“Not very,” said Nancy coolly.
“There was a pharmaceutical problem, that’s all. Gempaku used too much stimulant, or so he said. The Tengu woke up in the van and blew his mind. It shouldn’t happen again.”
“I don’t know,” said Nancy. “Esmeralda is always full of explanations, but the motivations don’t seem right. If you want to develop a team of extra-special bodyguards, why use such clandestine methods? And why use the name of an ancient Japanese demon?”
“You’re spooking yourself, that’s all,” said Gerard. He watched her as she took out her green-lacquered case and lit a cigarette. “As long as we appear to do what we’re told, and make sure that Esmeralda never catches us napping, we’ll come out of this several hundred thousand dollars richer, and still in one piece.’’ Nancy blew two streams of smoke out of her nostrils, and then said quietly, “Let me tell you something, Gerard. I don’t know whether Mr. Esmeralda is aware of this or not. It may be the whole reason he approached me and asked me to work for him. But when I was much younger, I belonged for several years to a Shinto shrine in Japan known as the Shrine of the Seven Black Kami.
Kemo brought Gerard his Scotch, and Gerard took a large mouthful before he said anything. ‘
‘The Seven Black Kami?” he asked. “What are they?”
“In Shinto, every material object–every mountain, tree, lake, every person, every animal–is seen as a symbol of spiritual power. Everything and everyone has its kami, its spiritual essense, which is not so much its ‘being’ as its ‘beingness.’ There are evil kami as well as good kami, and the particular oddity of the Shrine of the Seven Black Kami was that its priests revered the seven most terrible of all Japan’s ancient spirits, the most evil, in the hope that they would suffer in mind and body, and thereby achieve greater spiritual cleansing.”
“I see,” lied Gerard.
“Of course you don’t see,” said Nancy. “There is no way that I can explain the Shinto shrines to a Westerner. Shinto priests believe that the body and the mind are manifestations of spiritual power, and that if they starve themselves for weeks on end, or walk hundreds of miles barefoot, or immerse themselves for hours in freezing water, they will bring themselves closer to a state of purity.’’
“Not much chance of achieving a state of purity at Inca’s,” said Gerard, checking his watch.
Nancy sucked at her cigarette and then said, “Shrine Shinto came into being at the end of World War Two, after the abolition of State Shinto. There is also Imperial Shinto, which is forbidden to the public, and centered around the ancient rites performed by the Emperor of Japan; Sect Shinto, based on the thirteen sects which worship a high trinity of great and good kami–Amaterasu, Izanagi, and Izanami; and Folk Shinto, the superstitious customs of the people who live in Japan’s remotest rural regions. Shrine Shinto, however, is the most ritualistic and the most mystical.”
Nancy went on, “It was my uncle who introduced me to the Shrine of the Seven Black Kami.
Before that, I had always gone to the shrine of Fushimi Inari. But he told me that in conjuring up the demons and devils of old Japan, I would experience my inner self in a way that I had never been able to do before. He said, ‘You cannot know total spirituality until you have known utter darkness and despair.’ “
“Go on,” said Gerard, watching her narrowly.
“I became obsessively involved with the Seven Black Kami,” said Nancy. Her voice seemed softer and more Japanese-accented than ever. “I went through mental and physical pain such as I had never suffered before and I hope I never suffer again. Whether everything I saw and heard was happening in my mind alone, I shall never know. But I saw demons walking through the streets of Kyoto; real demons such as I can scarcely describe to you. And for night after night I felt myself on the very brink of something I would have to describe to you as hell itself.
“I walked for five miles on shoes that were filled with broken glass. I sat naked in a karesansui garden for a day and a night, impaled on a bronze phallus. I learned to talk the language of devils. I have photographs of myself taken when I was seventeen and eighteen years old, and to look at me you would not have thought that I was the same person. You remember the Manson girls? I looked like that.”
Gerard said huskily, “What made you give it up?”
Nancy half-smiled at him. “I underwent the greatest of all the mortifications of the spirit and the flesh that a member of the shrine could attempt. I took into myself–that is, I allowed myself to become possessed–one of the Seven Black Kami. Actually possessed. The idea was to experience complete evil from the inside; and thereby to conquer it forever.”
She was quiet for a moment. Her long, immaculately painted fingernails traced a pattern on the polished wooden floor. Then she said, “It took me six years finally to shrug off that demon, and in the end I only managed it because I was taken in by a wise and knowledgeable old Shinto priest called Shizuota-Tani. He had seen me many times in Kyoto during the six years of my possession, and he had gradually come to understand that what I appeared to be was not my true self. I appeared to be a drug addict, a prostitute, and, indirectly, a murderess.”
“A murderess?” asked Gerard. He felt the skin prickling at the back of his back.
“I procured girls for films which, in Japan, we call sacrifice dramas. In Los Angeles they are commonly known as ‘snuff movies.’ Films in which girls are involved in sexual orgies, and then, at the height of intercourse, are stabbed or strangled right in front of the camera.”
Gerard said nothing. The room was as silent as a Japanese rock garden.
Nancy said, “I went through another year in the company of this priest, fighting to find out where, inside myself, my own kami had been imprisoned. Then, one night in February, the old priest took me to Nara, the ancient capital, on the evening of the lantern festival at the Kasuga Grand Shrine. I stood in the grounds of the shrine on that evening and saw thousands and thousands of lighted lanterns hanging from the walls and the eaves of the building, bobbing in the wind like the captive souls of happy people. At that moment, without my knowing it, the old priest passed over my head the purification wand, which drives out demons and devils. I fell to the ground as if I had been hit by a truck. They took me to the Kyoto University Hospital, and for three weeks they did not know if I could live. But I survived, and with the help of friends I managed to leave Japan and come here.”
“Why are you telling me this?” asked Gerard in a harsh, soft voice. “What does it have to do with Es-meralda?”
“It has everything to do with Esmeralda. The demon which I accepted into myself was Kama Itachi, a kind of weaselike demon which thrives on pain inflicted by knives and blades. There were six other Black Kami to which I could have opened myself up: Raiden, the storm demon, for instance, who enters human bodies through the navel, and for fear of whom many Japanese people still sleep on their stomachs during thunderstorms. Kappa, the water demon. Pheng, the bird creature who can eclipse the sun Kami Amaterasu with his wings. Rinjin, the dragon beast, who rejoices in death by fire.”
Gerard raised both his hands, a gesture of friendly impatience. “I’m sorry, Nancy, but I’m really not a superstitious guy. I mean, I’m not saying that you didn’t experience any of this. I’m not saying that it wasn’t as real to you when it happened as anything else you might have experienced.
I know how people get when they’re on drugs, that kind of thing. But I have to be getting along to see Esmeralda, and I really don’t see how this is helping.”
Nancy said, very quietly, “The most evil of all the seven Black Kami was called the Tengu. Even the most experienced adepts at the shrine were warned opening themselves up to the Tengu. It was said that the leader of the shrine had once done so, and had almost been driven mad. The Tengu had even caused him to bite off his own tongue to prevent him from exorcising the demon, and to curtail his prayers to Amaterasu.”
“Nancy, please...” Gerard interrupted.
&n
bsp; “No,” said Nancy. “You must listen to me. The characteristics which the Tengu gave to all the men and women he possessed included invincible physical strength, the mad strength of the berserk; and the ability to stand up to ferocious attack from any kind of weapon. He had another characteristic: if the person he was possessing was chopped into the tiniest pieces, the pieces would regenerate themselves, and grow again into misshapen demons even more hideous than the original. What was more...”
“Nancyl” Gerard shouted. “For Christ’s sake!”
“No!” Nancy hissed back at him. “You have to listen because it’s true! They’ve done itDon’t you understand what I’m saying to you? They’re not building up men into bodyguards. They’re not using steroids or chemicals or vitamins! They’ve brought it here, the Tengu, the real Tengu demon!”
She was shaking, and she paced from one side of the room to the other as if she were a madwoman who had been locked up for her own safety. “I didn’t believe it at first. I didn’t want to believe it. I couldn’t! I thought, they are using the name of the Tengu simply because it also means a terrible and powerful being. When Esmeralda said we had to send it out to kill, I had fears enough then. But what happened to that girl, and the way that policeman was smashed to death.... That Tengu was no superathlete, no killer bodyguard. Perhaps Esmeralda doesn’t even know it himself, but we’re helping him to create a race of men who are possessed by the crudest devil ever known. The Tengu is the devil of remorseless destruction; a god without a conscience and without pity. Those men have him in their souls, and they can never get rid of him.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
At nine o’clock that evening, Skrolnik and Pullet drew up outside a pink house on Rialto Avenue in Venice, and doused the lights of their car. Across the street, two or three young boys were smoking and playing a guitar and drinking beer. “I could do with a beer myself,” growled Skrolnik. “That chili-dog is just about burning me up, from the inside out.”
“I could get you a Pepsi,” suggested Pullet. Skrolnik gave Pullet such a withering look in reply that Pullet found himself coughing, looking through his notebook, folding his arms, and finally saying, “Well, I offered.’’
Skrolnik said, “Okay, you offered. Next time, don’t offer. Now, how are we going to tackle this El Krusho character? I have a feeling that if we invite him to accompany us back to headquarters, he’s going to decline. You know what I mean? Guys with a fifty-pound advantage usually do. So, we’re going to have to catch him by surprise. You go round the back of the house. I’ll take the front. At nine-fifteen on the button we’ll kick open our respective doors and shout ‘Freeze, police’! You got me?”
“Freeze, police?” asked Pullet.
“For Christ’s sake,” said Skrolnik.
They climbed out of their car and walked side by side across the sidewalk until they reached the low stone wall which surrounded Casita Rosa. Skrolnik hiked his police .38 out of his belt and cocked it. “Just remember,” he said. “This guy is totally dangerous. If it looks like he’s going for you, armed or not, open fire. Shoot to kill.”
“What should I do if it looks like he’s going for you?”
“Stand by idly and watch him grind me into a Wendy’s hamburger,” said Skrolnik sarcastically.
“What the hell do you think?”
Pullet went around to the back, climbing uncertainly over a wrought-iron fence, while Skrolnik went to the front door, his revolver raised in his right hand, and tentatively rang the bell. There was a long silence, punctuated only by the lonely nighttime sound of a patrol car as it howled its way along Mildred Avenue, answering a call to a supermarket robbery. Skrolnik glanced up at the building and thought for a moment that he could see someone looking down into the street from the third floor, a girl’s face. He leaned forward and pressed the bell again.
It was 9:11. If Skrolnik didn’t get into the building now, right away, Detective Pullet would inevitably go leaping into the suspect’s room, legs bent, revolver held in both hands in the approved Los Angeles Police Academy style, and get the holy shit beaten out of him. Skrolnik yelled,
“Somebody open this goddamned door!” but after a whole minute of waiting, nobody did.
Skrolnik propped his back against one of the wooden pillars of the porch, lifted his left leg, and kicked against the lock. There was a loud bang, Kinney town shoe against solid oak, but the door didn’t give one fraction of an inch. Skrolnik took a deep breath and kicked again. Nothing.
The door was so damned thick that it wouldn’t budge.
At that moment, however, there was a clicking noise, like a catch being released, and the door suddenly swung open. An elderly lady in a blue nylon scarf and a blue bathrobe stood there, blinking at Sergeant Skrolnik through bifocals.
“You don’t have to knock, you know,” she told him. She reached across and pointed to the bell.
“You can always... you know... ding-a-ling-a-ling!”
Skrolnik flipped open his badge wallet. “Madam,” he said. “I have reason to believe that there may be a dangerous criminal in this building.”
“I’m eighty-three years old,” the woman said, with a note of triumph.
“That’s terrific,” Sergeant Skrolnik told her. “Eighty-three! You don’t look a day over sixty!”
“Well, you’re very flattering,” the old lady smiled. Skrolnik checked his watch; it was 9:14.
“Lady,” he said, “in one minute flat my partner’s going to come busting into the house from the rear, and I’ve got to be up there to give him some backup. So, will you please... ?”
The old lady clutched Skrolnik’s sleeve. “Do you know something?” she said. “You remind me so much of my grandson–a fine, well-built fellow, just like you.”
“Lady...” said Skrolnik, gently but firmly clutching her wrist and prising her away from him. But it was too late. There was the flat sound of a handgun shot from upstairs, then a scream, a girl’s scream, and a door banging open so hard that plaster showered down the stairwell. Skrolnik threw himself against the wall, his .38 raised toward the stairs, his eyes wide.
“Pullet!” he shouted. “Pullet, what the fuck’s going on?”
The next instant, a huge man came thundering down the stairs with a noise like an approaching avalanche. Skrolnik shrieked, “Freeze! Police!” but the huge man collided with him as he fired his first shot, and the bullet zonked harmlessly into the plaster.
Skrolnik, however, was a streetfighter, and not so easily put off by one simple dead-end football block. He made a grab for the big man’s arm as he galloped for the front door, missed, but ran two steps, jumped, and clung onto the big man’s shoulders.
There was a grunting struggle. The big man’s hand pushed straight into Skrolnik’s face, squashing his nose. Skrolnik punched him in the kidneys, once, twice, three times, and then in the side of the ear. They both toppled and fell over, while the old lady in the blue bathrobe had gone off to fetch a spiky-haired toilet brush, and now was hitting them both violently on the back and the legs.
Skrolnik jerked up the huge man’s head and succeeded to getting a wristlock onto his throat, as well as a good firm handful of hair. He banged the head on the green linoleum floor to stun him, and followed that up with another punch in the ear. Then he painfully climbed off, and scrabbled around for his hat, and his glasses, and his .38. He found his gun on the other side of the hallway, wedged behind a cheap Chinese vase with a chipped rim. He picked the gun up, cocked it again, and walked over to the huge man lying half-conscious.
‘‘You have the right to remain silent,’’ he panted. ‘‘But you are advised that anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.
The huge man lifted his head and saw the muzzle of Skrolnik’s revolver pointing at his nose. “All right,” he said. “All right.”
Skrolnik tugged his handcuffs out and locked the huge man’s ankle to the bottom of the newel post. Then he quickly climbed the stairs, calling, “Pu
llet? Pullet, are you okay?”
The old lady shrilled out, “You can’t leave this monster here! Not in my hallway!” and she slapped at the huge man with her toilet brush.
“For Christ’s sake,” the man complained. “I’ve surrendered!”
At that moment, one of the doors across the landing opened. Detective Pullet appeared, blushing. Behind him, inside the bedroom, Skrolnik glimpsed somebody bending over, and he pushed past Pullet’s foolish grin and threw the door wide. “All right,” he demanded. “What goes on here?”
The room was decorated with rose-covered wallpaper, and over the wide bed was a 3-D picture of Jesus the Savior, sad but forgiving, his hand raised, surrounded by a glittering gold chorus of 3-D cherubs. A young girl with very short-cropped blonde hair was sitting on the end of the bed, rolling on a pair of sheer black stockings. Apart from her stockings and a black garter belt, she was naked, small-breasted, suntanned, and Teutonkally pretty. A Rhine maiden in shiny nylon.
“Is that your boyfriend, that man-mountain we’ve got downstairs?” asked Skrolnik. He watched impassively as the girl fastened her stockings and then reached for a sheer black bra. It is a good thing I’m a reliable family man, Skrolnik thought. Because, by God, if I weren’t a reliable family man....
“He hasn’t done anything, has he?” the girl asked, in a snappy East coast accent. “He hasn’t broken the law or anything?”
“What do you think?” asked Skrolnik. “You probably know him better than we do.”
“He’s a red gentle guy,” the girl said. “Most of my girlfriends call him the Gentle Giant. “Ever known him aggressive? Mad, for any reason? Drunk, maybe?”
The girl reached for a short black dress with a white Peter Pan collar. “Sometimes he gets sore about the whales.”
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