by Harker Moore
Flower. Hanae. Cherry blossom. He sliced the air a final time. With a resolve that he would do better with his wife. And with an awareness that he had an erection that soap and a shower would do little to ease.
“Catch a load of those tits!” Rozelli had come up behind his partner at the computer, was peering down at the picture on the screen. “There’s hope for you yet, Talbot,” he said, “stealing a little computer time to sneak a peek at the babes.” He grabbed a nearby chair and rolled it over to plop himself down.
“Research, Rozelli,” Talbot explained. “And you’re trainspotting.” He moved the cursor to an icon on the screen, replacing the image of the tank-topped girl with another shot, this one a blur of patterned light, a dancer with whirling glowsticks.
“I’m what?”
“Trainspotting . . . looking over my shoulder. It’s what the kids say when they try to make out what record a deejay is spinning.”
“So I guess you’re an expert on raves now?”
“Pretty much.” Talbot had swiveled toward him, was leaning back in the chair. “They call them parties,” he said, “at least the underground stuff.” Then, “What do you want to know?”
“Do all the babes look as good as that first chick?”
“That’s strictly on a need-to-know.” Talbot was grinning. “Next question.”
“Okay, smart boy. Where do we find this deejay, this Shaman guy in Sarah Laraby’s diary?”
“No luck on your end, huh?”
“Hell, no.” Rozelli was frowning. “A couple guys at Anti-crime had heard of him. No standard gig. Spins at a lot of the local clubs. But no clue to his real name.” He eyed the computer screen, where a gallery of images was unfolding—a group of scantily clad dancers, a trio of girls decked out with backpacks and strings of plastic jewelry, another girl with long blond braids sucking on a Day-Glo pacifier. He looked at Walt. “You think you could download us a list of the clubs that play this stuff, and—”
“Download?” Talbot mimicked amazement. “And here I thought you were still stuck on the Mario Brothers.”
“Don’t shit with me, Walt.” Rozelli, in spite of himself, was grinning too. “We got to find this Shaman guy, and I figure now we got to go club to club.”
“That what you figure?” Talbot sat up straight, letting the chair pop against his back. He swiveled to the screen, moved the cursor to the bottom, and maximized a file.
The screen bloomed black. A symbol in the middle. New Age. Southwestern. The trickster god Kokopelli with his flute. ENTER in small block letters beneath. Talbot clicked with the cursor and music played. A small box of streaming video had replaced Kokopelli. Lights flashing. A sea of writhing dancers. The camera pivoting on the shot, taking in the man on the platform above the seething mob. The angle shot over his shoulder, still on the dancing crowd. The camera panning, turning. A close-up on him now. The image of his head in the foreground, looming. The camera moving. Zooming. His face filling the box.
Blackout. The whole screen a uniform darkness. Then blazing from nothing the name. S-H-A-M-A-N in glowing letters. And the music still playing. Eerie. Electronic.
“Acid house,” Talbot said.
“What?”
“Techno is divided into a whole bunch of genres,” Talbot was explaining. “House. Jungle. Hardcore. Maybe twenty more. That particular track is Acid House. The Acid stuff is kind of the Shaman’s specialty. Though he plays a good mix.”
“Jesus H. Christ,” Rozelli said. “You his press agent?”
“No, but I have been studying his website.” Talbot clicked on a small icon and the page changed. A picture of Shaman. At the side of the graphic, the words: HOME—BIO—GIGS—MEDIA.
“I don’t think he does any underground, what the kids would consider the real stuff,” Talbot said. “But take a look at this.” He clicked on GIGS. A grid appeared listing the Shaman’s club dates. Talbot’s finger stabbed at one of the boxes.
“Shit,” Rozelli said. “I had something going for tonight.”
“Cancel, my man,” said Talbot, “and get back with Anti-crime. We’re going to need some way cool threads.”
In zazen Hanae sat, eyes closed, spine straight, her legs crossed, with fingers in small circles. Empty mind. She sought empty mind. A blankness upon which to set her foot, severing time, allowing the skin of space to split around her. Not one thought did she want, beyond this thought of no-thought. Not one breath, beyond this breath she now took. And just this beat of blood inside her. Not the next, or the next. Stilled must be the very pores of her flesh, the single hairs upon her head, the impatient flutter behind the lids of her eyes. Emptiness. Nothingness. Into the All. Into the embrace of the One. Into a single wave of pure consciousness must she let herself go, riding the small vessel of self that was not self. Be and not be.
She opened her eyes. She was weeping. Tears came without will. Flowed freely from eyes devoid of sensation. No feeling of moisture or warmth upon her skin. No bitterness of salt fell into the corners of her mouth. Yet the reservoir of pain from which the tears came was real and acute. They sprang from the same source as the tears she had shed the other night.
The tears washed away her hoped-for emptiness. Brought self back to self. No Buddha-mind filled her mind. Only his face. Jimmy’s face. And his words. Gentle and harsh. Wise yet unknowing. I want my wife. I want my wife to be safe. These are not two things, but one. And her words. To see that there is no wall.
It was this wall that now stood against her solitude, blocked the light inside. The light that had become her surest guide to both the interior and outer worlds where she had lived since birth, sightless but not without vision. When had Jimmy lost faith in that vision? Or was it possible she had fooled herself into believing he had ever accepted what he had had on her word alone?
Was this some karma she must meet in this lifetime? A dance that must be danced? Some past debt due? Greater than her blindness did this separation from her husband test her. Their lives seemingly upon a single path, only to unwind now into two.
She closed her eyes and was back in Kyoto. The day was hot and no breeze stirred inside the small enclosure of the garden. Somewhere near she could hear a steady explosion of water, gushing through a ropy rubber hose. The hard spray, spitting against the pavement, washing away the crust of the city. Inside her mouth was the wet-dry taste of dust.
She was sure that this particular day had never happened, though there had been similar days in Kyoto, in the home of her parents. But not this precise day. Why she did not return to an exact experience was noted, but not in any way examined. She simply let the vision flow, knowing there must be meaning inside this variance with the indelibly inked sameness of her Kyoto life.
The shuffle of her mother’s geta upon stone. The smell of fresh melon. The soft clop-clop of wooden chopsticks against porcelain.
“Something to cool us.” Mama-san’s cheery voice. She set the lacquered tray upon the square wooden table, the edges of two bowls clinking.
She ran her hands across her brow, then across the nape of her neck. The hair that grew there was damp from perspiration. For only a moment did she question the shortness of her hair, its brush-bluntness against her fingers.
“Fresh from Mr. Arigato’s market.” Her mother was speaking again, the ripe aroma of the fruit escaping as she cut into the melon.
She reached then, and took one dimpled belly into each hand. The sweet juice ran down her forearms into the shelter of her kimono sleeves, her thumbs slipping into the centers, into the spongy nest of hair and seed. She was vaguely aware that the tough outer skin of the rind pressed a kind of cerebral pattern into her palms.
“Hanae, let me cut the melon into slices so that we might enjoy.”
She knew she did not respond, but held tight the two halves. It was then she felt her mother’s hand, the knife inside. The edge of sharp steel cut.
She opened her eyes to present time. Her spine was straight, her fingers rounded, her postu
re still in zazen. But the metallic flavor of blood had replaced the taste of the dampened dust of memory.
What’s the bitch got this time, Sakura? McCauley’s question still nagged, long after their morning meeting. Sakura gave up on his sandwich and sat back in his chair. It was not a good sign that he’d already succumbed to bad takeout.
The promos for Kahn’s weekend show had started the speculation that was rife. He admitted he himself was hoping for the best, that the promise of some exclusive revelation was no more than empty hype. But the woman had certainly proven herself both clever and ruthless in the past. And security on any high-profile case was always a major concern.
So many new faces in the Operations Room this morning, new men assigned to what was now an official task force. So many officers needed for the enormous amount of legwork that an investigation like this required. But the expansion of manpower was always a double-edged sword. The wider the pool of persons possessing information, the more likely that some of it would leak. And the more likely, too, that the one really important piece of information—the detail that could break the case—could get lost in the blizzard of paperwork.
His own desk was covered in files. But despite all the canvassing and interviewing that were still ongoing, despite the hot line numbers running with the nightly news, not a single credible witness had turned up. It seemed they could not catch a break. Even without the media hype, the pressure would still be building.
It had started slow. A kind of false reprieve. Months having passed between the first body at the recycling center and the moment when it became undeniable that a serial killer was stalking young women in the city. By the time the police had caught on, by the time his unit had been given jurisdiction, four women had died. News coverage of the discoveries in the landfill had placed the public square in the loop. Solange Mansour was tipping the scales toward outrage, if not panic.
For days the dramatic footage of the recovery of her body from the abandoned car had seemed to cycle endlessly on every cable channel. The story had gone national, with all the extra headaches that entailed. The game he hated had begun in earnest, with a press conference scheduled for Tuesday.
“Got a minute?” Adelia Johnson spoke from the door.
“You have something?”
“Cab company logs.” She came in and set them on the desk. “Could be a taxi driver is our best deal for a witness. And we’ve got the parking tickets from around the clubs in the works, too.”
He nodded. It was a long shot, but a parking ticket issued on the night of a murder had led to Son of Sam.
“But you know,” Adelia was saying, “he could be using the subway. A girl doped up on Rohypnol is like a zombie. They don’t pass out at first.” She shifted position to fix him with a look, asked the inevitable question. “What you think that Kahn woman’s got?”
“I’m hoping nothing much.” Sakura sighed inwardly. “But I’m sure she’s got sources in this building.”
“Not Johnny.” Delia was instantly protective.
Sakura smiled. The rumors about Kahn and Rozelli had seeped through Major Case last year with the inevitability of osmosis. He knew it was the judgment that he had been uncharacteristically lenient in not accepting Rozelli’s offer of his badge. Speculation was still rampant as to why.
At the time, he had told himself that it simply made sense to retain a good officer who was not likely to repeat his mistake. But there had been more to it than that. Johnny Rozelli had been the beneficiary of his own guilt. His history with Faith Baldwin had given him an understanding of that particular kind of temptation.
“I wasn’t thinking of Johnny,” he said to Delia now. “I’ve no doubt we have civilian clerks who regularly pass information to Ms. Kahn. They all have their favorite reporters.”
“What is up with Rozelli?” Delia asked. “He and Walt were makin’ some big mystery of a trip to Anti-crime.”
“They’re getting outfitted for a little undercover clubbing tonight.”
“Johnny and Walt in phatlegs and hoodies.” Delia was shaking, her laugh in contralto. “Oh, mama, to be a fly on that wall.”
Red explosions of light jackknifed across the afternoon’s dimmer gray palette. The pair ran and scampered in the early cool, working up a doggy-smell sweat, tossing off zippered jackets to downy sweaters beneath. Hither and thither the boys raced—monkey see, monkey do—tumbling in crisp drying grass, skipping over scaly stones. Bright Easter eggs inside a thick lawn. Once hidden, now revealed. Ever surprising him. And like a moth to flame he had been drawn.
Inside the shelter of the park’s trees, he sat on a bench. A conventional-looking man. Reading. Concentrating. Absorbing. Oblivious to the delights sparking like fireflies around him. He turned the page of the text. Adjusted the glasses on his nose. Consumed by the written word, a wayward scholar, under a jaunty cap, taking in a bit of the fading equinox. Soaking up sun and sentence and syntax.
Liar. He smiled, barely controlling his excitement as the laddies romped and rallied inside the black wrought-iron fencing, within the square’s spare exclusivity. His eyes on the slant, he observed a nanny wise enough to forgo reining in twin fissions of copper penny-headed energy, two sets of legs beating a trail of maddening ever-widening circles. Little rubies. Red and brilliant and precious. Spontaneous gifts long overdue. Yesterday he’d been held prisoner, peering through the tall iron grate of the gates, captivated by the wild boys at play. Until by clever device, he’d opened passage to an infinitely greater Kingdom.
He sat cozily and happy within, licking a thumb to catch a page, his lips quivering in want of just one fox-red curl, a wet cherry rolling over tongue and throat. He set aside the book. His prop. An important piece of his invisibility. He would have to leave soon, and he removed his glasses, staring boldly for the first time today at the plump compact little bodies, somersaulting in spinwheels of color. Over and under in a patch of newly fallen rusted-out leaves.
Sleep would not easily come tonight. Instead he would stare into a volume of dark space, stilling his heart of its ancient memories, relishing the bloom of fresh imaginings of his boys. And already they were his boys.
Suddenly the ball rolled at Nanny’s feet. In a moment they pulled up short, stood their ground before her, blue eyes stretched wide, questioning her will to become a third party to their game. He watched their chests pumping, waiting for the moment when Nanny would cross over into their boyhood. Then pairs of chubby hands reached for the ball she scooped up, held over their heads. The twins squealed, vying for possession, till one brother took ownership, the other nipping at his heels. Suddenly they were aground, all arms and legs tangled, struggling for the charmed toy. Conjoined, bound both by mutual and cross purpose. And he almost wept for joy.
Willie sat in her office, scrawling in her date book, attempting to organize her life. As if any date book could do such a thing. She laughed out loud, curling her legs up under her, twisting a strand of hair. Teeth clamped down on a pencil. She’d left Michael at Police Plaza, with a promise he’d make it home in time for dinner. She pushed back from her desk, wishing him there, puttering away in his workroom. She liked the safe solid sound of his hammer coming down, the sweet smell of the wood. Liked knowing he was never more than a few feet away.
Schedule. The word intruded. She rolled her chair forward. She had to come up with some kind of schedule. It had been days since she’d written a word. What had happened to her grand plan of writing a chapter a week? By her calculation, at the present pace, she would be lucky to finish the book in three years. Though her editor had told her to take whatever time she needed, she didn’t want to push it. She already felt guilty every time she spent a penny of the advance. What if she paid herself? A fraction of the advance for every chapter she wrote. That seemed fair, and it might even be an incentive to get productive. Who was she kidding? Nothing could force her into a routine. Quantico had been her great stab at organization and discipline. And she’d been partially success
ful. But old habits were hard to break. She was a quantum thinker, a quantum writer, a quantum housekeeper, a quantum shopper. A quantum everything. She jumped from one activity to another. At times she half-suspected she had some form of attention deficit.
If she just didn’t spread herself so thin, she could make some real headway. But there was little hope for that. Besides, she loved to mix it up. Boredom was her worst enemy. She looked down at what she had written. Time allotments for her three major undertakings: her writing, the investigation, and her patients. Speaking of patients . . . She had a new patient coming in later this afternoon. She reached over and flipped open her appointment book. Victor Abbot. 3 P.M.
The night was a large bat descending, its leathery black wings moist and heavy, promising chill hard rain. Streetlights bit sharply into the dark, but surrendered halos of saturated illumination. The air had the cold thick taste of autumn waiting in the wings.
Inside the dance club, the bat had landed, but had dropped some acid on its way down.
“Like what you see?” The man had turned over the reins to another deejay, who took his place inside the glass cage. He glanced over his shoulder, following the cops’ eyes. The two girls were polar opposites. One petite, round, and blond. The other tall, angular, and dark. The height difference, however, didn’t stop them from meeting breast-to-breast, tongue-to-tongue as they gyrated in what passed for dancing. Then the small one turned, flipping her long gold mane with one hand and grinding her rear into the groin of her taller partner. The flashing lights gave their movements a harder, more precise edge.