Sensei

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Sensei Page 5

by John Donohue


  Micky tapped me lightly on the shoulder and took me by the arm. “Don’t worry,” he said quietly in a voice I recognized as my brother’s. “It’ll be OK.”

  “Besides,” Art concluded, “we’re afraid if we tried to take you in, you’d kill us with your freakin’ ninja death touch.”

  “Be afraid, Art. Be very afraid.” I used my most menacing voice, but it was an effort.

  Art appeared unimpressed. “Come on,” he said as we walked toward the door. “You ever been on a crime scene, Connor?”

  “No.” I watched Micky dawdle on the pavement, fingering his pack of cigarettes and wondering whether he could get in a quick smoke.

  “One cardinal rule,” Art continued.

  “OK.” I looked over at him.

  “Don’t touch anything.”

  We went in past the uniformed cop, whose eyes briefly refocused as we approached, but glazed over once the boys flashed their shields. The waterfall burbled with a relentless lack of consideration for the solemnity of crime. The plastic yellow crime scene tape was strung across the scenic little entrance Bobby Kay had showed me with such pride the other day. Inside the gallery, the room was empty. I let out some air, realizing that I had been holding my breath in anticipation of having to see the body.

  But it was long gone. There was the taped outline of Reilly’s last earthly location on the floor, but that was about it. The room was an empty one to begin with, so there wasn’t much to look at. There were some small pieces of paper and tape laying around—the detritus of the crime scene people—but not much else.

  Then I saw the wall.

  I could feel their eyes on me, but Micky and Art didn’t say much. It’s a thing cops develop. They’re hunters of a sort. They learn by watching and waiting. They were both very still.

  I did a double take and moved slowly toward the wall and what was written there. It must have been done with one of those thick magic markers. The black strokes had none of the esthetics of brushwork, but they were well formed and confident, nonetheless. It was calligraphy of a type. I had seen the characters before.

  “Oh, man.” I murmured.

  “Can you read that, Connor?” Micky asked.

  “Lookin’ for a translation. We got a call in for a PD liaison from Chinatown, but no luck yet,” Art added in explanation.

  I turned to look at them. “You sure this wasn’t here before? Not part of Kay’s show?”

  Art flipped through his notebook. “No such luck. This wall was set to have a display hung on it and was painted last week.”

  “We’re assuming whoever got in here and nailed the victim did it,” Micky added. “No trace of the magic marker, right?” He looked at Art, who shook his head. Micky ran a hand through his white streak and squinted at me. Our Dad used the same expression: a squint created from a lifetime of looking at the world through the smoke from a Lucky Strike. “So, can you read it?”

  “Oh, I can read it.” I said.

  “What’s it say?” They asked in unison.

  I looked from one to the other. A uniformed cop drifted closer to eavesdrop. “Fellas,” I said, “let’s get a cup of coffee.”

  We ended up in a diner, hunched over the table in a booth near the back. The waitress wandered over, a Pyrex in hand, and topped up our cups.

  “Thanks, that’s it,” Art said to her. She looked disappointed that he didn’t ask for donuts, but Art struggled manfully against stereotype.

  Then they sat there and simply looked at me with the flat expectancy of their profession.

  “What you’ve got here,” I lectured, “is a message in Japanese. It says, ‘I am here.’”

  “Ooh. Ominous,” my brother said.

  “What’s really interesting is that the note is signed.” I dipped my finger in the coffee cup and drew the characters we had seen from the wall on a napkin. “The characters read ro-nin. Translates as ‘wave man.’”

  “Sailor?” Art suggested.

  “Hmmm, Surfer?” Micky countered.

  “Psycho surfer,” Art grinned, happy with the sound of it.

  “Guys,” I said, trying to rein them in a bit, “in feudal Japan, a warrior without a master to serve was called a ronin, wave man. He was adrift, without moorings, without social place.”

  “Like Palladin,” Micky said, eyeing Art.

  “Have Gun Will Travel.”Art, more than equal to the task, barely missed a beat.

  “Well, yeah,” I admitted, “although it doesn’t have quite the same attraction for the Japanese. A ronin was an essentially tragic figure. In Japan, your identity is bound up with the group. The individual outside group boundaries is an outcast. He has no status. In stories about a ronin, it usually doesn’t end well for him.”

  Art snapped his fingers and pointed across the Formica. “Like Shane.”

  “Well, yeah,” I said, “but Americans tend to romanticize the gunslinger story. It pops up everywhere. Cowboy flicks. Private-eye flicks. Cop flicks. Same story, different costumes. The lone fighter is heroic for us, not really tragic.”

  “I think Shane pretty well captured the tragic aspect,” Art began as a protest.

  “So, what’s that got to do with offing this Reilly guy?” Micky wanted to get to the point before Art digressed into the lesser known works of Jack Palance and Alan Ladd.

  “Hey, you’re the detectives,” I countered. “Detect.”

  “What we have here .. .” Art began.

  Micky picked up the thread. “Is a murder in the public space of an art gallery specializing in Asian objects related to all that martial arts stuff you do.”

  “Victim appears to have been done in without an apparent weapon,” Art added.

  “Then again, the perp could have used a pipe and taken it with him.” Micky nodded as he mulled over his own statement, looking at Art expectantly.

  His partner nodded in agreement. “We’ll check with the M.E ‘s report. Pipe. Club. Cosh. It got done. We’ll see if they pick up anything from the autopsy that IDs a weapon.”

  “You mean like splinters or stuff?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” But he waved it away. “Now the graffiti. Here’s a new wrinkle. What’s that all about?”

  “People who sign their work, they want to be known,” Micky pointed out. “Even with an alias.”

  “You don’t think this was just a robbery gone bad?” I said.

  “Connor,” my brother explained slowly, as if to a simpleton.”Someone breaks into an art gallery. They take . . .” he raised his eyebrows, waiting for the answer.

  “Well, art, I guess,” I replied.

  “You guess right. You don’t thread an electronic alarm system in midtown, go through all that planning, knock someone off, and take . . . what?” He looked at Art for confirmation.

  “Nothing of any real value. Nada. Zip.” He consulted his notes and quoted, “A personal inventory by Mr. Akkadian confirms nothing missing except an old wooden sword that formed a minor part of the display.”

  Micky nodded. “No thief is gonna act like that. Akkadian had tons of valuable stuff in there.” Micky seemed outraged by the ineptness.

  I sat, digesting this, and Art followed up. I think they were both secretly enjoying lecturing to me. “And, if something goes wrong and you have to knock some heads, you tend to boogie outta there quick. Your basic thief doesn’t whip out the old magic marker and do Chinese graffiti all over the place instead of stuffing valuables into a sack.”

  “So what do you mean? What happened?” I asked.

  Micky answered me. “This wasn’t a smash and grab sort of thing.”

  “Maybe just a smash,” Art said. I guessed he had seen the body before they came to fetch me.

  “This is some weird, hokey murder,” my brother said. “And that ‘ronin’ shit is the clue.”

  “Guy like this,” Art said, “is gonna leave a trail. And a trail . . .”

  “Is just what two ace bloodhounds like us need,” Micky said.

  That seeme
d to do it for them. They drained their cups and headed out. Art paid the cashier, and Micky provided a running commentary as we headed out to the car, double-parked out front.

  “We’ll run a check. Connor, we’ll need a statement. Compare your prints with any latents the lab people picked up. They won’t match and you’ll be cleared. Then, we see if there are reports with similar MOs. Shouldn’t be hard to spot. The newspaper clippings alone should stick out a mile.”

  “Martial mayhem,” Art offered.

  “Samurai slaying.”

  “Psycho Samurai Slaying.”

  And off we went. This time, I had to sit in the back.

  6. An Open and Shut Case

  Progress has pretty much ruined everything. When Micky and Art invited me back to the squad room, I had all those B-movie images of where cops work lodged in my brain: dark and dingy rooms crammed with untidy desks, choked with cigarette smoke, and smelling of old coffee and stale sweat.

  In reality, Micky and Art shared the wall of contiguous cubicles in a brightly lit, cavernous area made mazelike by the portable half-walls that divided up the space. Phones didn’t ring; they chirped. There were even faxes in plain view, along with prominently displayed “No Smoking” symbols. Despite my disappointment, there were some comforting links with the past. The room was littered with coffee cups: anonymous Styrofoam ones, others with the very popular blue Greek motif, upscale types made of paper sporting various brand names, and even some ceramic mugs of the kind people get at conventions or as gifts from other people with no real clue about what to buy as presents.

  The surface illusion of order and neatness was somewhat damaged when I got escorted to Micky’s cubicle. Cartons awash in folders and dog-eared documents were shoved beneath the desk. Little slips of paper were tucked under blotters, half-empty coffee cups, and anything else remotely heavy. Art was on the phone, standing up and peering over the wall that divided him from us, murmuring “uh huh, uh huh” into the receiver and taking notes. His pen ran out of ink. He grimaced and snapped his fingers at Micky while throwing his dead pen in the trash. Micky opened a drawer that was crammed with paper and rummaged through a pile of ballpoints with mismatched caps, tossing one to Art.

  “Excuse me,” I said as I approached, “is this 22IB Baker Street?”

  Art sat down, rolled his chair out, and swiveled in it to eye me briefly. Micky pulled some paperwork off a chair and gestured for me to sit. Art hung up the phone.

  I eyed him expectantly.

  “Nah,” he shook his head, “nothing. Other case.”

  He thumbed through some pages of notes in his little book. Art had thick, freckled hands and his fingers made the book look tiny. “OK,” he said, “Connor’s landlady confirms his statement that he was home the night of the murder. She heard him come in and various noises in the apartment for most of the evening. Seems to corroborate his statement.”

  Micky raised his eyebrows. “Noises? Way to go, bro.”

  “Don’t get too excited, Mick, it’s a two-family house. I live upstairs and the floors creak.”

  “Yeah, well. One less thing to worry about.”

  “Which is nice,” Art said, “’cause there’s a shitload of other stuff to wade through here.”

  “What,” I said, “you’ve got something?”

  They swung their chairs to face me at almost exactly the same time. I felt left out because my chair had no wheels. Then they looked at each other.

  “To the Batcave,” they said together.

  I followed them out of the cubicle and into a conference room, thinking that they really were seeing too much of each other.

  It had only been a few days since Reilly’s murder, but in that short time the investigation’s paperwork had ballooned. Art and Micky both hauled various boxes, manila envelopes, files, and VCR tapes to the Batcave. It was pretty state of the art for cops, a carpeted conference room with a computer hooked up to a projector, a TV/VCR unit, and a large oval table. They dumped the stuff at one end and began sorting it, rooting around and grunting at each other like apes contentedly working a grub nest.

  I sat and watched the process, waiting until they were ready. Finally, Micky popped a tape in the TV. The sound kicked in and it was some cop I didn’t know narrating the examination of the crime scene. Date and time were automatically displayed, but he went through the motions anyway, identifying the location, the hour and day, and the fact that Art and Micky were the investigating officers.

  The camera panned carefully around the room, noting entrances, windows (there were none), lighting and alarm controls, orienting the viewer. Then it carefully focused on the floor where Reilly lay.

  The camera panned over the body. Reilly’s form was like something discarded. It had the shape and dimension of a human being, but it was just flopped there on the floor, a heap, without any of the sense of connection you get from looking at a person at rest. The left shoulder looked droopy and it was obvious from the face that Reilly had taken a major blow to the head. What looked like an oak sword was pinned under the body.

  Micky shoved some still photos across the table: Reilly from various angles. “OK,” he began. “So much for cinema. Mitchell Reilly, aged forty-two. Casual employee of Samurai House. Ran a martial arts school in Queens. Some minor stuff as a juvenile, nothing on the record for the last twenty years or so.”

  “Saved for clean living by the martial arts?” I asked.

  Art snorted. “Saved for the coroner’s office.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Micky said. “No apparent problems in his life that would suggest he was anything but a guy who got in the way here.”

  “We put an end to that grudge match thing, by the way,” Art said. “Once we squeezed Akkadian, we got to the bottom of it. Anyway,” he continued, “we told Bobby Kay that you were clean.”

  “What was his reaction?” I asked.

  “He seemed like his mind was on other things,” Micky commented. “He did say that he never really thought it was you; you seemed OK.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “I seemed so OK he couldn’t wait to finger me for murder.”

  Art waved it away. “It happens.” Then he picked up the thread, “Time of death is estimated somewhere between two-thirty and six-thirty A.M.”

  “Is that significant?”

  Micky made a face. “There’s a four-hour margin of error in this stuff. He was found at around seven-thirty in the morning, so it doesn’t tell us much that we didn’t already know.”

  “Deceased suffered a number of fractures, including a cranial blow that might have killed him,” Art continued.

  “Do you know what did it?” I was trying to remain as clinical as they were, but my eyes kept drifting to the frozen video and the stills on the table.

  “Cellulose fragments from his shirt and scalp suggest the weapon was wood of some type; we haven’t got it fixed yet.”

  “Let me ask,” I said. “Reilly suffered a number of fractures. Collarbone?”

  They nodded.

  “The head wound is obvious. Any sign of damage to the right wrist or forearm?”

  Micky consulted the M.E.’s report. “No breaks that are noted. Did seem to have taken some bangs there, though.”

  It figured. I got up and shut the TV off so I could concentrate better.

  “OK,” I continued, “so Mitch Reilly is in the Samurai House guarding Bobby Kaye’s exhibit. He got let in when?”

  “Building shuts down about eleven. Lobby security logged the cleaners out and Reilly in at ten P.M. Reilly activated the Samurai House alarm and buttoned up for the night. There’s no lobby security presence until five-thirty A.M.”

  “Custodial shift comes in at seven,” Art said. “Secretary at seven-thirty. She takes a quick look in the gallery and all hell breaks loose.”

  “She screamed so loud, the guards spilled their coffee,” Micky said. “They were very upset.”

  “So how’d the murderer get in?” I asked.

  Micky
snorted. “That’s the easy part.”

  “Yeah,” Art said. “Reilly let him in.”

  Reilly lay sprawled there in the photo with the bug-eyed look of head wounds and offered no clue to me as to why he let his killer in.

  “What we need to know is whether you’ve got any insights into what happened,” Micky prompted.

  I nodded. “This thing wedged under the body, do you have it?”

  “Sure.” Art pulled another photo out of an envelope.

  My first impression was right. It was a bokken.

  “Murder weapon?” I asked.

  “Nah, We’re pretty certain it was Reilly’s weapon,” Micky said.

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “He carved his initials in the butt end.”

  “Then again,” Art countered, “letters could stand for ‘Master Robin’.”

  “Murder Rampage,” Micky suggested.

  “Mister Roberts,” Art offered.

  I cut them off in mid-flow, “One of his students can probably identify it as Reilly’s.”

  They seemed somewhat put out, and just stared at me.

  Art shook his head and went on. “We’re looking at fragments in his wounds. We can’t type the wood yet.”

  “Wood of the murder weapon could be a lot of things,” I said. “That thing looks like oak. You can also have the forensic guys check hickory. It’s commonly used for bokken. If they really want to get exotic, they can try loquat.”

  Art looked at Micky and silently mouthed the question “Loquat?” Micky shrugged.

  “The wounds seem fairly consistent with the kind of damage you might get if two people went at each other with wood swords,” I said.

  “How’d you figure the collarbone break?” Art asked me.

  “You can see a little extra slump in the shoulder,” I pointed out, spreading the different still shots out and pointing it out in each. “It’s also a pretty easy bone to snap if you hit it right. In kenjutsu—swordsmanship—there’s a pretty common strike that would do that. Kesa-giri. Means ‘ scarf cut.’”

 

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