by Rex Burns
“You fucking—”
Writhing and pushing, he heaved Kirk off his arm as the pistol bounced and clattered across the stone. Devlin shoved hard, trying to knock it off the barbette into the courtyard below. Pierson groped with his free hand for something else hidden behind him, and Kirk swung him hard into the wall. The pistol was a couple inches from the lip and Devlin reached, Pierson’s hand matching his, and for a long moment, the two sets of fingers wriggled in tandem toward the weapon. Then he grabbed Devlin’s hair and pulled backward, wrenching him around and away from the weapon. Devlin’s fingers sought his eyes. He saw the pistol drop over the edge, and Pierson, twisting away from Devlin’s hand, saw it too. His grip relaxed momentarily. Kneeing him with his whole weight, Kirk knocked Pierson’s hand away from his hair and jabbed the blade of his knuckles into Pierson’s throat. The blow sent him gagging backward away from Devlin and off the bastion onto the parapet.
For a moment they stared at each other, gasping, waiting for the other to commit to a move.
“Without me—” He coughed and spit something. “Without me, you ain’t got shit!”
“I came for you. You are shit.”
Beneath the glaring rage, something else stirred. “Why? Why you want me?”
“You know why.”
Pierson was as winded as Kirk, and as willing to talk. “Bullshit—I don’t even know who you are.”
“Remember the kid you left hanging in a sack? The kid in Denver?”
It took him a moment. “That’s who you are? Fucking company dick? That’s who?” Pierson’s bleeding lips stretched into a grin of some kind of triumph. “And you’re going to be the big hero? Take me back?”
“Take you back. Leave you here. Either way.”
“Shit!” A small skinning knife appeared in his hand from somewhere behind him, and Devlin figured he must be wearing an entire arsenal back there. He crouched and circled toward Kirk on the balls of his feet, legs wide to sidle either way with Devlin’s dodging. He held the blade low as if he knew what to do with it. Kirk wasn’t sure what to do with it, but something would have to be done in the next few seconds. Somewhere in the back of his mind came one of those stray and irrelevant thoughts, as if Devlin were looking over his own shoulder: the sardonic awareness that all his college texts and lectures on deconstruction and the shibboleth that “all we have is language” boiled down to facing a man with a knife. There was no way in the world Kirk was going to rearrange that fact by rearranging his word order. Pierson feinted with one shoulder and lunged with the blade. Devlin swung past its glinting tip to swipe at Pierson’s face with the side of his hand. The next thrust was toward Devlin’s stomach and up, pulling back quickly before Kirk could grasp his wrist. But Pierson would have to do better than that. Have to come in closer than that. They circled in the dusk, moving down the parapet. On one side was the outer wall, on the other a line of posts and cables and signs that warned tourists away from the ledge above the parade ground. Past Pierson’s shoulder, Devlin saw a full moon—gigantic and orange—lift from the other side of the earth. Beautiful, and as distant and unmoved as the old bricks they slid across.
Pierson lunged again, the narrow blade a silver blur, and Devlin felt it catch this time. Its pressure was an oily, hot sting along his ribs as he rolled away and grappled. He trapped Pierson’s arm in the bend of his own and levered his forearm under Pierson’s elbow. Then he squatted and fell back and jabbed his knee hard into the tumbling man’s groin. Pierson gurgled something as they flipped, and Kirk heard his head whack against the parapet. Something gave in Pierson’s arm as it crumpled beneath their combined weight. Still grunting with pain, Pierson twisted and writhed and groped for the knife in the black of the wall’s shadow. As hard as he could, Devlin drove the heel of his hand under the blur that was Pierson’s jaw. The head snapped back solidly and he went limp.
They lay there, tangled like savage lovers. Devlin pumped air into his aching lungs and tried to make his flesh tell him how deeply it was cut. Untwisting his arms and legs from Pierson’s, Kirk started to stand. Pierson exploded in fists and elbows and feet, shoving him back and stunning him with a solid hit on the temple. When Kirk shook the whirling sparks out of his eyes, Pierson was a running, panting shadow disappearing down the barbette toward the uneven steps formed by the crumbling wall.
Devlin staggered after him. Groping fingers along his ribs, he was relieved to find only a narrow slit in the blood-slick flesh. No deep and pulsing hole, no wide flap of flayed skin. It would be sore—it already ached—but it wasn’t fatal and nothing below the skin was cut.
He heard more than saw Pierson scramble down the loose stone where the wall of the fort had been breached and weathered into grit. A bounding silhouette against the white of moon-washed plaster and drifted sand, Pierson turned at the foot of the wall. Racing back, feet muffled in the clumped grass of the parade ground, Pierson sprinted for the pistol that had been knocked over the ledge. Devlin rolled over the parapet and dangled from the rusty guard cable. He dropped to tumble across soft earth and stretch his legs after the man. A series of squat arches formed by the casemates and the massive brick groins echoed their panting. The shadow bent and bobbed and groped along the ground. As Devlin rushed up it turned to fire fire, a red jab of flame and then another, the blue of the round’s gases flashing with a thoomp from the chamber. Devlin leapt, both feet clubbing the shape. He landed heavily against Pier- son’s torso, knocking the man to the sandy ground. Pierson rolled into the shadow of a casemate and scrambled brokenly to his feet. He dodged toward the mass of a thick pier. The pistol lay in the grass and Devlin picked it up by its hot barrel. Sprinting through the flickering semicircles of moonlight that fell in a line through the casemate arches, he ran after Pierson. The man would have to double back around the concrete gun emplacement; his car would have to be near Kirk’s on the asphalt parking apron. Devlin cut across to head him off when he doubled back.
But Pierson didn’t. Running and halting to listen, Devlin lost him in the maze of doors and tunnels that led toward the quarters area. Then he glimpsed Pierson limping over the shoulder of an earthen apron piled against the battery housing. The shadow disappeared like a rat into another tunnel. Before Kirk could reach the dark entrance, Pierson swung out onto one of the triangular walls of a bastion and crawled over its face to hang a moment against the rough brick. Then he was gone.
Devlin made it to the top in time to see him still running with that tilted, broken sway through the bright glow of moonlight toward the fishing pier. By the time Devlin found a way to follow him, the throb of a heavy motor fired. A moment later, the silver water of the bay split with the spreading wake of a speeding boat.
CHAPTER 24
BUNCH SQUINTED, AS if that could help him better understand Yoshi Kamakura’s English. From what he could figure out, the Japanese investigator said that Mitsuko’s last name wasn’t Watanabe but Saito, and she was not the big man’s daughter but his mistress. “But not so much mistress anymore, Bunch-u. Now his once-mistress.”
“Ex-mistress?”
“Yes. ‘Ecces.’ But also a … how you say, bond-gift to yakuza.”
“Yakuza? What’s the Japanese Mafia have to do with this?”
“I told you, Bunch-u. Watanabe-san is active in politics. This means he has dealings with yakuza. The Kobayashi gang. Payoffs, you understand?”
“You mean Watanabe owed Kobayashi a favor and Saito Mitsuko was the favor?”
“Yes. But it was not to Kobayashi. It was to one of his lieutenants. But Saito did not accept this, yes? Not like the old days, this woman is Westernized, yes? Or maybe it’s because the man she was given to is a Korean. Kim Soon.” Yoshi’s voice dropped with embarrassment. “Much loss of face for her to be given to a Korean.”
“Yeah. I guess that’d upset anybody. So what happened?”
“She ran away. Flew to New York. Very embarrassing to Kim Soon. A lot of people know about it now and laugh at Kim Soon, yes?
A yakuza who cannot control a woman. What kind of yakuza is that?”
“Aw, yeah. He’s got my sympathy. But Saito’s not in New York, Yoshi. She’s here in Denver.”
“So? Not Big Apple?” A muttered Japanese phrase, something apologetic with okudusai in it. “My worthless operative was told she was in New York.”
“She was there. Now she’s here, and someone has tried to kill her American boyfriend.”
“Ah so. Yes. Of course. Kim Soon.”
“It’s him? You’re sure?”
“Yes. Certainly. Who else? He has to kill her boyfriend and bring Saito back. Or kill her, too, and bring back her head.” Yoshi laughed with embarrassment. “Much loss of face to have a round-eye copulating with your woman. Even for a Korean.”
Bunch thanked him and started to hang up, but the Japanese detective had one more thing to add. “Aksamio! You be very careful for the nine-fingered man, okay?”
“What nine-fingered man?”
“The yakuza. They have nine fingers, most of them. They cut off one of their fingers to show loyalty and … Bushido … obedience, courage.”
“I will. Domo arigato gozaimas, Yoshi.”
“Genke pali pali, Bunch-u.”
Bunch played the tape recording of their conversation and leaned back in the desk chair, feet on the iron rail, to listen and to stare at the mountains in the distance. An early snow had dropped a light film of white on the mountains’ dry east flanks. Heavier pockets of it still marked the blue-shadowed folds that led up into the cap of thick clouds leveling the horizon. Above the clinging layer of cloud, the sky was clear and blue and marked here and there by scratches of contrail. On cue, the rumble of casters, like a jet overhead, crossed the ceiling and punctuated his conclusions.
He made a few notes to himself and sighed and heaved out of the gasping chair. It was time to protect Miss Humphries/ Watanabe/Saito.
Bunch’s inspection of the house’s perimeter defenses was perfunctory and routine. He had other things on his mind. Gleaming and fluid in a silver spandex exercise suit, Mitsuko was taking advantage of the warm October sun. On a corner of the brick patio outside the sliding glass doors of the dining room, she bent and stretched and twisted. Bunch settled on an empty chaise lounge to watch.
“You’ve got some nice moves, Watanabe-san.”
The full lips curved in a smile and she made a gliding, rolling motion with her pelvis. “That’s one I learned in Hawaii. It’s good for the spine.”
Bunch figured it was good for two spines: hers and the guy riding. “Humphries is a surprising man.”
“Why?”
“He doesn’t look like a great lover. But he must have something.” He watched the spandex divide into legs as she bent and reached her arms between them. “Is it his money?”
A dark eye tilted toward him. “Jealous?”
“Nah. Just curious. The guy doesn’t seem like an imaginative bed partner.”
She exhaled and stood slowly, inhaling all the way, and then held the pose for a long count before sighing her breath out. “He doesn’t have to be. Besides, he’s learning.”
“A little different from screwing a yakuza?”
She looked up from a deep bend that pressed the curves of her torso against a straight leg. “A who?”
“Yakuza. Kim Soon. The man who wants to kill Humphries and take you back.”
Slowly, she straightened, surprise slacking her face and rounding her eyes. “How—? What do you know—?”
Bunch shrugged. “I’m a detective. I detect, remember? Now why don’t you just tell me what the hell’s going on?”
She stared without answering.
“Was the guy on the motorcycle Kim Soon?”
A nod. A shrug. “I think so.”
“And the note was from him too.”
Another shrug.
“And you’re not Watanabe’s daughter but his ex-mistress.”
This time she said nothing; her eyes said it all.
Bunch leaned forward. “You still think Humphries is going to marry you?”
“I don’t know. I hope so. No … maybe—”
“But he thinks you’re Watanabe’s daughter.”
“Yes.”
“And if he finds out you’re not, you’re out on your sweet ass?”
“Please don’t tell him, Mr. Bunchcroft.”
“But that was your plan, right?”
“Yes. He would never marry a … geisha. But perhaps if he thought I was someone important … From a family even more important than his own …”
“Kim Soon found out you were in New York?”
“It was only a matter of time. He searched—he discovered what flight I took.” A sigh. “I called my sister. To let her know I was alive. Kim Soon visited her. He threatened her and her husband and children if she didn’t tell him where I was.”
“That’s who you called when you told Humphries you telephoned home?”
“Yes.”
“But New York’s a big place. You could’ve hid there.”
She shook her head. “Not for a Japanese national. And there are yakuza in New York.”
“So you met Humphries.”
“He was at a cocktail party. I was there with Lawrence and I remembered meeting him in Japan when I was with Watanabe-san.” She smiled slightly. “Roland assumed I was his daughter. Watanabe said I was. He didn’t want to lose face with Roland. Roland didn’t understand that in Japan a gentleman’s wife or daughters don’t go to that kind of public conference.”
“And then came Kim Soon.”
She looked at the ground, her shoulders sagging slightly. “Watanabe owed Kim Soon. I was what he wanted.”
“But not what you wanted.”
When she looked up, the hurt had been replaced by anger. “The woman of a gangster? I, who had been first mistress to one of Japan’s most powerful men, given like a dog to that man!”
So she ran, skating on the thin ice of hope and lies and terror. She was tough, and Bunch admired that. “Suppose Humphries does marry you? He still thinks you’re Watanabe’s daughter. How’re you going to keep up that role?”
She shrugged. “I would be a daughter Watanabe refuses to acknowledge. One who could never go home again.”
Bunch grunted. “And he wouldn’t ever want to see Humphries, either.”
“Yes.”
Bunch sighed. It might work; it was a long shot, but it looked like the only shot she had. “So where’s Kim Soon?”
“What?”
“Kim Soon. He gave you a note, said you should do what’s right. He must have told you how to get in touch with him so you could do it.”
Her black eyes stared at Bunch. “If you go to him, Roland will find out everything.”
“If I don’t go to him, you and Roland are both dead. Mitsi— Is that your real name, Mitsi?”
“Yes. That much is true.”
“Mitsi, we can’t keep you safe against that guy forever. We’ve got to change his mind about what he wants to do.”
“No.” She shook her head. “He won’t. He can’t, now.”
“What about Humphries paying the guy off? He’s got plenty of money.” Bunch smiled. “Call it a new kind of head tax.”
Her head shook again. “Money won’t be enough now. He’s made a public gesture.”
“You mean by coming to the States?”
“Yes. Bushido. He must return with his vengeance satisfied.”
Bunch whistled a crooked little tune between his teeth. “I think I better talk to him anyway.”
The woman’s eyes widened in fear. “He is a very dangerous man, Mr. Bunchcroft. A hired killer!”
“Yeah, you told me: yojimbo.”
“A trained warrior, Mr. Bunchcroft. A professional. That’s the reason he’s here!”
Bunch smiled. “Sounds like my kind of guy. Now where do I find him?”
“I still don’t see how you let him get away.”
Bunch drove and Devlin tried
to keep still against the pull of stiff, hot flesh beneath its gauze pad. He’d telephoned ahead to let Bunch know when the flight would arrive from Pensacola and to give him the bad news. “Maybe you could have done better, Bunch.”
“I didn’t say that.” He added, “But then I don’t have to.”
“I gave his name and description to the DEA before I left. They weren’t all that excited about it—you know how those people are. But they did pick up Hall and Schuler and said they might put Pierson on their hot list.”
“Might?”
“Might. Hall and Schuler they have confessions from, so DEA didn’t have to work. Pierson calls for a little effort on their behalf. So ‘might.’ “
“You know he’s got a getaway stash somewhere. He’s probably on the Riviera or down in Argentina by now.”
Devlin winced as Bunch swerved to avoid a pothole and angled onto Martin Luther King Boulevard. It led across the sprawling residential section of north Denver toward their office in lower downtown. “But he’s an ex-con,” added Bunch. “Maybe he couldn’t get a passport.”
“Maybe.”
“Then again, maybe he’ll come looking for you. Scotty Martin thought he was crazy enough to do something like that.”
Devlin grunted. “Fine. I’d like another shot at him.”
The Bronco jolted and rattled past the black neighborhoods and Devlin watched a handful of kids chase each other through the rainbow arc of a water sprinkler on somebody’s front yard. Their wet, dark bodies glittered in an afternoon sun that was unseasonably warm for late October. As they ran and jumped he tried to remember what it felt like to find that much excitement and joy in the simple act of motion and in the shock of cold water on sun-heated skin.