is what gave McCarthy his credibility among a large segment of government and the population; it took us some time to break that down, and by then a great deal of damage had been done.’

The long afternoon had grown increasingly steamy and uncomfortable, and Kisoko took off her gloves, smoothing them with long, rhythmic strokes of her fingers. A bumblebee buzzed somewhere nearby. ‘The true danger was that
some
of what McCarthy was fighting against was real. We decided to help your father in his quest to make Japan strong again. Japan stood as a bulwark against the spread of Communism in the Pacific. The Soviet Union already had under their control the Kurils, islands that belong to Japan. What else would they take?’ Kisoko brushed a tendril of hair from her cheek, wrapped it behind one ear. ‘The old Fascism of Hitler and Mussolini was dead, but a new form of it was condoned and abetted abroad by the United States government. It was, in its own way, fashionable.’ She lifted a hand. ‘Now, as the wheel of life continues to turn, it has become fashionable again in the guise of religious righteousness and ethnic intolerance.’

She stood up, brushed off the skirt of her suit. The sun had gone in and night was fast coming. ‘We allowed Michael Leonforte to play all his cards, not knowing which ones he held and which he would play. It was God’s will and there were terrible consequences, but there are always terrible consequences when such dark forces are set in motion.’

For an instant, as she went by him, his psyche brushed hers, and he felt a dark current, swirling, a cold spot, deep and dark, in a corner of a children’s summertime swimming hole. ‘Kisoko-san...’

‘Yes?’ She turned, expectant, but when her eyes met his, a veil was lifted from in front of her emotions. She stopped cold.

‘There’s more, isn’t there, when it comes to Mick Leonforte.’

A lark began to sing, hidden somewhere in the foliage of the garden. Kisoko drew on her spotless, white gloves with the care and precision of a surgeon entering the operating theater.

‘You’re right, of course.’ Her head came up. ‘Long ago, Michael’s grandfather invested a small sum of his money with the order. On his death, a great deal more was added to it. Michael’s grandfather had pegged him for great things, and he wanted the future prepared for his grandson’s arrival.’

‘But Mick got rich on drug money he stole from the US government-sponsored pipeline in Laos. He didn’t need the order’s money.’

‘But he needed our influence, and this is what the money was used to procure for him without his ever knowing the source. In the Army; before he went AWOL and began his career as a renegade. How else do you think he was able to outwit the military for so long? By that time he’d cemented the necessary liaisons that kept him one step ahead of military justice.’ Her eyes slid away from his. ‘So you see, the order had a very personal reason for wanting Michael neutralized.’

‘Then Mother Superior –’

Kisoko nodded. ‘Was obliged to plot her own brother’s demise.’

Back inside, the house was as echoey as a cathedral. ‘It was all the worse because Marie Rose – well, her relationship with Michael was, as I believe you saw, quite special. She came here to try one last time to save him, though I am quite sure in her heart she knew there was no chance.’ She gave him a partial smile. ‘Still, there is always hope,
neh?
It is the pain and elation of being human.’

‘God, I’ve missed you!’ Margarite hugged Croaker to her.

He kissed her cheek and put his arms around her, constrained by the garden in which they stood. All around them the white walls of the Convent of the Sacred Heart of Santa Maria rose, shining in the sunlight as if newly washed. Birds flitted among the trees and the drone of the bees among the rose canes was a lazy and nostalgic sound.

‘Francie always adored it here,’ Margarite said. ‘As a child she saw it as a safe haven, but later, when she was so ill and Tony and I were at our worst, I think she rejected everything that was safe.’

They lapsed into a comfortable silence. There had been plenty of time on the flight north from Ft Lauderdale to think about their lives and how much they meant to each other. Margarite had also had time to decide what was most important to her. She wanted to reclaim her company, even if that meant a court fight. Because of Vesper’s diligent work and Milo’s testimony, Caesare was behind bars facing an airtight case against him for smuggling arms, and drugs, and multiple violations of the RICO act. Vesper had been promoted to head her own unit of the Anti-Cartel Task Force, reporting to its director, Spaulding Gunn. She had put Margarite in touch with the assistant attorney general attached to the ACTF, who had assured Margarite that she had an excellent chance of getting a judge to annul Caesare’s takeover of her company on grounds of misrepresentation. And with Caesare’s apparent mental breakdown she had nothing more to fear from him. As far as her brother’s business was concerned, it would have to run without her. She had already put the mechanism in motion by creating a commission of the three Family capos most loyal to the Goldonis. These men were not used to decision by committee, it was true, but it seemed clear to Margarite that everyone, including them, was going to have to learn to live by new rules.

Croaker saw her at last turn her head toward the chapel with its tall, narrow windows so like a fortified castle.

‘Are you worried?’ he asked.

‘Worried? No.’ She gave him a small smile and gathered his hands in hers. ‘Well, maybe a little.’ Her face darkened. ‘What if I lose Francie, Lew? It wouldn’t be fair, would it? Now that she and I have found each other again. Now that you’re here. She never really had a proper father.’

Croaker took their joined hands and kissed the back of hers. ‘I think you have to trust her just a little. She’s been through enough to begin to know herself. Her life is just beginning, Margarite. After all that’s happened to her, something has changed inside her, something new to replace the old. Let whatever will emerge, emerge.’

Paul Chiaramonte stood alone in the stone chapel of the Convent of the Sacred Heart of Santa Maria and nervously shifted from one foot to another. The chapel smelled faintly of stone dust and incense. It was cool and dim, but Paul found himself sweating. The Latin he heard faintly spoken and echoing made him nervous. Religious places made him think of confession, and confession brought up all the sins he had committed.

‘Paul.’

He turned at the sound of her voice, and his heart skipped a beat. Jaqui looked almost regal in the black and white robes of the mother superior. Behind her, like a medieval lady in waiting, he was surprised to see Francie. She wore a plain black dress that covered her from neck to knee. Her pink-cheeked face at first looked solemn, but as he came closer, he saw that it was composed. She gave him a tiny serene smile.

‘I knew,’ Paul said, gazing into Jaqui’s sea-green eyes, which had haunted him for so long. ‘All these years I knew you were alive.’

Jaqui extended her hands and he took them briefly. They did not kiss, but Francie could feel an extraordinary current pass between them, like a heat ripple coming up from a hot pavement in August.

‘I must apologize, Paul.’

‘For what?’

‘For that night – in the garden shed when we –’

‘No,’ he said emphatically, ‘don’t apologize. Even then I knew I couldn’t have you forever, but I wanted you that night, and it was right, Jaqui. It was right.’

She moved a little at his use of her secular name. It was not that she hadn’t anticipated it, but the reality of it possessed more power than she had expected. It made her think of her brother Michael, of them dancing together on the rooftop of their apartment building in Ozone Park. Or had that been Michael’s dream? Her dream? She couldn’t remember now; they were melded, memory and dream one seamless whole.

‘Thank you. Yes,’ she said. ‘It was.’

Despite her vow, in her heart part of her was still Jaqui Leonforte and always would be. Was it always so with the mother superiors of the order? She put her arm around Francie, allowed the warmth of her charisma to enfold the girl, as well as Paul. Was Francie of the chosen? Was she an agent of change as those before her had been? If so, she was about to tread a challenging and difficult path. Perhaps, Jaqui reflected, that was precisely what she needed.

Paul cleared his throat. ‘It was good of you to see me.’

‘For a time, you were her protector.’ He knew Jaqui was speaking of Francie. ‘That makes you important to this order. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.’

Her eyes were a world in which he could still become lost. Paul spent a long time thinking about what he had lost – and what he had found in the odyssey of his life. It seemed to him now that the most important lessons were to be learned closest to home, where the knife clove closest to the bone.

Staring into Jaqui’s eyes, he already knew the answer to the question he was about to ask, but he asked it anyway: ‘Will I see you again?’

‘You’ll see Francine again, I’m sure.’ He was leaving her, perhaps forever, and Jaqui knew it. ‘God bless you.’

Damaged light leaked through the rent in clouds dark as a bruise. Mist rose off the leaf-strewn ground, the pockmarked stone markers, as if it were morning.

‘Say something.’ Koei stood at his right shoulder like a sentinel. ‘Your silence terrifies me.’

The cemetery within which the Kaisho lay was still save for the low chanting of the Heart Sutra, weaving itself on an invisible loom of light. A breeze ruffled Koei’s hair and then collapsed into the wet heat of the afternoon.

‘Akinaga told me everything about the last days, when I wasn’t around.’ Nicholas said it almost as a sigh, and the tender regret made her heart constrict. ‘And it was the truth.’

Almost against her will she said, ‘What did he tell you?’

Exhausted shadows, broken by tree roots and small markers, lengthened along the pathways, pooled beneath the dark cryptomeria.

‘That Justine’s death was no accident, that she was having an affair with her former boss.’

‘And now you’re thinking, how could she betray me?’

‘Part of me.’

‘But she didn’t.’ Koei moved so that she was in front of him, waited until his wandering gaze intersected with hers. ‘Whatever you had with her is in here’ – she tapped his head – ‘and in here’ – tapped his heart. ‘If she had an affair at the very end, it was because your relationship was already dead. She knew it; the problem is you only realized it after the fact. That is where the source of your guilt lies.’

‘But Akinaga –’

‘Forget Akinaga.’ She would not allow his eyes to wander. ‘Forget everything for a moment and let yourself be.’

‘I cannot forget Mikio Okami. He was –’

‘You must accept Justine’s death before you can mourn him, or anyone else.’

A plover canted down through light lacerated by planks of cloud, alit upon Okami’s marker, stayed for a brief moment, then departed in a small clatter. And in an instant Nicholas saw that she was right. He could not allow Akinaga to destroy whatever he and Justine had had when they had been happy. Those memories dwelled solely within him now, like dreams, a landscape apart, full of symbols and portents. Akinaga could not touch them.

Whatever circumstances had driven them apart could not be boiled down into so easy a syrup as guilt, not any one thing or even ten, rather a vast web growing within each of them, pushing them inexorably apart. He could have turned himself inside out and the result would have been the same. What happened could not be helped. Karma.

He reached out and Koei put her hand in his. ‘I’ll miss her.’

‘Yes. I imagine you will.’

Together they knelt by the side of the marker. Together they recited the prayer for the dead. Then they rose.

He turned to her. ‘Koei, you’re magic.’

The Heart Sutra had finished, but its spell seemed to hang in the trees like glittering tears. Koei put her head against his shoulder. ‘Nicholas, you have been isolated inside yourself so long.’ And she felt with an intense sense of relief his body and his mind – all of him – melt into her.

A glowing moon the color of a persimmon broke through indigo clouds hanging low on the horizon. From where he lay, naked and relaxed, Tetsuo Akinaga could see the full moon of Harvest Night illumine the snow on the crest of Mt Fuji, white tinged the palest shade of blue.

Akinaga loved Harvest Night. It had great significance for him because on a Harvest Night many years ago he had been in a vicious street fight with a
kobun
of a rival family. Both had been grievously wounded. Crawling in the gutter on bleeding hands, he had managed to strangle his barely conscious antagonist with fingers clawed with hatred, seeing with immense satisfaction the tongue emerge between bloody lips, hearing the terrible thick gurgling of lungs deprived of oxygen, smelling the heavy stench of fresh fecal matter.

Behind him, Akinaga heard Londa’s sweet alto, as she sang a song unfamiliar to him.
‘Watching the moon at dawn,’
she sang softly as a breath of breeze at sunrise,
‘solitary, midsky, I knew myself completely’
– he felt her coming up behind him where he was staring at the persimmon moon –
‘no part left out.’