Tengu (21 page)
We all looked flatly at him and he turned his attention to his captive. Marangan ground and snapped and probed in that dark place, intent on getting what he wanted.
“Let him work,” Micky said. “It’s his turf.”
Eventually, Marangan pronounced himself satisfied. I was sweating profusely and feeling slightly sick as we made our way back to the SUV that Ueda was driving. Marangan got in front and sat next to him.
“You okay?” Micky asked me quietly before we got in the car. Even in the dim light, I was probably green.
I swallowed and took a breath. Nodded. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Art told me. “That kinda thing’s hard to see. Just remember—you’re in a whole other world here. They play by different rules. And we don’t have much time.” We kept our voices low while we talked.
“I’m starting to get a better picture of what Ueda meant by ‘issues with means and ends,’” my brother said.
Marangan’s window whined down and he looked at us balefully. “Hurry. I have the name of the shooter.” When we got in, Ueda had handed Marangan his cell phone and the rapid-fire series of calls began anew.
Marangan’s two assistants trundled the man in the alley over to the Dodge.
“What’s going to happen to him?’ I asked to no one in particular.
“Eleventh Avenue,” Micky said.
“Huh?”
Art’s voice was matter of fact. “We can’t let him go, Connor. Chances are that as soon as he gets a chance, he’ll call whoever Marangan’s after.”
“So let’s take him with us,” I suggested.
Art grimaced. “Too much trouble. The secret to doing this sort of thing is to move fast and light. We don’t want to have to babysit this guy.”
“So. . . . “ I persisted.
Micky looked hard at me in exasperation. “Think about what I just told you.”
Maybe it was all the flying, or the foreign city. Maybe things were just happening too fast and it was after one o’clock in the morning. But I thought about my brother’s cryptic statement for a minute and then it hit me.
When Micky was a young rookie on foot patrol on Eighth Avenue in Midtown, he’d been partnered with an old beat cop. On a midnight shift, they got a call from the night manager of a local hotel, and when they arrived, found the man nursing a huge bruise across the side of his head. His security people had a street bum in custody, but the guy seemed totally incoherent. Micky got the story from the shaken manager: the bum had wandered in a few times during the night and they had rousted him back onto the street every time. Finally, about three a.m., the bum came back. When the exasperated manager had come out into the lobby for one last time, the bum yanked a phone out of the wall by the concierge’s desk and beat the manager to the floor with it.
Micky got the report down, and then looked at his partner. The older cop hadn’t said much, just watched the bum, who by this time was kneeling in front of a potted plant and babbling at it. Everyone in the room knew that the bum was more crazy than he was violent. Finally, Micky’s partner explained things to the manager: They could take the bum over to Bellevue Hospital for observation; they’d hold him for an hour there, then turn him back onto the street. There weren’t enough hospital beds in New York for all the walking wounded. Chances are that the bum would be back before dawn. The night manager looked upset, so the old street cop made a suggestion: they could take the bum to Bellevue or they could take him to Eleventh Avenue.
It was Land’s End. Beyond the West Side Highway in the concrete no-man’s land where Manhattan petered out into the Hudson River. Indian country. The old cop knew that you could load a problem like the bum into the back of a squad car and dump him anywhere on Eleventh Avenue. He might return and he might not: it depended what was prowling on the avenue that night. It was a street solution to a street problem. My brother Micky learned over the years that you sometimes did what was expedient. It might not have been right in a strict sense, but you learned to drive away without looking back.
Every city has an Eleventh Avenue, and Manila was no exception. I watched the Dodge drive away and tried not to dwell on its destination.
Marangan’s network of informants was good. Even at that hour, he pulled scraps of information that led us to a motel on the edge of the red light district. It was the kind of place where you paid cash when you checked in and few questions were asked. They turned the rooms over two or three times a night. It was getting close to three a.m., but the streets were still lit with passing cars. Music from bars pulsed in the night air. As we pulled to a stop down the street from the motel, three drunken Americans lurched by. One bent over and gushed a stream of beer into the gutter. Ueda watched impassively from the driver’s seat. The rest of us waited for Marangan to say something.
“Shooter in there?” my brother asked, jerking his head at the motel. It was a two story building with an open air hallway that ran across the second floor. There was a light on in the small office on the ground floor and a parking lot in the back. It’s a universal tradition in motels: patrons park out of sight.
Marangan rocked his head from side to side. “Possibly so. There is word of a member of one of the motorcycle gangs who has recently come into some big money. Did you notice the color of the motorcycle used in the killing?” he asked.
“Yellow,” Art told him.
Marangan nodded. He held up a piece of paper. “I asked an old friend to check for vehicles registered to this man. He owns a Kawasaki motorcycle. It, too, is yellow.”
“It’s a start,” Micky acknowledged.
Marangan slipped out of the car. “I’ll speak to the night clerk.” He moved off with the muscular, contained glide typical of fighters. Micky let him enter the motel office, then slipped out of the car himself. Art was right behind. They disappeared around the back of the building and returned almost immediately.
“Yellow street bike parked in back,” Art told us. “Engine’s cool, so it’s been there a while.”
Micky was examining the cylinder of his pistol, moving it back and forth and spinning it. “This is a piece of shit,” he commented. “It’s a throw down piece.” He looked up at Ueda. “First thing tomorrow, we’ve got to get some decent firepower.” The attaché nodded, but said nothing. He nodded toward the windshield. Marangan was coming back.
“Room twenty-one,” the Filipino told us. “Second floor, third door from the far end. He has been in there most of the night.”
“Alone?” Micky asked.
“Some girls went up earlier,” Marangan said, “but the clerk isn’t sure if they left or not.”
“That’s it, though?” Art pressed him. “One guy?” Marangan nodded.
“Let’s go,” I said.
Marangan had a key and we moved slowly along the second floor hallway and placed ourselves on either side of the door. My brother grabbed my arm as if to hold me back. I looked at him.
“Let us work this one, Connor,” Micky told me. He and Art had their small snub-nosed revolvers out and, for the first time since we had landed, looked comfortable. Art winked at me.
Marangan slipped the key into the door and looked from side to side as if to check to see if everyone was ready. He turned the key and pushed the door slowly in. It gapped open and then caught on a chain.
“Lemme,” Art grunted. He backed up and rammed his shoulder against the point where it looked like the security chain was tethered. The door flew open and Art flew in with it, Micky and Marangan right behind him.
The man on the bed was slight and young and clearly stoned out of his mind. He had a wispy little mustache and longish hair. He didn’t look particularly deadly, but the naked rarely do. He was tangled up in sheets with two girls. They were skinny and small-breasted, and their black hair was long and dirty looking and snaked across their shoulders. They could have been fourteen or fifteen, but their eyes were much older. They sat up in bed and caught the drift of things much quicker than their companion.
Marangan was on them in a flash. The girls jumped up and Ueda herded them into a corner. Then the
eskrimador
seized the man on the bed, yanked him face down. and bound his hands behind his back with a plastic tie. It was all very slick.
Marangan turned to the girls and snarled something to them. He looked at Ueda. “Get them their clothes. Give them some money and get rid of them.” The two prostitutes kept impassive faces. They got dressed, gathered their things, and tried not to look at anyone. They left quickly, spurred on by instinct. Street life dulls many senses, but these two could smell trouble coming easily enough.
The room was a shambles, with empty food containers and liquor bottles littering the floor. You could smell stale perfume and sex, old cigarettes and spilled beer. Ueda went through the place professionally, coming up with a black gym bag stuffed with money. Then he took out a small pocket device and shined it on a few of the bills. He looked at Marangan and nodded.
“You marked the ransom, Ueda?” Micky said. It was a question, but he knew the answer.
Ueda nodded. “Indeed. This is ransom money. At least a part of it.”
Art looked at the trussed man on the bed. “Okay. They used part of the payoff to finance the hit. It fits.” He turned to Ueda. “We can call the cops now and get them to squeeze him. Probably easy enough to do a test on him for gunpowder residue. We got enough circumstantial stuff to hold him.”
Marangan chortled. “And how will you get the information you need, Detective? It will take a day to book him. Then the interrogation will start. In the meantime, the trail grows colder and colder.” He gestured at the man with contempt. “He was hired because he is expendable. Chances are good that he would not survive long, even in police custody.”
“So what good is he to us?” Micky asked. He was looking from Marangan to the man on the bed to Ueda. My brother had one eye closed and squinted at them, the way he does when he’s thinking hard.
Marangan looked at Ueda significantly, then tossed a small bag on the bed and began removing its contents: tape, pliers, a scalpel. I looked at Micky in alarm.
“In our experience,” Ueda told us, “people often know far more than they think. It merely takes persuasion . . . ” His eyes were hard and for the first time I saw something of Mori in him.
My brother and Art exchanged looks.
“We’re out of this, Ueda,” Micky said. He and Art moved toward the door together and I followed. Micky grabbed a pillowcase from the bed.
“You touch anything, Connor?” Art asked quietly.
“The doorjamb,” I stammered. Micky wiped it down. He tossed the cloth to Art, who did the same to a few more surfaces. Then we went out. Ueda followed us onto the second floor hallway.
There was no real energy in Micky’s voice. He kept it low and matter-of-fact. And he kept moving. “We’re not gonna be a part of this, Ueda.”
The attaché nodded. “I understand. You are policemen. This . . . is something different.”
“Uh, yeah,” Art told him, “you could say that.”
The Japanese don’t typically respond to our sarcasm. Ueda plowed on. “But you will utilize whatever . . . information I am able to coax from him?”
Micky swallowed and nodded.
“So,” Ueda concluded. He handed Micky some keys. “Wait in the car. This should not take long.”
“How do you know?” I asked, and my voice was raspy.
“I have seen Marangan work before,” Ueda replied, and turned back to number twenty-one. The door closed quietly.
We ran the motor for the air conditioning. It dried the sweat but it didn’t make you feel clean.
“How’s this any different from the guy in back of the bar?” I asked.
Micky rolled the car window down to listen for something. He was watching the hotel intently as well. He didn’t turn his head when he spoke. “This is different. Trust me.”
“How?” I persisted.
Art put a large hand on my arm. “Connor. This is different. Trust us.” Art is big and broad where my brother is narrow and whipcord thin. If Micky is all spiky energy, Art usually exudes more calm. And his voice was quiet as he spoke to me. But it wasn’t a comfort.
“I don’t get it,” I told my brother. “You won’t be part of torturing a suspect but you’ll use the information Ueda gets? How’s that make sense?”
My brother turned to look at me and his eyes were hot. “Hey. Dickwad. You wanna find Yamashita? We gotta use what we can.”
“It’s a shitty situation,” Art explained as if this were a telling debate point.
“I don’t control the whole fucking world,” Micky continued, and the tone in his voice told me just how angry he was. “Best I can do is control
me
. I don’t always like it, but that’s the way it is. There’s nothing that says ya gotta like it. So grow up a little, huh?” He turned back to watch and wait.
In a while, we heard a muted
pop
from the motel’s second floor and Ueda and Marangan crept quietly out of room twenty-one. They didn’t bother closing the door. Micky and Art exchanged glances.
Ueda and Marangan got silently into the front of the SUV. The attaché handed Marangan the black gym bag with the money in it. “Thank you,
batikan
,” he said to the Filipino. Marangan gave a small, cruel smile, and took the bag.
“What’s the deal?” I asked.
Marangan turned to look at me. “Let us term it . . . a finder’s fee.”
Somewhere out to the east, I knew the sun was racing up to cross the rim of the world. In the back of the car, my eyes gritty with night, it seemed a distant promise. The SUV rolled out into streets still locked tightly in darkness.
Hatsue occupied her mind by observing the camp, noting its patterns of behavior, trying to read the ebb and flow of activity, searching for a clue to her fate. After the first interview, she had never again spoken to the hideous old Japanese man. She shuddered at the memory of the way he made her feel.
She knew from what the old man had told her that there was a purpose to her captivity, an end game. She couldn’t yet determine what that end game would be. For the first few days, she had driven herself to a terrified exhaustion simply by generating imaginary scenarios. All were equally horrific, and so she stopped, blocking out any thoughts of the future.